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

Since we got funded through mid-December it’s been relatively quiet at work (and I sincerely hope I didn’t just jinx it). Random little questions, just enough that I haven’t been able to dig into any long-term projects as yet.

Did manage to finish two books on the commutes today – Strong Ground by Brene Brown and some forgettable fantasy/sci-fi thing that was on Kindle Unlimited. Enjoyed Strong Ground a lot, but that’s not surprising since I’ve enjoyed/found useful her other books. Debating the next ‘serious’ read for the morning. I’ve been reading non-fiction on the commute in to work, and something that requires less brain power on the ride home, which has worked pretty well. I have quite a queue of books, including some started but not yet finished, so I’m going to try and get through those first.

Waiting for the husband to land at National in about an hour, then I’ll grab him from the local Metro. I picked up this week’s comics for him, and thankfully it was a light week, so it wasn’t hella expensive. Catching some Netflix before I have to go get him, and cleaning up some digital properties. I think I’m going to have to switch a bunch of accounts off of one of my email addresses because the local ISP looks like it’s going to be shutting down in the next couple of years. They sent an email saying they’d sold one of their domains; not the one my email is on, but adjacent to it. So, time to switch stuff over.

Took about a week off to work on my calves and otherwise let myself rest. I’m intrigued that while my calves were cooked from the start of running, my quads have been fine. I’m chalking it up to a combination of paying more attention to my form, and 9 months of strength training. Before this, the spot on the quads right above and to the outside of the knee (the head of the rectus femoris muscle) would always work itself into a knot that was a bear to untangle. But I’ve heard not a whisper out of it of late. And I’ll take that, even as I spew out a steady stream of curses whenever I work on the sore calves.

Work is work. As I called right after the Mad King’s UN speech, he’s issued an executive order this evening directing agencies to switch from calling it “artificial intelligence” to “super intelligence”. Po-tay-to, to-mah-to. While I’m not a fan of the super left-wing of the opposition party I do hope they wipe his party out in this fall’s election.

The husband’s birthday weekend went well. We attended Baltimore Comic Con on Saturday, ate at his favorite pizza place afterwards. Sunday was Avengers Endgame on the big screen, which was even more fun because the two of us and a friend were the only three people in the theater, so we could point things out without disturbing anyone else. The pinnacle was of course getting the new Lego Enterprise bridge set that came out earlier in the month, though the flat (no rim) serving plate that he’s been asking for for years was a close second (it’s useful if you want to decorate or cut something like a cake without hitting the rim). Oh, and I tried some non-alcoholic beer Sunday night, which I quite enjoyed as a nice option, with no hangover after.

My own birthday this weekend will be quiet because I’m kicking him out for an out-of-town work conference (for him) starting Saturday. LOL And no shut down this time, which is a pleasant surprise.

Metro extended the track work they were doing this weekend into today, meaning I got to take the long way around to get to work. I don’t subscribe to any alerts, so it was a surprise when I got to the station this morning. Just took it as more time to read my book.

It might extend into tomorrow, and Wednesday they’re single tracking part of the way, so I’m just planning on longer commutes.

The husband and I met up on Metro on the way home, mostly avoiding the rain. Got him home in time to grab some packages he needed to send out from UPS and FedEx, got those dropped off at their respective outlets, and then to Mod Pizza for dinner. That was fun – I’ve ordered delivery from them many times (they have vegan cheese), but never eaten in the actual restaurant. Was a pleasant change getting the pizza right out of the oven.

Over dinner I started a discussion with the husband about what retirement for me in three years might look like. I’d be open to moving for his work, so I planted that seed with him. All depends on finances, of course, but if we’re no longer tied to DC for my job, why not? Also had him think about that that might look like in eight years versus three. Or perhaps somewhere in between.

Friday, while still full in my rundown at work feels, I wandered into my supervisor’s office after lunch and asked if he minded if I went home early, “because I really just don’t want to be here.” Heh. He understood, we chatted a little about the current craziness, and I took off for home. Laid on the couch for a bit with cats (the husband was working from home, but between his regular job and his various side teaching and writing gigs he’s swamped at the moment), and generally just vegged for a bit.

Saturday we had plans – the city had one of their occasional bulk trash drop off days that we wanted to take advantage of. Hauled out a ton of old, broken deck furniture, as well as our old bed frame (finally!) and a bunch of paint. Felt very cathartic to get rid of it all. The top deck is now half furnished (an outdoor couch, two chairs, and a coffee table over a rug), but in better stuff that we’re taking better care of (it’s all covered when we’re not using it). Took our friend who helped us haul the stuff to lunch, then the three of us walked over to an arts festival just south of where we live. It was a lot larger than what we were expecting, which was a pleasant surprise. It was also populated with local folks, so not just the same vendors you see every week at the permanent weekend markets in DC. Picked up a drop bowl for the husband, for keys and what not for his dresser, and just enjoyed running into neighbors.

This morning I met up with the local running group, in the same general area as the arts festival. Before we ran they asked us to introduce ourselves and what we were looking forward to later in the day. Favorite answer was the poor parent saying they were going to go home and watch K-Pop Demon Hunters with their small children, as they had been doing since the movie came out. Heh. I said I was looking forward to my knitting group, which led another guy to come up afterwards and give me his email so I can have the other organizer add him to our group. Sweet. The run was a little shorter for me than I have been doing (2.27mi), but given all the rain we got this morning (so. much. rain.) that was fine. Got cleaned up, bought some vegetables for the week, then off to knitting where I made some progress on a scarf for the husband that I had put down several months ago. Back home to make fried rice, start watching Monarch with the husband (I’m intrigued after the first episode), clean up the kitchen, and shortly to crash.

