FINALLY.

The temperature dropped 30° (F) overnight on Friday and we haven't gotten above 75° since, with no humidity and lovely breezes and hurray, I am cautiously optimistic that we're done with summer. I actually had to put a light sweatshirt on while I was re-mulching / re-graveling the path through the wooded area in the front of the house this morning. Very exciting!

In random, fannish-adjacent news, Oldest has persuaded BabyBoy to listen to some Vorkosigan audiobooks, so I've been pleasantly revisiting Shards of Honor and Barrayar when we're in adjacent spaces. And wow, it is HARD to keep a straight face as events begin to unfold once C gets to Barrayar. I've been able to keep my comments to generic platitudes, like, "huh, a lot really does happen in this book." I'm very proud of myself.

And finally, I'm about to kick off a season of travel here, so stay tuned for a quick address entry post if you'd like a postcard from Orlando/Disney World and/or Asheville/the Blue Ridge parkway area.

We're back from the beach (#36, omg) and I did send postcards to those I have addresses for, but I may have forgotten to put my fannish pseud on some of them, so if you get a postcard from South Carolina and you can't figure out who sent it to you, it's probably me, lol.

It was ridiculously hot this year (we went in August to accommodate assorted teaching schedules but will not be doing that again, apologies to our professor kids but ugh, we couldn't even play bocce until after the sun set, and even then it was better if we came directly out of the ocean to let the breeze be filtered by the water) and pretty low key, but #2's partner joined us for the first time, which was very fun; and we had a birthday to celebrate, which entailed eggs benedict for 15 and entirely too many Nothing-Bundt-Cake little baby bundts in more-or-less every flavor they offered, so y'know, typical Beach Week shenanigans.

Then I adulted really hard and got my screening colonoscopy done and god, that prep is so vile. The actual test is fine but that drink (even the low volume protocol) is nearly unbearable. Fortunately, I'm clear and don't have to do it again for another 10 years (blessings upon my brother for doing it every year--he got my mom's problems there.)

BUT. Because I did the evil thing, I took myself out on new-bookstore date the next day, which was delightful. And BabyBoy made Dolly Parton's recipe for banana pudding, which involves almost a dozen eggs, waaaaaaay more butter and sugar than you really want to think about, and 2 boxes of Nilla wafers as a treat for me. And then, circumstances being what they are in this bad, bad timeline, we ate it while watching Tim Curry run around and completely commit to the farce in Clue.

Coming soon: reading, watching, playing, crafting

I’m still here, just letting my brain (often referred to as Henrietta) figure out what to do with the done-with-working concept. Of course, I had already planned for work on the living room to be happening, so it’s not like I can sleep late or anything, not with the contractors showing up every morning around 8 a.m. The Berserker!dog has mellowed a little in these last few years, but a) that’s a relative number and we don’t call him a berserker for nothing; and b) no amount of aging and mellowing is going to make him be ok with PEOPLE IN THE HOUSE, MOM! STRANGE PEOPLE! WALKING AROUND! RIGHT HERE! MOM!!MOM!!MOM!! DID YOU SEE HOW BRAVE I AM AND HOW LOUD I BARKED!!!

Even better, with all the carpets and drapes and soft furniture out of the way, the living room echoes like whoa, which makes the heroic barking even louder. (For those of you very sensibly wondering why we don’t just put him in a room, we tried that once and he literally tore the carpet away from the wall trying to dig out under the door, sigh. So now we just put him on a leash, let him bark and smell all the new smells and then he gets a treat and sits at the end of the hallway, on alert in case any of the strange people should take a step out of the ordinary. And every time I go to consult/answer questions/okay a work-around, he has to be right there with me. My 75 pound shadow, lol.

Also, #2 moved out to be closer to his office so that’s occupied a fair amount of time too. We still have one chaise/sofa to move up there, but it’s been buried in with the rest of the furniture from the living room. Fingers crossed the painting will be done by Thursday so the new carpet can go in Friday morning & we can de-jenga the furniture & it’ll be free this weekend.

In other news, we’re all World Cup all the time around the house. The kids have been super into football since I don’t even know when so they have all their favorite players playing for their national teams, and I know enough from having it all at my dinner table that I can generally follow along. I’m also enjoying watching the European fans flood through various cities and have a good time and discover Buc-ees and Walmart and all the random little places that are across the US. We’re hosting games here in the city, so anytime you go into Midtown or downtown, it’s like a giant festival and lots more fun than a regular June. Also, the Braves are playing baseball like they know what they’re doing and I’ve gotten far enough past the last season when D was still alive that I can actually listen to the radio broadcast without getting flashbacks. So that’s fun.

