Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

But like, my usual up between 6-630 and start at 7-730 early. Not wake up at 0530 just because. Can’t even blame Lily, she was happily snoozing when I rolled over and was just, “Oh, guess I’m up.”

Speaking of the LilyMonster, she is showing a tiny bit of her age. Nothing terrible, just noticed this weekend a tiny bit of grey on her tail, one white whisker, and she’s doing a lot of math making the jump from the little table next to the dresser up to the dresser for her water & snacks in the bedroom.

So, I moved the food & water down to the little table. (It used to be there, I think Moxley must have been eating it so I moved it at some point.) Made a big production of showing it to her, so there were no WTF? moments when she hopped on the little table. Bonus for her: the little table is deeper than the dresser, so a bit more room to eat.

So, what did she do? Jumped on the little table, looked at me, and immediately leaped to the dresser and stared at me, LOL. Had to have a little discussion about how accessibility is good for everyone.

Now does this mean I can put things on the top of the dresser again? Oh no, unless I make it a bookshelf – anything else, she’ll get up there and knock it to the floor, LOL.

Well, time to go get a jump on the day and be on the lookout for the email saying “You can leave early on Friday for the holiday weekend” – it probably won’t show up until Wednesday or Thursday, but I’ll be looking for it all week, LOL.

You have a great day.

I didn’t do any office work yesterday, mostly out of spite and the Pokemon Go Fest finale.

And I don’t particularly want to do any office work today, either, again, mostly out of spite. So I’m just trying to figure out what the bare minimum is that I can do today to make tomorrow somewhat easier.

I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that my other side of the world coworkers have probably already had their holiday weekend trashed given that one of them was texting me on Friday night about the problem that popped up.*

The problem is two-fold – the item that they want done by COB tomorrow – a day and a half turnaround time wasn’t adequate and the team lead knows this and still agrees to this shit. And then there is the item that popped up Friday that will need to be tested tomorrow as well if we’re gonna get it to the client by Wednesday, unless my overseas partners in crime work over their holiday.

So, I’m looking at roughly 2 to 2 1/2 days of work that will need to be done in a day, or my coworkers holiday weekend being totally trashed. Both completely suck.

I am at least taking a moment to check my email and see what’s going on before I go to the trouble of setting up the laptop for the day. Maybe something has been pushed out a day…

Huh. Nothing has been pushed out, but the dev has called a meeting to brainstorm other ways to fix the Friday problem, cause it would appear that the only practical solution is to do the thing we told the client to do, that they won’t do. So, it sounds like I won’t have much of anything to test on that tomorrow – and hey, holiday weekend for coworkers still intact.

Still may do a bit on the COB tomorrow thing, because that was already a potential issue before everything else exploded, but it’s not a must right this second. I think I’ll just get my templates setup so tomorrow it’s just a matter of dumping the data into my spreadsheets. That seems reasonable, if vaguely annoying.

So, tomorrow is still probably gonna be a bit of a shitshow, but not as bad as I’d anticipated.

Onwards and upwards and all that happy horseshit, LOL.

* Not because I didn’t stay late – it wouldn’t have made a difference at that point in time.

Seriously, I hope it’s as pretty where you are as it is here. Sunny, warm, low humidity, and a generally good day to drive with the windows down and singing loudly.

Saturday errands all run, farmers market goodies all washed and chopped and whatnot. Couple weeks back I got a lever-chopper for veggies. Holy shit, I should have done that years ago. Only used it twice so far, but it’s been 100% worth it. Onions? Peel, quarter, 4 whacks – bag o’ diced onions. Carrots today? Wash, peel, cut to fit the insert – half a dozen whacks – bag o’ salad crunchies. And the pieces go in the dishwasher.

Like, I can actually consider making potato salad and/or goulash again, because it does potatoes, and the last time I made either one of those, dicing the potatoes took FOREVER.

