Done last week (20141221 Su - 27 Sa)

[mdlbear]

It's been a nice, relaxing week - I took Friday off as well as Thursday. Won't be able to do that again for a long while, sadly.

Glenn made roast beef and proper Yorkshire pudding for dinner on Christmas; I made borscht yesterday. We had a few guests over; not many. But the borscht came out well. Next time we'll have to make a much smaller batch, though. Recipe to follow, though you can deduce much of it from the timeline in Saturday's notes.

Despite feeling relaxed, I also feel as though I should have been doing more. I am, as usual, going to have to scramble to get all the charities paid by year's end, and there are probably still some lingering bills and other items. GAAK!

On the other hand, my web resources are in pretty good shape. The whole thing is amost completely deployed with git, the rest with rsync, and "make deploy" works on both. I'm pretty happy about that -- it feels good to get back into toolmaking again.

On the gripping hand -- or is that the griping hand -- I still don't feel particularly happy about myself. This is mainly because, even when I know what needs to be done, I still prefer to waste time reading or puttering rather than do it. Not even the prospect of giving myself a little star in my notes -- which is what that file is for -- is enough to get me off my arse when it comes to writing checks or sorting through envelopes.

1221 Su Solstice
  * Up 6:35; W=211.6; shower
  @ Villains's Cat
  @ I Asked 21 Photoshop Experts From Around the World to Make Me (A Plus-Size Woman)
    Beautiful — Here's What They Did | Bustle 
  : Curio broke into the bag of tortilla chips that I had next to my chair.  He seems to
    like them.  Who knew? 
  * Went out to get serial numbers from the scooter, since the imbecile tech said he
    couldn't find them.  They were on the aft end of the battery compartment, exactly
    where I expected them, and wrapped around the seat post (also on the aft end of the
    battery compartment).  Got contact info from Colleen; will ream them out in the
    morning.  Visit was 12/9.
  * lots of puttering.  Great Room door latch adjustment; symlink fixes.
  * Dinner.  Chicken tikka masala.  Put a little saffron in the (brown) rice.
  : Kat found a copy of CC&S and put it on.  I can mostly only hear the flaws.  AARGH!

1222 Mo
  * up &;05; W=211.6
    Also weighed Curio, who is 10 pounds.  So he hasn't lost weight since the vet visit,
    in spite of the fact that I never see him eating.
  * Called Spinlife; got partial quote and gave them the serial number of the scooter.
    It'll probably end up around $1K by the time we're done.  If Colleen doesn't get the
    quote by sometime tomorrow afternoon, call.  They apparently emailed the quote Friday.
  : Max worked pretty well with Rolly; she also fits in the rolling backpack.  Rolly works
    on the bus, but isn't as comfortable to carry.  I prefer the double handle, though.
    Max fits vertically in the backpack, so that's also a possibility.
  @ haikujaguar: Dissent (link to my comment there)
    "I wouldn't want to diminish someone else's joy in a holiday I don't celebrate. There
     are a lot of them, and I'll cheerfully respond in kind to someone else's wish for a
     happy Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas, Festivus, or whatever. I often even mark the day
     itself with its appropriate greeting in my blog. On those rare occasions when I send
     cards, I go for a winter theme and something like a "Happy Holidays" message, because
     I'm not religious and anything else would make me uncomfortable. I rather like the
     Japanese tradition of New Year's cards -- Japan, for all its cultural uniformity, is
     a land of many religions, and they seem to get along rather well. 
      By the same token, I'm not upset by people for whom a particular holiday is not a
     happy one, who might respond with a shake of the head or simply withdraw. I spent a
     lot of lonely Valentine's Days, and quite a few solitary winter breaks. I've been
     there. 
      I get a little upset when people complain loudly about everybody else celebrating a
     holiday that they don't. I may grumble quietly when I see Christmas decorations going
     up before Halloween, but I'm not going to get in somebody's face about it. I don't
     have as much sympathy for them as I do for the people who quietly withdraw from the
     festivities that make them uncomfortable, but I have some. 
      The people who really disturb me are the ones (invariably Christians, in the US) who
     feel that not celebrating their holiday is an attack on them and/or their
     religion. Who feel that wishing them "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" is
     somehow an "attack on Christmas", and react angrily when they hear it. Who take
     "sorry, I don't celebrate that" as an insult instead of a request to be left
      alone. No sympathy for them, at all. "
  @ World’s First Amputee Pop Star And Model Shows Off Her Badass Prosthetics In Music
    Video | Bored Panda Edgy and seriously badass, like it says on the tin.
  & Some overdue syncing between cygnus and nova.  git status is NOT reliable about
    telling when master differs from origin/master.

