CON.TXT

I am not having a happy morning. My stomach woes continue, and this morning, I am not only still a touch nauseous, I'm also running to the bathroom every five minutes. Stupid body. I still have no clue if this is a tummy bug, or Mounjaro. I'm really hoping for the tummy bug. But the Mounjaro would definitely be a possibility. Stomach issues are one of the top side effects. I just need for it to settle the fuck down before work.

When my PTO for this weeks check dropped, I finally had enough time to put in for the Monday after we get back, so my vacation is completely covered, even if I cut it a bit close. I wish I had enough to call out on the Wednesday before we leave, but that's probably not going to happen. I do have 4 hours left of PTO, so if the stomach continues to protest, I might leave early today. We'll see how it settles down.

Once vacation is done, it's back to hoarding PTO like Smaug hoards gold. I have other places to go that I'll need it for. If I'm correct, I should have 9days of PTO by the time October rolls around and another 10 days by April when we're planning to go to Hawaii for a total of 19. OF that, I need 15 days between Animate!Philly, CONfab and Hawaii. So I'll definitely need to be careful of how many days I take off. I just need my body to remain illness free for a bit longer.

Today, we start with the new phone system at work. I offered to come in early, so that I can help out with the clusterfuck of getting everyone signed in and on the phones. It's likely to be a mess, though I did sign in yesterday and test everything, so at least my system will be working.

Apparently, we're going to be firing someone in the near future. They've been stealing a lot of time, so they are going to terminate them. HR is just processing the paperwork. This is the first time I've tangentially been involved in this, and it's weird to see if from the other side. I keep telling A. that if they backfill, I've got a list of people from IKEA who will be happy to apply.

Yesterday was a day. Nothing particularly exciting, aside from the whole firing thing. Oh, and I got to write, coordinate and post a scavenger hunt for Administrative Professional's Week. Also the first time I've been on that side of morale improvement stuff. It's kind of fun. Whie I was working, I had Yoda's dinner on simmer. At break, I pulled the meat out and added some sweet potatoes and some brown rice. Boiled that into submission and then re-added the deboned lamb and the chicken livers. It looked kinda gross, but he loved it. After work, we fired up the vacuum food sealer and made up a bunch of bags. It made 8, so that's a another four days worth.

Our disposal is currently not working, so cleaning the pan could be tough. A tiny shotglass fell down it, and I didn't know. I've cleaned it out, but there must be something still in there. I'm going to wait, and call in maintenance next week when the dog is in daycare.

Today, aside from the utter chaos of Talkdesk, it's going to be a nice boring day. Hopefully the stomach settles a bit.

The trip begins in just 14 days!! This time in 2 weeks, I will be sipping coffee in an airport lounge, waiting for the time to walk to our gate and board Alaska Airlines and wing our way off to Seattle.

I think all the important things are locked in. The itinerary looks pretty solid if I do say so myself. Not overly scheduled, but not under scheduled, either. We've got stuff to do in every port. I don't know if we're going to make all three of our stops in Seattle. Pike Place seems like it might be difficult to do in a short time, so we may end up devoting most of our time to it. The park sounded like fun, but it might get dropped. Of course, adding to the difficulty with Pike Place, we're probably going to be there right around lunchtime rush, so it might be very crowded. The nice thing is, if we miss something, we can just uber back the day after our cruise and visit a second time!

I've got reservations in Vancouver the first night, and as long as we finish in Seattle by like 3pm, we should be good to get there. We land at 9:51, so figure 40 min for luggage, and we're in the car by about 10:45. We get 3-4 hours in Seattle. First shall be the Space Needle then Pike Place. We leave around 2:30, we can get to Vancouver in 3 hours, and have an hour to relax before it's time to go have our dinner at Hy's Steakhouse.

That day is honestly the one that has the most moving parts, so we'll have to see how it goes. Oooh, the food option has come up on the Air Alaska app. Now I have to decide what I want for breakfast on the flight. Decisions!

Okay, time for me to go forth and get myself together. Everyone have a Fantabulous day!

It's Wednesday! We're halfway through the week! I am a little less sleepy today, which is nice. I've not quite made up my sleep debt yet from the last couple of nights, but it's definitely better.

