30 July, 2023

Ah, technology

Category: Health,Home,Stuff — Moose @ 9:41 am

We had a couple power blips during storms the last two nights. Yesterday morning woke up and the stairway lights were not on, though it was well past the time when they should’ve automatically turned on. By way of background, we’re in a townhouse, or as the husband puts it, a giant staircase with rooms attached. A giant staircase with no windows, I would add, save at the very top, so it’s very dark without lights on. I was an early adopter of Philips Hue lighting, and Amazon Echo devices, so we have automated lights all over the house. It’s nice for things like the front porch and driveway (lights on at sunset, off at sunrise), and a couple floors of the central staircase (on at 6am-ish, brighter at sunrise, dimmer at sunset, off at 10:30; mainly so we don’t trip over a cat in the dark), and definitely for turning on/off and adjusting brightness via the voice controls. We particularly use the dimming feature on most lights as we rarely need them at 100%, unless we have company or workers in the house. Not difficult to set up, but also aging somewhat as we’ve had the basics of it since we lived in DC, and brought that with us to MD when we moved in 2020.

So yesterday morning nothing is on. Check the app, it’s showing none of the lights are connecting. Google that, lots of reddit threads, try several things like turning lights off and on, cycling the hub, etc. Eventually I just unplugged the hub and left it off for a few hours while I did other things. Plug it back in, leave it alone for a bit, go back into the app and see that the lights are slowly reconnecting, so let it be (after turning the staircase on; again, don’t want to trip on a cat, but also don’t want the lights at 100% as that’s way too bright). Eventually everything connects back and I can control it all, but one of the things reddit had me try zapped all my preset routines so I had to remember how all of those were set up and reestablish them. I was grateful it all came back; the idea of having to replace the hub was obnoxious.

Otherwise I’m slowly recovering from the covid bout. Still a little extra snot going on, and a little fatigued, but getting better. Feels like the end of a nasty head cold at this point. Grateful that I never lost my sense of smell. We’re off to get covid-delayed haircuts this morning, and hopefully catch at least the Barbie movie, and maybe Oppenheimer as well, depending on my energy levels.

26 July, 2023

Better sleep

Category: Health,Sleep — Moose @ 7:51 am

Afrin for the win, for sleep. I can’t do sleeping formula cold stuff, because my body always ends up fighting the sleepy part, and I sleep worse than if I’d just taken regular medication. The nasal spray, which can be used for a maximum of three days before you get a rebound effect and get even worse sinus grossness, is a good temporary “clear these up so I can sleep through the night while breathing through my nose” option. And it worked like a charm. First decent sleep in days. I still want a nap, but I think that’s just overall feeling run down from the virus now and not lack of sleep.

15 July, 2023

Finally got me

Category: Health — Moose @ 9:58 am

Welp, I finally got caught by covid. Started coming down with what I thought were really bad reflux symptoms on Thursday, but those morphed into full on cold/flu-like stuff on Friday. Took an at home test this morning and it hadn’t even finished 3 minutes of the 15 that you have to let it sit before it was showing a positive result. I blame the Metro commute to the office on Wednesday. Heaven willing I didn’t pass it to any co-workers. The husband just tested negative, so here’s hoping that masking and kicking him out of the house for a good chunk of the weekend will keep him from getting it. Yuck.

As the random little indie comedy group from Australia says, I always get into stuff, just when it’s finished being cool.

23 May, 2023

Too long

Category: Commuting,Cooking,Family,Games,Health,Motivation,Reading,Work — Moose @ 11:25 pm

The out-of-office message is set, and the work laptop is powered down. Out for a little over a week as of this evening, for our annual anniversary trip to the Virginia part of the Eastern Shore.

