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

That’s my life, giving the american taxpayer more government than they’re willing to pay for. Heh.

Which is not to say I’m working extra these days. I’m doing my job, I’m spending the 8.5 hours a day in the office that they’re requiring for that now, but I’m not stressing about too much of it after those hours are done. Heck, I even managed to forget the work phone on the charger on my desk this evening when I left. And that was legitimately forgetting to grab it, not “forgetting” to grab it.

Still trying to adjust the sleep schedule. The weather changes aren’t helping; sinus headaches from the high pressure system are driving me nuts.

A bit better today, for having named the feeling bummed out yesterday. Doing extended periods of couch stretch before bed seems to be helping the knee, and we got one big project completely done today, and another partially done, which also helped.

Then came the expected firing of probationary employees today, which was apparently an emotional mess in the building (understandably!). Folks gathered to applaud the folks who were fired as they left. I’m glad I was teleworking; I would’ve broken down. As I reminded a friend, the chaos and the cruelty are part of the point, to keep the public off balance so they can’t effectively push back. It will be interesting to see what reaction gets wrung out of Congress when they go after Defense, which they are reportedly doing soon.

Feeling drained this evening, a combination of diet, knee, and work. On the diet front I’m trying some new enzymes that are supposed to help with digestion of FODMAPs, and so far it’s early so it’s a little hit and miss, but I’m giving it a try anyway. If it works long term that means more options for eating without digestive discomfort, but for now it’s not quite there (so my gut is feeling off). On the knee front, just feeling annoyed at it in general.

On the work front, the latest exercise is a “find all the legal/regulatory requirements that directly tie to your job as an attorney for the agency” as we attempt to fend off cuts in the legal office (after at least two attorneys took the early out offer). The other two attorneys on my little mini-team are stressed as fuck right now, and that’s bleeding over. I think we have ways to justify all of us, but in the meantime we’re all a bit on edge, understandably.

Walked to a local restaurant for dinner, which was apparently a mistake. Knee is not happy with me now, which means it’s finally time to reconnect with the orthopedist. Ugh. Hopefully it’ll be something more helpful than ‘go do more PT’.

Steadily making my way through Dishonored 2, playing as Corvo. Three missions down.

Latest stupidity at work is trying to pin our exact job duties to particular statutes. Unlike most agencies we’re so small that we do not, by law, have a ‘general counsel’ (there’s a singular reference to our specific office in law, but it’s not an establishing statute). We should probably get that fixed the next time we look for changes to our organic legislation, but in the meantime we’re now having to justify our existence by pointing to all of the things we actually do that are called for in law. What a crock.

Another day, more back and forth with 47’s crew not knowing how to do what they want to do. Oh well. Full employment for me. For now. And no, there’s no way in hell I’m taking their fake ‘quit now, work from home for 9 months’ BS.

Dentist this evening. Thankfully he wasn’t talking down to me this time (I had a whole ‘dude, learn to code switch between clients’ talk ready to go, though). Three months and I’m back to do some sort of tooth repair that sounds unpleasant. Whee.

The husband met me after the dentist and we had dinner over in Dupont, which was nice. I miss the walk home together that we used to have when we lived in Southwest DC; that was a nice way to have some time to talk and bond over our days before the inevitable dinner negotiation. We don’t get that as much now, sometimes in the car from the Metro, but a 10 minute car ride is not the same as a 25 minute walk.

First purposeful walk on the treadmill after the cold. Bugged the hell out of my knee afterward, but some time spent beating up my shins and quads with a foam roller helped tremendously with that. As did ibuprofen. Here’s hoping there’s not a repeat cold any time soon; I’m tired of not breathing clearly.

The husband and I had lunch with friends to plan a trip to Boston this fall. Then I made some good progress on the next book for my leadership class while the husband was out a movie with another friend. He’s more the social butterfly these days, which is a good thing. Monitored some work stuff that’s pending for implementation tomorrow. I don’t know that 47’s team will appreciate how much people do at odd times because we have the equipment at home because of teleworking, and how much that capability will dry up because many people won’t bother taking laptops home just to haul them back to the office the next day. Oh well.

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.

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.