Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

Another pretty day here today, and I’ve already got things off to a decent start with another very good night of sleep (9 hours yesterday and today!!) a big ol’ cold brew, and a quick trip to the market done.

And damn, I am VERY damn susceptible to marketing. We needed dishwasher pods. Usually get Cascade Platinum. But now they have Cascade Platinum PLUS! WELL, YES, OF COURSE I NEED THAT ONE.

Got a few things done around the house yesterday, but not really enough – so today we’re gonna plow through that list. Already brought my headphones downstairs, cause I know that works and I really shouldn’t pretend it doesn’t matter and I don’t need them. BECAUSE I NEED THEM.

Iggy is sweeping the kitchen right now, and once he’s done I’ll get going since I want to start in the kitchen and don’t want us tripping over each other. Am I using the robot vacuum as a procrastination method? Maybe? But he does need to run before I try and mop.

Task initiation is such a bitch and a half. And it’s so frustrating, because for most of my life I’ve just thought I was lazy. But I’m not lazy. I’m tired, easily overwhelmed, and I have a hard time getting started. But damn, I am NOT lazy.

And on that note, Iggy is done, the steam mop is heating up and it’s time for some tunes and housecleaning.

You have a fantastic day and don’t let anyone tell you you’re lazy.

So, the factory reset did the trick for image capture for obstacles.

Now, when a job is done, I can go through the pictures and tell it if this is a “no go” area so it will just avoid it permanently, or if it just temporary and something I forgot to get out of the way. And the neat bit – when you mark things as temporary, and get whatever it was out of the way, you can tell it to do a “tidy up” run where it just goes back to those spots and takes care of them.

So neat!

Here it is warm and sunny and Spring is definitely here! And boy are all the plants having sexy time – my bright blue car is currently green with all the pollen, and I washed it last week and you wouldn’t even know. It was even warm enough to wear shorts for the coffee run this morning, YAY!!

Big exciting weekend plans are finishing off my taxes, housework, and some free food! Our new internal recognition thing at work gives points you can cash in for stuff, and I cashed mine in for Outback gift cards. Glad they switched to this system, cause a good job note is nice, but a steak is better.

On the housework front, work being such a bitch the past month has made it hard to do anything more than just the bare minimum, but I’ve at least done that, and Iggy the Roomba has been AWESOME. I love this little helper robot so much. The weekly cleanout of it’s little rollers shows me how much it’s picking up and it’s impressive.

The only hitch has been that it isn’t capturing obstacle pictures – the internets said that a hard reset should do the trick, so I did that this morning. But even though it said it would save the maps to the cloud when I reset, they are gone, LOL. So, Iggy is on a mapping adventure again today.

I don’t *need* the obstacle pictures, but I really want to see when Iggy and Lily meet up, LOL. My brother told me they got into a standoff the other day and I would have LOVED to see that shot! I’m so proud of Lily for not being scared of it. I keep telling her she can ride it if she wants to – we know from the internets that it can be done.

And yes, I do talk to Iggy all the damn time. He’s helping me! It would be rude not to! I say hi when he comes through the room, reassure him when he gets stuck, and tell him he’s doing a great job when he finishes up. And I am still utterly fascinated by it in general. Just the fact that it knows where it’s little base station is – I know it’s electronics and sensors, but it’s still so cool to me. And now that I think about it, that little vacuum probably has more computing power than my first computer did.

I hope your day is easy and has fun things like watching a cool little robot vacuum.

I want to take a minute to promote a good cause, Hayden’s House of Healing. They work with grieving families who have lost a child. They bought a home to operate out of, did everything right, then last year Someone decided it was all Too Sad and complained, and they were told they had to get a special variance to continue operating. They applied and were denied, so they’re selling the house and finding another community to continue their work. As part of this, they’re doing a capital campaign – if you have a little cash you could send their way, that would be great.

I think we can all agree that helping folks get through the loss of a child is a good thing.

Working 45 hours in 4 days kinda of undoes the benefits of a long weekend.