Other than some family medical messes, and a tinge of slightly-higher-than-we’d-like-to-see blood pressure for me, things have been going fairly well. Playing the heck out of Tears of the Kingdom now, to the point where I took a break from it early this evening to rest my poor hands. I’m going into the office once a week now that Metro’s yellow line bridge is back open. Or at least I am until late July when they’re closing the stations near me for 45 days. I’ve vacillated back and forth on how much to go in, and for now I’m doing the minimum required (2 days in each two week pay period).

Still working on the biscuit recipe from January, though I’ve not posted any new notes yet. It’s getting closer, but still needs tweaks.

I’m determined to finally finish the Grant biography this trip. I started it two years ago on the anniversary trip, plowed through the first half in short order, then just couldn’t get back into a rhythm (it didn’t help that I hit Reconstruction, which I find difficult to read about, given how awful this country treated her newly freed citizens). But I’m going to get it done this year.

20 October, 2022

Shots, Commuting

Category: Commuting,Family,Health,Work — Moose @ 7:54 am

Tuesday morning the husband and I went and got our second monkeypox vaccine shots. Mine has expanded out nicely in a flat pink splotch that’s bigger around than a golf ball, but not as big around as a baseball; his has barely raised past the immediate dime shaped bit where the needle went in. Lucky dog. At least it isn’t itching too badly, but I learned with the last one to moisturize it when/if it got itchy and that would calm it down. I took Tuesday off work, though I was monitoring email off and on. Other than the light itchy, no real side effects. Then sometime around 4am Wednesday morning I woke up, nauseous and headachey. No fun! And even less fun because I had to drive into the office on Wednesday.

Since C4/LM hadn’t been updated since 2017, I haven’t mentioned that I switched agencies in January of 2020, just before we all got sent home for COVID in March of 2020. Went from the Big Gubm’nt Agency (BGA) to a much Smaller Gubm’nt Agency (SGA), for more pay and without any supervisory duties. Woot! But, their headquarters is waaaaay down toward the end of one of the Metro lines out in the suburbs. Not exactly the 1.25 mile walking commute I had at the BGA. Then the husband and I moved to a townhouse in the MD suburbs in the late summer of 2020, to get more space after working from home on top of one another in my old one bedroom apartment in DC, which is on the same Metro line as my new office and close-ish to his office downtown. However, the Metro is currently horked thanks to construction, and will be until summer of 2023, so I’m unable to Metro to work until then, making driving there the only real option, which can take anywhere from 30-60+ minutes, depending on the time of day.

So, fast forward to yesterday. There was a high-level meeting with the head of the SGA which I unfortunately had to attend. I did take full advantage of our maxi-flex schedule and drove in around 10ish, which meant it only took 30ish minutes to get there. The meeting itself went very, very well; we had prepared for the worst, but really got the best result, so it was worth the face time with the agency head. Unfortunately there was another meeting scheduled after that, at a time that didn’t give me enough time to get home first, so but the time I got out of that the various map apps had my commute home at about an hour. It took a little less than that, but only because it routed my all the way around the DC Beltway, as opposed to running up through the highway that cuts through the east side of DC proper. Less stop and go, which was appreciated since I still drive a manual transmission car.

I get to repeat that for some mandatory fun with my office mid-day on the 1st, but I’m scheduling my day such that I can get out of there soon after and avoid the rush hour nonsense. I wouldn’t mind Metro’ing down, but driving is for the birds. And even after I’m able to go back my plan is to spend the minimum amount of time I have to in the office (two days every two weeks, which I’m scheduling on Mondays) to meet the HR requirements. Fewer people commute in on Mondays, and since I’ve avoided Covid by avoiding people, I’d like to minimize my risk there. Cynically, there are also more Monday holidays, so I’ll get more random days off from commuting that way. But I expect that eventually there will be more call-backs for in-person meetings like the one I had yesterday, though even before the pandemic my new SGA was very big on and good about telecommuting and hybrid meetings.

8 October, 2022

Cleaning house

Category: Body,Family,Health,Home,Relationships,Stuff,Work — Moose @ 4:16 pm

Literally. The husband took off for the day to hang out with friends, and had made some noises about how “crowded” he felt the main level was getting, so I dug into a few things down there to straighten them up before he had a chance to put things “away” in places I’d never find them later.