And finally, my niece is taking her two year-old to Disney World for the first time and Auntie Topaz is planning their weekend down to the last second. It’s been ages since I’ve plannrd around a little one, so that’s new and exciting. Beach Week is also coming up here in a month or so but first, I’m gonna spend a long weekend in Chicago with some friends. Possibly by September I might be able to figure out this whole ‘am I actually retired?’ thing, but between you and me, I think I really am.

Have a good week everyone. Think of me on a ladder measuring out how big the replacement lighting should actually be before I go and fall in love with something impractical and then have to return it because it doesn’t fit (not that that’s ever happened before, right?)

Oof, yesterday turned out to be A Day, almost entirely due to my apparently not taking care of myself so I’m coming here to write a sternly worded letter to my brain, which I’ll ( cut since it’s not very exciting for the rest of you. )

Still here, still employed at the crazy place of business, still unpacking the house. (I’m finally getting sort of close on the last one)

I disappeared b/c we did a family trip to Disney World where we really did all of the parks. I know we go all the time but mostly we’re just hanging out with friends or hitting maybe one park. This was full-tilt, hitting all the new rides and snacking our way through the day. It was a ton of fun but holy crap was it hot. Just ridiculous, close to 100 degrees (F) every day. Our next trip like this will be in the dead of winter, no joke.

So, yeah, I was scrambling there at the end to get my schedule clear at the office and get things set up at the house for our sweet friend who comes and stays with the berserker dog (he looooooves her, and she spoils him outrageously so it’s like he has a mini staycation, too)

And then I’ve contracted what is essentially con crud from the gazillion people I was around (I’ve tested negative for everything, but I’m hacking and sneezing and sound like I’ve been smoking two packs a day for my entire life.) I took a day of sick leave and somehow decided I should wash the slipcovers on my living room furniture, so that’s been A Thing.

Also, I managed to smash my phone pretty thoroughly while dealing with all the Disney app stuff so I had to go get a new one (it was more than 4 years old & wasn’t really holding much of a charge so I didn’t feel too spendy about it.)

And now, there’s weirdness happening with the thermostat attached to the AC/furnace and the transmission is dying on my car so it’s definitely back to normal life after our sojourn in the Disney bubble, sigh. At least tomorrow is Friday though we’re starting a new work book club & Amazon says my book was delivered while we were away (with pictures and all) but I have yet to unearth it so I should go do that in order to have a good base for my irritation that we are yet again reading a tech bro book rather than just assuming it’s going to irritate the fuck out of me just on sight.


Also, also, here’s my entry in the what-fic-trope-are-you** questionaire:

fix-it

you don't have time for this 'making your barbies kiss' bullshit; the world is fucked, and you're here to do something about it! (the thing you're doing about it is making your barbies kiss)


**my memory is a little iffy here but I’m sure you’ve seen this around

Of course the only thing that’s broken my fascination with the utter disaster that is the British royal family’s PR "strategy" (please see the comprehensive timeline at the bottom of this article) would be my beloved Sparkly Dancing Boys (who I freely acknowledge are not too sparkly, not dancing a whole lot, and are no longer boys, but once an SDB, always an SDB) ON STAGE TOGETHER.

(I do have thoughts, like that Lance looks fabulous, and that somebody needs to persuade JC to shave (and to not do whatever it is that he’s doing with his hair these days), and that it’s terribly convenient timing for this to happen after Timberlake decided to demonstrate just how far he could shove his head up his ass when talking about Britney, but mostly my brain is just shrieking and twirling with GLEEEEEE.)

(Also, my Millennial & GenZ coworkers seem convinced that a Vegas residency is in the cards so that’s a thing in my brain, too.)

Hi, hello, good morning!

I have to be at the office today and my hair is still wringing wet and it’s trash day and I don’t have anything out to the curb yet and all is chaos, but hey, Happy Pączki Day!

I could not make the journey out to the sole Polish bakery in all of Northern Georgia, but Publix came through and while they’re not the greatest of jelly donuts, they fit the bill and I miiiiiight be on a sugar high.

The weather was wild last night, very windy and the trees were dropping branches like crazy. I think one of my cheap plastic chairs got taken out but I don’t think had any roof damage, fingers crossed.

That’s all that’s happening here; I’m gonna go dry my hair and take the trash out And try to de-cortisol my body before I have to drive into the city.

