Chat

hooray for fixed plumbing!

i mostly have dog news (no surprise there).

echo is officially part of the family as of saturday. signed the paperwork and sent it in! i've got her signed up for a trainer evaluation next weekend so she can get into a canine good citizen class.

i took the other two dogs (loki and jean) to a fast CAT trial on saturday as well. loki peed in the ring his first run (immediate disqualification, oops) and didn't seem to know what i wanted him to do. kinda kicking myself for not signing him up for two fun runs instead of paying for two scored runs. i swapped his second run to a fun run so i could walk down the length of the track, and he did way better that time. the lure spooked him at one point, but he recovered, and i think we'll do a couple more fun runs to see if he likes it enough to keep doing it.

jean absolutely crushed it! her fastest run was 9.477 seconds, which boils down to 21.58mph (34.93kmph). the slower run was somewhere between 10-11 seconds, but i forgot to write it down. she ran right to me at the end and leapt into my arms like a champ both times. she was also great around all the other dogs who were barking and yowling and generally being amped up. looking forward to seeing the photos that were taken later this week, which i'll be sure to post over on !animals@beehaw.org. 😊

loki & jean after the trial.

echo spending her day with another rescue volunteer.

jean is heading to another fast CAT trial in a couple of weeks, and loki has a rally obedience trial coming up the weekend after that. this year is really going to the dogs. 😅

Hope everyone has a good week!

Supremely frustrated as of late of flakey people who make plans which fall through and considering setting a boundary around that or just not doing the labor to keep them in my life. Not sure what I wish to do at this point, to be honest, and need to think on it. With that being said, I'm otherwise doing well, on the last few days of antibiotics to recover from strep. Just a few weeks out from getting the peripheral nerve stimulator put back in, assuming they don't blow an IV or two again, so hoping that goes well and doesn't get infected again.

I bought a second car yesterday so I'm pretty stoked on that

It's not a new car by any stretch (it's 24 years old) but it's going to do a lot of work for me as a vehicle I can use for going to trails that isn't my commuter car

I registered an account at Beehaw 😁

I had been having a tough time this past month with work and some interpersonal feels. Yesterday was my birthday so I took LSD and went on a hike with my best friend. It was good to feel some of the results I've been getting from taking boxing class, as I was able to keep pace with my buddy for the 6 km walk. Saw some nice rocks and fungi. I went into the experience thinking about what I wanted to change in my life. Ultimately I was like, yeah I actually already had everything I need: amazing friends and plenty of opportunities for creativity And self improvement. Just gotta work on separating from the stress and enjoying the little moments :)

Oh and then my buddy's gf made me panang curry and my wife made me key lime pie! And we watched Jennifer's Body, a quirky horror movie from 2009

CW

Well, tbh I'm in bed 24 7 since my meds ran out. It's going to take a few more weeks until the new ones arrive. It's a complicated and traumatizing process to get access in this country. I'll just have to hold out a bit longer, and then I'll finally be able to continue healing again.

And I just received the message that my grandfather died. I just don't feel anything, and I know I am going to miss this funeral as well. I just hope he's in a better place and that he can finally understand why I couldn't visit him, and that I really wanted to see his smile one more time.

Had a rough lecture the other day and the imposter syndrome smacked me hard. I was teaching students in a skills lab, a sort of optional space where if they are struggling they can join me and learn basic items their prior courses didn't prepare them for. For context, a budgeting class where they never opened a spreadsheet before.

So I walk them through the basics, how to use formulas and functions, simple stuff like SUM and using conditional formatting to make negatives red. I must have clicked it typed something and missed it and f'ed the last 10 minutes. Pie charts broke. Wouldn't filter or sort my data by color. Man. It was a cluster fuck.

I woke up this morning, huge headache, and realized I'm just damn tired and drained. And it's resulting in cracks in how effective I can be in the classroom. Really need this term to end, I've got too many classes and too many students to teach in top of my own research, family balance, etc.

Pretty crappy, really, I've been laid low with what is most likely a flu since Tuesday. I'm still sick, but I think I'm getting better now. At least it doesn't seem to be covid(I took two tests and both came back negative).

It's only Monday but ok. This week started quite good actually. I'm still about to cry very often but at least I can talk to my best friend again and that's just great. Also nothing very bad happened yet and I still can watch YouTube and TV shows all day as I always do so hey it's already much better than the last week. Sorry for not saying as much as other people. I'm just almost completely lifeless and I'm going through a lot now so yea not much "normal" stuff to say

Found this website thanks to a comment on another site, so that's pretty cool. Still trying to figure out what the Fediverse is, but since it's defederated, I guess that doesn't matter?

