« First concert since the before times, weekend stuff and more | Main | Still busy ... Henri and more »
Tuesday, August 17, 2021
Hopkins Inn Lunch ... and general business & craziness
Running behind again with my updating. Last night when I meant to update I was just kind of burned out. It was a long Monday and work is just really kicking my butt at the moment. I meant to get up early today to get a headstart on things and even had the alarm set for 5.30 but yeah it didn't really work out that way. I lingered in bed for way too long and just dragged when I really needed to get a move on. Ugh, I really do need a reset. I do have a vacation coming up in less than three weeks but even that is kind of stressing me out at the moment. Yes, go figure. lol. Back in May I booked a roundtrip flight to London when Jet Blue announced their new route and had a great sale on tickets. My thought process was that I could spend a few days with my friend Nicola in the UK before heading to Austria to see my mom. Well, all that sounds like a great plan in theory on paper but what I didn't calculate into the deal was that instead of getting better everything has gone a bit crazy again with the new variant of the virus. Travel restrictions and rules, testing, it's all super complicated and also expensive. The UK does let you in if you are fully vaccinated coming from the US now, without having to quarantine. BUT you still have to take a day 2 test ($$$) and then I also need a test to leave the country again and to get to Austria which has to be a PCR test no older than 72 hours. Those seem to be difficult to come by unless you are in a metro area because everything else is mail-in tests where you do the test at home and then mail the sample to a lab and get results. Anyway they do have relatively quick rapid tests at Heathrow but for a good amount of money ($150-$200). So I am trying to figure out what I am actually going to do. I really do want to see my friend and we had made such fun plans already. Go hang out at a winery, have afternoon tea, go to Brighton for the day, more tea & cake and whatnot. So yeah, just trying to decide. The only other way out of it would be to rebook my London-Vienna flight and go on to Vienna the same day I arrive in the UK (pretty much what I am doing on the way back) Because rebooking to a flight straight to Vienna would mean that I would have to cancel both my Jet Blue and British Airways flights - they are cancelable but you only receive a travel voucher/credit back and not an actual refund. So I would have to pay for an entire new set of tickets and booking with relatively short notice, not sure if that's the best of ideas either. Also the other fun thing is coming from the UK you are currently required to quarantine when entering Austria. There are some exceptions such as extenuating personal circumstances in the immediate family/births/deaths/health of a family members etc. So my aunt is going to work on getting me a letter in regards to my mom's health and the reason for my visit which should hopefully do it.
So anyway, besides the work stuff .. which I won't bore you with (basically it's really busy, we are short staffed and no matter what we do, hiring new people, it just never seems to help us because every time we solve a problem something else seems to happen) .. I just feel generally burned out and tired at the moment. I know it will get better and all this will be a distant memory at one point but right now it's just hard. But yeah, one day at a time, that's what I have to keep telling myself. If I didn't have all my personal stuff in the back of my mind (my mom, the upcoming trip, all the travel nonsense) it would be easier to manage I guess but well it is what it is.
The weekend was nice though. Most of last week was a crazy heat wave and by the weekend I was really over it. Saturday was still pretty hot but by Saturday evening it was much better and felt nice to have a nice cooler breeze and Sunday was absolutely beautiful. We went to see "Free Guy" in the theater (fun!) and then went for a lovely lunch at the Hopkins Inn - the most beautiful spot, lunch on a big terrace overlooking Lake Waramaug. Delicious food and the most wonderful weather and scenery. It was a nice break from all the craziness even if it only lasted for a few hours.
Mail Update: Received a letter from/owe a response to: Carmen/Malta, Celia/MA, Nina/WA, Tiffany/OK and Kimber/Canada.
Posted by Hanna at 07:01 AM | Permalink
Comments
Post a comment
