Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

And I hope you had a nice Passover! And your Ramadan fasts are going well! And Happy Vaishakha! Been a big weekend for the godly folks out there and I hope it’s been lovely for you.

Around here, it’s brunch and candy day! Yes, I still put together Easter baskets, CAUSE IT’S FUN. AND CANDY.

My technical woes continue. Called the cable company to have them try to pair the cable card one more time before I go exchange it, cause no harm in giving it one more try – no love. They did offer to send a tech with a new card today, but I’ve just got too many little things going on and it’s no big deal to run to the shop at lunch tomorrow.

And my TV has no sound this morning… So I’ve got a full power cycle going and we’ll see if that does it.

HAHAHA, I am an idiot, my TV did have sound the whole time, the live stream I put on from Monterey Bay Aquarium just doesn’t have any music on the weekends, so I now am running their “12 hours of coral reef footage” that has background music.

And despite forgetting to take the hashbrowns out of the freezer last night, an hour or so in the fridge seems to have done the trick, whew. While they can still be frozen for the casserole, it’s way easier to mix when they’re defrosted.

So, the hashbrown casserole is in the oven, I’ve got a very large coffee and pretty fish on the TV and once the coffee is done, it’s gonna be mimosa time, WOOHOO!

And whatever your Sunday plans are, I hope you have a lovely day. Here’s a Lily!

And of course, how could I forget her Easter Lily shot?

Got a replacement cable card to put in the TiVo today, called and activated it, call dropped after I power cycled everything – my dumb ass had my phone on WiFi calling and the reboot took down the modem – waited an hour or so to see if things refreshed after the power cycle, but nope.

Call back – the card was activated but not paired. And they can’t pair it. Fails every time. Call escalated – same result.

“We can send out a technician…” No, I am not taking time off work for that, I will just get another cable card and try again. (Waiting for a tech to bring me a new card is not going to be faster than my running over to the shop and getting a replacement.)

“Well, I have seen these things resolve themselves with time” Not if the card won’t pair in the first place.

So, all streaming services for me until at least Monday…

Got the car into the SUPER POWER X-TREME car wash and the car is actually blue again! Granted, it will be covered in pollen again in under 24 hours, but for the moment, it’s very clean and shiny!

And the LilyMonster has gone almost 31 hours without booting any food, so that’s awesome – and she’s had a small snack around every 2 hours – appetite is still good, YAY.

I had to run up to the cable store today to exchange some equipment, and the shopping center its in has a ton of good restaurants and today would have been such a great day to just take an hour and have a nice sit down lunch – but alas, we are back in high community transmission. With of course, the CDC saying the Community Level is Low – which is wrong, it should be Medium, and guess what – they only update once a week on Thursdays, so we’ll have a week of extra bad guidance. Awesome.

In silly stuff, I am so glad someone mention that T-Mobile had the free MLB.tv deal. I can watch ALL the Padres games with no blackout issues cause I’m way out their market. And if a game is being broadcast here, I no longer feel that pressure to watch cause we don’t get a lot of them. And I do love being able to just put on pretty much any game from any team and just have the soothing tones of baseball announcers in the background as I do things around the house or do yoga.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

And things are OK. Abdominal exam showed no abnormalities and they suspect the upset stomach is part of the whole UTI/fighting it off.

She was a bit dehydrated (tracks) and they asked if I wanted to get her some subq fluids, even though she’s drinking and I said yes, cause it won’t hurt anything and while she’s a good water drinker, might as well get her watered up. And an anti-emetic just in case the successful second breakfast was a fluke.

We’ve been home about a half hour, she’s had a snack, and kept it down!

So, fingers crossed that we’ve got a good and settled tummy – but she’ll also be getting small quantities to eat to fend off any “eat too much too fast” cause she likes to do that, too.

And she was very, very good for them, and they apparently got a cute picture and it’s gonna go on their Facebook page.

And you’re still here, well done!

My local Starbucks lost it’s union election. :( Guess it was a combination of A) Starbucks shitty anti-union comms that probably involved threats, and/or B) folks didn’t see the value in being in a union.

