Monday (technically today >.>) is Canadian Thanksgiving! We're making a turkey, and we tag-teamed making the pies today. Wererogue made the crust, Longpig pretty much took care of the pumpkin on her own - while she was putting it together I started rolling the crust for the apple, then she and I peeled/chopped/did the other prep together. It was eerily well timed! Like as I finished one thing it was exactly timed to start the next and so on. They both look beautiful. Tomorrow is for Turkey! We're having some friends over, since they didn't already have plans and we have a 12lb turkey!

I went out this afternoon while the rest of the fam were going to see the new My Little Pony movie, and got apples for the pie and ran some other errands. We did already have apples, but I brought home cortlands, which are the superior pie apple. I should have gotten a nice sharp cheddar to go with it though, damn. Ahh well, I think we have some kind of cheese, anyway.

I also spent some time updating my ravelry stash, though I'm nowhere near fnished. Maybe tomorrow? And of course I posted my Yuletide letter!

And that was most of my day. I did some laundry and slept in and vacuumed and tidied my room, too I guess. It's nice not to feel super rushed, because of the long weekend and for staggering the holiday cooking. I'm grateful to have family to spend it with. Even if I have more cleaning to do tomorrow, including a bathroom and stair vacuuming, which are things I hate the most (other than dusting).

Probably she'll see this somewhere, anyway.

I made cupcakes, and I got her one of those dodgy Chinese-manufactured ~assymetrical hoodies~ from a facebook ad. It was not as bad as some of the reviews said (reviews I only looked at after I'd ordered, because I'm clever that way), but not all I'd been hoping for. It is a cotton polyester blend, in that it is mostly polyester and probably there is some technical standard minimally being met? The arms are tight but it is wearable and she seems happy enough with it, anyway. I guess I could have gone a size up. Knitting was nice tonight, and I'm glad I cajoled her into coming out. I'm about 2/3 of the way into chart 11 (of 13) of Pulled by the Sunset.

Work was BUSY today! Not only with self-assigned projects, but just lots of people in and around doing various research things. And more of the same tomorrow! I'm hoping to get some things Put Away tomorrow, and I need to contact one of the grad students to do the same.

So much to do, so little time....

Time for bed! Before midnight! I mean, not by much, but I'll take it...

No children were murdered! I did have to almost put myself in timeout a few times, but they always balked and then settled down a bit when I told them I was done with them and was going to hide in my room. I think I let them have too much sugar today, but we are out of milk except chocolate milk, and a friend brought them chocolate cookies, and so on >.>

They really were good most of the day, though, but I was ill :/ They remind me of longpig and I when we were kids, good and bad.

Anyway, I managed without parents, but with help, for four days! And back to work tomorrow. And maybe some kind of other normalcy as well?

Nary and fam are here this weekend, while Longpig and Wereroge are away, and I have the nephews.

We mainlined Voltron season 3 yesterday

I've been feeling weird off an on all day - lightheaded and sorta dizzy. We had ribs from ribfest fro dinner and they were pretty tasty, and there are plenty of leftovers for tomorrow. Also made peach ice cream.

Sleep now. At least I turned off the kids alarm clock >.>

Today is a day of intense tiredness. I'd almost blame PM's but the timing is all wrong. Ugh, bodies. Ovulation, maybe? Because I need everything to get more intense, that's just peachy.

Work was fine, tomorrow is our Strategic Retreat, which is a little ominously named, especially since it has the potential to determine my future job prospects... And also the last day of filming.

We had a family meeting to talk about how we need to do better at keeping house... I guess we'll see if that has any impact.

Early bed for me I think. I'm wiped despite a mini-nap earlier.

I am really sock. I have a super shitty cold. I thought that I was past the leaky face bits yesterday - or the day before even - but no, they returned full force around 4 PM, after I'd booked a 10am meeting for tomorrow. I'd felt so much better this morning, but tonight my sinuses are inflamed (really visibly so - my face is red and hot to the touch), and I'm tired and my asthma is acting up. And I can't find my inhaler, it isn't in any of the places it should be /o\ I really don't want this to get in my lungs. I've been doing sinus rinses (gross but better than the alternative) but they only help so much.

