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

Yup, still crazy.

Still can’t quite believe I signed up for the marathon. Should be a nice experience, and I’m looking forward to doing it, but wasn’t quite sure I was up to it. I think I am, now.

Work has been absolute hell this week. Can’t and won’t go into details, but it’s been stressful enough to trigger a cold sore and set off my eczema. Grrr. I’m so glad I’m going to be out of there for the next week and a half.

Working through final prep for the race. Picked up a bunch of Shot Bloks, and a new pair of club-branded bike socks from the local bike shop. List is made, trying to make sure I have everything planned out and ready.

In the meantime, one more day at work, then off for the duration. Debating whether I should leave my phone off just so I’m truly unreachable while on the road. The joy of being the specialist is that you’ve a lot of job security. The pain is that they have to call you, no matter what.

I shouldn’t be surprised at it, but I still seem not to grasp quite how much the state of my digestive system can effect my entire mood. The past few days it had been gradually getting worse, the result of allergies run amok. Yesterday was just the culmination of it, combined with a calf that continued to hate me, and a work day that was beyond insane, and I was just in A Mood. So I came hom, stuffed myself silly (my body’s normal reaction to upset stomach – eat, Eat, EAT!, I suspect in an effort to drive out the ickiness), popped a sudafed and proceeded to have a little pity party.

What finally snapped me out of it was being ignored in a chat room while being whiney, and then Richard calling to confirm that not only was the USPS still not forwarding my mail, but that I’d gotten a jury summons yesterday (my fourth in seven years living in DC). I think the jury summons was the last absurd little detail, which finally got me laughing (and by then the sudafed had kicked in and my stomach was settling). Slept well, and today was much better. Just as crazy at work, but without the stomach woes, so the whole attitude was much, much better.

Tonight I managed to clear off a bunch of junk (over a year’s worth of flyers from when the place was empty), finally talk to TiVo (who had never charged me for the lifetime service and had charged me again for a monthly – they’ve now fixed that), tried to hunt up a receipt I need to mail in (unsuccessful), and paid a couple irregular bills.

Had bought flowers on Friday and they’re still looking nice. A simple touch that is very pleasant to look at, and nice to have around. Will have to consider doing that more often. Of course, I need to get plants in here period. Brought none with and haven’t bought any. But first I need to figure out the layout of the living room, and for that I need to drag in outside help.

I hate when I overschedule.

I’m normally fairly good with putting things in the two different calendars I maintain (work and home), but I forgot to put in an after-work-work-function (aka happy hour with the other young attorneys) and scheduled dinner with a friend this evening as well. Given the relative positions of the friendships and what not, I’m choosing dinner over HH, but I hated having to spill the beans that I’d overscheduled and was not making HH (even with the real and good excuse that I have to run and get my new glasses after work today). Ah well.

Been in a mild funk the last two or three days with a lack of sleep, general feeling of pessimism, and dealing with the last bits of the relationship with CT (a handover of some things I left at his apartment). Not terribly fun, but I know it’s a temporary condition, just have to keep telling myself that.

The dining room table arrives today, as does a stool/side table for the balcony. The chairs are on backorder until the middle of the month, but that just gives me time to clear the remaining junk out of the way. Once the table’s set up I’ll have a chance to look at various designs of couches I’ve been looking at, to see if any of them would work in the space. For the most part the dining room table will be in the folded mode against the wall, so I’ve got some space for a couch in front of it, but I’ll need to actually see the space, as well as measure, etc.

Work’s nuts, with several things bouncing around. Thankfully the bosses are understanding since they’re bouncing on the same issues (as well as others). Fun stuff (not). Hopefully will settle down soon, but if not, oh well!

Didn’t run this morning, but did run this evening, same long loop I did on Sunday (since I’l really supposed to be doing Very Long Loops at this point in training). Will attempt an hour on the bike in the morning if it’s not too cold/nasty tomorrow morning. Otherwise, long swim instead.

Work was in one of those “everything is flowing as it should” rare moods this morning, knocked out two long time problems, then lunch arrived and all my mojo went out the window. Oh well, at least I killed two projects before it fizzled.

Trying to start finalizing plans for race nutrition and the like, pick up those last things I need to get (um, wetsuit?) and make sure I can stomach the food I want to have on the bike and run. Gotta plan this stuff out in order not to kill yourself in the race, so I’m trying to ensure I have a plan and that it’ll work.

Skipped out of the board meeting early tonight (yes, the cult co-op had a board meeting the day after a membership meeting) because I was too hungry, post-run. Dinner was good, some fake sausage, light salad, hummus. This was about an hour after the run, and I had already had a recovery drink and a protein shake before that. Food is good, and good fuel is better.

The visit to the parents and other family members was good. My new niece, the three and a half week old one, is tres cute, with a full head of very black hair (all spikey, too – punk rock baby!). We’ve determined that her nickname is one that irritates my sister-in-law, so of course we’re all using it (including my brother, interestingly enough). The older niece turned nine on Friday and liked seeing her Uncle Moose, especially since I think I roughhouse a tad more with her than her father does or my parents can (i.e., picking her up, flipping her over, etc). I’m enjoying the chance to play with her while I still can – both her parents are a good chunk taller than I am, and she’s catching up to them rapidly.

