mousme | Entries tagged with work stuff

1-State of the Phnee

Holy Hannah, I am TIRED, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I woke up on time for the threshing session and managed to stay alert and pay attention for the whole two hours of discussion. It was the usual blend of informative and frustrating, the way all group discussions tend to be for me. I’ve found lately that I don’t have as much patience as I used to for listening to people who don’t listen to instructions or speak only to repeat the same thing four other people have already said or to only talk about themselves when the subject matter is about a much larger issue.

This is not a flex, as the youths say these days, it’s a character flaw that I am working to correct in myself. I need to find more compassion and understanding and make space for people who are interacting with the world in a way that I think is incorrect. I recognize that this is an example of rigidity in my thinking, but I’m having trouble with the praxis part of things these days. I don’t have the emotional reserves to hold that much space for people I don’t know well and who are getting under my skin for their perceived flaws. Work in progress, I guess.

I got the announcements done for tomorrow’s Quaker Meeting, and since no one from M&C has volunteered to be the Greeter, I will have to forgo most of my sleep tomorrow in order to get up in time for the start of Meeting. If I’m lucky I may manage to get a one hour nap before Meeting, and then I will have to be awake for the rest of the day until I get home around 08:00 Monday morning. I will have to invest in some caffeine, I think, to make sure I get through my shift and also don’t kill myself accidentally while driving home. It’s not ideal.

Speaking of work, there is a mandatory all-staff meeting on Monday at 13:30, because of course there is. So that means even less sleep, since that’s the time when I would have been recovering from my night shifts. *sigh* It’s a meeting addressing government cuts and what’s called “Work Force Adjustment,” which is the government’s fancy way of saying “layoffs.” This doesn’t affect me directly, as WFA only applies to indeterminate employees and I am a term employee. They can simply not renew my contract, and it ends there, whereas an indeterminate employee subjected to WFA is subject to different regulations and still has some rights. Still, it will be interesting to see what our execs have to say, since they swore up and down that they would be addressing budget shortfalls without resorting to cutting positions, and I am quite sure that that was horseshit. I am cynically curious as to how they are going to spin this.

In unrelated news, I have been putting off three things of varying levels of importance because they all involve having to make phone calls to people I don’t know. The least important is calling a local(ish) hairdresser to address the absolute disaster that my hair has become in the past year (it’s been at least that long since my last cut, and our well water is very hard and does my poor hair no favours). I also need to make a long overdue dentist appointment and am hoping to find someone local(ish) so I don’t have to drive all the way to Ottawa every time I need to get work done. I haven’t been to the dentist in a long time and am quite sure that my teeth are… not in great shape. I had a referral years ago to a periodontist for receding gums, and since I didn’t have $10,000 at the time to spend on treatment (still don’t), I can only imagine things have gotten worse since then.

Last but not least I need to make an appointment with my doctor. She and several other doctors left the clinic where I was a patient for over 10 years without so much as a by-your-leave, moved even further west from where I live (so that now it will take me at least an hour and a half to drive there), and are now charging an arm and a leg for a bunch of services they used to offer for free at my previous clinic. I was never offered the option of staying with my previous clinic, which is very frustrating, and now I can either pay out the nose and individually for things like forms and faxed prescriptions or pay a yearly “flat fee” for the privilege of accessing medical services. I fucking hate the slow creep of privatization in our healthcare system, it SUCKS. And of course when they moved their booking system was down for nearly six weeks and I can’t even access it without having to call first. I was supposed to get an appointment six weeks after my surgery, but since there was no way to contact them (no phone, no online system), it’s now been three months with no follow-up to make sure that, for instance, my blood pressure medication doesn’t make me violently ill the same way it did to KK. *sigh*

If I had even a little bit more energy (and a lot less anxiety!) I’d consider running for office, because things have absolutely gone to shit in this province and if I’m going to bitch about it I should probably try to do something about it. Of course, I don’t think I’d win. I am a terrible public speaker with the charisma of a boiled potato. However, I feel like the effort needs to be made in some way. Of course, I’d probably have to go and lock down all the fanfiction I wrote all those years ago, which all seems like a lot of work. ;)

2-State of the smallholding

The water heaters I got for the quail somehow got unplugged, so the poor things had no water when I check them this morning—everything was completely frozen over. I plugged everything back in and added some fresh water to tide them over while I waited for everything to melt again. I have no idea how it got unplugged—the only explanation I can think of is that I must have accidentally pulled on the extension cord when I was changing out the food and water at some point.

Sometime tomorrow I also need to make a point of putting out all the paper and cardboard recycling as well. I missed the last collection day, and things have really started to pile up.

There isn’t much else going on right now. I’ve been very passively trying to think of how to get help with “farming” things now that KK appears to have more permanently injured herself. She’s looking into getting herself both a walker and a motorized scooter to help her get around outside the house, and whereas in the past she was able to at least walk over to the garage to turn the light for the quail on and off and sometimes even check their water and food levels, she now either can’t or won’t do it. That means that when I’m working evening shifts or weekend night shifts, or in cases when I’m visiting my parents in Montreal, I will need to find someone else to come look after the quail and eventually the other animals I want to get. The original plan was that I was going to be primarily responsible for all the smallholding stuff, but that KK would be my backup on the rare occasions I wasn’t available or if I was ever ill. Obviously that’s no longer the case, so I need to find a new solution for that problem.

3-State of the news

There hasn’t been anything really new since my last post, just updates on the current (very) long list of global garbage fires. Greenland, Ukraine, Iran, Palestine… it’s a depressingly long list, really.

Our Prime Minister is now in Doha, talking trade with Qatar of all places. After China, I suppose it wasn’t that big of a stretch for him to decide that we can absolutely ignore all those pesky human rights violations and atrocities if it means making the big bucks. *sigh* I was already side eyeing the deal with China a little bit, but Qatar is in a league of its own when it comes to human rights violations. I remember the horror stories that came out during the last FIFA cup, and I am disappointed but not surprised that our PM continues to prove himself a Conservative wrapped in a Liberal trenchcoat.

Okay, time to get some other stuff done. I have to figure out a reading for tomorrow’s Quaker Meeting, and then if there’s time I have some personal projects I want to work on. I need to write up the background for my new D&D character, and I’m also working with some other people on a Soopar Seekrit Prodgikt which could possibly turn into a TV show (probably not, but the chances are not zero), so I have some writing to do this week.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: cynical

1-State of the Phnee

Yes, it’s only been a couple of hours since my last post, but since I’m working night shifts I figured I would take advantage of the relative peace and quiet to do a bit of writing. As such, I expect this will be a short post, but it will allow me to feel less rushed when I update tomorrow night so that I don’t feel compelled to backdate my post. I know I don’t have to, but it feels weird and wrong to post on the “wrong” date. There’s probably some rigid thought processes in there that I should unpack at some point in the future.

This is another update from the treadmill at work. There’s a sign-up sheet for all the treadmills so that people don’t double-book during the day or keep the treadmills for longer than their allotted time slot, but so far this year my name is the only one on the sign-up sheet and I haven’t even been using it during the day, since I’ve been exclusively working evenings and night shifts for the past two weeks and change. I know at least one other employee is using them, but he apparently doesn’t seem to feel the need to use the sign-up sheet. I’ve been diligently filling it out because this is a pilot project, and collecting accurate data is important so that they will continue to provide the means for employees to be able to implement healthier habits at work. I want to encourage my work when they do good things! Anyway, I still like the treadmill at work. I can do a gentle 1 mph rate for a couple of hours without any difficulty, and although my personal data isn’t comprehensive enough to draw a good conclusion yet, I am tentatively hypothesizing that I feel a bit more energized after the shifts when I use the treadmill. Obviously more study is needed, but I am cautiously optimistic.

On an unrelated note, I’ve been wondering about recurring dreams lately. My dreams don’t recur in the classical sense, but I have noticed recurring themes over the years. I have a lot of dreams about travelling, about taking public transit (usually buses but sometimes the metro or a train), and about moving house. I also have a kind of recurring dream in which I discover a pet or multiple pets that I’ve somehow forgotten about that’s either died or else managed to reproduce (usually hamsters) and are now overrunning part of my home. I can trace all of these themes going back about 25 years, or ever since I moved out of my parents’ home and started living on my own. Also, I don’t know about you, dear readers, but I have lots of dreams in which I am watching events unfold like a story being told to me, rather than my being the POV character. Interestingly, in the dreams with recurring themes I am almost always the POV character, but not in the “stand-alone” dreams. I have also had a lot of the “classic” anxiety dreams of being in school for final exams and realizing I haven’t attended all semester, teeth falling out, etc., but those ones aren’t as common for me. I don’t know what any of it means, I’ve never been much into dream interpretation, although I do find it interesting in a vague way. I don’t think my dreams have any psychic or supernatural meaning but subscribe to the more common understanding that they’re just a way for the brain to process information it absorbed the previous day. That being said, I’m not sure how typical my experience is compared to others. Brains are weird, y’all.

