Training Boundaries

The air here is significantly more grirty than my body is rated for. It’s not great, even inside (not that inside and outside are super distinct in a century old house). It did keep the temperature down though, and made a passible impression of heavy overcast. My eyes could really go for some fall weather though. That constant falling most for a few days would go a long way toward sanity ¹Mine at least. The city is still in the middle of this thing where we pay cops overtime to organize violent assaults and property damage, while the mayor lies to and threatens citizens, so overall levels of sanity are pretty low. and air quality.

Started training dog for a radio fence system, so we can let him outside. There’s not much room for a physical barrier, and even if there was I’d like to give Dog the option to flee. If the cops show up I don’t want him trapped ²If he decides I’m not tolerable I don’t want him trapped. – cops kill a lot of dogs. I also appreciate the concept that I’m communicating boundaries to Dog, not giving him orders. The amount of will he would need to disagree is very small.

Spent lots of time on hold today, dealing with utilities and banks. The cable company thinks they need paperwork to cancel but can’t get it sent to me. The telcom has the wrong email address for me and so I can’t pay my bill. And the bank has been hassling me ³The credit card reliably has 30+ minute hold times. Today was 47 minutes, a transfer, and another 22 minutes in that queue. Hold times are not longer than normal. You are understaffed, by design. Don’t tell me to use your website – you decided not to let me do this on the website, that’s literally the only reason I would ever call. with this credit card fraud thing for weeks now. But I made progress on all 3, so it was probably worth the effort.

I’m back on the queue next week, and I think almost ready for it. I didn’t quite hit 0 before rolling in, but I’m still at tolerable levels, and feeling more up to paying attention to the day job than I have been. I knocked out some non-SR work yesterday that will give me some cover, and helped quell the dread.

Got spice racks up today, which Shanda was very excited about. It does make our good storage eaiser, and helps the kitchen feel settled. The basement still seems daunting to get setup, which is not great for household projects, but it also keeps getting bumped for injury or urgency or somesuch, which makes it difficult to gather momentum. Maybe September is finally our month to rest.

Tomorrow is robot kickoff, for a season with no meetings and no competitions and no access to our workshop. We can still find things to do, but it will be harder to find people to do them. It will be harder to get people to work together. But mostly I’m afraid it will make future teams real thin. I’d hate to lose my team to the pandemic. But we’ll see what the game is, and who we can get interested.

These last two have no shape. I’m letting that be, but it’s not what I hope for. Are my expectations wrong? How have I moved before, between the ones with shape and the ones that are just a series of unrelated plot notes?

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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