ups and downs.
Jul. 18th, 2025 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hafniaThis week at work was not worth talking about.
Yesterday, I got into my car after I got off-shift, sat down in the driver's seat, and just bawled for a solid five minutes. Sitting in the fab parking lot, crying like a little kid that just dropped their ice cream. Stress release, I guess?
Anyway.
That's the most you're going to get about that, suppose.
(It's not worth talking about — a lot of "things aren't working because of factors that are beyond my control" combined with "but people think it should be under my control", and that's just a fucking miserable place to be. Eventually it will either be determined that there is fuck-all I can do to make e.g. certain shit work, because God Themself could not do it, or I will leave to "run an errand" and simply never come back. Both are acceptable at this point.)
My car is apparently paid off? I know because I got a call today from the bank asking where they could send the title to. The address they had on file was evidently incorrect.
(I bought it in late November 2021, so when we were still living in the duplex in the north of town, oops.)
I gave them the address, the title guy went, "congratulations!", and...that was that, I guess? I am now the full owner of a '22 Hyundai Elantra SE. Of course, with the job stuff, my brain immediately goes to, "so if you need to, you can sell it and that's a few months' worth of mortgage payments!" — but, you know. (Truly, things would have to be very dire for a period of roughly TWO YEARS before I had to go, "ACK" and think about e.g. selling the car, but lizard brain does what lizard brain does, I suppose.)
This does mean I'm out of debt save for the mortgage, which is a nice feeling, I guess? (Well, and the balance currently on my credit card — I put everything on it, so therapy, groceries, all the utility bills for the house, etc — it's at about $1100 right now — but I also pay it off at the end of each month because fuck paying interest.)
It occurs to me that with the car paid off my expenses for living pretty "extravagantly" (getting takeout like 1x/week, buying myself coffee on Fridays and Sundays, purchasing 1-2 ebooks per month) are back down to ~$2000/month, with two thirds of that being my half of the mortgage and bills.
Weird.
Today at work was fine. I was alone in the lab, which was great. Got coffee (FRIDAY RITUAL), came in around 9, worked on only what I wanted to work on. Actually managed to get something maybe working? which was a surprise to me, but oh, well.
Week ended on a high note. Did some metrology and data analysis, uploaded everything, drove home. At the house Max let me know that he'd ordered pizza from the new place that just opened literally two blocks away from us, and when I said, "so...we're sticking with the plan I made last week?" (to eat pizza from there and watch "Sinners"), nodded.
Said that we ought to pick up the stuff to do Aperol spritzes, so we did (we didn't have soda water! we usually do! somehow that was the only thing we were missing!), grabbed the pizza, came back, fed the cats, and —
Okay, so apparently he did not know anything about "Sinners". I filled him in on what little I knew (vampires, 1930s Mississippi, Michael B. Jordan plays a pair of twins), and we watched it.
No spoilers, but y'all, it was wonderful.
I think I can best sum it up with the following exchange:
MAX: You know, I really liked [STYLISTIC CHOICE], but I found [SPECIFIC PART] anachronistic. Like, damn, they almost had it.
five minutes later...
ME: So do you understand why they included [SPECIFIC PART]?
MAX, completely and utterly stunned: I take that back, I should have let him cook.
(I love the reviews going, "this felt like two different movies to me", like — it was clear as fucking day what the story was and how it tied together, and if you paid even a millisecond of attention, you got it. It's a movie that rewards careful watching, for sure. LOVED the midcredits scene, too ♥ )
Tomorrow we are going WINE TASTING with my LOCAL QUEER FRIENDS, which is A THING, but I get to WALK TO THIS ONE, so if I get WINE DRUNK at 4pm, it'll be FINE.
Probably. :)
As a final note I suppose I should say, the work-in-progress noted as point 1 of this entry has been split into three parts.
Part 1 ended (without any editing!) at 131710 words.
Part 2 is at the midpoint (roughly), and sitting at 65059 words.
Apparently all it take for me to write like there's no tomorrow is for someone to go, "what about...", at which point I will go, "OH YEAH" and write literally 100k words in a month.
Well then.
(Are they good words? I mean, it's a rough draft and it's being written incredibly fast, so it has all the plot and structure of hot wet jello, as my mentor liked to say when I was in graduate school, but I'm having fun and the sole person reading it is also enjoying it, so.)