I’ve been making my way through The Expanse audiobooks. I am really enjoying the series, even though it’s a little bit “crunchier” than what I usually read. I’m finding the worldbuilding reminiscent of C.J. Cherryh, although not the same at all in terms of the contents. It’s more of a vague vibe than anything else. I should do a C.J. Cherryh re-read after this. The Expanse novels have been a bit of a slow go, as the novels are quite long and I’ve been listening to them in audio format. I will confess to listening to them at increased speed, because the narrator is a bit slow for my liking, even if it does make the voices sound a bit odd and distorted. The novels themselves are compelling but often have parts that bog down seemingly interminably before the pace picks up again. I’m on Book 7 out of 9 (Eeeeeey, inadvertent Star Trek reference!), not counting any of the novellas, and this book began with a 20-year time skip, and I’m not sure what to make of it. Time skips can be tricky to navigate, and I’m only just starting the story, so time will tell. The skip probably means that my favourite character has died of old age, but there’s no confirmation of this and it is set in the future, so she might still be alive if people in the future have significantly longer lifespans (I don’t recall it being mentioned one way or the other in previous novels). I guess I shall have to wait and see!

2-State of the smallholding

Obviously, I’m still at work, so I don’t have any actual updates about the property. However, the new coworker who brought me borscht and I had a conversation about urban chickens and other poultry, because he’s thinking about getting some chickens. I warned him that I’m far from an expert but that I was willing to ask more experienced friends any questions for which I don’t have a solid answer. He then very generously offered to help me build the new chicken coop(s) I want to put in place this summer. Now, I don’t know whether he is the kind to follow through on this sort of promise, nor do I even know if we’ll still be in touch come the summer, since I may not be employed here anymore, but it was a very nice thought.

Our conversation reminded me that I’ve been planning to research more chicken coop plans online and find ones that are beginner-friendly while also meeting the chickens’ needs and my needs. And other poultry too, obviously, but my plan is to start with chickens. I’m hoping I’ll be able to snag a bunch of birds at auction over the summer. There are also plenty of Facebook groups that seem like they will provide some good leads on acquiring some lovely heritage breeds.

It's actually quite interesting to see how many of my coworkers have similar interests to mine in terms of growing their own gardens, acquiring a small number of livestock, and generally living a semi-independent lifestyle. It’s been nice to find like-minded people at the office. Several of them are also D&D geeks like me, which is delightful and hilarious when we all get going talking about nerdy things.

3-State of the news

You will be relieved to know that nothing of substance has happened in the past couple of hours, so I will leave this section to be update after I’ve had a chance to sleep and then do other things.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: calm

1-State of the Phnee

I got called in for overtime tonight, as I mentioned in my previous post. The OT money is nice (albeit not as much as it could be since it’s “only” an extra four hours this week), so I will take what I can, when I can, especially since I might be unemployed come April. Every little bit of extra money helps, after all. (I’m totally not stressed about being unemployed. Nope. Totally fine, nothing to see here, move along.)

The supervisor on duty made a bit of an oopsie with the OT today, which is hilarious but also a little annoying. I am the “early” shift tonight, which means my shift partner arrives at midnight and I come in an hour before. I was asked to come in at 8:00pm to cover a few hours, but they forgot or didn’t notice that the person who was working evenings was ALSO the early shift, and therefore scheduled to leave at 11:00pm, leaving me alone for an hour with only a trainee as backup. OOPS. We are risk-managing the situation, because it would have meant approving another hour of OT otherwise, because it’s impractical to ask someone to come in to cover that one hour, since it would take them longer than an hour to even get to work. Yay risk management! /o\

Luckily tonight hasn’t been too busy, and weirdly enough this same situation happened to me at the RCMP AND we happened to have a proper crisis happen when I was alone with a trainee. I handled it like a fucking champ at the time, and I actually had a lot of fun (it was the kind of “crisis” where no one got hurt and no one’s life was immediately at risk, which is the best kind of crisis to have!). Whenever I go to job interviews, it’s my go-to answer for the almost universal question of “Tell us about a time when you had to manage a stressful situation at work!” and it never fails to impress people. :)

Other than that, there’s not a ton to report. I did find a suspicious rusty looking stain on my shower floor today, which makes me think either Octavia or Juno might have a urinary tract infection. I really hope not, but cats hide illnesses super well, and Juno hasn’t been gaining much weight back since her dental surgery at the end of last May, unlike Octavia who has filled out again nicely. So I bought some hydrophobic sand/cat litter and a couple of urine sample collection kits and my cunning plan is to sequester each cat separately to see whether I find bloody urine (KK tells me she’s found diarrhea in the litter boxes, but it’s impossible to tell who from) or anything else, and then once I have identified the victim I will call our local vet to schedule an appointment and bring a urine and/or stool sample with me. Ah, the glamorous life of a pet owner.

I keep swearing to myself that I will stop burning the candle at both ends during my night shift weeks, and then life keeps throwing responsibilities at me. It’s very annoying. So in spite of my best efforts, I will be sacrificing my sleep for several days this week. Tomorrow afternoon I have meeting with another member of M&C to discuss a workshop we both went to on resolving conflicts in Meetings, and we’ll be preparing a report to present first to M&C and then to Ottawa Monthly Meeting if there is interest there. Then on Wednesday at 10:00am we have a Worship Sharing for Health concerns, which is a fancy Quaker name for a support group for people dealing with both acute and chronic illnesses, as well as people who are caretakers for ill and disabled people. But since I’ll be getting home around 8:00am it means I’ll get maybe an hour of sleep before I have to attend, and then go back to sleep afterward, which makes for a pretty broken “night.”

Then on Thursday at 11:00am I have my three-month follow-up after my bariatric surgery (thank goodness it’s a virtual appointment, at least!). It’s the whole reason I went to get blood tests done on Saturday. I already got my results back, and my hemoglobin, MCH and RDW are all out of whack (albeit only marginally so), meaning I am probably back to being slightly anemic. *sigh* I’ve always struggled with my iron levels, and I knew this was a risk with the surgery. Boo. I will chat with the nurse practitioner on Thursday about what to do about this. I also have slightly elevated ALT (2 U/L higher than normal), which the internet tells me is potentially a sign of liver cell damage like fatty liver disease. Unfortunately, the internet’s solutions are to drink less alcohol (I already don’t drink anymore and haven’t in a year, and before that I could count on my fingers the number of drinks I had in a year), to eat more fruit and vegetables (yes, already doing that) stop taking OTC pain meds like acetaminophen (I haven’t had any in, like, two months), drink coffee (I’m not really supposed to drink much coffee now due to the risk of ulcers), and consume more folic acid. I will check with the nurse practitioner about that too, I guess. Stupid body, I am TRYING to take better care of it, and this is how it repays me! :P

Speaking of trying to take better care of my body, I got in another workout today using FitBod. The app is hilariously optimistic about how much weight it thinks I should be able to manage with my noodle arms. 15 to 18lbs for each exercise, whereas I can barely manage 10 right now. Luckily it allows me to modify the weights in the exercise, so I can track my progress a little better. I think I will be happy if I can progress to the prescribed weights by the end of the month. My hope is that by the end of the year I will be using the maximum amount of weight allowed by the locking dumbbells I bought a couple of weeks ago (which is 50lbs, for those of you following along at home). I think that’s a pretty reasonable goal over 12 months. I will be hitting the treadmill at work tonight as well, maybe in a couple of hours when the 2:00/3:00am blahs kick in, especially after I didn’t get a chance to nap before work today because of the OT.

I began experimenting with different forms of wraps today. I love wraps so much, they are often a go-to for me for breakfast, but my new stomach does NOT like flour-based tortillas. They make the new stomach super duper unhappy, to the point where I often have to lie down afterward for at least an hour and wait for things to stop hurting. It’s not ideal, but I keep hoping against hope that today might be the day I tolerate them again! Alas. Anyway, I consulted Reddit and got a bunch of neat suggestions. One person suggested I try egg wraps, and since I wasn’t planning on a grocery run today I decided to make my own at home, since it’s pretty straightforward: two eggs, 1 tsp flour, 1 tsp water, salt and pepper to taste, cook like a super thin omelette. Easy and filled with protein! Unfortunately this, too, was rather too heavy for my stomach to tolerate, so I am going to try different kinds of lettuce to see if they cooperate any better, and then after that move onto different recipes (there’s apparently a lentil wrap made with red lentils and chickpea flour that has potential) and maybe rice paper or nori. Experimentation, ho! I am also wide open to suggestions from my delightful friends here, too! Your suggestions for tuna salad were great!

2-State of the smallholding

I am having to fight off my tendency to build castles in Spain. My ambitions, as usual, far exceed my time, energy, and financial resources. Like, right now I am barely keeping up with my daily responsibilities, but someone on Facebook put up a halter-trained pregnant Jersey Cow and I found myself briefly tempted to contact the seller, even though I have no money to buy a cow, no vehicle with which to transport it, no barn, no equipment, and no fucking clue how to handle a 1-ton animal that can kill me with one well-placed kick. Good fucking Lord, self.

I am considering moving my tools to the garage from the workshop until I can figure out why the workshop doesn’t have electricity anymore. The garage isn’t heated, so I might have to invest in some thermal underwear and fingerless gloves so I don’t freeze to death, but it might at least give me the opportunity to get some woodworking practice in and maybe get a small project going before I start tackling the really large stuff later this summer. My main concern is the quail, because I think the sawdust is not good for their sensitive little quail lungs. I did spot a portable dust extractor at Lee Valley Tools (a very dangerous place to shop unsupervised!) for $475. Not the cheapest ever, but certainly in the realm of affordable (as long as I don’t lose my job) by my current standards. Having a portable one would allow me to place myself in the furthest possible corner away from the quail to try to limit their exposure as much as possible, and then when I get electricity back to the workshop I could simply move it back there.

