infryq

Yesterday I made another batch of nut and seed bars, though the nuts were a touch old so I might not keep them. I hemmed P’s pj pants, and they fit him and are a good length, so, complete. At work I slogged through a pile of issues with database truncation and Django fixtures and python multiple inheritance but was ultimately victorious, and now my test rig runs as designed. Back to actually fixing bugs!

Home, sat with P and picked out a rolling stool for him to replace the kneeling chair that’s starting to aggravate his knee issues. Dinner, crossword, then I started watching Next In Fashion, a new Netflix reality competition show a la GBBO. It’s hosted by Tan France, which is lovely, and the designers are both already professionals and paired up in teams. It’s a neat take that reduces some of the anxiety of amateurs looking for their big break, and seems to keep the focus on cooperation.

Snack, sleep. Dreamt of bunny selfies, disused roundabouts, stationery shops, and tower defense.

Yesterday I finished felling the left seam on P’s pj pants. At work I tracked down some details of an old software system that let our research group send masses of search queries through Google, and sent them off with caveats for bit rot to a faculty member from our sister research group in Brazil. I spent the rest of the afternoon battling pyparsing, which seems to have a bug in its resultsName implementation. I think I’ve fixed it (or at least fixed our use of it), but I still want to finish putting every possible combination of input types in a unit test just in case.

P had the car on campus and drove us home, after which I spent another hour looking at bags on the internet. I may have found one, in the form of a cork bag. Cork hit the sewing world a couple of years ago as a new leather alternative, flexible, durable, sustainable, and water resistant. The top is still narrower than I’d prefer so I’m holding off to see if I find anything on today’s Ross Park mall expedition.

Dinner, crossword, Voyager, snack, sleep. Intense dreams, some wretched.

Yesterday I overslept, and had to send P off to his late morning class without breakfast 🙁. I finished packing up yarn and fiber for J, and went in to campus on a later shuttle. At work I fixed a password reset for an AWS student, and made some progress on the CUDA upgrade for one of W’s machines, fixing some issues with the lab status page and old defunct share mounts in the process. I went to therapy, talked about intrusive thoughts and progress setting boundaries and sleep lethargy and general mood buoyancy in spite of it all. On the way back I went to the Indian grocery and got red lentils and ground cumin. Back at work we had a lab meeting to brainstorm about the upcoming collaboration with B’s research group. Less technical than I expected but ultimately more useful I think, since we got a lot of use case ideas out of it.

Home on the late shuttle, made dinner, which was done just in time for P to get home and heat up some soup. Dinner, crossword, Voyager, snack, sleep. Dreamt, but they’ve already vanished.

Yesterday I slept in. After lunch we went to Sqhill for mild adventures, but 10kV was shut; I did some window shopping at Little’s but nothing jumped out at me; I looked through Avalon for boots and handbags but they didn’t have anything that suited; by then P had come up empty for seating at the coffee shop so we failed out to the grocery store for taco supplies and went home. Crossword at some point. I did the laundry and watched Voyager while P made beef filling, then I took over the kitchen for roasted sweet potato, parsnip, yellow rice, sautéed mushrooms zucchini and bell pepper, and refried beans. Cleaned the tava of all its dook from Thanksgiving and made masa. P squished the tortillas and I cooked them; there was some learning curve to stopping them from sticking and getting them to puff but we got there eventually. The beans smelled weird so we didn’t eat them but everything else was delicious. P went back to course prep and I watched Voyager, then no snack since we ate so late, and sleep. Dreamt, but they’ve already vanished.

Yesterday the taxi picked us up at 8:30. I took my meds, we had an uneventful two flights. I read some of Gideon the Ninth and made a bit of progress on the final handkerchief but mostly napped. I troubleshooted a bit with F some problems she’s having with the user study environment, but it’s not fixed yet so there’s more to do. We got home to our correct house with correct silverware and correct pots and stove and oven and correct bed and it is good. I put together a shopping list and we went to geagle. There were many packages waiting for us, as I’d told the post office to hold our mail and deliver it all on the last day. There was a nice card from F&A, along with a fun book on historical playing cards. The calendar from grandma arrived, along with a pile of cotton yarn for dishrags. A shipment of apple chips, which I need to put a stop to until I start eating them again. And.... a mixed case of wine from my folks! I can’t believe it both made it through PA nonsense and that FedEx dropped it off (when? who knows! & nobody stole it!) without the required signature. It’s all CinqCellars stuff, mostly 2015 vintage. Very exciting.

