weekly check-in post (TM)

So, it's a long weekend. Monday is Memorial Day, and today our office closed early - so I took advantage of that and scheduled a day off (leaving work in the early afternoon isn't very convenient for me, since the bus line I take from the office to the closest transit station runs only about once an hour during the day, while in the early morning and late afternoon it runs 3-6 times an hour; plus, if you do come to work on an "early close" day, you have to stay there 5 hours, while you only use 4 hours of vacation time if you choose to take the day off). My highly ambitious plans for this long weekend include dying my hair (accomplished!), cleaning my apartment (hopefully tomorrow), doing some laundry (Sunday) and visiting my parents (Monday). In addition to, obviously, grocery shopping (accomplished!) and cooking - or, to be precise, making salads, because it's supposed to get really hot starting tomorrow; and when it's really hot, using the kitchen stove OR toaster oven is simply out of the question for me (I don't have central air conditioning, only a single window unit, and the temperature in my kitchen easily reaches 30C/90F in the summer). Microwave is OK, but I don't actually want hot food when I'm feeling toasty, so I mostly eat salads/sandwiches/fruit etc. Btw, I am collecting salad recipes which don't involve any cooking, for this very reason - so if you know of any tasty ones, please share.:)

In other news, I must have really overdosed on the internet in the past few months (years?...), because I seem to be experiencing some sort of allergy to the computer screen. I can no longer stare at it continuously for hours - I need frequent breaks. Otherwise I completely lose focus and/or get a headache. So no matter how much I'd love to keep up with LJ, I'm afraid it's simply not doable for me at this point. I have to get more selective about which posts I read and/or respond to. I also have to get more selective about which topics deserve an entry. I mean, I love to ramble endlessly and pointlessly about everything and nothing just as much as the next person - but from now on I'm going to have to "cut out the fluff" and write only about things that are actually important to me. Those things may still be entirely irrelevant to anybody else, since it's MY journal, after all - but I want to make sure I'm not just spewing random words into the digital void, as it were. *snicker*

( Which kind of defeats the whole purpose of this post... LOL. )