And then, there's a bearded fetus.

It's somehow already Monday again, ugh. I could use another day to nap. As I sit here, the kitty is at her door, singing the song of her people very loudly. She's got a strong set of lungs. In a bit I'll go back in and take her a can of food and take my pills.

Today is bound to be insane. I need to make Yoda's food, so I'l get that started in a bit. I have my meats, and a japanese pumpkin to try as part of his veggies/carbs. I didn't feel like putting in two orders, one of the meats, and one for the butternut squash, so I got a Japanese pumpkin. Looked interesting, so we shall see. I also need to cook dinner, which means that I need to pull out some form of meat.

Yesterday was a good, quiet day. I did go out to IKEA for the great Mounjaro hand off and to have lunch with a friend, so that was nice. The rest of the day was sitting and napping. I had a very pissed off stomach yesterday that had me running to the bathroom a lot. I managed to go out, but when I got back it was super annoyed. I finally took a nap at about 3:30 and it settled down so that I could sleep for a gour and 45 minutes, which was blissful. I had some miso soup and rice for dinner, which was very tasty. Aside from that, we watched a bunch of YouTube videos.

The cat again climbed on my chest and begged for love, which made me super happy. She's such a sweet cat as long as you're not feet under the blankets. Then, she will pounce and beat the crap out of them with no mercy. And even that is cute.

I've started looking at Viator for some of our excursions while we're in San Francisco. I think I found the Muir Woods tour I'd like to do, so that's a start. We're going to be doing it on a Thursday, so I don't think it'll sell out. I did discover that House of Prime Rib does their reservations a year in advance and sell out all the time. So I set an alarm for September so that I can make that reservation and get a good time to eat. I looked at July 2027 and already all the 5&6pm seatings were gone, so I will need to be at the top of my reservation game.

Now that we've finalized our cruise, I'm very excited. I like cruising for the sake of cruising as well as the ports you get to see. I really enjoy the ocean, and I like going to get food whenever I want, and having entertainment whenever I want. And I love sitting on my verandah and watching the water go by. It's super relaxing. Since this cruise has a lot of sea days, I should get home from my vacation less tired than I did for Alaska, which was just a lot of doing. I'm sure the ports will be a lot of doing, but then there's another four sea days before we get to Ensenada and eventually back to San Francisco.

I think I've found our hotel, the Stanyan Park Hotel. It's right on Haight Ashbury, just next to Golden Gate Park. Which, coincidentally, is where the Japanese Tea Garden is. I'm going to go walk around the tea gardens, and maybe stop for some lovely Jasmine tea.

Those are my big touristy things, though we'll also go down to Pier 39, and wander a little, maybe see the sea lions on the piers. I'm torn between two or three days in San Francisco. We have so much that we want to do, it might be worth it to do 3.

I've got Chinatown for Dim Sum and House of Prime rib, so I'll need to come up with a few more possibilities for food. If anyone has any other restaurant suggestions there, let me know.

And on that note, I'm going to hop off and relax. Everyone have an amazing Monday!

Day four of smoke. Ugh. We're supposed to get storms this afternoon, which doesn't help the extra wheezing and cough right now, but might make things better in the evening. I'm debating taking a small suo if cough syrup beffore work so that I don't cough too hard in our patient's ears

Yesterday waa a day, I played the part of the other PAS III, so in the morning, I was in teams, answering every stupd question people threw at me. A lot of them were from the new girl sho seems to no underand Radiologic principles. But then I got "Which shunt study should I do!" And I looked att he order, and one said Eval VP Shunt patency." It's literally right on the order, at the topo! Then, not three minutes later "What kind of shunt study do I use? And I very quickly screen shotted the protocol and paste it in to chat. My patience knows some bounds apparently.

It was mostly quiet, wiht things I barely needed to look at the grid for, which is a good day, because the grid is hella outdated. I spent most of my time playing stupdi little games and surfing online.

The aftrnoon, I worked radsets ane watched the queue, along with actually doing some of my owb job and also watching the PET Queue. I kept it down under 3 people even as the docs were putting orders in fast and furious. The Bitch Fest meeting was super short, because our Dept head was in a mood. Not helped by one of the manager being a bit of a bitch to her. She vented to me, and I sepent the rest of the day trying to cheer her up with descriptions of how dumb Lizzy is.

I mean, I love her so, but she is not bright. But I was telling her of some of her foilables, and her fascination with my waddle--the loose skin on my forearm and best of all, the big swinging flap under my arm. She just fucking loves it. Yesterday she got so excited loving it that she gave mea lovebite on it. Fucking hell, that pinched. It wasn't hard, just in a sensitive area.

Other than that and 9pm zoomies, she's perfect. She's started attacking our feet in the bed,so sleep is not going to happen. Even after I ran her with the laser pointer, she still wants more, She's so sweet though, just a little rag doll of a cat. When you approach her, she flops on her side to demand pets. head, back and sides are good. Tummy may or may not be a trap, depending on how she's feeling. She got on my chest again. She never stays for more than 10 seconds, but hopefully as she ages out of her kitten ADHD, she'll do it more often.

Despite the shitty Air Quality Index, we went out to the newly opened Volcano Hot Pot.. It was busy when we arrived, which was not shocking as they opened yesterday in our area. Still, we only had about a 10 minute wait for a table and anoter 5-10 for a waitress. The waitress brough a tray of complimentary waygu beef for the grill, and it was lovely. They didn't have as many choices for hot pot. Just fatty beef, pork belly, chicken and lamb. Which was fine, because they had rice cakes, and gyoza for the hot pot. We had the KBBQ too, which was excellent. The portions were enormous, and their Bulgogi was one of the best things I've eaten, flavorful, tender, no need to dip the meat at all. We got two orders of htat. IT became an orgy of food. Galbi Ribs, garlick marinated beef strip, honey pork belly. All very tasty, and the service was suprisingly attentive. Things I did not avail myself of: The salad bar, except to grab a kimchi cucumber. I figurted it was a risk but since it was pickled, I gave it a shot. We'll see if anything happens from that. I was too full to check out the ddesserts and ice-cream. Also didn't try any of their teas. They had a cooler ith verying kinds of tea. I considered a peach, but then forgot as a hole at the sauce station opened up. All in all, very good outting. When we left the waiting area was bugfuck, so yay for a good grand opening!

