What's everyone up to right now?

[Gwaithmir]

I'm watching three big, fuzzy raccoons running around in my front yard.

Can't match that; there are no raccoons in Oz. We do have possums.

My house is set at the base of a cul de sac, with a linear park running across the back, about 100 metres further down the hill. The park runs along a creek, so there are lots of native birds and animals around.

Kookaburras can be often heard, but I've only ever seen any once;  a pair, about the size of a chicken, perched on a branch outside my kitchen window. (the window has reflective film, so they couldn't see me.) Several kinds of colourful parrots are more common.


I ONCE saw a koala  as I was on a walk along the creek. A large male, sitting in the fork of a tree, staring stupidly at me. ( most Australian native animals make your average sheep seem intellectually gifted)

I live in Chester, Massachusetts, USA. Chester is a small hilltown nestled in the eastern foothills of the Berkshire Mts. Raccoons are common here. My home is located on a mountainside with a scenic view of a valley. Most of my property is forested. I also frequently observe bears, deer, foxes, wild turkeys and squirrels.

[Clueless Morgan]

Okay, not really.  Just dropping in to say hi since I've been MIA for a long time.

An update:

Next week is my 1 year anniversary of ending treatments - YAY! and I'm doing way way better than I was last year.  Like night and day better.  Not just healthy-wise but mindset, too.  I was put on antidepressants last year for very very good reasons and I'm trialing going off one of them now.  So far so good.

I'm taking a painting class with my sister who is currently home from Ireland.  It's amazing the change cancer can have on a relationship, I gotta say.  We get along much better as adults than we did as kids but man alive we're practically besties now.  I think she feels a little guilty for leaving the country basically right after I was diagnosed and came back right after I finished treatment so she missed the worst year of my life.  I don't care and I don't think she should feel guilty at all but it's been great having her home.

My actual besty has been home for more than four consecutive weeks now! Amazing, I know.  She's been traveling to the UK for two to three weeks at a time every... three to four weeks for the last nine months and she's finally getting a break.  So she's been home and we've been hanging a lot which has been nice.

My coworker besty announced that she's quitting so I've inherited a good portion of her projects and am being sworn in on the top secret inner workings of the hospital system for those projects.  Not really, but I do have an online training today to learn how to work their online project manager app where all the documents are shared.  Joy.

Because of this, though, I got an almost $15k a year raise and promotion to Project Manager so my business cards no longer have the stupid title of "Job Captain."  But that also means I've been very busy at work and don't have a ton of time to goof off here.  My at-home time has been largely spent attempting to regain my pre-cancer routines like cleaning, I now have two fish tanks I'm maintaining which are fun, I partaking in lots of kitty snuggle time, and I'm doing a personal year-long challenge of "do something visually artistic every day" like draw every day or paint every day or something.  I'm tracking that over on instagram (to keep me honest and on track) and I'm having fun with that.  I'm doing an online anatomy for artists course which has been a lot of fun.

Anyway, that's my update!

tl;dr: I'm busy working, having fun, working on projects, hanging with besties and celebrating my first official cancer-free year!

Love you all, miss you all, but I'm doing good and I hope you are too

PS. I am posting every day on instagram because of my everyday drawing challenge.  If you want to follow me there to keep in touch, DM me here and I'll give you my @  I'll make a calendar reminder to check af.org a couple times so I don't leave you hanging

[Rev. Rye]

Yup, still sick. At this point, I'm clearing my throat non-stop and I can only speak in short bursts.

[Cod]

I'm supposed to be working but I really cannot be bothered today, a massive hangover is contributing to my apathy.

[Angrboda]

Drinking a pot of decaf. This is a small sample of a store brand bulk coffee that I thought I'd try. I've been leaning towards lazy all morning and I'm thinking of putting off a bunch of things. I needed to check to see if an external hard disk which hangs my desktop from booting would do the same where it will end up, on the file server. It didn't. Thank goodness for small favors. That went off at the time I had planned to take care of it, but I'm supposed to be making chili right now, and I think I may procrastinate on that for a couple hours. I planned to start reinstalling Windows and all my programs at noon, but I may not do that until later. I went looking for tartar sauce last night at Cub Foods because they had a sale on it, but they were out of it there, and out of it at Target as well. I neglected to realize that I needed a red pepper for my chili, so I may just be irresponsible today and make a trip to Midway to get the pepper and the tartar sauce, which, hopefully they won't be out of either. I also need to pick up some Victor Allen individual K-cup pods there. Victor Allen K-cup pods can be had relatively cheaply in bulk, but these are sold for $0.49 each, giving me the opportunity to try the different blends before I buy in bulk. And at $0.49 each, that's about the price you pay for a more mainstream brand like Green Mountain on sale in a 12 count box. Win-win!

[Anomalocaris]

....I went looking for tartar sauce last night at Cub Foods because they had a sale on it, .....

Minnesota, or Illinois?

[Angrboda]

....I went looking for tartar sauce last night at Cub Foods because they had a sale on it, .....

Minnesota, or Illinois?

Minnesota!

[fredd bear]

It's 0803 Sunday here. Up, fed and watered. Not fully awake as I've only had the one espresso.

A very quiet day at fredd's cottage. Might go to the art supply shop later.


A true lazy Sunday. One of the many perks of having rejected religions of all kinds. Of course, Public TV is appalling on Sunday mornings, full of church services and choirs. Wouldn't mind if the choirs were half decent; some of my favourite music is liturgical.

[Kitty Galore]

Painters working on the house... working on a resume to get back to work. The man is taking his son to get his licence today!

[Jackalope]

Almost wrapped up prepping the house. Tomorrow everything not staying for staging or going with us in our travel trailer is going into storage. We're leaving Friday - there is a lot of other work to be done, but not by us.

We're really really hoping to be in a position to make offers on a new place in a couple of weeks so we can close by the end of May.