Corner of Bourbon & Division

 Peggy has decided to try to dig furiously in her crate, for reasons best understood by her. As long as she's not trying to chew or rip apart her bed I don't mind, but it's weird. Dig-dig-dig. Scrabble-scrabble-scrabble. I love my weirdo dog. The cats are also weirdos, but right now she is being the queen of weirdos in this household.

I watched Joe Biden's inauguration in bits and bursts throughout the day. It's really hard to watch an inauguration *and* take part in video conference calls, turns out. Who knew? XD It was a nice change from the last inauguration, but didn't feel particularly different to me from most other "normal" inaugurations I've seen, apart from the fact that there was no crowd (pandemie oblige and all that). I caught Garth Brooks singing part of Amazing Grace, but unfortunately missed the poem read by Amanda Gorman, 'The Hill We Climb,' which apparently was extraordinary. I heard most of Biden's speech, and I teared up a little bit only because it felt like such a relief to hear a normal speech, you know? I am sad I didn't get to see either Biden or Harris get sworn in, but my work day kind of swallowed me whole after that.

I am not actually super optimistic about our immediate future, either here in Canada or in the USA. Voters have very short memories, and the 'honeymoon period' of this new administration is going to be very, very short. If it lasts the entire first 100 days, I will be pleasantly surprised. The thing is, right now, everything sucks and is likely going to continue to suck because the hole is so damned deep. The economy isn't going to miraculously rebound, the pandemic is going to continue to ravage the country, and there are still a shit ton of honest-to-goodness Nazis and fascists in positions of power.

I worry that when "Uncle Joe" doesn't pull a miracle out of his ass, voters will turn against him, and in four years we'll be staring down the barrel of another worse right-wing extremist President. Worse because they will have learned from this experience, and they will pick someone less erratic, perhaps more charismatic, and they will know exactly how to manipulate people and the media because they saw what worked for years. They will shamelessly gerrymander, suppress votes, fuck around with the system in general, and cheat their way into a dictatorship, and a significant enough percentage of voters will be so "disillusioned" that Biden didn't "save" them that they will cast their votes in favour of it.

It might not happen. I just worry, is all.

This is my worry about our neighbours, but I worry a lot more about us, not going to lie. We've seen a huge surge of right-wing extremism here. Canada has always had a racism problem, but the MAGA/Trump supporters in the USA emboldened them. The current leader of the Conservative Party actually ran for leadership on the slogan "Take Canada Back." Like, take it back from whom, exactly? Pretty sure he didn't mean he was planning on restoring land to its indigenous people (just a hunch).

My provincial government is doing its best to emulate the USA's dystopian nightmare, within the confines of our more robust social support system. They've eliminated the requirement for paid sick days (in the middle of a pandemic in which they have declared a lock down and are telling people to stay home, which totes makes sense), and up until early 2020 were slashing spending in education and healthcare like it was going out of style. And now they are all shocked!Pikachu that the system is crumbling under the pressure of a global pandemic. They keep making speeches assuring us that they care deeply and are committed to taking care of their citizens, while literally doing the opposite.

People praised the premier (Doug Ford) in April for making the "tough choices" of locking down and requiring social distancing and implementing testing sites, but as someone else said that's like praising the arsonist for not parking his SUV directly in the path of the fire trucks as they try to control the blaze. 

I don't know. Politics have not given me a lot of reasons to hope lately. I'm doing what I can (working with local activists, voting in all the elections, etc.), and for the rest I'm just hunkering down and trying to ride it out.

It's been a bit of a long day (albeit productive!), so I am going to leave this here. Perhaps tomorrow I will find something to talk about that isn't work or politics!

 Despite what my brain keeps trying to tell me, today was a good day.

I got my weekly report finished, and submitted all of my employee's extra duty pay forms (after a maddening silence from the pay centre). My brain keeps telling me that I didn't get anything done today, but that is objectively not true. I think it's partly because I spent a good chunk of today reacting to things rather than working on things I had planned, or things I knew needed doing.

A not-insignificant part of my job involves putting out fires, and doing that leaves a lot less time for routine things. This is not a great recipe for me either, because my ADHD brain is WAY happier putting out the fires than it is doing mundane things. Combine that with difficulty with both transitions AND task initiation, and you get a Phnee who will not have finished her reports on time. Oops. BUT I conquered that today, and got the report and other "boring" things done (they're not boring, but my brain classifies a lot of things under "boring" or "but I don't WANNA" without being very discriminating about it).

