Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

I should probably stay away from the news in general.

All I have for the Ukrainian people is this, and I say it with all my heart: Fuck ’em up.

To the people in power in the international community who can do something but are just sitting around watching: Fuck you.

I get that no one wants to actively participate – fine, get them more weapons, now. I’m hardly the warmonger of my younger days, but we at least owe them the means to defend themselves.

And then we have the CDC just deciding that the pandemic is over. It’s such a slap in the face to everyone who has actually *tried* and put forth effort and sacrifice to end this shit. “Oh, but you can still stay home or wear a mask if you want” – yeah, but I don’t WANT to, and I’d like to have us in a situation where I legit do not HAVE to – and I don’t think this approach is going to get us there.

I’ll be happy to be wrong about this, but I think it’s going to fuel another surge within a month, which may or may not overwhelm the hospital system, which means it’s going to be that much longer before we can snuff this out.

This idea that the elderly, disabled, immunocompromised, and kids under 5 can just hide away and we can pretend they don’t exist is seriously fucked up.

My county has amazingly gone from High Community Transmission to Low Community Levels with the stroke of a fucking pen.

This morning, from the county:

This evening, from the CDC:

So, as long as we’re not clogging up the hospitals, the CDC et al does not give a shit how many people get sick.

Oh, you’re elderly, disabled, immunocompromised, or under the age of 5 and need your community to keep masking up a little while longer so we can get these case numbers really knocked down so it’s safe for you to be out and about? Well, sucks to be you.

Get an email, bonus payday is Monday, the last “supplemental” payday in February.

Except, that’s not a thing at our company.

They literally uploaded the 2022 supplemental pay calendar to the internal website 2 minutes before sending the email. Like we can’t see version history in SharePoint documents.

They created a whole damn new pay schedule rather than just saying they fucked up.

Putin is invading Ukraine and I guess we’re just letting it happen. We’ve just abandoned the Ukrainian people. I know I don’t feel good about that. These people shouldn’t have to be getting instructions on how to make molotov cocktails to go up against tanks. I get that no one wants to get in a fucking land war in Eastern Europe, but JFC, “Good luck with that” shouldn’t be the worldwide response.

Here in the US, the CDC is ditching current mask guidance for IDK, “Do whatever the fuck you want, we don’t care” I guess. They say it’s going to take hospital admissions/capacity into account and such – yeah, let’s make the guidance more complicated. What we had was fine. Substantial/High – mask up. Low/Moderate – up to you. Very simple, but I guess it highlights the fact that 95% of the country is still in high transmission status and the admin has failed with its vaccination only strategy. But if no one is wearing masks, I guess Covid is over.

And an incredibly small and selfish annoyance – we made our numbers for bonuses at work and we were supposed to get those today. It is not in my bank account. I was just gonna chuck it into savings, so it’s not like I’m bouncing checks or anything, but FFS, when you say it will be with the last February payroll, it should be there.

It’s gonna be a hard day with many more to come. If you need to turn off the news, do it.

One down, 2 1/2 days to go. Early in and early out today. I WILL BE SMART AND THINGS WILL WORK!

In exciting news for other workplaces – our local Starbucks is having a union election!! I am so excited for them – with Virginia being all Right to Work and generally anti-union, I didn’t expect it to happen.

Everyone should have a union – individuals shouldn’t have to go up against a corporation – it’s good to have an organized group that has your back. Pretty much everywhere I’ve worked in the past 30 years needed a union and none of them had it, so I get really happy for anyone who has a chance at getting one.

I’d really like more white collar staff jobs unionize – I don’t want others to have to put up with the crap I did over my career. Maybe someone could have stepped in and said, “No, you don’t need to have the books closed in 5 days – the shareholders can wait an extra day or two.” Or “You need to staff up the department properly because these people aren’t going to work 50+ hours a week with no additional compensation, and no more cage matches to get PTO.”

Even good workplaces can benefit from a union – they help *keep* them good places to work.

You have a great day – and support folks who are unionizing.

So, started with missing the developer demo.

Then the engineering all hands meeting, where the VP tried and failed to explain again why we’re changing the department name. (Something to do with the fact that there are non-engineers in the engineering department. I still do not see the need.)

Then finally on to testing, which turned into beating my head into the wall. Tested the exact same thing last week, different version, no issues. Today? This version? Put data in screen A, it should show up in Screen B and Screen C. Except it won’t show up in Screen C and I cannot figure out WHY. Is it legit broken? Did I fuck up one of the dozen fucking settings between Screen A & C? Am I just losing my goddamn mind? Who knows. I’ve sent it to the folks in Makati to see if they can get it to work tonight.

I mean, of course immediately after getting a nice public compliment, I immediately acquire Teh Dumb for the day.

I am going to spend the rest of the evening trying very hard not to think lest I sprain something.

The weekend was not at all restful, and I didn’t sleep particularly well last night and the ol’ anxiety has decided to kick in this morning to boot.  Spending a good 5 minutes trying to figure out what THAT NOISE was and finally figuring out that it wasn’t from something in the house and was in fact a woodpecker nearby didn’t help.