Work yesterday was quite busy, but I'll admit, I loafed a little bit in my tiredness. A, the head of the call center, was having a bad day, so I was talking to her a good chunk of it. That woman needs a vacation in the worst way. It's just been a bear of a month for her. New health diagnosis, the phones have been psycho, we're switching our telephone systems tomorrow, and then the whole thing with the Bethesda office has been a fucking mess. I'm trying to talk her into taking a week off and go sit somewhere on a beach, or in the mountains and just relax and dissconnect. She's a great boss, so I'd hate to lose her to burnout. I still did some other work, but mostly I was trying to convince her to put her own oxygen mask on first. I will definitely be texting her pictures of vacation in an attempt to help relax her while I'm gone.

After work, I promptly gagged on a pill and felt nauseous the rest of the night. It was not fun. I have soup and plain chicken skewers for breakfast, as I just couldn't take more than a spoonful of soup. Feeling much better today. As with all my new digestive foibles, I'm blaming them on Mounjaro.

Today, I shall do work, and then cook dinner. I've been looking forward to the halibut for days, so I'm definitely going to cook it tonight before it goes off. Then, I shall nap again.

Tomorrow, we get our new telephony system. It's a VOIP, so they're insisting that all our connections are wired. This is going to mean running a ton of ethernet cable from the kitchen to the living room. I guess that'll get done tonight as well, so I'm up and running tomorrow morning. I'm fairly sure that this rollout is going to be a shitshow, but we'll see. We're the 4th rollout, so we'll see if they've learned from their errors. Supposedly they did figure out how to trigger pop ups with patient information, so that's something. The customer puts in their phone # and DOB, and as it works now, the system cross references the two, and will throw up a pop up with their info, that we then will verify. When the pt is new, or mistypes their info, we'll get a blank pop up. Those are the times when you're really praying that the caller doesn't have a thick accent. When they do, I spend a lot of time praying for a name I know how to spell. Shah, Nguyen,Patel, Li, Sanchez please. And if it's not, please let them be pleasant. I know how much it sucks to have to spell your name repeatedly every time, but work with me here. After that, I'm sure I'll be exhausted, so we'll see if I fix anything for dinner.

Tomorrow will be exactly 14 days til vacation. And Saturday, we might get our boarding passes! It's very exciting. It's still surreal. It's been so long since we had a proper vacation that ut feels unreal. There's a great song in the Lost Boys Musical called "skip to the good part," and that's where I am with vacation. I want to skip ahead to the vacation and get to do all the things I've been planning since last April. We have so many adventures to go on, and I want all of them.

I saw a video of some whales returning to Alaska for the season, which made me happy. We may not see hummpbacks, but the killer whales are back, and I'm more excited about them. I have seen Shamu, in his tiny pool, but I want to see one wild and free. And I want to take the White Pass train up into the mountains and see all the amazing scenery. And I want to walk Creek Street and maybe visit a historic brothel. I want to buy ALL the souvenirs. My bag is definitely going to be overweight, though. I might need to invest in a second carry on suitcase to keep it under weight. Or use the one we have. We'll see. I kind of want one of the cool ones that have a fold up cup holder. Then I'd be able to pack one of my coats in there and save me some weight. The limit is 50lbs and I'm already at 43, so there could be more wiggle room.

We have laundry service on the boat, but the bags are very tiny, so I want to bring at least 6-7 days of clothing, plus cold weather gear. I will do some looking and see what I can find. The one we have is an Amazon Basic, and it is indeed very basic.

Might be time to get rid of what we had. I'm sure that one of the thrift shops would take it. They were great when we were driving to Disney, less so when we're flying. We'll see what we end up with. I also could then pack our emergency meds in the carry out. My standard meds will be in my personal item, but I ordered an emergency pack from a company called Jase. For a fee, they'll make up a personalized kit of medication for travel. It's various antibiotics, anti nausea, antifungal and cortisone cream to cover any medical emergency. Since cruise medical care is ridiculously expensive, it's a little peace of mind that I'm covered if my tooth starts acting up again, or if anyone has any problems. I was going to put it in my checked bag, but if I take a roller bag, I'll probably put it in there.

I'll see what the options are for something that will get to me before we leave.

I've downloaded SO many books for the flight. I have the RSS feed of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books on my dreamwidth, so I get a ton of recs for books that are on sale, or even on kindle unlimited. I was trying to wait to read any of them, but I started one called Dreadful that seems pretty good so far. I've got books by both Ursula Vernon and John Scalzi, so that'll be good. And for Jess, I think the new Murderbot book comes out on 5/5. I've already preordered that for them. Something to read on the flights if you can't sleep.

