Friday Five: Ringing in the New Year

I can’t help but note here that the world did indeed not end on December 21st 2012. I haven’t yet heard the new end date.. but I will continue development (on my life) until a new date is officially announced.

1. Work/Programming
So this is what a Lame Duck Engineer feels like :D.

The current plan is to continue to be employed by CBS until at least 12/31/2013. Hopefully a few months before that I’ll know what I’m going to do after that. There’s a fair to middling prospect that I’ll end up moving back to Montana.. but that’s still TBD.

Anyway. I continue with work projects. We have little/no QA people available to our department now (they’ve all moved to other departments) so we’re going to just do without. I’m not looking forward to that. At this point it looks like some sites are going to adopt my new pet project as a stop-gap between now and the end of the year.. but it’s not looking good for living beyond that. (ie, prospects of my job as it currently exists continuing past the end of the year are looking grim.. so that’s probably no longer one of the possible outcomes).

2. Home

On December 21st, when the world did not end, F and I flew off to spend Christmas with my family in Montana. On the 22nd we had a lovely bonfire (second annual) and Christmas was smashing. It was really great to get to spend time with my extended family.

Post-Christmas we returned to find the house pretty much as we left it. Linnet house-sat for us while we were gone and she did a great job. The only thing that’s off now is that suddenly we have ants. Need to deal with that.

Fynriss is mostly back to normal. Occasionally he’ll whimper from pain.. but he’s pretty much back to his normal self.

3. Health
Last year was not-good in the weight loss department. Well.. ok, most of the year was ok.. but then the last 3 months I gained A LOT of weight. Technically it is baby weight.. but we have no baby to show for it(which does indeed suck). So I’m back on the wagon of getting this all back into check. The goal is to have some moderate weight loss in the next few months while we’re waiting for my body to re-start the baby-making factory. That translates to sane (and somewhat restrictive) eating. Really it’s the slightly-more-strict version of what I should be doing anyway.. but I’m officially giving up sodas and french fries entirely. I don’t think I’ve had a soda in the last few months.. so I don’t expect to miss it.. and mentally I just need to get to the point where I expect that the entree is plenty.. and I don’t need the added bulk of french fries. More news as we progress.

We do want to get pregnant.. but the OB/GYN advised us to wait at least a month. Once I -do- get pregnant all dieting is off limits. I assume I can stick to “sane” eating.. but nothing like CrazyStupidDiet.

Speaking of which.. F wants to do a round of CrazyStupidDiet. I’ll check in with him on that after his cold. He’s sick now.. so it’s not the time to discuss it.

4. SCA/Projects
F has caught a chest cold and so won’t be attending 12th night. I am one of Zanobia’s Queen’s Artisans so I have regalia to hand over so I’ll be there.

A vicious rumor says that the incoming King and Queen have cancelled the Laurel meeting at 12th night.. and are thinking about cancelling the one at March Crown also because “There’s no one even close.. and no one even worth discussing”.

Ouch. I mean.. just ouch.

5.
F and I have been inviting friends over for dinners on Wednesday. This week I made a spiral sliced ham, scalloped potatoes, baked apple sauce (it was supposed to be baked apples but they disintegrated). Our guests brought Brussels sprouts and some bread. It was a really really good dinner. Considering I don’t normally care for ham I was surprised about how good it turned out. The ham came from Costco… I’ll definitely do that again.

After dinner we played a couple rounds of Zombie Munchkin. I last played Munchkin about 5 years ago.. and over Christmas I told F I’d be interested in playing it again. I find it utterly hilarious to announce that my Atomic, Flaming, Fast Zombie “Kicks down the door”.

It was a lot of fun.

Later (in fact a few days later) F asked me what we’d do if we didn’t do SCA (we have a few friends who are falling out of the SCA). I told him we’d have spare time and extra money.. and that we’d fritter it away watching more TV and buying more toys. Now that I think about it some more.. I think without the SCA our life would be a lot like dinner was on Wednesday… and that’s not all bad.

Future:
Jan 5 12th Night
Jan 26 Cynaguan Winter Investiture
Feb 2 War College (maybe)
Feb 23 Northern Wolf Prize Tournament
Mar 22-24 March Crown

August 31, 2013 My wedding in Billings Montana