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

I had rough plans with a friend this weekend while the husband is down at MAL, but as usual with this friend a house emergency came up (leaking roof this time) so I’m flying solo. I told the husband I looked forward to him complaining about the number of comics I’ll read this weekend (complaining because he then has to sort and file them all at once).

Spent the work day on a last minute emergency that is only an emergency because a) lawyers who worked at the agency before me gave bad advice; and b) our public affairs shop can’t plan things in the normal federal budget cycle. The agency has an anniversary next year with a big number and what should have happened was that planning should’ve started 2-3 years ago so that we could’ve asked for the budget authority to do the big shindig they now want to hold, but which they didn’t start planning until last year (an agency develops their budget plan each spring for the fiscal year that starts almost two years later; so for 2025 they would’ve had to develop it internally back in the spring of 2023). When they did approach me about it, I got to tell them that no, we don’t have any authority to pay for food for a shindig, and in fact there’s a statute that affirmatively says we may not pay for food for a shindig, and by the way here’s the two Justice memos that back me up on this. The previous lawyers had told them that a certain pot of cash we have didn’t have to follow the normal rules, which is horse shit. I did tell them how to get the authority to pay for food (ask for a one-time increase in a special reception budget, or ask for permanent authority to pay for food at shindigs. Or, preferably, both), and I’ve told this to everyone in management who will listen, but the game of telephone based on the previous bad advice is still going strong and people don’t want to hear the bad news. Oh well.

Used the random day off to nap and to catch up on comics. I’m not quite a month behind at this point; the little box I use to hold ‘to be read’ comics is full with overspill. I almost got all the overspill into the box today, but I still have 8-10 comics that won’t quite fit.

Very glad I’m not attending Mid-Atlantic Leather this weekend, the whole thing just sounds like a nightmare. Mostly because gay men tend to be incredibly immature and an event like this brings out the worst in far too many of them. Then you add in generational anxiety (like seriously, fellow Gen-Xers, what in heavens name did y’all do to your kids that they’re this anxious and incapable of functioning on their own?) and all the other kink drama, and no ma’am, not interested. Nice to shop the market sometimes, but the second-hand drama is more than enough for me.

The husband was out late, and it’s still gross outside from the snow, so I was up late last night to grab him from the Metro. But that’s okay, because it meant I slept in this morning, so he had to walk himself to the Metro first thing to get to work. Karma.

Still walked on the treadmill, still made my morning meetings (that I’d forgotten until the work computer dinged at me), still got a lot of work done. Today was more of a ‘leading people’ day than substantive legal work, which is okay by me.

Then it was picking up the husband from the Metro, grabbing the weekly haul of comics, and enjoying pasta at the Italian place next door to the comic shop. I’ll pay for the pasta tomorrow, but it was tasty. Apropos of that I ordered a new enzyme supplement that’s supposed to help with digesting FODMAPs, and is aimed squarely at the ones that I react to, so here’s hoping that’s useful once it arrives.

Huh, WP is behaving in Safari tonight. Yay computer weirdness.

The husband kindly volunteered to do the little bit of snow shoveling we have to do (a driveway, which is two cars wide and maybe 10 feet long, and a couple feet of sidewalk). Very happy we did not have to commute today.

Trying to catch up on comics today, because I’m a month or so behind, still. I’ve been reading multiple issues a day, but the two weeks out of town just put me so far behind. And, of course, working. Good conversation this afternoon with our newest attorney over how I’ve previously handled part of her new portfolio, as well as filling her in on some of the oddities of the small gubm’nt agency’s operations.

The latest update to WordPress seems to have broken the ‘make new post’ page in Safari. Works alright in Firefox, but the screen just shows up as a blank page in Safari (which is really odd because everything else in WP works just fine in Safari; it’s just the ‘make new post’ screen that’s dead). Here’s hoping the next update fixes it.

Snow day today. We think maybe 5″ (~13cm) here by dinner time, with some more falling at the moment. Respectable. Enough to force the local jurisdictions to close (the DC area does not do snow often, so we tend to close up shop and hunker down), giving me a nice excuse to skip a commuting day in favor of staying home.

Boys are starting to crawl out of the woodwork for Mid-Atlantic Leather this upcoming weekend, or as one friend called it, the annual DC textiles convention. Not attending myself, but glad it’s still going strong.

