Sunday is for rest. Good lord, I need some. I have no plans today. Just going to lounge about, and eventually make somre dinner.

Yesterday, we went down to the Silver Spring farmer's market to pick up our meat. I had made plans to meet coyotegestalt there. (I completely forgot to tell my lovely spouse about this part, so we got there and they were like "Buzwhuh?" It was a lovely time, getting way more food than we'd planned. It all looked so good, though. I got corn, and basil and shrimp and vegetable empanadas (SO GOOD) plus a variety of cheeses (ALSO SO GOOD). We walked around for a little over an hour an shopped, before we went back to the stall and picked up SO much meat. (22lbs of prime aged beef.)

Our haul ended up being about three lbs of short ribs, two small filets, a chuck roast, a shoulder roast, some sandwichh steaks, 6lbs of ground beef, and two enormous ribeye steaks. It ended up being about $11/lb, which isn't half bad. If they have any leftovers, I may be going back down to Silver Spring again soon to pick up more. We need to work on eating all of this first. lol

Then, we came back, stopping for a quick lunch and trusting the cooler to keep everything good to go. (It did an amazing job--those steaks hadn't thawed even a bit.

Once I got home, we dragged everything in and I played Jenga with the freezer to get 23lbs of meat into our fridge. It took a lot of work, but I was finally able to close the door and have it stay shut. We're going to be eating a lot of beef for the next few weeks. But honestly, since Jess is prepping for their top surgery, a little extra iron would hurt no one.

Then, we had game which was a lot of fun. We're playing an old module called the Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga. It's seriously fucked up, and I'm looking forward to them getting further into the game.

They dunked on a couple of the lower level monsters, but it gets harder as you go, so it could be fun.

Today, I shall rest up from all our travels in the last two days, and relax and eat cheese and crackers. Maybe I'll even fry up the other dumplings. I had an excellent chocolate croissant for breakfast.

And now I shall relax and maybe read somemore of the Vecna module we're starting on Friday. Everyone have a restful and lovely Sunday!

I'm a little bit sleepy this morning, so lets see if we can make this make sense.

Work yesterday was a little bit crazy. I'm assumming someone quit or went on FMLA at one of our sites, and there were about 20 patients that needed to be moved. Guess who got to do that? The site was begging us for help. and so my boss asked me if I'd be willing to do it. So, I did it. It involved calling people and then, if I didn't get them, sending them a message via mychart, with a carefully worded note asking them to reschedule. People were relatively nice, so it was all good.

Then, I was calling about another 15 patients back to get them in sooner/correct the mistakes they made scheduling on my chart, etc. IT meant that overall, I maybe took 25 calls during the day. The rest of the time was in callback mode. In theory that was fine. In practice, it felt a little like chaos.

Afterwards, we attempted to take the dog out for a walk, were denied, and then got all dappered up for our dinner at Ammoora.

We left as soon as my sister came home, and ended up getting there early. It was an easy drive down I-83 and across to light street. The restaurant is nestled into the Residences by Ritz Carlton, which look super swanky.

They seated us immediately, even though we were early and walked us through the hallway to the dining room. It was fucking gorgeous. Seriously, look it up on TikTok, and you'll see. It's just a beautiful restaurant.

Our waitress was adorable, and very sweet. We got a liter of sparkling water, and some non alcoholic drinks--being a Levantine restaurant that bridges the gap between Mediterranean and Middle Eastern, they had a lot of non alcoholic drinks. Which makes sense, since the food is halal, and some people who follow halal also abstain from alcohol.

We decided to go all out, and I didn't regret it until the end of my entree. We had the Za'atar Honey Burratta, which was amazing, with honey, pistachio and rose petals, and the Mousakan Chidcken rolls, which were excellent, and came with this sumac labneh dip that blew my mind. I was tempted just to lick the bowl of the sauce, y'all.

For dinner, Jess got Shish Tawouk, which is very spiced chicken kabobs--spicy, but oh so good. I got the Short Rib Freekeh, which is a buttery, melt in your mouth short rib (I didn't even need a knife for this, it was so tender) and a mushroom freekeh risotto. It definitely qualified as one of the best things I've ever eaten.

