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

The last two weeks or so I’ve been on a ‘straightening up’ kick. Not consistently, and not every day, but I’ve gone into a couple of ‘okay, it’s time to fix this area’ moods. I’m pleased with the results, for the most part, but there’s always more to do. The problem with having hobbies and enjoying collecting things is finding ways to store and display said things without driving yourself crazy. Today I put some things I needed more readily accessible in better places, moved a table out of my office, found a set of crochet hooks I’d forgotten I’d bought and put them with the other needles, hooks, and notions, and made a mess of my work desk.

I finished another hat, the “ziggity slouch” pattern from Stephen West in Hazel Knits Ruby Love yarn. Like the last hat of his I did the yarn count for my gauge was off, so I had to cut the last repeat in half in order to have enough yarn to finish it. Nevertheless I like how it came out, and I’m looking forward to wearing it this winter. I was going to queue up another hat of his with a green yarn, but then he announced a new e-book of ‘small shawls‘, and the first one was the same Dustland pattern that I was going to use for the hat, so instead I’m going to do a small scarf/shawl instead. It’s going to use the same start for the blanket kit I have from him (an i-cord cast on) in miniature (3 versus 303) which I’m looking forward to trying.

Despite getting that set up, once I ran some errands I got sucked back into re-playing the Darksiders series of video games, because the studio teased a new game this week. I finished the first two games, but not the last two, so I thought I’d play through them all. I just finished Assassins Creed Mirage, making it a good time to plough into something familiar and fun.

Installed an AquaPurr water fountain for the cats in the little bathroom off my office. It’s the faucet they would beg me to turn on at various times, so now they can do it themselves. It took some wrangling to find the right size adaptor, but the owner of the company was very helpful via text and email and I got it all sorted. They like it, but I’m not sure they quite get that they can do in and use it any time without me needing to be there; I usually have to encourage them to get up on the counter and approach so the sensor turns the water on for them.

I checked my work phone this morning, mainly to look at scheduling, and ended up taking care of two “emergencies” that people were hopping about this morning, then promptly dumped it on the charger to ignore it once more. They can have my time when I’m back on the clock Wednesday. I did end up having to reschedule a doctor’s appointment because the original one is on the day they chose for out office holiday party while I was out on break. No biggie, thankfully. Still need to find out when my current 90 day full-time-remote status dies (next week, I think). I think I’m capable of commuting in now, but I’ll make sure to take the crutch with me for it.

Ortho at the end of the week. Vet for the cats tomorrow. So I’ll be working Wednesday and Thursday, but off the rest of the week, added to the week off last week. Has been a nice break. Knee is progressing still, but definitely not back to normal. I’m able to bike on a stationary trainer now, so that’s becoming my default cardio. The new Garmin GPS watch I bought in August for running works well with the bike accessories, so at least that wasn’t a total waste.

Desperately behind on comics. Like dozens of issues behind at this point. Even reading 4-5 a day I’m still falling behind because of the backlog. Clearly we have a comics problem.

On the third color of my four-color brioche scarf, finally. Just in time to get more yarn for a blanket the husband asked for (which I’m glad I grabbed, because the plum base he wanted is not showing as available any more on the site).

Xmas is all up, and we’re the envy of our street (which apparently got me added to a group text that I hadn’t been on before). Added some strings going from the roof to the group floor, framing the house and windows (lines from the balcony edge straight down to the top of the garage/front door), and some blinking rainbow candy canes for the front walk. And a manual timer to turn them on at 4:30pm and off at 7:30am, roughly around dusk and dawn.

Spent a chunk of yesterday finally getting all four tires replaced on the Mini. The local place was a lot friendlier than BJ’s, and apparently NTB is now Mavis, though the signage (and online) hasn’t caught up yet. Popped by the local carwash on the way back from picking up the car, so the beast looks (and drives) much nicer now.

Continuing to slowly build my running back up on the treadmill.

