topaz119 | Entries tagged with workin' for a living

I was unexpectedly off work yesterday as it was Veteran's/Armistice Day and the new company has it as a holiday. ( cutting for work annoyances, do feel free to skip )

So, that's been "fun".

In fannish news, the kids and I got take-out and watched Black Widow together on my actual birthday. There might also have been some Rekorderlig involved (though, sadly, no edible glitter.) ( I guess I'll cut for reaction spoilers, including for the rest of the MCU continuity? )

Also, I meant to post book stuff Wednesday, as is traditional, but I was exhausted by all the work-related stuff and spent the day off dealing with car issues (did need new tires, -$700 USD /o\; did not need new struts/something else, +$2600 \o/ \o/), so let's have it this morning before the rest of life decides it wants to suck up all my energy.

finished
(editor's note: After months and months of not finishing anything, I HAVE SOMETHING TO PUT IN HERE!! wheee!)

Battle Royal, Lucy Hale -- Another of her breezy, fun romances. She writes an excellent opposites attract trope and this one was no different. It's more-or-less Paul Hollywood vs a more whimsical Christina Tosi + crazy cocktails + a minor royal wedding. There's a lot of edible glitter involved, too (though, sadly, only in the kitchen.) So, you know, basically catnip for me.

The Ex-Hex, Erin Sterling (aka, Rachel Hawkins) -- Described on the author's twitter while she was writing it as Hocus Pocus but they f*ck, which is pretty spot on. Nicely seasonal and set up in the North Georgia mountains, so I had extra fun figuring out where she was setting things. Also breezy and fun. (See the theme there?)

reading now
Beowulf, trans Maria Dahvana Headley, narration JD Jackson -- aka, the 'Bro' translation. Definitely helped by the excellent narration of the audiobook, though I think that's really how you should 'read' this no matter what the translation.

Into the Dark, Claudia Gray -- This month's

swbookclub pick and I am trying to actually read on time & participate. ::is determined:: My first High Republic era book of the new canon.

Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, Kate Racculia -- Also somewhat atmospheric, given that there are (as noted) ghosts and all. I'm halfway through and while I'm not sure if the actual plot has started, it's a very entertaining story. I just had to take a break b/c of job-related stuff and let it go back to the library but I'm next up on my re-borrow.

The Companion, E. E. Ottoman -- Started this a while ago and have stalled for no discernible reason so I'll not give up on it yet.

Between Two Kingdoms, Suleika Jaouad -- a recommendation from Beach Week, and one that I was engrossed in, but I had to take it slowly as it hits a little too close to home with relationship issues during extended, life-threatening illness (it just landed back in my library inbox, but I think I will let it go to the next person in line as I'm still not sure I'm up for more of RL in my escapist reading.)

The Jane Austen Society, Natalie Jenner -- I barely started this when there was a whoosh of library holds coming in, so it's on the back burner.

There are so many more that I've gotten maybe 20 or 30 pages into, but until I pick them back up, I'm not counting them here. (and let's not even talk about the other 10+ physical books sitting in a stack next to my reading chair. Anything that looks remotely tempting, I'm grabbing b/c my brain is swiss cheese at this point and I never know what's going to work.)

next
I would not blame you if you look at that in-progress list and say words to the effect of 'are you kidding me?' but see above, re: who knows what's going to work these days?

A Spindle Splintered, Alix E Harrow -- a novella that's only a 3-hour audiobook. File this under atmospheric reads (before we descend into the peppermint madness)

Witch, Please, Ann Aguirre -- yet another seasonal read and hopefully another one that's light and fun. I somehow have never read AA, though she is beloved in Romancelandia so I'm hoping for good things.

hmmm, all those autumn/Halloween books don't exactly explain the cocktail with edible glitter this past weekend (it was called Spells by Twilight) but they definitely form more of a pattern that only my brain understands.

Okay, quitting now! Have a good weekend, y'all.

Previously, in PandemicUnhingedTime...

