I begin today's blog entry with this happy memory from my childhood — the ubiquitous puddy tat that always seemed be somewhere nearby at my great aunt and uncle Spickard's house next door as I was growing up.

This morning, Susan has gone to take care of a patient being discharged from the hospital. She has to dress a wound. I've been struggling with anxiety and depression and messaged my friend-in-similar-straits, KB, via Facebook Messenger, to inquire about how well he's coping with his own symptoms.

I think I've been so stressed at work at Adanta that I've felt the urge to escape, but I wonder if I'm not better off to stay put and see it through. I only lack 4 years till full retirement. At least that will be a few hundred dollars a month, and I could then seek to embark on another 10+ year career elsewhere (or else re-contracting with Adanta).

I've also been working on the Unit 4 Step 2 lesson in my C# programming social learning units on my Facebook group.

Four days until Christmas. I haven't posted a blog entry in 9 days.

I've been having a lot of anxiety, chiefly I think due to the mess in TR: Kelly on leave, C being so high-maintenance. I actually faked a reason to be off work yesterday and interviewed with Heritage Children's Services at their Somerset location. MG was one of the two who interviewed me. I think my chances of getting it are pretty decent. It might only turn out to be $1500-$2000 more than I'm making, but I just feel I need a change. There's no chance of me advancing further where I'm currently working.

On another front, I've been spending some effort to gather group members and promote my William Miller Services side business. Group membership is growing well, but I've not seen an uptick in sales of various services.

Rough week. Friday, Supe and I did a written reprimand and PIP on someone.

I hate this kind of work stress. The personal/personnel kind. I can handle work-load/paperwork stress much easier. I put the dogs to bed last night at 7:40 and was in bed reading at 8pm. Still recovering from the UTI.

I'm 28% into my current Variant Publications proofreading job, which is around 193K words total. Today, I will also work more on Tracie S's dissertation proposal.

Okay day at work. No noteworthy drama. K and D don't like each other, still. I've got a touch of burning sensation when I urinate. I've been eating cranberries and drinking some cherry juice.

My shoulders, neck and back are hurting really badly, like they did 2-3 weeks ago. I've taken four Ibuprofen and had a fair amount of whiskey. It's easing, some. But, I'm going over my calorie allotment for the third day in a row. No help for it. It was 38 °F by the time I came through Columbia after work.

It's gonna be cold all weekend, I think, so I'll have to work-out on the exercise bike, probably.

I've been doing some light reading on Docker containerization this evening. We finished Money Heist (what's available currently) last night, and tonight we've just watched one-offs.

S is also having significant shoulder, neck, and back pain, so perhaps it is the weather causing it.

I've been installing a few apps on my laptop via Chocolatety. I have the space: I removed about 3 GB of games from my hard drive (still available on a backup drive).

It has been a busy week. Eleven groups and too many emails and spreadsheets. And to top it off, I think I'm coming down with something: too many aches in too many places. Hopefully it isn't Covid, back for round two.

I'm hoping to finish assessing Desolation RPG as a potential rules manual from which I can cherry-pick for my intended solo campaign. But I also need to work on 6 CEU hours for an EMDR training I purchased weeks ago. October 30th isn't that far off. I need to be able to show 10+ completed CEU hours to my licensing board.