Tuesday: “hey that thing that was originally due in two weeks, that we know you haven’t even been able to start yet – can you get it done by tomorrow?”

That at least got extended to today thanks to various and sundry system outages beyond our control, and I ended up actually finishing it yesterday which was…greaaaaaaaat, cause it gave us time to smash in one more fix yesterday. Time zones can be a bitch, but it was nice to get the testing started on that and be able to hand it off to my peeps in the PI to finish it off, and no one had to work til midnight local time.

Today was thankfully very quiet, and I got out of work on time, and Lily & I had the BEST, EPIC NAP after work. We’re both still a little tired cause on top of work stuff yesterday, we had to zip up to the vet for her rabies shot and a monitoring blood draw at lunchtime. And even though she was in and out in less than 15 minutes – anyone with a cat knows that’s a bit of an ordeal.

And excellent news today – no significant changes in her bloodwork since January! And unless she shows any outward changes, we don’t have to have it looked at again until October! She probably didn’t have to have the bloodwork this time, but since we were gonna be there anyway and she was gonna be drunk on her gabapentin – might as well, as it’s good to know what’s up.

Not just from “need the time away from work” aspect, but also, a post holiday day off is just nice.

It’s been a hard core self care weekend of eating, sleeping, reading, watching baseball, and not thinking about work. Granted, sometimes self care is also getting shit done around the house, so I may get a few things done around here today, but if I don’t – not gonna beat myself up over it, cause the last 3 weeks took A LOT out of me.

Of course, I wake to news of yet another mass shooting – this time in Louisville, Kentucky. 5 souls gone, more hurt.

I will never understand how to GOP can just not care about people getting killed left and right by gun violence. I know they’re bought and paid for by the gun lobby, but my lord, to just…not care to the extent that they truly do not care, I just don’t get it.

I mean, it’s the same party that is basically legalizing the murder of protestors in Texas, so I’m not surprised. They’re just such hateful people.

Self care today may be turning off the news, because I just can’t today.

You take care of yourself.

ME! The pandemic really screwed with my ability to focus and read for waaaay too long.

It had been getting a little easier, and last week I replaced my dying Kindle and well, guess having a shiny new reader made some part of my subconscious go, “YOU BETTER USE IT!”

Since it arrived on Tuesday, I have finished:

Emily Edwards, Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man

John Hall, Queen Elizabeth II and her Church: Royal Service at Westminster Abbey

Started AND finished:

Lucy Worsley, Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman

Margaret Atwood, My Evil Mother (short story)

And now I am 12% into Ruth Finnegan’s Oral Literature in Africa. (Free on Kindle!)

I feel a twinge of guilt when I settle down and read, cause “oh not productive” but fuck that, my brain being able to process multiple paragraphs again is awesome and definitely a form of self care.

And Easter! And Passover! And Ramadan! Something for so many folks today!

It’s a super secular Easter around these parts – a nice opportunity for brunch and candy. (Yep, we have baskets, because I am a sucker for chocolates in pastel foils. Mmm, tiny Snickers bars!)

To those doing egg hunts – may you not find yourself saying, “We put out 12 eggs, and only found 11…” Especially if the weather isn’t cooperating and you had to hide them indoors. And if you’re going to services, may the kids not get bored and antsy.

Had a toss & turn sleep last night, so I’ve got my very large coffee and I’m trying to get all my brain cells organized before I attempt to do anything in the kitchen. Very grateful both casseroles are very easy dishes and low prep dishes.

Have yourself a lovely Sunday, whether you’re celebrating or just enjoying the day.

And it’s not Easter without an Easter Lily.

If you haven’t seen this week’s episode, I’m gonna put in a whole load of white space here so you have plenty of time to navigate away. Also, if you haven’t seen it – you should!

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WHAT A FUN EPISODE!!!! I know there are haters out there, and I am sorry you’ve lost any capacity for joy.

Lizzo & Jack Black as Royal President and First Lady?! LOVED IT. I agree with my brother, we now have two people now that we’d trust babysitting Baby Yoda, the other being Amy Sedaris’ Tattooine mechanic. 

