2nd dose tomorrow yayyyy!

Things are slowly unfurling and summer is starting to feel a little more "like before" again.

Work is good, but my weird relationship with my boss will need some untangling i feel like. The work part i'm happy with - i'm just a little more worried about the friendship part that has been on... standby? since we started working together. I've recently learned he is separating with his long time girlfriend - a decision she told me about that they took a month ago. Something he has not mentioned to me at all. And i'm a little disappointed because it's the kind of information I share with my friends. But then again we had exchanged some flirty vibes before I started working there, and I believe their incompatibility around a potential openness of the relationship was one of the reasons for the separation. So I get it - but untangling and frank conversations would be appropriate just about now. On one hand, I'm happy not to get dragged into any drama and that our work relationship still feels efficient and good. On the other, I do miss my friend, hanging out and talking shit.

I went though a loss of friendship through conversion to coworking with the girl I started my speakeasy tours with back in the day. This person I used to hang with all the time and try new restaurants and bars with suddenly became my business partner, with an opposite schedule since we were talking turns doing the tours. And it worked great, we made bank - and then she moved to live in London like she has been planning to do before we even met. So I never really regretted transforming our friendship, because she would have moved away either way. And that you can't hold on to things and relationships to avoid changing them. But it still hurts a little and I still miss the good times.

Good thing the world is full of beautiful people, this one lady just came to our backyard tonight for a little meeting. A lady i've been hearing about from a bunch of my friends, and she is indeed just as awesome as all our mutual friend say. I haven't met new faces in ages - and awesome ones at that too! It just warms the soul.

I have a cast-iron frame, 4mm ball screws, 170lbs of steel, 350lbs of granite, $25k worth of servos and $10k worth of spindles and turning that into a precision sub-micron CNC machine is a journey. I'm pissed that the $140 worth of steel cost me $370 because of scarcity but the $25k worth of servos cost me $2200 because they get used a lot on screenprinting equipment so they're readily available used.

(not shown: shit-tons of wires and cables)

Takes a lot of time tho

Have to keep reminding myself that I'm doing two things: (1) building a giant moat between "what I can do" and "what everyone else can do" (2) Building a $250k CNC machine through almost pure sweat equity.

Sister's family was in town. Lived through that. Sister-in-law's family is next week. May survive that. Air conditioning will be in in six weeks and I'll be the dog in the hat at the table with the cup.

The LCD on my 3d printer literally died from heat. Guessing the garage hit 120, 130. So did the CPU for the Jumbotron - we measured 111 there and it lives in a black box above a parking lot. New LCD is $27. New Jumbotron is $70k.

Long time no see. I've been lurking for some time, but I just haven't wanted to post much in a while. I think I may have been baited to come out by goobster's dope Dingwall and Strandberg.

Various new stuff going on. I got a new job that I'm excited about, and will be moving to Glendale in a couple weeks. Didn't really expect to be living/working deeper in LA, but there's not much demand for a chemist/mass spectrometrist in the inland empire.

I think it's actually been pretty eventful since I last checked in? I got married (COVID elopement, more or less. The actual reception is this year). We nearly pulled the trigger on a house (good thing we didn't actually). I've been recording more and more music, and making a lot of progress in mixing and stuff. Got a Moog.

Overall things have been pretty good actually, but things really need a shakeup, so I'm very excited to be moving to a new place with ample windows and natural light as a stark contrast to the dungeon we've been in for several years now.

I had a second interview for a job I am really interested in today. My degree, my employment experience, and my small business have little to do with each other, but a biopharmaceutical company approached me and asked me to apply for a position that is somehow an amalgamation of all my skills. I am really hoping I get the job, but I know they are interviewing a lot of people.

I've started selling soap irl at some local craft shows. I only have 4 planned this summer, and they are on weekends so they shouldn't interfere with the new job if I get it.

I've started getting into some hobbies since I last visited hubski. I picked up sewing again, and I've been making my own versions of cottagecore and prairiecore dresses I keep seeing on Instagram. I'm upcycling fabric from bedsheets and curtains that I get from thrifting. I have been feeling an increased sense of guilt from waste and throwing away materials that are still usable, so I've decided from now on not to buy new fashionable clothes. The only clothes I will buy new will be staple pieces that wont go out of style (I bought some black office shoes for my interview for example), any other clothes I buy must be second-hand, or I have to make them myself.

I'm also dipping my toes into pickling eggs, (but just in a container in the fridge, I don't have all the equipment for canning atm) I'm going to try a bunch if different recipes, basically marinating the eggs with various other ingredients.

In other news, my living situation has greatly improved since I was last here. FIL finally told MIL to take a hike bc her NPD behavior was getting more severe and she was making everyone's lives hell while she had a meltdown over everyone getting vaccines (thus, her losing the power of being the one person allowed to leave the house for groceries etc.) Life has been FANTASTIC since she left. SO is happier, his dad is happier. Her leaving coincided with BIL and myself being able to start job hunting, and with everyone having more emotional space to return to a sense of pre-pandemic normalcy.

