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

Following the stress of this past week, I ended up going out on Thursday to meet the regular crew at JR’s, then on Friday, in a convoluted fashion, I ended up at the new Ziegfield’s/Secrets. Two late nights, and even without drinking terribly much, it was more of that sort of stress than I’m used to. It was fun, but I don’t see how some guys do that week after week.

Tonight’s plan is a dinner date, sober, with one of the regular crew from Thursday. Don’t know if it’ll go very far past this as I hadn’t realized he smoked when I agreed to the date, but hey, we’ll see how it goes. Can’t really do much past dinner because I’d like to bike or run tomorrow, and I need more normal sleep pattern back before the upcoming work week and the new stresses that will entail.

On a side note, I wonder if anyone has studied whether people buy less cologne/perfume in jurisdictions where they don’t allow smoking in the bars.

It was interesting to see that Z/S is within walking distance, as long as you feel safe walking through/around the public housing between there and the cult co-op. The experience was a bit crowded; I don’t think they have a very good layout for the bars – too crowded and too few bartenders. Getting ignored by one bartender as he worked the back bar didn’t help my impression of the service. No dancing upstairs, either, despite a large dance floor and lots of dance music playing for the dancers.

Our new political leadership, at the urging of certain offices who have an axe to grind, has decided that the lawyers in the BGA are the source and instigators of all delay or other ills affecting the BGA. I actually had one political tell me to my face, in regard to some impossible language coming our way in the upcoming appropriation, that we collectively were being “insufficiently creative.” As if all there is to lawyering is to wave our hands and declare that red is green to suit the immediate political desires of the leadership. As I recall the last administration had their attorneys do some “creative” lawyering, and that turned out just swimmingly (not). Little twerp.

Needless to say, this has not made working terribly pleasant at the moment, especially in the face of the extraordinary demands on us under the stimulus act.

Adding to the difficulties are the normal issues with any transition, getting the politicals on board and up to speed, and also just getting our senate-confirmed folks nominated and through the senate vetting process. The tax woes of earlier nominees have caused an increased scrutiny of all nominees by the white house, thus further slowing the process (plus the desire to have cabinet secretaries all in place before lower appointees are nominated).

We’ll get through this, but it would be nice to have more, and less hostile, political leadership in place in the face of these extraordinary needs.

PT again today, am doing much better, foot-wise. One thing I did was ask for new orthoses to better balance my odd little feet. He’d put a couple cushions in strategic places on my current orthoses the last time and those did seem to help (until the tape fell off). Keeping my fingers crossed.

More importantly, it was an hour in which I was able to turn off all my little electric devices and be “off-line” for a while. Felt like heaven.

Tonight I’m headed out, because I need to get the hell out of the apartment and see people other than my co-workers in a social setting. So, off to a haircut and JRs for moi now.

Well, as if I didn’t know it already, that speech proved that I’m going to have a very, very busy four years.

As far as habits and coping mechanisms, knitting seems to be a healthier alternative to drinking. So far.

Long, long, long day. We have agreement on the stimulus bill, but no text yet to see what’s changed and what they still left there and fucked up. And there was some truly fucked up stuff in there, like mandated competition for grants, all grants, even the ones which are just supposed to be spread among the states evenly by some sort of formula (because it’s smart to have, say, Delaware competing against New Jersey for grant money). Not brilliant, but typical of rushed legislation with good intentions.

Got several more rows done on the hat, the decreases and slips in the rounds have started. It’d look better if my stitches in the cables were more even, but I’m still pleased with how it’s coming out, and I think K will like it. There’s a bit of an increased urgency now, as she started chemo on Monday, and radiation this week as well (1 day of chemo, 5 of radiation each week – yowch). So I want to get it done and off to her this weekend so she’ll have it if she needs it. Plus I need to know if I’ll need any more of the yarn, since my one supply is waaaaay out in Vienna. It’s supposed to knit up from one skein, but that can vary, and I’ve heard other folks say they’ve needed a smidge more than a skein to finish these.

