I checked my work phone this morning, mainly to look at scheduling, and ended up taking care of two "emergencies" that people were hopping about this morning, then promptly dumped it on the charger to ignore it once more. They can have my time when I'm back on the clock Wednesday. I did end up having to reschedule a doctor's appointment because the original one is on the day they chose for out office holiday party while I was out on break. No biggie, thankfully. Still need to find out when my current 90 day full-time-remote status dies (next week, I think). I think I'm capable of commuting in now, but I'll make sure to take the crutch with me for it.

Ortho at the end of the week. Vet for the cats tomorrow. So I'll be working Wednesday and Thursday, but off the rest of the week, added to the week off last week. Has been a nice break. Knee is progressing still, but definitely not back to normal. I'm able to bike on a stationary trainer now, so that's becoming my default cardio. The new Garmin GPS watch I bought in August for running works well with the bike accessories, so at least that wasn't a total waste.

Desperately behind on comics. Like dozens of issues behind at this point. Even reading 4-5 a day I'm still falling behind because of the backlog. Clearly we have a comics problem.

On the third color of my four-color brioche scarf, finally. Just in time to get more yarn for a blanket the husband asked for (which I'm glad I grabbed, because the plum base he wanted is not showing as available any more on the site).

Xmas is all up, and we're the envy of our street (which apparently got me added to a group text that I hadn't been on before). Added some strings going from the roof to the group floor, framing the house and windows (lines from the balcony edge straight down to the top of the garage/front door), and some blinking rainbow candy canes for the front walk. And a manual timer to turn them on at 4:30pm and off at 7:30am, roughly around dusk and dawn.

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.

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.

After getting the grump off my chest here, the rest of the awning installation went well. It will definitely help the availability of the deck on our top floor - almost full coverage of the deck, dark fabric to offset the white flooring which, while cooler as serving as the roof of the bedroom, is not good for staying cool on the deck itself (plus it's oh-so-bright). Well worth the cost, though perhaps a little less aggravation would've been nice.

Sister in law and niece are safely here. Doing the comic shop run with them today, tomorrow is the concert for the husband and SIL, and I'm trying to think of ways to corrupt the niece. I was debating whether she'd be up for making ice cream cookie sandwiches - take a pint of ice cream, saw it through the package into rounds, peel off the label, attach cookies to either end, voila. She's not quite to teenage angst (11), but is still in the partially picky eater stage, so who knows. The fun is finding a balance between "what does your mother not let you get away with," and just letting her be herself.

Took today off as well as yesterday (because why not?), mostly because if I had Thursday off for a new bed delivery, I might as well have Friday off, too. The husband is out of town, so a free day to do whatever. Unfortunately the day started early with an emergency request for drafting assistance from the Hill, so I worked for an hour or two before I even got breakfast (at one point I wrote the phrase, 'bear with me, but I'm doing math before I've had enough coffee' or something to that effect). I eventually got over the annoyed-ness of it and got on with my day.

Decided to do a run to BJ's Warehouse for gasoline and sundries. At some point I started griping to myself about how annoying it was going to be with all the last minute weekend people, and was I going to run into a post-church crowd when I finally remembered it was Friday and not Sunday. Yes, it's been a long week.

The husband's flight from Texas was delayed because apparently there's a pothole on one of the runways at National airport, so they're down to one, and will have to circle before they can land, so they took on some extra fuel for that before they finally left. They're scheduled to get in a little after midnight, so hopefully it won't be much later than that, since I'm being nice and staying up to go pick him up with my fresh tank of gas.

The week away last week was much needed, and very good. Had some good conversations with the husband and cleared up a couple minor misunderstandings/pet peeves for both of us. Finished one book I was almost done with on the kindle (the last of the Wheel of Time series), made some more progress on Chernov's biography of Grant (we're at Reconstruction while Johnson is still president, which is just plain difficult to read because this country was so awful during that period), and started a book on ergonomics and knitting. Picked up a bunch of infused olive oils and balsamic vinegars from Drizzles, and am happy to report that peach infused white balsamic vinegar is an absolute treat over vanilla ice cream.