Wife and I are on week two of our daily walks (barring the weekend, we are lazy) and I've been keeping up with a few exercises in between, and that's been encouraging. I've always been cleaning more and have just generally been more on top of things since the funeral. I do need to read this manga I bought and this cool black horror anthology comic, but they're not going anywhere.

All in all, doin' fine! Thanks for asking.

All but two of the groups of cuttings I stuck in the ground last fall are looking promising. The earlier season plants are loaded with buds that I hope won't be damaged by frosts (late or otherwise) like last year. With any luck this will be the first year getting to eat hazelnuts from my own property.

The bookshelf project is coming along reasonably well. Today I put clear epoxy into all the knots and nail holes in the original stud we're keeping as part of the build and when that's cured it'll get sanded up. The boards for the shelves are in the sanding phase which is a slow, fine grind (woodworking pun ftw!). I'm finally up to 80 grit on the palm sander after 36 and 50 with a belt sander. Part of what's taking so long is that I'm taking the time to raise the grain in between sanding sessions so I can get a finish that will impress my one woodworking friend.

The ducks are starting to feel like it's spring, which means that they're getting busy. That wouldn't be a problem except that our bestest boy Sudo is extremely reactive to the act (ducks are not gentle lovers) despite my efforts to counter condition his perception of it. One of our neighbors was over when he had an episode, and were perplexed by how calm I was at what was clearly the sound of my dog dying in six bear traps.

Very good, got back from my fifth date with the chef girl and it went super well, we spent hours together and we both managed to get off in the end as well unlike the first time where I couldn't keep it up from the anxiety and anticipation.

Starting to be a lot more active around here because a lot of people (read: deranged spammers) have been posting uhh... Sketchy shit (putting it way too lightly) in other places (Kbin was where I was most active before) and I just don't want to be around that.

Shitty, because we're potty training.

Luckily the kiddo is doing better more than not, but we're having issues with daycare. They said they would "follow our lead" on what we're doing, how we want to approach this, etc...but the reality is not that. And I get it, they have 15 kids to manage and you can't have someone pooping their pants and not telling them about it, it's more just our own frustration that the teachers/admin said one thing and we're seeing another (and never sat down to map some of this out). A lot of our frustration would have been solved if they said how they do things and we could adjust to their style. This is really the first time we've been disappointed in our daycare, it's been fantastic otherwise ever since we started with them.

Plus the poor kid fell in the toilet at school last week because they were playing too much/not paying attention (not at all shocking to me TBH) and has been terrified of the school toilet ever since. The upside is at home over the last weekend, we're calling it one and a half accidents in 2 days, with several longer outings/trips in there.

In non-bathroom news, work slogs on, child #2 is shockingly imminent for us, and I'm mad at my wife for introducing me to The Traitors because I've had a blast watching it and I'm not usually a reality tv person.

I’m learning Boolean Logic in my Discrete Mathematics course, and it’s really cool! Lots of writing for the proofs though 😮‍💨

Legs haven't been treating me well. Well, my muscles in general. But this last week or two has been significantly worse than usual.

Before referring me to a rheumatologist, my doctor wanted to go ahead with some of the blood tests that they might want to do anyway, so getting a CK level and antinuclear antibody test (among others, which I'm not quite sure of) done tomorrow.

Might help in figuring out quite a few things. Also might not.

We'll have to see. Should know by Wednesday what's up, at least with these particular tests.

Not great. I keep thinking about suicide as a preferable alternative to having to work a shitty day job to barely scrape by in a slow-roll apocalypse until I expire of natural causes, or possibly climate disaster or World War III. Maybe I could do some good with it like Aaron.

its ok :D

Blood tests came back.

Everything's fine except my potassium is very slightly elevated, so need to run another test next week to double check it. Unfortunately, elevated potassium can be caused by kidney stuff, so now have to do those tests as well. I think also some hormone involvement, so maybe that, too.

Otherwise, all the muscoloskeletal and fatigue stuff is still unexplained. Last time I checked my potassium and kidneys was like three years after this shit started and they were fine then, so I don't think think that would be root cause.

Welp, not really going to concern myself with it now. I need to relax and there's no point making up scenarios in my head. Will do the tests, and we'll see what happens depending on the results.

Based on one of these recent results, though, something I can say, and it's really fun to do this: "It's not lupus!"

Work has been stressful due to the social politics

Nothing too special going on in my life. I've got a lot of little early transition things that I'm working on, but other than that I'm just vibing. I do have a cute new pair of oversized glasses coming that are going to replace my geeky wire-frame transition lenses, so that's exciting.