Of course this happens when H&I are out of town for two weeks, so I have a lot more stuff that I need to do. No one else is going to walk the dogs or feed me :(

Ugh. I guess I'll see how I'm feeling in the morning, and if need be I can try and reschdule that meeting, but for now I'm just going to take it realllllly easy and hope for the best.

I was going to do a log of how I've been managing to feed myself, but other than Kraft Dinner yesterday I think I'll probably be okay. I can, in fact, remember how to food. I just can't taste any of it -_-

So this meeting tomorrow is to talk about cloud computing solutions for work.... it's going to be a hassle and a half. I need to talk to the campus IT people, too. I probably should have done first. This is gon' be a nightmare :p

Well, here goes I guess! Anyone know anything about cloud computing? :p

Oh oh oh!

Meanwhile, I got *THREE GIFTS* for Space Swap! And they're all excellent. I highly recommend them all :)

The Fabric of Space (4819 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Cthulhu Mythos - Fandom
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Additional Tags: Blood and Gore, Alien Culture, Alien Biology
Summary:

A jaded courier discovered that there is more to life than they ever imagined

--An amazing Mythis story that play around really interestingly with the canon tropes.
---

Beefcake of Marmora Hunks Calendar (0 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 5/?
Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Ulaz (Voltron), Thace (Voltron), Kolivan (Voltron), Antok (Voltron)
Additional Tags: blade of marmora, Worldbuilding: Blade of Marmora - Freeform, Art, Photoshop, Calendar, Hunks, buns, man meat, it's what's for dinner, space swap 2017, Treat, Beefcake, Crack, crack art, Butts, butts for days, Galra Empire
Summary:

Hey, if you're gonna resist a 10, 000 year old empire, you're gonna need to do a little fundraising. Who could say no to these foxy freedom fighters? :D

-Galra hunks calendar! It's amazing. What more can I say :D
--

To the Champion go the rewards (2054 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Relationships: Sendak/Shiro
Characters: Shiro (Voltron), Sendak (Voltron), Ulaz (Voltron)
Additional Tags: Background Matt Holt/Shiro - Freeform, Gladiators, Blood and Injury, Anal Sex
Summary:

Shiro, the Champion of the arena, is summoned to the private chamber of Commander Sendak.

--Voltron Non-con because I'm a bad bad person. But it's great! I love being in Shiro's...head >.>

I had a dream last night, though I don't remember it super clearly and it was not to begin with super linear. I may not even be remembering them in order - I am not super sure whether the UART or the home bits came first. It involved a few different elements:

UART:
I was working at A&M for a different museum there. We were having a staff meeting. One of the other women was trying to track down record for an old purchase. They'd bought a bunch of prints for resale, I think, and were trying to find out details, because some information that was now relevant was missing. I suggested talking to Cathy, my old boss, while I was thinking (but not saying) that we really ought to be part of UART. Cathy had been here long enough to remember that time and might know something about it, I suggested. The woman was ambivalent.

I later ran into Cathy in the hall. She was dressed sort of like McGonagal from the movies minus the witch hat. She initially seemed pleased to find out I was working there again, but then we talked about my citizenship. We talked about how expensive it had been to hire me as a Canadian, but I hadn't had to pay for it. Now I was a dual citizen (I'm not). She was mad at me for a: not having to pay and b: not having to choose. It came out that she had been forced to choose.

Home:
I was still living with Wererogue and Longpig and the kids, but we were in Moncton, in my maternal grandparents' old neighborhood, and kind of in their old house. It was late winter/early spring, and not too much snow left on the ground. I'd gone with were rogue to pick up the kids from school, which was down the road and around the corner by the park. We looked back and they were gone - we found them Krazy Karpeting down a very small hill. Wererogue told them that he was disappointed they hadn't listened, and that he had been planning to take them sledding on a bigger hill, but now they weren't going to be able to do that. They could go home or keep sledding where they were (it was a really tiny tiny hill, not even snow bank size). They were disappointed. At some point, Longpig managed to set the Karpet on fire from friction because there wasn't enough snow?

