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What did you do this week (and weekend)?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
Celebrated a milestone birthday with friends and family. Ate too much, drank more than I ought to, and enjoyed having my home filled with happy people.
Congrats! Sounds like a great week!
I've been running around work trying to take care of all sorts of things, which has been productive but also really tiring. Trying to get to all of my clients with handling all of the other projects our team is working on has me pulled every which way to make sure things are running as they should. I have a friend visiting this weekend so hopefully I'll be able to take some of the load off on my shoulders by kicking back and hanging out.
I've also been rethinking my budget and lifestyle with the... current events of the world. A lot of things I've got to plan out and get in order in fear of everything in the world blowing up, so to speak. Really not the ideal situation I wanted to find myself in just over half a year after graduating from college, but I'll make do, I hope.
Hope everyone's had a good week so far! Weekend soon!
Being a bit frugal is definite a wise choice given everything that’s going on in the world. But if you just graduated then you’re probably still young enough where there’s gonna be plenty of ups and downs in the financial world in your lifetime. Congrats on the graduation btw!
As time has gone on, I've taken on more responsibilities for managing what all goes on with my grandmother, so last week was a lot of back and forth with healthcare providers over doing some monitoring. There were some symptoms going on that didn't have a clear explanation, so I tried to figure them out with her providers. That comes after about a month of having to do similar stuff, and this weekend is when it all finally kinda settled into place (for a time, at least).
It's been exhausting but I've been impressed with most of the providers. They've been very attentive, listened to my concerns and took in my observations. They've been good about staying in touch as different processes happen and making sure that I have been reached with their conclusions.
Where I've been less impressed is with some of my extended family members. Without going into too much detail, it's that they've had me take the lead but have a hard time being followers. I get that folks are concerned, they worry, they have ideas and input, and some folks are very attached to the hierarchy. I try to listen, but also have a lot to do, and don't respect the hierarchy quite the way they do. I have little room for endless, often pointless speculation, and especially little room for talking down about the folks who have been nothing but helpful. It's not an opportunity for a social occasion, but it sure feels like that's what they're doing sometimes. If folks want to do that they're welcome to do it on their own, and I'll hear out what they come up with, but the ask is always for me to be in it and participate. It's difficult not to get frustrated with folks who want to blame the provider/medicine/etc when the process of figuring things out hasn't finished. I get tired of being talked at like I need a reminder of the goals when I am the one establishing the goals and getting the results. Had to deliver more than one lesson on what boundaries are. Nothing I haven't dealt with before, but the familiarity doesn't offset the aggravation a good portion of the time.
Thankfully, no serious issues have emerged thus far. We've pieced things together and arrived at what seem to be reasonable explanations, with options for treatment and management. Funnily enough that didn't eliminate some of the chatter - it's like now that things have kinda settled, folks can't just sit with it and wait. I could really do without the peanut gallery constantly offering me two cents about stuff they didn't do and don't know much about, after I've been clear about putting limits on it from the jump.
Grandma understands, at least. She's just glad to get somewhere with it, and though a lot makes her nervous, as we put info together that nervousness dissipates. As always, fear of what could be is often a lot larger than what is actually there. My immediate family is way more on my wavelength too, so there's an abundance of support when it's needed. I showed Grandma Monster Hunter the other day, and she had fun watching like it was a choose-your-own-adventure action movie. Where the week was exhausting the weekend has been very refreshing. There's more to do, but it won't be for another week or so, so my hope is to catch a bit of a break and maybe level-set with a couple of relatives. Just gotta continue and see.
Good to hear that the providers are listening to you at least. And sorry about the family, that shit can be stressful as hell. Though it seems like your grandma appreciates you, which is really the only opinion that matters in the situation if you ask me.
And lol that Monster Hunter story came out of nowhere! She sounds cool!
I can't talk the providers up enough honestly. Her primary reached out to me personally, so we could keep up better correspondence/have more immediate attention when issues arise, and their experience is all centered around elder care - I could not ask for better on that.
And yeah lol grandma loves checking stuff out. Doesn't matter if she has no idea what you're doing, she's interested because you're interested. She likes art and media for similar reasons I do - it's just cool to see what people do, and learn why they did it/what inspired them, even when the work doesn't hit or it's outside our usual preferences. Its one of the many reasons she's been a big deal in my life, it meant a lot to me as a kid to have someone who was down to just investigate things and talk about what was neat (as opposed to, say, concern over stuff having an influence, or refusing/disengaging because it was unfamiliar).