My hope is to build a bunch of sturdy, weatherproof enclosures in the early spring and summer for more poultry and meat rabbits. If I start working on it all in March, that gives me a fair bit of time for trial and error during the cutting/preliminary assembly process and eventually for the full building/assembly process outside where I want the structures to be “permanently” installed. I use the term “permanently” very loosely here, as I am quite sure I will have different opinions over the years about where things should go.

I haven’t yet fully decided where the enclosures should go. Ideally, they wouldn’t be too far from the house, because it’s kind of terrible to have to trek all the way across your property in the dead of winter to do animal husbandry of any kind. The quail are right across the way in the garage and even that is kind of miserable, and this winter hasn’t even been that harsh! I don’t want future!Phnee to curse me for forcing her to schlep through the snow and ice at -35°C during a serious cold snap in the coming years. :P It would also be helpful if the enclosures were partially sheltered from the wind, so it might make sense to put them up near the house, but I also wonder if that might not have unintended consequences for the walls/structure of the house (bird droppings and rabbit urine and general moisture come to mind). It could be a problem, or it could be nothing, but I simply don’t know. I will have to talk to more experienced owners and get some educated opinions. I could also put the enclosures just on the other side of the garage, but since I will have to tear down said garage in a few years, I am loath to do it. Mind you, I could also just do that and have it be a problem for future!Phnee, as long as I accept that she will likely curse my name when the time comes. It’s a quandary, for sure.

Because I understand my propensity for building castles in Spain that are well above my actual capacity, what I am trying to do with this planning is to eliminate as many of the barriers I know can and will crop up that would prevent me from tending my animals properly: inconvenient clean-up is a big problem, as is access to water and electricity. I will have to make sure that all the enclosures are close enough to an electrical source so that I can heat the water dispensers in the winter, and also not have to schlep dozens of gallons of water super far so that no one dies of dehydration. The ease of clean-up will be largely dependent on the design of the enclosures, so I will have to do more research on the best designs that are also relatively beginner-friendly, or I may have to ask some of my more experienced friends for help with some of the cutting and building.

None of that is going to happen this week, of course. This may be a project for next week, which is my first week off after my night shifts, or it might have to be pushed to the last week of January, depending on time and energy levels and just how much “disposable” money I have after most of my paycheque goes to everyday expenses. Life has become very expensive indeed. *sigh*

3-State of the news

Well, Trump is still threatening to use military force to seize Greenland “whether they like it or not.” For fuck’s sake. Denmark’s Prime Minister is not having it, unsurprisingly, and both Germany and Sweden have spoken up in defense of Denmark, so things could get very interesting, diplomatically speaking. The NATO Supreme Allied Commander has also stated that alliance members are “discussing Greenland’s status.” Not ominous at all, nope.

I haven’t talked much about Iran, mostly because I am embarrassingly not fully up to date with what’s going on there. Right now almost 650 people have been killed in protests there since December 28th. As far as I understand it, the protests began in response to rampant inflation but quickly transformed into general protests against the country’s regime and spread across the country. The US has, of course, threatened to intervene if Iran uses force against the protestors, which has as far as I can tell only fanned the flames, although it appears Iran is making somewhat conciliatory noises in their direction. The Grand Ayatollah Khamenei has basically told Trump to mind his fucking beeswax, and of course Trump does not wish to mind his fucking beeswax, because his fucking beeswax is full of pedophiles and fascists and he would like people to not focus on that, please and thank you.

In the meantime, Prime Minister Carney is off to China to try to diversify our trading portfolio and attract new investors, since the US is becoming an increasingly volatile and unreliable trade partner. I’m a little conflicted about this, mostly because the Chinese government is, well… *gestures expansively* But it’s undeniable that China is one of the great global powers to be reckoned with, and they are pioneering a lot of green(er), environmentally sounder initiatives, among other things. Their foreign policy, especially with regards to Taiwan, is personally abhorrent, but I also understand why our PM would not want to snub them from an international relations perspective. It’s complicated, I guess!

BC is either flooding or under flood warning, depending on the area. The Chilliwack River area in particular has been hit hard by the floods, and the residents are under an evacuation order at this point. I hope everyone makes it out safely.

Speaking of BC, there’s a case going before the Supreme Court now that’s going to be challenging the constitutional validity of a provision that prohibits MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) in publicly funded faith-based institutions. Right now, if an institution is faith-based (i.e. probably Christian) they can refuse to provide MAiD on their property and force terminally ill patients to be transferred to another hospital in order to end their lives. Now, I have very mixed feelings about MAiD. I think that, in principle, it is an excellent idea: everyone should have the right to choose their manner of death if it’s feasible (sudden and accidental deaths being a common enough phenomenon). However, there has been a lot of evidence over the years that the system is being used/abused in order to target lower income and disabled people, especially those with long-term but not actually terminal diagnoses, and to pressure them into accepting MAiD in order to relieve the system of the “burden” of their care, and that is abhorrent. If it’s an issue that could be solved by better access to health care services, then MAiD shouldn’t even be on the table. Also, medical practitioners should not, in theory, ever suggest it to the patient, the patient needs to bring it up themselves. Since the system exists, however, I do agree that religious healthcare institutions, if they are publicly funded, have a duty of care to all members of the public. It’s for the same reason I firmly believe they should not be allowed to deny birth control or abortion care: health care should be evidence-based, not faith-based. Faith is wonderful (I am a practicing Quaker, after all), but it should be there to support people on their journeys and not needlessly add to their suffering. I am interested to see how this court case goes!

There was apparently a pretty massive anti-immigration rally in Toronto this weekend as well as a counter-protest, all of which ended up with eight arrests and 29 charges being laid. It looks like it started with a “Stop Mass Immigration Rally,” which is laughable because the federal government has already slashed immigration quotas and the country is suffering because no Canadian citizen wants to do the low-paying jobs typically taken on by foreign worker programs and other marginalized folks who have come to this country. Like, is the mass immigration in the room with us, buddy? Are you feeling okay? Do you need some water? Anyway, things got out of hand, police are blaming “both sides,” and everyone is scheduled to appear in court at the end of February.

I do NOT like the direction in which Canada is going. We’ve had a growing problem with the far right, exemplified by the so-called “Freedom Convoy” of 2022, and it appears nothing is being done about it. I must confess I’m at something of a loss as well about what I can do about it personally, but there must be something I am missing. Maybe I will check in with some activist friends and see if they have concrete suggestions for me. Otherwise I can easily see us going the way of the USA if the right “charismatic” leader comes along.

Oh, and in “no one is surprised” news, Ontarians have continued to drink way too much since the inception of the pandemic. Weekly binge drinking is up 3.6% since 2019, hazardous or harmful drinking (i.e. early signs of alcohol dependence) is up 3.3%, and symptoms of alcohol dependence increased by 4.7%. There’s also been a spike in the abuse of illicit AND prescription drugs, and a spoke in people reporting mental distress and poor mental health. Suicidal ideation increased from 3.9% to 6.4%, too. Gosh, I wonder why ALL THAT could be? The article, of course, blames it on social isolation from Covid, which is such contrived bullshit, I cannot even. We have not socially isolated in five years. People are getting multiple Covid infections a year, which is wreaking havoc on minds and bodies. Inflation is out of control, people are getting priced out of being able to live under a roof, let alone comfortably, and all around us people and governments are sliding into fascism. PEOPLE ARE STRESSED OUT BECAUSE OF COLLAPSE, BOB.

*rips out hair*

ANYWAY. In more neutral news, I wasn’t able to go to my town council meeting today because of the overtime at work. I have marked my calendar for the next meeting, and I will make a point of reading the minutes when I get a chance.

I wonder if I can find some good news on which to end this post. Otherwise, it does feel horribly depressing. Ooh! Apparently, there’s a generic version of a very expensive Cystic Fibrosis drug becoming available! From what I can see the name brand costs a horrifying $300,00 to $370,000 a year, which the pharmaceutical company claims is based on their trying to recoup the costs they incurred while producing it. However, a Bangladeshi pharmaceutical company will be offering a generic brand for about $6,750 a year for adults and $2,000 for children, which will make it a lot more accessible (although it still won’t be free, which would be the ideal scenario). This is very exciting news and I am very pleased that I found it so I can end this post on a high note.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: frustrated

1- State of the Phnee

a. Work has been incredibly busy the last couple of days. I’m not entirely sure why, but I assume it’s something to do with everyone returning to work after the holiday, although it can’t be only that. It feels like everything I touch today requires me to send complicated updates and/or make a bunch of phone calls, all of which is very time consuming.

b. Work was so busy yesterday, in fact, that I didn’t have time to go get the available treadmill and do any walking, but I have rectified that today. I am in fact walking as I type this post (shh, I am totally working). The FitBod app for which I have a two-week trial gave me exercises that require heavier dumbbells than the ones I own (it seems to be ignoring the fact that I have resistance bands, so I shall have to play around with it to see If I can fix that), and I decided to get a set of modular ones that were on sale at the local Canadian Tire today. I am hoping to get in a workout when I get home from work tonight, even if it will be Fuck My Life O’Clock when I get there.

Bodies are ridiculous things, aren’t they? I was chatting with friends about this earlier today (okay, I was complaining).