1223 Tu
  * up 6:20; W=212.8;
    Curio is actually 9.8 lbs according to our scale.  Will weigh him next week and get
    worried if he's lost any more.  He doesn't seem to be eating well.
  * Checked on Amazon shares; they vested 12/15.  Not worth much, so I don't have to worry
    about the tax consequences this year.  Probably.
  * 10ish leave for Swedish
  * 11a Colleen - ultrasound, Swedish First Hill.  4th floor East wing.
  * WFH afternoon
  * last-minute shopping

1224 We
  * up 6:20; W=213.0
  @ Farm Fresh? Natural? Eggs Not Always What They're Cracked Up To Be (ysabetwordsmith)
  * Last-minute shopping with N on the way home; wrapping with N. 
  ~ Humira
  * found main (RE) router plugged in to wall.  Move to other end of shelf (using ethernet
    extension cable if necessary) and plug in to UPS.  The extension cord obviously isn't
    robust to people who don't know why it's being used... that, or I set up the cord and
    forgot to plug it in because it was in use when I did it.  More likely that, now that
    I think of it.

1225 Christmas/Newton's Birthday
  * up 6ish; W=211.6; Shower
  * Wonder Workshop | Home of Dash and Dot, robots that help kids learn to code
  @ Writing Robust Bash Shell Scripts (via a coworker)
  : N. give me a new *purple* rolling backpack.  Glee!
    High Sierra Freewheel  Max fits easily in the main compartment.
  : sysadmin:  upgrade Kat's laptop (Barnard) to Trusty; boot up Purple and update.
  @ Why is the Number of Linux Distros Declining? - Datamation 
  @  One of my rare posts on G+
  @ mdlbear | Thankful Thursday
  * Put remains of dinner away; clean up.
  ~ Humira (actual)

1226 Fr Boxing Day/Babbage's Birthday
  * up 8ish; W=212.2
  @ 6 things I learned from riding in a Google Self-Driving Car - The Oatmeal

1227 Sa
  & awakened 4:30ish; cleanup; never got back to sleep, but drifted for a while
  * up 6ish; ; Shower
  * 11:30ish:  start borscht
  * 21:15: beets in oven, onions and garlic browned, beef in pot simmering.
  * 1ish: beets out of oven.  Start chopping roots
  * 1:55: taking a break, with all but about half the beets done.
  * 3:05: beets and rutabagas in; meat out.  Picture taken. 
    We should probably make a smaller batch next time
    Chaos and Alex are here.  Not really expecting many others, but one never knows.
  * 5:50 I'm calling SOUP!  Nobody but me and Colleen eating it yet; Emmy tried some and
    didn't like it.  (update -- she added ice and sugar and made a smoothie out of it)
    Chaos says she's never liked it either.  Guess I know what I'm having for lunch for
    the next month.  This is a particularly good batch, too.
  @ Sounds Like Weird LJ - An Awesome Resource for Free Web Site Backgrounds
  ~ Tried to repair lift chair pendant.  Failed.
  : In the end, we had 5 guests:  Kat and Alex, Chip, Lisa, and Bun-Bun.

Comments

[amaebi]

Scylla and Charybdis: Guilt and not getting enough done do that you all get your butts chomped by Nemesis. :/

I celebrate your many achievements.

[mdlbear]

:) Thanks.

(bad markup fixed -- sorry about that)