Against our best judgement, we got two deserts. I chose Rus Bil Karaz, which was coconut rice & milk pudding, confit sour cherries, coconut caramel tuile. It was really good, but the true star was Jess' choice, the Ashta Bil Asal, which was milk cream, honey, pistachio, Arabic cotton candy, rose petals. OMG, it was delicious and the perfect way to end the night.

My only complaint was that as it filled up, things got a little loud, and at points, we were both overstimulated.

Today, we're off to the farmers market to pick up our meat share, and then back home to play D&D!

Tomorrow, rest.

And on that note, I'm going to go put on pants and get myself together. Everyone have the very best Saturday!

It's Friday! We've made it through the week! Whoohoo!

Yesterday, I had a bunch of packages coming. Some socks, nail polish and a cooler to pick up our meat share with. Of course, the first one, the nice, expensive cooler, was sent to the wrong address. I had a pretty good idea where they dropped it, so I went and got it. Mistake! My back was so utterly pissed last night. Still not thrilled today. Everything else came just fine. Today my tennis shoes should come.

Tonight, since we have no game and it's a Friday, we're going to go for a fancy dinner. I'm very excited. We're going to try out Ammoora, which is a Levantine restaurant--very fancy. I'm definitely getting all dressed up and looking nice. The hard part is deciding what I want to eat because everything looks amazing. It's a bit expensive, but I got the bonus for bringing on my coworker, so I'm putting a couple hundred of that towards it.

I've wanted to eat here since I found out about it, so it's very exciting to me. They have Valet parking, which is awesome, since it's downtown.

We've also got brunch scheduled there on 9/21 if Jess feels up to it post surgery. They only do brunch 1 Sunday/mo, so it's semi exclusive. If it's good, we're going to take poisontaster there in November.

Then, if the cow share people ever email me back, tomorrow morning, we'll run down to the Silver Spring Farmers Market and pick up our beef. See also, got a bigass cooler to hold it and keep it cold for the hour long drive home.

Then we shall have game, and it'll be awesome. I have to finish uploading maps for it, but I only have a handful left to go, so I can do that after I finish this entry. Then shower for tonight, and get ready for work.

Okay, time for me to go forth and do my thing. Everyone have an outstanding Friday!

And somehow, way too quickly, we're back to Monday. I did not want to answer the alarm's call. I did, because it's fucking annoying, but I wanted to go back to sleep for a few minutes.

I didn't really sleep great. I was excited after game and I had a hard time settling down, so I was a little late dozing off. We listened to Shmanners (which is a podcast--my favorite) and that didn't do it, so then I listened to Ghost--what I've termed my "emotional support Papa"

Speaking of Ghost, Jess sent me the best TikTok where the lead singer had the best quote about why his music is the way it is. "I want to try to let people who might be lost for hope tap into my sometimes, maybe, quite over-optimistic outlook on the future.” I think it hits on why I enjoy Ghost so much. Yes, the songs are about the darkness, but overall, it's about surviving the darkness and maybe even finding beauty in it. And they have one banger after another. They've really worked their way into my brain. I'm really grateful that last year Jess said "If Ghost tours again, would you go to a concert with me? And then they got excited when their Mocumentary/concert video Rite Here, Rite Now came out, so I downloaded it, watched it with them. That started it, but the concert definitely solidified it. There were people wandering around and trading bracelets and just such a sense of community, like I hadn't felt the likes of since Season One of Supernatural. It was nice.

Today is sure to be very busy, and then I actually have to cook this fucking chicken. I put it off one more night, but tonight's gotta be the night. I will probably cook the chicken separate from the stuffing, so I can get the chicken in first. Hopefully, I'll have that all done in time to eat at a reasonable time.

For now, I shall hop off and maybe grab a nice shower. Everyone have an outstanding Monday!

It's Sunday! Today, we have some games, and in between, I'm going to make dinner. I'll probably do as much of it as I can this morning. If I need to slice and reheat the chicken tonight, that's fine. My sister kindly got dinner last night, so I didn't have to stand (still a bit sore) so I am not making the spinach lasagna today. I might prep it between games so we'll have it to just bake tomorrow. That would get some enormous containers of spinach out of my fridge.

Yesterday was mostly quiet aside from going out to lunch. We got some excellent Mexican food from a place in Towson called Mucho Gusto. Very tasty food, and a super sweet waitress. After that, we came and lazed, and eventually, I did some prep work for our first game. I need to go looking at my maps, and find some maps for the feywild, which is one of their options of places to go. Went to bed early and passed out pretty quickly. Of course, that meant that I woke up at 6:30am, which is not my first choice. I was hoping for 8. Oh well.