The flights are the part I'm not looking forward to. 3 hours in the BWI terminal, plus another 6 hours in the air, assuming everything is on time. When we land, it'll already be 1pm our time, but only 10am in PST.

The first day is going to be a lot. We'll be getting up by 2:30am and not laying down til nearly midnight our time. We're all going to be falling asleep in our steak dinner.

One of the people from the Facebook group reached out to me about doing dinner the Friday before we get on the cruise, so we might be doing an early dinner with them before going to the movies. We'll see how organized we can get in 2 weeks. He's really nice, so I'd be okay with that. When I mentioned going with my spouse, referring to them as they/them, he reached out to let me know that Holland America does Pride meet ups, usually on the first night of the cruise. He's traveling with people from his softball team.

I'm really looking forward to both Pike Place Market and the Granville Island Public Market. It looks like they have some cool stuff and good food. Mostly good food.

Okay, time to go forth and get ready for work. Everyone have an absolutely outstanding Wednesday!

It's Sunday and in an hour or so, we can go get Yoda home! I'm very excited about this, because the house has been too quiet. It seems like he's done really well looking at the little report cards that they've generated for him and the pictures. Mostly it seems like he's been pestering the staff for love. They take hin outside, and he explores a bit and does his business, and then he'll just go sit with the staff for love. The pictures have been great, and it has relaxed my mind about Alaska. He goes next week for 5 days, from Sunday to Friday, and then it'll be the main event.

After he flunked out of the other doggy daycare, and it was such a shitshow with the pet sitter, I was worried that we wouldn't be able to find anything. But this is good. He seems to be having fun, and they understand a small anxious dog. They've let him guide them every step of the way, and I'm loving it. I feel so much better about leaving him to go on vacation. He's even eating all his food for them!

After we get him and have some major cuddle time, we will play our first game of Marchen. I'm nervous as always when I'm starting a new game, but I think I'm ready, and the players are so enthusiastic that it's going to carry me along if I'm not. One of my other players, who we went out with yesterday gave me a huge compliment. She said I always seem prepared for game, or I'm very good at faking it, because she never feels like I'm winging it." Since half my DM style is "review the book 15 minutes before game," that's really awesome. I always feel like I'm scrambling, but I like it that way. I live for the improv.

Yesterday was awesome, but I am so sore today. I'm not used to that much activity and socializing. We got up early and got ready for the day. I dressed kind of cute in one of my new skorts, and a soft t-shirt, and Jess put on one of their new dressy tops. The car showed up at about 9:30am and soon we were on our way. The drive to Philly wasn't bad until we were in Philly proper, and we got Chaneen without any problems. Of course, once we hit NYC, the traffic slowed way the fuck down.

We were getting close to show time, so we had the driver let us off a little distance from the theater and walked rather than sitting in bumper to bumper traffic. We got there about 15 minutes early, and found our (very good) seats pretty quickly. The Palace is a nice, slightly older seater. This mean wider seats, which was very good for us.

The show started on time, and was awesome! They had some banger musical numbers, and the two leads who played Michael and David were amazing. I'm happy to report that they not only didn't remove the gay subtext, they punched it up so much that at one point, I looked at Jess and whispered "This is the gayest thing I've ever seen." Seriously, David had the hots for Michael in a big way. And they made Sam queer as well. Special mention to the dude who played David. He more than lived up to Keifer Sutherland's performance. He had a great, deeper, resonant voice that drew you in. And even he had a little character arc about wanting to belong and have a family.

The show was much more about that then the movie was. Family, found and blood, and the need to belong to something and to find your place. Also, the song Wild remained a banger, though it's been joined with Lose Yourself and Have to Have you as favorites as well. They kept the comedy of the movie to some degree, with skateboarding Draculas and the the Frog Brothers. Also awesome, at intermission I went and got some merch and a drink. Normally I just get water, but they had slushies, so I asked for cherry. "With or without alcohol?" Well, I wasn't driving, so I got it with a shot of vodka. It was great, and I am making plans to go to Seven 11 and get a slushie. First, I need to hit a liquor store and get some vodka. Jess suggested vanilla vodka, and that sounded amazing.

All in all, super fun and I highly recommend it. Lost Boys is definitely worth a look if it ever goes on tour.

