Ooh, maps! This is my jam! Yours look great, keep it up!

Just reading about the testing sounds so exhausting and overwhelming! I am so impressed that you are able to track and understand all of that *and* add the physical components as well! Way to go, Mistr!!!!! 

Sorry to have been away but I am caught up now!   Yay for seeing your friend and the baby, and for catching up with Mr Harriet in German. Well done. And extra awesome that the naked men proximity stress is plummeting! I hope no one gives you any reason to have concern. 

Weekend report   Friday I had to drive in to the office because my computer hub would not work. I brought home a new-to-me monitor on Monday. My laptop does not have a compatible HDMI port, nor does it have an ethernet port. It has wifi, but that is not fast enough for what I need to do. I think the thunderstorm last weekend fried both the monitor and the hub. So I packed everything up and went to the IT desk to get new hardware. Once I was in the office things were okay. Having other people around improved my mood.    After work I went to aikido. The instructor went over a kata that I needed work on. I should know all of the kata cold by now, but some still need a lot of cleaning up. I felt better working on the targets one at a time. When we do the moves quickly, each strike gets blocked before it gets close. That makes it easy to forget what the real target is.   I left after the first class so I could go to the grocery store and cook. I decided on broccoli salad since my weapons partner said he was making cole slaw to go with the pork shoulder. I decided on a recipe with a honey-mustard dressing instead of the usual mayonnaise-based dressing. I substituted red grapes for dried fruit and slivered almonds as the nuts. It turned out well. That is good, because I brought over half of it home from the party.   Saturday was all aikido. I managed to get 8 hours of sleep, barely. There was a two-hour class in the morning, a break for lunch, then a one-hour class before the test. Several people came from other dojos, but none of them took falls for the test. My weapons partner did a great job keeping his composure and doing aikido for 45 minutes straight. I jumped up to take falls at the beginning on the theory that things could start a little slower and then ramp up. It is always interesting how my perception changes when I enter the testing space. Suddenly the world is the open area of the mat. I know there is a row of people sitting by the wall, but they are just dark shapes. Sensei is a voice from the side of the dojo. It is just me and my partner, with me doing my darndest to give clean attacks and take smooth ukemi. At the sandan level the testee is expected to respond freely to the attacks. Sensei says what type of attack to do. The response could be anything. One must stay in the moment to adapt and not get hurt. I was winded when my section was done. My partner was just getting warmed up.   I also did the weapons kata and the randori section. I screwed up one of the kata and we just redid it. My partner screwed up two of them. I also managed to hit myself in the face with my own boken. I'm not sure how that happened. I just ignored it and kept going, hoping that no one noticed. I don't think they did because they were concentrating on my partner. I am going to have an impressive black eye this week.   Sunday was laundry and catching up. Dumbledore and I went out for an early supper and a long walk. My right knee started complaining again, but not as bad as a week earlier. I'm still not sure what is up with that. I missed both knee exercises and zen.     My non-fiction is The Discovery of France by Graham Robb. Fiction are novels in Eric Flint's 1632 alternate history series, currently the ones set in the Americas.   I had a sleep fail again last night. Partly because I stayed up too late, mostly because my left hip hurt for no good reason. The staying up late was more Dumbledore's fault than mine for a change.   Tonight I am going to mow the back yard and then play Immortal Life. Then sit zen and go to bed.   I talked to Elf about mowing and they do not feel physically up to it. Cleo can barely walk, much less use power tools. Dumbledore will be out of town again for a week starting Wednesday. I am putting off all cooking until Thursday, and maybe not then. I have enough salad mix, frozen veggies and frozen meatballs to keep me going.

Happy Birthday!   For creativity, it can honestly be a drag. Sometimes the only way into a creative time is kicking and screaming. I am someone who is fairly creative and I struggle so much with getting started. I always appreciate having done whatever I was working on though, and sometimes that is enough to get me going. Solidarity. 

Your Liam is such a gem. Well done making the current place more dreamy and functional while you are still there. ❤️ 

Beautiful work, Maerad! 🥰

So real. We just got a massive meat order so the garage freezer is packed. I went to take the homemade turkey stock Martin made for me out there and there was no room. So I took it to the drinks fridge in the basement (our D&D space) and discovered it is almost full as well! There are even two pieces of ice cream cake left from Dave’s birthday in April when Houseguest was here. Mind blown. Apparently I need to be doing something different for Freezer Inventory to prevent this happening.    I am sorry work is such a mess, I am really hoping the changes end up working in your favour. Please continue to take very good care of yourself. I am concerned with how scheduled you are and the havoc the weather and such is wreaking on your head. I love you and want you well. ❤️ 

I really enjoy this inspired combination of "things we would never use but somehow have." I do this too, though less now that I am the only one doing the shopping. Good for you for digging through the freezer! This is an activity I tend to punt until forever.

I'm glad the Big Scary Meeting came out with positive news for you.     I found a package of split chicken breasts that are slowly thawing in the fridge. They are still rock-like. I got out a Marie Callendar pot pie that I baked for lunch. It is cool enough today that having the oven on for an hour was not a stupid move. The pot pie might have been a poor choice because it had a cheese sauce. I'm still not sure how well my joints tolerate cheese. Tasty, but definitely not health food.   I need to do some more digging to see what is hiding on the bottom layer. We used up the large bag of ice (by we I mean Elf and Cleo) that was filling a lot of the space. I am hoping to find another container of medjool dates. There are two boxes of orange chicken that someone else bought. I found half a bag of hamburger patties from Costco that everyone agreed are mediocre. There is a bottle of vodka that Hermes stashed in the freezer at least four years ago. I should send that home with him sometime. I have my own cheap vodka in the freezer for making pie crust. I don't expect to find any big surprises because we did freezer inventory last summer. Dumbledore is prone to "in case of emergency" shopping. That gives us food that we never use. There is a pile of Hamburger Helper-type mixes in the mud room. We never make that kind of food, and if we did, Cleo couldn't eat it. Hmmm. Maybe I can use some of that with the frozen package of ground chicken....