Happy Fat Tuesday to you all!

Hello and happy Friday! I have fixed a cocktail and put my feet up and am ready to let the weekend begin.

The first week of return to office has been checked off the list, yay. The new office is actually really nice and I feel like I can find enough places to work that are quiet and tucked out of the way, but it’s still more than a little annoying to have to go in. I’m trying to keep in mind how much baby!engineer!topaz wanted to work in “the city“ and have a fancy office. I’d really like to have a private office rather than just a desk that I have to reserve every time I go in , but the rest of it is all there. And they feed us. I’m trying to focus on all the good things about this change.

I also can’t believe that we’ve gotten through January. I’m usually deep in the throes of hating the world at this point, but it’s been a pretty chill month. I’ve leaned hard into candles and twinkly lights and generally wrapping up in quilts and what not, and that seems to have done the trick, at least so far. (see above, re: cocktail in hand). Speaking of candles, I found the box of my stash, and have been running a candle spa the last few days. We’ve put new wicks in where necessary, and fixed up the tunneling issues and sorted them all by fragrance profile. I feel very accomplished .

At some point, I need to collect up all the random, wonderful fic recommendations I’ve been accumulating and share them out. I’m still not at the point of being able to write but once again fandom has provided so much wonderful distraction and the very least I can do is share them with you all. Maybe this weekend?

::kisses::

I have to be in Midtown this week for an offsite, work-related thing that starts at the ungodly hour of 8 AM (which I am so not happy about) so I’ve been getting up early so I can fall asleep early enough that I’m not completely wiped out when I have to leave my house a little after 7 to arrive in a timely fashion and launch into my best extrovert cosplay. Oddly enough, the best part about all of this is that I’m out in the living room before sunrise (because if I stay in the bedroom, I’ll just go right back to sleep) and I’ve been watching the day lighten as I have my first Diet Coke and go through all my feeds. The windows in the living room face southwest-ish so I don’t actually get to see the sunrise per se, but I do get to see the sky lighten around the tree branches of the woods at the back of our property. I’d still rather be asleep but it’s not a bad way to start the day.

I did finally get all the holiday decorations packed and properly returned to their storage area, which I also cleaned out with the help of BabyBoy. Yay? If I didn’t have to go pick up some packages I accidentally had sent to L’s, I might actually get the last of the boxes from the reno out of the living room. Regardless of the exact timing, though, the end (at least for this room) is in sight. That’s really a yay!

In other random work-related news, we move into our new office tomorrow and we have to start going in a couple days a week. They’re dangling all sorts of goodies (with middling success) in front of us to make the RTO order policy seem less heavy-handed, one of which is an on-site barista. I don’t actually drink coffee (hence the pre-dawn Diet Cokes), but far be it from me to not take advantage of a perk so I’ve been trying out various tea options. My favorite so far is a London fog (Earl Grey tea plus steamed milk) but I’m accepting suggestions so please tell me all about your favorite fancy tea drinks. ♥

The Tuesday after a three-day weekend is always a slog but I think this Tuesday is the worst of the worst… You’re barely back focusing from having a couple weeks off over the holidays and then you get a three-day weekend and I swear my brain just forgets all about how it is that I make money, completely and totally.

As with the rest of the US, we’re having cold weather. No snow or rain or sleet but temperatures not reaching freezing. Most of the schools are either on delay or closed outright so everybody’s scrambling for childcare and that’s not helping with this most Monday of Tuesdays.

Because it was a long weekend, BabyBoy and I engaged in some cooking projects, mostly involving pasta. We made a durum wheat spaghetti and a more eggy fettuccine with a gochujang sauce on the spaghetti and an fully-involved Bolognese for the fettuccine. It all turned out well and it was fun, which is my excuse for not getting the holiday decorations put away, because by the time I cleaned up pasta making twice as many days I was too tired to be lugging boxes around.

And more fannish news, the kids have me watching an anime that is about an elf who is going back for another DND-ish quest after after her original adventuring party did the thing and returned home as heroes and then grew old and died while she’s more or less immortal. It’s very sweet and I’d tell you the name of it if I could remember it, but basically I say, ‘I wanna watch an episode of the elf show' and somebody pulls up an anime watching site and we watch. Fortunately, it’s dubbed so I don’t have to squint at the TV and read subtitles.

Also in fannish news, I joined getyourwordsout, so maybe I’ll get back into writing fun things…?

Alsoalso, the purple row in today’s Connections was ridiculous, y/y

Be safe, stay warm, ♥ !