Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

After sort of being in remission the head cold the husband gave me last week came roaring back this morning. That or it’s a new things on top of the other thing from someone at one of the rest areas on the way home. Who knows. Still managed to straighten some things in my office and catch up on a few comics, but otherwise was pretty much a lump for most of the day. Back to the job tomorrow, but I may use the excuse of not wanting to infect my coworkers to telework the rest of this week.

Whole lot of changes coming down the pike at work, as expected. I suspect some of them will end up being pulled back as impossible to implement from a practical standpoint, but others will end up creating a lot of work. Eh, elections have consequences and all that. I don’t anticipate that it’ll be life changing for my little agency, just a lot of busy work changing language around.

The drive down wasn’t too bad, just shy of nine hours. The various highway departments from Massachusetts down to Maryland did a good job of clearing the snow and keeping the roads free of hazards, which made the drive down pretty good. Not much use of cruise control this time because there was more traffic, but at least the roads were in good shape.

Cold as hell down here at home, and due to get colder. It’s currently 15F (-9.4C), and getting down to 12F (-11C) tonight. High of 20F (-6.7C) on Wednesday when I might or might not have to commute in (I’m scheduled for Thursday, but 47’s workforce orders might change that; hopefully not that quickly, though). Planning to get up in time to drive the husband to the Metro in any case so he has that much less time out in that mess.

We are expecting 4-8″ (10-20cm) of snow here in the Boston area overnight. We thought about leaving today, but then we would have been driving through the snow in the middle of the route, whereas it’s all supposed to be done by the morning, so hopefully the highways will have been well treated by then. Of course we managed to leave our ice scraper/snow brush at home, so I made a last minute trip to Walmart for that, some waterproof gloves, and some snack for tonight/tomorrow. And I spotted a relatively inexpensive gas station so I filled up as well.

Good last day visiting with the in-laws. We went candlepin bowling in the afternoon, which I had not tried before and quite enjoyed, then an early dinner before the snow started. Now we’re settled into the hotel for the night, packing what needs to be packed, and glad I remembered to pull the wipers out from the windows. Here’s hoping it’s a relatively easy drive tomorrow.

Not sure how people sit around all day. We visited some relatives and ended up spending several hours gabbing around the table, but afterward I was so stiff. Had to head to the local mall to walk around afterward to stretch out my legs.

We feds got a message today from the outgoing president about how much he appreciated our work. Well, 46, if you appreciated it so much why did you limit our pay raise this year to 2% instead of matching the military’s at 4.5%, as is customary? For someone who claimed he was a champion for labor he sure didn’t show it. Of course, neither did 44, who agreed to ridiculous pay freezes because he was afraid the opposition party in Congress would say ugly things about him. Fools. Meanwhile, insurance and living costs continue to outpace raises so we’re not even breaking even (a big reason you lost, 46). Again, fools. So thanks, you senile old fool. Enjoy your early retirement, and do us all a favor and take more of the other 70+ year olds with you into the sunset.

The drive up to Massachusetts wasn’t bad. We made good time, and only really hit traffic when we got to the Boston I-95 beltway during rush hour, and even then the maps app had taken that into account with the timing. Checked in, all good. Got an upgrade to a “suite” because we walked into our first room and there were a handful of tools (think hammer, etc.) on the counter, so they switched us. Not bad.

Then dinner took as long as the drive up here did because we had The. World’s. Slowest. Waitress. Seriously, she was just bad at her job. Good food, but overly warm in the place and slow service left me slightly cranky. Felt good to get outside into the cold.

All unpacked and ready for whatever we’re up to tomorrow. I have a video call from 1-3 for the training class, and the husband is meeting one of his college friends while I do that, but otherwise we’ve no plans until Saturday.

Uneventful day at work, which was fine by me. The husband and I are headed up to Massachusetts tomorrow morning for a couple of days, so we’ve been doing the light packing required. Mine is a little heavier than normal because I have to take my work laptop for a video meeting with my little cohort from the training I attended back in early December, a kind of mid-break check-in to see how we’re doing and (I suspect) get us back on track, post-holidays.

Commuted to work, Metro was behaving. Got to pull out one of my favorite wah-wah court quotes (“However, nowhere does our Constitution extol the virtue of efficiency and nowhere does it command that all our laws be fiscally wise.” Guadamuz v. Ash, 368 F. Supp. 1233, 1243 (D.D.C., 1973)). Was in the context of telling someone that it didn’t matter that it would be cheaper if we paid for individual memberships for people to attend a conference, and that while buying the memberships plus the member registration rate was cheaper than paying the non-member rate, Congress said in law that we couldn’t pay for memberships for individual feds, so they’d just have to suck it up and pay more money. Yes, sometimes the law is like that (and frankly in most instances the law makes sense because you don’t want to use taxpayer funds to pay every employees’ voluntary society membership dues, it’s just that in this particular instance it happens to cost the taxpayer more). My job is weird.

Past that I walked on the treadmill this morning. I think my knee may be hyper-extending and thus causing more issues, so I’m going to dig out some of the lighter knee braces in my collection and see if one of them helps. The walk was fine, and I stretched a lot right after, so it was okay for most of the day. There’s still a lot of ice out there so I was very careful where I put my feet, especially in the Metro parking lot, where ice melt had refrozen as black ice.

I really should have done more aftercare after the walk yesterday, and before taking a rest day today. Quads (and maybe calves) were dragging the knee out of alignment and that was not fun. I beat both legs up with rollers and the Hypervolt this evening, so here’s hoping that worked the stiffness out of them.

Commuting tomorrow to the office. One meeting scheduled to touch base on the work emergency from Friday because even more people are involved now. Whee! Also going to use the opportunity to try a breakfast sandwich at Dunks that is supposed to be more tummy friendly for me (their sourdough is supposedly real, made-with-an-actual-starter sourdough). This is important because we have to head up to the home of Dunks this weekend (aka Massachusetts) and it would be nice to have a friendlier option.

Did a three mile walk this morning on the treadmill. The knee did well, which was nice to experience.

Finished sorting the donations with the husband’s help. Now I need to document them so we can get rid of them on Wednesday when we’re out and about.

Headed to the office on Tuesday, then we’re escaping down Thursday to avoid most of the inauguration brouhaha, though we are driving back on Monday. I learned that being out of the city and watching it all from afar is more my cup of tea than being in the middle of the craziness that can strike. While I don’t want to drive in it, here’s hoping for a very wet and cold next Monday.