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

The drive up to Massachusetts wasn’t bad. We made good time, and only really hit traffic when we got to the Boston I-95 beltway during rush hour, and even then the maps app had taken that into account with the timing. Checked in, all good. Got an upgrade to a “suite” because we walked into our first room and there were a handful of tools (think hammer, etc.) on the counter, so they switched us. Not bad.

Then dinner took as long as the drive up here did because we had The. World’s. Slowest. Waitress. Seriously, she was just bad at her job. Good food, but overly warm in the place and slow service left me slightly cranky. Felt good to get outside into the cold.

All unpacked and ready for whatever we’re up to tomorrow. I have a video call from 1-3 for the training class, and the husband is meeting one of his college friends while I do that, but otherwise we’ve no plans until Saturday.

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.

Commuted to work, Metro was behaving. Got to pull out one of my favorite wah-wah court quotes (“However, nowhere does our Constitution extol the virtue of efficiency and nowhere does it command that all our laws be fiscally wise.” Guadamuz v. Ash, 368 F. Supp. 1233, 1243 (D.D.C., 1973)). Was in the context of telling someone that it didn’t matter that it would be cheaper if we paid for individual memberships for people to attend a conference, and that while buying the memberships plus the member registration rate was cheaper than paying the non-member rate, Congress said in law that we couldn’t pay for memberships for individual feds, so they’d just have to suck it up and pay more money. Yes, sometimes the law is like that (and frankly in most instances the law makes sense because you don’t want to use taxpayer funds to pay every employees’ voluntary society membership dues, it’s just that in this particular instance it happens to cost the taxpayer more). My job is weird.

Past that I walked on the treadmill this morning. I think my knee may be hyper-extending and thus causing more issues, so I’m going to dig out some of the lighter knee braces in my collection and see if one of them helps. The walk was fine, and I stretched a lot right after, so it was okay for most of the day. There’s still a lot of ice out there so I was very careful where I put my feet, especially in the Metro parking lot, where ice melt had refrozen as black ice.

I had rough plans with a friend this weekend while the husband is down at MAL, but as usual with this friend a house emergency came up (leaking roof this time) so I’m flying solo. I told the husband I looked forward to him complaining about the number of comics I’ll read this weekend (complaining because he then has to sort and file them all at once).

Spent the work day on a last minute emergency that is only an emergency because a) lawyers who worked at the agency before me gave bad advice; and b) our public affairs shop can’t plan things in the normal federal budget cycle. The agency has an anniversary next year with a big number and what should have happened was that planning should’ve started 2-3 years ago so that we could’ve asked for the budget authority to do the big shindig they now want to hold, but which they didn’t start planning until last year (an agency develops their budget plan each spring for the fiscal year that starts almost two years later; so for 2025 they would’ve had to develop it internally back in the spring of 2023). When they did approach me about it, I got to tell them that no, we don’t have any authority to pay for food for a shindig, and in fact there’s a statute that affirmatively says we may not pay for food for a shindig, and by the way here’s the two Justice memos that back me up on this. The previous lawyers had told them that a certain pot of cash we have didn’t have to follow the normal rules, which is horse shit. I did tell them how to get the authority to pay for food (ask for a one-time increase in a special reception budget, or ask for permanent authority to pay for food at shindigs. Or, preferably, both), and I’ve told this to everyone in management who will listen, but the game of telephone based on the previous bad advice is still going strong and people don’t want to hear the bad news. Oh well.

Huh, WP is behaving in Safari tonight. Yay computer weirdness.

The husband kindly volunteered to do the little bit of snow shoveling we have to do (a driveway, which is two cars wide and maybe 10 feet long, and a couple feet of sidewalk). Very happy we did not have to commute today.

Trying to catch up on comics today, because I’m a month or so behind, still. I’ve been reading multiple issues a day, but the two weeks out of town just put me so far behind. And, of course, working. Good conversation this afternoon with our newest attorney over how I’ve previously handled part of her new portfolio, as well as filling her in on some of the oddities of the small gubm’nt agency’s operations.

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.

Had another couple we’re friends with over this evening, and made some new dishes (a maple glazed pork loin with Swiss chard & carrots; roasted broccoli; and lemon & parsley quinoa). They turned out well, for the most part, and were well received. The broccoli was a trifle overdone in spots (overly hot burner while pan roasting), but still tasted good. Then we played a couple riffs on queer versions of apples-to-apples that we picked up at the end of the year. Fun time.

Last day of work for the week was good. Nice chat with a new coworker, talked over some stuff that’s going on with transition, and made plans to address at least one of them with a couple quick meetings next week (because, putting on my former information lawyer hat, one should never create more written records when a conversation is better suited to the topic). Also talked about how I’m not completely clear on what my role is going to be going forward as a big part of my portfolio is moving over to another attorney who just started. I’m okay with the hire, just in a bit of limbo over the scope of my duties at the moment.

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.

Spent the better part of this past week preparing for the government shutdown that almost but didn’t quite happen at the last minute. The good part of the temporary funding extension is that it goes past the time frame for my next tranche of training in late February/early March, so I’ll be able to plan for that to happen on time. The bad part is that we’ll get to do the shutdown dance again in March when I return from training. It was also good trial-by-fire for my backup at work, who hadn’t been through one of these in the role of fiscal attorney before. But hey, we’re through it, and now I can start leave, albeit a day later than planned (I had Friday off, but The Hill had other plans; the leave will roll over to next year).