I have no idea! 

Wow, what a curveball! Yay for clarity and more doors opening. I'm so proud of you for presenting yourself so well during the interview!!

Glad you're feeling better! Congrats on your PRs!!

I should just stop making declarations, they are always immediately followed by a curveball that throws everything off.   My boss called me into his office yesterday, thought that maayybbee D&A had come up with a counteroffer after all to keep me in their office, but instead it was something completely out of left field: The head of HR was in my interview on Tuesday, and she was very impressed. She is now trying to recruit me out of Human Services and into another department. Specifically, she is working on a transition plan for someone in Farmland Preservation who is retiring next year, which involves a lot of grant writing, and as someone with a farming background and grant writing experience, her antennae went up during my interview. I don't know how likely it is to happen, but I would absolutely love if it did, and if nothing else it made a couple things very clear: 1 - The Aging position is my only option for advancement within Human Services, but it is not my only option in the county, and while it feels good to know how badly my boss wants to keep me in his department, I also respect that he let me know I may have other opportunities coming my way, and it's pretty darn nice to have caught the eye of someone as high up as Lori. She knows every position in the county, basically, so if she is on the lookout for another spot to put me in, something is going to come up, even if it isn't this very cool farmland preservation position. 2 - I do not want the Aging position. I managed to talk myself into taking it, but I was not excited about it. On the other hand, I was immediately interested and excited in the possible other options that Lori might have for me later on. So if they offer it, I will not take it, but I will delay and ask for the weekend before giving an answer, and hopefully use that time and offer to leverage a little more info from Lori on what my other options might be.   Phew, that was a rollercoaster. I'm trying not to get too excited about the farmland preservation position, but it would be really cool if it happened. Also, I've been slowly distancing myself from my current job and now all of a sudden I'm not going anywhere, at least not right now. And heck, the way things are going, something completely unexpected is going to happen today and I'm going to end up taking the Aging position after all.   More raspberry picking last night and dinner with my sister. Got our group project recorded and turned in. Workout at lunch today and then church anniversary banquet tonight.

Late follow. You have some exciting, yet anxiety inducing stuff going on 🫠   LOTR is one of the few (I get technically 4 of the few...) books I've kept from school and I keep looking at them thinking I should re-read them. But I'm a little worried because when I re-read another series I had loved from that time a few years ago I realized it was awful. I think I need to track down the audio version read by Andy Serkis though...

Thursday June 27   I stayed on track better yesterday. Food was good, I got a decent amount of steps in (much less than I should, but more than I had been doing). I cooked dinner, fajitas with all the colors of bell peppers. And I made it downstairs to the home gym and got a workout in, shoulders and triceps. Though I realized after I was done that I had accidentally subbed out front raises for upright rows  which make more sense in a back & bi day. Oops  Then I finished Housemaids Secret (not as good as the first book in the series, very predictable) and queued up the third book of the series (it's free on Kindle Unlimited so I might as well finish, right?)   Tonight we are hosting our monthly board game night, but I'm signed up for an OTF class between work and that and just need to keep the game snacks to a reasonable level.    Steps - 6145 Calories - 1700 Weight - 211.8