Yesterday, I got into my car after I got off-shift, sat down in the driver's seat, and just bawled for a solid five minutes. Sitting in the fab parking lot, crying like a little kid that just dropped their ice cream. Stress release, I guess?
Anyway.
That's the most you're going to get about that, suppose.
(It's not worth talking about — a lot of "things aren't working because of factors that are beyond my control" combined with "but people think it should be under my control", and that's just a fucking miserable place to be. Eventually it will either be determined that there is fuck-all I can do to make e.g. certain shit work, because God Themself could not do it, or I will leave to "run an errand" and simply never come back. Both are acceptable at this point.)
My car is apparently paid off? I know because I got a call today from the bank asking where they could send the title to. The address they had on file was evidently incorrect.
(I bought it in late November 2021, so when we were still living in the duplex in the north of town, oops.)
I gave them the address, the title guy went, "congratulations!", and...that was that, I guess? I am now the full owner of a '22 Hyundai Elantra SE. Of course, with the job stuff, my brain immediately goes to, "so if you need to, you can sell it and that's a few months' worth of mortgage payments!" — but, you know. (Truly, things would have to be very dire for a period of roughly TWO YEARS before I had to go, "ACK" and think about e.g. selling the car, but lizard brain does what lizard brain does, I suppose.)
This does mean I'm out of debt save for the mortgage, which is a nice feeling, I guess? (Well, and the balance currently on my credit card — I put everything on it, so therapy, groceries, all the utility bills for the house, etc — it's at about $1100 right now — but I also pay it off at the end of each month because fuck paying interest.)
It occurs to me that with the car paid off my expenses for living pretty "extravagantly" (getting takeout like 1x/week, buying myself coffee on Fridays and Sundays, purchasing 1-2 ebooks per month) are back down to ~$2000/month, with two thirds of that being my half of the mortgage and bills.
Weird.
Today at work was fine. I was alone in the lab, which was great. Got coffee (FRIDAY RITUAL), came in around 9, worked on only what I wanted to work on. Actually managed to get something maybe working? which was a surprise to me, but oh, well.
Week ended on a high note. Did some metrology and data analysis, uploaded everything, drove home. At the house Max let me know that he'd ordered pizza from the new place that just opened literally two blocks away from us, and when I said, "so...we're sticking with the plan I made last week?" (to eat pizza from there and watch "Sinners"), nodded.
Said that we ought to pick up the stuff to do Aperol spritzes, so we did (we didn't have soda water! we usually do! somehow that was the only thing we were missing!), grabbed the pizza, came back, fed the cats, and —
Okay, so apparently he did not know anything about "Sinners". I filled him in on what little I knew (vampires, 1930s Mississippi, Michael B. Jordan plays a pair of twins), and we watched it.
No spoilers, but y'all, it was wonderful.
I think I can best sum it up with the following exchange:
MAX: You know, I really liked [STYLISTIC CHOICE], but I found [SPECIFIC PART] anachronistic. Like, damn, they almost had it.
five minutes later...
ME: So do you understand why they included [SPECIFIC PART]?
MAX, completely and utterly stunned: I take that back, I should have let him cook.
(I love the reviews going, "this felt like two different movies to me", like — it was clear as fucking day what the story was and how it tied together, and if you paid even a millisecond of attention, you got it. It's a movie that rewards careful watching, for sure. LOVED the midcredits scene, too ♥ )
Tomorrow we are going WINE TASTING with my LOCAL QUEER FRIENDS, which is A THING, but I get to WALK TO THIS ONE, so if I get WINE DRUNK at 4pm, it'll be FINE.
Probably. :)
As a final note I suppose I should say, the work-in-progress noted as point 1 of this entry has been split into three parts.
Part 1 ended (without any editing!) at 131710 words.
Part 2 is at the midpoint (roughly), and sitting at 65059 words.
Apparently all it take for me to write like there's no tomorrow is for someone to go, "what about...", at which point I will go, "OH YEAH" and write literally 100k words in a month.
Well then.
(Are they good words? I mean, it's a rough draft and it's being written incredibly fast, so it has all the plot and structure of hot wet jello, as my mentor liked to say when I was in graduate school, but I'm having fun and the sole person reading it is also enjoying it, so.)