Me: “I would like to improve my fitness.”

Body: “Sure thing! It will be incredibly painful, hot, and sweaty, and on the best days you will actively feel like you’re dying!”

Me: “Wait, what?”

Body: “The pain is good! Except for the pain that’s not.”

Me: “Which pain is good and which pain is bad?”

Body: “TRY IT AND FIND OUT, SUCKER!”

Alternately, it could just be that bodies like to freak out about whatever you’re doing. *frantically producing lactic acid* “I JUST FIXED THOSE MUSCLES YESTERDAY, ASSHOLE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUT THERE?!?”

But overall I am pretty pleased with the humble beginnings of my strength and endurance training. It turns out that doing exercise really does help with mood and energy levels, curse it, although I haven’t had miraculous results by any means. I have noticed that I feel better after the shifts when I use the treadmill, and feel less tired behind the wheel when driving home, which is a very good thing.

The trick will be maintaining the practice long-term. I am not exactly known for my follow-through on these things. I’m posting in a group chat, so I’m hoping that will keep me accountable.

c. I have changed my mind about getting a new computer. The main problem right now is that my disc memory is low, so I am thinking of getting an external hard drive instead of a whole new computer and put off the computer part until maybe next November for Black Friday sales. I have a lot of files that I need to keep but am not actively using these days, so just putting that onto external storage should hopefully extend the life of the computer by a few months, and it’s considerably less expensive than a new computer, by a few orders of magnitude. Fingers crossed that I can get away with it!

2- State of the smallholding

a. There’s not much to report for this today. We’ve had quite a bit of snow, as I mentioned in a previous entry, so I need to do some shoveling to clear the front deck. KK bought us a little electric snow shovel which was super helpful, but the last time she used it she tripped our newly installed GFCI outlet and we haven’t been able to reset it. I am still actively trying not to be annoyed at how much stuff around the house she breaks and then just… leaves for me to deal with. A few months ago it was the kitchen sink, which she clogged and then tried to unclog with a plastic snake that she then got stuck in there and left for me to find. When I pointed it out she then broke the plastic snake off in the drain, and I had to call a plumber (and pay for it myself because she’s consistently broke). I had the GFCI outlet installed a few months ago and also paid for it entirely, and it’s all extremely irksome because it seems like she’s being awfully casual about my time, energy, and money. I don’t think it’s malicious, but goddamn.

3- State of the news

a. International news reports Maduro in court facing charges, to which he’s pled not guilty. Interestingly, China has opted NOT to respond with a show of military force, but with legal recourse, and honestly, I think it’s a move that may serve them well (even though I’m not a political science expert by a long shot). China has provided economic loans to dozens of countries that are contingent on that country’s government being able to fulfill its contractual obligations during its tenure, and also future governments’ ability to adhere to said contract. The USA swooping in and removing the government and then not stepping aside to allow the new democratically elected leader to take over makes all of that pretty moot for Venezuela, so it makes sense that China would withdraw its funding and send 10,000 lawyers to recoup their losses. I am going to be watching with interest to see how this plays out, because I have no doubt that China will be willing to throw military force behind their legal threats if push comes to shove, but if they don’t have to, why would they?

b. The big news in Ontario is that a court has ruled that Doug Ford needs to turn over his private cell phone records for review. Normally a Premier is entitled to privacy, you see, but Doug Ford decided to abuse that by not using his government-issued cell phone to conduct government business at all. His government is well-known for being corrupt as all get-out, and I guess he thought he could hide behind privacy laws in what seems to me like the most inept way possible. *snort* “I’ll use my personal phone instead of my government-issue one! They’ll never catch me this way!” Oh, Douglas. Anyway, part of me hopes that this blows all the corruption scandals wide open, and another part of me rather cynically thinks that this will slide off him like Teflon, as usual. I continue to be baffled by how rampant the corruption in that government is with seemingly no consequences. It’s like a more sanitized version of what’s been happening in the US: we’re all watching it happen, and yet we can’t figure out how to make it stop.

Okay, that’s all I have for today. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: busy

Holy shitsnacks, it has been a day! First off, I turned 47, which is no mean feat. Somehow, 47 feels a lot closer to 50 than 46 did. I don’t know why, it just does. Brains are weird.

1- State of the Phnee

a. I spent the morning of my birthday trying out a “foot mask” for the first time in my life. I’m not usually a beauty products kind of gal beyond using moisturizer and lip balm, but the soles of my feet got really dry this year and it’s actually not nice from a sensory standpoint when I sleep and the sheets catch on the dry skin. It’s not the worst problem to have, but I figured it was one I might be able to solve without too much difficulty. Apparently, it takes about 4-5 days to really start doing its thing after application, so we shall see.

b. The rest of the morning falls under the heading ISN’T HAVING PETS GREAT. The cats left a present for me in the form of a dead mole in the basement. The reason I discovered this is that I had to bring down emergency laundry after Peggy barfed prodigiously all over her crate and therefore her bedding (she has a cozy blankie to lie on). So, this morning was a glorious symphony of vomit and mole carcasses. Delightful.

c. Since it’s my birthday I brought doughnuts and Timbits to work for everyone. I’m working evenings again this week, so the crowd is a little smaller than the day shift, but whatever, it’s fine. The night shift will get some too, and tomorrow’s day shift might even get the leftovers. It’s usually the day shift who get first pick of that sort of thing, so it’s okay that other shifts get to have the slightly fresher stuff for once.

d. I chatted very briefly with my parents who sent me very nice birthday emails and tried to reply to everyone who sent me nice messages on various messaging platforms. I get overwhelmed by emails and messages a lot more easily lately, which is not something I enjoy. I’ve always struggled a little to respond on time, but now it’s gotten a lot worse, and I don’t like it.

e. In Quaker news, one of the Meeting Members has asked to bring a concern to our next M&C meeting, and I will confess to being apprehensive about it. She hasn’t said what her concern is, and this lady and I don’t see eye to eye on a few very important matters. Notably she is anti-vax, which I learned about her long before the pandemic. She’s also very anti-tech in the Meeting, which means she wants to do away with our hybrid system (partially online and partially in-person) because she finds the tech disruptive. I disagree with this pretty fundamentally, because the people who attend online are the most vulnerable Members and Attenders: people who are disabled, immunocompromised, frail, elderly, or who live far and don’t have access to good transportation. And all these people would be more likely to come to Meeting in person if people already there were to mask consistently, but of course they don’t, and while she and I have never discussed it, I get the feeling this Member and I probably don’t see eye to eye on masking, either. Hopefully things will go smoothly at the Meeting. I can manage my feelings of anxiety and apprehension, and maybe it’s not a concern related to anything I think it could be. I will find out on Friday, I guess!

2- State of the smallholding

a. No more quail casualties, at least for now. I added more pine shavings and straw to all the enclosures. I’m sort of doing a half-assed version of the deep litter method of bedding for the winter, because it allows the old bedding to compost and generate a bit of heat. I don’t know how well it’s working, however, because the quail enclosures are considerably smaller than your average chicken coop, so I think the “compost” might be freezing or at least cold rather than generating heat. The straw does serve as insulation, however, and they seem to like the pine shavings, so I’m going to stick with that for now.

b. I should be thinking about starting seeds, probably in late February, and that means digging out my seeds from whatever box I packed them in before we moved (oops). I also don’t remember what I did with my asparagus crowns, which is super annoying because those were expensive as fuck. Hopefully I can find them and also hopefully they haven’t died. They’re hardy little fuckers, though, so fingers crossed that they survived. If not, I guess I will have to bite the bullet and get more. *sigh*

3- State of the news

a. Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry: I got a notice by email of a special meeting for zoning amendments in the area on January 26^th. If it’s like the last meeting I went to then it will start half an hour before the usual town council meeting and consist of “Welp, so-and-so would like to convert this from Agricultural to Agricultural Special Exemption and here are the fifteen reasons why this is a good idea.” And then it will pass unanimously and we’ll all move on with our lives. It’s administrative and rather dry, but I find it interesting to get a glimpse into the workings of the area. I may find myself in the position of requiring either permits and/ore exemptions in the coming years, especially if I decide to replace the septic system down the line. I don’t currently have the $40,000+ required to redo my septic system, alas, so we’re coping with what has turned out to be a rather limited holding tank, but eventually I’d like to get it whipped into more manageable shape.

b. We’ve been having a colder and snowier winter than usual this past month in the Ottawa region, which honestly isn’t a bad thing. More snow means hopefully less drought next year, although I am a little concerned about the melt in the spring causing some flooding, especially in my backyard. Cow Shit Creek, as we have affectionately nicknamed the little rivulet that runs through the property (it has a real name but I’ve forgotten it) overflowed its banks thoroughly last spring and filled the back acre right up to the big retaining wall that I assume was built exactly for that purpose. By the end of the summer it was bone dry, not even so much as a patch of mud, so there are some pretty interesting extremes happening there.

c. OC Transpo has increased its rates, which a lot of people are disgruntled about, given that the quality of the services has declined pretty steadily over the years. I myself am hoping that the extension of the LRT eastward will be finished soon (it was meant to be this spring, but it appears to be delayed). I’d love to be able to drive to a Park ‘n’ Ride and take the train in the rest of the way to work. Transport Canada is right on top of a LRT station, and if I get the new job I applied for, it’s also within walking distance of a LRT station (albeit one with significantly less parking, which could be an issue).