Today is Marchen, which I still need to uplad a map for. Then, nothing all night. I might do some cooking re: dinner. We'll see. I really do want to use the steaks and teeny tiny lobster tails.

We'll see how the storm goes. I'm Yoda's safety momma during storms, so I may have to sit at my deskk to keep him happy. They're saying a high chance of severe, but they're not good at predicting actual storms in our area. A lot of them fizzle as they come over the Allegheny mountains.


Tomorrow, I'm meeting up with a former IKEA coworker, who is now Hopkins. I have a ton of Mounjaro left, and she uses it. I want the puke serum out of my house, so She gets 2 1/2 months worth of medicine. Enjoy! I can use my vegetable drawer again! We're meeting up for lunch at IKEA, just for the irony. Plus, they have good food. I'll have soem swedish meatballs, and then maybe take a quick trip through their food store. I could go for a bag of cocktail meatballs and IKEA definitely wins for meatballs hands down. I will need to get a crock pot for that, though. But that's not a big deal. I could definitely have that, and some Jelly and sweet chilli sauce together in time to have it for dinner sunday night.

Today also, I need to order and make dog food for the puppy. We've started feeding him half and half. HE gets the homemade food in the morning and Spot and Tango in the evening. It seems to be working. He's lost a little weight, and that way he gets the commercial food vitamins, in case I'm missing something in my mix.

Lizzy is just getting normal canned, albeit bougie food. She's on Tiki Cat, which is supposed to be good for them.She's happy and growing, so I figure it's working. She even gets bougie treats. We have an barely touched box of friskies, but the salmon and chicken treats take top billing right now.

Today, I shall answer phones and try to juggle the schedule if needed. And then game, and then videos. I think I've found our hotel for San Francisco, The Stanyan Park Hotel. It's directly across the road from Golden Gate Park, which is great, since one of the big things we wanted to see was the teahouse in the park. It's about a 7 minute walk, or there's a free tram. I'm leaning towards that. It's a bit of an uber to downtown from there, but I'm okay with that. Our other big stop is Muir Woods, but I'm doing a tour for that, since it's a ways outside of town. I think tea gardens are day one, Muir day do, and somewhere in there Chinatown for dim sum lunch, and the House of Prime rib. We're going to get in around 11am, so 12:30 by the time we get to the hotel. We'll probably be hungry. But I'm goig to do the Tea Garden first because that may take a couple of hours, and the days will be getting shorter.

And now, I must go get dressed and consider starting my day. Everyone have the very best Saturday.

I am wiped out today. Another night of not sleeping well, and towards the morning around 2:30, I had a tremendous leg cramp (which is still achy) that put a kibosh on sleeping for a bit. Lizzy was very sweet, and insisted that I love her while I was limping around, so that was sweeet. Then, I got back in bed, and laid down, and she again trotted straight up my body to sit on my chest. Yet again, I could have exploded in a cloud of rainbows. She's just so freaking adorable, though it makes it tough to get a good picture.



Work was uneven. One hour I'd be paddling upstream, trying to catch up, the next, things would be dead. It made for a slow and very tiring day. I ended up getting BBQ rather than making dinner. If I' known I was going to have an even worse night's sleep, I'd have waited. Oh well, gonna have to cook today. I have some very lorge steaks and a couple of little lobster tails (I mean little--they're more like large crayfish than lobster.) I may also make scallops, since I got them top. Harris Teeter had a huge sale on seafood. I may have to order some more if this is any good. Either way, I think tonight shall be surf and turf. I also have some corn that I could roast and have with it, but honestly, I'm not sure it would fit on the plate with the steak, because that is huge. We'll see what I want to make.

Well, I did some more research, and found that Carnival does have a Hawaiian cruise out of San Francisco for 15 days. I put a hold on it while we consider it. It's a lot of sea days, but then you go to Hilo and Kona, Hawaii, Honolulu, Oahu and Kahului, Maui. Then a lot of sea days back, a stop in Ensenada, Mexico and back to San Francisco.

I put a refundable deposit on it, and we'll see how we feel about the Bahamas cruise with Carnival. If it goes well, then we might cancel the California Coast and got toe the islands instead. The cruise is 1-2 days longer than how long we were going to spend between Disney/San Diego/Cruies, and I should be able to work that as far as PTO. It's actually cheaper to do the Hawaii cruise than the other, thanks to the price differential between Holland America and Carnival. The real questions is, do we need that Holland America class, or are we just as happy on the fub boat? We shall see.

Everything hinges on the Bahamas and how we feel about that cruise. One thing that I'm a little unsure of is that the Alaska cruise was mostly in sheltered waters, but when we moved between sheltered areas it could be very rocky. I didn't get seasick, but it was only for a short amount of time. So we'll start with the shorter cruise and see how that goes.

Looking forward to the weekend. It should be a mostly relaxing weekend, and I will enjoy it. Hopefully, they've gotten my PTO figured out. I do have to go on Friday for my ultrasound, so that'll be fun. Hopefully, it doesn't fuck up my weekend with pain. The Pap smear wasn't bad. I had some aching, but nothing bad. I got the Pap smear back yesterday which was negative, so yay!

Lizzy was being super cute last night, but the picture is horrible, since I'd turned the lights off and it was twilight.