No word back from the financial advisors yet, but it’s also the middle of several jewish holidays so I expect they’re busy and I’ll hear back after those wind down. Which is just fine.

The past few days, and especially today, I’ve just been really down about work. I’ve also been really tired, physically, from all the work I’ve been doing with exercise and running, which is probably contributing. But in reading Brene Brown’s latest (Strong Ground) I’ve been thinking over some of the lessons from the predecessor book, Dare to Lead. There’s one particular exercise she recommends, where you drill down to the 2 factors that really motivate you as a leader. Mine were “Learning” and “Making a Difference”. And in thinking about those this week, I’m really struggling to see where those are kicking in. There’s a little bit of learning, but making a difference? Under this administration? Ugh. And given the direction and partisan polarization that both parties are indulging in (thanks, social media) I don’t really see where it’ll get better any time soon. The Mad King is sure to be nuts, one way or another, and if they retake one or both houses of Congress the other party will just make our (Federal employees) lives miserable as they try and undo some of what the Mad King is doing by flooding us with information requests. I fully expect he’s going to fire all of the “Schedule F” employees (or “Schedule P/C” as it’s now known) on his way out the door. That’s one bullet dodged, since I’m not on that employment schedule, but really, this isn’t what I signed up for when I signed on to public service.

And yes, I know this is exactly what his party wants, to drive off good people, but at a certain point you have to wonder if it’s worth dealing with the dysfunction on a personal level. I really don’t know. I also don’t know what else I would do, but I think it’s time to sit down with a financial advisor who knows Federal benefits and map out what an exit might look like.

In the meantime, I also need a rest day from exercise, so that’ll be tomorrow (and Saturday – I want to check out the local running group on Sunday morning). Based on the stream of curses I let out when I barely touched my calves with the Hypervolt massage gun this evening, they’re a little overworked. That may be contributing to the mood; it certainly isn’t helping.

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.

Got another run done this past weekend. One mile this time, still doing repeats of run up the block, walk back. But still no knee pain during or after. Huzzah. Plenty of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) this week, though, between the run and my regular workouts M/Tu. Whee.

I am working from home this week and next as my office building is reinstalling network cable all throughout our floor. The floor that was the first one occupied back in May. So while the last cohort of everyone else doing the whole Return To Office thing came in on Monday, half of the first folks back are once again at home because they didn’t have the cable done before we moved in. *snert* Whatever. I will say that I am terribly out of practice for working from home, and it definitely doesn’t give me enough other movement (aka steps) versus going into the office. I don’t miss the time for the commute (I do appreciate the uninterrupted reading time on the train), and the cats have enjoyed being able to bug me 24/7 again, but I think I’d rather have a mix of in-office and at-home.

Had my first crown done a couple of weeks ago. Aside from the gums feeling a little roughed up for a couple of days it’s gone smoothly. It helps that the doc has the printer for the things right in the office, so no more having to wait weeks with a temporary one – they fit it 20-odd minutes after he got done drilling. And while I’m not thrilled with the location of the office (Foggy Bottom), he’s a whiz at the anesthesia shots, so it’s worth it.

Starting to catch up on comics finally. I think I’m two months behind at this point? But I’m dedicating more time to get caught up, which isn’t easy when there’s a new batch every week. Plus trying to keep up with other reading.

Up way too early this morning. Been a rough week for my gut, which has not helped my sleep. FODMAPs hate me, and I haven’t been able to eat at home where I can better control the food as much as I should.

I make it a habit to flip off the statute of the 40th President of the US every time I pass National Airport on the Metro (twice daily on work days). While I’ve found most presidents are a mixed bag, I have a particular dislike of that one because of his inaction on HIV and what it did to wipe out the generations of gay men right before mine.

The husband thanked me this week for insisting that we not look at any properties which were anywhere near a flood zone of any kind on the FEMA flood insurance maps, after one of his coworkers complained he was going to have to completely redo his finished basement in the house he’d just moved into 11 days prior.

Work has asked me to write up my second memo in six months on constitutional issues facing our agency for the folks at Justice to weigh in on. On the one hand, hey, they like me and like my writing. On the other hand, no pressure, it’s just the future of the agency and how it operates. Eeck.

Because of the lack of sleep my personal reading has been light – rereading the Cradle series by Will Wight, which is fun, but by no means a heavy intellectual lift. Thank you, Kindle unlimited.

The husband and his sister are bungee jumping off a bridge this afternoon. Her daughter and I will watch and make fun of the screaming. All good.

The husband brought in a head cold, which has us both snotty and not sleeping well. Skipped the potluck, obviously, as I greatly prefer not to share such bounties with others. Took today as a sick day, might do the same tomorrow. In the meantime I’m reading fiction that doesn’t demand a lot of me (Dungeon Crawler Carl) and napping. Several good sneezing fits today, which typically means I’m on the mend in my experience. Blech. At least the cats are happy with quietly reading/napping Moose.