Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

I hope you have a great day with all your favorite food and get to spend time with people you love.

I do wish it didn’t have genocidal origins, but while we can’t change the past, today you can hop over to Twitter and search on Indigenous Art and find some great artists you can support. I have a couple favorites in NDN Silver and Seed & Stone Beadwork.

Despite it’s seriously problematic origins, I love Thanksgiving, and one reason I love it is that it’s really for everyone. Doesn’t matter if your dinner table has turkey, tamales, fry bread, lumpia, butter chicken, pho, or lasagna – everyone gets to celebrate a day of food and family.

Have a lovely day, everyone.

We have smoked gouda, hickory smoked cheddar, brie, Tennessee whiskey bella vitano and black pepper bella vitano. Both the bella vitanos are gooooooooood and it’s taking everything I have to not just start gorging myself. We also have 3 kinds of salami, and I have managed to not open that package yet.

Still kicking myself a bit on the turkey breast as it is a deli turkey breast (apparent from the photo on the website, but it Did. Not. Register. at all when I ordered it) – perfectly fine, but also not a Thanksgiving turkey breast, LOL. And there were no heating instructions on the container, so I looked it up…

The Turkey Breast is fully cooked and ready to enjoy. Take the meat out of the refrigerator to stand for at least 30 min before serving. Refrigerate unused portions immediately. We recommend that you do not heat the Turkey Breast – made to enjoy right from the refrigerator.

It does go on to give quick heat up instructions, but yes, my dumbass ordered a cold turkey. 🤣

My brother has zero qualms about it, he is confident it will be good and is already excited about the leftovers. I am trying not to beat my head into the wall. I really, really hope it’s good, cause I am very excited about the convenience so far. If it’s terrible, lesson learned and I’ll see if I can order one through the butcher shop so I don’t have to go to a half dozen stores to find one like last year.

I am also resisting the urge to go try the turkey NOW, because in all my planning for tomorrow, I didn’t think about dinner tonight.

But, we have a turkey and beer.

Pro tip: If you are ordering from Honey Baked Ham for a holiday, always pay online when you order vs pay when you pickup.

While you won’t be able to add any extras when you get there, the prepaid line moves way faster.

I didn’t even get snippy with anyone today – folks will figure out their shit on their own. The realizations may be slow to arrive, but they’ll get there.

Everything that needed to get done today, got done.

My brother was kind enough to clear the fridge, so that was the last housekeeping bit that needed to be done around the house for Thanksgiving.

I do not understand how I can be this exhausted after a whopping 2 day workweek, but I am not sure I’ll even be up until 11 tonight.

But I am off work for the next 6 days. YAY!

Oh yeah, today is just…awesome.

Soft deadline task out the window, working on two hard deadline items that need to be done COB Tuesday, and I am out the rest of the week & Monday.

Then, convo with a dev:

Dev: “Oh you sent over a lot of bugs yesterday!”
Kinda my job, but yeah, nothing terrible, just some UI stuff.
Dev: “Well, I’m still working on that app, so you’ll still be finding things wrong”
Um…it was marked as development done…
Me: “Should we go ahead and set this dev task back to In Progress instead of Done since you’re still working on it?”
Dev: “Well, no, cause then QC wouldn’t start testing”

BUT IT’S NOT DONE AND I DON’T HAVE A WAY TO EASILY DISTINGUISH IF SOMETHING IS A BUG OR YOU’RE JUST NOT DONE AND IF THE DEV TASK IS MARKED DONE, I’M GONNA THINK IT’S A BUG AND YOU’RE GONNA GET ALL FREAKED OUT AGAIN.

My actual response was, “Oh, OK, I’ll just hold off testing while you’re still working on it” and that task has simply been moved to the backburner until such time as I can verify it’s actually done. There is some nuance I’ve missed here, but I am too tired to figure it out.

Then another “go in circles” convo with a product manager that I am just letting go, cause it will eventually click that the issue needs to be addressed, and it’s my Friday and I’m just not in a place where I should be pushing anything – they’ll figure it out.

Only a couple more hours of fun!

And work is gonna be a slooooooog today. I’m not working on anything particularly difficult today, but it’s feature testing, which isn’t my favorite compared to defect testing – so much of feature testing is “we don’t know what we don’t know” and trying to figure out, “how would the client try to break this new shiny thing?”

