Life is a combination of magic and pasta.

I'm sure I'm not the only one getting that knot of dread in their stomach every time a news article comes out about an Executive Order. DEI also involves those of us with disabilities (and girl parts) so even if I wanted to jump ship, I'm safer staying put. At least I hope. Those of us that get grant and other federal funding are biting nails right now since it appears that although articles are only talking about NIH being on hold, from Emily's connections at NSF, all new awards and travel and such are on hold. My regional connections haven't heard anything yet from USDA but that's probably because they're flailing too.

So yeah, been kind of a nervous wreck and popping pepto and tums. I also have to be careful what I have for dinner since nearly everything is generating extra tummy acid.

At least the new bossdude isn't contributing to the anxiety, well, not directly. Having to get used to new leadership is always a bit nerve-wracking but so far he seems kinda awesome. We had our first sit down meeting to get an intro to the land-grant stuff and it went very well. He's really energized to work with us and he even requested to have the office next to us up on the second floor instead of being on the first floor with the Executive Dean. Our currently tiny group is going to meet weekly about stuff which is something that Bosslady didn't bother to do. Any talk of an upgrade for me is on hold which I expected (Elaine was hoping to get that done as interim boss but with new boss, that had to change). But at least he does want to get some more staff since to say we're a skeleton crew is exaggerating - more like a skull and a couple of femurs right now.

Even having a couple of the uncomfortable discussions about things that Bosslady handled badly or didn't respond to went extremely smoothly and I'm able to take some positive steps to repair relationships with faculty and start fixing the program I manage. I hope this keeps going in a positive direction.

Health-wise, well, feeling shitty from nerves but I'm making gradual moves to eat better. If I can improve my sleep, that will also help immensely. Need help from JonJon for that since he wakes me up WAY too much.

There's more but my brain just ran out of steam. I've been reading y'all's posts but sometimes I just can't form the right thing to say in response. But I'm sending good vibes.

Had my physical today - I liked the NP so I'll stick with them for now. I know I'm going to get an ugly bruise since my vein was being its usual level of fussiness. Only one stick but she had to keep moving the needle to encourage my dumb body to give up the ol' hemoglobin. Meh, I'll wear longer sleeves for a while. Hopefully the blood tests show some decent news. I'm crossing my fingers especially that the A1c goes back to prediabetic.

Anyhoo, they had the flu and shingles vaccines available so I got both (still need to get a COVID booster but they didn't have those). I heard the side effects for the shingles vaccine suck - any of y'all have any experience with that?

Since I had fasting tests and was HUNNNNGRY, I treated myself on the way home to a pistachio latte from the Greek place.

Holiday break was quiet which should have been my signal that 2025 was going to be quite the adventure. So far when we got back yesterday, Elaine found out that the person that had accepted her job offer backed out since her current place offered her more money. She was supposed to start the day after MLK day so it was annoying.

So after a while, I brought up that while we're in the in-between stage waiting for a new director, why don't we do what we've been talking about for years and merge our offices. We'd previously talked about finding a way to get me an upgrade so let's merge bits of the job she was advertising with what I do now and see about leveling me up. And at the same time, we should see what else we need done (we are INSANELY understaffed and have been for years) and put together job listings for a couple of positions to report to me and to her.

Elaine thought that was a good idea so we're brainstorming and yesterday she even talked to the head of HR and the head of the business/budget office (who he's in charge of HR too) about looking for support for my upgrade and for our reorganization. We're also going to try to get me a 10-15% raise which would be frikkin awesome since I've been hovering at the midpoint of my salary for over a decade.

So that's the positive. Then at 1am this morning, we had the negative. JonJon had been doing just fine and then he didn't finish his previous meal which wasn't surprising since he'd eaten fine before that. Well at 1, he hopped out from his carrier where he was sleeping and barfed up a lot. Then he went to the litterbox and put a squishy deposit from the other end. Poor dude! I don't know what prompted that. Nothing new to eat, he had plenty of energy before that. He spent at least an hour after that laying in my lap being kind of miserable. We both slept after that until about 6ish. He got me up but didn't want food and spent another 45 minutes on and off in my lap. I'm at work now and he's resting on the bed next to the heater (it is chilly this morning). I'm hoping he wants food when I get home and that he's ok.

