We survived Monday! Whoohoo, go us!

Work was purely chaotic. We had an immense call volume, and I was getting emails every few minutes asking me to do something else. I don't know if they have forgotten that I haven't gotten the new job and new pay yet, but goddamn, I felt like I was going in 10 directions at once. I got it all done, but it was a lot. I need someone to tell me which I should prioritize, because I feel like I'm letting my team down by not helping on the phones as much (Though I took 33 calls), but I've got to get these patients in, too. I just need a little clarification.

Today will probably be psycho too, but we'll see. Usually Monday and Tuesday are the worst, and then it dwindles a little through the week, though it's never light. I may clarify with Amanda what my primary focus should be.

Tomorrow is payday and that'll be nice. I have bills to pay this week. There's rent and phone and various little things that come at the beginning of the month. So I'll take care of that on Wednesday, when I get paid.

I purchased Office 365 in preparation for college yesterday and downloaded it. I like googledocs, and I'll still probably use it for most of my stuff, but I learned on Word, so I have a fondness. My term starts on 4/9, so I've got a little time to prepare. Between now and then, I'm going to start working on my math skills. Youtube is a helpful resource that I didn't have in high school as is Khan University. I think I'll be okay? I don't ever expect to be a math savant. I don't expect to be able to figure out the secret language of numbers, but if I can manipulate them and solve for X that's all that matters. I just need a C in the class.

I'm having a little pie in the sky about finishing my bachelors and maybe considering a master's degree. Not saying I can't. Hopkins would pay for it, and I feel like I'm smart enough to do it. I just don't know that I need it. I guess we'll see how much I like academia.

I need to curate a playlist of instrumental music that I can have on while studying. I've already found a bunch of orchestral covers of Ghost songs, which sound like a strong start. After all, I can trace a line from their concerts to my current list of upcoming things. Getting to go to the concert (Ritual) was really empowering.

It's funny, for a band who's music is supposedly Satanic, their music is very hopeful. There's a song of theirs called The Future is a Foreign Land that is about the future being better. And even songs like He Is which is a song about Satan, is at it's core about community and belonging. And Peacefield is possibly one of the most hopeful songs I know. It's a "yes, right now things suck, but hold out, it'll get better." And right now, we all need that.

When I'm stressed out, I put on my earphones and have some emotional support Ghost and Hazbin Hotel and it relaxes me and makes me feel better, and I can't really ask for more than that.

Tomorrow, it's supposed to be 50 degrees, so I'm hoping that I won't have to clean off my car when I go out again. I'm going to have to request a refill on my clindamycin. It's working, but slowly. Each day, it's a bit better, and the swelling goes down a bit, but it's not quite there yet. The yeast infection is going to be epic (It already is.)

Next week, my sister is going up to NYC for work for the whole week. This means that I'll be sleeping with the dog for the week, which is sad. I love my puppers, but I miss snuggling Jess. On the other hand, that's a bunch of nights where we can watch TV in the evenings and have quality time during the day. It also probably means we're not going to be able to get away on the weekend of the 7th, but we'll figure out another time. Maybe the weekend of the 28th. We don't seem to have any games planned then.

This is apparently going to be a thing that happens now and then, so I might as well get used to it. It's really not a big deal, just means that I'm going to be sleep deprived for a couple of days until I get used to her bed and a dog kicking me.

So I might as well enjoy this week in my own bed. I don't spend enough time there. Maybe we can watch some more of The Pitt in it. I want to watch more of that.

I might as well work on The Pitt and Heated Rivalry, since there's not a whole lot of movies coming out in the near future that I'm wildly interested in. I might do Project Hail Mary and the rerelease of the Mummy, but the first one I'm really excited for is Mortal Kombat on May 8th.

Of course, we'll be in Vancouver when that releases. I'm seriously considering going to an evening showing the night before we board the ship. We'll see how tired I am from the day of sightseeing. Knowing us, we'll do that til about 3, and then go back to the hotel to rest. So we might be good for a movie. Stupid action movies are better with a first weekend crowd.

I had an Advocate magazine add pop up about the least expensive cities with good gay enclaves. One of them was Old Chinatown in Portland, which seemed really cool. Maybe in a few years, when the BIL's mother has passed, we'd consider moving. And the Pacific Northwest has always seemed like a good place to go. They have strong protections for LGBTQ+ people and the weather is nice. I also thought about Seattle, but good lord, it's so expensive.

