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

On Sunday I’m taking off for the middle of Virginia for two weeks of training for work. Haven’t started a packing list yet, but I know I’ll be doing a lot of laundry (and perhaps some ironing) in preparation. Business casual attire. It’s also finally going to get cold in this part of the world, so perhaps sweaters will be in order. Not that I own many of those; they tend to be too warm for me in most indoor environments.

Hit the grocery store relatively early this morning, where it was busy but not overwhelmed. No wait at the deli counter, and a normal wait at the checkout line. Might have to do one more trip before I leave to stock the husband up on non-perishable foodstuffs.

We decorated the interior of the townhouse for Xmas. Three trees up (two in the living room, one on the top floor), lego villages, etc. We’ll hang the exterior lights tomorrow or Friday. Tomorrow we’re continuing a new Thanksgiving tradition and spending the day building a big lego set (Barad Dür, to go with the Rivendell set we built last year), though it’ll likely take us more than the day to build, depending on how dedicated we are. Simple fare is planned, nothing fancy, lots of carbs. Talked him into a snacking cake sized dessert (8×8 inch pan, single layer) rather than something huge; should fit in the toaster oven while I make melting potatoes in the regular oven.

Yarn store didn’t have the color I needed to complete the hat, but they’ve ordered some for me (it’s one they carry regularly). The husband picked out a green for a version of the same hat, and while I’ve wound the yarn I haven’t started it yet. Will take the yarn with me to Virginia, along with a Woobles advent calendar I purchased earlier this year. No lack of projects at this point.

The week between Xmas and New Years can be an odd one. Cleaning up from Xmas, figuring out where new things need to go. Finishing off leftovers. Etc.

Two weeks on the new drugs, and also dropped a decongestant that I’ve been taking for forever (20 years?) because it can raise BP. Other than the withdrawal from the decongestant (felt like a bad head cold, especially on day three), things have settled in. Of course there’s a weird paranoia that comes with having had a TIA – is any odd sensation, which would not have raised an eyebrow prior to three weeks ago, related? They’re not, of course, but that doesn’t stop one from idly questioning each and every one. I’m more likely now to move out of a position that will give me pins-and-needles now than I was previously, if only to prove it’s not my brain misfiring (as opposed to just cutting off nerves/blood supply). Whee! Bodies are such fun.

Picked up new glasses this afternoon, which was a whole other adventure in being more active than I have been. The new Echo frames are fantastic. The other regular frames I picked out back in August seem to be cursed. Second set of lenses, second set of “this isn’t right”/headache inducing oddness. I have to go back next week for a pair of readers (prescription adjusted for close work – yay aging eyes), so I’m trying out the regular ones off and on, but I swear that VSP either did nothing with the lenses, or they just can’t get the prescription right. Especially since the Echo frames are, as stated above, fantastic – no issues seeing out of the new lenses there. *shrug* Hopefully they’ll be able to test the lenses and see what’s going on there.

The in-laws came down for Xmas and we had fun playing card/board games and what not with them. And of course the usual Xmas stuff of gifts and stockings and what not. Fare was relatively simple, no big bird or beast, but the melting potatoes were a hit again.

We have another couple coming over for New Years eve, and I need to plan out dinner. They’re mostly vegetarian, which is easy enough, but I did a risotto already for them pre-Xmas so I need to plan something else this time.

Saw my sister-in-law and niece off this morning, after they popped down for the holiday weekend.

Made some homemade pumpkin spice coffee additive last night (1.5 cups sugar, 1.5 cups water, bring to boil over medium heat, whisk in 4 teaspoons pumpkin spice blend and 1/4 cup pumpkin puree, lower heat to simmer for 20 more minutes. Strain through a fine mesh sieve (and cheesecloth, if you have it, to further reduce the solids) and add 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract. Stores in the fridge for up to a week). Also made toddy coffee concentrate, so had homemade iced pumpkin spice lattes this morning (1/2 cup concentrate, 3/4 cup milk, 2 Tablespoons PSL mix). Was tasty. I’m normally a black coffee drinker, so anything beyond that is exotic for me, but this was a nice treat. And the SIL was impressed, which is what really counts.

