Scrivener is awesome

I don't think I've ever promoted this particular product before on this blog, but I wrote my dissertation in Scrivener and it was awesome. I never would have gotten going without it.

Of course, I opened it today to solve writers' block on the 30-page summary version of my dissertation for a contest, and the dissertation itself opened, as it was the last project I worked on using it. Meaning I probably haven't been doing enough writing.

Yay birthday

I had a really great birthday.  Monday night Joe cooked manicotti and cupcakes, and we had prosecco and bummed around.  Yesterday I got up at the luxurious hour of 9:30 (instead of my usual weekday 7am), and Joe went off to his appointment while I had an additional hour to drink my coffee and lounge before I went to meet him at Friendship Heights.  He usually takes the Metro there, but that is such an error because THE BUS IS BEST.  Those of you who remember my packet-o-schedules from my Union Sq, Somerville days know that I am a big fan of buses, and yesterday I got to ride a whole new bus, the Montgomery County Ride On #1, which is similar in direction to the J1 Metrobus I ride to work, except that it makes many thrilling diversions into the adjacent neighborhoods instead of sticking to the boring main road.  It was the best ever, and then I met Joe for lunch at Mei Wah, which was super tasty.

After lunch we went down to Union Station and walked over to the new Capitol Visitors Center, where we had a tour of the Capitol (fun, but I need to get on a staff tour because only on those is there the possibility of riding the Capitol Subway), followed by a quick browse of the little museum.  Joe was pretty worn out after all that being out of the house, so we went home and vegged for the rest of the evening.  It was fun to have the day off work; sadly, I only won $2 in last night's Mega Millions drawing instead of the $212 million someone in Ocean County, NJ won, so I can't play hooky for the rest of my life and will have to continue working.

A great day for Metro

I was very bummed about having to trek out to use the bus, but I became less bummed as I realized that the little bit of deck and walk I had to shovel to get to the street was far less work than shoveling the whole driveway and cleaning off my car, as I'd have to do if I were driving.  It was also not that bad a walk, whereas it would have been a very stressful drive, since the streets were pretty slushy.  The bus I caught was on schedule (later than the bus I would normally catch, but just fine for today).

Sadly, we care a lot more as a society about clearing roads than sidewalks.  We leave it up to businesses and residences to clear sidewalks (where they exist... there aren't any sidewalks on my street), but we expect that our government will clear the roads.  I kinda want to boycott work whenever it snows as a protest.  Despite the University being open today, most of the sidewalks were not cleared when I arrived around 10, which is lame.

I wish I had been able to stay home today (I had to come in for something that we ended up cancelling and rescheduling anyway), but tomorrow I'm off for my birthday, which I will spend with my sweetie.