So, yeah, instead of going out to drink, or staying home to drink, I popped in more bad movies and got a bunch of knitting done. And now it’s crash time so I can hopefully get what I need to get done tomorrow done and get out of there to my PT appointment.

Now comes the difficult part – trying to get things fixed in the conference on the stimulus bill. Ugh.

Seem to have irritated my foot, not in the plantar fasciitis sense, but a sprain on the top of it. Yay for overdoing it. Guess the swim last night was a tad too much.

Because it was so irritated, tonight was a night off from things, watching a couple of bad movies (“The Seeker,” and “The Apple”), with some more progress made on my co-worker K’s hat:

It’s about halfway done now, with most of the repetitive cabling done – 1.25 repeats left of the main repeat, then I start the decreases to the top. Might get it done this weekend so I can get it off to her.

Still busy with the stimulus bill here. I’m “on call” this weekend, meaning I actually have to carry the work blackberry around if/when I go out. Sort of annoying, but not overly burdensome, as long as I’m carrying other things. And as long as they’re not sending me .pdf attachments and actually expecting me to read them.

I made a PT appointment for my foot for Thursday. It should be an assessment of where it is, what other factors might be contributing, and what else I can be doing to help it. It still twinges on occasion, and I’d really like to be done with that. Hopefully with a PT assessment I’ll get better advice than just my (non-running) podiatrist and his ‘well, you just have to rest it’ attitude. Love the doc to death, but he doesn’t get it sometimes. And I’m tired of not feeling like I’m in control of the foot and its recovery; I want more options for what I can be doing with it.

I must be mellowing in my old age; I went to a Superbowl party at a neighbor’s apartment, actually watched large segments of the game, and didn’t hate it. Made veggie chili which was well received, even if it was a last minute “OMG, I totally forgot that I need to cook something for the party and what can I scramble together out of the cabinets” type affair. And hey, I got rid of some of the five gazillion tomatoes I have in my freezer courtesy Mom & Dad’s garden.

Not looking forward to another week of 9 am meetings, but you do what you’ve got to do. At least I have a core training class to look forward to tomorrow evening after work.

I can tell I’m fighting off a cold, and not just sniffling from allergies, because I’m in full “OMG, must eat and eat and eat some more” mode. Stoopid body. Probably caught my friend’s cold from Monday night. No good deed going unpunished and all that.

I finally started knitting on the hat I was requested to make by my friend K for her chemo treatments. Of course last night as I got past the initial ribbing and into the cabling I managed to goof two rows, one of which I couldn’t tell was goofed until I got up a few rows. So, I ripped out four rows at the end and called it a night. Redid them this evening, and they’re correctly done now. Have to say, for a non-wool yarn, Calmer is pretty darned nifty to knit with. Definitely a different (and better) experience than with other non-wools I’ve knitted with.

Work continues to be insane this week, and the early morning insanity continues into next week as well – I’m scheduled for 9 am meetings again all next week. I know most folks don’t think anything of that, but I don’t normally report until 9:30, and adjusting my sleep and waking schedule hasn’t been easy.

I think this has to be one of the most difficult periods to be a fed – we’ve got new management, but only a few actual political appointees (only one, in fact!), a handful of political non-appointees, and they’re not fully integrated yet. We know they want to go in different directions, and on the major things those are clear, but on the details they’re definitely not. We’re trying to react to the various provisions proposed in the competing stimulus bills, and despite the fact that the same party is in charge of the two branches, it’s not a given that we in the Executive will be completely on board with what Congress proposes.

Oh, and at some point they’re going to give us our actual budget for FY 2009 as well. You know, the fiscal year that started back on October 1st. So there’ll be that to deal with soon, too.

At the moment, though, I’m running around like mad getting stuff together, analyzing and reacting, and generally trying to be helpful to management. With little to no clear direction, and a lot of guessing. Fun, fun.