CONfabulation

It's Thursday! And that means one thing! Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans. It might be hard to find something you're grateful for in this shitshow of a year, but one thing I'm grateful for: We're still here. We persist and we snatch bits of joy and pleasure, even in the onslaught of political bullshit.

This year, I'm grateful for a lot of things. Despite the aforementioned political bullshit, it's been a pretty good year for us. Most of the year, we spent relearning how to live without Dad taking up all our time and energy. I miss him, but I'm also grateful he's gone. The last two years weren't living for any of us. I'm also grateful that both his and Jess' father's death have given us a nest egg in case of emergencies. I was able to pay off a good chunk of my car, so my payments are paid until 2027. I'm going to pay off more as well, and hopefully be paid off by the beginning of February. I'm grateful that we're able to go out and do things. I'm grateful that Jess was able to get their top surgery this year, and that thanks to my Hopkins insurance, and the Hopkins Medical system, everything went smooth as silk. Other people have had their surgery take years to get done, and Jess' was done in about 6 months from saying "Hey, I think I want this" to actual surgery. There were some hoops to jump through, but even those went smoothly. And thanks to an excellent surgeon, their recovery was quick and mostly painless and had nice results.

So, today I'm going to cook a shit-ton of food, including the fresh turkey and stuffing and gravy, and bake some Brussel sprouts and corn from Sam's Club, and we will have a nice meal, followed by pumpkin custard. And I'm going to be grateful that I get to do that in a warm, safe apartment with an actual oven. And the rest of the day, I'm going to sit in front of our tree and watch the lights twinkle and relax.

And tomorrow, I'm going to be grateful to have a good job that I enjoy with people who I like working with.

Then Saturday, I'm going to be grateful for my D&D groups, who have gotten me through the last 5 years.

And I'm going to (hopefully) get more presents to wrap in the mail.

All of which is to say, I wish you and yours the best on this holiday!

Okay, time to go forth and maybe poke at the turkey. Everyone have an amazing Thursday!

It's Tuesday! Yesterday I would have sworn we were relatively quiet at work, yet somehow I had 57 calls logged. Go figure. I swear, some days our phone system routes calls so that they go to the same person who just got off a call, even if there's five other people sitting there waiting. We're getting a new system next year, so maybe that'll be less nonsensical.

Jess kindly made dinner, which was a lovely pork tenderloin with peanut sauce and rice. It was excellent. We made a second loin with honey mustard for tonight, since I'll be off getting the turkey. It's not a huge bird, but it'll be good for us for a few days.

Discovered last night that my sister and I got each other the same gift. She was talking about something she got for the whole family, though BIL was going to have to hide it, because he's not telling his mother about the cruise ahead of time, because she would commence worrying immediately. I immediately said "well, shit." because I got the exact same thing, from the same company. Mine comes either today or tomorrow. It's a keychain and you put these little tokens of the countries or states or landmarks you go to. I thought, oh, what a fun way to commemorate it. And promptly ordered it. My sister and I occasionally have brain share.

Today, one of the gifts I'm most excited for arrives, and it's going to be a struggle not to just give it to my sister. It's the canvas of the cartoon portrait of Yoda, and I just want to hand it over.

I love giving gifts, and waiting for Dec 25 is really difficult for me. I think it's half ADHD, half that I love that dopamine hit of someone being happy for something that you gifted. I know this one is going to be a hit, so I want to shove it in her face and say "look, look!"

Weirdly, I'm not having that problem so far with Jess. Though if the big present comes, that may be more of a problem. It's supposed to be here between 12/10-12/29. Hopefully it picks the 14 days before Christmas to show up.

I'm feeling very festive this year. I'm looking forward to the holiday and my birthday (even though I'm working.) That isn't always the case. I'm very prone to the doldrums around the holidays, so this is a new experience. Last year was our last Christmas in the house and the first after dad passed, so this year, we're going to be fucking Merry or else.

Tomorrow, I'm going to get my tattoo consult. It should be super fun. Ronie's a kick, from all Jess has said, so I'm looking forward to that. I haven't decided where to put it yet. Probably on my calf, depending on the size needed for good detail.

Depending on how tired I am tonight or tomorrow, I may try to make the pumpkin custard with crushed gingersnaps ahead of time. They get put in the fridge anyway, and per the recipe can last up to three days, so that seems like it might be a good plan. One less thing to do on Thanksgiving.

Okay, time for me to get myself together and figure out breakfast. Everyone have an amazing Tuesday!