I also got the ball rolling on a bunch of the projects I've been planning since early January. So now all the projects I want to do have been started except one, and it will just be a question of maintaining momentum. 

There were a bunch of minor frustrations that piled up, too, but they're all minor in the grand scheme of things. Tomorrow I have a day entirely free of meetings, which is a rare beast indeed! I am usually bad at structuring those days, so I am going to experiment with taking the first half hour to plan out my day while leaving in a bit of wriggle room for the unexpected, and see if that makes me more productive.

I set some alarms for today to remind me to take my pills (my pill box with alarms on it is broken, alas), and also to remind me that I needed to leave work before 18:00 to pick up groceries, and it worked, for sure, but dear God every time the alarms went off I jumped about five feet. Sudden, loud noises are not my happy place, that's for sure!

The plan for tonight is to get to bed at a reasonable hour. Tomorrow I'm bringing Peggy to daycare for the day so she can get her required socialization and zooming in, and I am going to make a valiant effort to get the recycling out on time. Getting the recycling/garbage/compost to the curb on time is a ridiculously hard struggle for me, and I have yet to find a "system" that works. More experimentation is in order.

I brought a report home from work with me to read because I have a 10:00 meeting in which I was asked (with others) to provide feedback. I am not sure what I can contribute to this, because it's kind of outside of my field of knowledge, but I'll do my best anyway. 

The talk with my Director went pretty well. The first half went really well, because it was a "Okay, you are my supervisor now, what kind of ground rules are we looking at?" kind of a talk, and he and I have very similar styles. The second half was the "I do not want to work for the manager when she returns from maternity leave" talk, so obviously that wasn't much fun for either of us.

He asked me very diffidently to reconsider making that a hard line, and I had to explain that I am a person who almost never draws hard lines, but in this case working with her would mean sacrificing my mental health and I refuse to do that. He agreed that my well-being was more important than trying to salvage a working relationship that has never once been good, and while he didn't make any promises, he did say that since the Powers That Be are looking to expand the scope of our unit, we could look into trying to find something else for me so that I wouldn't report directly to her.

That's pretty much what I expected to come of the meeting, so I am not disappointed. He gave me a glowing (unofficial) review of my work so far, so I'm on pretty solid ground, here.

I spent a good chunk of today continuing to try to sort out the pay issues of one of my employees. She came to us from elsewhere in the public  service in September of 2019, and since then has not once been paid correctly. When she left PPS (her previous place of employment) she was in an acting supervisor role. She came to us, and PPS simply... didn't transfer over her file. Not only that, but they removed her acting supervisor status, so her pay dropped drastically, to way below the salary we were meant to be paying her. Because her file remained with PPS, we couldn't do anything about it: her vacation time, her lieu time, and all of her sick days also remained untransferred.

We FINALLY got that fixed last summer (ten months later!!!), at which point when the RCMP started paying her, we discovered she was being paid at the lowest possible "step" for her position. Her letter of offer, signed by the Assistant Commissioner, clearly stated she was to be hired at "step four" of the salary scale, and when she was made permanent, she should have immediately moved up to "step three" of her new salary scale. Instead they were paying her at "step one" of the initial scale, with no change.

She also was not getting paid any of her extra duty pay (overtime, shift premiums, etc.). We discovered that whenever we were submitting her pay claims, our Pay Authentication Centre would send it to the Phoenix Pay Centre, who would note that she wasn't listed as an RCMP employee (because PPS was still hanging onto her file, you will recall), and simply deleted the claims without further processing. *headdesk*

When I stepped into the role of interim manager on October 30th, nothing was solved, so I made it my mission in life to get this fixed. I talked with everyone under the sun, and the first thing I was told was that her letter of offer, signed by the A/Comm, was invalid because, get this, there wasn't a one day interruption between her last day of employment with PPS and her first day with the RCMP, so "transfer rules" applied, meaning they were forced to pay her at the lowest rate. *insert eyerolling here* I told them that it was very clearly bullshit, and pulled out the big guns, in the form of my Director.

My Director, as you will have noticed, is absolutely lovely and cares about his employees' well-being. He agreed with me that this was all bullshit, and he got on the phone with our DG, who got on the phone with the DG at National Compensation Services, and then we were off to the races. The letter of offer was approved (shocker), and we were told to re-submit ALL the paperwork and they would take care of it.

