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You’re wise.   The movie tonight was The Fall Guy, and I knew I would enjoy it but I didn’t know it would fill my heart up so very much. I really enjoyed everything about the film, even including the running musical theme of a Kiss song, and when I came home I played a couple rounds in Beat Saber ( @RES, I think I have some time opening up on Saturday and Sunday evening, if it fits with your schedule.  )   The Impossible Project at work was finished just as the toxic director landed a whole new bag of flaming poo on the team, which in most ways meant me, even though I was scheduled to leave at noon. I did a heroic amount of investigation and analysis before 11, and met with the senior developer on our team to discuss how this might get solutioned, and then off I went to therapy, followed a brilliant meeting with my Advisor (I might graduate in June 2025???), followed by a massage that was another round of amazing, and then back to work to test the solution that had been worked and applied to the test environment while I was away. The toxic director wanted a hotfix to production (at 5 pm on Friday) but the solution is clunky and will require many additional workaround steps, but has the added bonus of being slower than snails 🤦‍♀️. My official recommendation was that we all meet on Monday morning to demo the solution and get a training session for affected users in place before we go making a change to production. This made everyone as happy as they were going to be, and left the toxic director yelling at everyone and anyone that he wanted to know why there was a problem in the first place. I told him I hadn’t done an Root Cause Analysis on that yet (I suspect an Oracle Patch update) and that I would look into it on Monday, and then wished him a good weekend and logged out. ❤️    Anyway, I’m in a great mood and ready for a cup of tea and a reasonable bedtime. I’ve been sleeping brilliantly since Wednesday, and this makes everything easier (including chucking things right back off my plate, because yes, @DarK_RaideR is still right). 

Race time race time race time Race time race time   Trail race is coming up June 1! The race is about a 3-hour drive from home so I am hoping to go up the night before. Guess I need to book someplace to stay, haha. This is my second favourite course on the island…sadly the local race series nixed my favourite this year so I am making do with #2 and 3. Maybe one of these years I’ll just go run in my fave park on my own? But I would 100% end up running double what I planned because I missed a turn or something looked like a connecting trail on AllTrails but turned out to loop back or whatever, haha. I neeeed that pink flagging tape. 😅   Three concerts this challenge, too! Balkan Babes are headlining at the local folk club on Sunday and doing a shorter set at an outdoor folk festival at the beginning of June - I’ll be performing Canadian folk songs with my family there too. My chamber choir is performing the Brahms requiem on Mother’s Day, and we have an out-of-town choir joining us so it’s rehearsals allllll weekend. That’s our last concert for the season, what will I do with all my extra time??? I’m super nervous, actually. This choir auditions every year and while I’m pretty confident in my skills I know at least two excellent altos who are coming back/looking to join and I don’t know if I’ll make the cut. But I really, really want to. Music is an area where I love to be challenged and it’s been great singing with this group that really tests my capabilities. Plus there’s no membership fee!    Goals this challenge:   🌟 Run every week 🌟 Other movement (yoga, skipping, strength, strenuous walk or bike ride) every week 🌟 Meditate 10 mins every week 🌟 Nature Appreciation every week 🌟 Unloved Hobbies (gardening, painting, sewing - all of which I love but have been taking a Way Back Seat to music this year) 1 hour per week    Bonus   🌟 Any weekly goal more than once 🌟 Adventure runs (including the race) 🌟 Post more than weekly and in other threads (HYPE! HYPE!) 🌟 Photos (two stars if I manage to get a share-worthy pic on race day…looking back through the years I’ve only got post-race sweatyface shots, no delightful forest photos or elegant views or even the “I can’t believe I’m only halfway” selfie)   Assessment   35 stars: A! EXCELLENT! You get a PRIZE! Prize will be using my PTO to book a massage instead of booking it after work  25 stars: B! GOOD JOB! No prize but I get the satisfaction of knowing I “passed” my challenge!     Actually, thinking about it I might open up Unloved Hobbies to include household projects too. I have some art I’d like to hang, for example, and we need to do a dump run sometime soon. Would love to sew some curtains that actually look nice in my blue bedroom (the ones I have are gold and burgundy from my old living room, which was yellow, and they look pretty bad, haha). 

Welcome! And good luck on your adventure! 

I'm so sorry, my friend! Job hunting can feel like a kick in the teeth.    When you're starting to get past the initial disappointment, hopefully you can remember that it's absolutely not about you personally, even when it feels that way. And I guarantee there's a job out there with your name on it!  ❤️ 

That seems like an inaccurate characterization. Depending on exactly how those non-human 50% were grafted on (all in the same place, distributed evenly, and so on) I'd expect them to be Level 3 at a minimum, but most of them would/should be at Level 4. I mean... mermaids.    Also, I'm picturing Laghail chuckling gleefully at being able to create this entire discussion about monster fuckability just by posting a mildly amusing screenshot. I can sense the smug build-up from over here. 😏  

I love this term and will steal it so I can use it around unsuspecting innocents. 😈

Those boots are badass!   ...do they come in black?

45 min walk   Light stretching/warm up   24 kg DB KB Clean and Press 2x3 24 kg DB KB Squats 2x3 24 kg DB KB Rows 2x3 24 kg DB KB Floor Press 2x15   Ring Pull Ups 2x2   Heavy stretching

Right? I ate ice cream today! And thanks. We all need some time, and it seems like Mom and Dad are starting to move forward and now I’m a little stuck. I told myself I can wallow for a solid day then I need to get busy.    Right? I mean, a person still has to enjoy life!

I am taking this afternoon and evening to have fun. I may do some things from my list too, but my main focus will be down time.   My original plan was to take off early this afternoon to go to an aikido seminar an hour away. I just don't have the enthusiasm to drive for two hours and do two hours of aikido this evening. I knew that yesterday, before I had a sleep fail last night. This brings into focus two topics - aikido and down time   Aikido I have been practicing aikido for a long time. I love it and intend to keep doing it well into my 80s. If I had taken a much different path in life, I might have gotten good enough to become a senior instructor. That typically requires several years of dedicated practice in one's twenties. Instead, I took a roundabout path with some long breaks. I can keep getting better but I am never going to be great. I'm okay with that. It was never my dream to be a martial arts instructor. I can happily stay at 2nd degree black belt for as long as I want. Getting a higher rank would not allow me to do anything special.   I do feel a bit odd about my weapons partner moving past me. We started training weapons together when he was training for his shodan test and I was training for my nidan. We tested on the same day. He took his nidan test right before covid. I feel like I lost more fitness than he did during covid. Not to mention that he is 15 years younger than me and training hard for his test. He will be testing for sandan (3rd degree blackbelt) at the end of June. I am happy for him and a bit wistful. Sure, I would like to be able to do all the things on the sandan test requirement list. I can do some of them easily. Others need work. Some would need several years of dedicated physical therapy first. That is just not my top priority now.   Down time It seems that my mind and my spirit do not agree on what I can realistically do. I remember being super efficient and doing all the things. When I try to do that, my spirit rebels. I want to just play phone games or read junk mail. I would do better to just give myself the time to relax and spend that time on things that are more fun and have something to show, like spinning and knitting.   With that in mind I just bought Manor Lords. It is a new city building game that has my number.   Now I am off to go for a walk with Dumbledore and do fun things.   Have a great weekend!