d. Ontario politics have been quiet of late. The big headline is Doug Ford threatening to pull Crown Royal from LCBO shelves in response to the company shuttering its bottling plant in Amherst, ON and moving those jobs to the US. Ol’ Douglas is using the move to capitalize on the anti-American sentiment that’s swelled since the trade/tariff war began. Kind of cheap, but given his general antics I am not surprised.

e. I am pleased to not be alone in being displeased with Canada’s weak response to the kidnapping of Maduro and the blatant attempt at colonizing Venezuela. One commentator remarked of Carney that it looked like he was trying to carry a Fabergé egg across the ice, referring to the delicately phrased statement that was clearly designed to not upset Donald Trump. Meh. I still think it’s pretty spineless as a response and we should be doing better. Pierre Poilievre of course lurched forward to lick Trump’s boots with his response, but at least Don Davies (interim leader of the NDP) came out with an unequivocal statement about it.

f. In a move that I will confess I don’t understand, Chrystia Freeland will be stepping down as MP and taking an uncompensated (?) role as an economic advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. I am kind of baffled as to why he would pick her when there are approximately a gajillion more qualified Europeans, but I guess politics move in mysterious ways.

g. In the Continuing Adventures of the Dumpster Fire to the South: Stephen Miller has essentially come right out and said that the US is more than willing to take Greenland by force. Here’s a snippet of an interview between him and Jake Tapper of CNN:

“TAPPER: Can you rule out the US is going to take Greenland by force?

MILLER: Greenland should be part of the US. By what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? The US is the power of NATO

T: So force is on the table?

M: Nobody is gonna fight the US militarily over future of Greenland.”

*beats head on table* I’m sure this is fine. FML.

Now, I don’t think that Canada is in immediate military peril the way some other people appear to. However, it is pretty anxiety-inducing to have a fascist regime next door with a leader rapidly succumbing to some form of dementia or other cognitive degeneration who has repeatedly talked about making our country the 51^st state. I’m more concerned that the US will use its considerable economic leverage to try to control us rather than risk incurring the wrath of NATO and fighting a war on multiple fronts. Either way, it won’t be pretty.

Oof. Okay. Time to get back to work.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: chipper

Happy post-Canada Day! I had to go to work in the midst of the craziness that is downtown Ottawa just as the fireworks were ending. Absolute madness, but I was able to get through thanks to a letter from my manager explaining that I'm an essential worker and a (mostly) understanding police officer. Now I just have to get through this night shift without falling asleep at my desk.

The building of the Murphy bed is an ongoing saga. It is a huge undertaking for people who aren't accustomed to doing such things on the regular. My friends Dylan and Sarah came over on Saturday to help me build it, and by the end of the day only the upright cupboard part of the bed was built and anchored to the wall, so I had to sleep on the cot one more night. Sarah came back on Sunday and we got the bed part built enough that I was able to sleep in it that night, but we still weren't done. She came back today, and we were able to add the "doors" that make the Murphy bed look like a wardrobe when it's folded up (they are not functional doors, for the record), and also put together the shelving portion of the built-in desk part of it. We are still not done.

I'm on nights this week, so I got about two hours of sleep before Sarah came over, and then KK let me take a nap in her room later, so I'm chugging along on about four-ish hours of sleep in total. I haven't been much help in building my own bed, mostly because Sarah kept kicking all of us out of the room, preferring to work on her own for most of the time, but also because I've been trying to get a million things done at once, which is working about as well as you'd expect.

I'm cautiously optimistic that once the Murphy bed is completely built I'll start getting more on top of things, because I'll be able to fully unpack my bedroom and hopefully get it set up for maximum efficiency, and from there I'll be able to keep going in the rest of the house. The kitchen and living room are a bit more unpacked now, but we're nowhere near done.

I also need to take several days to go back to the old house to clear out the remaining stuff from there, clean the place from top to bottom, and then hopefully find someone relatively inexpensive to repair the basement walls. Longtime readers will remember that my cats did not react well to the stress of moving many years ago and had peed extensively in the basement, damaging the walls to the point where the bottom of the drywall had to be cut away in many places. I may try repairing it myself, since it's just a question of getting drywall cut to the correct dimensions, screwing it in place, and then screwing some shiplap over it (I think it's called shiplap, it's basically cheap white wooden slats). It doesn't have to be done well, it just needs to be done.

All right, time to get back to work. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: busy

I was going to make a joke about making a sacrifice (or perhaps an offering) to the god(s) of wakefulness, but it turns out that there are only gods of sleep and dreaming and they just happen to also have wakefulness as part of their domain or sphere of influence. Either way, I made choices yesterday that resulted in my getting to sleep a lot later than my good intentions. I don't think these fall into the category of poor life choices, though.

I had some errands that I had to run, specifically to pick up more quail feed (I had thought I had enough to last until the weekend, but my calculation was off by a couple of days) and more toothpaste for the dogs. Yes, I do brush the dogs' teeth every day. Honestly, if I could manage it, I'd brush the cats' teeth too, and that would have spared me the nearly $3,000 vet bill from a couple of weeks ago, but the cats do NOT take kindly to having their mouths messed with. The dogs are wriggly about it, but otherwise they let me brush their teeth without too much fuss. Anyway, we always have a backup tube of toothpaste, but of course the backup tube is packed in a box somewhere, so I had to buy another one. I suppose we could have let the dogs go for a week either without brushing at all or just brushing without toothpaste (I am quite sure KK doesn't brush their teeth when I'm not home in the evenings because I'm at work), but it wasn't that much of a hardship to detour for 15 minutes to go pick some up at one of the local pet stores.

I got home at 6:30pm and allowed KK to persuade me to watch TV with her, although I probably should have taken that time to do something useful. I put the dogs to bed just after 8pm, then went to the basement to put the quail to bed and put away the quail feed into 5-gallon buckets. Fun facts I have discovered: 1) 1 bag of quail feed fits almost perfectly into 3 5-gallon buckets; 2) 6 quail will go through one bag of feed in about 9 weeks (I forget how much the bag weighs, but I think it's 25kg), which means each bird goes through about 600 grams of feed a day, which is 3 times their average body weight; 3) quail feed is dusty AF.

Since I was now coated in quail feed dust, taking a shower seemed like a non-negotiable, so that's what I did.

As an aside, hot showers are pretty glorious things, and honestly having continuous access to fresh running water on demand at temperatures I can regulate according to my whims is going to be one of the things I miss the most if society collapses (even partially) and the grid no longer supports us. There's a lot of stuff we take for granted in our modern society that is kind of hanging by a thread these days, not least of which is clean, potable water and pretty excellent waste management. I'm moving to a place which doesn't have access to a municipal sewage system, but it still has a septic holding tank (not a full septic system with a septic field, interestingly enough) which requires regular emptying by a company that knows what it's doing when it comes to disposing of waste in a safe and sanitary fashion. We eliminated so many illnesses and premature deaths just by figuring out how to dispose of human excrement that I don't think many of us (myself included, if I'm perfectly honest) truly understand how bad things will get once we no longer have access to good sanitation.

Anyway, all that aside, after my shower and general pre-bedtime ablutions, I ended up only getting to bed well after 10:30pm and fell asleep shortly after 11:00pm. Given that I was working the "early" 7am shift today, that made for a shorter night of sleep than I would have liked, but it was all for a good cause. As of next week, since we'll be living much further away, I am going to have to become much more regimented about going to bed at a reasonable hour, because I'm going to need to leave on average 30 minutes earlier than I have been for the last year or so. I'm probably going to have to forgo watching TV with KK in the evenings. That seems like the best way to save a couple of hours in which to get things done. I didn't sit down and watch TV per se before she moved in: often I'll have a TV show or a podcast on kind of in the background as I move around and do things like chores.

I find it weirdly hard to do any kind of chores when KK is in the house, which unfortunately is 99% of the time these days (or else it's during work hours, when I can't do chores anyway because I'm either working or physically at my office). This is entirely a me problem, a weird hangup that I have about getting stuff done where I can be Perceived(TM), especially when she's just sitting and watching TV or playing on her phone or her tablet (or all three at once, as is often the case, which boggles even my ADHD mind). I don't know what it is, exactly, but I just feel weird about cleaning up around her, partly because it kind of feels like I am cleaning up AT her, which is not my intention (although maybe I am subconsciously doing that? It's possible.). Anyway, I am probably overthinking this.

My shift is nearly over, thank goodness, because today has been nothing but a long list of frustrations because of our automated SOPs. When they work, they are great. However, today a supervisor decided to take them offline without warning (our manager gave the instructions but apparently it wasn't meant to happen until next week), and I lost all of the work I had done on a rather complicated file, which was just maddening. And then I went around in circles with said supervisor about it for a while, and finally had to start my file over from scratch using an older version.

Whoops, shit is hitting the fan. I will leave this here for now. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: busy

It's been long enough (nearly four weeks) since I worked the AvSec Desk at my job, and I forgot how busy it can get. There's a lull right now, but even though everything else has been pretty quiet, I have basically been going steady since I got in at 08:00. It does have the advantage of making the time go by much faster.

