See the Mouseachu! Oh, and his flunkie. You know, that pinto guy

Three weeks since the last update? Busy busy!

So I've been keeping with the routine and it's showing results. I have consistently remained below the 220 range.

Okay to be fair: I haven't been able to hold with the routine for long, but for good reason: I'm still moving, and hooo boy doing it with just us two has beem a constant test of my own body's shape. My health goals never looked better, ironically enough.

A lot of the PITA things to move have been moved: most of the shelving, the L-shaped desk that uses real wood, the bed frame and a king size mattress we managed to vacuum shrink successfully, etc. At this point outside of an ottoman and the syrup shelf, it's all easy stuff that just takes time to pile up.

My work area is mostly complete. At one point after moving the desk, I was working in a room crosslegged with a mess of wires and monitors.

Now we just slept in the new place for the second time. Half the bedroom, half the living room, some of the garage and the untouched kitchen are all that's left. Overall I want to say it's a quarter of the house. Then a cleanup/touchup and everything should be good.

I've figured out how to handle putty like a pro and all our nail holes are gone and with a coat of paint handled with precise strokes may have never existed. I feel so fucking powerful.

I have a room that took three fills to clear of anchors and I just need to give it a sand and paint and it'll be like it never happened once the vacuum clears the dust.

It was Michelle's birthday last week and she likes the moflin but needs time to set it up (she's being pragmatic because she knows we need to focus with the move). Her desk was also drooping so got her the same desk she got me as revenge. The newer versions are actually easier to build now though so I think it'll be even easier to break down for the next move. There were also food plans we had to rearrange and overall stop because of the chaos of this move (I missed out on history day ar a hisyoric village for the 250th anniversary for example), so we must deal with our first world problems.

The shelves had some bad anchors so ended up also replacing those with a power drill and a good pair of pliers. Nice fact: the closets are not maintained, so I don't have to paint nor putty and if you understand how to destroy an anchor the new ones don't need the hole to be rebuilt. Easy!

I like my new desk space more as well. I wanted studio space but in all honesty I never found a use for it let alone built a softbox so eh. We're going to need to understand how to take advantage of this space in general but that's also going to come in time.

Once the home is empty we will probably see about one last run of donations and storage followed by one of those junk pickup companies depending on what the landlords think.

I still miss taking photos, but this weather also suuuuuuuuucks. Give me back my cold weather!

Also have some health stuff but to put a long story short: the worst part of the healthcare system I'm dealing with right now is finding a way to get into the proper network for the healthcare system. Sigh.

That's it, back to work.

-because I am where you go if you want drama!

From work changes to missing a company event because the plumbers left a gravel pile in front of our garage to controlling people trying to get themselves too into my life to yet another house ish that continues to pop up to pushing every kind of muscle in my body trying to get things out the door to even preparing food the wrong way and essentially NoDozed myself to a 48 hour awake cycle, this entire week has seen to it that I am the Crazy Eddie of every kind of tumult I can think of and-not going to lie-it's been a lot but the more that was resolved the more clean my life feels to have one less inconvenience after another sorted and categorized and kept out of my hair. I didn't want to Marie Kondo everything, but when it ends up trying to swallow you, what else can you do?

I've got a lot cleared through and even the brain fog of work which has been interfering with my work goals has been better.

Packing is reaching the point where it starts getting harder, not because there's so much left as much as because you've got the really complicated stuff or the things you need to King Solomon into storing it into a place where it will be forgotten or taken with you to be used immediately.

There is a Catholic church that is going to be full of expensive shirts I was gifted and never wore because I don't think I can pull it off (tbf I also live like a modern day Diogenes (aka dirtbag)), and a fire dept that has boxed appliances and studio equipment and a few computer component boxes. Best Buy's e-waste section is overloaded with AC adapters and lithium batteries, my trash is full of cords, and my room is still attempting to reestablish chaos as I give it fewer messes to entropize--is that even a word?

Ironically, 48 hours awake made sleeping easy again, it's like I hit a reset in my circadian and the nausea that came with it allowed my stomach to shrink a little more.

