On Saturday, I shut down my computer for the day in honor of International Shutdown Day. I learned many things in my day in the real world, some of which I’m sharing here:

• I overestimate what can be done in a day. Always have, always will. But getting my chunky behind out of bed earlier would help me get a lot more accomplished!

• There’s an awful lot of dog poop in my back yard, and the slugs are out already. I noticed this as I was upgrading our solar lanterns. We like our yard lit up a bit at night, it’s awfully hard to tell if our long haired black girl dog actually squats in the dark.
• Speaking of that, don’t listen to Brad Paisley’s new single “Ticks” while drinking coffee and driving, nor while you have to pee. I just about snorted coffee out my nose, and then howled in laughter through throughout the song. You can hear the song on his Myspace site.
• Beer batter fish and chips and chocolate truffles are a really sad dinner combination.
• Teens really dislike being deprived of electronics. They are bbbooooorrrrrreeeedddd and make vague accusations of child abuse. And then they make their parents listen to Lemon Demon over and over again on the car stereo. Mine got back on the computer at 12:01am.
• Since I had to pick up Ben in Seattle last night, I really, really missed the ability to check the Bainbridge ferry schedule and the Amtrak train status online. The ferry runs every 50 minutes, and the train is gonna get there when it gets there (most likely late) but I still missed knowing the details.
• When someone leaves the passenger door open on the car most of the day – gee, that would be one of my teen passengers – the car battery dies. Having this happen while the hubby is out of town is really poor timing.
• If you rip your home office apart to build shelves – and you need 12 shelf brackets and they come in a package of 12 – you will misplace at least one. Or more. Buy extra on the first trip!
• It’s awfully difficult to go to Home Despot for more brackets when your car is dead. I have a small inverter charger but it’s slow, and by the time the car would start, the store was closed.
• I really, really hate working in a cluttered, destroyed home office. This almost motivated me to to make a non-required trip across to my Seattle office just for a calm and non-trashed work environment. But with both boys here, I stayed home anyway.

So, I’m still working on reorganizing my home office today- finishing my closet shelves, putting everything back, sorting drawers and shelves and updating the decor and feng shui. If nowhere else, I should focus on enhancing opportunity and creativity in my office space.

I really, really wanted to make jewelry this weekend… maybe later this week.