When I got home, there was a package. I didn't know what it was, but was told it might be Longpig's possum. Apparently the oven might have been leaking some kind of poison gas, and the way to tell was to keep a small possum in there and monitor it. To do so you should wear full surgical gear made out of maple (??). The possum had died.

Diablotin Jedi:
So I was also Denise, my Diablotin character, and she was a Jedi Padawan. Ander, her mobster-mentor in the game, was her Master. This connected to the earlier fragments in a few ways: when forced to choose earlier, I'd decided that the most important part of my identity was Rat, which is the House that Denise and Ander both belong to. We were dealing with these glass necklaces/fragments that had been part of that purchase where the records were missing. The glass was green with some purple, kind of like fluoride in mineral form. It had words impressed into some of the fragments, but either they weren't actually legible or I just don't remember them at all.

Ander was looking into one of these, and he had found out something, but wouldn't tell me because it was too dangerous. Possibly this related to some cryptic stuff Cathy told me as well? Something about this cause him to die in my arms, and it was very sad. It also somehow related to the possum, if only metaphorically? I don't remember/can't make sense of it now.

I managed to chase down the people who were dealing in this glass to The Docks (What docks? Who even knows, it was very generic). I had a fight with one dude, who had some kind of light saber whip. Obi-Wan Kenobi (Clone Wars vintage) showed up and helped me fight, also telling me that I shouldn't be there, that I didn't understand, that I would get myself killed, and so on. I was all 'but they killed my master!' of course, because Denise really would be a terrible Jedi. We (I) managed to beat the first guy.

The second guy ether ate or absorbed one of these pieces of ...ghost glass? it gave him glowing green wings. He gloated that we couldn't really defeat him. The first guy, who I had very throughly light-sabered, also started glowing green around his chest (the wound? I'm not sure now), and coming back to life.

Then I woke up and I don't know at all how anything resolved! Very frustrating!

Overall, I slept for crap and my back was killing me all night :/

Spent my morning faffing around the internet. but I have settled on my space swap premise at least, this time really. I also managed to actually order some storage bins and a storage Thingy (stand with bins?) for my room. The bins have a ridiculous delivery date of 1-2 months, but there's no real rush on them. Would it have been quicker to go to Walmart? Probably. But this is easier. I accidentally bought Amazon Prime; I may as well use it.

I went downtown and bought too much Candy. We were supposed to be getting stuff for Bubby's birthday party on Saturday, which was also achieved. I somehow lost a bag of watermelon slices on the way to the cash, so it could have been worse. Today was ridiculously warm, but it isn't going to stick quite yet. At least it isn't snowing! Yet...

Saturday is both the party and the LARP game I'm going to, which despite knowing both these things for ages now only came together in my mind tonight. so, that's unfortunate - I need to talk to Bubby tomorrow. I *will* be around on his actual birthday though, so I might promise to do stuff with him that night instead and see how that goes over. I'm such a jerk :(

In other sad news, Nary found out her grandmother died today.... She was old (97) and Very Ready, but still. That's also Nary's first grandmother to go - the other one had her 100th birthday last year. She's going down for the funeral, and flying back on Saturday... So she will be saying here on Saturday night! Which yay! But also Boo :( She's the third friend of mine to lose a grandmother in the last month, too.