I drove in with KK this morning since we're both in-office today. She had originally wanted to park near her office because the parking is cheaper there, but she got up late and therefore asked that I drive and drop her off and park at my office (conveniently making me pay for parking). It makes more sense to carpool on days when we're both in-office, but she tends to pull these last-minute bait-and-switches on me, and so I think from here on out I'll be making my own way to the office on those days anyway, especially now that we aren't paying for a monthly parking pass anymore. We had one before she got her medical exemption from the three days a week in-office, but now that she only has to go in two days a week or less, and I have only nine to ten in-office days every two months, it's not worth the monthly cost.

I have been a lot less patient with KK lately, and I think it's because I've worn through a lot of my resilience in the past couple of months, between my parents being ill, my getting Covid, the stress of working a bunch of extra hours, all the last-minute legal and financial shenanigans about buying the house, packing up the house, and then having to pull an extra few thousand dollars out of my ass because the move had to be postponed. Each of these things I probably could have handled just fine, even two of them would probably have been stressful but fine, but all of it within a six-week period appears to have taken a toll. Objectively I understand that KK is unable to share the load equally, because she is more physically disabled than I am, and she also doesn't have much money due to having to pay down some considerable amounts of debt (she actually makes about $16k a year more than I do, but I am in much better financial shape than she is). On my good days, I totally get it and have no trouble with it. I knew this going in when she moved in four years ago, so this isn't a surprise or a deal-breaker. On my bad days, however, when I've come home to find that she's left more garbage in the sink for me to clean up instead of throwing it in the garbage can that is *literally right there* and then she makes some sort of snide comment about something I've done that she doesn't like, it takes all my self-control not to snap at her.

Anyway, I think my first order of business will be to go to bed as early as possible tonight in an attempt to be better rested for the next couple of days. I'm working in-office and KK is working from home, which will spare us some of the logistical issues at least. I would also like to finish all of the packing by Sunday. I think it's all pretty doable, but I definitely need to be less of a zombie for all the dominoes to fall just right.

I think I'll leave it there for now. Work is so busy I may not have time to post before my shift is over otherwise. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: busy

I don't understand how I can have spent all of today doing next to nothing during my work from home day and yet be absolutely fucking exhausted anyway. (This is a back-dated post, because I collapsed in an exhausted heap into my bed instead of updating) I spent most of the day cleaning out my long-neglected inbox. For the record, my job involves sorting through emails in a separate, shared inbox all day long, so I don't pay attention to my personal inbox most of the time except to quickly read through the new emails in case something important has cropped up. In the past I was more diligent about sorting through my emails and filing them away into various folders, but somewhere around last November I stopped doing that and just let them kind of pile up. I kept meaning to get around to cleaning everything up in there, but I never did, so yesterday I bit the bullet and spent several hours doing that.

There were just shy of 800 emails to sort through, so it took a while, and I am glad that I had a day without having to write SitReps or work on other projects so that I could concentrate on that. I got it down to just 3 emails and today it's down to two because I was able to "action" one of the items (I do hate that it has become a verb, even though in principle I agree that language is fluid and that we should not be prescriptivist about it). One of the emails is something I only want to do sometime next month at the earliest. I am being sent on a course to learn about railway operations, which is super cool, but because part of it will be on-site I am required to wear safety gear (specifically work gloves and steel-toed boots), which I have to purchase myself and then submit my receipts for reimbursement. These days I am hemorrhaging money thanks to the new house and the moving shenanigans, so having to spend another $200 on gear (even if I get reimbursed eventually) is not a prospect I particularly relish. Ugh.

I am probably paying for several late nights over the past few days. I haven't even been going to bed late for a "good" reason, I've just been messing around and putting off going to bed. That has resulted in my dragging myself a little through my days, and the minute I actually get into bed I can't keep my eyes open at all and am always at risk of dropping off to sleep over whatever I'm reading and not getting my CPAP mask on. I shudder to think what sort of condition I'd be in without the CPAP, given that I now know it's making a difference in the quality of my sleep, even if it hasn't resulted in noticeable improvements in energy levels.

All right, that's it for now. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: tired

It is SO nice not to have to be the SitRep writer anymore! I spent a small chunk of today holding the hand of the new SitRep writer as she navigated her first day of writing SitReps, just as the previous SitRep writer did for me last week. It is a job and a half, and honestly the instructions we were given are, uh, not very clear. I am sort of tempted to re-write them and submit the proposal to the "Core" team of supervisors/managers so that future SitRep writers don't find themselves navigating a sea of practically indecipherable text. Okay, it's not that bad, but whoever wrote the instructions did so with no regard for brevity or clarity, nor is it particularly well ordered. Technical writing is a skill, after all.

I'm working from home tomorrow, which is a blessing. It's the only WFH day I have this week, so I plan to take full advantage of that. I have to get up early enough to take out the recycling and the green bin, but at least I don't have to get up at the ass-crack of dawn. Also, since I'm not the SitRep writer this week, it ought to make for a much more chill day. If that turns out to be the case, I am going to try to take advantage of the "extra" time to keep packing up the house.

KK is finally home after being out with H most of the weekend. We drove to the new house this evening and took the dogs out for a run, checked the mail, and picked up the cat food that had been delivered there (we didn't want to leave it outside in case the smell was too enticing for the local wildlife). I also wandered over to the road that leads to the neighbour's farm and said a respectful hello to some of the dairy cows that were hanging out nearby. They were pretty nonplussed at my presence, but they didn't seem overly concerned otherwise. I quite like cows, so I'm hoping we will be on good terms with our neighbours in general. I also spotted the same cat I'd seen over the weekend (I think) trotting down the path in the direction of the farm, so I am reasonably confident that the cat must belong to them.

Okay, time for bed. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: tired

I spent today in a haze of frustration about work. First my work tablet/computer refused to recognize that it was, in fact, connected to the internet. It did this for the better part of half an hour. I informed my supervisor, who only had "Contact IT, please," as if I was too stupid to come up with that on my own. I thought it was a well-known best practice to first do all the troubleshooting you can on your own before contacting IT, but apparently not in her world. Anyway, just the threat of dialing the number for the Help Desk made my computer decide to behave itself, and it spontaneously decided that Oh, did, I mean THAT internet? Why didn't I SAY SO? *rolls eyes*

Then I spent the rest of the day chasing my tail trying to get the wildfire SitRep written, then I had information for a different SitRep come in, but when I tried to run it by my supervisor she didn't even know what it was, so I had to explain it to her. Then she gave me the green light to send the information, and then five minutes after I'd hit "send" on my email she messaged me to tell me that I shouldn't send it because the information was for "internal distribution only." *screams into a pillow*

I ended up working 30 minutes late, which is NOT my idea of fun on a Friday, I won't lie.

By that point I was so tired I couldn't see straight, so I fed the dogs and opted for an early night. The early night was then curtailed by KK, who kept messaging me on Signal with blow-by-blow updates of her night with H at the hotel. It turns out their first room had no working A/C (the irony is rich, since the lack of A/C is why she decided to let me take care of the house on my own this weekend), and when the hotel gave them another room it also had no A/C. When the bar across the street started blaring music they opted for a different hotel.

At least I got some stuff done, but there was no progress at all on the packing.

Current Mood: tired

I just don't want to lose my streak, and I'm willing to "cheat" just a little bit to accomplish that. ;)

Yesterday got away from me a little bit. Work demanded that I produce two situation reports a day on Monday and Tuesday, and that meant that I basically did not get up from my desk for eight hours. Both days I managed to sneak away for 15 minutes to grab a bite to eat around 2pm, and that was it. So I ended up not having the time and energy to make a post here, alas.

At least I got to bed at a halfway decent time, so that's something.

A more fulsome update will follow eventually, I promise.

Current Mood: busy

I have one of those twice-weekly reports to write for work tonight, and it's time-consuming and annoying, so I can't spend too long updating this journal just in case work gets busy later and I don't have time to get the report done. I do not want to have to explain that I didn't get my work done because I was blogging. That would look bad. ;)

I probably shouldn't stress too hard about it, because I routinely take, like, five hours or longer at work to update because I keep getting interrupted anyway. So I'm sure I'll get it all done. This report in particular stresses me out because there are no explicit instructions for how to prepare it, but it's somehow still extremely important to get it done exactly right. *headdesk* Also, I only write one once every four months or because it's specifically a night shift duty and my shift partner and I take turns to do it, so I am woefully lacking in practice. Nothing stresses me out more at work than being asked to do something I'm not familiar with AND for which I have no reliable blueprint. It is objectively the worst.

Tonight is my last night shift, and then I am off until my day shifts next weekend. So far no coworkers have agreed to a shift trade, although I am waiting for that one coworker to get back to me tomorrow (he won't be in until 3pm, though, so I won't find out until late in the day if he's accepted the trade). If he says no, which he likely will, because going from an evening shift directly to a 12 hour day shift with no break is goddamned brutal, I will simply have to suck it up and go to work next weekend.

That give me five days this week and four days next week to get everything packed. Normally I would spend the Monday after my night shifts sleeping, but obviously I can't waste all those precious packing hours on something as silly as sleep, so I'm going to take a brief nap when I get home and then get up and start packing. I have asked KK to help me with packing tomorrow because it's a statutory holiday, but I'm not sure how much help she will actually be. Tomorrow being a stat holiday means that I won't be able to go to U-Haul to buy more boxes, because I'm 99% sure they'll be closed for everyday purchases (albeit likely not for van rentals and that sort of thing), and rightly so. Employees deserve their statutory holidays, and should have the day off like everyone else.

