Utterly swamped and scuttled.

"One impossible whopper please."

"You know there is no meat in the whopper."

"Yes, I know."

"I said, you know there is no meat in the whopper."

"Yes, I know!"

"Would you like cheese on it?"

"...sure."

This exchange emphasizes everything so amusing about the modern world we are currently living in.

So anyway! I created a fire in my kitchen.

Before I tell you this tale of my meandering to suppress the ear-thumping squeals of a fire alarm, I should probably talk about why I was asking a lady for a no-meat sandwich at Burger King through a mask that muffles 80% of my speech.

Before that, let's say that I had to take a trip to Boston to get that.

Oh yeah, uh, this happened on the same week as some deadlines. And some major house cleaning.

And did I mention 35 pounds of pickles were involved?

So here was my last two weeks.

Work!
It's been busy. Ridiculously busy. No layoffs yet, but we've been told they're coming and I'm still trying to get them through, but the more I do, the harder I realize it is to find work during a pandemic when so many people are looking for work (I know, what are the odds?). I have a project and pushed it aside for way too long as a result of catching up on everything else.

I had an interview last week for an entry level position. I asked questions, I tried to determine what they were looking for. I didn't really figure out the scenario example they gave, but I did show interest and made sure to ask a lot of questions. I didn't make the cut.

I need to apply to more jobs. I applied to see if I could be a loan officer. I am skeptical if I can find more work, but I'll keep trying. I'm anticipating being disappointed, but that's nothing new for me, hah.

Between all this, an old client of mine from Boston asked if I could take some photos for him. Sure, not a problem. Only one problem: most of my gear is ancient. My rechargables lost most of their charge and are no longer reusable. My fullframe was stolen years ago.

So I guess you can see where this is going.

Photography!
I bought a new fullframe. It turns out an A7rii is not as expensive as it used to be (to be fair, it's a five year old body). Bought one on B&H. Bought several batteries. Bought more batteries because they were the wrong type (really?!). Then I had to buy new adapters because the ones I have are built for APS-C format and vignette everything I see out of it. Joy. More expenses.

I tried to be frugal on this purchase, but overall I think I spent around 3k in total.

eBay!
I decided then to make up for costs to sell a box of Magic cards that I've been sitting on for the longest. Did you know how much a box of Mirrodin boosters sells for now? Turns out the answer is over 500.
I dealt with answering offers to lowball it. I kept explaining that I wanted to sit on the box for awhile since I don't need the money immediately.

I was treated to a sale this Monday. 500 dollars to me! ...in a week I think. Which is fine, I've got 2000 dollars in Paypal credit and this blunts the blow significantly.

I need to put up a few other items. I think it's time I got rid of my PocketWizard, which I only got for my studio work years ago. I should sell a few other lenses too that are rendered obsolete. I'd like to sell my old Sony adapters too, but they're beat up and one of them needs a replacement mirror. Sigh. More work.

To be fair? I've got a lot of work.

Gaming
I spent a day drawing up a map on Roll20.

Do you know how long it takes to draw all those little boxes? Yeah, it was a pain. The party seems to like it.

Boston
The shoot wasn't even that long. Still, I'm paid. We celebrated by getting food in a very ethnic neighborhood where half the people don't wear a mask and the other half is rapidly getting gentrified to hell. It didn't stop us from visiting a Brazilian bakery and taking all their savory breads and then Burger King where I got a whopper from a lady that didn't understand half the things I was saying in a confined corner of the street that was not designed to avoid social exposure, so... yeah.

We spent a day just resting in a hotel that was under construction, because we have been sleep starved between this and all the work.

Gardening
I have... not been getting much luck with beans. I have though been getting a lot of tomatoes. I spent this week making sauce and yielded three pints.

To be fair? The beans I planted were the wrong variety. I planted the yardlongs when I wanted the purple beans: they're awesome, but grow really slowly in this climate. It's admittedly neat seeing a plant that is maintained by ants, though.

So when I got my CSA, of course I saw:

Cucumbers
35 pounds of cucumbers for 25 bucks.

I convinced myself (and Michelle) to get it to make up for our lack of beans and I made pickles.

I made a LOT of pickles.

I used up every pint jar and quart jar in the house, but we have used up almost every cucumber in this house. You can not imagine the pride I have to be able to have cleared every goddamn cucumber in the house for this oddly ambitious project I had cleaning up these cukes. I will probably never(?) do this again.

Unless the pickles are good, in which case I will probably buy flats of jars again and repeat this vicious cycle because I am a sucker for my own gluttony.

This process by the way also ate up days through the week.

Fire!
In between my multitasking, I forgot how quickly an electric stove heats up my favorite stainless.

One neat thing I got to see was what happens when you add water to a grease fire because I'm a dumbass. It still looked neat though, not gonna lie.

So imagine spending fifteen minutes clearing a smoke alarm as your significant other is going out to pick up mustard seeds for you so you can justify those 25 pounds of pickles you bought while you're hoping she doesn't come back wondering why the house is so cloudy and you've got my madcap adventure of a day.

btw, she did come back and didn't suspect a thing beyond the smell of "burgers"--I was going to make stirfry! Vegetable stirfry!--and that's my day. I confessed to her later on and she turned into Castle looking for clues of the fire. It didn't change the fact that my lungs were feeling it for awhile and the AC filter was a PITA to clean.

Cleaning
Michelle wanted to organize the closets. I also wanted to dump the old air conditioner. While I pickled, she basically reorganized the entire thing and we spent two days of donating things. Do you know how much shit I bought to get our home office setup effective? The answer is: quite a bit but not anymore because I donated all of it including an adapter that Michelle had to rebuy when she actually needed it. Sigh.

Health
Michelle has high cholesterol and is... being iffy about it. She doesn't like having high cholesterol because high cholesterol is bad. She also doesn't eat like I do, so it gets frustrating when she continues to say she'll eat what I eat but continues to eat things that I know she shouldn't. Sigh.

Anyway, there's probably a ton of other things I forgot to mention, but I'm just going to say: tldr, I've been too damn busy.