Ramblings of an itinerant rocket scientist...

Well, that was a thing. I took a long weekend, and there were ups and downs.

Thursday and Saturday night took nice long dog walks  at dusk in the nearby mega-development along trails and lamp-lit streets. Carrie and i went with my sister and her dog on Thursday, returned with Christine on Saturday.

Friday night i saw my niece in as the lead in "She Kills Monsters," which is about the relationship between an older sister and her younger deceased sister, in which the elder realizes that assumptions that her younger sister was cisgender or heterosexual were not necessarily correct. It was a little surreal to watch sitting next to my younger sister, while watching my niece play opposite her girlfriend.

Sunday i met up with my sister and dad at a house he's looking at in between the two of us. I hope he jumps on buying it. [News: he's decided not to move again. Oh well.]

I spent lots of time resurrecting coding environment in my laptop, using mise to handle dependencies and environment along with poetry for python. Had a headache getting my diagramming tool container running. I think i was just (1) trying to run on a port with something else on it and then (2) had conflicts with the development environment user/workspace/folder configurations. Instead i chased the container management system, switching to a new system, and fiddled forever with ai assisted node scripts (i don't know javascript really) to see if there were firewalls etc etc oh good grief. Very cranky making.

And my project was aligning my records of absences with work's. By definition, work is correct for previous years, and it seems the offset errors are in previous years. So i put in offset corrections. But that was fussy and annoying. However, i learned about "frictionless" data manifests. That delights me no end.  In general i am trying to learn to manage things "right" in semi-standard idiom and patterns. Over the past few months i've developed a personal style guide (leaning heavily on work's) and a workspace template. This was the first time trying to get the template running at home, so, yes, some bumps.

CPAP has been stopping in the middle of the night and my ("smart") watch started dying within hours of a full charge. Sunday morning i woke in a terrible mood because i had awakened 03:30ish to a watch with just 3% battery after going to bed with a day and 21 hours of charge. I also woke to no air. I couldn't fall back asleep, so i ended up spending hours trying to factory reset and reconnect to my phone with no luck. I think i found some setting that will fix the CPAP behavior: i didn't know if i was turning it off in the middle of the night myself, but last night i slept well.

This morning i had to fast -- including NO TEA!! -- for a "wellness" blood draw to get a $500 reduction on my health insurance premium. I think it will be worth it. I stopped in the past because it was all very intrusive with lots of participation in online portals that seemed pretty annoying. This year it simply (it seems?) requires a bio-metric screening. What i don't know is if the coaching is triggered by being pre-diabetic or simply a BMI trigger. It doesn't seem that one has to engage with the coaching to get the reduction in the premium. I trust my doctor, i don't need an algorithm. Anyhow, i survived the fasting by not taking my vitamin B in the morning, and beat back the caffeine withdrawal with coffee.

I did get blue and have had lots of self recrimination about not being outside this vacation. But trying to accept my focus. We did have a lovely Sunday dinner with a Quorn roast (mushroom based protein loaf) with home-grown chestnuts among the carrots, onions, and potatoes, and a cranberry relish with  home-grown persimmons and spice bush spices.  I thought i might have overdone it with the spice bush, using all of last year's frozen pulps+sugar. Fortunately Christine still loved the relish, and i was motivated while it was cooking to get this year's second harvest of pulps separated from seeds. (The first harvest went bad in the fridge as i neglected it.) By the time of the second harvest some of the spice bush berries had dried out on the shrub. People often dry them whole, so i had some of those ground over slices of persimmon for breakfast for several days: also yummy.

Let see, this week had me succeeding some days at some of my routine. I have been up and down.

 Tuesday morning i was having some executive function frustration around making vaccine decisions, but within hours i just went ahead and scheduled vaxes for noon that day. And got them and was a little meh and had headaches.

Over that night to Wednesday my CPAP failed to run, so i was very groggy and forgetful. Thursday i was also really tired at the end of the workday. And the thermostat failed for good, so i researched and ran to Lowes to get one. While there was not an appropriate WiFi-free one, the one i bought does not need the WiFi.

On Friday, i sent Christine to get wire nuts to secure the ends of the sensor wires that are not supported by the new thermostat. Since our  dehumidifer had started leaking -- after making mysterious and not really healthy sounds all summer, she came home with a new one. I hate that we can't find repair   She also brought in the new cat tree we had delivered - -it's made of wood (well, not particleboard), not covered with beige carpet that shreds and gets everywhere.

After work i installed the thermostat, and built the cat tree. We removed the one Bruno is used to to the living room where we hope he can see it as soon as he comes around the corner. The new one replaces the one in he's been using in the front room. We've had some good visits with him, all of us in the front room for a bit. Carrie is basically doing great with him. Marlowe.... sigh. Christine reported having the epiphany that Marlowe is the one who has bad behavior and Bruno is doing great.  I think i managed all my reactions so as not to reveal just how obvious i thought that was. But now we are in agreement about time outs for Marlowe and that she;s the one that needs training.

Unfortunately, one morning i was letting Bruno roam and didn't close a door and Marlowe chased him back to his hidey cave. And he's not really left the front room since. Sigh.

He's a lovely sweet cat. Christine says he looks like Richard Gere and i can sort of see it? Around the nose and maybe some sort of tilting of the head?

Anyhow, i need to bestir myself if i am going to the protest today.