Ang's Journal

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This is the big month. I'm having friends & family descend upon Ouray County starting June 11th. My parents arrived on June 13th & they are planning to move out here! They're looking for a house in Montrose, the "big city" of ~20,000 located a half-hour north of Log Hill Village.

June 16th is Mom's birthday. We're having a dinner at my current favorite restaurant, the Lazy Dog Saloon, to celebrate her birthday & kick off wedding festivities.

The BIG DAY is June 17th. Wedding is at 11 AM, reception will run from noon to 3 PM. Alan & I will spend the night at an undisclosed location. This will also be my parents' 57th anniversary.

Sunday June 18th is Father's Day & we're having a good-bye brunch at our house.

My five-year sobriety anniversary is June 20th.

I'm actually calm (so far). Work is crazy, but work is always crazy. I'm in decent health & decent shape - I actually weighed myself this morning & I'm at the lowest weight I've achieved since moving out here in August 2020. The wedding planning is nearly complete. Money is tight, but I think we can get everything paid for without too much stress (or borrowing).

I'm ready to become Ms. Angela Todd.

Sleep: SH said 11:20 PM – 6:30 AM, but I definitely stayed in bed later than that. We’ll call it 8 hours. Headache was gone when I awakened.

Program: I tried to attend an AA meeting in Traveler’s Rest, but Google Calendar helpfully changed the meeting time from noon to 10 AM because it thought I entered it in MST. Grrrrrrr.

Tasks: I tried to be helpful around the house today. I cleaned the spare bathroom. I did some laundry (mostly mine). I took Mom shopping in Hendersonville. Then we watched a bunch of college football.

Food: Potato pancakes & bacon (& coffee w/milk) for breakfast, snacked on mint Oreos & taquitos, then dinner at Yellow Ginger – I had Malay sweet & sour chicken. It was a citrusy version of General Tso’s chicken. I skipped the rice.

Exercise: A mashup of rowing, arm weights, & stationary bike. My left arm – particularly my triceps – is noticeably weaker than my right arm & the muscle twitches when under strain. I’m trying to decide how worried I am about it, & who I should ask about it. I suspect it is related to the pinched nerve I had in my neck last… Year? Two years ago?

Mood: Definitely ready to go HOME.

Grats: 1. Dogs! 2. I got to chat with A* briefly. 3. B* & I are going to be workout accountability buddies.

Goals from last year:

1) I will attend at least 100 SQUID practices this year.

Not even close. I did 26 swim practices this year. I need to find another workout venue, because Squid weekday practices are inconvenient enough to be a real disincentive, & I never make Saturday practices because we're always on the go on the weekends. Possible alternatives: swimming at Denver Recreation facilities, finding another team with better practice times, or maybe picking up a different activity. I have toyed with the idea of just throwing myself into skiing & hiking, & maybe doing yoga.

2) I will compete in at least one swimming competition this year, either a pool meet or an open-water event.

Nope. I let my uncertainty about my new job derail my training & missed all the summer events.

3) I will overpay my mortgage by at least $4,000 this year.

Nope. We overpaid by $1,916.05. Good but not great. Still, we have done well in our first year of homeownership. We owe $320,172.25 on the mortgage, & our realtor estimates our house could sell for around $370,000. Our neighborhood has been proposed for historic district designation, which would likely drive up values. We're doing well with Breezehome.

4) I will earn, in some fashion, some income from any source OTHER than my AECOM paycheck.

Yessss.

5) I will log at least 30 Whole30-compatible meals a month into MyPaleoPal.

No. I have actually done an about-face on this. Instead, I have been attending Overeaters Anonymous & trying to work through some of my weird issues around food.
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Health: Weird year. I worked on mental health for a while, then stopped. I worked on weight loss, then realized I'm all fucked up in the head about weight & food. I feel good but I need more exercise for sure. Still not sleeping well. It's not been a great year healthwise. But I did achieve some of the specific goals I had last year: I grew some food in my own garden, I learned how to brew kombucha (I have a batch going right now), & I'm eating more seafood & vegetables than ever before.

HEALTH GRADE: Change in direction required.

Wealth: We did pretty well this year! We didn't make any huge outlays, & didn't realize any huge windfalls. We just plugged along, paying down debts, saving money in assets. Very boring, very pedestrian.

Change in assets, 2016: increased by $55,011.64
Change in debts, 2016: decreased by 10,817.27
Change in rough net worth, 2016: increased by $65,828.91

WEALTH GRADE: Steady Freddy.

Happiness: This year has been volatile. HPG & I nearly broke up in late summer. I'd say we are doing much better now. My job transition was stressful, but overall I think it was a good move. Larger trends - political, mostly - have made me wonder if our world is worth saving. We've made some good friends in our neighborhood, & met even more great people this year. I've spent tons of time in the mountains, exploring the beautiful areas around Denver. But the year's finish - the surprise discovery of my elder brother Richard - means that 2016 can never be anything but amazing.

HAPPINESS GRADE: Despite everything, would 2016 again.

Plans for 2017

I dunno. I did so badly with my resolutions in 2016 so maybe this year I'll just see how things go. Or I may write another post later with some modest goals.

