A Song in the Trees

I have a post half-written about my recent trip to visit my workplace in person and how it was much nicer than I expected, even if I came back just in time for Big Conference Deadlines and everyone I've collaborated with in the past year suddenly asking me for more data/figures/whatever to finish their submission on time.

But today I just feel exhausted. Kind of beats the near-panic attack I was at for most of last night. Trying to keep myself busy and making myself eat.

We've already seen the effects of the rightward shift at the organization where I work. I'm not on the front lines of it, but I've been in the video calls where the people who are were almost begging to be allowed to violate the law to keep serving our populations properly. I can't imagine how much worse it's going to get for both of them.

Been a busy March for me! I traveled down to give a presentation for work with my boss at a university we collab with a lot - it's a bit weird to now be the outside speaker at the grad student seminar instead of the grad student who didn't really want to be there 95% of the time, haha. We had a good reception to the talk and the students asked good questions, so I think it went well :) Also saw my parents and went to work in-person for a couple of days, then came home juuust in time for a bunch of snow!

A lot of my work time this past month has consisted of me bashing my head against code for a new project - I had to do some things which were not documented very well and then spent two weeks trying to figure out an error code/waiting for someone to be free to help me figure out my error. But now that it's finally solved, I'm making good progress. I have to use R rather than my fave Python, and I haven't used it for ages, so everything seems a little bit backward.

I also finally had my ENT visit to get my vocal cords looked at. I can't say I really enjoyed the experience - the office was huge and very Corporate, they repeatedly emailed me to ask me to fill out a bunch of forms beforehand only to then ask me in the office for information I had already filled in two or three times because nothing talks to each other and they can't actually see anything I filled in, and everyone seemed very rushed. The doctor outright told me that she didn't have time to read anything, so she had no idea what problem I was there for. (When I told her, she then asked why I hadn't seen anyone for my voice problems before now if I'd had them for so long. I almost laughed in her face. Maybe it seems like a medical problem if you're an ENT! Everyone else just thinks you're not trying hard enough.)

Also, I found out that having a tube down your nose sucks :( They did give me a numbing spray, but it still hurt a lot, even though that's apparently not supposed to happen? I guess I should have told her. Notes for next time. At least my vocal cords didn't have anything obviously wrong with them. They have scheduled me for another test as well, but I need to check with the speech pathologist to see if I need that done or not.

Watching skating Worlds this week was pretty fun. I'm happy KanaDai didn't fall over this time, and for the most part, the men's and women's events were pretty good, despite some heartbreaks. Seeing Katya going from :D to ??:(?? at her scores in the FS was rough, but it's not like she hasn't struggled with rotation for a while, so I can't say I was super surprised and I hope she can work on that. I'm pleased for the women's podium, especially for Kaori for hanging on after the popped flip to add a 3T and Loena for hanging on in general and committing to her performance despite the mistakes. And Kazuki did great despite his falls, even if he ended up improvising his step sequence in the FS (good job, Kazuks).

I liked having Belinda on the world feed during the Olympics, and she and Mark made a great team with good rapport. It really came across how much they enjoy watching good skating and keep up with it. They were positive without being blandly uncritical or simplifying technical critique down to nothing, and it was also pretty clear that they were happy to have full-grown adults vying for medals in the women's category. Would love to hear them team up some more :)

Fortunately, my company laptop arrived! Unfortunately, I have yet to be able to get the VPN working or even log in to the computer because I need to call IT first, which I haven't had a chance to because...

Fortunately, someone from HR called me about my benefits issue! Though it took a while to hear back from her (she didn't pick up when I called back a couple of hours after she said she would, but she did call again after 5), and though the problem still isn't fixed, she did assure me that the deadline to sign up for insurance and whatnot will be extended. I am still curious as to what the issue is that is apparently so hard to resolve, but at least progress seems to be being made.

I also called my property manager because of a problem with my rent, and nobody picked up at either the new phone number I was emailed or the old one. I ended up texting him about it, so maybe he will see it at some point. (The thermostat is still a bit fucked, which I will relay if I can ever get anyone to talk to me. You'd think if anyone was answering the new number, they would've returned my voicemail where I said my hot water had frozen to make sure it unfroze - it did - but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

In conclusion, I hate playing phone tag. At least tomorrow I am free to call IT and get the laptop set up.

I also couldn't get convolutional layers to work in RKeras today, but that's just R because hard like usual, and Tumblr won't show my most recent post in the tag, but that's Tumblr being Tumblr because it's a descriptive list of links to FS stuff, and we all know that links = bad.

In happier news, I also discovered a last-minute Olympics-themed event for YOI (here!), which looks fun! I might try to put something out for it. And also the snow-covered hills outside my window are very pretty, and it's expected to be warmer this week than last. And I may (or may not, we'll see) have a project at work soon :)

I came back home this morning, and my heat was back. Yay! I went out and skated for a bit, picked up a few groceries, then waited for a very late bus because wearing a binder + steep hill + very heavy backpack + walking on the road because the sidewalk was unshoveled + slippery slidey sidewalks that were shoveled did not sound like a great combination.

...my heat is now out again. I texted my landlord, but it's late enough that he's likely asleep. So I am currently curling up in bed to try and get some work done before going to sleep, since it's not unbearably cold yet. I plan to get up early and escape to my office on campus to work and watch Euros. Someone just came to look at the furnace with my landlord a few hours ago, too. I hope it's just the cold and not the furnace itself going.

We are predicted to get rain tomorrow already. Freezing rain, even. Goodbye, lovely snow :(

In happier news, I have reorganized most of my clothing drawers and tossed a few items into the recycle and donate piles (and a couple into the ever-growing mending pile, which I really need to start in on). Everything is much easier to see now. Yes, I have been watching the Marie Kondo show. I'm not into every aspect of her method, but that's fine. I can see all my cool socks in one go, now, and I put my winter clothes drawer back into order after it's spent three years descending into chaos. And I dusted my dresser and re-arranged my Victuuri nendoroids so that they are now being cute while celebrating with katsudon and flowers. My apartment is in a bit of chaos at the moment because the apartment's recycling bin is missing, but at least my bedroom is looking better.