Up far too early this morning after Benjamin (male cat) decided to puke, twice, in the hallway outside our bedroom. Found it without stepping in it (yay?) and got it all cleaned up. Very grateful that I thought to stash some paper towels under the sink in the bathroom off that hallway so I didn’t have to go downstairs for some.

A good chunk of my office flooded last week. There’s a ledge outside the windows of about 2/3 of the offices (including mine) where water got backed up and came in though the walls. Nothing personal of anyone’s was damaged, and very few official documents were dampened since most of that is electronic now so there was only like one box on the floor in the suite (unlike a flood in my old office that was a nightmare of drying out old paper). While facilities swung into action while the flood was still ongoing thanks to one of our employees alerting them, it apparently still smells according to the few people who’ve braved the place, and they’re going to have to do all sorts of remediation. So who knows if I’ll be going back in immediately after labor day or not? That’s tentatively the plan since the local Metro stations reopen after that weekend, but not if they’re still dealing with walls and carpet and what not.

I know the husband must be exhausted from his latest work trip because it’s 10am and he’s still asleep. Didn’t help that his plan landed at 2am, and he seems to have a garden variety head cold on top of it. So I quietly got up, set the thermostat at sleep temps for a couple more hours, and decamped to the main floor for my morning coffee and what not. Normally I’d be in my office, but that’s across the hall from the owners’ suite, so the cats and I are lounging downstairs instead.

He missed all of the fun with the wildfire smoke from our Canadian friends this past week. That was wild, orangey light filtering into the windows all day. Glad it was temporary, and here’s hoping they get them under control soon for their own sakes.

Did start playing Diablo IV. I’ve played every game in that series (even tried the mobile one, though it’s not my jam), and this one is just as addicting. I thought the other players bipping about would be distracting, but for the most part you don’t really interact with them. I was surprised to see that since the game is “always online” they now tie the game to your Blizzard account, regardless of platform, so your characters show up on whatever machine you’re playing on. This is a big change from Diablo III, where each platform would have an entirely separate game. One of my nieces picked up D4 as well, so I suspect we’ll be playing together on that soon.

Part of the strangeness of having the husband asleep upstairs is that he’s always the first to bed and the first to rise, often hours before I do. Mornings are his quiet time in the house, and one of the reasons we have the Roku with the remote that lets you plug in headphones, if he wants to watch something (which he usually does; he’s much more a TV/movies person than I am).

Hunkered down here in suburban MD as we await freezing temperatures to fly through over the course of the morning and afternoon. Managed to sneak off yesterday afternoon to fill up the car, pick up the last little thing I’d gotten the husband for Xmas, and hit the grocery store to get most of what we needed for the weekend and Xmas day, before today when it’s supposed to get icy (and just maybe a hint of snow in the afternoon), and this weekend when it’s supposed to stay in the 20s and below. Still will need to walk over to the local organic market for some bits and bobs, but don’t need to drive any more, which was what I was going for.

Things have been going okay here. The husband had two work trips, to New Orleans and then to New Zealand. He had fun jumping off things in Auckland (bungie jumping off a bridge, leaping off a building), and generally enjoyed everything other than long the plane ride. He’s still not completely back on east coast time, but he’s getting there. It was odd having him gone for almost two weeks; I think that might be one of the longest times we’ve spent apart since we got married.

Two more sleeps until Xmas. No family around this year because of leave situations (on their end), so it’s just the two of us. Trying to figure out what the husband should bake, and I’m leaning toward a gingerbread bundt cake. We’ll see how he feels about it when he gets up. Melting potatoes are definitely in the plan, and probably some zucchini in the air fryer, plus whatever veggies look tasty over at the organic market.

The cats have gotten incredibly spoiled by new heated cats beds we got them. And much like Susan’s experience, they love the smaller ones (even though Benjamin spills out of it), and won’t use the larger one. And they won’t use each other’s – I tried to move them around when we got the big one, and Ezri took one whiff of the one B had been sleeping in, hissed, and ran away. Ah well. But they definitely appreciate the heat, and it makes it easier for me to find them when I’m looking. I also don’t feel as guilty keeping the thermostat set lower.

