branchandroot | Entries tagged with daily life

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Okay, I have finally had a week in which nothing broke catastrophically, things actually went mostly well, no one needed killing, and I’ve got a few things shoved off my plate.

Fucking finally.

And just in time for the season of wrapping, decorating, and cooking! Accordingly, the six presents I’ve laid hands on so far are wrapped (and in one case boxed for shipping), the icicle lights are strung and hooked up to their timer, I have cleaned the sliding glass doors on what is likely the last day of the year warm enough to do so, and a massive batch of chili is simmering.

Tomorrow will be for cleaning the kitchen and bathroom, and pulling tree fixings down from the closet.

It is now time for cooking wine, as in the wine you drink while you cook. [toasts the internet]

Work is definitely at significant fault for mostly vanishing off the internet, recently. No sooner do I start my person midwinter vacation than I feel like I can actually post. So!

Yesterday I personally rescued an uncle's birthday party by scrounging up dinner reservations for six on morning-of notice. A successful dinner out was had, and I got to have some very good whiskey cocktails.

I've finished converting my local media storage to solid-state drives, and secured a usb-c dock for them so they don't constantly eject because of poor usb-a connections. ...even if I did need a c-to-a dongle to plug the dock into my desktop.

I'm considering attending a New Year event in town. It has a Roaring 20's theme. Given this is A2, I'm pretty sure that's historically informed heavy sarcasm, but also I /do/ have a dress that would work.

I am increasingly amused by the development of the Great Illuminations War, in this city. I mean, initially they were pretty limited to about five blocks of Main St., and only slowly climbing up the cross-streets.

And then the city passed an anti-light-pollution mandate of “holiday displays can’t be up for more than 90 days” and the response of downtown appears to be along the lines of “Well, if you’re going to be that way about it…”

The illuminations this year reach east and west of Main for about five blocks on Huron, Liberty, and Washington. Liberty goes all the way up to State St. Almost the entire of downtown is now lit up, and about a third of the businesses have put up outside lights or water-fall strings on their front windows, which used to be fairly rare outside of Main itself.

It’s beautiful, and reconciles me considerably to the existence of Michigan Winter with its over-sixteen-hours-of-darkness. I’m just entertained by the extremely Midwest nature of this little contest.

Wow, it's been a while since I posted. And, actually, work has calmed down (mostly). Which was when my system decided that there must be time for a depressive downturn. Thanks, brain, that was just great.

On the other hand, I have a new Project!

This year has been one of slowly doing all the little things to my home environment that I'd thought of doing but never did. Until I was at home 24/7. I've filled in the gaps in my bed covers. I've slowly acquired seasonal glass art. I finally got new dishes and glasses. I've expanded and (because this fucking year) color coded my tea collection.

And I really thought all this would assuage the "fuck it, let's do this" urges that have hit so hard this year.

Apparently, I was wrong.

My back brain made the decision before I quite realized. Apparently I'm going to go ahead and let my hair grown out silver over the summer. Which, on the one hand, no more henna-and-indigo every two weeks (unless, of course, I hate how the silver looks). On the other, though... I'm about to have bright silver hair and warm skin and dark eyes, and that means I need about a dozen items of clothing in warm, medium gray instead of black. If this was a year when JJill had their pewter color going, I'd be all set, but of course it isn't.

So. Project! Possibly a dye project, when I get to pants, but I'll be okay on black for those.

Also, Imma need a surplice dress in deep marine navy, because life is too short not to look sexy as hell, and I /love/ that particular little black dress.

To the hunt!

*crawls back onto the internet like a small animal onto one of those life-saving pool floats, bedraggled and wild-eyed, and lies there panting*

Oh my god, you guys, the entire world of education is losing its collective mind. Every week there's a different decision about what we're going to do for Fall. Faculty are frantic. Students are frantic. Engineering is going full throttle to get the new recording/streaming tech into 268 teaching spaces in the span of four weeks. If we actually wind up fully online, they're probably going to hunt down the Uni president and strangle him with ethernet cable, and no jury in the land would convict them. My instructional designers are running flat out trying to help all the instructors figure out WTF they're going to do about fall courses and cornering like mo-fos every time directives change, and I just hope nobody wipes out. I'm madly writing website pages of recommendations and directions and guidance, because no one else has time to, I think my fingers are going to fall off, and if the Support Services director says one more word about making every content page a knowledgebase article in the ticketing system I swear I'm going to put out a hit on him. Also, I have three, possibly four, new tools lined up to pilot because everyone keeps screaming about the inadequacy of the discussion tools (they're not wrong), and while it's gratifying to have vendors line up to kiss my toes it's also /very wearing to arrange all this/.

My counterpart over in the Med School had a bottle of tequila hand-delivered to my door when I agreed to help get her prospective iClicker specialist up to speed. It's just that kind of world right now.

I've had to leave off coffee completely, lest I never be ulcer-free. My current coping mechanism is to finally replace my tea-brewing equipment in glass, like I've been meaning to, and audition new teas for my collection. My kitchen counter is a positive riot of color-coded tea canisters. It's feeding my need for /some/ order in my life, at any rate.

And of course this is the time that the "yes, but what about Qin Su" bunny decides to come chew on my ankle. *hands* Because why not.

...actually, Qin Su is a little terrifying, when you catch her right. Madam Jin is about to acquire a student.