It's sunday and I'm up early because I'm meeting a friend for breakfast. She's taken up quilting, and I'm going to comission her to do some stockings for Shelly and George and the dog and cat. I picked up some cute pet fabric for her to use, and she's making noise about not charging me for them. I'm planning to stop off and get some cash from the store and put it in the fabric.

Then, it's home, and into two games. The first one,I'm just playing in, but the second I'm running. We're definitely going to be ordering something for dinner tongiht. The pork tenderloins can wait til tomorrow, because I'm only going to have an hour and a half between games.

Yesterday was so much fun. We did our morning errands, or we tried to. We did go everywhere, but the nursery hadn't gotten many wreaths made yet. So I'll go back next weekend and see if they have something. They had two, but they didn't jump up and grab me.

The bank was much more productive. I got my stamps, and mailed out the first group of cards. And then we had a nice lunch at the Kpot. We went for both bbq and hot pot. It was very tasty and plentiful.

Then, we went home and I drank some coffee, then napped. Then, it was about time for game. I was so nervous about it! First session of a new game is always anxiety producing. I did a little more prep, and got ready.

I was pleasantly surprised. The vignettes to introduce the character worked super well, and my players 100% bought in to the game. They brought the same energy to their individual intros that I did, and it was amazing. It seemed like they all had fun, and so did I. The vignettes took up most of the session, with one quick combat to spice up the end. Afterwards, people seemed really happy, and excited about the game. Which honestly is all I can ask for!

Okay, time for me to go forth and put on pants. Restaurants usually appreciate that.

Everyone have an amazing Sunday!!

It's Saturday, and the cat informed me that 6:30am was the time to get up and get her food. After that, I couldn't get back to sleep, so I'm going to do my entry and then go grab a shower to try to wake up.

Work wasn't too bad yesterday. The phones weren't horrible, and I was able to get people in for appointments relatively quickly. I did make 1 fuckup, but I think I fixed it. Nothing huge, just misread an entry in our grid, and misscheduled something. I was annoyed with myself, but I'm human, and things happen.

The rest of the day was fine overall. I finished work, and Jess and I watched Hazbin Hotel's Broadway Special. I haven't watched the show, but Jess has shown me some of the music from it, and it's pretty much a banger.



Maybe one of these days, I'll watch an episode. Jess really loves it, so I might give it a try.

Today, we have a few errands. We did need to be back by 3 so the sister could go to an inlaw birthday even, but now BIL is sick, so she's just going to stay home and be plague free, so we have the full day. I need a little bit of time to get ready for game, but I think I know what I'm doing. We're going to start off the campaign with individual vignettes, where everyone will tell me how they died, and then get on the train to the afterlife, transforming into a nightmare version of themselves. I'm looking forward to it. There should be some good RP, and the party can meet and start to form a party, and we'll go from there. Not expecting much actual play tonight, probably mostly meeting the characters and doing a wee session Zero. I've done a lot of it online, but I will read out the list of triggers and see if anyone has any hard nopes for what they want "onscreen."

But first, errands!

Okay, time to go forth and get a shower. Everyone have a perfect Saturday!!

I am so sleepy this morning. Not only did I have trouble getting to sleep, I also made the stupid choice to take another weed a little bit later than I normally do. Not my brightest, but I was thinking about work and game today and was having some anxiety. I can't even say "I didn't think of being tired," because I have fucking anxiety, which means that I will obsess over every possible outcome. So, I'll have my coffee and wake the fuck up and maybe be a little draggy before game. *shrug*

Yesterday, the work gods blessed us with an upgrade to things we never asked them to fucking touch. And it promptly broke other things. We had a dashboard that showed us how many calls we'd done, and averages for the month or 4 months. Just stuff that you could look at to see how close you were to your metrics. For me, it was how severely I was kicking ass. And it was just gone. The things we use to log our calls--gone. That was more alarming to the higher ups. But the dashboard was harder on the calltakers.

I played around with it, because the potential was there to have a dashboard, just not the pre-filled one. And after a little while I had it figured out. This started a day of me playing tech support, and helping deploy the fixes to the various problems. First, I had to train the trainer of what I knew how to do, of course.

Apparently, later when was in a meeting, she gave all the credit to me, prompting the head boss to say that they need to get me more money.

It was a long, and strange day. I'm not sure it'll all fixed yet, but we'll see!

I still ended up doing 50 calls even with the tech support.