I started working on work goals and the progress I felt was immediate. I think I can do this and the fewer distractions I get, the better, so I think I'll cut it here. I didn't think I would type this up here either, but it's been a crazy time and I'm starting to see real progress. I think I might even be seeing less of the plumbers now (though they promised there's another pipe issue that's now going to be in the center of the street). Even my lungs finally cleared up of mucus, so I can go harder on the cardio.

The music collection is also a future fix goal: I recovered a lot, but the drive's broken nature meant more of the music files are damaged than I initially thought, so need to sort through but this also gives me a shopping list of old bands that I forgot about from my concert shooter days that I want to check back in on.

Here's to moving forward; I celebrate by going back to work and listening to more Dan Carlin. Salut!

I went to Conowingo Dam and...

It was really, really, good. I didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I thought I would, I didn't think I would get the kind of shots I did, and I definitely did not expect our accommodations to be as great as they actually were.

So context: we took an airbnb out of desperation: there's no nearby accommodations beyond a few questionable motels and a 30 minute drive from Great Wolf Lodge. I found a home available and it seemed highly received and as we drove in on a cold Friday night, we were treated to a nice house that was fairly clean and well-cared for with plenty of instructions that were fairly straightforward: no shoes in house, try not to scuff the floor, etc. It's a decent-sized house, I told the owners that we basically just needed a place to sleep and maybe eat takeout (I managed to forget my wallet meaning I was operating on a phone to charge for things and Michelle's still using Invisaligns so it ended up being more true than I thought).

Went to bed on a hard memory foam mattress and woke up to a lousy night (Michelle had coffee during lunch with her colleagues the day before and we think it affected things) but allowed us the chance to get up before sunrise to head over and catch some eagles.

Was this a good idea?

Along the drive over we saw a pair of eagles dogfighting over a rodent.

This was a great idea.

The stay was freezing but paid off: eagles kept flying over us, osprey, black vultures... At one point, I thought we should head back and then a bald eagle straight up HITS THE WATER AND LEAPS OUT WITH A FISH and after my muscle reflex relaxes on my giant lens I announce "Holy shit" because this was directly parallel to us.

I was warned that the place is full of photographers too but only saw maybe six people in the freezing cold, all older people with some form of telephoto or another. We were the only couple participating together. One older Asian gentleman with a 600/4 had his wife staying in the car bringing coffee to him and other things. Very few of us talked to each other. It felt like I was around my people lol

Okay, so we did head back but we returned again when I lost my memory card (it ended up being underneath my seat) but also because Michelle needed coffee and milk for said coffee while I needed water because I realized at a certain point that I was as dehydrated as she was (very). Took a trip to a national park nearby, then one of the shore towns before a final trip back to the dam during sunset to get some golden hour time.

I would love to show off some photos, but I tend to work on things chronologically, but here's one I'm kind of pushing ahead of my queue just to show off.



There's so many good ones, I swear.

The host seemed good with us and Michelle liked the place enough to want to come around again. I mentioned that I might consider the place for night photography too (it's bortle 5, which is one level lower than the Boston Islands, very promising).

Michelle's birthday is coming up soon and looking at this reminded me of two things that I am probably getting her: one of them is better noise software since she's using a slower lens (also gives me an excuse to buy some for myself).

Anyway, plumbers came back on Tuesday. Unannounced because that's how they are. We were promised they would cover the hole by Thursday and now that it's Thursday and they're gone, I can confirm they have absolutely not and will probably come back on Friday. I think they're closer to IDing the problem though. Or they're just going to listen to pipes some more too, who knows.

Work's coming along. We have a new hire too! With all the work we're doing, it's a big time relief, let me tell you!

I also always worry about being rendered redundant, but I think there's just so much work. Still, I'm uncomfortable that there's so much less work on my plate and it makes me anxious. Ugh, if it turns out there's less work this year, then I'm going to be more annoyed at myself since this means I'll make myself the most likely to live my fears.

Okay, enough of this, I want to get some more things done. I was worried about being too loud while the plumbers were around.

Week 2 of Peloton consistency and the most I can say is that the key to Peloton consistency comes from waking up early. That is to say, this week's been shit for my sleep. I can sleep without a leg pillow but now I'm also finding other problems that it comes with. I'll try sleeping with elevated legs tonight.