And on that note, off to wake the fuck up and. be a little more alert for work. Everyone have a terrific Thursday!

We survived Monday! Whoohoo! It was a long day, but not a bad one. Work was pretty steady, but not overwhelming. Today should be the same, barring crises. It actually gave e a couple of minutes to relax here and there, which was nice.

During lunch and after work, we watched a couple of videos about our cruise and the ports we're hitting. We've discovered that we don't really have a lot that we want to do in Nassau. We may get off the ship, do some shopping at the market right around the cruise port, and then get back on the boat and enjoy a day of a mostly quiet ship. Maybe play a round of mini golf or go to the specialty pool. The other two ports are at private destinations and private islands, so those I plan to enjoy.

We also learned that the private destination, Celebration Key, gets very busy. We had planned to free ball it, but I thin we're going to spend the extra couple bucks for their Pearl Cove Beach Club, which is the special adults only section. You're guaranteed a lounger and it's genereally not quite as busy. There's also a little market there so if I can't find something in Nassau, I can look there, too. Next project is to find out more about the third stop, which is their private island, RelaxAway at Half Moon Cay.

I never thought of myself as a beach person, but then the only beach I've ever been to is in Ocean City, MD. The water is rough and the sand is somewhat coarse and rocky. I'm given to understand that beaches in the Caribbean are a bit nicer. The pictures of all the beaches make me want to try to be a beach person.

Mostly, though, I'm going for the ship portion of the cruise. Being able to grab food at any hour. and sitting on your balcony watching the waves. I enjoyed that on the Koningsdam. Will I do more things on the Pride? Who knows? I'd like to try to make it to a couple of shows, maybe hit the comedy club. Without my sister, we have a lot less mobility issues.

I'm also debating on our stateroom, and whether we should bump it up to a suite. It's a little bit more, so I need to figure out if it's worth it to us. We shall see. I don't need their top suite. But a Junior suite might be good. I'll do some research and see if it's worth it to us.

After that, we got dinner (moderately good schwarma and chilled out until bedtime.

I'm very annoyed, since the post office says that our package was delivered, but it was not delivered to us. I'm going to have to go looking and that just pisses me off. There's also mail that isn't in our mailbox, so I don't know what to do about that. Hopefully, that'll make its way here. There was a card addressed to Jess with just their first name from an unknown person, and I wanted to see who it was from, and now who the hell knows where it is? Also, I have no idea what package that was, so I don't even know who to let know that we didn't receive it. SO annoying!

Today, more work, more videos and research. Hopefully, people will be a little less jerkish today. I had precisely one person who sounded happy to talk to me. And I was calling to offer them their golden ticket appointments! People are annoying.

My friend got an offer, but it was seriously low ball. Apparently, they go by how long you've worked, and he's a bit younger than I am. They're going to try to get him a little more, but we'll see. He's probably going to take it, but I feel a little bad about it.

Either way, I'm slowly packing the team with IKEA refugees.

And now, out little Lizzy is howling the song of her people, so I'm going to go see her and see if I can settle her down a bit for Jess' sake. Everyone have a sterling Tuesday!

Happy Sunday, y'all! It's going to be a lovely day in Baltimore-86 degrees, sunny--in other words, a day I don't want to go outside in. I am not a huge fan of then outdoors. So, I'm just going to relax inside and do some chores, play D&D and enjoy my day off.

Yesterday, I had work, and good lord it was busy. I ended up doing about 25 calls in 4 hours. I'd planned to take calls only when it was busy and work on schedules the rest of the time, but it was busy non stop. I only had time for a few call backs at the very beginning and very end. Otherwise, I was on the phone. I'm doing it again next week, I think. Or the week after? I'll have to look.

Once work was done, I had half an hour to relax, and then it was time for Marchen. It was a very roleplay heavy episode, with the players having a little bathhouse interlude where the players got to relax, and have some downtime and get cleaned up after traveling for two weeks. Then, they each went out to do their own errands. The Pied Piper, had a interaction with the got of Mischief and Misfortune, who claims her as his own as an outcast. He led her to find a powerful magical instrument that makes it easier to hit people and harder for them to resist her spells.

Little Red Riding hood went to a temple. Her last interaction with the god Mother Night had been rough, but today she was afraid for her sister, and the Mother responded favorably. She was able to send a message to her sister's caretaker and ended the interlude feeling lighter than she started.

Jess' character, a conflicted paladin went to send a message to the Regent who sent them on the quest, who is also his fiancé. He sent a sad message, because he was convince he lost the fiancé's trust. The fiancé replied that he loves him, and then sent another message to reply when he was somewhere private. The paladin immediately ducked down a secluded alley, and surprise, the Regent showed up in person. He did his best to soothe the paladin's unhappiness and let him know that he still trusts him. It just gives him satisfaction to personally execute slavers and child murderers and rapists, and the last time he failed to act, the paladin went to prison for five years. Then they made out, until the Paladin mentioned that he was a virgin, at which point the Regent pulled the plug, declaring that he would wait for a solid surface and true privacy before they had full on sex.

The, the rogue (played by poisontaster ) went to yet another temple to pray. She's in a bind. One of her missing children has been found, but her son is still in the clutches of a hag. She's pregnant and on a dangerous mission. The Mother gave her a little comfort, in giving her an auditory peek into her son's whereabouts, with the coven of hags saying that they needed him and would have to wait a while yet. The connection allowed her to hear her son, and when she sobbingly replied, he could hear her. The Mother left her a cloak that will protect her further from getting hit, and increase her stealth to keep her hidden to protect the baby she carries. She accepted and skipped the midwife, where she had been debating on aborting.

Then they reconnected and had a little time to not discuss their backstories, and prepare for the first party of the Season in the capital city. They were to babysit the royal family's mute ward while the queen schemed an invitation to a noble from another city. The noble woman took a liking to the prince and danced with him while the ward they were babysitting got progresively more upset.