Well, some of that was true. Here we are mid-January (sixteen months after she was hired), and the poor employee still hasn't seen a red fucking cent. Not only that, but because her file was with PPS in 2020, her union dues weren't being taken off her pay, so now SURPRISE! they are charging her double the union dues to make up for last year, so she's making even less money. In a twist which I wish were surprising, her PPS union dues have not been reimbursed. The Phoenix Pay Centre informed her that they would not be reimbursed until her "promotion was all settled." Which, WHAT? That is bonkers. There is no good reason for the fact that she received a promotion to somehow impede the reimbursement of a fixed fee. I just found that part out today, so I'll be looking into that tomorrow.

Anyway, I feel terrible for this poor woman. She is an incredibly hard worker, and it feels like she's being punished by the bureaucracy gods for no good reason. The salary she's getting now isn't enough to cover all of her bills, she's had to get loans and it's fucked up her credit score, and all this because a bunch of government bureaucrats couldn't (and seemingly can't) get their shit together. This shouldn't be hard, and yet here we are.

I really hope that I can give her some good news soon. At least I know all of the paperwork is now in order. I just need a human being in the right position of authority to give me concrete proof that all of the documentation has been correctly input into the system and that all of the back pay that is owed will be paid out ASAP.

The rest of my day was all meetings and emails and trying to fix all of the problems generated by the fact that our entire organization of tens of thousands of people is moving to Outlook. The whole Outlook thing is a bit of a garbage fire, and the less said about it, the better. ;)

I've always been a very vivid dreamer, for as long as I can remember. There are times when I don't dream as much (or, rather, I wake up without remembering my dreams), but for the most part dreaming is a huge part of my sleeping experience. I am often half-aware of dreaming, and sometimes can exercise some small control over what happens in my dreams. It's not really lucid dreaming, but it's something kind of like that. Usually it manifests as "starting over" some dream sequences because I somehow know that what just happened isn't the desired outcome, and sometimes it manifests as "changing the rules" partway through (a common theme in my dreams is that something scary will turn out to be a roleplaying game, and everyone in the dream stops the action to discuss the rules of the game and whether or not we're following them properly).

Anyway, I had a very vivid dream this weekend which left me a little unsettled. It wasn't a semi-conscious dream, just a run-of-the-mill dream, but I dreamt that a Member of my Quaker Meeting had died. It felt very real, and even right now I don't really understand why my subconscious came up with that, because I'm not particularly close to him or his wife, and indeed hadn't had any contact with them for nearly a year while I wasn't attending Meeting. The best I can come up with is that in my mind I think of him and his wife as being "the same age" as my parents, and so maybe I was projecting some fears about my parents onto him. It wasn't a distressing dream at all while it was happening--everything was all very matter of fact. I was more unsettled when I awoke and had to double check that I had truly dreamed he was dead and that it hadn't actually happened, because it felt so real. Sometimes my subconscious is weird.

I am trying to remember the dream I had last night, too, but it was less unusual and so unfortunately I lost it over the course of the day. I often have dreams about moving or changing houses, and I think it was one of those types of dream.

Apart from that, I had a nice, productive day today. It started out a little weird, because I woke up naturally around 06:00 but decided to go back to sleep (my alarm was set for 07:00) and then managed to oversleep a bit, which was not ideal. I got to work about 10 minutes late, but since I'm not replacing anyone on shift and my bosses aren't at the office to check what my hours are, it didn't really matter. Not to mention that I ended up staying nearly an hour late anyway, so I refuse to feel bad about it. I need to get better at getting out of the house AND the office on time when there is no external motivation for it.

Tardiness aside, I managed to get through two meetings this morning and then blitzed through a bunch of work in the afternoon, including finishing the draft of the PSE evaluation standards I'd wanted to do before. I am glad I got it done, but a little irked that I ended up having to do so much of it at the last minute. Part of that was unavoidable because other priorities cropped up, but there were some missed opportunities last week in which I could have done this. I procrastinated on it a bit because it felt like this huge thing, but once I started on it, it wasn't as long or complicated as I thought, so now I feel a little silly about it. Still, I got it done, and I think I did a pretty good job. It's now with the supervisors for their feedback for two weeks, and then I will work on the next draft.