( February turned into quite the month; also medical and dental discussions though I tried not to get too gory )

On the flip side, my jaw actually doesn't hurt now, for the first time in 8 or 9 months (yes, I know, I really shouldn't have put it off, but it wasn't BAD until last week and we've been having this discussion about ignoring personal issues during Covid so I guess this is just another entry in that book of lived experiences. I can't decide if feeling semi-proud that I actually took off the rest of the day after they pulled the tooth is progress or just a sad admittance of how ridiculous my brain can be. )

I have a lot I want to talk about wrt Wandavision but I'll save that for when I have enough brainpower that I can string together a coherent paragraph outside of the office setting (where I *have* to.) The kids have also gotten me into Ted Lasso, about which I'll only say that it's as much about football as the first season of FNL was back in the day. (Totally loving it.)

I'll leave you with two links:

Beyond Burned Out (Harvard Business Report, not paywalled, I don't think) - I mean, on the one hand, duh? On the other, it's nice that somebody is calling out the systemic bullshit.

Obi Wan & Anakin from the School of Sabrefighting, with full symphonic accompaniment. Slightly less fraught than the first link.

bye, be safe, take care ♥

Dear lord, they asked me to mentor someone at the office. Like, an official relationship where we met monthly and all. I may have to consult with my brother, who does this on a regular basis, just to get some idea of what to do. (I mean, normally, I'm the thorn in people's side, always sitting over in the corner where they shove me and deflating their pretensions to clear writing skills, not being asked to share expertise. I need to remember this for when I do the year-end meme and it asks me for something I've never done before.)

In other news, I am so close to finishing off the Steve/Darcy MCU fic I've been playing with over the last few months, soooo close. Last 2k words. HEA. Debating between straight-up smut/fade-to-black. Y'know, the important stuff. ( cutting for character-related spoilers in the MCU )

...and books

finished
A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold, audiobook == I'm so glad I beat down my internal completest freak and just skipped over all of the many books between the ones I've read (SoH, B, TWA) and just went ahead and listened to this one. I definitely enjoyed it and ( I realize this book is 20+ years old, but this was such a delightful reveal that I don't want to ruin it for others ) Somewhat surprisingly, my favorite character might actually have been Gregor, so I'm guessing I'll be on an AO3 hunt for a bit.

reading now
The only thing I started new was Laziness Does Not Exist, Devon Price, which I think I gleaned from a podcast last month. Just now starting so no opinion as of yet.

Otherwise, I'm still in with Deal with the Devil, Because Internet, and Obi Wan and Anakin.

next
Possibly Captain Vorpatril's Alliance...

Hi, hi, it's been forever!

Mostly, that's been due to the job search ramping up in intensity and grinding to a happy ending of a new job in a new company with someone I've worked with (and loved working with) previously, \o/.

But oy, what a month. I ended up interviewing with 9 different people across 4 different appointments for the new job, and then when I gave notice at the current job, they came back with a counter-offer, which entailed 3 more meetings with various people. The only reason I entertained the counter was because my current director has been an absolute rock star since D's stroke and he asked me if I would raise some of my reasons for leaving up the chain of command. It was, I think, the least I could do for him, but I am SO HAPPY that it's all done and I'm leaving at the end of next week.

Also, in the middle of all this interviewing stuff, we had Covid-19 impacts to the current job because CurrentCompany has some large number of Chinese employees and multiple manufacturing facilities that were impacted by the quarantines, etc. I haven't done so many middle of the night calls in years. It totally fucked with my sleep, which is yet another reason I'm not sad to be moving on. The only thing that saved me is the Calm app on my phone, which has a daily Sleep Story--just someone reading some random thing in a super-soothing voice. I was extremely skeptical, but they consistently keep my brain out of its stress spirals and do it quickly enough that I don't even remember what the stories are because I'm snoring in no time.

In books/tv/movies news, I finished watching The Witcher, which I enjoyed a lot more than I expected to. Part of that is because BabyBoy is a huge, huge fan and his enthusiasm and enjoyment was contagious, but also, I really had fun with HC and his very expressive uses of 'fuck'. The intertwined story timelines didn't bother me (though possibly that's because I had the encyclopedic knowledge of BabyBoy only a text away), and you know I'm always up for a good found family trope. So that was fun.

I also zipped through Pandemic, Netflix's docu-series on, well, pandemics, and I have to say, it was really well done, especially given the timing. (Though, watching it as I sat on the subway every day got to be a little nerve-wracking, especially on days when I'd been on China-impact-assessment calls overnight. (My part in these calls is virtually nothing, but one of the teams I write for had major impacts to their delivery capacity so we were all there to understand the situation.)) I didn't find it to be unnecessarily alarmist or fear-mongering, but it is a scary topic, even without the events happening in real life. The people they profile are very inspiring, for the most part.