The rogue went over and dumped punch on her, and sent her off to clean up. However, soon she was back, and starting towards the prince again. This time the paladin tripped her, and attempted to get her to blurt her darkest secret. It failed, but she did attempt to backhand him, inhuman claws out. That kicked off a fight with the noble, who turned out to be a sea hag. IT was a tough fight, and the paladin went down once, only to be revived. In the end, they were victorious! The session ended there.

I know I've said it before, but I love this game so much. The characters are still getting to know each other, and very prickly, but they work well together, even in their interpersonal conflicts.

It's been really fun to work with them to personalize the story, and to reveal little bits of their backstories and to slowly feed them clues to the overarching mystery. (Very slowly at the moment, but it'll be speeding up as they journey.) One of the nicest things is that in July, we're getting to play every weekend, which helps to keep the excitement high. It's gone really well, and I've been balancing little individual interludes with team time, and it's been fun and really allowed the players time to shine. It's been a good thing, and I appreciate that due to party conflict and hidden backstories, they don't feel the need to stay together all the time, so they can have those little scenes.

All in all, it seems like everyone is enjoying it a lot, which really helps the DM Imposter Syndrome that every DM I've ever known has. You'll finish a great session, where everyone tells you how awesome it is, and as soon as the game ends, you're like "Was it that good or were people just being nice?" It's good to have that validation. I don't have that so much with this game, because I can feel that we're in that sweet spot, where things are just clicking, and at the end I'm energized. Even when it goes over by an hour like yesterday's did. I came out of it ready to do things.

So, against my better judgement, I went outside to the German Festival. It was much smaller than I remembered from years ago. We got some schnitzel, and I added some really good potato salad to it, and some sauerkraut. Then we got strudel and got my sister a carry out and headed home. It was nice, but I don't know that the food was worth the ticket price, since we were neither shopping, nor deeply into A-Ha's Take On Me in the style of Polka.

Then, we came home and I was coming down with a mighty headache, so I laid down, and promptly slept for an hour. Then I got up to nibble snacks, and went to bed. It was a very full day, so I'm looking forward to relaxing today. I may attempt to vaccuum in our room, if I can, but we'll see. I need Jess to take Yoda out, and my sister to watch the cat in the living room so I'm not scaring her with the loud noise. We'll see if we're able to do that or not.

Tomorrow, it's back to work for another fun day! I still love my job, but I can't deny it's gotten much more complex and stressful since the promotion. I've gotten a look at the underpinnings of the dept, and so I've been learning to work with that, and moving into a more quasi managerial role, and it's tiring. I don't really want to do anything when I get off work. Sometimes, I'll do a game on Friday night, but that's about it. It doesn't help that we're down by 4 people, and the phones have been insane. Part of my job is to bug people when they've been in aftercall for too long, and we're getting ready to shorten the time before we message them, so that's going to go over well.

We've got a team meeting next week that I get to present two sections, and the managers are going to announce the crackdown. It should go interestingly. Especially if I'm in the call center manager's session. She's so done with people abusing Aftercall and ACW times that it could get ugly if they push. Then again, assistant manager did suggest that he wanted to throat punch someone, so it's possible that both could be clusterfucks. I'm waiting to see which session my co presenter wants to do. Either way, I'm going to make popcorn.

Not much planned for this week. I've got work and Marchen on Saturday, and possibly we'll go out on Friday and try a new hot pot/kbbq place that's opening on Thursday. Might be a mistake to go the second night, but we're going to do it anyway. It's right in White Marsh, so only about a 20 minute drive.

Okay, time for me to hop off and drink some coffee and wake up the rest of the way. Everyone have an awesome Sunday!

We've finally made it to Friday! We have (almost) survived the work week! (I have a bunch of Lizzy pics, so I apologize ahead of time)

Yesterday was a busy day! After I signed off here, I got ready for work, and Jess took Yoda out for his walkies. While I was waiting for them to come back in, I put a harness and leash on Lizzy, and let her out of the room.



She is not fond of the harness, but I wanted to be able to pull her away if things went poorly. Instead, it actually went pretty well. He sniffed her, she flopped over and showed tummy. He booped her excitedly with his snoot and we ended in there, before she showed him whether the belly was a trap. A very short meeting, but a good one. The rest of the day, they would pine at each other through the door. Yoda would go check on her, and she would sit at the door, making her sad bike horn of a meow. It was very sweet. Lizzy is already convinced that he is her buddy. And Yoda's not far behind. I just need him to play gently, and we'll be good.

We'll just keep introducing them slowly.

Then was work, where I was kept busy. After that, it was time for the dreaded GYH exam. It...actually wasn't bad. I hurt a little bit today. I mean, I wouldn't want to go for a hike, but it's not terrible. Just a bit of an ache, not stabbing pain. I still have to go get an ultrasound, which is also going to be painful and suck, but if we need anything beyond that, I'll be unconscious for it, thank you. I'm hoping the US is fine and the labs say "Oh, it's just that you weren't quite in menopause yet, but obviously, I'll do whatever they need me to.

After I got home, I was a bit sore, so I took some good meds and then we watched "The Wrecking Crew" with Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa. It's not a great movie, but I had fun with it. They played half brothers who's abusive father was killed in a hit and run. They're both emotionally stunted whiny man-children. It was everything I needed it to be. Stupid, violent, with some creative kills. Most of all, I loved that these men's women just ruled their asses. They had a great cast of women, including Morena Baccarin as well as Roimata Fox, both of whom were awesome. Solid A on the Teresa Watches Questionable Movies Scale.

Then, we had dinner and I made a decision. I was sore and achy and I had a headache, and I had gotten my little package from Temu, so I made Lizzy into a fashon plate.