After the show let out, we went to Langan's for dinner. They had excellent food. The starter was a pile of Ricotta with honey and spices and little crostini to put it on. It was really tasty, and I enjoyed it a lot. I also had French Onion which was pretty good. Entree was the fish and chips for me. Very tasty, especially with some malt vinegar. Jess got short rib pappardelle pasta, which was amazing. We both have leftovers for lunch today. Then afterwards, we hiked to Junior's to get some carry out cheesecake, which will probably be breakfast. After that, our driver picked us up, and we headed home.

We dragged in around 11:30pm, and I crashed immediately. Not sure why my body insisted that 5:30am was a great time to wake up. As mentioned today I'm very sore, but I'm sure it'll improve with ibuprofen and a little relaxation. This afternoon, I should make more of Yoda's food, but we'll see how I feel. If not, I'll make some tomorrow while I work.

It doesn't take much work, but I do need to wash out the pan, which is difficult, since it's an enormous enameled cast iron pot. Last time, I made enough for 11 packets, which I think is probably the limitation of the size of the pan. I need to make at least that every couple of days until trip so we'll have enough food for the 12 days that he'll be in the kennel. Not to mention the five days next week. I need to get cracking.

Or, I may just become one with the couch after game, I haven't decided. Dinner is definitely going to be carryout or delivery. I am far too tired to worry about food. It's supposed to be rainy this morning to early afternoon.

18 days to vacation! Soon we will be getting up obscenely early to get on a plane that will be winging us towards Seattle.

It still feels a little unreal, but soon we shall be on our way, and then maybe it'll sink in. But now that the dog is settled, it feels a little more solid. Like it's going to actually happen. Soon I shall be on a ship where my every whim is catered to.

Okay, time to get myself together to go get a puppy. Everyone have a stellar Sunday!

It's Saturday and I managed to sleep a whole hour later than my normal alarm. I guess that's good? It still means I'm up at 5:30am. I'm going to be tired when we get in at 10:30 tonight. It'll be a long day for me. An awesome, fun day, but also a long one.

I'm actually glad that I'm up about 4 hours before we leave. That gives me time to have coffee early so I probably will not have to make our poor driver hit a dozen rest stops on the way. He's due to get here between 9-9:15am, and then we shall go pick up our friend Chaneen, and then. off to Broadway. We should get there around 1pm and the matinee starts at 2pm. We're going to see The Lost Boys Musical, which looks super cool from the bits I've seen on TikTok. The music is definitely solid from the songs I've heard. Once that finishes, it's dinner at Langan's and a short walk around the corner to Junior's Cheesecakes to get a few slices for carry out. Then, the car will pick us up, and we'll be heading home.

Yesterday was a pretty good day. We took Yoda to the Kennel/daycare to be boarded for two nights. I swear, this place is SO nice. We took a blanket for him and his food. (Not that I expect him to eat much.). At 11 and 5:30, they upload report cards and pictures. His first set of pictures had him loving all over the kennel worker, just shoving his head in her hand for attention like he does to us. That made me feel good. The report card was very complimentary, that he'd had a good morning and enjoyed lounging in the sun and getting cuddles. The second one, at 5 was a dude, and Yoda can he iffy with dudes. But he talked about taking him on a walk, and that they had a good cuddle once he took him on a walk and got acquainted, because "You have to earn Yoda's trust." I nearly cried at that one, because they understand what he needs. I'll be waiting eagerly for his updates today. I'm also looking forward to picking him up early in the morning tomorrow. The house is too quiet without him around.

. There he is getting pets and being a total little love pig.

Work was busy, but not horrible. I got a fair number of people in for their appts. But then I had a 2 hour slot that I just could not give away. I called like 6 patients and no one freaking wanted it. Hey, I did what I could! We had our weekly meeting/bitchfest. I still feel like I'm a bit of the outsider, but it's getting better. I made some suggestions, which were well received, so that was nice. Mostly it's just fun to rubberneck on it. Not much of it is directly relatable to my job, but since they've had me working the Help Chat now and then, it's good that I know it.

After work, we watched the 7th and 8th episodes of Amazing Digital Circus, which were fun. Now I have to wait til June for the final episode in the theater. They're going to re-show the 8th episode and then the hour-long 9th episode. Excited!

