infryq

Yesterday we went to the farmers market and got nectarines, pluots, apricots, and peaches, melomacarona cookies, mushrooms, eggplant, broccolini, cilantro, basil, tomatoes, onions, garlic, rhubarb (!), and scallions. We ran into C and had a good solid chat to catch up, and wound up discussing commonly-misinterpreted art (Felix Gonzales-Torres, John Cage, an art installation I’ve been unable to google involving homemade bread fed on blood). Miss hanging out with C.

Home, lunch, crossword, spent the afternoon reading fanfic in the breeze from the window and taking a nap. Early dinner, then we drove over to B&S’s place north of the river for drinks and dessert. It was deeply satisfying to have so much unstructured time to tell stories and hopes and worries and triumphs and struggles big and small. Their deck is perfect. They have bats!

Home past my bedtime, but still had a snack before sleep since I’d skipped my afternoon one. Dreamt of autonomous school buses, being snowed in in a clothing shop, using math to convince a friend to stop doing dangerous shit in his unusually tall garage, something about barns and warm hay, staying dry.

Yesterday I almost had a therapy appointment at nine, but it turned out she’d double-booked. Upside was that I had a much more relaxed morning schedule than planned, since I’d had to shove in something at 11:30 that stomped all over my normal lunch arrangements on Thursdays. The 11:30 was D doing an excellent job convincing R&R that the query-time computation system was legit more complicated than they expected. I had to drop out briefly for the last forecast eval dash meeting with K, which was shorter than usual because it turned out all the forecasting stakeholders had last-minute conflicts. After lunch I lurked in the research meeting and heard A give his presentation about ICD codes and syndromic identification, then we had team leads and decided most of the remaining open items for the API key registration system. I had my first 1:1 with G, which I think will go a long way to help keep him engaged and everybody’s brain weasels at bay.

P and I packed up dinner and met A at what will soon be their new house in Sqhill. It’s gorgeous, a little tight in the hallways of the oldest parts, but has a sizable dry basement which will hold all the books they can’t find room for in the rest of the house. We did a detailed walk of the intensively-developed gardens, then picked up dinner for A and ate in the park. It was really good to see her, and I’m glad they’re moving back to town so we can see more of both of them.

We finished up way past my bedtime, but we snuck in a crossword before I passed out. Forgot my evening meds, so I was up for an hour at 3:30. Boo. Distressing dreams then, but I don’t remember the details; afterwards I dreamt of a board game franchise based on a (dreamworld) TV show in which Xena and Gabrielle had guest-starred for a couple of later seasons. Not bad.

Yesterday we went to a picnic for my research group! It was the first time I’d met almost everybody in person, held at a gorgeous event area at one of the new loft spaces on the south side. Mostly outdoors, well-ventilated, high-ceilinged indoors, and all the adults were of course vaccinated because epidemiologists don’t mess around. A bunch of the Fellows were able to make it and it was grand to get a chance to catch up. C and R brought their dogs and I got some quality happy animal time. R took some candid photos and one posed. R made an informal speech based on a mildly patriarchal quote which I then modified to my favorite “if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, bring people with you”; very in-character for our dynamic. Had a lovely time and left before getting overwhelmed.

Spent the next couple hours decompressing with a delightful perspective-bending game called Gorogoa and texting with A. Did the normal weekly laundry and hung it out on the line. Had a snack, watched more Expanse. Dinner, brought in the clothes, crossword, finished Gorogoa, snack, sleep. Dreamt of preparing for some kind of research competition a la science olympiad but for grad students; chocolate; pro-level hide and seek; peeking through the keyholes in the doors on the second floor of my grandparents’ house.

Yesterday I fixed some blown signal titles in the meta sheet, worked through some tricky staffing discussions with R&R, heard K and V give their final presentation of their data analysis project on identifying leading indicators and using them to predict cases and deaths rises (which was stellar, very proud of K), lead a team leads discussion on what we should track when using the new API key scheme and how to reduce the impact on casual users, then had most of my Friday 1:1s since I’m off today. Solid productive work day.

I cleaned up early and spent some quality time in the garden, clearing the paths of comfrey and lemon balm and arugula. I spread some more alfalfa meal everywhere leaves and stems matter. The beans are starting to produce in earnest. The squash is growing bold.

Dinner, crossword (cute trick), Expanse, snack, sleep. Dreamt of a vacation at some kind of large inland lake; a cabin, a freeway system, a row of open-air eateries on a pier, clear water, pebbled shore.