Here's our fresh faced beauty blogger in her summer clothes haul.

I swear, that cat is so freaking chill. She's just like "oh, you want to put me in a dress? Okay. Whatever. I won't do it often, but Halloween is coming!

After a while, we went to bed, and Lizzy decided this was the time for play. She was rocketing around the room, and we played with the laser pointer until she was panting. Once I put that away, she began to make her own fun. Most of it seemed to be on hte bed.





There was something supder nice about her playing with her stuffed mousie in between our feet. Later still, I got up to grab my earphones, and she was laying on the bed on my shirt, just like Boodle would lay on my sweatpants, and both broke and healed a spot of my heart. I still miss Boodle like hell, but I do love Lizzy. She's such a good kitty.

Today, I shall work, and then we have game at 7. Tonight shall be the Swedish horror game. I'm looking forward to trying it out! Tomorrow is Marchen, and then Sunday I play in the Strixhaven game run by poisontaster

On Saturday, we may go to the German festival and get some food, but mostly I think I'll be relaxing in between games.

After thinking about the cruise further and crunching the numbers, we could do it, but I'm not sure if we should. I'll see if they drop the price any further before I jump at it.

Okay, time for me to get myself together and for another fun workday. Everyone have an outstanding Friday!!

We've reached the halfway point in our week! I am so tired this morning. I had trouble sleeping due to small kitty, and I'm feeling it. I was awake for about an hour or so at about 1:30 AM. It was deeply annoying. Hopefully, today will be a little less crazy at work, because we were 100% slammed yesterday, to the point that I worked until 5 to help out. I don't know how helpful I was, but I tried, dammit. I'm not that quick when it comes to scanning in orders from the fax to the charts. It's a whole process, and I'm definitely out of practice, but I got some done.

I can tell that my hormones are out of whack this week. My ADHD has been really high, and the meds are barely taming it. I spent most of yesterday in the land of terminally annoyed at people's stupidity. Of course, in the middle of that, our big boss dropped a new project into my lap. It's not horrible, but it's going to take a lot of time searching out patients to put in the new slots. And then, Columbia realized that their cardiac tech is going to be out on a day I've scheduled, so I have to fix that, and to top it off I had a high maintenance patient who I've been working with decide to give me a call with 8 million questions. I was actually really glad to go to work the faxes. Not that people still weren't messaging me.

I was going to cook dinner, but then Yoda met Lizzy through a cracked door, and seemed to really like her, so we ordered so that we could put together the oversized baby gate. It's about 5'5 and made of clear plexiglass, so they can see each other, and smell each other through the sides, where there are inch gaps.

It fought us, but we got it up and opened the door for them to sniff. So far, so good! They seem interested, but not overly interested. I have a feeling she's going to be a lot for poor Yoda. She likes to rub against our legs and beg for pettings and I feel like she might be very obstructive for him. We'll see. She's got a few more days in the bedroom, and then we shall begin letting her roam the apartment at night.

The other issue with the ADHD is that when the pills wear off, it's kicking my ass. Nothing like laying in bed and not being able to hold still. I've been getting that great feeling of wanting to claw my own skin off. Fucking hormones. Hopefully, once this period is over, it'll settle back down, because this sucks.

Today, I absolutely shall cook some food. I'm tempted to throw a couple of sausage and a slice or two of bacon in for breakfast. That's technically dinner as well, but we have a lot of sausage, and 2 lbs of bacon, so I can definitely get away with a few pieces of each. Hopefully, work shall be less crazy, and I'll have a little bit of time to think through a bit of lore for Marchen. I managed to pull about three hundred words out of my ass yesterday, and now I must flesh it out.

We've been playing for 8 sessions, but I'm still figuring things about the world I created.

This had to do with their religion and myths. We have three gods--Mother Night, Father Light and the Bastard. But, yesterday I created more of them. There's another two gods mentioned in a myth about the time before the Three. It mentioned the Creator and the Moon. One more little thing to drop at my players feet like a dead mouse.

Today, I also have to get on ticketmaster and get tickets for Danny Elfman's tour at 10am. The venue has limited seating, so I want to get on early and make sure we get seats. It looks like the balcony has seats, so we'll aim for up there and hope. Apparently, he's dropping a new album, so it'll be that, some stuff from Oingo Boingo and some from his films. I'll have to listen to the new album when it drops so I'm familiar.

I'm really hoping that he plays one of his old album called Insanity. I was appropriate for the elder Bush's era and it's applicable now, too. (The white folks think they're at the top, ask any proud white male. A million years of evolution and we get Danny Quayle.) I'd love to see him rework it for the current era.

Tomorrow, of course, I have my gyn appt, which I am deeply anxious over. I'll be fine, but I'm really hoping that this doctor is a little more gentle than my last one and maybe I don't have stabbing pain for three days.

Mostly, I'm just trying not to think about it. Obviously the cure for that is more lore about Marchen.

I was thinking the other day that I 100% understand now why people want to go on cruises all the time. Ours is still 15 mo away and I really want to get back on the boat sooner. They're doing some 5 day cruises next year, but sadly none that would work for us. There's a 7 day cruise with Carnival, which is Holland America's parent company, that leaves out of Baltimore, so maybe we'll consider that.

Okay, on that note, I'm going to hop off and do some prepping for game on Saturday. Everyone have an excellent day!

It's Monday already. I actually slept fairly decently last night, so it's not so bad. I'm trying the new thing where I take pills at 5am instead of when I get up at 4am. Just to give it an extra half hour that it'll work in the evening. We'll see.

It ended up being a fun and relaxing Sunday, so that was good. Early on, I was worried, because one of my players lost power in a storm. Fortunately, it came back up well before game time. Whoever her power company is, they're good because it was only down about 45 minutes, it that.

