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

After sort of being in remission the head cold the husband gave me last week came roaring back this morning. That or it’s a new things on top of the other thing from someone at one of the rest areas on the way home. Who knows. Still managed to straighten some things in my office and catch up on a few comics, but otherwise was pretty much a lump for most of the day. Back to the job tomorrow, but I may use the excuse of not wanting to infect my coworkers to telework the rest of this week.

Whole lot of changes coming down the pike at work, as expected. I suspect some of them will end up being pulled back as impossible to implement from a practical standpoint, but others will end up creating a lot of work. Eh, elections have consequences and all that. I don’t anticipate that it’ll be life changing for my little agency, just a lot of busy work changing language around.

We are expecting 4-8″ (10-20cm) of snow here in the Boston area overnight. We thought about leaving today, but then we would have been driving through the snow in the middle of the route, whereas it’s all supposed to be done by the morning, so hopefully the highways will have been well treated by then. Of course we managed to leave our ice scraper/snow brush at home, so I made a last minute trip to Walmart for that, some waterproof gloves, and some snack for tonight/tomorrow. And I spotted a relatively inexpensive gas station so I filled up as well.

Good last day visiting with the in-laws. We went candlepin bowling in the afternoon, which I had not tried before and quite enjoyed, then an early dinner before the snow started. Now we’re settled into the hotel for the night, packing what needs to be packed, and glad I remembered to pull the wipers out from the windows. Here’s hoping it’s a relatively easy drive tomorrow.

Uneventful day at work, which was fine by me. The husband and I are headed up to Massachusetts tomorrow morning for a couple of days, so we’ve been doing the light packing required. Mine is a little heavier than normal because I have to take my work laptop for a video meeting with my little cohort from the training I attended back in early December, a kind of mid-break check-in to see how we’re doing and (I suspect) get us back on track, post-holidays.

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.

Late start to the morning, didn’t end up working out until around lunch time (walk 30 minutes on the treadmill; 25 minutes of strength training). Before that I emptied out three drawers in my dresser, sorted shirts into ‘yes, no, maybe’ piles, put the yeses away, put the nos in a bag, and put the maybes aside for a consultation with the husband. Those will likely be nos in the end, but there some sentimental bits in there so I’ll check first. Worked out, cleaned myself up, ate. Then back to the remaining drawers. I’d already done a cull of exercise gear last year, but needed to rearrange the order of things based on what I’m actually doing now (more walking, less cycling). There was a surprising amount of little junk in one of the drawers, which all got pulled out and bagged until I can find a home for some of it. But the dresser has been set back up so all the drawers close cleanly now, which was the major goal.

Went through a storage cube in the bookshelf in my office that really needs to be a set of drawers (the cube is too big for what I store in it, with the result that it’s difficult to find and pull out what’s needed). IKEA has some, but I’m not going out today.

Read a bunch of comics, but with the late start not as many as I thought I would today. I am down to just the box (huzzah!), and I’ll get through more tomorrow before the husband puts more in my pile.

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.

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.

Got a ton of books for Xmas, so trying to sort & prioritize those. Also have a massive backlog of comic books, dating back to the training at the beginning of this month (I would estimate a couple dozen in queue).

Walked on the treadmill this morning. Waiting for a big Amazon order to show up “by 10pm”. The husband is downstairs trying out one of his Xmas gifts from me, an adult, exercise version of the 90s “skip it” toy. It sounds like he’s having fun, and is out of breath from it.

I’ll hop onto the work computer tomorrow to monitor stuff and clear out my inbox (so many reminders and news items await), but leave the out-of-office on so people don’t bother me. Glad I figured out how the ‘delay sending’ thing works in Outlook so I can have stuff go through on Thursday if I write anything up tomorrow.

I’m definitely my mother’s child – found a third batch of misplaced stocking stuffers this morning (she regularly forgets where she stashed Xmas gifts, and would find them weeks or months later). Really need to do a better job finding a consistent place to put those. These will get handed off when we see them next month for a family event.

My knee is still not at 100%; some days it’s 95, some it’s 80. Likely need to up my game on strengthening exercises. In the meantime I’ve been walking on our treadmill at some point during the day, and taking the speed up into more aerobic territory, according to my Garmin watch. Probably could’ve walked outside today, but I was trying out old hiking shoes from the closet that I hadn’t worn in forever and I wanted to be at home in case I needed to bail and switch shoes. The hikers did fine, probably better than my usual Timberlands for an extended walk, so I’ll keep them in the rotation.