Despite the best laid plans, I did nothing more athletic than lifting a wine glass the entire time I was there (though I did get through several levels of Super Princess Peach). Ah well. The Cherry Blossom Ten-Miler is going to hurt this weekend.

Placed a couple calls about the utilities today and was pleased to discover that it’s going to be pretty painless to switch the cable and phone stuff over to Richard without a disruption in service. Thank heavens. Of course, the cable company I use now doesn’t have service in the new building, so I have to decide what I’m doing for ‘net access. I’m leaning heavily toward DSL as opposed to cable because frankly I don’t think I’m going to notice the difference between 3Mbps (DSL) and 5MBps (cable), but I know I’ll notice the $20+ price difference (~$35 for DSL, ~$57 for cable). A decision to be made soon, but not necessarily today.

I’m also dealing with some drama with my real estate agent, but that should get resolved today. I hope. Nothing that’s screwing up the deal, that’s solid and set, it’s just some timing issues on things.

Work has been absolutely insane today, with things we thought were waiting on something else suddenly not needing that something else, or the meeting that we thought was happening on topic A suddenly being on topic B. Ugh. Hopefully that’s not the trend for the entire week, but I don’t have my hopes up.

Even if it is supposed to snow today, the first full day of Spring, the DC Department of Parks & Recreation made sure my first spring day was complete by weed-whacking their front lawn in sub-freezing temperatures this morning. Nothing like the smell of freshly cut frozen grass to make you feel all warm & fuzzy. Or at least all sniffly.

Today the “G” in “OGC” stands for “Grammar.” I’m reviewing a report that we have to give to our overlords the Congress and it’s just chock full ‘o nuts errors. Semi-colon abuse is the most frequent problem, but there are plenty of others clamoring for the top position.

Oh, and I have seen an occasional snow flake this afternoon, but they’re awfully sparse thus far. I think it’s waiting until the evening rush because, as one co-worker put it, “It’s not a real storm in DC unless it hits at rush hour.”

Woke up at 5 this morning and knew I wasn’t going back to bed, so I putzed for a bit, then got the gym to swim at 7. It was very quiet there, and I was able to get into a lane, shared at first with one other gentleman, then alone for the last half. This was about an hour before I normally get in there, but it was just as un-crowded at 8 when I was getting out as it was at 7 when I got in.

The resolutioners seem to have resolutioned out, finally. Thank heavens.

I think I freaked out my office by getting in at 8:30. Not early for most people, I know, but since I normally get in at 9:30-9:45, it was a tad strange for the rest of the folks here. I’ll use the extra time today to take less time off tomorrow when I go to fill out paperwork with my agent for the offer on the apartment.

(OMG, NPR is talking about the case of Marshall v. Marshall, aka the “Anna Nicole Smith” case, and I have to say, I knew she was a train wreck, but the description by Nina Totenberg is just Too Fraking Funny)

Will be slightly crazy here at work, even without the home buying stuff (my mortgage broker called when I was in the gym this morning). Whee.

I’ve gotten no less than 4 calls thus far this morning from shysters’ attorneys’ offices offering to represent me in a case against the gentleman who hit me last night. That’s just the one I picked up at home before I left and the THREE on my cell phone (lesson learned: never give your cell # to the cops for an official report, stick with the home number, since it appears said numbers are available to the public!!). So far. Who knows how many will be there at home when I get there tonight.

Unfortunately it doesn’t appear to be against the DC bar’s ethics rules to do this (yes, I checked, and Rule 7.5 is far too lax on this issue in my view), so I can’t complain about them. Which is a shame, I was looking forward to reporting them all on ethics violations.

As I said the other day, I’m moving offices soon, to a window office here at the BGA (and no, I can’t take photos of the view – as folks know, I do not identify which BGA I work for and to take a photo would clearly mark which building I’m in and thus which BGA, so no pictures. Sorry). Spent a good part of today: a) moving my furniture around (much to the chagrin of the 78 year old guy we keep around to, I kid you not, move furniture); and b) dusting/cleaning said furniture.

It’s amazing how much dust builds up both on the outside and the inside of furniture when it’s used by the same person for year (and when most of it is about as old as I am – be assured that at this BGA we’re not spending your tax dollars on furniture, nosiree).

Regardless of all this, I am excited about moving in. They painted it yesterday, hence rearranging the furniture today. The phone order went in today, so by Thursday next week it should be switched (yes, it takes that long to flip the phone cables around), and then I’ll be in there for good. I’m going to have to get some more violets and pot them in all the useless unused violet pots I have, since the cats tend to sleep on/eat my violets if I put them in windows at home.

In other news™, I bought Animal Crossing: Wild World for the DS yesterday (naming the city I’m in “Crobuzon” since “New Crobuzon” wouldn’t fit). It’s almost too much like real life: buy stuff, go into debt over it, and then go do seemingly silly and useless tasks to earn money to climb out of debt, lather, rinse, repeat. That said, so far I’m liking it. It’s not as fun as Kirby: Canvas Curse, but it’s keeping me occupied.

Da Boss came in and told me I was going to be losing a wall on which to hang my office decorations, because she’s moving me to one of the two vacant window offices in two weeks, after it gets painted and the phones move.

And, best of all, it’s the one with the couch in it. I’ll gladly take the couch and lose the privacy (it’s also the office that’s right off our main suite, as opposed to the other one, which is waaaay at the end of the hallway and shares a wall with the Deputy Grand Boss’ office).

Huzzah!