If A, shame on Starbucks, and if B – maybe if the union isn’t for you, why deny that to your coworkers? I just hope corporate doesn’t decide to retaliate. Deciding to have a union election is a brave thing to do, and they shouldn’t be punished for it. I wanted them to win so badly – I just want everyone to have better workplace protections and with Youngkin in office here, they’re not going to get it on a state level.

At my own workplace, the team in Makati is on Easter holidays, but one emailed me & my US partner in crime to make sure we knew one particular bug was assigned to us (we knew) and ready to test. This bug isn’t due until May… Does it have to get into the next special build and need to be tested sooner? There is no corresponding bug for it with the special build, no one has mentioned it going into the special build, no note of it anywhere, so…IDK. We have plenty that is due much sooner, but I have a feeling come Monday it’s going to be, “Oh, this needs to be done right now.”

And miss Lily is gonna have to go back to the vet. She threw up a couple times last night, and I took up her food cause I thought maybe it was a one off where she just got into a little cycle of “throw up, have unsettled stomach, eat again too soon, throw up again” and I thought if she had some time to let her tummy settle back down she’d be OK, but she just had some breakfast and threw up again. So, I’ll be calling the vet when they open and see if we can get her in for a quick look-see and maybe some anti-nausea meds.

Could be the UTI she’s fighting off, could be a delayed reaction to the antibiotic injection, hopefully it’s not something really bad. Other than the puking, she’s acting fine – appetite is fine, water drinking is fine (she’s splashing around in her fountain as I type,) and she’s chirpy & bright eyed. I just want my sweet, goofy girl to be OK. She’s almost 13, which isn’t a kitten anymore, but it’s not that old either.

If you’re inclined to think some good health thoughts for my little sweetie, it would be appreciated.

ETA: Vet appointment scheduled for later today. She was banging her food dish around as I was on the phone, so when I got off, I gave her a very small amount. It’s been 45 minutes and of course, no barfing.

To the weekend! I half jinxed myself yesterday – got into work and right off the bat found a big hairy issue and spent the better part of the morning trying to figure out why the software responded with, “LOL, fuck you” when I mashed the buttons. Then towards the end of the day, it registered that my to-do spreadsheet had some things due on 4/18 – and the QC spreadsheet (not mine) said 4/14. Mine was right, but there were some “Oh shit!” moments there.

And this morning as I poured my cold brew I realized I don’t really have enough to get me through the whole morning (enough for the moment, but…) and thought I could hit up Starbucks and opened the app and my local store is closed today. Can’t help but wonder if some retaliatory short scheduling happened after they filed for a union election – there have been days when mobile ordering is turned off cause they’ve been short scheduled. The app says they’ll be open again tomorrow – I can’t think Starbucks Corporate would be stupid enough to close the store altogether, but their behavior has been pretty atrocious lately.

For a long time, Starbucks has been known as a fairly decent workplace, and boy are they blowing that with their anti-union bullshit. It’s incredibly disappointing, especially considering the outgoing CEO had a $60 million golden parachute. Just let the stores unionize and be a union friendly employer – it won’t be the end of the fucking world.

[ETA: Realized they are closed today cause the union vote has started. LET’S GO MY BEAUTIFUL BARISTAS AND GET YOU SOME WORKPLACE PROTECTIONS!!!]

Yesterday I did the Easter shop and was reminded that my local Giant has developed a weird habit of taking down 90% of the holiday stuff a week before the holiday. Thank you CVS for actually having Easter candy. (My brother had been at Giant last week and said they were still fully loaded so I don’t think they sold out of everything.) But we have candy and brunch stuff, so it’s all good.

Yes, I am a grown ass adult and I make up Easter baskets for myself and my brother – cause you’re never to damn old for an Easter basket.

Welp, time to go do the thing – my shit is still fairly well under control, so it may be an early in, early out day!

Have an awesome day.

Guess who got off work ON TIME yesterday? Me! I KNOW, IT’S PRETTY RIDICULOUS!

AND!! Last night I realized a big-ish thing I’m working on this week – I CAN ALSO USE THIS TESTING FOR ANOTHER THING NEXT WEEK. Not just reuse the test data, but the actual tests themselves, I can point to these results! YAY!!!!! That little epiphany is going to make life a lot easier in the next week.

