fufaraw

It's Hump day! Thank goodness, we're halfway through the week. This week and the three days next week are just going to drag on forever.

Yesterday was a quiet day. I spent most of it trying to fill a cardiac MRI, but I swear, no one wanted it. Fortunately, one of my coworkers finally filled it in, because I was ripping my hair out. I swear, I called over 45 people. Half didn't answer the other half felt like July was just fine for their heart scan. After that, I tried to start filling the Cardiac Schedule for Columbia, but the stystem wouldn't let me, so I'll need to wait a bit for that to get fixed.

After that, with everyone's stomachs behaving themselves, I ran out and got some Italian food from a place that opened nearby. The food was very good but lord, we have so many leftovers. I'm planning to have my short rib ravioli for breakfast. Sadly, I ate the shrimp scampi appetizer, but it was SO good.

We got another good report card for Yoda, which was nice. I really like this place. They send twice daily "report cards" which are usually kind of cutesy and positive, I'm sorry pawsitive. Even the corny, cutesy stuff makes me inordinately happy. He seems pretty good, but I've been a little worried that he was stressed, and that's why he was being such a total love pig to the staff, because we hadn't seen a full body picture where his tail was up. well, yesterday's pictures alleviated that worry with this picture.



He looks so happy! I nearly cried. I'm missing him something fierce, but that did help to settle my nerves that they're the right people to leave him with.

Then, we sat down and watched the rest of the video series of the British couple taking the same trip we are, which was very nice and relaxing.
( Yup, she's about to spew random vacation thoughts again )
Tonight I have to go pick up some meats so that I can make the dogs food. I've got lamb and goat and chicken gizzards and livers. The stinkier the better for Yoda. I'm going to go on a cooking spree over the next few days, so that we have enough food for his kennel stay. I need 24 packets, and I usually get 7-10 packets our of a batch, so I've got at least three or four cooking sessions between now and Tuesday. I also need to make more of the food to hold him from Friday night til Tuesday. By the time we take him on Wednesday morning, I will need to have made at least 36 packets minimum on hand. IT might be slightly less, because I still have some in the freezer from the last time I cooked.

So tomorrow, I'll start cooking and vacuum sealing. They like us at the daycare, because we bring pre-portioned food that makes it easy for them to dump and go. Also because we have "the sweetest dog," who is "a pleasure to work with." Go figure.

The good thing is that aside from sealing, the cooking isn't that labor intensive. Throw meat into pot at 7:30am with water to cover. Boil until 10am, when you pull the meat and bones and then throw in veggies and rice. (he's especially fond of sweet potatoes or butternut squash and green beans) Boil them until tender/done and put the meat back in at lunch time. Cover, and portion and seal it after work.

On Friday, a spa that we have gone to is opening a new location near us, so after work, we're going to go visit, and have free seated massages. Then, it'll be off to get a dog who will. yell at us.

We're going to have a quiet weekend, and tie up any last little things that we need to do before we leave.

Okay, time for me to hop off and get myself ready for work. I've only got 6 more work days before we go. They're going to feel super long and dragged out, I know. Everyone have an amazing Wednesday!

Today's is probably going to be a short one, because the stomach bug came roaring back yesterday and I feel like ass. I was up and down all night trying to expel everything I'd eeaten during the dya. It was not pleasant. This morning, I'm still running to the bathroom, plus I'm nauseouse as fuck.

So, short one. Up until about 7, I was feeling better. I was able to eat some bland food and I kept it down, but towards the evening, I started to feel kinda crappy. Then, blech.

Work wasn't bad. The phones weren't super bad, I learned that I too can creep on people with our new phone system. They gave me access to the dashboard where you can see what everyone's doing. Part of my job will to make sure that they're not fucking around when they're supposed to be on the phone. It's a little bit creepy, but sure, I can do that.

We had our weekly meeting, but we all were so burned out from the week that it was very quiet and short. We were off the phone in time for my normal lunch.

After that, we relaxed for a bit, and then I started feeling cruddy. I had some dinner, which was a mistake, and then the tummy troubles started.

I think once I finish this, I may go lay back down, since my sleep was very disjointed. I'll take a zofran and maybe a weed and nap. We'll see.

We're supposed to have a game tonight, but I'm thinking that may need to be moved.

Tomorrow, we also have a game, but hopefully, since I don't run that one, I'll be up to playing.

Still no boarding passes for our trip, which is annoying. I want my boarding pass!! Maybe later today it'll come up.

And on that note, I'm going to go take a nap. Everyone have an amazing Saturday!

Well, that was a fun day. The stomach woes continued yesterday, coming to a head around lunchtime, wehn I went full exorcist. I ended up calling off work early so I could be a giant lump. I slept most of the afternoon, getting up to throw up again around 5, and then going back to bed. Still not 100% sure whether this is somach bug or Mounjaro, but I'm leaning towards stomach bug, but I suppose time will tell.

Yesterday, I felt poorly enough that after I finished posting, and doing my morning things, I went back to bed. I may do that today as well.

I'm still queasy, and lower digestive tract is not happy either. I've been running to the bathroom this morning. I skipped my early morning coffee in favor of a ginger ale, which is how you know I must feel bad. I may actually drink some tea!

I've got a game tonight that is on entirely shaky ground right now. We'll see how I'm feeling after work. Right now, I would say cancel, but it's been waiting forever and a day, so I hate to push it. We're pretty near the end of the module, so it would probably be a short session. I'll see how things go.

Still no boarding passes yet. I am waiting patiently for those to arrive. But the meal choice on our flight to Seattle was ready to pick. They had some good things. I (and everyone else but Jess) opted for Parmesan chive eggs, bacon and potatoes. Jess is getting the Bananas Foster crepes, which sound delicious. If it weren't for needing protien, I'd have considered that one.

