Things I did today

 Last year, I got to Aldi at 7am and was second in line for the wine and cheese calendars. This year, I expected more people to be lining up with the pandemic on - they'll want to have something to do on Wednesday morning, and something to continually open throughout Advent season. One of my friends who I've not seen since March agreed to meet me at Aldi at 6:30am on November 4th. She and I were the first ones to arrive, and the only ones at the store until 7am, when one other girl showed up. Slowly, around 7:30am, a few more people lined up, and by the time the store was about to open, there were 50 people. Not bad. The store manager came out to hand out the advent calendar tickets, and informed us they had no wine calendars. In fact, no wine calendars were given to North Carolina at all! My friend and I considered for a brief moment driving the hour north to Virginia in hopes to catch a wine calendar there, but decided to stick with our consolation prize - he did have plenty

Laura of late August: Yeah, weekly posts! That'll be easy, I've been doing daily posts! Laura of early October: I feel like I have nothing to write about, and I also don't want to write. Laura of late October: Medical issues and work abound! No time or mental space for writing! But I have more faith in Laura of November. It's true that I took the first two weeks of October kind of "off" and did stuff that didn't really help me long term. I looked at my financial accounts too much. I looked at Reddit too much. I watched YouTube too much. If I learned anything, it was that I was not any happier by overusing those things, and I should probably cut back or quit. In late October, my annual review was due, and I'd wanted to write how I had learned how to use SQL Server Integration Services. After all, I had started a book in the early summer (that I had purchased in 2014) and I should be able to finish by the time the review needed to be handed in, if I work