Today, we have Arvandor, which I DM and Prophecy of the Nine Omens which is all poisontaster .

I had taken yesterday off, so that I could go get our cow share, but apparently, it's still aging at the butcher. We went to this place last year, and they give you a nice big duffle bag of frozen, aged beef. It was so freaking good. You get an email, and you get to choose what you want in your bag. It's entirely worth the long ass drive to get to the farm for pickup. It's about an hour and a half drive.

Before then, I need to get a nice cooler, so that we transport our meat easily and safely.

We're t-minus 13 days from the fandom get together. It'll be 9 fanpeople at an all you can eat steak buffet for brunch. I'm looking forward to it.

It should be loud and raucous and I hope the restaurant is ready for us. lol

Okay, I'm going to hop off here and start working on my chicken. my herbed butter is not going to make itself. Everyone have a stellar Sunday!!

My god, I'm exhausted today. If I didn't ave a Saturday shift, I'd definitely still be in bed.

Yesterday's meeting went pretty well. I got up half an hour early and got myself together to go forth down to the city. I looked very business appropriate in a pencil skirt, a teal blouse and dress shoes. (Remember those dress shoes.)



I got down there fine, GPS is actually very good for downtown, and I left just before 7, so I was before a lot of traffic. Before I knew it, I was pulling up to the hospital. My plan was to valet, but in my invite package, they mentioned that the conference center was right by the one bridge from the parking garage, so I gave it a try. I found a pretty close spot, so I was like "okay, I can do this." And sure enough, the conference room was *right* there.

I had 60 min before my meeting officially started, so I figured I'd try to get my badge, and did hike one, which was about a mile all totaled. Nothing horrible, but yeah. Dress shoes.

I couldn't get my badge, because I needed a paper from HR, which I in no way had time for. So, I went back to the conference room and figured I'd try after we were done.

On my walk there, I heard my name, and found the director of Radiology addressing me. She recognized my picture from the article and paused to say hello and introduce herself.

They had a light breakfast--bagels and pastries. I had half a bagel, not wanting to be greedy. Then we had the meeting. It was good. Just your basic "welcome to Hopkins." It was interesting to find that we had scheduled over 300,000 exams just for the outpatient centers alone. A chunk of those the pt scheduled via mychart, but we did a good number. I do wonder how much money we bring in. It's gotta be fairly steep.

During the meeting, we were encouraged to participate, and the head of radiology singled out the story I had online, about the sweet patient. She was very complimentary and held it up as an example of something that was top of the line customer service, and would drive brand loyalty. So that was nice.

Afterwards, we got a tour of the hospital. It was about 2 1/2 miles of walking. In dress shoes.

I did it, but goddamn.

I did get a good view of the famous Hopkins Dome and took a picture.



Finally, our tour was almost over.

We stopped in our fifth building to get our box lunches, and swag and came back through the building where I needed to get my badge. Peg let me beg off the rest of the tour so I could get my badge at that point, and I did so. After 18 months, I finally have my Hopkins credentials! I don't technically need them, but I wanted them.

Then, I gimped back to the sky bridge, stopping at the gift shop in the Children's Center. On an end cap by the door, I glimpsed a pile of rainbows, and thought "surely they don't have gay pride stuff prominently displayed in the gift shop in the Children's center! Uh, dear reader, they had a FUCKTON of gay pride things displayed. I got a mug for Jess that says "Queer AF."

Then, I toddled off to my car. Right around ten minutes from home, the leg cramps started to hit.

That became a theme for the next three hours. My legs and feet were NOT happy.

I got home and unpacked all my swag, which included a nice tote bag, a cool automatic umbrella, some sunglasses, lip balm, lens cleaners and a nail file/mirror combo.



I took a little nap once the leg cramps eased up, and then ordered dinner. We had game after dinner, and that was a lot of fun.

Today work, then nothing scheduled. I'd like to go get my pills, but aside from that, just relaxing and recovering. My legs are just sore as hell today. But since I walked somewhere between 3-4 miles in totally non supportive flats, I'm not shocked.

Okay, time for me to get myself together for work. Everyone have an amazing Saturday!