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

Snow this morning was pretty, and no issues on the roads. The wind, however, picked up in the afternoon as the temperature dropped. As I type this it’s 21F (-6C), feels like -3F (-19C). Brrr. We decided to stay in the hotel for dinner rather than deal with the wind and cold tonight.

The last day of the Con was fun. We went to a session on drawing comics covers, taught by a professor in the art program at the local college. He was a lot of fun, and very informative about how things get put on covers to ‘sell’ the comic, and to draw the eye to various elements of the page. And the husband may reach out to him to coordinate on some research that ties into his own on media representations of higher education.

Quick, light late lunch, then we hit a local bookstore and wine bar, where we happened to run into the author of a book we picked up to buy when his book club came in to sip and talk. That was fun, especially as the author and the husband went to the same graduate school (well, the husband’s first graduate school, as he attended three for his various MAs and PhD, so far).

Quiet afternoon reading and trying to deal with the inevitable stomach upset of eating badly (for me). I look forward to a lot of rice and eggs when I get home.

I don’t know that I was expecting the OC comic con to be so well attended, but well attended it has been thus far. Got in some good stocking stuffer shopping, and checking out the fun cosplay and art. Back tomorrow for day two for more wandering around, but not until after lunch I think. It’s supposed to snow in the morning, so we’ll see how Ocean City handles that. They’ve been pretreating roads since Friday, so I’m hoping the short drive on the main strip should be okay.

We also wandered out to a little town (Berlin, MD) that had an adorable downtown shopping area. Reminded us a lot of Cape Charles. But in a shocking twist it had not one but two men’s clothing stores, a far cry from other beach towns we’ve been to, which tend to skew female in their shopping.

Then before a later dinner we hit the OC Winterfest of Lights, a fun holiday light set up in a local park. Quite fun wandering through the displays, seeing what was animated, and the husband was looking for things to do to our townhouse next year. Heh.

Overall we’re enjoying the trip a lot. I’d do the event again, and we think we’ll have to pop back out sometime over the summer to see how this place is when it’s hopping with summer tourists.

Pro-tip: Clip your toenails before you have knee surgery, and not a week afterwards. It’ll be a lot easier. 😉

Sutures are out, balance is good. I drove to PT. Hardest part of driving right now is getting in and out of the car. Strength and coordination while driving were fine, it’s just awkward getting out of the car. So now it’s working on range-of-motion (so much flexing of the knee) and strength (so many variations of squats).

In other news, it’s hot as all get out here in the DC area. Currently around 96F/35C. Which was a perfectly fine temperature when I lived in Taiwan and had acclimated to sub-tropical heat, but not so much now that I’m stuck in AC all the time and fat.

My small gubm’nt agency is getting kicked out of our new (2017) office building in favor of a big gubm’nt agency that wants to move out of their mid-century brutalist monstrosity downtown. We found out definitively yesterday evening, with the press stuff happening this morning. So far the rumor is that we’ll be moved to the federal center in Suitland MD, which would be fine by me because it’s a straight shot down the green line for me – no more switching trains. But I bet it would lead to a lot more attrition, as both the current and former HQ buildings are in Northern Virginia, and people aren’t going to want to go to Maryland.

In better news, since I can drive we can go get haircuts. And comics. And groceries. Yay!

Took some time at lunch to start another dishcloth, this one in the opposite colors of the brick/honeycomb pattern, so the white is the structure and the blue variegated is in the ‘windows’. Needed the break from catching up from being out for a week.

Overall not too bad playing catch up. We’re losing two more attorneys, though, and possibly a third. One’s last day was today, the other is going in a couple weeks. The third has been attending every retirement seminar the agency offers, so we think she’s close to making a decision.

Thunderstorms are currently rolling through. I do love that about spring in the south (and yes, DC is still ‘the South’, geographically).

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.

The husband and I went to see the last of the preview productions of Waitress up at Olney theater. Very solid production, excellent show. They have some lighting and sound cues to work on, but that’s the joy of going to a preview show – you get to see more of the sausage being made.

Quiet day otherwise. Lots of rain washing away the last batch of snow, though apparently we’re looking at another possible snow storm mid-week again. If the amounts currently forecasted come to pass it’ll mean another snow day or two. Such a shame (he said, sarcastically).

Well, snow telework day. It finally started mid afternoon and we’re up to a couple of inches outside now. Lots of leftovers for lunch (ordered pizza last night), and various and sundry work messes to clean up as we attempt to normalize what 47 is doing.

It’s unclear if I’ll be attending the second half of the training course at the end of this month because he issued an order dissolving the training institute that’s putting on the training. Rumor is that as part of an orderly shutdown they’ll finish out the class that’s there now, and then have my class come down for our last two weeks (because we already paid them for the training last fall), at which point we’ll be the last ever class there. The whole point of the institute is to train federal employees in leadership skills, and as we know this team hates the idea of a profession, non-partisan civil service (because he just wants yes-men), so it makes some sick sense that they’d close one of the ways that we maintain that professional civil service. Depressing, really.

We’re expecting another big (for DC) snow storm tomorrow through Thursday. Four to eight inches (10-20cm), which is a lot for here. Work laptop came home with me, and I will take advantage of any and all “unscheduled telework” days that pop across, like the “Early Departure ?” DC area Federal offices status message that’s posted for tomorrow (the question mark, present in the original message, was my favorite part; like they weren’t sure they completely meant it).

Commuted in, met the husband in metro on the way home. Ordered pizza for dinner and watched the last half of season one of Big Boys, a British show on Hulu that we’re quite enjoying. Probably an early night tonight as Tuesdays are traditionally busy days for me as people manage to catch up on their weekend/Monday emails and start tossing bombs at the lawyers.

The drive down wasn’t too bad, just shy of nine hours. The various highway departments from Massachusetts down to Maryland did a good job of clearing the snow and keeping the roads free of hazards, which made the drive down pretty good. Not much use of cruise control this time because there was more traffic, but at least the roads were in good shape.

Cold as hell down here at home, and due to get colder. It’s currently 15F (-9.4C), and getting down to 12F (-11C) tonight. High of 20F (-6.7C) on Wednesday when I might or might not have to commute in (I’m scheduled for Thursday, but 47’s workforce orders might change that; hopefully not that quickly, though). Planning to get up in time to drive the husband to the Metro in any case so he has that much less time out in that mess.

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.