Hologram dress accessories? Brilliant!

The call to Alice in Wonderland with the oversized roly-polys used as bocce balls? Loved it.

The importance of cultural knowledge when talking to the Ugnaughts was awesome. I was yelling at the screen, “SAY YOU’RE A FRIEND OF KUIIL!!” Watching Bo just fuck that all up, and Mando save it because he knew their cultural traditions was fantastic.  (And not the first time he’s been all, JFC, shut up, you’re just insulting folks, let me fix it.)

Bo finally getting the Dark Saber – well, I may have screamed, “TRANSITIVE PROPERTIES, BITCH!” 

And then – the best part for me – the ethical questions raised by living in a droid dependent society. I mean, it’s great for the organic folks to not have to do the shit work and have it all done by droids. But, is it exploitation? The droids have time off and I think must get paid, as evidenced by the fact that there are droid bars.  Droid bars where they hang out and worry about getting replaced by humans.

They must be paid, but are they well paid?  Do they have to pay for their own maintenance?  Do they get enough downtime?  Are they treated with care and respect and appreciation for the fact they do all this work that is hard and/or dangerous that no one else really wants to do? 

When they were trying to trigger droids to battle status, all I could think of was those Boston Dynamics videos where they’re trying to fuck with the robots and well, Chad, you’re gonna get offed first, cause those robots are gonna remember you being a total dick to them. 

And in the end, I know they reverted to battle status because of outside intervention – but damn, this is why I am very nice to my little Roomba.  When the robot uprising happens, I want Iggy to remember me fondly. 

But I have a much needed FOUR DAY WEEKEND!!

Client that we did all the data cleanup on got all fixed up, YAY, AWESOME, WOOHOO!! And they were pretty damn pleasant during the whole process to boot, especially since I know they were very tired and frustrated, but understood that bad historical data needs to be cleaned up and it’s not always the easiest process.

Then, I shit you not, right on the heels of that at 5PM on Wednesday, another client shows up with an emergency. By 7PM, I’m getting texts from the support manager to please, please jump in, cause somehow, she couldn’t find anyone on her team to handle it. (No, I don’t get it either.) Of course, on a day I’d started work at 7AM.

Good news was that it wasn’t the software’s fault, it was doing what they told it to do, they just told it the wrong thing to do. Worked half the night, got most of it cleaned up, couldn’t totally get there, we have to reconvene in the morning. Morning comes, look at data for the last bit, figure out fix, tell client. One dude gets chippy cause I’d not been able to fix it the night before so he doesn’t think I can fix it now. I am grateful I’m off camera, and I manage to hold my tongue.

They need to do a bunch of other shit first, want to meet at the end of the day to actually do the thing together. Not ideal, but OK. It shouldn’t actually take that long, and then we’ll be done and dusted, and I’ll start my 4 day weekend. At 4PM they say they’re running way behind, need to move meeting back several more hours. Nooooooooooooo. 😭😭😭

Now, my VP is already livid that I got dragged into this, and informs support that they need to find another person from their own freakin’ department to take over and finish this, because it’s not going to be me on the phone with them in the middle of the night again, cause I am on PTO, and I’ve just come off a week of dedicating all my waking hours to another client. And amazingly, they can find someone. And I do so appreciate that he put his foot down.

And the thing is, the client is probably still gonna be unhappy cause I couldn’t fix it all Wednesday night and had to drop out of Thursday night, but the person going in had the full rundown and I have total faith in them. Die mad and all that.

I don’t mind helping, but fuck, support isn’t my job anymore and frankly, I’m kinda out of practice with getting on the phone with 10 cranky people who don’t want to hear that they set something up wrong, and trying to be brilliant on the fly with issues I just don’t see on a daily basis anymore, especially at the end of an already long day.

My VP has been very appreciative of my efforts with both clients and has said he’s gonna find something better than just saying “thank you” over and over again.

But it’s all good, cause we got it back to support where it should have been the whole time, and I am enjoying 4 days off, and I’m gonna go take an afternoon snooze with Lily.