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Saturday
Saturday was another relaxing day. Aaron took the Toyota in for a recall – now our front bumber won’t fall off. I got some reading done, both to IL5 and myself. We went out to Red Lobster.
About halfway through the day, my headache got worse despite my increased intake of tea. So I ran a Google search and found out my tea doesn’t have caffeine. That would explain the withdrawal. So I drank soda the rest of the day, and ordered some appropriate tea. I also found some sweetener-free water flavor to disguise the taste of our tap water.
Sunday
Sunday I worked my day job. I got a couple of letters written. Aaron cooked chili. Dad went on a walk and got super tired – he came back tilting to the side and lurching. We started setup for M12’s new board game, but 45 minutes in to setup, it seemed obvious that setup was only half over, and it was getting close to IL5’s bedtime, so we put it away with expectation that it would be easier to set up now that we’d done it once.
Monday
Monday IL5 woke up at 5am. I tried to keep him in bed, but he got up not too much later. I did some cooking for the week and did dad’s laundry, then I took IL5 to swim lessons in the late morning. We were going to go to the big pool with M12 after I dried out IL5’s swim suit. But he fell asleep. So instead I just bumbled around the house getting stuff done, read, and got sucked into the black hole that is Grey’s Anatomy. (D14 is on season 6.) I should have ridden the Peloton bike while IL5 was asleep, but I got pinned by Puck, and that seemed a good reason to watch Grey’s Anatomy. In the evening, I cooked the family chicken, and I ate a salad. Then I read to D14.
Tuesday
Tuesday I ran errands and took my dad to lunch. In the early evening, I had a 4 hour training for my work. I had been dreading it for over a month because my ADHD makes such meetings torture. It was better than my last training, at least – they didn’t give breaks last time. Aaron dropped M11 off at his baseball game (they lost), then took IL5 to his t-ball game.
Wednesday
Wednesday was an unproductive day for me. My brain was still recovering from the 4 hour work meeting, so it was hard finding motivation. I had lunch with Aaron, then took the kittens to the vet for vaccinations.
In the evening, I got a call from my dad’s cousin Joanne. She had been trying to call my aunt Anne (who doesn’t have a phone any more), and finally called my aunt Virginia, who told her to call me. We talked for about an hour, and then I gave her my cousin Bob’s phone number, because Anne lives with him.
M12 played D&D instead of going to his playoff game for baseball. I let him do that, since it’s only his second D&D game. But his team lost, so there’s no more left of the season. His DM thanked me afterwards for adding M12 to his game, since he’s a really good fit.
On a side note, I have interesting news. Polyphemus, my 1yo cat, used to literally stalk Hero, my older cat. Hero found it really stressful. Polyphemus has stopped doing it now that he can stalk the kittens, who love being stalked. So Hero is better off with the kittens here. And my dad likes them, and they get along with Loki. And they’re cute. So maybe 5 cats aren’t so bad.
Thursday
Thursday was a calm day. I went to my day job pretty quickly after my night job. Work was a little less relaxing than it usually was, but I made it through. In the evening, it was raining for IL5’s last t-ball game, so Aaron didn’t take him. Instead, Aaron, M12, and I played a game of Magic. Then I went to my night job early because a coworker had a family emergency. My client at my night job was already in bed, so I just sat and read a book, then went to sleep early (making me wake up early, so oh well – at least I know I got enough sleep? I could have used that extra hour on Wednesday night…)
I had time Thursday to partially estimate the cost of the 10th anniversary road trip Aaron and I were going to save up for. But, as usual, I planned too big. Just looking at hotel costs and car rental added up to a fortune. It was a bummer because the trip would have been a lot of fun. We’ll have to just save up a reasonable amount of money and decide at that time what we’ll do for the anniversary.
Friday
Friday, I took IL5 to an appointment and then to a playdate. He was excited about the playdate, then wouldn’t play with his friends, then asked for another playdate immediately upon getting home. In the evening, we went out to eat (I tried a black bean burger, it wasn’t particularly tasty). IL5 volunteered to go to bed an hour early, which was nice.
Week’s Photos
Letters Written
- One letter Maine
- One letter Oklahoma
- One letter Pennsylvania
Reading to myself
- Mr Ballen Podcast
- Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert
- The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene
- Behave, by Robert Sapolsky
- Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, by Dungeons and Dragons
- The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordon
Reading to IL5
- Press Start: Super Game Book! by Thomas Flintham
- Looniverse: Stranger Things, by David Lubar
- Super Cheat Codes and Secret Modes, by Thomas Flintham
D14 reading
- Queen of Shadows, by Sarah J Mass
- Everblaze, by Shannon Messenger (I’m reading this to her.)
Media Completed
Madame Bovary learns that men suck, and she’s terrible at finances. Yup, that’s what this book is about. I was disappointed, because I had expected a story of a strong woman who took control of her sexuality, but nope. However, the book was well-written and was more pleasing to me than Anna Karenina because all of the characters in Madame Bovary were more likable than all but one character of Anna Karenina.
Ed finds a coin that makes everything stranger than before. This is a cute little book about self discovery that is about second grade reading level.
Classic scientific literature about genes/evolution.
I didn’t like this book. It wasn’t what I expected. I DID expect Dawkins to come off as pompous about religion (expectations met), but he was just generally pompous. He had numerous humble-brag footnotes. Like, for instance, one rather long one was in the meme chapter. Apparently, he made a mistake in his first edition of Selfish Gene‘s bibliography that was also made in Edward O Wilson’s book Sociobiology, which came out slightly before Selfish Gene. Gasp! Did he adopt an error from someone else’s book? Oh, horror of horrors! But, (sigh of relief), the mistake was also in a bibliography he had handed out to his class before Sociobiology was published. Really? We needed a commentary which put him above being humanly influenced by memes? Just fix the mistake and stick to your point – which is that humans are influenced by memes. (I may have over-emphasized the emotion he put into that footnote, but not by a lot. He made it known how mortified he was at the idea of picking up a mistake from another author.)
I also felt this book rambled a lot about things that were not biological. Like a whole chapter on chess programs. I mean, I understood that Dawkins was trying to explain a concept by using a similar concept in another field, but if it takes a whole chapter to explain the other field’s concept, then it’s not a good example. That amount of time should have been spent talking about the field of evolutionary genetics with simple examples that are easy to relate.
Finally, (and this is my problem, not a problem with the book), I was confused at first by some of the statements he made because they were in contrast to what I had learned in college 20+ years ago. Then, he started repeatedly saying that he didn’t agree with Stephen J Gould’s theories, and I realized that’s the disconnect. It’s not that I didn’t understand what Dawkins was saying, it was that I had learned from Stephen J Gould’s theories in college (in fact, some of his essays were required reading).
Ummm. So. This is a classic that I feel I should have read with my interest in biology, but not one I enjoyed reading (except maybe for the differing theories, which were interesting).
Weight loss
I didn’t lose any weight this first month without Ozempic. But I learned some things about effectively restricting calories. First, I need to program in a little extra deficit each day to allow for cheat days when I go out to eat or feel very hungry. Otherwise the diet isn’t maintainable. Second, I need to eat when I am hungry before I get very hungry, because once I get very hungry I cheat big instead of only a little. It’s better to eat a few extra calories that can be soaked up by my planned deficit than to just pig out because I tried too hard to wait until lunch-time.
Hibernator's Library 