Aimless Ramblings

My son and I went for a walk/hike along the parkway on Memorial Day. 6 miles, which I previously would have considered a short hike when I was walking or running at least once a week. Now? My feet were sore by the end of it. But my plantar fasciitis is definitely better, because after a day of rest, my feet were fine.

We saw a coyote, which might have only been our son's second sighting of one? It would have been the first, but there was a coyote on our front lawn a couple of weeks ago. Not good. :(

Tuesday, I was out there biking again, and at my last turnaround point (a nice shady spot), I saw what looked the the biggest, fattest caterpillar ever shuffling across the pavement! When I got closer, I saw that it was a tiny mole. :O I haven't seen a mole since I was a kid, when we were out digging in the yard for one of my dad's interminable child labor projects. Possibly the summer we made a French drain? Anyway, my brother put the shovel in the ground, and it came out with a large mole on top of the dirt. Ewwwww, but those things are ugly. We put it in an empty Folgers coffee can, and my brother later walked it several blocks up the road to release it into the forest patch that abutted our property.

My husband's wildlife sighting beats mine, though. He was out riding his recumbent trike yesterday, and had to slow because a skunk and her babies were crossing the path. He gave them a wide berth, which I think could have ended badly. I would have waited until they were all the way across and out of sight!

Speaking of skunks, I've decided the odor at the downriver spot where I turn around is skunk and not weed. That's because the mystery construction project beyond the clump of tall bushes there has moved much closer, and you can't smoke weed while working construction. Fortunately, the smell has cleared away from the surrounding areas. Nearby, I biked past one of my favorite smells: the sweet, peppery aroma given off by the buds of wild grapes. No idea why they smell like that this time of year, but it's very consistent!

Do you all have plans for the weekend? We're going out for a belated anniversary dinner tonight, and then tomorrow I need to get my new laptop running. Always a chore...

I only work Monday-Thursday, so this would normally be a 4-day weekend for me. I'd thought we might go somewhere for our anniversary, but that was when I thought Memorial Day was NEXT weekend. So, maybe in June?

I feel like I missed most of yesterday, due to filling out Disability Accommodation forms and routing the needed ones to my doctor. What's happening is that my company is demanding people go into the office to work a minimum of twice a week. But after the pandemic, my division (and probably most) shrank the office space and radically changed the environment. Instead of having individual cubicles (which kept getting smaller over the years), the office now consists of rows of long tables with people packed in side-by-side. Most of the employees are software or hardware engineers, so this is the worst possible environment for getting that kind of work done! And with my ADHD, particularly the problem I have with visual distraction, I will not be able to get any work done there. You can use headphones to combat noise distraction, but without high cubicle walls, there's no way to hide the movement of all the people next to, in front of, and behind you. Plus, I don't think you should have to fight an unreasonable office environment just to try to do your job. :( So, I'm requesting to be exempted from the in-office policy and allowed to just continue working from home. Fingers crossed, because otherwise I'll probably have to retire earlier than I want to. :(

For intentional viewing, I recently finished a couple of TV series on Amazon Prime. The first was the one-season New Blood, where the bromance and humor really made the show. The second was In My Skin, a drama set in Wales that involves a teenager trying to cope with high school, a bipolar mother, and a vicious alcoholic father. It was very good, and it was interesting to see the wiry Rhodri Meilir playing another villain (he's also in the first season of Hidden). Now I'm onto A Taste For Murder (scenic fluff set in Capri) and may be continuing with 35 Diwrnod? That last is a Welsh mystery series where the language is entirely Welsh, but you miss part of the dialogue because notifications like "Beti speaking" obscure parts of it. Some idiot missed the fact that if you can't hear WHO is speaking, it's still more important to know what they're saying. \o?

Now I need to do some work on the photo albums before we go out tonight (dinner and In The Grey).