Okay, time for me to go forth and get myself together. Everyone have a stupendous Tuesday!

This is up late, & I thought maybe this scene wasn't ready yet. But I like trying to more or less post on a schedule, so this is my Monday post.

Pony plushies are apparently a status symbol at cons, but they're expensive for obvious reasons. But luckily there are patterns online to make one at home? I'm not sure if I want to get into sewing, but I'm curious how easy/hard a very small one would be to make.

https://make.smol.horse/ (I can't archive this, but I saved an offline copy of the pdf.)

https://imgur.com/a/tiny-pone-ep-pattern-K4L3Q (archive)

derpibooru.org/images/152249
https://www.deviantart.com/cavelupa/art/Updated-Pony-Plush-Pattern-337440530 (archive)

Thinking about using the access-only features to post about serious and more private things, like the room party I had last weekend. I figured I was going to have an "anyone who adds me to their circle gets added to mine" but I haven't gotten around to it. So I guess you can comment/ask if you want to see more personal and less mundane postings. I mainly have meta related stuff in mind.

And we're back to Monday. It's snowy out, but thankfully we seemed to miss most of the snowpocalypse. It looks like maybe 3" if I'm being generous. It'll keep the kids out of school, but not much else. I'm really happy that it's not going to fuck up our routine for days, but that tiny part of me that's still a 5 year old is like "That's not real snow." Mostly, I'm happy that the dog won't be upset by it. He won't like the bit that there is, but he'll probably still do his business.

I forgot to mention that on Saturday night, we watched the first episode of The Pitt. I keep getting clips from it on TikTok, so I finally decided to take the plunge. One show, and I'm already hooked. Really excellent. I think that'll be a new thing for us, settling in and watching an episode now and then. I know season 2 just came out, so that'll give us plenty of episodes to watch.

Yesterday was a pretty good day. I got up relatively late and then relaxed until gametime. We did get breakfast/brunch sushi, which was very good, or so I'm told. The antibiotics are messing with my tastes, so sometimes things just don't taste right. So really, anything I say about food can be taken with a grain of salt for the moment. It tasted okay, just not quite what I was expecting. We found a place that does not fuck around with the tobiko. When you ask for fish eggs on your California roll they put great heaping spoonfuls. It was glorious. Despite not being quite right, I'll probably have some of the leftover rolls for breakfast.

Then, it was onto game, which was super fun. My character got to showcase her temper a bit, punching a classmate for being a racist twat. It didn't matter that said character had also tried to trip my character. They're long standing rivals, and that's a matter of course. But get racist with her tiefling and firbolg friends, and she's going to forget that she has magic and throw hands.

It lost our team 10 class points, but fortunately, the racist's friend came up and shoved my character, who oversold that shit like Shawn Michaels against Hulk Hogan, so they lost points too.

It probably escalated things with our rivals, but sometimes, you just gotta punch someone.

After that, I piddled around for a while before I realized that the beef I took out for dinner was not anywhere near defrosted, so I ordered pasta. It was very good, and the stuffed shells tasted perfectly correct.

After dinner, as I was perusing the internet, I found an add for an online college. I've been thinking lately that this promotion I'm about to get will probably be my last, because I don't have a college degree, and considering going back to school. The thing that made me hesitate is the money. But we have some money now, and I have tuition reimbursement, so I could 100% do it.

I just don't know if I can. I'm not strong in math--I may need remedial classes to get me ready for algebra, but we'll see.

Anyway, I looked at this college, wondered if it was too good to be true and dug further. Turns out they're fully accredited, and legit. Probably not the most prestigious, but I don't have the time for prestigious, I just need a degree. So, I signed up.

It's called University of the People, and it's a tuitionless college. You pay an application fee, and you pay for your assessments at the end of the classes. The complete BA will cost me $6600. The degree transfers, and should I want to, my last semester, I could go to Edinburgh or Canada to study. (I won't, but it's cool.) So, come Summer, I'll be a part time student. I'm nervous, but excited. It's kinda weird to think that in a few short months, I'll be writing papers and doing tests. I'm probably going to start with one class, just to get my feet wet. and then from there if I feel like I can take more, I will. It might take me til 60 to get my degree, but I was planning to work til I'm at least 65, maybe later. We'll see.

There's one dude online who has a serious hate boner for the college, but PBS and other outlets have covered it and acknowleged that it's a real college with real degrees. I'll be sharing classrooms with people from around the world, including a 10% refugee enrollment, and some women studying at home secretly under the Taliban's restrictions about higher education for women. Most people seem very happy about their schooling, though they agree that it's what you make of it. Online can be tough, so I'm' going to need to be at the top of my game.