I was going to bring the second draft to my boss, but I think I mentioned that he's stepping back from supervising me (or anyone else, I should specify), and my Director has neither the time nor the knowledge needed for this particular job, so I guess my own expertise will have to suffice for this. I don't see a problem with that, to be honest. It's just that my boss doesn't like to feel left out of the loop, but since he's deliberately stepping away from the loop, it should be fine.

[...]

I paused to Skype with my parents. They, like most people I know, are still appalled by last week's attempted coup d'état in the U.S., so we mostly talked about that. They were a little surprised that I'm of the opinion we're likely going to see more violence and more attempted "uprisings" before Biden's inauguration, but I stand by my prediction. Just because some of the mob looked silly doesn't mean we should dismiss these people as a joke: they are dangerous, and they have not been dissuaded. At least they are being de-platformed, slowly but surely. Twitter has banned Trump permanently, Amazon has kicked Parler off its servers, and right-wing accounts are being shut down. Not all of them, but it's a start.

The hot debates around "free speech" and whether or not Twitter, Facebook, etc. should ban this kind of account have me uneasy. Don't get me wrong, I am all in favour of de-platforming, but there are other implications here too. Most of us already knew or suspected, but this has pulled back the curtain and shone a big, bright spotlight on the fact that these giant mega-corporations are basically in control of almost all the media content we consume. They can shut down anyone they like at any time with no repercussions. It's fine for a private company to do what it likes with its own content, I have no beef with that. My problem is that there is literally no alternative out there other than private mega-corporations, and this really should give us pause. I don't have it fully articulated in my mind, but doubtless others out there have already written about it more eloquently. Maybe I will see if I can find any of those articles or blog posts. 

That's it for today, folks. I will be back tomorrow with more fascinating life updates. :P

I decided to get myself a birthday present(ish), and bought a laminator and laminating sheets, a Nakia Funko Pop figurine, and a packet of fidget toys. The latter are for an experiment at work to see if they help me focus better during longer meetings. It's a packet of ten and it cost a few dollars, so I think it's worth trying out.

I have the worst headache today. I woke up with it, medicated it almost entirely into submission, but then it came back with a vengeance. It didn't help that I had nothing to eat for lunch. Having a lunch ready for work has been a hell of a challenge for me since I started this new position. Before if I forgot a lunch or was disorganized I could always just run out on my lunch break and grab something, but now I'm "only" working 8 hours a day and I often work through lunch. I take frequent very small breaks throughout the day because I find that more helpful, but it does mean I don't get a proper lunch break. So after work today I went to the grocery store and got myself a bunch of emergency back-up meal replacement drinks. I am going to also make an effort to be more organized and bring a lunch with me, but for the days I inevitably fail I know I won't be spending the whole time hungry with nothing to eat except my own words.

I found out yesterday that my immediate boss is stepping back from his supervisory duties for mental health reasons (he was off for nine months and only came back full time in November) and will be working a reduced number of days a week, so I'll probably be reporting to the Director for the next little while. I like the Director and I think we'll work very well together, but I am going to miss my boss--we don't see eye to eye on everything, but he has a lot of experience and a willingness to mentor and I was looking forward to collaborating with him. Hopefully this is temporary and we'll still get to work together before my time is up. He DID mention that he was mindful of what I'd told him about not wanting to work with my manager when she returns, and he wants to find a solution for that, so that's a good thing. I am not going to hold my breath, but at least it hasn't been forgotten.

The week went by in the blink of an eye. It's so hard to believe tomorrow is already Friday. I have one big project that I want to get done before the weekend, which is the first draft of the standardisation of the PSE evaluation criteria, so I must devote most of my time to that tomorrow. I really don't want to have to work on it over the weekend, and the timeline I have to do it is *tight*. Hopefully the interruptions will be few and I will have the time to finish it.

I think it is time to go sleep off this headache. Tomorrow night is the first official session of my Mage campaign with all the players. We've been doing mini-sessions in two separate groups with the Storyteller in order to set the stage for when all the characters finally start working together. I am pretty excited to see what happens, as we are split down the middle into two diametrically opposed character types. It ought to be very entertaining.