With all the new bottles to figure out a home for, today for the holiday our major undertaking was cleaning out and reorganizing the pantry. We've only been in here two years, but it still felt like there was a ton of food we tossed. In any case, I have a better handle on what's in there now that we removed it all and reorganized it. And I appear to be a hoarder of tomato paste, likely because there was a considerable stash hidden behind some taller stuff. I think tomorrow sounds like the right time to make some marinara and use some up.

Next up needs to be my office, but first I have to survive reentry to work tomorrow. I did go into email, turned off the out of office message, and regretted forgetting to schedule myself as busy tomorrow morning (that's my normal habit, to give me time to sort emails), as someone set a meeting for 8:45 tomorrow. Video call, but still, far too early for the first day back. Ah well.

Took the husband to the Maryland Sheep & Wool festival for the first time. My second (?) time attending, first with him. And I picked up some yarn.
( Pics behind the cut, naturally )

Twas fun, if expensive. I prepared this time, picking out some projects ahead of time and shopping for yarn for those projects, as opposed to just doing what I did the first time, which was basically, "oooh, pretty, must have!" with no clue what I'd knit with it, or even if I had enough yarn for a project. I did let the husband talk me into two sets (the really brightly crazy colored ones, and the blue-and-purple variegated ones) for projects for him, but overall I was pleased with how it turned out.

Benjamin-kitty is currently guarding my office, after spending the morning hiding in it. We had our HVAC company out to try and fix some monitoring hardware they use on our system. After much frustration on their part they finally pulled the wifi version off the bottom system and put in a cellular version, which then worked just fine. So they'll have to come back later with another one for the upstairs unit. Whatever, it doesn't affect my temperature inside, so I can afford to be chill about the whole thing. They seemed otherwise busy as hell because we got our first truly warm day in the last week, and that of course leads to an uptick in calls for them. Ezri-kitty was in here earlier (after they left), but has decamped back to the main floor as per her usual habits. I expect they'll both settle in the kitty hammocks in my office windows once the sun rolls around and starts hitting those.

I'm about to take my last required Continuing Legal Education course for this reporting year (11/1-10/31). Everything else I take after this banks for next year's requirements, and I will be glad to be done hella early for once.

While that's going on I'm migrating my work bullet journal to a new notebook, because I realized as I was taking notes this morning that I'm on the next to last page, so it's time for that. I must've taken more notes my first year, because that first notebook went pretty much exactly Jan-Dec, where this one has gone Jan 2021-Apr 2022.

Sister-in-law is coming down this evening for the weekend. Haircuts and shopping tomorrow. Annual physical on Monday. Jury duty on Thursday. Going to be a busy week starting tonight.

Been plowing through the Wheel of Time book series - up to book four now. I had the first three in paperback format, but at some point in 2018 (?) I lost the first one on a plane, and gave up on restarting it until the TV series came out. I enjoyed the TV series, I get why they made the changes they did, and I look forward to the next season. But I'm really enjoying the books, they're very much up my alley in terms of fantasy epics.

A little behind on comics; I have ten in the current stack from this week and last, all DC stuff because I try to keep up with Marvel in case the husband wants to discuss one of those.

I think we're going to go see Moonfall this weekend, which looks like it'll be delightfully over the top and silly.

Two days of poor sleep and a lot of gut-not-happy-with-me this morning just combined to say 'nah, you're not going to work today.' I did a little stuff, but then emailed the bosses to say I was logging off for the day. The husband went into the office, so I plan to just be a slug today around the house. The cats will enjoy that at least.

Tried a new recipe last night and I think perhaps the squash used (acorn) wasn't low-fodmap friendly (which may be why the gut isn't happy with me this morning). There's no info on that particular squash on the Monash site, and while some squash are low-fodmap (pattypan, spaghetti, zucchini), some are not (butternut). It also cemented in my mind how much I dislike spaghetti as a pasta shape. It's messy, it doesn't hold sauce, it sticks together in the pan. Just don't care for it. Give me penne or rotini any day over that nonsense. Or a good wide noodle like egg noodles or wide fettuccine. Grump, grump, grump. :-p