We kind of chilled out and relaxed for in the morning, until I discovered that I seem to have a period. Complete with cramps. Since it's been a while since I had a period, I do have to go get it checked out, but since it's a full period, I'm not quite as worried as I'd be if it was just spotting. Still, I'll go to the GYN soon to get it looked at.

Once I'd taken some ibuprofen and it had a little time to kick in, it was time for Marchen, which is always one of the high points of my week.

This time, the party was arriving in the fantasy analogue of Amsterdam, and immediately headed to the castle to do their check in with the nobles. It went great, as the Piper insulted the queen and they were sent on some fetch quests.

On the way to their fetch quest, the rogue got a sending from the Regent who sent them on the quest (who is also the paladin's beloved), Kristoff. Kristof let her know that they'd found one of her kidnapped children, but that the other had been sold to a hag, and his trail lost. The Regent's men are going to go to a nearby country and speak to the great Baba Yaga for information, as queen of the Hags. Then, the Regent, who up until now seemed like a bit of a socialist, asked what she would have him do with the slaver who they captured. When the rogue gave the word, he whipped out phantasmal killer and executed the man himself, showing off a ruthless streak that most of the party didn't know about. The scene ended with the rogue telling the ranger in confidence that she thought she might be pregnant.

Then, we switched over to the paladin, who wandered into a street festival. IT turned out to be the festival of the Koningsmoordenaar, or Kingkiller. As he moved through it, he discovered that it was a festival to the worst day of his life, and something that he considered the worst thing he'd ever done--murdering the former king to put the Regent he was deeply in love with on the throne. But he snuck in and stabbed the king in front of his children, while the blood splattered on them. And there they were, celebrating it. Celebrating him. There was a reenactment and all. He dissociated at the reinactment, watching the thinned strawberry jam splatter onto the children's giggling faces. The bard pulled him out. Afterwards, we had a little fun roleplay with the local vendors, which involved a flower crown for the pied piper's rat.

Then, it was back to the other team, where a werewolf with personal information on the ranger started shit. The combat was short, but the werewolf attacked in a way that indicated that she knew who the ranger was by referencing the biggest trauma of the ranger's life. The post fight was fun, where the ranger questioned the werewolf who did nothing but spout off how the other members of her pack were out there, and they would end the ranger, and by the way how was her litte sister? Now the ranger is in full freak out.

Then back to the festival, where the pied piper found them being watched by a figure. As he turned, she saw the white knotted scars on his back where he'd been whipped, and she followed, not sure why she was. The piper is a great character. She's angry and nihilistic, and doesn't seem to give a fuck about anyone. But she followed. And she found a creepy flesh golem, who didn't speak, but did sign. Eventually, his master came out, and it became obvious that he was not treating his creation, who he called his son, very well. The bard first tried to buy the golem, but then ended up fighting the dude and killling him for the golem's freedom. Between the golem and the master, they ended up doing quite a bit of damage to the paladin, but it ended well. The piper had her rats eat the body, and they sunk the bones in a bag with rocks into the canal.

It ended up being such a fun session, during which poisontaster burst out with "T, I love you, but you are a motherfucker." High praise! It was awesome, and revealed a little more about each character. And now they know a few new things about the Regent who sent them.

It was a super fun three hours. Afterwards, the discord was a flurry of messages, with things to do next session and theories and what not. It's glorious for me as the DM, because every message is a little bit of validation that I made good choices.

After that, we had a quiet afternoon. My back was really sore so I took a weed ad dfrifted through the rest of the afternoon. Today, my back/uterus is again pissed and are giving me crap, but alas no weed before work, so I'll need to take some ibuprofen and tylenol and see if that helps. It's been so long since I had cramps that they're really annoying me. It's just not a pain I'm used to.

We got Lizzy a donut that she can get into and play or onto, and she adores it. There's a jingly ball on a string, and she loves to play with it.



Today, we shall have work. I have a doctor's appt tomorrow that I'm not sure about. I was supposed to get labs done, and I haven't. I could run up and get them done this morning, but I don't really feel like it. On the other hand, maybe I could get an referral to the GYN and maybe get in sooner.

I've got til 10am to cancel it, so I may try to call a couple of GYN offices before then and see what I can find.

Okay time for me to get myself together. I hope you all have a stellar Monday!

So, it's official, I was a total airhead yesterday. I was exhausted from lack of sleep in my defense.

On Thursday, I had mentioned to Jess that I was thinking about waiting to take my pills until 5 am, because I didn't like that the ADHD meds were wearing off in the late afternoon and leaving me icky in the evenings. I need it to work for bookending my day as much as I do for work on account of the sonic onslaught of hearing about my sisters day and everything she's seen on social media. First, in the morning when she wakes up. Less important, since she doesn't normally start talking til later in the morning. She gets up at 6, and doesn't really start talking for a 15-30min. I guess the coffee needs to kick in. Then in the evening, she gets home at 6, and the real fun begins.

I could ask her to chill, but it's really the only times she gets to talk to us during the day, since Jess and I go lay down early at night. So I want to talk to her, I just don't need the social media shit. So, I deal. I really am considering asking for a little short acting dose for the evening like we used to do for kids who needed to do homework.

But anyway, you can probably guess where this is going. I was going to go take my pills at 5:30, but Jess went to the bathroom then, and a small creature slipped out from the bedroom and required chasing. I got Lizzy back where she was supposed to be and promptly forgot my pills.

I felt like shit all day. Called out of work early and went directly to bed and stayed there til about 2, when I looked over at the nightstand and saw my pills in their transparent case. And then I cussed and debated whether it was too late to take the Azstarys. I ultimately decided that sleep was less important than feeling like a functional human, so I took it. By 4, I was feeling 100% better.