 I don't know what it says about me that I am suddenly tempted to spend money on Dreamwidth just so I can get a bunch more icon slots. I have a ton on my permanent account on LJ, but cross-posting goes from DW to to LJ and not the other way around, so I have to go manually "fix" icons in my LJ entries after I post, since the ones on my DW don't always quite reflect what I want to convey. I talk myself out of it each time, because it's not like I am a regular user of either service anymore, and I am trying to be less, well, spendy. It definitely would not be a good use of my money.

Anyway, it was kind of a long day at work ( Cut for long, long rambling about work )

That ended up a lot longer than I intended, but at least I've written down some of my work plans in a more explicit way. I think next on that list I should break down the plans into proper, accomplishable steps with proper deadlines and everything. Maybe I will do that.

Tomorrow, however, I shall return here and post my resolutions. Some of them are also about work!

I hope you're all keeping as well as you can. I've gone back a couple of weeks reading journal entries, and it looks like everyone is having a hard time. People have gotten sick, people have died, people are feeling more alone than ever. I see you all, and I am sorry you have to hurt this much.

*hugs to all*

Daylight Savings is the worst. Granted, it worked out for me because my night shift yesterday was an hour shorter, but it's not worth it. They should just go ahead and abolish this ridiculous antiquated thing. Every year the news headlines all yell about abolishing DST, but it never happens. I'm sure there must be a rationale behind it, but whatever that rationale is, it's insufficient. 

On a far more positive note--and I am mindful that I did promise a happier post this time--I have a job interview on Wednesday! I am pretty darned excited. It's an informal interview only, as it's for a government position, and they have to go through a whole official process before hiring anyone, but I am encouraged that they do want to talk to me now. I would be working at PSPC as a conflict management practitioner, if I do end up getting the job.

I really hope I get it. It would be a welcome change of pace.

I had more I was going to write, but I've forgotten what it was. If I remember, I will come back.

 I don't want to make this the All Landlady, All the Time journal, so I promise to try keep it brief. I have been in touch with two paralegals today. The first is actually on maternity leave (she was recommended by a friend who obviously wasn't in the loop), but she gave me some good unofficial advice and then recommended a couple of other names for me to try. I have now secured the services of one of those firms, and will be having my first meeting with the paralegal on Wednesday. She wants me to come in with all paperwork and pictures of my house, so that she can see for herself that there's no damage to the house. Shockingly, she can't take my word for it. ;)

So, for now, I'm exploring options. While a huge part of me wants to just rip off the bandaid and get out of this place ASAP and just have done, already, I am coming to see that there are more reasons for me to just grit my teeth and bear it for a couple of extra months. If nothing else, moving in early spring will be easier than trying to dig out my barbecue, patio table, and a lot of gardening stuff from under 3-4 feet of frozen snow, not to mention that I have to dig my packing boxes out of the shed, which is also buried under the same 3-4 feet of frozen snow. As much as I am loath to deal with extra landlady shenanigans during that time (and shenanigans there will be, I am quite sure of it), moving in the spring would be much more convenient.

There are a few avenues open to me, all of which have some drawbacks and some advantages. We shall see what comes of the meeting with the paralegal and go from there I guess. Yes, that's the royal "we." ;) I can ask my landlady for a 

In the meantime, my job is changing categories, starting April 26th, if all goes according to plan. This was all put into motion years ago, when it was decided that Civilian Members were to be eliminated from the RCMP. So we're all being converted to the public service. I think I mentioned this in a previous post many months back, but I can't be bothered to go find it right now.

Anyway, none of the Civilian Members are happy about this, because it means we're losing a ton of the benefits we enjoyed before, including unlimited sick time, which I don't think is offered by anyone else in Canada. Instead we're going to be getting the same amount of time as the other public service employees, which is 120 hours a year. For most employees, that's the equivalent of fifteen days of sick leave. If, like me, you work 12-hour shifts, though, suddenly you find yourself with ten days of leave instead. Granted, most of us don't use that many days in a year, but every now and then it's to be expected that you *will* find yourself in need of long-term leave. Right now, what that means is that if you get seriously ill, you imply stay home and concentrate on getting better, at full salary. Once the "deeming" happens (as it's called), it becomes a lot more complicated. First, you have to burn through your sick leave, then any vacation time you have. Then you have to claim unemployment insurance (thus guaranteeing a not-insignificant interruption in your revenue while they determine if they're going to accept your application), and after, IF that goes through, your insurance kicks in after a year. Needless to say, unemployment and insurance is a lot less than your actual salary.