On the book side, it's been a string of exceedingly escapist fiction, which I will try to get to next week for the Wednesday reading topic, but all the buzz about Andie Christopher's Not the Girl You Marry was spot-on, in my view, and I'm not normally one for contemporary romances.

I have to laugh at all the articles about preparing for possible quarantines and how people are so worried about what you might do to keep yourself occupied if you can't go out. I mean, do they not know anyone with a serious TBR pile? Or a crafting addiction? I might grab a couple of extra pounds of butter tomorrow at the store, just in case we do get the work-from-home word and I suddenly have the time to go on a mad baking spree, but otherwise, I still remember with great fondness the snowstorm we had around 10 years ago, where the usual snow-removal strategy (wait for the sun to come out and it'll all melt) did not measure up for the actual snow that we got and we were home for a week. It. Was. Bliss. D was going bonkers in 2 days, but omg, I wallowed in it. I will definitely do my part to stop contagion vectors!

In other news, BabyBoy was cast in a production of The Laramie Project, which is probably yet another show we will not mention to the conservative part of the family. I know they have to be thinking that he's just not very good because we keep skipping over things like the original Broadway staging of Hair or the corsets from Cabaret so all they know is that he played one of the flying monkeys from Oz. (Don't get me wrong--he loved being up on a wire, but yeah, it's not really much of a dramatic stretch.)

Okay, I should go and take the berserker dog out for a walk, because it is actually not raining here for once (we've had more rain than Seatttle this year, ugh.)

Have a good weekend!

It is suuuuch a Monday. To whit:

The dog went bonkers at 4:23 this morning, which is just late enough that I couldn’t get back to sleep, while still being stupidly early.

My computer blue-screened 4 times this morning, so we updated the BIOS & a half-dozen other things, which took an hour, and it blue-screened again. sigh. He’s trying something else, but the word 're-image' has already been thrown out there & seriously, I’m supposed to run a cross-site symposium tomorrow morning—I really do not need a wonky computer.

I’ve been craving a Starbucks iced chai latte w/cold foam but I can’t drink it after about noon b/c caffeine & I are getting to be crazy. I haven’t been able to get away from my desk before 2 pm in a month’s & when I tried to go get one this weekend, I was cleaning on Saturday (& barely in front of my (new) guy who was doing all the serious deep cleaning, so I didn’t stop until 4)& then on Sunday, we were under a boil-water order (thunderstorms knocked out power to the water processing plant for long enough to have let bad stuff in) so nothing was open, hmpf.

See how exciting life is here at Chez HoB?

Wow, so asking for prompts/questions to keep myself entertained during our deployment call turned into the kiss of death, as instead of the normal 'excitement' of listening to the server/database engineers ticking off the stats as the new services start, something in the new code did not play well with more than one of the big production servers and all hell broke loose as people scrambled to roll back the deploy and minimize down time (we have very tight downtime allowances that start to impact people's bonuses v. v. quickly.) My team's architect and lead developer are not native English speakers and while their English is really good, in times like this we've worked out a process where I act like a real-time validator to make sure they're writing what they mean to say. It was a little crazy for a couple of hours and then we had the audit forms to write up and submit and then we had the post-mortem and then we had the re-deploy (where everything went fine, because it turns out it *wasn't* our code that was the problem, it was an out-of-date patch on one of the IIS servers) and yay, we are now live with the new stuff (and everything else is now super-behind, so we're all triaging that.)

So, yes, this week did not go as planned. But it is the weekend! And I am not going anywhere! (I've been out of town for the last 4 weekends in a row, mostly all for fun/good reasons, but still. I may not get out of bed at all today.)

( and now for the ask-me-questions meme... )

Thank you all for listening to me whine about what are (at base) fairly inconsequential things--I really do appreciate your kindness.

( computer-related sadface )

and! this is an actual (ridiculous but fun) thing we did while hanging out at Disney World over NYE--Me + 6 adult kids + my best friend from college (2 of the kids were hers, 2 were mine, 2 were L's) fighting our way through the hordes of kids at the Lego store to make custom Thor 2 minifigs to go with my Dept 56 Royal Observatory. ( also behind the cut because the picture is biggish )

and that is my fannish fun for the day!