Currently processing through Bronx Zoo shots, this time through snow. Took some good ones because if I didn't then it wouldn't justify the 3000 images I have to sort through for the day.

This weekend I'm tempted to look through Brooklyn's Chinatown. It's easier to get to than Queens and Manhattan's and I don't have to worry about parking the same way I do Staten Island's (if there is one, there prob is). But I'd also like an excuse to walk in general, so we'll see. Michelle said we need to visit her parents, so that's going to be the other day.

Seal season is starting to reach its end too and I'm honestly tempted to try to catch at least one more Sandy Hook visit. I'm also aware that foxes are out more than ever but I am way too loud or something to catch them BUT we did see what I think was a fox while getting gas at our local Costco. Hooray!

Oh, and we're on top of a giant leak. This week's been a mess.

THE MESS
So our unit's been dealing with this loud drainage noise for what I'd say is about half a year now. We've mentioned it to the city, the landlords, etc. Most of the time, they dismissed it as something that should be looked into but not really.

WELL on Saturday night at 9pm we came back home to hear loud rattling noises. We were unsure what the hell was going on, but were able to figure out it was from the unit we share a back wall with. The noise stopped by 10, so in the morning we came by and saw the unit had a lot of clay mud and a whole bunch of cars in their driveway.

Later on, we get a visit from some people we weren't expecting. It turned out to be from the homeowner's management who were trying to ascertain a leak that has been flooding someone's garage (they also say "bedroom" which tells you what they did with the unit). The guy was jackhammering his garage to figure out what was happening, in fact.

So this lead to a bunch of people coming in and out of our unit looking at the drain where we've been hearing the noise. They said that they think it might be associated with a leak but also that they noted we haven't had any of these problems; in fact, we thought it might be from our neighbor's unit since they also have had water pooling in their driveway every so often.

This in fact was not the case, it's all leading to our unit, where it turns out we are situated over a set of pipes that center on the flow of all the water in our units.

So they found the valves, got to testing them (after getting the right parts to use them) and ended up breaking one of the valves, leaving our neighbor without water. The neighbor's pissed, they're also pissed because they have no idea what's going on, and now they have to dig out around our unit and replace pipes too.

Between this, Michelle's reaching some craziness with these new invisilign things that are forcing her to only eat for 2 hours a day, which is helping her diet but also making her life harder to manage. I say this because during that same time, she tried to avoid running over a random box and dinged the car against the garage. Mostly superficial stuff, thank god, but it's been a lot.

There was also an oil change where it was revealed that the car's in need of a lot of replacement parts, so that was like 3800 getting the tires replaced, axles replaced, and toe (tow?) hook replaced, which Michelle thinks may have been compromised from the accident awhile back.

On top of that, we had tornado warnings for the days all between this, meaning our internet was shit from the wind blowing out a transformer and I couldn't get any work done reliably. I came to a meeting late as a result and finally just told my boss that my signal is bad and we have plumbers that might try to look into our unit to fix this big problem and took two days off (I still worked though, there's too much shit for me not to).

OH one of Michelle's new lenses is also acting up, so we needed to send that in for repairs. Yay. At least it's still within warranty.

So yeah! Friday. Hopefully things will be a little more normal. I'm glad the plumbing stuff hasn't had them do any teardowns yet (we can still see though, there's a big hole in our front yard), and it isn't costing us anything beyond our time unlike the car fixes which couldn't have happened at a more convenient time (thank god for the bonuses which were used to pay off that and the last of the trip expenses, we're set for Iceland).


Things I need to do:
-Design a popup card for June wedding
-Prep for next week's trip (booked a home for the weekend to Conowingo dam)
-Get more work done (stuff is coming back)

I have some cute images of animals and it's soothing, also got a fair number of the Paterson waterfall during winter. Looking forward to finally getting to the timelapse stuff, which dinged my fucking 35mm but at least has some great potential. Will share when I have the time.

So I can confirm this is a cold because I did a COVID/flu test combo and it came out negative.

I can also confirm that old age is turning me into a bitch baby because I very rarely have a migraine that lasts me 48 hours but this time nature found a way thanks to the combination of aforementioned cold and really dry weather.

Which is fine in its own way but I also have work I wanted done ASAP and I had a big meeting about something I needed to instruct to my team that my other coworkers were excited about.