So if, for instance, you get cancer, you get to also worry about keeping your kids fed or a roof over your head as well as worrying about whether or not you're going to die. Before you say "But lots of people have to worry about that!" let me hasten to assure you that I know. The point is that we had a more progressive set of benefits, and we are going backward. The goal should not be to remove our benefits so that we're like everyone else, the goal should be to give everyone else the same security we have. Of course, that's not what's happening, and I can all but guarantee you that it will end up costing the government more in the long run than they are saving in the short run.

The other part of this is that, thanks to Bill C-7 and the elimination of Civilian Members, we also now have to unionize. Now, I'm generally pro-union, so this isn't terrible news, but I will confess that, having never been part of a union before, the unionization process is breaking. my. brain. We have several unions competing for our attention, and none of them appear to understand our jobs or see the whole picture or even be able to give us a straight answer to any of our questions. It's bloody well disheartening. 

I keep meaning to talk about watching The Clone Wars, or my continuing re-watch of Deep Space Nine, or any of the other shows I'm watching, but my brain is currently being consumed by anxiety about my living situation. When that's not happening, my brain is being consumed by anxiety about the entire world being a political trash fire. There is, of course, the living nightmare going on in the United States, but even Canadian politics are being depressing, with Trudeau going back on his promise of electoral reform, which was basically the platform on which he was elected. It's such a disappointment, even though I have to admit I'm not entirely surprised he's reneging on it.

Okay. I am off to find more painkillers in the hopes of making this lingering stress headache go away. I have fish in the oven for dinner, so at least healthy food is in the offing. See you on the flip side, LJ!

Today was spent dealing with a fair bit of fallout from the mass shooting in the mosque in Quebec City, and my brain is now fried. My section wasn't directly involved, thank goodness, but a lot of people seemed to think we were involved, so I spent most of the day redirecting traffic to the appropriate sources.

I've had to do some compartmentalizing about it, too, in order to get my job done. I had to set aside my visceral horror and my disappointment at the fact that (another) hate crime was committed in my beloved country. Now, I was under no illusions about Canada before, unlike some of my American friends on Twitter who are aghast that our panda-hugging nation has right-wing extremists in it too, but it's still incredibly disheartening to see first-hand that they are finding comfort in the current political climate, and feel emboldened enough to take action.

There's going to be a lot of talk in the next few days about this man being a "lone wolf" and probably mentally ill, and we'll go through the whole list of rhetoric that we usually go through when it comes to single white male shooters. We don't like our terrorists white, after all. Luckily the provincial and federal governments have declared this to be a terrorist act, so legally he'll be prosecuted that way, even if public opinion doesn't follow suit.

I love my province of birth for many reasons, but dear Lord, the racism there is terrible. Sure, there's socio-historical reasons for Quebec's distrust of organized religion, but that doesn't fully explain the rampant xenophobia and islamophobia that's become so evident in the last decade. Right now I'm too tired to work out how to even begin to fix this situation. Maybe tomorrow will bring a little more clarity. One can always hope.

Huh. This turned into a small update after all. Look at that.

We spent half of today's training literally going over which forms we need to fill out in specific instances in order to perform our new functions (as defined by the training). It was riveting. :P I wish I could say more, but given the level of secrecy at which I work, I have to keep it really vague. Oh well, it's not like you're missing anything truly riveting.

The upside is that I discovered one of my classmates is into D&D. I kind of had a feeling she might be a fellow geek when she walked in (is there such a thing as geek-dar?), but today confirmed it when she mentioned she runs a game night every Wednesday for a huge group, along with four other DMs. It sounds like a really great thing, since it's a community activity and includes a lot of people with various physical and mental disabilities. Anyway, we had a really nice, productive chat about gaming and DMing in particular, and she put me onto a Facebook group of local DMs, which looks promising, if maybe not super active.

At the very least, I may have found myself a new nerd buddy in Ottawa! \o/

Tomorrow is my last day of training. There will be more forms to study, more technical stuff I'm not allowed to discuss in public, then an exam so I can get certified in the thing I'm not allowed to discuss in public. Friday has been set aside for writing purposes, as Capricornucopia is around the corner. I hope I can get it all written in time. I'm out of practice with writing, having not done any serious writing in months. Luckily, Capricornucopia doesn't require "serious" writing, but it still requires writing. I have some ideas, so now I just have to find a way to make them all coalesce.