So quite the rollercoaster so far.

Aside from the cleaning folks, I'm pretty sure I was the first one in the building around 7:15 this morning. I was bundled up good for the trip since it was only 8F outside. The roof and hood of my car are still covered with snowy ice even after the short drive and I'm glad that I went out yesterday when it was sunny and in the low 20s to clear off the windows and get off what I could reach with my telescoping snow brush.

I knew the building would be colder but when I got into my office, the one that is typically the hot spot for the three floor building and it was only 67 there, I knew something was off. Yep, the boiler in the basement clearly was dead, as happens now and then. I found a space heater and put it in the main office area, having it rotate so that hopefully I could get it a little improved. Elaine arrived about an hour later and when she opened her office door, a blast of frigid air came out.

By this time, more folks were showing up, including those that have more a direct line to the facilities people. They made calls to try to get people in to improve the situation but since the estimate for ANY heat was 2pm, they told us we could go WFH. Ya don't have to tell me twice! We also called Bosslady to let her know not to come in and I also negotiated to have our meeting tomorrow be a Zoom or phone call or ideally just an email. It's supposed to snow a little tomorrow morning and I'd rather stay put. I'll still do some work on Xmas Eve but you know I won't be exactly busting ass.

My usually too hot apartment is no longer that since they seem to keep the boiler to the legal minimum so I had to turn on a space heater in the middle of the night to keep it reasonable. I don't mind it a little cooler myself but I do notice that JonJon tends to get a bit of a raspy meow if it's too cold so it was kind of needed. I obviously turned things off before leaving for work and when I got back, it was a coolish 66F and very dry so I have the space heater back on as well as a simmer pot on the stove with some dried orange slices and a cinnamon stick to make it smell nice while it's getting the humidity improved.

I do have a mix to make lemon poppyseed loaf or muffins. Might have to mix that up here soon.

I thought that my back would probably get annoyed at the colonoscopy prep and stuff and yep, it is grumpy. The ache is on the opposite side of where I usually get it but it's still aggravated enough that I need to take action, or more appropriately, inaction. So today is a jammie day with lots of recliner time. JonJon isn't all that pleased since he doesn't like the recliner and won't hop up there to sit in my lap but he'll have to be patient.

Hopefully with enough rest today, I can carefully get back to normal-ish. My back tends to act up over the holiday break and I'd like to actually not spend it that way this year.

But anyway, hope your winter solstice is calm and pleasant. Sending hugs

Borrowed this from JonJon for in front of the toilet 🤣🤣🤣


Boy Suprep acts FAST at least it does for me. Going to have to see if I can scurry out for my water bottle so I don’t get dehydrated 😳

Sorry I've not posted. I have things to post about and then my brain goes POOF and wanders away when I open the site to enter something. So I'll just ramble for a while until my attention span takes me elsewhere:

Like the car so far but it does have a few quirks. I turned off the safety features where it yells at you for leaving the lane or breaks for you when it thinks it sees an obstacle. The latter is really annoying, especially on a frosty day because where the camera is up near the top middle of the windshield doesn't defrost as fast as the rest of the windshield. So it warns you that OMG! The saaafety features won't work. But then when I got close to work, it sort of kicked in and the car kept randomly slowing which I figured out later was it supposedly "seeing" obstacles. Yeah, I can manage my own driving, thankyouverymuch. I didn't buy it for those features anyway. Also, I got all the way to work and my side mirrors still hadn't defrosted. Mind, I live less than 2.5 miles from work but I could swear it didn't take that long before. I think the solution for that is to get a spray bottle of the window defroster stuff and just spray and wipe those anyway. I will say I do like the backup camera for those days since the back window defrosts pretty quickly and I can use the backup camera for a nice clear view when pulling out of my spot on a winter day.