So, yeah. I should probably make some aspirational packing goals for this week, so I'll know how hard I failed by the time the weekend rolls around. ;)

Okay. Report writing time! Wish me luck. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: stressed

I have spent all of this shift halfway convinced that it's my third night shift instead of my second. I think it's the fact that I've already been working for nine days straight that makes it feel like it's later in the week than it actually is. I still have five more nights to go, including the 12-hour weekend shifts. I am not really looking forward to any of it, but it is what it is.

I managed to get about six hours of sleep and probably would have slept longer had I not had to get up early for my therapy appointment. I have made the grievous error of agreeing to multiple meetings and appointments this week. I keep trying to not schedule stuff during my evening and night shifts, and I keep failing abysmally. It's just never a good idea, but sometimes there just isn't another choice. Alas.

So later today I have a meeting with tow members of Ministry & Counsel about a small worship group one of them wants to start centered around chronic illness, and on Friday I am going to my new credit union to sign my life away in order to qualify for a reduced interest rate on my new mortgage. Okay, I exaggerate slightly for effect, but essentially I have to switch over to a checking account with the credit union and have my pay direct deposited there in order to qualify.

I've sent out feelers to my coworkers to see if anyone will trade my weekend day shifts in 10 days with me. Getting the weekend off to be able to focus on packing would be a godsend, but I'm not going to hold my breath. People are pretty accommodating at my workplace, but we're getting into summer vacation time and people are a busier with kids and commitments and stuff. Fingers crossed, anyway.

Okay. Time to wrap this up. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: awake

Today has been remarkably Not Busy (I know better than to use the "Q" word in an operational setting!), to the point where my shift partner and I actually tested the phone lines AND Outlook to make sure calls and emails were still able to come through. Of course, the minute we did that my poor shift partner got a really weird and complicated call that ended up taking her nearly two hours to resolve, so I think I owe her chocolate for jinxing her. ;)

I don't have much to report today. I've been doing nothing but work and sleep lately, and today I've mostly spent updating my resume in order to send it to the recruiter tomorrow. I suppose I could just send it today as soon as I'm done. I am very bad at updating my resume and hadn't done it since last year. These days there are lots of conflicting opinions and advice about how to format a resume, with some saying that you can't just provide a chronological list of your jobs and a description of your responsibilities, but instead need to present a more "dynamic" version with, like, an eye-catching "executive summary" and a list of your skills and all sorts of other stuff that feels like nonsense to this aging Gen Xer. Then you get other people insisting that, no, all that gimmicky stuff is actually super off-putting, and you should just create a simple document listing your education and your job experience, nothing more. I am erring on the side of simplicity, but I did include a list of skills by way of compromise.

Work is suddenly going nuts, so I'm going to stop here and catch up later. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: busy

We're meant to be losing at least some connectivity at work tonight starting in a little over 20 minutes, so I'm doing a very quick update just so as not to lose my "post every day" streak. Yes, these things preoccupy me, don't ask. ;)

I am really hoping it's a minor inconvenience. In theory we have backup systems, but there's a non-zero chance we will have to relocate to another building, which is a huge pain in the ass. We have to pack up laptops and cell phones and binders into backpacks and lug them on foot for several blocks to another building, then have a fight with that building's infrastructure in order to get everything connected, and none of it works quite right nor quite the way we're used to working at our regular workstations. It's inconvenient and annoying, but nothing worse than that.

More annoying is that I have to work this weekend, since I switched with a colleague last month, and so I'm going to spend most of tomorrow and maybe also Sunday mopping up the backlog that this outage is going to cause, which is yet another annoying, inconvenient pain in my ass.

In the spirit of maybe finally starting to get my act together (hah), I went out today and acquired some more moving boxes. Specifically I got wardrobe boxes, boxes for dishware and glasses, a pack of small book boxes (good for books, CDs, DVDs, and small but heavy items), and a bunch of bubble wrap. I've asked KK to get a start this weekend on clearing the trash out of the living room, in the hopes that that will clear some space to start a staging area for packing on Monday. I don't know if she'll do it, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I likely won't have much time to pack this weekend, but at least I have more materials now, which seems like a step in the right direction.

In the meantime, I am going to have a very short night of sleep tonight. I work until midnight, won't get to bed until probably 1:30 or 2:00, and then I have to be up again at 6:00 in order to get to work on time for 7:45 for my 12-hour shift. *weeps a little*

I had a preliminary conversation with the recruiter about WillScott Mobile (technically the recruiter is from a firm called Duffy Group, I think), and I think it's worth exploring further for now. I think I mentioned that they're located closer to my home than my current work, and it looks like they may have free parking, whereas parking downtown is $24 a day. It might not turn out to be a money saver if I have to drive in every day due to the cost of gas, but I'd have to crunch the numbers to be absolutely certain. I suspect I'd probably end up breaking even, or somewhere close.

Okay, connectivity thing has started. I will try to post this and hope for the best. Fingers crossed, and see you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: aggravated

I'm still symptomatic and testing positive, but according to the Government of Ontario I am A-Okay to go back to work and spread Covid to my coworkers because my symptoms are "improving," I have no fever, and I have no new symptoms since yesterday. All I have to do is wear a mask, and problem solved, I guess!

I think my supervisor and boss are both aware of how ridiculous this requirement is, but they have to tell me to come back to work because them's the rules. FFS. This is the height of absurdity, and I will never not be mad at all of our governments for selling out public health in the name of "the economy." HOW WELL IS YOUR ECONOMY DOING NOW, MOTHERFUCKERS? HUH?

Anyway, I am annoyed. Hopefully this won't set me back too badly. I will be working for the next... *counts* 14 days straight because I agreed to switch weekends with a coworker last month, and now those chickens are coming home to roost. Alas. I needed the weekend off last month, so I can't bring myself to regret it totally, but it's still going to be really difficult, especially if I'm still sick.

And somewhere in there I have to pack up the house. *weeps*

In other annoying news, I've given myself a second-degree burn on my right ring finger and knuckle due to an ill-timed oil splash on the stove. Thanks, I hate it.

I'm sure I can get it all done, because there's nothing quite like adrenaline-fueled panic packing, but it's probably going to suck out loud.

All right. I have a video appointment to get to, and I need to order groceries as well. Thank goodness for grocery deliveries, they are an absolute godsend. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: annoyed

Unsurprisingly, my mother has come down with the same symptoms as my father. She's taking her meds and being a good patient and resting a lot and drinking a lot of fluids, and so far seems to be doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances. I spoke to both my parents yesterday evening, and they're both being pretty good about things. My father is always more motivated when my mother's well-being is very obviously on the line. I wish he were able to project that into being more careful the rest of the time, but that's probably too much to hope for. Neither one of them is particularly good at risk assessment or management, alas.

I've been harbouring a headache and a slightly sore throat since yesterday, and I cannot for the life of me tell if it's Covid or if it's just the stress of the week catching up to me combined with the truly terrible air quality at work or the cumulative effect of using the CPAP without the humidifier (because it was way too warm). Am I paranoid? Maybe. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face. KK is going to be picking up fresh Covid tests tomorrow if we can find some, since ours are expired and therefore unreliable. It's been increasingly difficult to find Covid tests in Ottawa in the past couple of years--no one seems to carry them anymore. Shopper's Drug Mart apparently sells individual tests for $7.00 each, which is an absolute rip-off, but I expect nothing less from the Galen Weston Jr. empire. The main reason I don't know if it's Covid is because these symptoms do not at all match my parents' symptoms, which are mainly extreme fatigue and some gastrointestinal stuff. So headache and slightly sore throat? Who knows?

Work is going by very slowly, partly because of the aforementioned headache. I'm glad it's not busier, though, because I've already made a pretty regrettable mistake this evening which my shift partner caught, luckily enough, and it's been a pain in the ass to fix. I hate making mistakes at work, even though objectively I know that they are unavoidable. It triggers my impostor syndrome like nobody's business. Oops, make that two mistakes. My coworker is saving my bacon tonight. The second mistake was when I was trying to fix the first mistake, and I didn't realize that there was a new SOP for fixing the mistake and I followed an old SOP for fixing the mistake. *lies on the floor*

I am really looking forward to my bed, which I will be in in about four hours if everything goes really well. I got relatively little sleep today, because we got home from KK's endoscopy shortly before noon, and then I had to wake up in order to be on time for my phone call with Brian, my birth father. He actually sent me a text message saying he'd caught a cold and could we postpone to tomorrow? To which I thought "Sweet, I can go back to sleep!" so I agreed, but I then had to field a call from work asking me to come in early and then changing their minds because the supervisor in question hadn't done the math properly and my coming in early wouldn't actually help anything. After that I had to field a call from my mortgage specialist because the auditor apparently decided that the mountain of paperwork I provided was not, in fact, enough to meet all of my financing conditions for the house. *headdesk* So I have had to send even more paperwork to prove I am not an evil money launderer trying to get a mortgage to launder the rest of my ill-gotten gains through a rural property in Southwestern Ontario.

So, yes. Very much looking forward to my bed now.