Yeah as teens we had less worries distracting us and also more free space between our ears. I feel that past that now, it's probably something to pick up again once we're retired with too much free time 😅   Good thing you posted and reminded me I meant to mention in my previous update, last night I also got to play in our Netheril D&d campaign. It's been over a month since our last session, so it was nice to catch up with the crew. I think we've hit a bit of a slump in terms of the story though, things are pretty slow.   My character made some money working as a scribe in the downtime since last session, and also learned of some spell tomes the Enclave's arch-wizard has made accessible for sale in the open. Since he also didn't have time to study the tome on flight spells he convinced his patron to buy last session, I decided to focus on that first and not spread his focus too thin. No spells were discovered, but there was a certain analysis in the last chapters about harpies originating from cursed elves and how hexes tap into a more primal magical thing that takes a heavy toll on both the hexer and the hexed. Since my character is aware of Elven High Magic and also had a brush with the Shadow Weave, he thought that's a hint towards a more primal magical source, perhaps more akin to Power Words or the divine tongue of creation. We then headed towards the Enclave's Temple District, which included a temple to Shar, goddess of shadow, loss and creator of the Shadow Weave. My character met the local acolyte for a chat but didn't get much besides a cryptic suggestion to keep trying and things shall be revealed to him. He also found the two tomes for sale at a price of 600gp each. To put this in perspective, he made about 60gp for a month's work as a scribe. There was a suggestion that he could go to the Angel of Coin, which I understand is something of a fancy title for the local loan shark, but he decided to get a better understanding of what goes on before he goes into such debt. He also mentioned the Tomes to his patron in order to gauge if he's interested in purchasing them, but said patron is focused on flight spells and already knows a good chunk of the spells on those tomes. He did however offer to teach Unseen Servant to my character. I should, at this point, mention that although we made it to level 2 before the start of the session, wizards don't automatically gain new spells but must actively find them through playing and transcribe them into their spellbook, which keeps my character going in his search for magical power.   That was more or less my bit, early on while I was still fresh and able to participate, because my battery ran out the more we played. The young half elven girl was more keen on discovering some secret society of bounty hunters chasing down magical transgressors, probably to join them, but didn't find anything yet. She also visited the temple of Selune (sister deity and rival to Shar), of which she's apparently a faithful, calls herself a priest of but probably doesn't have the actual character levels as a cleric. I also think the whole barbarian rage thing was a show. She did however give bardic inspiration to an NPC, so I know she does have at least one level in that class. As for the elven man, his own quest for magical understanding led him to an interesting moment: apparently there's fights in the arena between gladiators and captured beasts. A pair of nobles owning a captured basilisk had issued an open challenge for anyone willing to face it, but not kill it. At the same time, there were mentions of basilisk eyes being a powerful ingredient for magical potions. Thus the PC started digging up ways to protect oneself from a basilisk's gaze as well as how far they could go bending the rules by potioning up one of the gladiators (there's serious betting going on around the fights) and also if they could get said fighter to remove the basilisk eyes without killing it. I'm not exactly sure of the details, I was barely awake at that point.   I've been thinking today, I feel like the way my bestie has evolved his GMing in the last several years is really starting to not click with me. At first I thought it had to do with his custom game he's been building since our teens and is perpetually 'almost ready' to publish. Some of that experience might have informed his style with other games too, it just rubs me the wrong way sometimes. Like he will put the hooks and all in there, but we're expected to understand they're hooks and chase after them. Really feel like it's a communication issue, because he's told me before he struggles to find a balance between feeding players with so much info it feels like they're passively watching a cinematic and being so passive they end up missing out on stuff.  I mean, love a sandbox game but dude, if this were a videogame I'd be pixel hunting, I'm not saying put a bright highlight and sign around the quest important items, but at least make them stand out from the background, you know? Then sometimes he'll say things like "so, anyone else want to do something else, look into something else?" and just leave that there hanging; makes me  wonder if we're expected to do more or if I'm missing out on something, but after I give up and pass it's like "okay so a few days pass and then X happens" as if we just had to wait for the next big thing down the timeline. I don't know, I'm just thrown a bit off by the pacing. Also, sometimes I just wanna say I'll "go about the market and chat up the merchants, see if anyone knows anything about X" and be done with it. Tell me if anything comes up, roll some dice if need be, but don't require me to roleplay through the small talk, especially if 9 times out of ten the outcome is something along the lines of "yeah I've heard rumors about them, but I don't know anything past that".   Alright, rant over.

Start: 92.7 kg / 204.4 lbs 14/06: 92.2 kg / 203.3 lbs 28/06: 91.5 kg / 201.7 lbs (-0.7 / -1.6)     Attempts to not go overboard with the indulgences past weekend and with the all-you-can-eat ribs at the team-building event on Tuesday, appear to have been successful!

WW went through the audiobook versions read by Andy Serkis recently - the bits of them I caught sounded really good. I know what you mean about reading them - I got through them all once as a teenager, but despite how much I loved them I could never make it past the Council of Elrond on a re-read. 

Settling into the ol' homebase. Haven't really unpacked, or met with the townsfolk yet; perhaps later today I'll embark on a quest.     Thursday, 27 summary: Job Hunt: ❌ Housework: ✅ cut down the dead orange tree in the back, might have been exercise, but it was not intentional Schoolwork: ❌ Exercise: ❌