shivver | Just a great week

It's been a while since I've had any time to relax, but this weekend was just wonderful. Evidence: I haven't been on any social media since Wednesday. I didn't even check email.

Life has been super busy because at work, we had a project with a firm and short deadline that we've been working constantly toward for the past three months. As usual with this kind of a thing, it gets busier and more difficult the closer the deadline looms, but we finally shipped the site last week, on time (well, we were ten minutes late due to a last-minute issue) and as clean as we could expect. The client's happy (though already waiting with a list of unscheduled enhancements), and this site is a lot more satisfying than the last project, which was a piece o' crap for a number of reasons (none of which was our engineering effort - the project was robust, it was just that what we were asked to do was crap).

Thus, the majority of us got Friday off, which was very nice, and that meant my husband and I got a lot of sleep without the stress of dreading the next day.

Of course, last week was also my birthday, which somehow publicized on DW and LJ despite having long ago set it to not show to anyone. No idea why it's been changed to show to everyone, but that's been fixed and won't be a problem next year. (I dislike having my birthday celebrated - as far as I'm concerned, my birthday is just a day in the year and does not deserve any special attention - but thank you all for the birthday wishes!) Anyway, my husband took me out to dinner on my birthday and then again last night to my favorite restaurant (which is an hour out of town, so requires special effort and can't be done during the week), and we enjoyed two nice, slow, relaxing times.

I did buy myself a birthday present. I got one of those portable jigsaw puzzle platform cases, one that's rated for up to 1500 pieces. I haven't done jigsaws in ages, simply because we don't have a surface big enough that can be left unusable for other things for long periods of time, and so I thought why not? I used to love doing puzzles when I was a kid, sitting in the living room for hours on end. Which is strange, as I think about it, as there wasn't a TV in the living room (our family TV was in the parlor) so I didn't have any other entertainment on while I did them. Perhaps I had music on - either LPs or cassettes, or possibly AM radio. Makes me feel old. :D Anyway, so now I have a new jigsaw puzzle about 8% done in front of our TV.

I spent a number of hours this weekend working on the jigsaw puzzle while watching the Good Omens steelbook, which I received a couple of weeks ago and hadn't had the time to get to it. So far the extras have been mostly entertaining, though a couple were completely useless. There's a tour of Aziraphale's bookshop, in which Neil Gaiman walks through the set and talks about the detail the set designers put into it. I also watched episodes 1 through 3 with the commentary, which was also fascinating. Here are a few tidbits.

They built their own Soho set for the exterior scenes. In any of the shots where there's the characters walking along one block with an intersection in the background and the next block further back, the front block is real but the one in the back is CGI.
They also built the bookshop, and then burned it. During the night after they burned the bookshop, the set guys covered it and it became the "Striptease" storefront in the 60s scene where Lance Corporal Shadwell talks to Crowley about the Witchfinder Army, which was shot the next day.
During the drinking scene in the bookshop, DT's contacts wouldn't stay rotated the right way. They had to CGI his eyes to correct the orientation.
The actor that played Adam's father said that the best bit for him was getting to address DT as "Doctor".
Many of the main characters got their own theme music, but with 250 characters, the minor ones didn't. The International Express delivery man did, because of how important he was to the story.
On the day when they filmed the scene where Aziraphale gives Crowley the thermos of holy water, DT broke the passenger-side door of the Bentley. So, when Crowley walks around the car, showing the empty passenger seat, then gets in and finds Aziraphale there, Michael Sheen was actually sitting there but was CGIed out. Then, at the end of the scene, when Aziraphale leaves, the camera panned back to Crowley and the sound of the door handle played, but MS never actually left the car.
At the beginning of the scene in St. James Park when Crowley asks for the holy water, a carriage passes by Crowley standing at the fence while Aziraphale approaches. MS said later that the carriage just missed clipping DT in the back, and the thing broke down a little bit after leaving camera view.

I also got Dragon Quest XI, but I haven't had time to even take a look at it. And, hearing how much people are loving Pokemon Sword and Shield, that might be the next thing we do.

On Saturday, I went to my band director Tim's house and played trombone with him and the rest of the trombone section, and that was a blast. I'm terrible at trombone, since I've only had one for a little while, don't practice, and have never actually had a chance (or hope) to perform, but I try. We sight-read a bunch of Christmas music (arranged in three or four parts) and selected three to perform at our concert next month, so now I have a target to practice for. And obviously Tim doesn't mind if we sound terrible. :D

But, we took walks, and watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, and cuddled, and honestly just had a happy time for the first time in a quarter of a year. I even turned off my alarm and slept late all days of the weekend except Saturday. I enjoyed it so much that I put off my calligraphy homework way too long and ended up scribbling out nothing interesting, and you know what? I don't care! It's awesome! My only regret is that I didn't think to work on something for