In response to that, we had a chill evening, and she read to me more of the SW: rebels book (New Dawn?). I am enjoying the story and, of course, I do like the characters. It's pretty fast paced and the bad guy is basically an evil cyborg petty bureaucrat "efficiency expert", so basically everything that is the worst thing about "bad" management (it doesn't matter if people get hurt, this will make things go faster and that will please the Emperor) and also a psycho murderer. But Kanan and Hera! I feel like the author has done a good job back-projecting them. Kanan is the most different, but then Hera has been on a steadier path for a while. Then we watched a few more episodes of the show. And I got a lot of knitting done! I keep thinking I'm about to run out of this ball of yarn and then not.... but soon, surely. I hope the rest of it arrives soon and will work how I want it to!

I made macarons! Almond with raspberry cheesecake icing. They turned out okay - I was pretty impatient with them, and my tools were not ideal. So they were too soggy in the middle. But they were damned delicious, and I have a few idea what to do differently if (when) I try them again. I blame #yuletide for getting me thinking about experimental baking. I mean, I followed a recipe for the macarons, I'd just never done them before. But the icing was all by the seat of my pants: ~1/4 C each of butter and cream cheese, a big spoonful of raspberry jam, and icing until it came together at a good consistency. I didn't measure anything super precisely, just tossed it in the kitchenaid :V It tastes amazing: A++ would make again.

I mad them because we were going to a friend's place tonight and she has gluten issues. I was going to make a simpler mint meringue cookie, but then we didn't have the mint stuff and we *did* have almonds, and at that point I figured fuck it, just go for it! They have been devoured, at home and away. We (Longpig and I) went over for tacos and boardgames, and it was a very successful evening. Tacos were delicious, I ate too much candy, and we played several different short games for small groups (4 people), which was a nice change form games for large groups that take a long time. We played Ticket to Ride (my first time), Fluxx, and Carcasonne. I also drank a lot of rum and ginger, and ate waaaay too much candy.

Other than that, I played a lot with the kids today. We played pirates, and raided the granola bars, which was extra great because we weren't supposed to but also it was harmless ;) OTOH there was a lice scare in the littlest's class, and he has some sign so now I'm very much freaking out about that. For those who don't know me/have never seen pics, I have waist length hair... I'll get someone to check for me tomorrow - it really needed a good washing first. Here's hoping...

I slept for crap last night. As much as I say I'm getting better, is seems like I wnd up coughing a lot whenever I actually go to lie down to sleep, so that's fun. But the sinus congestion is definitely improving, so there is that! last night I also wound up getting disrupted a few times a I was going to bed, and it took me longer to actually get there than intended. I've been having sort of stressy dreams the past tow nights as well, but I barely remember any scraps of them. I think last night was employment related. I know I wound up doing a lot things I wasn't expecting, and basically never got to stop/sit down, and that my attitudes o thins in the dream were mixed. The night before last they were more violent, with me trying unsuccessfully to harm people I care about. Thanks for that, brain? I don't remember a lot of details, thankfully, but they felt very vivid and true at the time, so extra ugh.

I had kitty cuddles last night during family Voltron time ( have seen the whole of the show, but no one else here has yet). I took a reactine, knowing I would then have a terrible antihistamine hangover today. I do in fact have one of those - I slept in until 11 and had a hard time making myself get out of bed, and have been exhausted and brain-foggy all day, despite caffeine. It never used to have this kind of effect on my (other antihistamines do it too, and they also never used to), so yay body, thanks for that.

Despite the brain fog, I went out to the mall with my sister to use a coupon on chocolate, then helped her make soup for dinner, baked a cake, and made some valentines for the family (mostly for the kids, but enh). Dinner shortly, I believe, to enjoy that soup, which smells amazing.

The cake is for the 'Family cake walk'. There is a cakewalk at school tomorrow, but the kids wanted to have one at home. So I said I would bake a cake, but that we would draw names, and whoever won gt to decide what kind of cake to make. And I won! So I'm making my classic childhood birthday cake, which is a black forest (but not an authentic one.... chocolate cake, cherry pie filling, and whipped cream). I'll make the cream for it tomorrow and we can have ti for dessert. Nugsy thinks a cake walk should be when you walk and eat cake. I can't disagree that it's a great idea!

And now - dinner time :)