Okay. I am going to go heat the last of my lunch and wait for the shift to be over. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: sore

I promise not every post will be about my CPAP adventures from here on out. No, really. But for now you will have to bear with me. :)

The first night with the CPAP was a success, I think. I didn't find the mask difficult to wear at all, despite all the dire warnings I had received ahead of time that lots of people struggle with wearing it and that it's the top reason for noncompliance with CPAP therapy. I think the fact that it's a nose pillow and not a full face mask probably really helped with that, because I barely felt it while I was sleeping. I actually woke up briefly around 2am worried that the machine had turned off because I couldn't feel the air blowing, but it turns out I only feel the air if my head is tilted back, so if it tilts forward at all (which it does during the night as I move around), then I don't feel it at all.

The machine also provides me with a helpful readout/summary of my sleep before I turn it off. It told me I used it for eight hours, and that I had 2.5 events per hour. I'm not entirely sure if that means I only had 2.5 events per hour, or if it only detected 2.5 events, or if I had 2.5 events per hour that the machine felt it need to push extra air or something. Since I was averaging 65 events per hour during my sleep study, whatever this is, I assume it's good no matter what. I did some googling, and the internet agrees that I should be aiming for a readout of under 5 events per hour, and this is definitely under 5, so I'm considering it a win.

My Fitbit readings were also different today. It's actually super bad at detecting my oxygen variation, so I don't pay attention to that, but today it did tell me that I spent a whole extra hour in REM sleep, which jives with the aforementioned reading I've been doing. Studies have shown 50% increases and more in REM sleep the first night of CPAP usage compared to the baseline. It's all pretty cool, really, if you're a nerd who's interested in brainwaves. Interestingly, for the first time in a long time I didn't remember my dreams at all upon waking, and I'm not sure what that means.

Today was a work from home day, and for once I wasn't tapped to do the morning briefing (this is a task for the people who work from home, since we don't have the same operational requirements as the people who are in the office), and I also wasn't given a project to work on, so I kind of twiddled my thumbs for most of the day. I can't complain too hard, because it's a pretty chill way to spend the day, but I'm expected to be at my computer and available to work at a moment's notice, so I can't really go anywhere or get into anything else too much in depth in case I get pulled away. I ended up doing a bit of busywork and watching The Librarians, which I've been re-watching for the past week or so. I actually got to the series finale today, which made me a tiny bit wistful. I had watched the three precursor movies as well, and it's just such a delightful premise and show: the world being saved by ultra-knowledgeable librarians. The series is fun and filled with whimsy, and it's from a time that doesn't seem all that long ago but in fact started over a decade ago (2014) and reflects the optimism of the Obama years, when it felt like knowledgeable geeks might be the ones to show us a better future: math and arts and science and magic, all rolled into one fantastical package.

I made chicken quesadillas for dinner, and it turns out KK has a lot of opinions about quesadillas. Mostly her opinion is that everything in the quesadilla is pointless except for the tortilla and the cheese, and any extra meat, vegetables, or spices are just contaminating the cheese. XD I was making them because I accidentally thawed too much ground chicken and I need to use it up before it goes bad, so she had to put up with some extra contamination of her favourite dairy product, which she did. I was very kind and didn't put in any extra vegetables for her, at least. ;)

Work from home days always feel like I'm in Limbo. I'm often not working on anything in particular, but I don't want to work on my personal stuff on company time, so to speak. I suppose I should try to get past those scruples if I want to get packing done on work from home days, but I think that might actually be a moot point since after this week I only have two day shifts left and the rest will all be evening, nights, and weekends, and none of those are work from home shifts.

All righty. Time for bed. I'm trying to get back into better bedtime habits (I fell off the wagon a couple of weeks ago after several good months of getting to bed between 8:30 and 9:30pm and being asleep between 10:00 and 10:30pm), especially now that I have the CPAP. I want to give it as much opportunity as possible to do its thing of giving my brain oxygen when it needs it.

Current Mood: calm

The day started out quite promising. I was up in time to get out the door for my appointment. KK, however, slept through her alarm and therefore didn't go to the office today, and worked from home instead. Luckily her job doesn't require her to be at the office to perform her duties, and she has come to a tentative truce with her manager about letting her work from home a bit more in order to manage her pain levels better. She had intended to go in today, but the weather change combined with the natural end of the effects of the injections she got in January (it's a special lubricant thing, I think, but I don't know what it's called) have been wreaking havoc on her lately.

The doctor ran 15 minutes late for our appointment, but the appointment itself lasted for maybe five minutes, tops. The doctor confirmed what I already knew, and performed a fairly perfunctory exam of my lungs and throat. Apparently my throat and neck structure are "built for apnea," with an extremely narrow pharyngeal opening, and it seems that still having my tonsils contributes to that, or so I gathered. He wrote me a prescription for a CPAP, and cheerfully told me that about 50% of his patients reported feeling better after CPAP therapy. Not gonna lie, I found that a little disheartening. A 50/50 chance of still feeling like absolute garbage. Boo. I asked if there was perhaps a commonality between the people who did feel better after using a CPAP, and it turns out it works best for people who experience the apnea during REM sleep, which is exactly when I experience it! So I am a little encouraged by that.

Anyway, I called the local CPAP supply place nearest to my house as soon as I left the appointment, and then realized that they were still closed. I called a few more times while I was driving home (using Bluetooth, have no fear), and got no answer. Since it's a literal five minute drive from my home I decided to just go there directly and ask in person, and it worked! I spoke to a nice lady at the counter, and she said they could see me next Tuesday at 1pm. That's not ideal, since I'm working night shifts next week, and an appointment right in the middle of when I would normally be sleeping sounds kind of awful, but I was willing to take it if it was the earliest available one. I pulled out my now tried-and-true "do you have a cancellation list?" card, and she promised she'd let me know, but that their provider was actually only in three days a week since they were "in-between." I had to ask in-between what, since surely there can't be an apnea season, or whatever, and it turns out she meant they're in-between providers, so I guess they just have one person covering multiple locations.

I thanked her, left, got in my car, and hadn't even pulled out of the parking lot when she called me to let me know she could fit me in tomorrow, with an array of time slots, no less! I'm guessing that the provider added a day to the calendar right as I was leaving. So I am getting in tomorrow afternoon at 3pm, which was the latest I could get. I'm working 7 to 3 tomorrow, so I wanted to lose as little work time as possible, given that I had to take nearly two hours off today as well. But the good news is that as of tomorrow afternoon I will likely be coming home with a CPAP to trial for the next three to four weeks! I am VERY excited to get this going. One more (more) sleep!

I was scheduled to work from home the rest of the day, and spent most of that time fighting with Outlook, which has decided it doesn't want to send emails anymore. They just hang out in the inbox and refuse to go anywhere, which is extremely inconvenient. Grr.

Then, right when I was about to get dinner started, all hell broke loose in the house. For some reason, Juno decided to be Very Brave and came downstairs while the Brittanies were loose. The dogs immediately lost their collective shit and took off after her. There was barking and shrieking and growling and hissing, and a million things got knocked around as they proceeded to trash the fuck out of my house. By the time I caught up with them (less than a minute) Pixie had Juno in her mouth and was using her as a chew toy. She let go as I arrived, and she and Peggy took up sentry positions on the stairs, so that they would have easy access to Juno if I tried to carry her up the stairs. Poor Juno was soaked in her own urine, and so all of that got transferred onto me as I picked her up and sent her to the basement for temporary safety. Then a a few minutes later Pixie busted through the baby gate to the basement, and there was another round of me chasing her around. Luckily Juno was well hidden, so at least the only thing to do was chase her back up the stairs.

So then I took a very long, very hot shower. To quote a D&D character of a friend I play with: "Never clean! NEVER CLEAN!" And THEN I made dinner. While I was brushing the dogs' teeth, I noticed that Pixie absolutely reeked of cat pee, so I took her upstairs and gave her a bath, much to her consternation. KK had already mentioned she smelled and had tried to scrub her down with some dog wipes, but they were unequal to the task. Pixie does NOT enjoy the non-consensual wetnesses, specifically she hates being in the rain and also being rinsed, so there was a lot of screaming and carrying on. My poor neighbours must think I routinely torture my dogs, based solely on the sounds that Pixie produces. Jeez.

Anyway, Juno is none the worse for wear after I gave her a more thorough going-over a few minutes ago to check for injuries. Pixie is now clean, and I got absolutely soaked, but I am calling it a win. I have changed the quails' food and water, and they gave me another egg! Luckily I always keep the laundry room door closed, so they were undisturbed by the earlier cat-and-dog antics. I did notice one of the males pecking at the other birds, and I don't like that at all. If he continues to be aggressive he may have to be separated from the others for their well-being. Time will tell, I guess. I will definitely hold off on drastic measures like culling until I get them into larger quarters when we move, since this might just be due to the quail being in slightly too close quarters to each other. But yes, if he keeps it up longer than that he may well end up being dinner one night.

All right. Time for bed. I need to be up at stupid o'clock tomorrow to be at work on time. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: indescribable

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Page generated Jan. 20th, 2026 02:31 am

Corner of Bourbon & Division

Her Words of Wisdom Scratched Into The Door

Entries tagged with work stuff

January 18th, 2026

January 14th, 2026

January 12th, 2026

Updating on the treadmill

Happy Birthday to Me!

Ah, sleep. Still ever-elusive.

There is no god of wakefulness

I had forgotten how busy the AvSec Desk is...

A day of nothing

At least work is back to normal

Definitely an early night

Another backdated post

A very quick update

It feels later in the week than it is...

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Well, that went well...

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