Of course, soon after, Jess came down wiht a headache from hell. Then, two more people had to drop out of game due to their AC struggling in the 102 degree heat and the other also migraine, so the remaining three decided to push the game to next week when maybe people would be up to playing.

So, I got to test out whether I could get to sleep on stimulants much earlier than expected, at 9pm instead of 11pm. I'm happy to report that I crashed out and got really good sleep. Further proof that I'm ADHD, I suppose. ADHD meds have never made me feel hyper, or even exceptionally focused in, but they have helped my anxiety/need to constantly do thing/wanting to chew my arm off tendencies. I think if I went to a higher dose I might be more focused, and maybe I will bring it up a little more. I don't know. I'll talk to my Psych when I see him in a couple of weeks.

Today, we don't have a bunch planned. We were planning to stick close as I am Safety Mama for Yoda when the fireworkds go off. Instead, we're having storms, which he also hates, so I'm still going to be hanging around. They're not suppoed to start til around 5pm, so there has been discussion of going to the movies, but we'll see how Jess' head feels and how I feel about going out.

I really, really do want to see Masters of the Universe, and this might be my last weekend to, but if I have to wait til August to download it, I will.

Tomorrow, we have Marchen, and I'm so excited. I can't wait for it to be time. I have so much stuff planned for the city they're in. And I've almost written the full module at this point. I've got two and countries left to finish and they have to go through another country or two to reach them so I'll work on that. I know what's supposed to happen and what clues will be revealed in each land, but I need to flesh out the narrative and figure out how they happen upon each fairy tale and whether the tale will be sweet or horrifying. Maybe both.

But tomorrow's game, and probably the one after that are set up. But this one, there's so many good character bits. I do need to find an appropriate token for one thing, but that's no big deal. And I need to see if I can find a prop piece. (some sort of object that I can place on the map.). It might be a hard ask, but there's things I can use if not.

No spoilers, but the stuff I have set up could be some major character growth or at least trauma. It also may drop a clue or two to the mytharc. And more of the complications might be revealed. I need to talk to a couple of my players to see how they want it to go-if they want to take a level in multiclass or if they want to just have an outside complication. Because I could easily do either.

I will send a message when I finish writing this.

You will 100% get the spoilery version of this once it comes to pass, but since two of my players read this, I'll refrain until Monday's journal.

If the weather behaves on Sunday, we may try having hot pot. We got plenty of meats and some veggies and some rice cakes. Definitely enough for a good meal. And I got hot pot bases, which should be tasty to dip things in.

No new pictures of Lizzy today. She was a little perpetual motion machine and I felt like shit, so I didn't get any. So have a couple from the other day,





She's so pretty, but good lord, we are coming to find out that she is dumb as shit. Just, no thought, head empty. If you could listen to her thoughts, it would be a dial tone. That is prefectly okay with me. I don't need a smart cat who's three steps ahead of me. I need exactly what I got, a sweet and adorable kitty. Maybe she'll wise up as she gets older, but we'll see.

I did a little more research into countries to move to if we need to bug out. Spain has changed their digital nomad visa that I would have a shot at getting in. We'd have to live somewhere northern like Pontevedra, where the summer high is only 80 degrees. THe other option would be Valencia, as long as we had AC. If I can't get into Spain, Malta is another possibility, but that would definitely require AC. I'm not planing to run, but just in case, I want to have possibilities.

Oh, if anyone is interested, Romancing the Vote is ending on Sunday. I've put in a couple of bids, so we'll see how it goes.

As part of my "I'm not cooking while it's 100 degrees out" yesterday we had BBQ. I split a turkey sandwich and a pulled pork sandwich with my sister while Jess had BBQ chicken. They were really tasty. I forgot how much I love a good smoked turkey sandwich.

Tomorrow, I think the weather is supposed to be rainy and stormy in the morning, so I will probably not go to the Farmer's Market, but I totally have the itch to make it to one soon. It's difficult to do the one closest to us, because it involves rush hour driving, which usually seems like more trouble than it's worth.

Okay, time to go feed a kitty and maybe consider pants. It's funny, her Tiki Cat food smells horrible, but her poops don't smell as bad on it. So stinky food it is. That at least, doesn't make me gag. Everyone have a safe and wonderful 4th, and may we be better off this time next year.

It's Thursday and the first of our two seriousy shitty days of heat. Our AC is still racing to catch up from yesterday. It hit about 95 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, and tht was just too much. It was 3 degrees hotter than the thermostat was set for. Today, and tomorrow, it's supposed to get up to 102-103 degrees, so it may be somewhat warm in here. I was tempted to try to order a portable AC to help. That is always a possibility if it gets to be to too bad. I am planning to stay insidet he apartment and open the doors as rarely as possible. Our room is going to be warm as shit, because we have the blinds open to avoid kitty assistance and the sun hits it during the late morning/afternoon. It's always a couple of degrees hotter in there.

Work wasn't too bad yesterday. It was busy, but no one wanted to answer their fucking phone, so I was of limited use. My friend K decided that she might like to apply with us after all. When I asked before she said she was too old to start over, but things continue to go to shit at IKEA. So, I sent her resume, and we'll see. I don't know if they're even still recruiting tbh, but we'll see.

We've got 4 positions, and they came at staggered times, so we'll see if it's meant to be.

My other candidate has his interview today, so I'm hoping that goes well. The first round were painful, according to my manager. She said that she was not pleased with our HR dude, as he was sending total duds. And of course, a bunch of them only want the job because it's remote, and they're mentioning that in the interview, which is not good. That's one of the manager's top pet peeves--when people want the situation and not the substance of the job. We need people who like talking with people and who realize that when patients call us, they're not calling for a good thing. Maybe it's a routine mammo, but the other stuff--they're calling us because there's something wrong, and they need to find out what it is, or clarify what it is. We deal with a lot of masses, tumors, MS, and people who are in pain and scared. There's a certain responsibility to that. Yeah, you're working from home, but the pt just cares that they can trust you to handle things with compassion.

