NOV 19

2025

Wednesday: back at work after my stray vacation day off. Couldn't be productive in the way that I wanted since all my new groups were more than 30 days away; I focused on reworks, and we had a long departmental briefing. On lunch, I took a break from the Blind Wave reaction series on Community to catch up with Grinding Gear's Final Fantasy IV playthrough. Once work ended, I cooked a pot of cheeseburger soup. My potato-chopping has improved: I now bisect the red potatoes along their perpendicular to their narrowest axis of symmetry, which I find counterintuitive in the act of slicing, but which ensures the ensuing pieces are not overly long. The onion was a little more haphazard, and my eyes watered too much. I had to do some last-minute defrosting of a second package of the hot Italian sausage I was going to brown, as the recipe calls for two pounds. My last couple of attempts at making this didn't boil the potatoes long enough for them to soften as much as they should have, but today, my patience was rewarded. I need to remember that we're out of chicken broth concentrate, as I had to substitute vegetable broth instead.

While we ate dinner, we continued watching Bob's Burgers, though I ended up sleeping through a couple of episodes in the egg chair. Even with the heat on, it's cold enough in the apartment that I needed both a blanket for my lower half plus a jacket to stay comfortable in the living room. Once I post this update, I plan to get into UmaMusume long enough for a career run or two before bed.

2024

Tuesday: since I stayed up so late playing WoW last night, I ended up sleeping to nearly noon. Julie was at work, so I could take my time and walk to Acme for more cat treats and lunch from the halal cart. After lunch, I gathered up the litter and trash, while Julie brought out the recycling, after which we went to the gym for a brief ride on the bikes. We had the leftover Cajun sausage and shrimp soup for dinner while continuing to watch Buffy. Season 4 is about as rough as expected, but I enjoyed getting to play through the Vampire Survivors DLC while we watched. Before I knew it, it was after 2 AM.

2023

Sunday: any day in which I don't have to get on the phones is alright by me, and while call volume was still high today, I spent the entire time providing chat support and working on my projects. Typing felt uncomfortable enough for the past few days that I wore my wrist braces to bed last night, and I didn't take them off again until my lunch break. While I worked, Julie baked the Oreo brownies that she likes because they're so easy to make before doing the dishes and cleaning up around the apartment. At one point, Cliff decided to stop napping in either of the spots he likes in the corner to instead lean on my shoulder and headbutt me. It was adorable.

After my shift ended, I went to the living room and kind of dozed on the floor while Julie was watching videos for a while. Dinner was the leftover spinach pasta, and we decided to try Civ VI once more, so we put Bob's Burgers on for the second night in a row. The latest updates seem to be causing a memory leak, so I need to close Firefox before we try launching the game, and I need to remember my plan to turn off animated leader screens. I keep forgetting. Anyway, the game crashed bigtime.

Once we were done trying to play, I did my daily puzzles over on Duotrigordle and Puzzmo. (I've been doing Duotrigordle for something like six months, but I only started Puzzmo in the last week.) After treat time, the cats were pretty worked up, so I spent some time dragging John's string toy up and down the length of the apartment to wear them out. There haven't been any real scuffles for a while, other than the kittens wrestling each other, so I'm trying to keep John and Mim from antagonizing each other so we can keep the good times going. Now that I've posted this update, I want to finish playing this IF game I started before I check in on some MMOs and then go to bed.