And now I am going to run back to the market, cause of course I didn’t realize we were out of gallon ziploc bags and we need them like, now. At least it’s only 5 minutes away, and I can also grab the cold cuts I should have gotten the first trip as well, LOL.

You have a spectacular Saturday!!

All my talk about healthy work habits, and now I gotta work this weekend, LMAO.

Day starts with, “Can you test X, and oh by the way, needs to be done COB Monday” – I say I’ll try my best, but no guarantees, cause I like to be realistic about things, and a day and a half turnaround is bullshit.

Halfway through the morning, things start hitting the fan. We changed something for a client (I don’t think we should have done it, but not my call) and it’s not automatically cleaning up the past data. We tell them “You would need to do X and it will clean up the past data” – “We can’t.” (They can, but, whatever.)

Now, I didn’t test this thing, but whoever did fucked up. And the team on the other side of the world has a holiday on Monday. And the client wants a fix by Wednesday.

Now, I didn’t stay late today, cause dammit, it’s my half-day Friday, and I had shit to do outside of work today, and I’m maintaining a few boundaries. As the account manager was making noises about meeetings this afternoon, I just said, “I’m out this afternoon, I’ve got a hard stop at 1, sorry.”

So, tomorrow, gonna do the shit that needed to be done for Monday, and clear the decks to be ready to test this new thing. Otherwise, Monday is gonna be a shitshow.

And while I definitely don’t *want* to work this weekend, it will be far better than doing 12+ hours on Monday. But we are NOT making a habit of this.

But September is gonna be awesome. The four weekends after Labor Day? Outdoor arts and crafts fairs!! Our little local one, market fair at Mount Vernon, one down in Occoquan on the river, and a big one in the artsy part of the county. Yes, I’m gonna go to ALL of them!

Yes, I am a middle aged white lady, and I am very excited about these.

That stupid “quiet quitting” thing is still bouncing around and it is still bugging me. Some columnist at WaPo chimed in on how it’s bad and a sign of disengagement, blah, blah. I think we’re dealing with a very unhealthy definition of engagement.

Look, when I switched departments, the change in workload was like night and day. And while there have been a couple stretches of too much to do, I’ve held pretty firm with just doing my job and doing it well, especially after the nonsense this past spring.

And I consider myself very engaged with my job. I like my work and I care that it’s done right. That is engagement. Am I really engaged with the company as a whole? Not really – I mean, they’re here to make money, they don’t particularly care about me, and I don’t really care about our core values and whatnot as long as they’re not “hurt and kill people.” I’ll just quietly get my job done, and that’s FINE.

And guess what? Putting the brakes on excessive hours hasn’t hurt the company. I hear rumblings that my cohorts on the other side of the world are overworked right now – but that is not really my problem. I don’t say that to be a jackass, but I am not responsible for handing out work assignments, and maybe they need to put their collective feet down. And honestly – I know from experience – no one notices if you’re working too much anyway, so don’t do it.

So, be a paycheck player! Act your wage! Work to the rule! Get a union!

And have a great day.

And looks like we’ve got 4 more months of student debt pause, and then 10K off. And something with interest, but I’m not really clear on it and I think it only applies to Income Driven Repayment (IDR) plans.

Do I think Biden could have and should have done more? Hell, yes. But fuck, I’ll take it and keep yelling. (I will say that I am certain Elizabeth Warren would have had this done and dusted a year ago.)

In the past 5 years alone, I’ve paid $74,000 in taxes. I like to think I’m getting 10K back, and helping 6 other people. And even if I wasn’t eligible, I’d still be happy for other folks. I’ve been through a lot of shit in my life, and I don’t want others to have to go through that, cause I’m not a fucking monster.

My one big remaining question is how they are going to make sure that servicers apply the 10K in a manner that actually benefits the borrower the most.

I also find it hilarious that Nelnet has crashed, even if I do need to get into it and check something.