So my dishwasher died a few days ago. It died in a very tricksy fashion - it would turn on & make lots of dishwashing sounds, but no water would ever enter the machine & obviously no actual washing occurred. It took me a couple of days to convince the landlord that, yes, I looked in the manual, & no, I don't think I've got the settings wrong. Anyway, it's a weird size (read: small) of dishwasher, so the landlord had to special-order it, & I won't have a dishwasher until May 21st at the earliest. Curses.

So over the past couple of days, I've had lots of vegetables spoiling in my fridge. Which is annoying, because I usually buy stuff for a specific recipe. When the collard greens go bad unexpectedly, one cannot prepare a smoke salmon & collard greens scramble. I turned down the thermostat in the fridge incrementally over a couple of days, but the fridge didn't feel cold, & things kept spoiling. The freezer stayed cold though. Another call to the landlord - this time, she didn't argue with me, she just ordered a new fridge. Which will arrive tomorrow. I loaded everything freezable into the freezer & threw out a ton of stuff. CURSES.

My Bobo Bro moved into his new downtown condo over the weekend & his move went incredibly smoothly - until he started looking around for a cable jack to have internet turned on (a big deal, since he works from home & needs internet access). No ... cable jack? Anywhere in the condo? After a lot of calls to the former owner & the condo association, he learned that there is a cable - but it got buried in the wall during a recent insulation project. Why? Because reasons. Anyway, he will not have internet access this week. So his home office has been relocated to my kitchen table, & I'm working from home in the back bedroom while he's working from home out there. It's actually been very nice to have someone to talk to during the day.

hotpantsgalore should arrive home today!

*blows dust off of LJ*

Wow, I haven't been here in a while. Which is a shame, really. I like having a journal. But like so many, I have been sucked into the short format version of journaling known as Facebook. It's much easier to come up with one or two sentences (especially when I can just type them in on my phone) than it is to write a full post.

Soooo.... my last post was on June 4th. Since then, I have spent 3 months on a field assignment in Conroe, Texas. We are repairing a landfill at a Superfund site that was leaking. By my standards, this has been a GREAT field assignment - Conroe is close enough to home that I've been staying at home, yet I'm getting overtime. And since we're repairing the landfill, we're not actually in contact with any of the contaminated material, so we haven't had to wear too much safety gear. This is a very nice thing when working outside, in Texas, in July & August.

(I mean, we're still wearing long-sleeved shirts, hard hats, steel-toed boots, & gloves, but at least we're not wearing respirators or Tyvek.)

It has been a pretty boring summer. hotpantsgalore sold peaches in Austin for most of the weekends, so we didn't see much of each other - until late August, when we took at a ten-day trip to the Pacific Northwest. Then we visited Seattle & Portland, & Shay got to meet a lot of my family on my mother's side. We stopped by Crater Lake & visited Fort Rock. It was a superb trip - very fun, very relaxing, & it was great to catch up with my family. They all loved HPG, like there was any doubt about that.

Health has been.... not bad, but not great. I have put on a lot of weight since doing the triathlon in February, & this is because I am getting almost no exercise. No excuses, just pure laziness. In the last few weeks, my right shoulder has flared up something awful & I have an appointment next week with an orthopedist to weld it back together (or whatever they're going to propose to fix it).

I am still really enjoying living in Houston. Our neighbors & neighborhood are simply fantastic. The more I learn about our neighborhood, the more fun things I find to do within walking distance of the house. I have also become very involved with my church, & I will be officially joining the church next month. It's WEIRD to think about being a member of a Baptist church, but I love Covenant & I want to be eligible to be a deacon or a council member, so I'm going to join. In the meantime, I am on the Facilities Committee, I lead Bible study classes, & I'm going to be the lay worship leader during Advent. I've also been volunteering with an outreach program to homeless GLBT teens, which is heartwarming/heartbreaking.

This field project (originally billed as 4-6 weeks, now completing our 12th week on the job) SHOULD be wrapped up this Tuesday. We are working through the weekend to make that happen (boo hiss). Wednesday & Thursday are booked with doctor's appointments that have been put off all summer, & then Friday-Sunday HPG & I will be in Austin for the ACL Music Festival. The lineup is incredible: Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Black Keys, Florence + The Machine, Weezer, Rufus Wainwright, The Shins, & about 2 million other bands. After that, I will finally be back in the office - I wonder if they gave someone else my desk?

I'm leaving South Carolina this Thursday (July 10th). That will exactly one month after I got here. Mom, while not thrilled about this, has acquiesced. Basically, I told her I was homesick & that I felt she was doing well enough to manage without me. I presented my schedule as a fact, & she didn't argue. So all that strategizing was for naught.

I'm trying a different route home, so as to avoid I-85, the Most Boring Interstate Ever. This new route is also a bit shorter (640 miles, according to Mapquest). I can't WAIT to go!!

So, should I tell Stacy my leave date, or just show up on Thursday night?

"As far as getting rid of stuff, two moves equals one fire."

-- Laverne McPherson (my grandpa)