Who knows, maybe I'll like it so much that I'll go for my masters. We'll see. I'd probably switch my masters to Health Administration. I don't really want to be in charge of anything clinical, I want to be in charge of people. But the nice thing is that I do have tuition reimbursement if I'm doing something that will benefit my career with Hopkins, so in the end, the only thing that I'll pay is the application fee (and of course if I fail a course, I'm going to be paying for the test I failed.).

I'm a little confused, since my materials say the semester starts in April, but my orientation is in May/June. So we'll see how that works. If classes start in April, I'll be doing some work on the cruise, but that's okay. We have a good internet package, and I get up early anyway. I'll sit with my computer on the balcony and do my reading and writing.

Today, work will be bugfuck, as people will be calling to reschedule appts, even though there's very little snow. We're opening at 8am for the sites, so that's a handful of people we're reschedule (since we start some tests at 6am.) And of course, a ton of "are you open" calls. People, we're Johns Hopkins. We don't close shy of blizzards.

Hopefully, there's some movement on the job application this week. Good lord, they're slow.

Okay, on that note, time for me to go forth and get myself ready for the day. Everyone have a wonderful Monday!

Job One: Remember that Computers Are Stupid

Job Two: bake Bob's favorite cookies to thank him for setting up my new laptop, and putting up with the occasional stupidity that's part of dealing with ones and zeroes.

We both knew it would take a couple of days, or even more than that, and I'm trying to be patient as he preps the new one (an Asus Vivo) so that we can download all my files from my slowly dying Lenovo, files that have been downloaded onto a delightful little red portable 2T hard drive.

That drive may will come in handy after the transfer, since I might need to keep it connected to my new laptop for a few weeks, or maybe months. My Lenovo has 1.82 T of storage, whilst my Asus only has 1T. We'll eventually see about getting a new, larger, drive in the Asus, but I don't foresee me using up the 1T of storage the Asus has. 

I've named the little hard drive Ada, and my new laptop is officially Alice-Alyx. It's the first time I've named a laptop, but it seemed the right thing to do with this one. I'm laughing a bit at myself, but hell, why not name some things that will help keep me happy for a good long time?

Now one of the remaining questions is whether Alice-Alyx will recognize my Samsung Galaxy ear buds. We tried to get them paired up yesterday, and the Asus laughed at us. Once again, I'm reminded that computers are stupid; they only do what we tell their ones and zeroes to do. 

In the non-computer part of the weekend, I was able to get in touch with a skiffy fannish acquaintance whose holiday card came back to me a bit ago. It turns out that he and his partner had indeed moved from the address I had for him, so I can send him something soon, and most definitely this coming holiday season. 

I also cleaned the bathroom, and sorted a small mountain of paperwork that had grown so high it was in danger of toppling over. I'm terrible at organizing and sorting, but I managed to do it today. I'm inordinately proud of myself. (I probably shouldn't be quite so loudly proud, because the universe will undoubtedly send something my way to punish me for such hubris. Heh.)

So that's my excitement for the weekend, and I am very happy that that's the most excitement I've had to deal with. Compared to this time last week, it's easy-peasy. 

I NEED TO MAKE A POST AAAAAAAA I constantly get stuck thinking of long posts and then they seem like too much work and I never do them!! I just have to do shorter ones and get them out there!! Bleaaghhhh

In stars-aligning type news, I've been doing a lot of good work on the next Vargas chapter! It was the Vargas anniversary like a week ago, which is one I constantly forget even though I usually try to keep track of this stuff. I had this really old meme I started in Flash ages ago I'd just found again, so I figured finishing that up would be something. So I did! I'd matched it to the source video so it's at a WAY higher framerate than usual, so Scri's little breakdance looks surprisingly smooth. It's also on Youtube if the Flash version isn't working for some reason. It should though, I have Ruffle set up so you can get the full experience! I used Swivel to convert it for Youtube which was so much easier than some other things I've had to do to get Flash videos into a workable format. I love the UI of Swivel, it's so dramatic and colorful and unique. I'm sick of the current minimalism trend in programs! Give me more elaborate UIs!