On the bright side I was allowed to work remotely all this week on account of two weeks ago basically repeating itself, but I'm also doing the safe thing and not going out until I think I'm all right.

I'll concede I took some risks last weekend: I wanted to see seals in Sandy Hook (mission accomplished, I got a couple of shots) on the last Saturday before the rain and snow would pound everything on Sunday. Week before this was a return to the Bronx Zoo to grab a membership blanket and remind myself why I love the place so damn much. Michelle even found a really cheap room beforehand just so we could make it a whole day trip (jokes on us though, we wasted our morning hours looking at that Yonkers Costco and Stew Leonards). It was still good though.

I also haven't weakened out too much. The snow is pretty much preventing us from going out though as New Brunswick is siloed in all this powder.

It's Wednesday and the migraine is thankfully gone and I hope it stays the hell out of dodge.

Things are still coming out of my body that don't look like how they should.

I'm probably also getting anemic from these things too, so will probably need to cook tonight and prep some proteins since I burnt through my spinach and the alternative is oatmeal (tbf I've grown to love oatmeal after realizing I can treat it the same way as congee).

Finished 2k images of those seals and I'd complain if they weren't so cute! I'm so stuck in work though that I haven't had a chance to add to these things, don't even have spare time to brainstorm keywords for stock and I didn't have a screaming need to squeeze my skull into a hydraulic press from the pain for the past two days.

So yeah, if you like seals then let me know, I've got some nice ones I can probably put up next post. Otherwise, I'm probably going to focus on work. Already "called in sick" yet worked through the migraines into 8-9pm just to make sure I was able to get to some progress point cleaning up some really messy work that I'm also never sure I'm examining properly either.

And with that, imma go look for food.

So I mentioned the toe bruise, right? It's gone through some changes that would come off as alarming if it still felt sensitive through a keratin window where I observe its progress from above. Every day I checked it and felt the pain fade while its colors flared into a blood-red splotch, then the blue-blacks of a zombie's skin to what I currently describe as a soy sauce brown swirled to a clamshell pattern, like the sort the Japanese use for their miso soup. Again, there's no pain and my movement is as good as ever (just dry, relentlessly dry) so I'm amused more than anything.

The cold is promising to thaw, drawing ice-hardened snow away to what will likely be heartier black ice. The Raritan is already showing wells of water over its whitened surface so I can imagine seeing the river again fairly soon but I also will miss it.

I've been wanting to catch some shots of the Raritan in this state but wind and ice that makes a walk to the shore akin to moseying through an Arctic waste, so was unable to do it (Michelle tried with me at least once and she fell three times in the process). This Tuesday the winds were mild enough for me to finally say screw it and ask if Michelle was comfortable with letting me try after work (she was as long as she didn't join me). In my work attire with nearly treadless shoes I walked through the broken ice of previous expeditioneers that broke through the literal white ice and tried not to slip on the pooled glaze that created frictionless bottoms.

Then I realized what a dumb idea that was and just pierced through hardened powder with my work shoes. Which, to be fair, are casual loafers but also seemed to hold up despite this.

Finally made it to the shore, clambered to what brown oases of exposed earth I could find for some blessed grip, and took what I could best describe as meh landscape shots obscured by branches. Not the best. Considered walking on the river shore but it's going to be even more frictionless and I don't want to mess up my work clothes that much, so considered a walk up. More ice piercing lead me to a fallen tree that was further out along the shore and I basically dropped my bag, grabbed my camera, and tightroped along the thick trunk as I saw it yield to every attempt to grip along the way.

Nevertheless, made it! I wanted to get a view of the train bridge from here, and I could see it, but still a bit far. Still, the comps I got were a *little* better and the stress of balancing on a log after slipping and sliding several times over reminded me I have a threshold that I am recognizing quickly, so I spent maybe another two-three minutes and then carefully walked back onto the surface of the snow with little to show for it aside from a few shots and some rattled nerves, lol

Work's been progressing, it's the most I could hope for. I feel like being at home for long periods of time combined with the ADHD and something else (illness? Dryness? Seasonal? Bad sleep? All of the above?) is screwing with my attention span and making it much harder for me to work but I powered through it this time and I'm getting through work (barring the stuff I should be doing instead of typing into this entry). I hope this lasts, that lull in my mental capacity can eat all the dicks. I figured out some new function that could circumvent some of the problems we've been hitting with the latest changes (despite being a tech institute our tools are fairly archaic) and when one of the senior teammates tested something I was using, she was ecstatic about it so that was neat for me.