Now, am I going to tell Those That Assign The Bugs and Whatnot? No – because even with this time savings, I still have a ton to do, and cannot take on more right now. I’ll let them know I can reuse some of it, and things are on track, but I am not gonna announce, “Oh, I’ve suddenly found an extra 20 some odd hours” cause it’s more “Oh, 20 uncompensated overtime hours I don’t have to work.” I think that’s reasonable.

We’re getting up to the mid-80s today – oh yes, there is gonna be a walk at lunch today, woohoo!

And last night it was warm enough to again sleep on top of the comforter with just a blanket. And Lily stole it again. Woke up a couple times with bare legs cause she had managed to pull it under her, LOL.

Well, it is time to go do the thing, and I am actually jazzed about the day, if for no other reason knowing that I have all my shit under control, a long task in the near future is now a short task, and I should get out on time today and be able to go do the Easter shop while it’s still light outside!

Honestly, been a bit since I felt this way at the start of the workday – it’s overdue and welcome.

You have a great day and I hope you can have that moment where you realize, “Oh, doing X will also cover Y!”

4 day workweek this week, YAY! And who avoided any and all temptation to log on to the work laptop? THIS GAL! Who has managed to not think about work so well this weekend that she has zero idea what she has to do once she does get logged on today? ALSO THIS GAL!

So, while I’m hoping for smooth sailing today – I’m mentally preparing for a shitshow.

Lily appears to have fully forgiven me for the vet yesterday. Lots of snuggling last night, and she full on stole my blanket at one point. (Deserved, I will give her that.)

I finally got around to scheduling my next Covid booster. It’s unsettling the lack of urgency I’ve felt around that, but it’s on the calendar now. I guess it’s just the feeling that nothing I’ve done has mattered as we’re heading into yet another surge. Over two years of staying home, getting takeout, masking up, getting vaccinated – and we’re still here. (I will be forever salty that these vaccines don’t provide sterilizing immunity. So. Salty.)

Well, we are creeping up on 8AM and I am still sitting down here in the living room, so it looks like I am mentally on a “I am not going to stress myself” track today – let’s hope it holds.

You have a great day.

ETA: Logged on, went through all my email and to-do list, and today just might NOT be a shitshow, YAY!! 😊

Lily was supposed to get her teeth cleaned today and I took the day off so I could pick her up as soon as she was ready and just spend the afternoon with her.

Welp, she’s been hiding a UTI and that needs to be cleared up first. Like really hiding it well – general demeanor, eating, drinking, litterbox habits all good. Tech even said when I picked her up that they’re really good at keeping these secrets. So she got a shot of antibiotics, and we’ll have a follow up in a couple weeks and if everything is cleared, schedule the teeth cleaning again.

Now I suddenly have a whole day off and no mad cat to console. (She’s not thrilled about today’s developments but she’s good.)

What to do, what to do?!

And I never want to do this again, thankyouverymuch. On the whole, I think I have handled all this reasonably well considering everything. Yes, I’ve been super angry with it all, but I’ve not been out throwing temper tantrums or telling maskless folks to go fuck themselves. I vent my spleen here and that pretty much handles it.

Taking the various and sundry steps to protect myself and my community hasn’t been a hardship – all of it has been pretty easy. Vaguely annoyed with it all, but on the whole, whatever, it’s fine.

But today, out running errands, it just all got to me and got me really down.

Our cases are trending higher again and we’ll be back to high transmission within a week at this rate, while the CDC is saying all is well.

Maskless folks all over the place, trying to order takeout the poor gal couldn’t hear me well with the mask & ambient noise in the restaurant and I’m apologizing cause I fear I’m yelling to be heard (she was very sweet and understanding and assured me it was OK), and I had kind of a stuffy nose to boot, and it was hard to breathe doing errands and my face was all sweaty and everything just kinda sucked.

And I look around at these folks for whom the pandemic seems to be over and I wonder – do they not know the new CDC guidelines are garbage or do they just not care?

I kinda envy whatever it is they have going on in their heads.