Early dinner, crossword, Voyager, snack, more Voyager, more snack, correct bedtime bathroom routine, sleep, on correct pillows and correct Monster and everything. I love seeing P’s folks but it is so so soothing to be home again.

Yesterday I made a bunch of illustrations for the New Years zine, rearranged some stuff, and did up the back cover. Front cover, photocopying, and shipping is left. M and D went to Trader Joe’s to stock up on the soup G likes. After lunch P and I took M to the airport, with many hugs and pats to transmit to A and the dogs. On the way home we stopped at the inferior Whole Foods for nut/seed bar supplies. D made chicken cacciatore for dinner, and I polished off the K-compatible leftovers. In the evening D asked about nutritionists for G, so I talked through the wide variety I’ve seen over the years and encouraged her to ask their PCP the right questions to get a referral to a GI specialist as well. Snack and sleep. Dreamt of a horrid alternate CMU campus, with mangled voicemails from MLD staff, getting interminably lost, and unexpectedly walking into active meeting rooms, lecture halls, SCA court processions, orchestra pits, etc.

Yesterday we walked through the center, and got stuff for Christmas Eve dinner (char, chard, beer, other bits and pieces). G’s home care assistant came around to help with normal things; she was very nice. After lunch I worked on the zine a bit, and discovered I’d left one of the pages at home. Boo. I’ll be piercing together some of it from memory and leaving the rest out. P and I drove to the airport to pick up M. After some chatting we made dinner, ate, did dessert, then I went to bed. G had a rough fatigue day but a good blood pressure day, and was able to be around for most everything with frequent nap breaks.

Yesterday was our anniversary. We went to the Staghorn for our annual small business Saturday field trip, and I had a pumpkin spice almond milk steamer which was excellent. Met Jordan, Sam, and their two little ones. Found several gifts. Home, lunch, crossword, then I finished cutting out the first couch seat pieces and made more piping. I read a bunch of Harry Potter fanfic, and started listening to The Library of the Unwritten by A. J. Hackwith. Dinner, then we played scrabble (597), I watched an episode of Voyager, then snack and sleep.

Long involved dreams about sharing an office with a grad student who became increasingly hostile and threatening to the point of me planning to quit my job and move to a different city. Woke up, rolled over, made up with them. Turned out to have been a combination of dialect, language barrier, domain, and a bad email address.

The respiratory symptoms linger. Yesterday I stayed home from the market, and P got apples (a shitton, since it’s the last market of the season), carrots, more different carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, a wee butternut squash, scarlet queen turnips, red peppers, Bulgarian pastries, pizzelles, a sesame cookie, mushrooms, pasta, and probably some other stuff I didn’t catch. After lunch we did the crossword, and I baked the nut and seed bars. I finished the diagonal filling on the circle embroidery and started some other circles to make it look less like a sarlacc pit.

[food] I’ve been having trouble regulating my appetite. I get ravenous, overeat, get nauseated, then by the time the nausea fades it’s past time for my next meal and I’m ravenous again. I know what I need to do — slow down the eating part of the cycle and under-serve — but so far I keep missing the mark.

I successfully ordered the socks, and also found a present for P. Watched some Voyager. After dinner watched an episode of Outlander. Wish the writers would find some other signal for “these dudes are bad” than r*pe.

Yesterday I slept way in, past the time the day-light shuts itself off. Not sure why, but P is now down with a feverish cold, so maybe it’s my immune system.

I sewed the long piped seam in one of the couch backs, in the process discovering I hadn’t balanced one side of the front panel. To compensate, I shortened the side panel, twice — once to measure, and again after sewing when it came up a half inch too long again. Ripped back twice in total, since the third time was an absolute charm. Pleased with the results.

I started reading This Is How You Lose The Time War, and can see why people like it. I may have to reread it once I’m through, as it was hard to follow in the early letters.

After a late lunch we went to geagle and got more meds for P, and more snack supplies for me. Early dinner, crossword, Outlander, snack, sleep.