And we’re off to a rip roaring start today at work.  Someone on the other side of the world sent a meeting invite at 1AM for a 7:30AM meeting today – I think you can guess who missed that.  It was just a developer demo and it’s been recorded, and I doubt they realistically expected me to be there, but yeesh.  (The hazards of a holiday here but not there.)  And it’s for a feature I didn’t even know we were doing, YAY.

So I’m starting the week feeling like I missed a month and not just a day.  Just told my other US based partner in crime that all our holidays need to be worldwide.

But, it’s a short week.  And we get paid, which is good cause I’m feeling super broke right now.  (I know I am not broke, but I am *feeling* broke, IYKWIM.) It will be good to add to the “if shit goes wrong” cushion in the bank account.  While I have no rational reason to think I’m going to be laid off from this job, it’s one of those perpetual concerns that just never really goes away.  This despite getting a really nice public shout out from one of our team leads, with a “what she said” followup from my supervisor.  Still always looking at the budget going, “If I get shitcanned, how long before I have to sell my house…”

But, onwards and upwards and all that happy horseshit.

They did not have my beloved baskets. Nor the drill kit… They did have the drill & accessories separately, and the accessories have a nice carry case, but the drill doesn’t, so I now also have a little tool bag for it.

They also had a little “home project kit” – hammer, ratchet screwdriver, allen wrenches and other miscellaneous stuff that is handy *and* has a case so things shouldn’t go wandering. (Wandering tools is a real problem for me.) And when I opened it, I discovered the screwdriver is a battery powered electric screwdriver!

What they did not have was screws. I figured they wouldn’t have a wall full of drawers of screws, but at least like a box of assorted screws, but no.

So, Target became Target/Walmart/Gas Station/Car Wash and frankly, now I need a nap.

I realize I probably should have just gone to Walmart in the first place, but it’s so chaotic I try to avoid it at all costs.

This is my 3rd busy season *not* in support and the novelty has not worn off. We got floating holidays in lieu of MLK Jr & Presidents’ Day, but there is a lot to be said for taking a day off when everyone has a day off – it’s nice to not come back to a bunch of missed work. (Also not missing the “no PTO in January/February” crap – that department SO needs a union.)

And – grocery shopping on a weekday at 10AM! Where I discovered that Sinex saline spray is age restricted! My level of confusion as the clerk came over to punch in my age – I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what super adult thing I bought. This crazy dry winter has just done a number on my nose, not helped by the fact that last night when I went to bed, I didn’t put the humidifier on full blast. It’s bad enough that my nose seems to be perpetually stopped up, then we have the bonus of “is it winter or is it Covid?” (So far, it is winter.)

The porch post construction continues as yesterday I discovered that the wood glue hadn’t set because it was so fucking cold. So, brought the pieces in, glued and clamped 3 sides and decided it would also need screws to boot. Guess who doesn’t own a cordless drill?* So, my next trip out is to Target – I’m very glad it occurred to me to check their website cause my first thought was that I’d have to go back to the hardware store, which is twice as far away. But, I know exactly what I’m getting and it has a carry case and can be used as an electric screwdriver to boot!

Yeah, I’m definitely getting old when I get excited about a cordless drill. AND THEY APPEAR TO HAVE MY FAVORITE LINED BASKETS BACK IN STOCK. If they’re really there, I’m clearing them out, LOL.

Jesus, I’m gonna have to get a big cart.

If you have today off, enjoy! If you’re working, I hope it’s a very quiet day for you.

* There is likely an ancient corded drill in the basement – but where it would be and the location of any drill bits is 110% unknown. How do I not own my own drill? I do not know.

Cause this weekend has already been chaotic as hell.

Went to the hardware store, looked at the boards and realized that oh yeah, an inch isn’t an inch when it comes to lumber. I literally sat my ass on the floor with my measuring tape, the boards, and my graph paper and pencil madly re-doing the math. But, I got it right.

Then about halfway through the construction, my brother says, “Did I tell you DND is at 3 today, not this evening?” No, no he did not. When I tell you the massive mental reset I had to do…holy shit my old, cranky, likely ADHD brain did not enjoy that.

But the post will get finished today, and it’s probably for the best that I didn’t take out the temp stabilizing piece before the gale warnings had passed.

But DND was very fun – we’ve only done it twice and yesterday was not just fun, but hilarious. We utterly failed our initial stealth check, and Matt just starts making marching band noises… We then had a streak where we couldn’t hit the bad guys for anything – at one point Will said, “So, we’re just basically doing interpretive dance with weapons right now.” That broke me – I was laughing so hard I was crying. And I asked the best question of the day when we got into town – “Let’s ask the *kids* if they’ve seen anything weird.” (They had!) We’re tipping the hell out of every barmaid we encounter and my brother is DM’ing and said “At some point, we’re gonna have to talk about y’all being drunk on the job.”

Was it the smartest thing we could have done? IDK – we’re well past our Omicron peak here, we’re vaxxed and boosted and test regularly and it was just 4 of us – but my lord, it was a good 3 hours, and it’s not like I’ll be going around breathing on people for the next week. (And I did a test before we went and I have a followup test on my calendar.) I know we’re not gonna see normal-normal for a while, but some very small, selective, spaced out meetups feel reasonable, and whoa it was good for my mental health.

With all the fun and games and nonsense so far since Friday, my to-do list for the house is an utter *shambles* so I guess I should go take care of that.

You have a great day.