Saturday in The Garden | Like a Golden Retriever With Couch Privileges

OUTSIDE

I got a lens flare/rainbow in the weekly pic of my yard!  I'm a photo-taking genius (aka lucky)!

Ahem....

And that's kind of all I have to say about the garden and the grand outdoors.  It was a beautiful week weather wise.  The last two days in particular have been cool and sunny.  More of that Autumn feeling moving in.  In an attempt to keep up at work, I am going to do some butterfly surveys tomorrow which I would normally maybe feel a little grumpy about, working on a Sunday and all.  The weather forecast looks fantastic though and this will give me purpose to be outside, taking notice of the world so I'm okay with it.

GAK

My "struggle" for the week has been having to rely on unreliable people.  This is at work of course and the people I'm referring to are all lovely, generous people who are talented at their jobs but they have too much to do and lack workable task/time management skills.  I HATE having to nag them and hate that my nagging implies I don't trust them but when I don't do this, I am almost always sorry.   It is a HUGE causer of stress at work for me. Besides not wanting to annoy the person who is performing a task for me,  I am also very busy and really don't have time to constantly be following up and poking people about tasks they agreed to do within a particular timeline.  And to be clear, these are not tasks that I could easily do that I am delegating (usually), they are things way outside of my training and job duties like producing a video or designing a poster using specialized graphics software.  I'm a wildlife biologist who has no artistic ability and it is not an efficient use of my already very full time to learn how to produce a video.  So I'm appealing to you all  - how do you handle this?  Do you have a technique for politely and non-obtrusively keeping a co-worker on schedule without seeming like a pesky nag?  Do you have a way of viewing the situation, that philosophically helps you navigate things without becoming frustrated and stressed out?  I'm not expecting answers but I sure would appreciate some!  They are the two questions most prevalently on my my mind this weekend.

WATCHING, READING and BLOGGING

Watching 

I finished season 3 of Agents of Shield and it was SO. DAMN. GOOD.  It's kind of amazing how good this show got after such a boring beginning.  Season 3 is anything but boring.  Sure Coulson still doesn't entirely work for me without May (so god forbid Ming Na Wen ever leave) and while Daisy/Sky has definitely grown on me, she is still the character I would least miss if she got abducted by Kree and was never heard from again.  Still, a very respectable third season!

I've drifted into re-watching the first couple seasons of Once Upon A Time in preparation for catching up with season 3 through 5.  How did three flipping seasons happen while I wasn't looking?!  I am also really excited about a bunch of shows upcoming on Netflix in September - Longmire Season 5! Supergirl!, Galavant!, Penny Dreadful!, The IT Crowd Series 5!  Also. ALSO. I was just informed that there is a Netflix Original show that was created by BAZ LUHRMAN!!  It's called The Get Down and I must watch it.  Baz isn't for everyone but he is definitely for me.  So.... hopefully I get some reading done this fall:).

Reading

Finished Last Week:

• The Castle of Wizardry (The Belgariad #4) by David Eddings:  I am re-reading this series on audio - it was one of my favorites as a wee(ish) thing.  It is holding up surprisingly well!
• A Corner of White (The Colours of Madeleine#1) by Jacklyn Moriarty: Told across two alternate realities, one of which is this realities Cambridge, England which is a town I love dearly.  I really liked this book - the tone (not sure that is even the right word) of it was very unique and I found it charming.  

Currently Reading:

• Lair of Dreams (The Diviners #2)  by Libba Bray:  I had an actual Love-Hate relationship with the first book in this series but there was enough love to make me curious about where the series is headed.  I am not not enjoying this book but I'm not making very fast progress.  I just can't express how little I care about Evie and her relationship entanglements with Sam and Jericho. 
• Rattle His Bones (Daisy Dalrymple #8) by Carola Dunn: Getting back to this series after a several year hiatus.  It's a mystery series set in 1920s London, very light and fluffy.  
• Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh:  If you read the GAK section you can probably guess why I decided to pick this one up, lol.  About mindfulness. 

Added to the TBR:

This is a list of books that I have added to my Goodreads TBR list this week.  It helps to burn the books I want to read a little more firmly into my mind, maybe get them on some other folks TBRs and gives me a chance to recognize a lot of the awesome bloggers that add stuff to my TBR!

• Assassin's Charge by Claire Frank:  A self-pubbed work that looks like a ton of fun and was recommended by Mogsy at The Bibliosanctum!  It's part of the Self-published Fantasy Blog-off

Blogging 

On the BLOG LAST WEEK:

TUESDAY : TOP TEN TUESDAY | Reading for Biology Majors

THURSDAY: REVIEW | The Passage by Justin Cronin

HAVE A LOVELY WEEK! May you relax with all the abandon of a golden retriever with couch privileges.