We did have our Lead meeting, which was mostly seeing if we had anything we wanted to add to the staff meetings in 3 weeks. I mentioned that I needed people to stop fucking with my Cardiac schedules and schedule on the fucking hour, so they're not screwing up the schedule. We can fit 3-4 Cardiac MRIs in a day. I'm going to need them to stop scheduling at any time but the hour. We're currently backed out to October on these fucking scans, so we need to maximize our appointments. Putting someone at 12:30 just ruins the 12 and the 1 hours, leaving a half hour on each end that we can't use. I need them to use their brains and not fuck up my schedule. Because then I have to do in and move the pt where they're supposed to be, and no one has time for that. Especially when you have more than one patient off the hour. Then I've got 2-3 patients to call and move. It sucks and it's time that could be used for getting a STAT in on another schedule. We discussed the departure of our big problem child in just a couple of days, which led to wondering if we should be more explicit about how we can see their screens. Apparently, there was an incident where someone was on teams, saying shit she really shouldn't be typing on their work computer that got escalated. A little griping is fine, but there are some things you hardcore should not be typing on a work laptop, much less on Teams. So Jenn was thinking that we should put a little healthy fear into them. I love my team, and I do whatever I can to help, but they are much shittier than I realized when I was still on the phones. I kind of assumed that the people who had been here for awhile knew what they were doing and were good workers. I was not correct. We definitely have a few people who could go.

After work, I started with a bugger of a headache, which didn't ease up until I went to bed. Despite that, I played laser pointer with the Lizzy until she was panting. She was laying on the floor by the door, so I moved her up onto the bed so I could get out and she just flopped. When I came back, I sat next to her and eventually kicked my feet over her so I could lounge. She did not move...except to push her butt against my leg. I was already a little warm before she snuggled, but afterwards. I was seriously grateful for my fan.



She stayed for a good ten minutes, just snuggled there. It's the longest she's ever laid with one of us, I think.



Eventually, she got down and went to grab a snack, but I was honored to have her visiting.

She's a funny kitty. She'll let you pick her up, but only for my sister and I will she stay for a couple of minutes. Jess tries it and she squirms immediately. They are not the pick up parent. They are the get down on the floor and pet me when I flop person.

I think today, we're going to have the managers bitchfest, since only a couple of people are here on Friday. That should be fun. There has been so much bullshit lately that we won't lack for things to talk about.

I think I'll send a mention to the TLs and ask about adding the information for the Columbia cardiacs to the staff meeting. I'm fighting a losing battle trying to fill the slots with what they want, and I could use help. If they could clue me in when they have a Cardiac, I could see if I could get them in sooner. It would be very helpful, since they just opened through September, and I'm still fighting with the end of July. There needs to be a way to have me involved at the jump, so I don't have to poach schedules as much. I also need to start keeping track of the calls I make with the info about the pt. Do they want a call back if something else opens or would they prefer to stay where they are. That way I don't bother them with calling again if they don't want me to.

I don't mind filling the schedule, but it's definitely hard to get the mix of protocols that they want. I just need to figure out how to word the request.

Tomorrow, I shall work for my time and a half. My Holiday pay dropped yesterday, which is nice. Now I can put in for the few days off that I need before the end of the year. I think it's mostly an early day for Weird Al and AEW, and then most of Friday and maybe Monday for Animate!Philly in October. When I accumulate another day, I may also take my birthday off, since it's on a Thursday this year.

The mesh gate for Lizzy and Yoda's introduction is not coming til Sunday now, so she may be waiting a little longer to see the big dog. Lizzy is hella curious. Yesterday she was trying to look under the door at him. Yoda seems mostly indifferent, so we'll see how that holds up when he can fully see her. He's chilled out a lot, but I'm not sure she'll like his version of play, since he is a bit bigger than her, and his play with Boodle was to come over and poke her with nis nose and sniff her thoroughly. Boodle used to smack the shit out of him for that, and then we'd have a kerfuffle. I'm hoping for no kerfuffles with this cat. She's much sweeter natured than Boodle was, so I have hopes. I was hoping it would come tomorrow, an that I'd be able to introduce them on Saturday when we had no games, but alas. Fed ex still says it's coming today, but I think they're on crack since the last location was Georgia.

I hate to spend the money to order food the next two nights, but I'm not adding any more heat to the apartment while they AC is struggling. Thankfully, next week it's going to settle back down to the high 80s, which is much better.

I need to look at the PDF for the system I'm playing tomorrow night. I think I know what I'm doing, but it wouldn't hurt to re-read. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can make of it for the next two Fridays. The mystery looks pretty simple, so there's a lot of room for improv, which I enjoy. In honesty, this is more me testing the waters. I'm a bit burned out with DMing. This is going to be my test as to whether I want to still do the occasional one shot, or if I want to just do my campaigns. The summer is such a bitch for scheduling that we have a lot of weekends that have nothing. I could easily knock out a couple one or two shots, I'm just not sure if I want to. Also, of course, seeing if this is a game that I'd want to play with more. It seems like a cool idea, and I'm hoping it goes well. It's a mixture of Monster of the Week and Blades in the Dark. You roll the number of dice you have in an attribute, and if you get a six, it's a success. I may adapt that to be a 5 or 6 to make it a touch easier to succeed. I might see how the first half plays out before I do that. I might be able to finish this in one session, though I doubt it, but should I do so, there are plenty of other mysteries I could run. Since it's so much like MotW, I can probably control how play goes, and work from there. With it being 103 degrees tomorrow, I'm thinking that playing in a Swedish horror game set near the Arctic Circle could be very nice.

Okay probably time for me to hop off and do some work on the Friday and Sunday games. Everyone have a terrific Thursday!