We took down all the Xmas stuff today. Well, the interior stuff; the exterior stuff came down before some wind storms earlier this week. First it was off to haircuts, lunch, and picking up some cheese for homemade pizza, which I promptly nixed in the late afternoon for tonight because the Xmas stuff took too much time & energy. *insert raspberry sound here*

They’re predicting that we’re to get 6-10 inches (15-25cm) of snow tomorrow. Was supposed to start late tonight, but it looks like most of tonight’s stuff is staying south of us. Nevertheless the county government just sent out the ‘yeah, everything is closed tomorrow except emergency services’ email. Nothing, of course, from the Office of the Poorly Managed on what the Federal government will do tomorrow (massive telework, at a minimum, because everyone with kids will be stuck at home when the schools all close). While I miss the days when a snow day meant a true vacation from work, I’ll take the lack of a commute as a consolation prize.

I decided for a variety of reasons to switch from my Apple watch as my daily watch to a Garmin watch instead. I’ve long used Garmin for sports-specific efforts, or step tracking, but not as a daily watch. One of the things the Garmin does in the morning when I first wake up is give me a readout on level of effort, recovery, etc., and it includes a suggested workout for the day. This morning it told me it was happy with my level of sleep (news to me, since I was up and down with a certain female cat who couldn’t decide where on me she wanted to sleep), and recommended a 45 minute base building run. I audibly snort-laughed when I read it. Thankfully the husband was already awake. I turned that into a 45 minute walk on the treadmill, instead, which felt good. Also had my first successful test of listening to an audio book while walking; the previous attempt I was later told by the husband was a dreadful audio book so he wasn’t surprised it didn’t work. I have never been completely sold on them, but decided to give it a go when a news email from someone I followed mentioned the book series (The Codex Alera by Jim Butcher), which I have read several times now, and that they had enjoyed the audio books on long drives. One chapter down.

Had another couple we’re friends with over this evening, and made some new dishes (a maple glazed pork loin with Swiss chard & carrots; roasted broccoli; and lemon & parsley quinoa). They turned out well, for the most part, and were well received. The broccoli was a trifle overdone in spots (overly hot burner while pan roasting), but still tasted good. Then we played a couple riffs on queer versions of apples-to-apples that we picked up at the end of the year. Fun time.

Last day of work for the week was good. Nice chat with a new coworker, talked over some stuff that’s going on with transition, and made plans to address at least one of them with a couple quick meetings next week (because, putting on my former information lawyer hat, one should never create more written records when a conversation is better suited to the topic). Also talked about how I’m not completely clear on what my role is going to be going forward as a big part of my portfolio is moving over to another attorney who just started. I’m okay with the hire, just in a bit of limbo over the scope of my duties at the moment.

High FODMAP load kind of day for me. The “sourdough” from the grocery store was not true made-with-a-starter sourdough, so the reflux is not happy with me. Ah well.

Work was relatively quiet. Cleaning out emails and suggesting responses to some things, mostly. I have an actual meeting tomorrow (the scandal!) to check in with a colleague about some language the agency has been using to advertise some programs that needs to change. Whee. Housekeeper is coming tomorrow, and we have friends coming over for dinner. And hopefully a tool to detect and fix faults in Xmas light strings is arriving and will work as advertised. Much preferable to replacing a pre-lit tree.

Windy start to the new year. Walked outside after lunch (Denny’s, which was chaos; I tipped our poor waitress very well). Walk went well, had one spot where a gust threatened my balance, but kept my feet okay and kept going. Slightly longer walk today since it was the last “warm” day for the near future (47F/8C) as a cold front brings possible snow this upcoming weekend.

In a very rare showing we were at the comic shop before they opened at 11, and were not the first to get there. I grabbed a dessert drink from the Starbucks down the shopping row while we waited (sugar cookie latte, with sprinkles).

Now the husband is making homemade hotdog buns in a new pan I got him for Xmas. Yes, it’s easier to buy them at the store, but this seemed like something fun for him to try. From the cursing I’m hearing from the general direction of the kitchen it might not be as fun as intended, but I’m guessing they’ll still come out tastier than store brand, just from the ingredient list.