PT this afternoon. I have some pitting edema going on, meaning there’s still a lot of extra fluid in the knee, so if that’s still there at the end of next week I get to ask the orthopedist about that. Flexion was about the same as last week, which may be related to the extra fluid at this point.

Short week last week (and weird because of the almost-government-shut-down), short week this week. My new attorney shadow gets here in two weeks; it’s someone I recruited from my old agency, so I know I’ll work well with him. Looking forward to training him on the new agency, and a new area of law, as well as passing off some of the stuff that I’m not as well versed in but that he has much more experience with.

Oooh, we played Uno Flip last night and really enjoyed it. The husband and I own it, but hadn’t played it, and it was quite a fun variation on the regular uno. Both sides of the cards are playable, a light side and a dark side, and every now and again people can make the deck flip from one to the other, which also flips all the cards in your hand. Kept things lively.

Got some more of the Halloween stuff put up, including the green-purple-orange light strings we bought last year but didn’t get up (maybe we bought them at the end of the season on sale? I don’t remember why they didn’t get put up). Our neighbor does a much better job with it than we do, but we outshine them at Xmas. 😉

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).

The out-of-office message is set, and the work laptop is powered down. Out for a little over a week as of this evening, for our annual anniversary trip to the Virginia part of the Eastern Shore.

Other than some family medical messes, and a tinge of slightly-higher-than-we’d-like-to-see blood pressure for me, things have been going fairly well. Playing the heck out of Tears of the Kingdom now, to the point where I took a break from it early this evening to rest my poor hands. I’m going into the office once a week now that Metro’s yellow line bridge is back open. Or at least I am until late July when they’re closing the stations near me for 45 days. I’ve vacillated back and forth on how much to go in, and for now I’m doing the minimum required (2 days in each two week pay period).

Still working on the biscuit recipe from January, though I’ve not posted any new notes yet. It’s getting closer, but still needs tweaks.

I’m determined to finally finish the Grant biography this trip. I started it two years ago on the anniversary trip, plowed through the first half in short order, then just couldn’t get back into a rhythm (it didn’t help that I hit Reconstruction, which I find difficult to read about, given how awful this country treated her newly freed citizens). But I’m going to get it done this year.

The husband and I do a Lego advent calendar each year, and as we were opening today’s door this morning I casually mentioned that I had heard that advent calendars were falling out of favor. He expressed some dismay, then I said, “Yeah, it seems their days are numbered.” 

Thankfully he didn’t hit me. 😉

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.

Tuesday morning the husband and I went and got our second monkeypox vaccine shots. Mine has expanded out nicely in a flat pink splotch that’s bigger around than a golf ball, but not as big around as a baseball; his has barely raised past the immediate dime shaped bit where the needle went in. Lucky dog. At least it isn’t itching too badly, but I learned with the last one to moisturize it when/if it got itchy and that would calm it down. I took Tuesday off work, though I was monitoring email off and on. Other than the light itchy, no real side effects. Then sometime around 4am Wednesday morning I woke up, nauseous and headachey. No fun! And even less fun because I had to drive into the office on Wednesday.

Since C4/LM hadn’t been updated since 2017, I haven’t mentioned that I switched agencies in January of 2020, just before we all got sent home for COVID in March of 2020. Went from the Big Gubm’nt Agency (BGA) to a much Smaller Gubm’nt Agency (SGA), for more pay and without any supervisory duties. Woot! But, their headquarters is waaaaay down toward the end of one of the Metro lines out in the suburbs. Not exactly the 1.25 mile walking commute I had at the BGA. Then the husband and I moved to a townhouse in the MD suburbs in the late summer of 2020, to get more space after working from home on top of one another in my old one bedroom apartment in DC, which is on the same Metro line as my new office and close-ish to his office downtown. However, the Metro is currently horked thanks to construction, and will be until summer of 2023, so I’m unable to Metro to work until then, making driving there the only real option, which can take anywhere from 30-60+ minutes, depending on the time of day.