Oh right, Vargas chapter! Anyway, did a lot of good work the past few days smoothing out a lot of more tangled or awkward bits that had been bugging me for a while. I'm going to cut the chapter in half I think and just focus on getting this first part done and out. It's still like 20k so it's lengthy but it's more managable and it's at a good breaking point. It's been almost five years since the last update which is way too long lol. If I hadn't hurt my arm I'd be more on schedule! Or so I tell myself, anyway. I'd like to get it done before May... I'm mostly doing small adjustments with each pass now. I need to email my beta and see if she's still up for taking a look at it... god, 23 years, can you believe it? It's crazy to have characters 23 years old that still show up with some regularity that I still think about and write stuff for, haha. Even if there are long gaps, they're always going to be there. The number doesn't feel real to me at all. |D I wonder how many readers are younger than the fic itself at this point...?

It's still crazy to me how invested people get in the fic since it's so bizarre and long and complicated. It's so hard to pitch to people! And yet it seems to snag people and draw them in...

lj post

But I really want there to be/have been a Kathrine Pierce video to “Rid of Me”

It's Sunday! I have a game at noon, and then I'll settle down for Snowpocalypse 2, Electric Boogaloo.

Saturday was good. I slept late, had a good game where my players rollplayed a lot, which is always awesome. I'm currently torturing the paladin, played by Jess with a ton of backstory. This group is very much a "just fuck me up," set of players when it comes to trauma, which is a lot of fun for me. I've got many more reveals to come that I'm looking forward to in this arc. One was twisty enough that I actually asked poisontaster if it was okay to do to her character, though. (She also was like "Do it!"

Yoda did not do well with the pet sitter. He barked non stop, though he would take treats from her. We're going to try twice more to see if he'll get used to her, and if not, he's going to the doggy boarding, where he'll be off his turf. I don't like that idea, but if we have to, we'll give it a go.

We also discovered that the Crab was bad. It smelled horrible, and we did not eat it. I put in a claim with Instacart/Costco, but now they're asking for a picture. Jess already put them in the dumpster so that's not happening, so we'll see how they reply. In the meantime, I'm going to put in another order for some from Sitka Seafood, since we've gotten twice from them, and they were awesome. So maybe some next weekend.

With crab off the table for dinner, we ordered from Wonder by Jose Andres. It was a mixed bag. The entree's were good, but the sides were not to our liking.

I've been craving sushi, but I saw Jose Andres, and got excited. I was unsatisfied, and still want sushi. I may order some for game, since I don't think we're getting out afterwards. Last I looked the snow is supposed to start around 2, and game won't be done til 3.

Weather.com says 2-4", but they just issued a winter storm warning that says 4-10" with totals locally up to 14". As usual, I'll believe it when the snow is on the ground. It's been a while since we had big snows, so I can't even bitch...much.

With the snow, I'm definitely cooking tonight. I'm going to look at the freezer and see what I want to make. I'm leaning towards the ribs with a dry rub.

My mouth continues to be slightly puffy. It's usually worse in the morning, I guess because when I lay down the bloodflow can pool in the head? I don't know. I just know it's better than it was yesterday, so I'm happy.

Now that we've started dealing with the practicalities, with Yoda, I'm getting more excited about Alaska. It's really happening and that is super cool. We're down to 74 days. In another two weeks, it'll be two months away! I'm both excited and nervous, but mostly excited.

But first, that's 53 work days to get through. Work will probably continue to be busy, and at some point, presumably, they'll move me into the new position. This week, we have our quarterly staff meeting. It's two hours long and it's on camera, so fun fun. That's on Tuesday so that's a bit of OT. Then I work next Saturday, so the check will look good in two weeks. Actually, I'll have two Saturdays, so that'll be a doubly nice check.

Okay, time for me to go forth and consider what I want to do today before game. Everyone have a stupendous Sunday!

I've not gone down a particularly deep rabbit hole with season 3. it may be unexpected, it may be exactly what we're all imagining it to be. Who knows, variables, etc... Glad I have finally gotten to this with a mere 80 days to spare! Some of these I believe more than others, but an entire 24 spaces to fill is... formidable. *g* These may be subject to change with future data/spoilers/Sheen blabs... <3 

I've also made a blank version of this layout if it is anyone's cup of tea.
(font credit is 'awakening' by Brittney Murphy designs)

 

January '26: http://fardell30.deadjournal.com/341353.html

February '26: http://fardell30.deadjournal.com/343620.html

Title: "...Groovy?"
Artist: magnavox_23
Character/Pairing: Team
Rating: G


2x21 1969