My parents dropped by to visit, today. We had a nice chat from the length of my entry stairs away. They brought me tequila, and I sent them off with muffins, which is really just such a capsule of the current world that I have to laugh.

Also, Zingerman's now has cocktail cherries which are smoked cherries in whiskey syrup, and I may just have to invent a cocktail worthy of getting some.

Rana bunnied me for Lan library porn, so that is a thing that's happening. I will only observe that LWJ appears to have spent at least some of those sixteen years contemplating everything he'd /like/ to have done, and it is possible he now has a bucket list.

In this weekend's "I am mistress of my environment" exercises, I vacuumed, dyed my hair, and made my personal take on jambalaya. This involves two things: one, use whatever is on hand (spicy sausage, shrimp, 'mexican' canned tomatoes,) and two, make the rice separately. Otherwise, when frozen and re-heated, the rice starts to dissolve, and that's not a texture I like. So! Sausage was cooked, shrimp was cooked, peppers and celery and onion and tomato were cooked, and then spanish rice was made and packaged up separately. It came out /excellently/. Well done, self, for already having creole seasoning made up and in your spice rack.

I may need to make ham salad later this week, to use the rest of the celery.

Yesterday I took a mental health vacation day, before I actually animated the ethernet wires with the power of hate in my heart and strangled a) boss b) perfectionist counterpart in another unit and c) every single instructor who emails me with some tiny-ass question without taking five hot seconds to google it first.

That was a very good call. I feel slightly less homicidal. Boss, on the other hand, is starting to use two exclamation points in email, and I'm wondering if we need to stage an intervention.

On the new plague annoyances side, there are no grocery delivery windows any more, and I'm running out of rum. I think it's time to order direct from one of my wine-and-liquor outlets. Possibly also a half-case of Queen City sausages, since there are no smoked sausages to be had for love or money in this town at the moment.

On the writing side, things are going well, and Lan Wangji continues to have /zero/ chill when it comes to Wei Wuxian, and may be planning to turn the cultivation world upside down and shake it until it respects his partner. So far, Nie Huaisang thinks this is sounds like excellent entertainment for all his new free time and that Wei-xiong has been a good influence. Wei Wuxian, meanwhile, continues gobsmacked over it all. Fairly sure Nie Huaisang thinks this is good for him.

This week is slightly less insane than last week, in that most of our faculty are now actually using online tools and therefore figuring things out for themselves. Of course, the students just got turfed out of the dorms, so who knows what the next wave will look like, as everyone has to deal with students who don't have bandwidth to attend vidoeconferenced classes (and also the network in general continues to stagger along like a 3am drunk).

On the bright side, my parents decided to cancel their annual spring jaunt to Florida, I suspect because all the restaurants are closing. I'll just be over here burning incense in thanks, because seriously, family, seriously?

Restaurant delivery is still up, but limited to drop-off-at-the-door. I'm still calling it a win, because when I get stressed I stop wanting to cook at all.

In the middle of this, I'm also having to renew my anti-anxiety meds, all over the phone (IRONY).

On another bright side, I'm making good progress on the porn for the Untamed ducklings! My god they're so adorable. Also, Sizhui really is going to wind up taking over the entire cultivation world someday, and everyone will be taken totally by surprise /except/ for Jingyi and Jin Ling, who will be enjoying the view of their boyfriend being very quietly and politely badass.

So, yesterday I went and submitted my paperwork for passport renewal, which I had to do from scratch because I changed my name since the last one. As a public service, here are tips for others who may be doing the same.

1) you will need your parents' birthdays and places of birth (state is okay if you don't know the city), and also for your spouse or ex, if you have one. Do not believe the online application if/when it says it's okay to leave those blank. You also need to fill in prospective travel destination, even if you fill it in with "none".

2) don't try to take/print your own passport photo, seriously, just go to Walgreens or similar, it will save you hours of frustration.

3) you will want to look up whether acceptance facilities take walk-ins or require an appointment. Most drop-off points will require an appointment. My county clerk's office did not, and thankfully had extended hours on Tuesdays, which made it worth taking the bus down, but all the post offices needed appointments.

4) almost everywhere will require you to pay the passport fee and execution fee separately. Because reasons. Take you checkbook, your credit card, and cash just in case. You don't want to go through this twice. You cannot use cash for the actual passport fee, so make sure you have a check or money order for that part.

5) if you have an old passport that is even slightly damaged, write up a brief statement that it was damaged in a flood/plumbing accident/the dog ate it/whatever, to sign and include if called for.

6) take every piece of identification you own, birth certificate, old passport, marriage license, court order of name change, social security card, DEFINITELY the driver's license. Just take everything, just in case, because once again, you don't want to haul through this twice.

7) if you are doing this for a child, either both parents must be present or else you need a signed release form from the parent who couldn't come. Consider bringing along custody paperwork if you were awarded sole custody.

8) they will take away the originals of your ID, except the driver's license. Don't panic, you will get them back, but they will come in separate mailings from your passport.

9) I would not consider it amiss to take along at least a good photo of the kitchen sink. If nothing else, you may make the acceptance staff laugh, which they are surely in need of.

10) on which note: bring along your patience. There are sure to be people ahead of you in line, quite possibly people who are upset and nervous. Soothing music, phone games, a hip flask, whatever gets you through.

Personally, I'd schedule a stop by the pub in the way home, to celebrate wending your way through all that bureaucracy. *lifts her glass* Good luck!