So, fast forward to yesterday. There was a high-level meeting with the head of the SGA which I unfortunately had to attend. I did take full advantage of our maxi-flex schedule and drove in around 10ish, which meant it only took 30ish minutes to get there. The meeting itself went very, very well; we had prepared for the worst, but really got the best result, so it was worth the face time with the agency head. Unfortunately there was another meeting scheduled after that, at a time that didn’t give me enough time to get home first, so but the time I got out of that the various map apps had my commute home at about an hour. It took a little less than that, but only because it routed my all the way around the DC Beltway, as opposed to running up through the highway that cuts through the east side of DC proper. Less stop and go, which was appreciated since I still drive a manual transmission car.

I get to repeat that for some mandatory fun with my office mid-day on the 1st, but I’m scheduling my day such that I can get out of there soon after and avoid the rush hour nonsense. I wouldn’t mind Metro’ing down, but driving is for the birds. And even after I’m able to go back my plan is to spend the minimum amount of time I have to in the office (two days every two weeks, which I’m scheduling on Mondays) to meet the HR requirements. Fewer people commute in on Mondays, and since I’ve avoided Covid by avoiding people, I’d like to minimize my risk there. Cynically, there are also more Monday holidays, so I’ll get more random days off from commuting that way. But I expect that eventually there will be more call-backs for in-person meetings like the one I had yesterday, though even before the pandemic my new SGA was very big on and good about telecommuting and hybrid meetings.

Literally. The husband took off for the day to hang out with friends, and had made some noises about how “crowded” he felt the main level was getting, so I dug into a few things down there to straighten them up before he had a chance to put things “away” in places I’d never find them later.

Then I culled T-shirts and other clothes in our dressers. Removed each drawer and tightened the screws on the rails. Moved on to my office, tossing papers that we no longer need, like old bills that we needed to prove residency when we first moved in, and filing away tax stuff. Found the cats’ file just in time for their next vet appointment in two weeks. Between the stuff I couldn’t donate from the bedroom, and the papers from the office I filled a small garbage bag.

Did other things in between, like eat, and do my daily run at Animal Crossing, but mostly I’ve been organizing and cleaning all day. The dust hasn’t been fun, but making sure the drawers in the bedroom can open without jamming, either from being overstuffed with clothes or loose rails, was worth it.

Other than that life has been busy at work for both of us. After two days of gross we’ve both recovered well from the vaccinations, though I still have a fairly prominent red spot from the monkeypox shot. The husband got a new tattoo from an old tattooer. We discovered the guy who did most of his left arm has a studio within walking distance of our townhouse. I’ve given him an idea for another one for myself as well, and we’ll see what he comes back with, design-wise.

The husband and I finally got appointments for this morning for the monkeypox vaccine here in PG County, a process that should have been done and over with months ago, but a lack of vaccines and a screwed up scheduling system meant long delays. But, fast forward to this morning and I drove us over to a local county health center for it. While we were there they offered to give us both the seasonal flu vaccine and the latest, updated Covid booster, so we figured why the heck not. Finished up, drove the husband to the Metro so he could go to work, then headed home.

A couple hours later and I’m slightly nauseous in the way that the flu shot often does, and perhaps a little body sore, but the poor husband is definitely feeling it worse, so he grabbed a cheap uber home. I made him some lunch and he’s crashing on the couch in front of some fluffy TV. No itching on the MPX shot site for me. I did go ahead and take the rest of the day off – I had originally taken just the morning, but with the three-fer-one deal we got I decided lawyering while vaccinated was a bad idea.