Today will hopefully be a bit quieter. I know I'll be on callback duty, so we'll see how many I get done.

After work, we have game, which should be fun. They're about to kick off a fight against a bunch of Sage Animal Lords, which are seriously high level monsters.

Then, it shall be the weekend!

I'm looking forward to having a nice weekend. Tomorrow, we shall go forth and look at wreaths. and maybe have lunch! And then I shall prep for game.

Okay, now I shall go forth and onsider pants. Everyone have a stupendous day!

It's Thursday! Friday eve! And for some godforsaken reason I'm awake at 4:45am. Ugh. My neck and shoulders have been really bothering me the last couple days, and this morning I just couldn't find a comfortable position, so I finally gave up, and now I'm upright.

Thanks to my sister's persistence, we should be able to close on Dad's probate in December. The lone holdout was this IRA that was "lost" when my uncle passed. It should have been changed over to Dad, but it never was. So after Dad died, they sent us a missive about it, and we've been fighting to get information for over a year. Until yesterday, we didn't even know how much was in it! Since my sister is the executor, she's stuck doing all the grunt work. My contribution was to call the main customer service line and get a supervisor's number for her to call. It'll have about $45k in it, which is a nice chunk of change. I'll pay off my car and save the rest for vacation.

Sadly, we won't have it in time for Comic Con, but that's fine. We'll have it for Alaska and that's what really counts.

I got an email yesterday from Zillow, where I still have our old house favorited. The house refurbishment is done and it's going on the market. The listing had pictures aplenty and may I say, holy shit. They worked miracles. It looks amazing.

It was like a sucker punch to be honest. I have so much guilt and shame tied up in how the house got that to see it looking so nice gave me mixed feelings. On one hand, the good memories hope that a new family will inhabit it, and that they'll enjoy it, especially the backyard. The other half of me that felt like the house had a personal grudge against us is angry and ashamed. Because the house could have looked like this the whole time. And instead it was a mold infested wreck, because we couldn't afford to have it looked after properly.

I had said that I would go to the open house, but I think the pictures were enough. I hope someone loves it, and they get all the money they're asking.

We're creeping up on Thanksgiving at a rapid rate of speed. I need to finalize my menu and order the stuff from Sam's club to be delivered on Tuesday or Wednesday. Tuesday I go to fetch my fresh turkey from a shop called Farmer's Daughter, which I'm looking forward to browsing as well. It's a produce stand, but they seem to have baked goods as well.

This weekend, I think we're going to go to lunch and then get the Christmas wreath on Saturday. We have games Friday and Saturday night as well as Sunday during the day. It should be fun. The Saturday night game is a new campaign, a folk horror game called Crooked Moon. I'm looking forward to playing it. It looks super fun.

But first, work for a couple more days. Hopefully they're slightly less busy. I haven't fallen beneath 50 calls a day all week.

And now, I shall relax and get ready for another workday. Everyone have a wonderful Thursday!

Good lord, it's early. I had a very difficult time sleeping last night--I just kept waking up every couple of hours. Around 3, my shoulders started hurting and being tight, so I got up t 4:45am. I'm going to feel that later.

I was both productive and non productive yesterday. I didn't actually do anything physical, but goddamn it, I shopped. I'm trying to get everything bought in the next couple of weeks, to avoid shipping woes. I was very productive for that. I finished up my sister for the most part. I may get another small thing, but the big stuff is done. I got her an Irish snack box, a pair of nice slippers from Ortho feet and I found an artist who does animals in the style of Disney characters, so I got her one of Yoda. I got the proof yesterday, and it's freaking adorable. I'm having it put on a 16x20" canvas for her.



Like I said, I may get one or more things, but the big gifts are done. I need to get some things for Jess, but they're difficult. I have one thing that is coming from Italy, and I hope it comes in time. I plan to do some looking after I finish typing this.

Yesterday was bugfuck at work. I took 59 calls, which is a lot, and I felt it afterwards. I just didn't want to do anything. We had take out Korean food for dinner. I was dying for Kimbap. It was excellent.

Today will hopefully be slightly less crazy, though as I've said before, the holidays tend towards busy.

I've had to wear my heavy coat the last few nights. I love it. Snow Country Outwear's stuff is amazing. I really like it. When I'm wearing it, even in 31 degrees, I'm super warm. It seemed nice, but I hadn't tested it out until the latest cold snap.

Okay, time for me to do some shopping! Everyone have an outstanding Tuesday!