Did that seem chipper? It’s a stretch this morning, cause a certain kitty cat decided it was very important to let me know that my sunshine alarm had started to light up at 5:30 AM. (Just like it is supposed to.) And then got a case of the zoomies. And as such, I ended up hauling myself out of bed at 5:45.

She’s happily noshing on breakfast while I’m wondering if I stab a straw into my arm, can I just pour the coffee directly into my bloodstream.

Another fun thing this morning is Penfed’s website is all kinds of fucked up. Seems my username is all caps now, had to reset the password and still took a couple tries to get in. There’s a little “try our new experience” box on the website, and I suspect those upcoming changes are the culprit. Wheeeee!

In other dumb shit, the White House has a week before student loan repayments start and they are leaning towards canceling up to 10K for people making under 125K. Tell me you have no concept of the current student loan situation without telling me you have no concept of the student loan situation. You can contact the White House via Resistbot and tell them how damn useless this is. When it asks “Congress/State/Whatever” – just answer President. You can also use the White House contact form.

Honestly, if they won’t cancel all of it, but really want to make an impact – do 50K and drop interest to zero.

Yes, this administration has gotten a lot of good legislation through in the last couple months. Little to none of which have an immediate and tangible impact on Americans. I think there are more than a few swing voters out there that would think, “Hmmm, Dems really helped me with my student loans” when it comes time to vote. Hell, maybe even a few Republicans.

But, Biden et al seem determined to shoot themselves in the foot. Repeatedly.

Well, time to go make the money to pay the student loans.

If you saw the last post and can’t find it now, it’s cause it wasn’t meant for publication, LOL. I’d been looking at my budget and panicking cause I needed to cut $300 a month based on this months numbers, totally forgetting that I had a couple “once a year” pricey bits in there, and things are actually OK and I just needed to write it out to cement it in my head.

The rain this afternoon has me so absolutely unmotivated to do anything whatsoever. I’m good with just quietly existing today. And then I wonder why the house is messy. SO WEIRD HOW THAT WORKS.

Well, I’m gonna go be a sloth the rest of the afternoon, because life is short and it sounds nice.

It’s a lovely day out there, sunny and not too hot, perfect farmers market morning. Got all the salad stuffs and more of the amazing sea salt chocolate chip shortbread, so my day got off to a good start.

I was reading a thread on Twitter the other day, the tl;dr is that Covid causes brain damage and health practitioners are seeing a LOT of it.* Then it dawned on me that this plus six years of barely acknowledged, much less treated, collective trauma is probably why so many folks out there seem more than a bit feral these days. Even today at the farmers market, I saw a guy get whiffy in the parking lot over a lady who apparently wasn’t walking fast enough to get out of his way. So many folks are short-tempered, oblivious, or both.

Some of it is the fact that you can’t help it if you’re cognitively impaired – if you even truly realize it. Think about how many asymptomatic cases there have been or mild cases that folks may not have even realized was Covid that resulted in their brain getting fucked up and they don’t even know it.

And some of it is just that people are fucking assholes and have been forever.

I’m so freakishly grateful that I can do anything even semi-normal. Like, probably to the point where it kinda weirds people out. I still seriously miss being able to have a sit down meal at a restaurant without it being a whole mess of risk assessment and stress – but I am still very happy for the things I can do. Farmers market, street fairs, even masking up and dashing in & out of Starbucks.

Just try your best to be kind, folks.

* I know it’s not really new information, but it just kinda brought it back into focus.

Showed up a touch early this year – no doubt because we’ve had a break in the heat and you can just sense the season just barely starting to change – little cooler at night, little darker when the alarm goes off, and the air just smells a little different.

Combine this with this unending plague, and vague feeling of being stuck that I can’t quite put my finger on, and you’ve got a gentle wave of melancholy that showed up over the course of the afternoon.

But, I’m gonna just lean into it and let it come and go, and remember that spring will come again, it always does.