The target due date was today, but that’s going out the window since development is still making changes, but I’ve hit the critical points of getting the data from point A over to point B, adding more data and bringing it back to point A – and that actually works! (Not without a few hiccups on the point B side that held things up a bit, but it works now!) So, “missing” the date isn’t the end of the world here, especially since the big stuff is OK and overall, testing of all the new features on the next version doesn’t have to be totally done until the end of January. But still, oof, I’ve technically missed a very soft deadline.

On the Turkey day front, I am stressing over the stupidest thing. We’re getting a turkey breast from Honey Baked and now I’m having all kinds of second thoughts. What if it’s terrible? What if it’s not terrible, BUT JUST ALL WRONG?! My brother has pointed out that we will still have stuffing, potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, crescent rolls, petit fours, and a fuckton of cheese and salami. But still, WHAT IF I’VE RUINED THANKSGIVING BECAUSE I WANTED TO SLEEP IN??

Seriously, brains are fucking stupid.

And our county Covid cases are ratcheting upwards yet again. And at the current trajectory, we’ll be back in high transmission by the start of the month… And with everyone deciding that the pandemic is over and traveling all over creation for the holiday…$1 says we hit it sooner. I know we all want the damn thing to be done with – I know I do – but pretending it’s over is just making it worse. We don’t seem to be able to do what we need to do to break the transmission chains, and it’s just so depressing.

My heart goes out to everyone in Waukesha. It seems like the kind of town where everyone goes to the Christmas parade, and I can’t fathom how traumatized they must be.

I hate living in a country where I have to wonder if I’m walking into a potentially target rich environment when I leave the house, whether it’s some jackass with a gun, or a car, or an unvaccinated plague-carrying twat.

I realize no life is without risks, but my lord, here it’s always fucking something, and we just never seem to get a break from it.

I do believe the Thanksgiving shopping is done! We have enough cheese for a small army. The only thing I couldn’t find was plum chutney for the cheese plate, but I do have the Bacon Onion Jam, which is money. (Worth the special trip to the Hallmark store to grab it – and I may have gotten some Bourbon Onion jam, too.)

To go with the cheeses, we also have 3 kinds of salami, 3 kinds of crackers and there will be cheesy bacon ranch dip and Fritos.

Turkey pickup is Wednesday at 1PM, and dessert is arriving today according to the tracking – got a box of “harvest” petit fours from Swiss Colony – butter rum, apple spice, and pumpkin pie. (We never go through a whole pie, but we can snack of petit fours like no ones business.)

I also have a nice bottle of Chardonnay for the day – what can I say, the lady doing the tastings at Safeway was very nice, and I couldn’t have a sample, go “Ooh, that’s good!” and then not get a bottle, LOL. (On sale to boot!)

Well, last night. My brother has been taking me through all the Marvel movies during the pandemic and last night we watched Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. WHAT A FUN MOVIE!!

You don’t have to know anything about the Marvel universe to enjoy it. It is visually STUNNING. the entire cast is fantastic – Simu Liu, Awkafina, Tony Leung (OMG), Meng’er Zhang (needed more screen time) Michelle Yeoh, and Ben Kingsley, who once again delighted me. (He needs more comedic roles, he’s funny as hell.)

It’s a fun, escapist romp and once again, Marvel has done that thing where you look the villain and go, “Yeahhhhhh, I understand why they’re that way.” Though like pretty much every Marvel villain – THERAPY. THERAPY WOULD HAVE HELPED YOU.

And I know there was some, “Um, first Asian Marvel hero and it’s basically a martial arts movie?” – BUT IT’S REALLY GOOD.

In not fun Marvel movie shit, the county is back in substantial transmission – and it’s my fault. You see, I got a new curling iron, cause with my shorter haircut, I can’t style it by putting it up in a bun and letting it dry that way to make it wavy. And I tried it out yesterday morning and it’s great and works and my arms aren’t dead by the end of it – and now I have nowhere to go again.

When we finally dropped into moderate transmission I wanted to see the numbers in moderate for a week before hitting up my bar and hanging with other people indoors. And at the one week mark, I also got my booster shot and the pharmacist said, “two weeks and you’re boosted!” and dammit, she’s right and all, and here a week later, we’re not in moderate anymore…

Being responsible fucking sucks and I am kinda over it. I’d like to think that booster shots being open to all will help, but honestly, we’ve had vaccines available to all since April and the county still only has 65% of the population fully vaccinated – that number just isn’t going to get any higher at this point.

The willingly unvaccinated jackasses are running around acting like they’re fucking martyrs, and yet in the six months that I’ve been fully vaccinated, NO ONE has asked for my vaccination status other than my employer in exchange for two floating holidays.

If people just gave half a fuck about other people…