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

I bought hair clips today. Not because I need them for my hair; I’m far too lazy to keep and/or style much more than the inch (2.5cm) or so on top of my head. No, I bought them for yarn. Specifically, for holding the end of a yarn ball in place so it doesn’t unravel. And once I wind up a new ball or two I’ll let y’all know how it works. I also finished the dancing droplet scarf, but it’s still blocking downstairs, so no pictures quite yet, mainly because the towel I have it on as it dries clashes badly with the colors.

Rest day today from exercise because my male cat uncharacteristically slept on the bed last night and managed to find his way into the middle of where my legs normally go. Not wanting to disturb his majesty (the things we do for pets), I contorted myself into shapes that were not conducive to the most restful sleep. Ah well, it was probably a needed rest in any case.

Comics run this evening, then tried a different branch of the TGI Friday’s chain. The food was good, but we almost left because there were only two waitresses who were both slower than a bowl of molasses in January. A Target run after that, then home to wrap up the evening. Work officially extended our telework through the end of this week so they can finish the cable work, and the husband should be home the next two days as well (which is good because a sewage pipe burst in his work building this morning, and it sounded like the smell was pretty bad). We’re planning on catching Practical Magic 2 this weekend, and hoping it has fewer plot holes than the original (which I love, but which has plot holes you could drive convoys through).

Got all my workouts in this week. Got the silly thing done for and sent back to the lord high muckety-mucks in the Mad King’s administration (redrafting part of a draft rule that they got a shit ton of negative comments on because, surprise surprise, they wrote it badly, and ended up farming out edits to a bunch of us in the agencies, which I got stuck with at my agency). Got half a day off from the career guy in charge of the agency for the holiday on Monday, and checked out at lunch time. Done and done.

The husband was not so lucky, though he was also working from home today. Did knock off a little early, so I ran him to the post office to mail a package off (he’s been selling collectibles we’ve gotten over the years and no longer need or want), then to the local Whole Foods for some staples. I especially wanted to get some gluten free bread from their frozen section because I have a recipe to try and the dough for it starts with commercial gluten free bread that you grind up, rather than trying to fiddle up your own ratios of obscure flours to make a home made dough. The cookbook is about ten years old, written before commercial gluten free flour mixes became as easy to find as they are now. I’m fascinated by the concept, so I can’t wait to try it.

Still plugging away at comics, still. Made a sizable dent this afternoon, hoping to continue that through the weekend.

Thankful that Congress passed a continuing funding resolution so early and the Mad King actually signed it, so we know we have funding through early December. it’s anyone’s guess how they’ll react after the election this fall, so all bets are off for a lapse in funding after this runs out, but at least we’re good until then.

Odd because of the holiday, and the heat. It’s forecast to be in the low 100s F (38-40C) here around DC, and combing that and (for Federal workers) the observed holiday today, my boss told us all to telework yesterday. Meant I had to do some cleaning of my desk at home to relocate stuff that had accumulated on it. I am my parents’ child – if there’s a surface, stuff gets put on it, at least in my office; I’m better about the rest of the house because the husband won’t put up with out there. Yesterday was also odd because the local power company reached into our thermostat and set the temperature up 4 degrees, as they do from time to time to avoid brownouts, and in exchange for slightly better electricity rates. Normally those will go for 2-3 hours, typically 4pm to 6pm, but yesterday it ran from sometime in the afternoon all the way to 10pm. And they never sent a notice that they were doing it, even after the fact. Annoying,.

We laid low yesterday, but braved the heat today. Out to an Uno’s Pizzeria for a treat, hit Target for some toiletries (and a clay garden gnome on clearance for the back yard), Barnes & Noble to pick up the third book in a trilogy I’ve really enjoyed (Rebel Blade by Davinia Evans). Hit a theater on the way home to see the new Minions movie, which was cute. It was more an opportunity to do something outside that house that wasn’t impossibly hot than anything else. Remembered to put some internal window covers on the sunroof of our Mini so it wouldn’t get quite so hot inside the car. Also remembered to put bags over the (black) front seats where they’d get sunlight while parked so we didn’t fry our legs when we got back. Makes me ever so glad we bought a townhouse with a garage – that always makes the initial temperature setting easier when taking off from home.

Have a potluck on Sunday with the neighbors but haven’t decided what we want to make yet. Looking forward to meeting more folks in person.

Like most ‘Murrikans on the east coast the husband and I are now just waiting for whatever snow is supposed to appear starting around midnight tonight. The news, as it is wont to do, has hyped this thing all week. I ‘maxiflexed’ Wednesday morning and did my main grocery shopping then. That evening we did the usual comics run and popped into Whole Foods for one thing the local Giant hadn’t had, and it was packed to the gills with lots of empty shelves. I know it’s human nature, but it’s still nuts. And they didn’t even have the item I was looking for. The local small organic market down the street did have it, and wasn’t a madhouse.