I made this granola.
It’s orgasmic.
I made mine out of organic oats and maple syrup, and the tahini and almond slivers were locally produced. So it was basically the best possible quality.
Like seriously, I may not make it again because it’s too good. I can’t stop eating it. But at least it’s all fairly healthy ingredients that are very filling to me.
I also air fried asparagus and I was amazed how good the crowns were when crisped.
I took a 4-day weekend since my parents have been in town since Tuesday night. I went to work on Wednesday and left them to entertain themselves (which they got out and did thanks to the Metro), but I spent Thurs and Friday hanging out with them. It was cool having a little staycation and playing tourist here in DC. I've only been here for ~7mo, and I haven't gone out exploring as much as I wanted because I'm a hermit, so it was nice to get out do things. We went to the National Air & Space Museum and National Museum of Natural History; both are Smithsonian Institutions. We walked and Metro'd around DC, and I took them to Union Market. We walked like 7-8mi total. We were on our feet for practically 8-9hrs straight. My feet were throbbing by the time we got back in the evening!
Yesterday (Friday), we went to Annapolis, which is like 45min away by car. Such a cool and cute city. Clearly a place that's been around since colonial times. We had lunch there and spent a couple hours walking around and peeking into shops and taking pics of the old buildings. I'll definitely be go there again, especially since it's so close.
They fly home later today (Saturday). Which I'll be sad about; they, along with my younger brother, live in Las Vegas. Practically opposite sides of the country, so we don't get to see each other often. But since they loved DC and the area, and I live here now, I'm hoping they'll come visit more frequently.
That said, I'm kinda ready for them to head back. I just want the rest of the weekend to be chill, so I can do my usual, uninterrupted: gaming!
Hell yeah those are some amazing museums! Staycations are definitely my favorite type of vacations too, lol. I feel you about wanting to just relax and play video games with whatever time you have left. Good luck!
I finally got my homelab in order. I have an old HP Proliant DL380 server that I got from a previous job for a good price. Over the years I've mostly used it for file storage, minecraft, and pihole, but this week/end I've been trying to dockerize an consolidate a bunch of other things.
Setup is as such:
Prior to this effort, all I really had was Minecraft and Pihole. I'm especially happy to have Jellyfin setup correctly finally because running it off my laptop was a pain the ass.
It's certainly not optimal, can't imagine it's remotely secure, and it's largely held together with spite and duct tape. BUT I'm happy with my homelab setup at long last! Goal for tomorrow is to look into dockerizing the Minecraft server. Also want to get mariaDB running as well for personal projects.
On April 1st, I went to go yell at one of the Great Lakes. It's a tradition I have started that I enjoy.
I also celebrated my Mustache's first birthday, one year old. It all started last year. A friend and I went to go camping, thinking we were safely out of the snow season, on our way up we got some messages that a small sprinkling of snow was coming (1-3inches or 2.5cm-7.5cm). No big deal. Well, over the next 24hours, we would get 20inches, or 50cms.
We continued to get snow and got trapped in our campsite. During this time I did not shave my facial hair, and ended up just keeping it after that. It would remind me of this trip (which was a lot of fun, even if unexpected), and I actually really enjoyed growing the mustache/subsequent beard. Was/Is very mindful, and what I imagine "The Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" is about. @kfwyre, since it involves beard journeys.
Will return later with an update on the mustache (before and after).
Went to New York to see the Caspar David Friedrich exhibit at the Met. I took AP Art History back in high school and Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog has been my favorite painting since then, so I booked a trip as soon as I heard it’d be in the US. I also saw Book of Mormon which was great.
Went to the local Hands Off protest on Saturday. There were some serious tubthumping, fire-breathing speeches from members of the community and local political notables. Carrie Barr, who will be campaigning against our odious U.S. Representative Jack Bergman in 2026, brought the heat and an impressive list of progressive "whys" for her campaign. Close to 2,000 [Update: Corrected attendance - 4,000 people] attendees out of 25,000 population, so we did our bit for a nationwide turnout estimated at 5 million people in 1,300 U.S. events.
First perfect spring-like weather of the year (i.e. minimal cloud cover and > 40°F), so I also got mildly sunburned. Then a wrap-up at the winery tasting room where my spouse works, hanging out with him and the rest of the staff, tasting too many wines. I was cajoled into their "March Madness" event to cast the tie-breaking tasting vote on four wines, had to give opinions on three recently bottled reds... Should have spit, but didn't.
Today, shopping and packing for another work trip.