Today is my birthday!
Friday: this was my forty-second birthday!
This one was rough. Julie and I are both still caught in the acute coughing/sore throat/sinus congestion phase of our illness, and mornings are the worst, so I was pretty slow to get moving today. Since I didn't finish my laundry yesterday, today I wore shorts, tennis shoes, and old Intrust polo, and a long-sleeved jacket to go pick up more cough medicine, some cat toys, and my groceries for next week. I stopped into Chipotle to pick up a late lunch, and the checkout aisle I picked at the grocery store had some sort of weird delay regarding a replacement receipt for an earlier shopper. I got back home right when Julie was finishing up with work, so we walked to Rite Aid to pick up a prescription for her. After discussing our dinner options, we decided to finally try the pizza place that was previously LaScala's Birra. While some of the pies are the same, my usual order (La Mortadella, which had pistachios on it) was no longer offered, nor what Julie's. I tried the margherita instead, but I should have realized that Knolla's Pizza Downtown in Wichita had forever spoiled me for margherita with their flatbreads. We watched the latest episode of Ghosts, and then since it was my birthday, Julie said I should watch whatever I want, and so I caught up on the last three episodes of Delicious in Dungeon that have come out since I last watched it, which turned out to be the season finale. Also had my weekly call with David and a long talk with my parents for my birthday, so I got to catch them up with the details of my cruise.
While this has been going on, though, our cat Koop has been having more trouble getting around, and since the vet said she was likely at risk for osteoarthritis, that seems to have manifested. We've put out some of the absorbent pads we had from when Mosaic was going through something similar, and we've been trying to keep her comfortable and ensure she has access to everything she needs at ground level. I also moved the cat ramp I bought into the bedroom (which required relocating some boxes I'd been storing there into the office), and we already had a vet appointment scheduled next week for two of the cats, so it was pretty easy to get her added onto the docket. We kind of wish we'd just tried to take her in today, though.
Since the water vapor in the shower seems to aggravate my respiratory symptoms, I tried to take a bath. We haven't been keeping the bath mats on the floor since Cliff has been pooping on them. (He's one of the cats we're taking in to check out.) I put the mat down for my bath, and Koop dragged herself on top of it, so I brought in a bowl of water and the new llama toy I bought her to replace the toy Cliff pooped on while we were gone. After my bath I spent probably thirty minutes just lying on the bathroom floor with her and crying about the unfair parts of life we can't control. She did seem to be sleeping alright, though, and eventually she brought herself into the bedroom to snuggle on the bed like she always does. We decided she hadn't been eating enough, and Julie had a can of tuna she'd been saving for situations like these, so all the cats got a special treat when the tuna came out today. I was glad to see that Koop ate a lot before she retired back to the bedroom, and since other cats were hanging out around the base of the ramp, I airlifted her onto a nest we've put together with an absorbent pad and a towel, and we had the good sense to always have waterproof bedding liners on our mattress. I don't think there's much danger of her urinating in the bed, but it pays to be prepared.
The Winter of Ignorant Bliss
I originally called this the Winter of the Promised Cruise, and I said the following: "We'd been anticipating this cruise for literal years, and it never quite seemed like it was really going to happen. Over the last three months, it finally became a reality we could look forward to, and post-travel colds notwithstanding, it was everything we hoped it would be. Julie said she never imagined being the sort of person who was interested in cruises, and yet that seems to be what's happened. It's otherwise been a pretty uneventful couple of months with work proceeding on Moondrop Isle and my various work projects. We keep busy with our usual routines. I'll be curious to see how our spring and summer develop, now that we had this big event out of the way." However, as the updates over the next week will show, at this moment, we were oblivious to the severity of the medical conditions that had developed for two of our cats. It's hard to have any pleasant feelings about the cruise when it undoubtedly aggravated their conditions such that neither Koop nor Cliff would still be with us by the second week of April.
Finally, I should get in the habit of asking: IS THE COUGH STILL HERE? YES
Wednesday: This was my forty-first birthday! Didn't do much special to celebrate the date, as I wound up going into work an hour early and staying an hour late. I did enjoy watching Joseph Anderson's second stream of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, and I located a fan I should order to fix the issue with my laptop. I finished the leftover spaghetti for dinner, and the "real" celebration, such as it is, will be this weekend when we check out the Italian restaurant I tried on our first trip to Philadelphia from this time, last year. However, the bittersweet news is that my project from the last two months has officially come to a close for now, and I'm back on the phones again tomorrow. Still, this should give my typing fingers a bit more of a rest...
Tuesday: after a night of walking around south Philadelphia in below-freezing temperatures, it was nice to wake up in our too-small airbnb bed. We bought new insoles, footcare first-aid, and transit passes before walking to our new apartment. Spent 15 minutes struggling fruitlessly to open a combination lockbox, but after calling the landlord, we learned the keys had been moved from the lockbox to the the welcome mat. With the door unlocked, we finally got to check the place out for ourselves. The basement's ghastly, but the ground level is great!
Had some pizza on our way back to the airbnb, and now we're resting before going out again to buy some better shoes. Not a bad way to turn 40.
Monday: this was my thirty-ninth birthday!
Sunday: this was my thirty-eighth birthday! Since we're all in the early days of the COVID lockdown, Julie and I logged into Animal Crossing: New Horizons to wander around the museum together. It was pretty cute.
Saturday: this was my thirty-seventh birthday!
This was my thirty-sixth birthday!
This was my thirty-fifth birthday!
This was my thirty-fourth birthday!
This was my thirty-third birthday!
Saturday: this was my thirty-second birthday! Since I've been without a functional computer for a little bit, we picked up a Surface tablet for me to use for my birthday. Julie also posted a glorious photo of Frank enjoying the sunlight since the weather is warming up.
Friday: his was my thirty-first birthday!
Thursday: this was my thirtieth birthday!
Tuesday: this was my twenty-ninth birthday! One thing I did today was to post several updates from my ongoing Fallen London playthrough.
This was my twenty-eighth birthday!
Sunday: this was my twenty-seventh birthday!
Saturday: this was my twenty-sixth birthday!
This was my twenty-fifth birthday!
This was my twenty-fourth birthday!
This was my twenty-third birthday!
This was my twenty-second birthday!
This was my twenty-first birthday!
This was my twentieth birthday!
Tuesday: this was my nineteenth birthday, and while my journal update from 1:37 AM today is being pretty evasive, I'm pretty sure I've just done some serious Frenching at a minimum. It's hard to say, because the way I chose to memorialize this event is with the words: "Revelation has manifested. I now don the mantle of the Ascendant." Jesus Christ.
This was my eighteenth birthday!
This was my seventeenth birthday!
This was my sixteenth birthday!
This was my fifteenth birthday!
This was my fourteenth birthday!
This was my thirteenth birthday!
This was my twelfth birthday!
This was my eleventh birthday!
This was my tenth birthday!
This was my ninth birthday!
This was my eighth birthday!
This was my seventh birthday!
This was my sixth birthday!
This was my fifth birthday!
This was my fourth birthday!
This was my third birthday!
This was my second birthday!
This was my first birthday!
FETUS NO MORE: This was the day I was born!