Then I culled T-shirts and other clothes in our dressers. Removed each drawer and tightened the screws on the rails. Moved on to my office, tossing papers that we no longer need, like old bills that we needed to prove residency when we first moved in, and filing away tax stuff. Found the cats’ file just in time for their next vet appointment in two weeks. Between the stuff I couldn’t donate from the bedroom, and the papers from the office I filled a small garbage bag.

Did other things in between, like eat, and do my daily run at Animal Crossing, but mostly I’ve been organizing and cleaning all day. The dust hasn’t been fun, but making sure the drawers in the bedroom can open without jamming, either from being overstuffed with clothes or loose rails, was worth it.

Other than that life has been busy at work for both of us. After two days of gross we’ve both recovered well from the vaccinations, though I still have a fairly prominent red spot from the monkeypox shot. The husband got a new tattoo from an old tattooer. We discovered the guy who did most of his left arm has a studio within walking distance of our townhouse. I’ve given him an idea for another one for myself as well, and we’ll see what he comes back with, design-wise.

20 September, 2022

Three-fer

Category: Adult,Body,Family,Health,Television,Work — Moose @ 1:34 pm

The husband and I finally got appointments for this morning for the monkeypox vaccine here in PG County, a process that should have been done and over with months ago, but a lack of vaccines and a screwed up scheduling system meant long delays. But, fast forward to this morning and I drove us over to a local county health center for it. While we were there they offered to give us both the seasonal flu vaccine and the latest, updated Covid booster, so we figured why the heck not. Finished up, drove the husband to the Metro so he could go to work, then headed home.

A couple hours later and I’m slightly nauseous in the way that the flu shot often does, and perhaps a little body sore, but the poor husband is definitely feeling it worse, so he grabbed a cheap uber home. I made him some lunch and he’s crashing on the couch in front of some fluffy TV. No itching on the MPX shot site for me. I did go ahead and take the rest of the day off – I had originally taken just the morning, but with the three-fer-one deal we got I decided lawyering while vaccinated was a bad idea.

15 September, 2022

Sore

Category: Aging,Body,Exercise,Habits,Health,Motivation,Racing — Moose @ 8:43 am

Since I did the Ironman back in 2010 I’ve struggled to figure out what the heck I want to do, exercise wise. I didn’t have a good plan for post-race recovery for the body, and the intensity of it was also very limiting socially, so I just sort of fell apart. Fast forward to 2021 post-marriage, post-move-to-the-suburbs, post-several-exercise-related-injuries and I’ve been struggling to get back into an exercise routine that doesn’t involve injuring myself. I’ve gotten much better at mobility work to keep everything in better moving shape, but little nagging injuries seem to bother me much more than in the past. Yay aging. Running and jumping rope have been most recently on the menu, and I enjoy both for different reasons. Adding some bodyweight exercise to the mix as well for some strength building, with the result that this week I am just sore. A new Hypervolt II I picked up about a month ago on sale is definitely helping, as is making sure I move more, but man, if you’re not used to using your arms a lot for exercise (as I am not – legs are great, given my exercise history; arms, not so much), starting up can be rough. But, sticking with it, because I know it will fade.

4 June, 2015

Adjustments

Category: Coffee,Exercise,Habits,Health,Mood,Running,Stuff,Work — Moose @ 9:26 pm

Switching between the medications for reflux ain’t all that fun. My body seems to want about a two week adjustment period before it evens out. Given that I’m in the third adjustment period (prescription samples, over-the-counter, now back to the prescription), it seems to be a regular thing. The first week has some unintended side effects (consistent across the three), and then it all kicks in at two weeks. Given that I’m in the middle of week one, life in ye olde gut is interesting.