Since the standard car mats were super cheap, I wanted to get WeatherTech ones but BOY those suckers are expensive so for half the price, I got ones from Husky, which arrived today. I got both front and back seat "weatherbeater" liners. I thought of only getting front seat ones but the advantage to getting the back seat rubber floor liner is that I can toss stuff on the floor like a squeegee and other thing to clean off the car back there after using them without worrying about crud and road salt making things yucky.

Anyhoo, car, doing pretty good. Emily got the fancy version of the Subaru Forester so she has things like heated seats and steering wheel and stuff.

We're going to go to Ikea tomorrow (on Rt 1 instead of the Turnpike since we both still have temp tags) and we both signed up for an event that starts when they open of playing PLINKO! Cool, huh? I don't know what the prizes might be but talk about nostalgia. For Gen X it's the memory of being home when sick or snow day and watching The Price is Right. I'm going to play for Mom especially since she was the biggest Price is Right fan.

Speaking of nostalgia, did you hear that the son of the owner of the original Chi Chi's chain is going to open Chi Chi's restaurants again? I really hope one opens up in NJ! I have fond memories of the seafood chimichanga/cancun and the fried ice cream. They even brokered a deal with Hormel Foods that owns the brand to use the name.

Work is...meh. They finally made the announcement that Bosslady is moving to central University admin to be the Vice Provost for Research as of Jan 1. GOOD, they can have her and sorry about your luck, no take backsies. You get the dumbass. I'm trying to get her to FOCUS to get some of the shit decided before she leaves but at this point, lady, just freaking GO. Peggy the other person that was one of my bosses and used me and Elaine and her former boss Joe as a stepping stone to get a cushy title is finally retiring before break and she can get lost too. I'm doing my best to avoid any sort of celebratory social gatherings with them because they've done jack squat for me.

Today one of the faculty from Food Science that I'd not met in person but had seen pictures of so I knew who he was stopped by to say hi to Elaine (which oh, she's probably going to be my interim boss for a few months, I'll try not to grump too much about that since we used to be the same pay grade but anyway...). Although we've only interacted via email and maybe once or twice by phone, I've always found him very pleasant. I asked and he's thinking about going for the director job. Elaine and I were STOKED about that. We'd love to have him or his Chair as our boss. Fingers crossed since goodness knows we could use a decent boss for a change.

Anyway, there's more but *POOF* yep, brain done. HUGS

Sweetness, my 2010 Nissan Versa with about 59K miles on it has been traded in for a 2025 Honda HR-V. Did I get the greatest deal in the world? Well, it wasn't perfect but we did make them take off the $3K in padding that I wasn't about to pay for. The trade in value could've been better but well, to be honest, it was in a minor fender bender years ago and it is wayyyyyy overdue for servicing (probably needs breaks and other things and it rattles a lot anytime it gets close to freezing) so it was good enough. Got a good 3.9% interest rate and a car that will be safer and more reliable, especially for winter.




Things like the backup camera confuse me already. But it doesn't feel too big (it's the smallest of the crossover SUV thingies) but it's tall enough that I don't have to struggle to get in and out. All of the sedans of the different brands are too low. Nervous about spending a lot of money but it was time. If I keep this one as long as the last one, heck, it could be the last car I buy.

I'm BEAT, though. It took FOUR HOURS (why? who knows?) and by the time we got done, we went back to my place and fed JonJon and then went out to get an early dinner.

Had a battle with the back last night since it's trying to go out. Documenting here since I try to keep track of when it's acting up. Also might be slow to respond here and elsewhere since I may need to be prone for a while.

Ugh. Seriously?

Thankfully, sister and brother-in-law were able to FaceTime again tonight since it was really clear how close it was. He couldn’t talk, but he really was trying and we kept telling him it was OK and that we know. And then a little while ago, my sister gave me the call to let me know that he had passed.

It hurts, but I’m just so glad he is not struggling anymore because you could just see the pain on his face even though he was already on the good drugs.