Did scurry out solo for a long overdue haircut this morning, then grabbed the husband for lunch at our favorite local eatery. Picked up some pints of ice cream from their shop for later, then home to hunker down, play some video games, read, and knit. Our power shouldn’t be affected unless something catastrophic happens, because our lines are all buried (*knocking on wood*). The only time this development has had an extended outage was when some drunken idiot took out a power box out on the main drag, which has been confirmed by folks who bought here when it first opened in 2010. In the meantime devices are charging, and I’m listening to a cat snore in his heated bed here in my office. The not-so-quiet wait before the storm.

Today was all about running errands. Getting my TSA PreCheck stuff was a breeze – no line for that service and was in an out as quickly as the quirky tablet would let the poor MVA (aka the DMV – Maryland uses “Motor Vehicle Administration”) worker process things (it was having issues, but she handled it stoically). Was actually out of there before the scheduled appointment time, unlike the rest of the MVA, which was packed. Then we wandered the Annapolis shopping mall, picked up some odds and ends, and window shopped at the LEGO store before heading to lunch. Some book shopping afterwards for the husband to finish purchasing the Dungeon Crawler Carl series (he’s hooked) and me to grab yet another cookbook. Mailed some stuff to family members, then hit the mother ship branch of our comic shop for a comic frame and a back issue we missed. Was a successful, if long day out.

In unrelated news, I had forgotten how much dreck Animal Crossing: New Horizons makes you dump all over your island to “decorate” it to get it up to a five star rating. Like, I want it closer to a wild forest, not a planned botanical garden, but that’s not what it wants. Just want to get there before the update drops in two weeks. I suppose this is what I get for starting over on the Switch 2.

The husband’s sister and her family should be here in a little less than twenty-four hours. Loins are girded, last minute laundry is going. Ran to Home Depot for cinder blocks to prop up a table on our deck to solve the issue of an inflatable Santa sliding off the edge (back onto the deck, thankfully, and not off the front of the house). The husband is baking cookies (“stress baking”). Beds have been made. We did a run to BJ’s yesterday, but I’ll need to drag the sister-in-law to the grocery store after we figure out what stuff we want to cook for the week. Haircuts scheduled for first thing tomorrow morning. Then it’ll be trying to stay out of the way while the husband obsesses over cleaning things that are already clean, and drives me nuts by wanting to me to put things ‘away’ into some mystical ‘away’ place that doesn’t exist in our townhouse.

I’m most excited that everyone is going to get a small Easter bunny in their Xmas stocking, because BJ’s not only already had Valentine’s candy out (semi-normal, though still too rushed), they had a partial array of Easter stuff. So of course we picked up some kit-kat bunnies, because why not. I guess it beats leftover Halloween candy. I understand that orders have to go in to get stuff shipped in time, but c’mon guys, Easter? Already?

My coworkers seem to be settling back into the fully remote routine. I think it helps that it’s so close to the year-end holidays, so much of the normal business of the agency is quieter than usual. Not to say that we’re not working, but the normal urgency isn’t quite as bad as the norm.

Comics, dinner, and a Target run. I was surprised at how quickly we were able to get out of Target. The husband’s sister had ordered something for her husband that she had us pick up, and then we went ahead and got the candy for stockings while we were there. I also picked up a Roku stick for the monitor in my office, as I slowly turn my office into a pseudo-man-cave. Hoping that the better seating and some TV will be conducive to more knitting and cross stitching. In unrelated news I finally finished the first section of dark grey yarn for the latest scarf so now I have to refresh my memory of how to switch colors. I know it’s not hard, I just haven’t done it in a while. I did some knitting on it while we were in Ocean City, and managed to finish the section today while waiting to pick up the husband from the Metro.

Had grand plans to wrap the presents that have arrived, but alas, Amazon decided that 7-11am delivery of wrapping paper actually meant 7-11pm. No biggie, but I had to put some of the stuff I’d set up in the kitchen to wrap back in my office before the husband got home. I know it’s rough work this time of year, and this wasn’t pressing, so I’m not stressing over it.

I did go through his lego advent calendar and pull the bricks for the rest of the month so I could catalog which pieces were missing and order them. No clue when they’ll arrive, but hopefully I got them all this time. Has still been a fun process, and I think he enjoys the ships that he has been able to build.

Work is … weird? Like hey, it’s the week before Xmas week, so it should be slowing down, and it sort of is, but the administration is still nuts and sticking to their crazy deadlines, so we still have odd one-off things to do. In the meantime, I have zero motivation for most of it between our ridiculous forced office move and (*waives hands wildly in the air*) all of the rest of it, but I plow through.

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.