Tomorrow will be 14 days til the boat, so I'm assuming that we'll be getting the boarding passes then. On the other hand, it's now 13 days today that we leave.

I'm a bit anxious about the cruise. I've never done one, and we are a sold out, or near sold out cruise. How will I do with the people. How fat friendly is the boat? Will I do okay with all the walking. If I'll get seasick. If everyone will have fun. I hope so! I'm definitely going to have to adjust my sleep cycle, which will suck, but I'll get there. The first day, we're going to be awake for nearly 22 hours. Hopefully that'll reset us to PST. Coming back, we span an entire day in one six hour flight. We leave at 10am PST and land at 6:30 EST. Fortunately, coming back I'll have access again to my weed stash, which should help me to go to sleep early. I'm going to miss the relaxing peppermints while we're away. It's going to suck. I wonder about that, too. How well will I sleep on this trip. I'm hoping that most days I'll be too tired not to sleep, but I'm a little nervous about it.

Tomorrow, whether I feel better or not, I need to do some packing adjustments. I went ahead and bought a small carry on suitcase, so I need to move a few things from my personal item and from my suitcase to bring the weight down a touch. Plus, then I'll have access to a fleece if I need one. RIght now, it looks like Seattle and Vancouver are going to be in the 60s's, so even with getting in early, a light fleece will be plenty. I know on the way back, I may get hit with the $100 overweigh fee anyway. It's a very small suitcase, so it's not going to hold a ton, but I will try to switch a few things over to lighten it. I do need to add a dress to the carry on, just in case our bags are late getting to us. Though, since we are the Pinnacle Suite, they'll probably come fairly early.

Apparently uber to the game is super pricey, but the hotel shuttle will drop you at the light rail, which seems to go from SEATAC to the Stadium for a reasonable price. Need to do a bit more research on that, though. I'm debating between joining him to go into Seattle proper and grabbing lunch and sightseeing vs having a quiet day at the Cedarbrook Lodge. Both sound enticing. I guess we'll see how much we get done in Seattle and how well we like it as to whether we want to venture out.

I can't say I wouldn't enjoy a second shot at Pike Placie, on our own time, when the limo isn't waiting. We might be able to hit that French restaurant that I really want to try for a late lunch/early dinner. The last day on the cruise should be pretty chill, so I might feel like a little excitement.

I just plan to have all our documents printed out and in hand when we board. The BIL is not great with technology, so I don't trust him to pull up his boarding pass in terminal. I've got an itinerary with all the phone #s of the vendors and hotels we're using in case anyone needs to get in touch with us. (Mostly the BIL's family.) But it's going to be a great vacation, and no one is going to need anything from us. BIL's mother is going to be fine, his sisters are going to be fine and on our end, Yoda is going to be fine at the daycare/kennel.

I just need to re-figure dinner for the day before the cruise, since apparently people from the Facebook group would like to get together before we go on the cruise, so I'm down for that. It'll probably mean going to a boring restaurant, which will suck, but I started the group for this sailing, so I feel like I should probably be there. Maybe we can sneak in something in Chinatown for lunch. We'll just do Granville Island Public Market for second breakfast. Or first real breakfast for Jess, since they don't like eggs and probably won't have many options at the hotel breakfast.

We'll be on the boat on Sunday, so no Sunday brunch in Chinatown. But we will have the Alaska Brunch. I think we'll finish up our game by then. Let's see, we'll be starting at 9 PST, and finishing about noon. I think the brunch goes til 1, so we might have time for that. I may see if we could start a wee earlier, so we have a little more time. That'll be in the main dining room, which may be the only time I go there. Though I may go there for Tea our last sea day. That would probably be nice. We can have tea delivered to our room every day of the cruise if we want, but since we'll be at port some days, that isn't likely to happen.

I'm planning to take a ton of pictures and hopefully some video of everything we see. It'll all get uploaded to my Alaska folder on Google Photos. If anyone would like to follow along, please feel free. I will probably also be posting some of the best, most exciting pictures on here in the mornings, but I'll put them behind a cut so as to not spam anyone who's not interested. Hell, you might see the occasional afternoon post pop up with "I saw a whale!" If you follow me on bluesky, you're also going to get occasional pictures there as well. I'll save the spam on facebook until we get back, since that's under my wallet name and I'd like my home unburglarized.

So, y'know, my apologies if you see the same pictures repeatedly.

I can't believe that this time two weeks from now, I'll be sleeping in Vancouver, dreaming of Granville Market the next morning. It still seems like a completely made up idea, a scheme that would never actually happen. But I have the airline tickets and luggage tags to prove it, and that's just weird.

The next week and a half at work is going to seem SO long, especially Wednesday. Wednesday is going to drag. I'll have another 6 hours of PTO, so I may leave at noon, so I can flit about the house and watch the clock instead of doing it at work. I know I'm going to be packing my pills and a daily pill case to put them in that night. They recommend taking the bottles. I can fill another daily pill case for the night and morning pills that I'll need before we go. Then in the morning, I pack the cords for the phone, since I'll want it to charge over night. I'm still debating on whether to take the portable charger. On one hand, it could be useful. On the other, fire risk on the plane. Maybe I'll wait and buy an inexpensive one in Canada, and then toss it before we come back. That might be a good plan.

The other day, we were watching a video about the steakhouse we're going to first night, Hy's. It looked so good, even in my vaguely queasy state. It's super expensive, but we're going to live it up. I'm torn between getting the tableside prep of Steak Diane, vs the ungodly expensive 20 oz dry aged ribeye. It's a tough call, because I do love ribeye steak, but tableside flambe also sounds good. It's sure to be tasty no matter what.

Okay, I've babbled enough for one day. Everyone have a most excellent Friday!

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!