Tooth And Claw continues well, if a bit heavy on the allegorical “these experiences will redeem you Or Else”.

Yesterday I ran the production systems meeting and the data scaling meeting, lurked in an ad-hoc team leads meeting about whether to stop publishing weekly forecasts for a bit while we adjust to the changing data landscape (cases and deaths reporting has rapidly been decreasing in quality), and assembled a shift in how we’re using one of the columns of the metadata sheet. I also wrote up the shortlist for the research programmer position to send to R&R.

I did a turn through the garden at lunch and tied up the squash again, gave the cucumbers some more air, and watered the beans a bit.

I’ve been having trouble stopping work on time, instead getting repeatedly distracted by one more thing.

Dinner, crossword, Expanse, direct to sleep as it was late. Dreamt of the sort of transformative feel-good coming-of-age detention you only get in fiction. And soft friendly birds that liked to be held.

I started reading Fringe Runner by Rachel Aukes, an antiestablishment space activism story with problematic elements. The refreshing bit is an ablist world, anti-ablist author; the depressing one is misogynist world, thus-far misogynist author. There’s also a tiresome obsession with secret societies that takes itself way too seriously but also has dismal infosec policy. The plot is reasonable though so we’ll see if it redeems itself.

Yesterday we went to the farmers market and got peaches, apricots, blueberries, melomacarona, mushrooms, eggplant, beans, broccolini, cilantro, basil, tomatoes, and onions. After lunch we did the crossword, and we did the laundry and hung it out on the line. I worked on some mending and started reading Dangerous To Know by KT Davies, an irreverent bit of roguelike D&D theater with eclectic cultural heritage. The villains are pretty tinny but the two main characters have substantial depth. Snack, Expanse, dinner, pulled in the clothes, scrabble (604, scored 66 with JERKED), more Expanse, snack, sleep. Dreamt of art school problem-solving, a complicated leaf table, offering crash space, and some kind of game with a weird cooking mechanic.

Yesterday we released the new sheet-based metadata system, and I put all my remaining free time into the process mapping report. The API struggled with performance issues all day, going back to 1AM so we know it wasn’t the metadata release. The fix we tried resolved the one error we were able to find, but not alas the performance problems. I met briefly with J to go over the edits requested by the journal reviewers and talk about a documentation project some of the girls want to help out with, then called it good.

P made a telemedicine appointment for this afternoon, but was otherwise feeling much better except for a low fever in the evening. I let B know we may have to cancel dinner plans Saturday.

Dinner, crossword, Expanse, snack, sleep. Dreamt of hotels, food shopping with friends, bus routes, trying to see a play but being unable to remember the PIN to any of my cards, a VR game about planning a wedding in a bizarre sortof frontier context.

Yesterday I finished my discussion with R about goal setting for HR, fixed a stalled code deployment, did a bit of git surgery, responded to feedback on the new meta data sheet, had C see if she could chase down the faculty member we’re trying to have assist us with the senior database applicants, and had a pile of 1:1s.

The cider proprietor dropped off the case I ordered around lunch, and it included four bottles of a wild ferment that is a gorgeous color and I’m excited to try it.

Dinner a bit late, but the crossword was good. Not Okay With This, no snack, sleep. Dreamt of interminable dance classes where I couldn’t remember anything and the choreographer could not make up her mind. Thanks, subconscious.

Massive thunderstorms throughout the night, including an absurd amount of lightning.

Yesterday I ran the all-hands meeting, which went beautifully; M gives a great talk. I met briefly with HR to discuss one of our job candidates who might be complicated to hire, then I had the visualization meeting, one on ones, and took a pass through the process mapping report. Very tidy day.

Dinner, crossword, Pose, snack, sleep; dreamt of some kind of time dilation puzzle and helping alien creatures find their way home.

I started reading Slippery Creatures by KJ Charles, the first book in a new to me series whose newest book is getting some positive attention on Twitter. So far it’s a little slow but makes up for it in complexity and vividness.

Yesterday I did the laundry and hung it out on the line. P and I shelled and split the lima beans, and I made the broken ones into beans and greens after a turn through the garden. I tore out the last of the snap peas, and we’ll see if that helps the lima beans sprout with more sun and water available. After lunch we did the crossword, then I spent a sleepy afternoon on the internet. Dinner, brought in the laundry, scrabble (624), Pose, snack, sleep. Dreamt of metro trains, swim team, miniature villages, roof and tunnel hacking, computer repair, human pyramids, auto translators, an agriculture conference.