Timelies all!

Tired, as usual. I woke up around 5 for no reason(as opposed to waking up because of cat or child) but fell right asleep again.

I found out my friend's mother passed away due to COVID-19 on Christmas Day, sadly only a couple days after they started vaccinating her facility. He hadn't been able to visit her with hugging privileges in the last 9 months.

On a more upbeat note, I ran into my aunt who recently recovered (more or less) from the virus while out at Wal-Mart yesterday. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the first day she was cleared to drive she immediately raced to the place with the largest concentration of customers in town. But it was good to see her up and around, and motormouthing despite shortness of breath.

Oh, I have to report back that I got the Soda Stream at Target, and R. was pleased and surprised, even though she'd asked for it.

Excellent! I use mine all the time, mostly for fizzy water with their fruit drops, but also for ginger ale or drink mixers like craft tonic syrups. Which reminds me that I should order more of the Elderflower tonic syrup, because that's been my favorite of the ones I've tried thus far.

Technically I'm working Mon-Wed this week, but since most people are on vacation and things are very quiet, what's actually happening is that I'm putting a few hours of work, and, barring any emergencies, the rest of the time I'm working my way through my cleaning and decluttering To-Do list. Apparently I'm more willing to tackle these things when I'm ostensibly supposed to be working.

Technically I'm working Mon-Wed this week, but since most people are on vacation and things are very quiet, what's actually happening is that I'm putting a few hours of work, and, barring any emergencies, the rest of the time I'm working my way through my cleaning and decluttering To-Do list. Apparently I'm more willing to tackle these things when I'm ostensibly supposed to be working.

I'm only working today and tomorrow, which means I'm half-assing it on checking these references. Every article about Covid (and there are so, so many, you guys. SO MANY. I cannot possibly overstate this) is working with such new data that half the references are non-peer-reviewed articles hosted on preprint servers. Normally, we wouldn't be cool with that, but everyone is learning about Covid in real time; there's no repository of published, peer-reviewed information at hand. So non-peer-reviewed articles are what we've got. (I mean, more and more peer-reviewed articles are being published every week [seriously, you guys, SO SO GODDAMN MANY], but even so, we're still at the point where there's not that much peer-reviewed stuff about Covid, relatively speaking.)

Yikes, Teppy, that's gotta be hard.

I logged in to work to look at a few emails today. Should've followed up with my one person who has been half-assing it, and who was supposed to be using this week to "catch up"--I suspect instead, she's quarter-assing it. It's frustrating because she's clearly smart enough to get it, but is just not organized or not caring or not working, or something...

I thought I'd have a quiet week this week, and so far I've been slammed with complicated rides (like, I wasn't supposed to have any today). At least both days have gone by really fast, and a three day weekend to look forward to. Still, I would have appreciated some time to catch up on my paperwork.

I am half assing it at work, but I should get all done I need to.

I am running my Roomba for the first time right now. I think I am going to love it once I get Christmas cleaned up and can use it on the whole first floor. Since I have to keep clutter off the floor to use it, I hope to get better about that.

Apparently I'm more willing to tackle these things when I'm ostensibly supposed to be working.

Because you're getting paid to do the work!

Matilda's gone full Otaku this year, and I had to go check on her when she started sobbing over Naruto. Admittedly, it was episode 478 culminating many storylines with loss of parents etc. So whatever your crypoint was on LotR/Buffy/Avatar/Farscape, she hit that.

Matilda's gone full Otaku this year, and I had to go check on her when she started sobbing over Naruto. Admittedly, it was episode 478 culminating many storylines with loss of parents etc

Ooof. I feel her angsty pain.

I am in the office today to spend my last day cleaning out my office. This is not a good time to be hit by a case of the don't-wannas.