Since we didn't have to worry about leaving the dog alone, we went out to dinner to Kung Fu 12 and had some amazing Szechuan food. The waitress recommended the beef filled Scallion pancakes, which were so good. We also had pan fried pork dumplings and crystal shrimp dumplings. For entree I had Mu Shu Pork and Jess had Taiwanese 3 cup chicken. My sister got the Orange Beef, and everything was excellent. I ate til I was stuffed, and enjoyed every bite. Even the Jasmine tea was good. We have so many leftovers, because the portion sizes were huge. I do need to get some plum or hoisin sauce for my leftover Mu Shu.

Despite being full to the brim, we made a stop at Rita's Italian Ice and got Jess and my sister some rainbow sprinkled custard and me a cotten candy ice. I could only eat a bit of it, but it was so good.

Then it was home to relax and eat our Rita's and then bed. Amazingly, the Jasmine tea did not mess up my sleep cycle, whoohoo!

Tomorrow, we shall fetch a dog who will probably be a bit barky and clingy. Then, we shall start our new Marchen campaign. I've sourced some of the maps, though I still have a lot to go. I've at least got maps for the first couple of sessions, so that's a start. It's definitely straining my map-sourcing abilities. Though I do have a couple of Wizard tower maps that will serve as Baba Yaga's hut, and I'm good on woodland clearings. I need to source some castle maps though I could probably make those if need be, as there's a modular map maker that just came out of beta. Hopefully it's a lot of fun, and grabs the players as hard as Arvandor did.

I told Jess yesterday that I felt like if something had happened after the Arvandor finale, and I had never been able to play D&D again, I would have felt satisfied. It was such a fun module, and the players were so engaged and the role play was so good that it just scratched that D&D itch so well.

I'm hoping to craft an ending for Frostmaiden that'll be just as satisfying.

T-minus 19 days until we leave for vacation. Things have started to show up in the daily program. Not everything, but we're getting there! I can't believe we're getting so close. That's just bonkers. I'm running through all my prep and our plans, just to make sure nothing has slipped through the cracks.

I confirmed with both limo companies for our rides, they assure me that we're good. I've confirmed our dinner reservations on Thursday and Friday nights. I'm looking forward both to Hy's Steakhouse and Dae Bok Bok Bon Ga Korean BBQ. I'm checking Holland America every morning to see if the boarding passes have dropped, but nothing yet. I just want to print them out to have them ready. From what everyone has said, the wifi in the port terminal is spotty, so it's best to have paper rather than relying on being able to pull it up at check in. Both pre and post cruise hotels are confirmed.

I'm really curious to see how the Pinnacle Suite is going to work out on the ship. I know the perks on paper, but it'll be interesting to see how we're treated. The info that I've gotten says that we'll have our pictures distributed to the staff of the ship so that they can recognize us on site, and we'll get extra attention. I want to see how that works in practice.

As I've said before, I know I want to talk to the Concierge right away and set up our pastry and coffee delivery for the mornings. Oh, also, we get free mimosas, so we'll order them as well. Might as well! I'm not a huge drinker, but I do plan to have some alcoholic beverages on board. Though they also have some amazing sounding mocktails that I'll indulge in. We have the drink package, so I can get up to 12 drinks per day. That's a little excessive, but once you factor in specialty coffees and mocktails and a drink or two, it'll add up. I don't think I'll make it to 12 every day, but we'll see.

I'm really looking forward to our tours of Seattle and Vancouver, and also to our port stops in Juneau, Ketchikan and Skagway. I think it's going to be a lot of fun, and I hope we're not too early in the season to see some wildlife, especially some whales and dolphins. I would like to see a killer whale in the wild. I've seen them at Seaworld, and they were just sad, so I'd like to see them wild and free and stalking seals. If we see a humpback that would be amazing, but again, we're a little early in the season, so we'll see. I'm also hoping to see a few bald eagles and ravens in Juneau. We're probably too early for bears, but you never know.

Mostly, I just want it to be a fun, relaxing trip. I did drop my other class, so I won't have to work on vacation. I'll restart school in July when we don't have so much shit going on, and I'm not still adjusting to a new job that has been stripping any brain power or post work motivation to study.

Oh, yesterday I got the cutest pleated skort from Snag tights. They also have amazing tights and pantyhose in a variety of sizes, which fit really well and are awesome as well as chub rub undershorts to wear with dresses. They're not cheap, but the products are really well made and understand what fat people need. I'm planning to wear one to the theater today. It'll be somewhat diminished by my tennis shoes and socks, but it'll look cute anyway.

Okay, time for me to take a quick shower, and get ready to go. Everyone have a wonderful Saturday!