At work, before we went on vacation I cleaned a large part of my office. My desk is clear for the first time in years (no piles of files/paper/books), and a good chunk of the bookshelf got cleared out and organized. The credenza behind me has the books I use most, and no more excess paper. It’s been illuminating, both in terms of my own work processes, and in terms of the reactions from my office. Everyone has commented on it. I’m loving having space to spread a project out to work on it, then put it all away when it’s done or I have to switch gears. Only drawback to date is there’s no place to hide something easily if someone comes in and they don’t need to see what I was working on (no files to flip over the paper, etc.). But I’ll take the calmer work environment.

That combined with the lack of caffeine (and hence the lack of energy spikes and lows) has, I think, meant a more even-keeled Moose at work. Gut issues aside. I had forgotten about how early I need to get to bed when not depending on a steady caffeine source during the day. Probably better on the whole, but it’s another adjustment.

Training is interesting. I’m trying more things like hill work, tempo runs, etc. this time around. Still too early to tell the effect, but I am looking forward to workouts more when they have more of a purpose, and more of a structure. Still need to lay out strength training in a more organized fashion, but I know where I’m going with that.

We’re headed off to see the boy’s family in another week, and in anticipation of the drive up, and to take care of the check engine light that popped on just before vacation, I dropped the Mini off at the shop to get it all adjusted. A couple thousand later it drove more smoothly on the way home after I picked it up this afternoon. Not exactly what I wanted to drop that amount of money on, but it’s worth keeping the car going. After driving the newer model loner car, I have to say I’m happy with my 12 year old car, so I’m glad I can keep it running well.

1 June, 2015

Experimentation

Life can be such an interesting experiment. After putting off seeing a specialist for ages, I finally got tired of a consistent belching that I had going on. Turns out the reflux that my mother and her father have/had was passed to me. Yay! Long story short the excess acid production was/is causing me to swallow too much air, so that’s what was/is causing the belching.

Had samples of a prescription drug, got it under control, then the samples ran out. Tried the over the counter (OTC) version, which didn’t give the same results (the samples I had were a newer form of the drug, and 4x as high a dose as the OTC stuff). So, saw the doc for a follow up today, got a prescription for the fancier stuff, and now we start the food experimentation portion of the treatment. I already know that coffee sets it off, so I gave that up a couple of weeks ago (the boy’s expression wasn’t quite one of horror when I told him I’d been off coffee for two days when I first started, but it was close – I had trained him well that coffee was the first thing I needed in the morning). Tea eased the withdrawal, but I’m mostly off that now, too. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been caffeine free – did that once before from ’00-’01, but then we had that little airplane event in the fall and I went back to regular coffee drinking.

I already know that pizza is out, as is falafel, sodas, and beer. Spicy foods seem to be a no-no as well. But the experiment will continue as I figure out what does and doesn’t work. It’s a fun process, actually, and I get to eat a lot of different things as I figure this out.

In other catching up, the anniversary trip to the shore with the boy went well. Didn’t get burned at the shore, had a good time relaxing and reading, and just catching up with each other outside the norm. We walked all over the place, which upped the numbers for both of us on the step count on our vivofits. I think it’s been fun to have those together and to have something of a competition going with them. He wins outright on pure walking, but I tend to go over when you factor in my running. And we both beat his sister regularly (got her one for xmas), which is what really counts.

I’m training now for the marine corps marathon this fall. I got in last year, developed runner’s knee, and postponed the race to this year. While not quite where I’d have liked to be in terms of a base, the training is going well. Related to that, I’m going to take a break from the tri club. There’s been a bit of drama with regard to the newbie program I’ve help run for the last decade, and I’m just not willing to put up with it at this point. I’ve never been one that enjoyed training with a large group (I like the meditative aspects of training), and I’m not really drinking at all (see the reflux discussion above) so I don’t get out and see club folks very often, and I think the club has just moved on, as have I. I’ll maintain my membership, but I don’t see myself doing a lot with them in the immediate future.