SO and I have been making some changes to his parents' guest room (which we have been living in for a year now.) I got SO and his brother to remove the large decorative loveseat from our room since we've never used it and it just took up a massive amount of space. I put a short book shelf agaisnt the wall in its place and now all of my belongings are on the shelf, rather than stored in plastic bags all over the floor as they had been. Removing the loveseat has opened up the whole floorplan of the room, and improved the a/c circulation I think. SO Frankensteined a computer from a broken laptop and some parts from Ebay to make a second desktop in his work area. I think these changes have really helped make the living space feel more like "our" space rather than just us and our things being crammed into "a" space.

My plants are doing well, my fuzzy 10lbs kitty is still trying to challenge the 90lbs dog though, so we are continuing to keep them separated. I hope you are having a good week hubski ✌

I've been much more scatter-brained than normal as of late. I try to focus, but can't seem to get the simplest of tasks done in a reasonable amount of time.

Adding to the confusion are the nexus of several life events crossing at once. I suppose everyone has these kinds of times in their lives and I'm not anything unusual.

I went to a small town rodeo last week... Probably the largest group setting I've been to since March 2020. I wonder how many unvaccinated people were there and now have COVID. Time will tell I suppose.

In the mean time - I love you all. Keep on rockin' in the free world.

I got shingles again.

Caught it early, not early enough to prevent more damage. Shingles sucks, valcyclovir 1gm TID for 8 days sucks.

Still not back in cardiac rehab, but that's the joy of insurance, the needless, senseless waiting.

We managed to have a wonderful time at my best friends wedding despite my rotting nervous system. My friend was the happiest I've ever seen him and his new wife was as radiant and contented and unbothered as anyone could ask of a normally rather introverted person put into the center of attention.

Lots of happy tears between me and the missus that whole long weekend because of how loved and accepted and wanted our friends and friends families make us feel. Upon reflection on this with my counselor, she likes to use the framework of 'You've finally stopped going to the hardware store looking for milk and eggs.' Which startled me to hear because of the ease and clarity of it. I did not have an easy time that weekend physically, in fact spent several hours on the phone with my PCP's maternity-replacement frantically trying to get pharmacies to move my antiretroviral script so that I could avoid a full blown shingles outbreak. In the family I grew up in, any kind of minor inconvenience or stress on vacation or at a family event was the death of all joy and lightheartedness. I cannot convey the absolute shattering sense of relief I felt when I was able to say 'Yeah, I'm not feeling great, I'm going to go lie down and make some phone calls to try and improve things.' and the only response I get is 'We'll make sure we turn the AC way down, should someone bring you your backpack with your meds and water bottle?'

One more wedding in a few weeks, another close friend from high school, two of them actually. Batting a thousand so far.

My Dingwall bass guitars have the "Novax fanned-fret system" on the neck, where the frets are "fanned" out so they are mathematically in the proper places for proper note intonation. You know how a piano has shorter high strings and longer low strings? That's because the length of the string needs to be mathematically correct to produce the right tone. Well, the fanned-fret system on Dingwall basses does that, and they sound incredible:

Recently I have seen a Swedish guitar manufacturer called Strandberg using the same system on 6, 7, and 8-string guitars. And I have been REALLY curious about what they sound like, and how they feel to play. Fanned frets. Headless. 8 strings. Chords on this beast...?!? But at about $2500, and terminally out of stock, I wasn't going to get to try one out anytime soon.

Or so I thought.

Found one on FB Marketplace for $1500. So I decided to get it and try it out. Worst case, I could resell it and make a couple hundred on the deal.

But now that I have it in my hands, it is ridiculous and amazing and ... I'm not getting rid of it. I love this weirdass beast.

I had only one small meeting today so I took the day off and did nothing. I tried going out for lunch but the place didn't have immediate seating, so I went home. I thought about swimming or biking, but it was raining most of the day. I could have done either inside, but in the end the full day of rest was probably good for me.

I did make homemade pizza today for the first time in months which was delicious. I even included a chopped up habanero pepper I grew myself.

My pepper plants seem to be doing pretty well with several peppers almost ripe. My Carolina reaper plant is doing well but no flowers yet. From what I read that's normal, and my habanero plants are all years old so they could flower pretty quickly in the sun. I think my oldest pepper plant is from 2018, and I moved it over to a bigger pot last week. I'll probably need to repot the others, too, but the one was starting to look yellow and was probably getting constrained in the pot. It's looking greener today.

File under: who gives a shit

I started exercising in earnest again after a weak effort that started sometime in February after my fingertip healed. It isn't something that gets easier with age. I find it easier not to eat than to exercise, but beer really likes the midsection, and if I wanted to, I could be one of those big belly skinny guys.

Our chocolate lab Winston is almost 1 year old, and he has his testicles for just two more days. I feel badly for him. He's a good boy, and I hope he doesn't interpret it as some sort of message.

In just over two weeks we'll be headed back to the cottage, where I can put the stove in the sauna, and fire it up.

It’s been an awesome 8 weeks without any direct reports at work. But in two weeks I’m back to having one...albeit only one...so...yay?

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