Found a pirate site for streaming that fulfills my needs, by the way. If you're curious, look up rivestream.org.

Just wanted to say that. Best wishes from me and my zombie toe.

Just another thing for anyone else annoyed by all the data mining and the like: Just The Browser

"Just the Browser helps you remove AI features, telemetry data reporting, sponsored content, product integrations, and other annoyances from desktop web browsers. The goal is to give you "just the browser" and nothing else, using hidden settings in web browsers intended for companies and other organizations."

You wouldn't believe what we finally got pics of.



Just happened today, so this one is still relatively fresh out of the camera. I did do some post, but I think I need to tweak it more. Not too windy, just cloudy: it's been a lot of rain and snow here and there and the day before was worse (ironically they said there were like 70 of them out there on that day compared to today's 40).

It's snowing, cold and windy to boot. Tried to get some fog in Asbury Park and instead got dangerously cold from freezing rain and strong winds. We've been trying to catch these guys outside though.

The only thing about these is that I think 80% of the shots are basically this, so not sure how much I'll share, but if you're interested let me know and I can show you how furry these guys are (the 100% images emphasize their fluffiness).

If any of you own the username craton  would you let me know? If you're being anon about it, just pm me. I'm very confused about its actions.

Welcome to the two weeks where no one wants to do anything.

I'm not saying that to make it seem bad, hell, I just want to game or something.

To be honest though, I'm just as good ready to sleep. Sleep's always this thing where I need to figure out how to do it properly. Why is sleep getting harder to figure out the older I get?!

Anyway, past few weekends have been us trying to go out and around. Tried to catch the seals in Sandy Hook, and found none. We later found out that the seals were around the day before and the day after LOL This is why I will never gamble, I suck at taking the odds.

Ironically, this was during a weekend we were also thinking of looking at bald eagles at a very famous dam in MD, but we canceled because packages were coming in. I think most of the packages are accounted for though (but I also swear to god I think I say the same thing every time I put an update).

I have started work on preparing my secret santa and since it's an in-law that likes novelty and trendy things, I'm doing something silly and doing a scavenger hunt.

More amusing: it is a scavenger hunt hosted by The Rat. Meaning:

- a very poorly written document were all the words are phonetic and driven by autocorrect.
- all clues are from the perapective of a rat.
- lots and lots of rat images thrown in like it was a geocities page for a rodent enthusiast that watches too much brainrot.

Speaking of gifts, I gave up on the 400 800. The lens is big and expensive as hell and the images I was getting out of it were so meh that I finally gave up and decided to spend a fuckton more.

Two thousand dollar lens? Why not 7k dollar lens?

SIGH.

Anyway, it was more like 5k after selling the old lens but it's f4 and so far it looks sharp as hell. I don't know if this fixes everything but whatever. Michelle felt guilty since she pushed me onto this lemon so now I have a new lens and it looks soooo much better but I guess we'll see with some field tests to confirm.

I spent so much this year man I feel jaded from cost, to the point where I can't even feel angry or sad just tired.

The new lens really does seem hot as hell though, barring the frame limitations and lack of teleconverters.

The weight is more but it really isn't that much more, so eh.

I gifted my coworkers!
I sent gifts to my friends!
I made quiche with my leftover thanksgiving ingredients!

More to do:

-I was asked if I want to make something for the in-laws chrostmas dinner. I still have all this vegan parm so did a quick look and found vegan latkes which I think should be nice to garnish with parm.

-playtested a game that a coworker made that I promised I'd do ages ago. It wad actually fun. Just need to send the feedback.

-field test the new expensive lens within the return window so I don't feel any regretsies about my 7k dollar commitment.

-finish the scavenger hunt stuff by packaging the things and labeling appropriately.

-I need to eat a lot of quiche. I have like two whole quiches my god

Okay, off the post and now to work on things.