Slowly closing out of triathlon related things. My membership in USAT won’t end for another two years, but I’m going to let the local DC Tri Club membership lapse next month. I joined that back in 2004, and it was a great experience, especially coaching the new triathletes, but I haven’t raced in over a decade, I have no plans to race in the near future, and I don’t do anything with the club, so it’s time to say farewell. Adjusted a bunch of social media sites to unfollow the club and triathlon related things, which then lead down a rabbit hole of unfollowing other stuff to trim down the time sucks and give the various companies headaches in trying to figure out what ads to serve me.

Hoping Congress hurries up and finishes up work on the latest mega-bill to fund the government so I can dig into that for work. I have some projects I want to do there that will involve spending some time now to make my life, and the lives of many fellow money law practitioners, easier going forward. Plus I’d also like to take the half day our head of agency gave us off today, but that won’t happen until I know we don’t have to shut down at midnight. At this point in my career I just sort of sigh, shake my head, and move along with my job, as Congress is stuck in this pattern now and there’s nothing I can do to stop it, so I just roll with it.

I want more coffee, but I’m trapped by a cat in my lap who’s purring up a storm, and burying her head in the crook of my arm. I feel bad for the lack of attention she’s gotten, and the disruption to her routine over the past few days with visitors in the house, so I stay seated, surfing the web and occasionally scratching an ear.

The latest trick of the little demons kittens is to decide to play with anything and everything that isn’t nailed down or might possibly make noise. At 3 in the morning. For the most part we’ve adjusted stuff in the bedroom to handle this – my wallet and coin dish live in a drawer now, for example – but last night Benjamin managed to find everything in the room that might possibly make noise. Belt buckles. Random paper. Electrical cords. Claws on the drywall (!!!). Ugh. So today is a low-sleep day, which should bode well (not) for meetings at work. Little monsters.

As I approach nine months of married life, I find it treats me well. We’re mostly into our routines of living together, with the occasional bump, but for the most part we’re handling living together in a far-too-small-for-two-people-with-all-the-stuff-we-both-have apartment pretty well. Having an external storage unit has helped somewhat with the level of stuff, but there are still regular discussions about how much more we could do with, say, the kitchen if we had a larger place.

Tri training hasn’t been my largest priority, though I am starting to settle back into a routine, with two races scheduled for this summer. I do need to figure out a strength training routine, which isn’t new, but given that I’m starting over with an extra (far too many) pounds, and I’m over 40, I need the extra support and strength that a strength routine would add. It’s more a matter of finding the time to fit it into my daily/weekly routine so that I’ll do it than it is a matter of knowing what I need to do – I know how to train, it’s getting myself motivated to actually do it that’s the difficult part.

Let’s see, what else? The kittens we adopted last summer (Benjamin and Ezri) are doing well. They’re just about a year old this month and next. They’re definitely more attached to me than to the boy, much to the boy’s annoyance, since he was the one who wanted to adopt them. They tolerate him if I’m not in, but they glom onto me if I’m home. I’m the one they like to sleep on, both at night and when sitting still. They’ve grown up nicely, not as large as my previous cats (Boris and Natasha – they were HUGE for house cats), but nice and healthy. It’s been nice having cats again, and I’m glad the cult co-op changed the rules last year to allow them in legally.

Work’s okay. Settling into being a supervisor, still trying to get a handle on the new areas of law I’m in charge of now. I’m finally booked for the mandatory training they require of new supervisors, which will be mostly a repeat of training I took three years ago, but hey, the rules are the rules, and I’d prefer not to get dinged for not doing something so simple. If only learning the new legal areas were as easy. The personalities are relatively easy to deal with, I like all the folks on my team and they do good work, which helps a lot.

So, yeah, not bad for now, and drama free life doesn’t make for the best writing, hence my quiet of late on here.