Jagrafess, what Jagrafess??

Decided to take the opportunity to use the cute woeful kitten icon on this, because I haven't used it in awhile and both I and my cat are kind of woeful.

I have had workers in my home 5 of the last 7 days, and they're due to come again on Thursday, and then more yet to be determined. The things they are doing have required me to keep my cat Nova contained while they're present, and we have not enjoyed having her freedom of house restricted.

My home is nearly as old as I am, which is to say it's nearly 50. Which means there are all kinds of interesting quirks built in from the start, and interesting things that various home owners did to it in the time since, which includes things like weird decisions when putting wiring in (like, why do these light switches connect to these things instead of these things? Why do I have to walk ten feet into this room to reach the switch for the ceiling light instead of using the one right by the door? Who knows.) But one of the big things is an extreme lack of insulation. Both in the walls and around the ductwork. Which is super-fun here in SE Virginia where it gets hot and very humid during the summers, and thus the ducts transmitting the cold air get condensation all over them. And thus get rusty. And moldy. And start to leak. So eventually, those leaks started actually getting through my downstairs ceilings, and finally started messing up my HVAC unit also. So, I have been through several phases of deconstruction and construction already, and still have a few more:

• Phase 1: Demolition of the messed-up parts of the ceilings.


• Phase 2: an industrial air scrubber and industrial dehumidifier running very loudly for 36 hours to clean and dry the air.


• Phase 3: Replacement of my be-gunked HVAC unit.


• Phase 4: Replacement of my ductwork (honestly the worst part - the noise the electric...saw, I guess?... made was reminiscent of the cavity drill at the dentist, except 10 times louder. Excruciating and headache-inducing for both me and my cat. Nova spent the day that was happening hiding in the far back corner of my office behind my desk.)


• Phase 5: More ceiling demolition because they missed some previously, resulting in yet more of my stuff sitting out randomly. This one was today, and fortunately it didn't last very long, but they didn't want to disturb me while I was working and so just... left when they were done. So I just wandered out eventually because it'd gotten so quiet for so long, and eventually confirmed they weren't coming back.


• Phase 6: Cleaning of the ductwork on Thursday.


• And then, finally, phase 7, reconstruction. TBD, both the when and the how long.

So you can see things are stressful, and costing me a lot of money, and no insurance won't cover it, I checked. Wheeeee, home ownership is such fun.

On top of the above fun times, work has been stressful the last few months as well. I'm still working for Large Corp, and in fact hit my 15th anniversary in November. This was only momentarily joyful, because in late October, we were reorganized and a bunch of people laid off as a consequence. Then more people were laid off at the end of November, and my now-former VP (who my team had been reorganized away from) announced he was planning to leave the company in January. Given what's happened this month, I've decided he saw the writing on the wall and decided to get TF out, because one of his leadership team who I worked closely with also made the decision to leave this month, and another was unexpectedly let go just last Thursday. (Like literally gone that very day, when usually they give a few weeks so you can distribute your work and possibly find another job in the company.) And then we found out that on my own team, two of our managers are being turned into individual contributors, and 3 people laid off, including someone I work very closely with, who I will miss a lot, and not just because a lot of her work will now land on me.

In the middle of all that work stuff, my Mom had major surgery that stressed us all out. She's absolutely fine, and was only in the hospital about 24 hours, but it was to clean a blockage in her carotid artery, so I call that pretty major no matter what. I traveled to be with my parents for a long weekend, and my dad and I wandered around the hospital for awhile because there was some bureaucratic confusion about where her room was going to be for the post-surgery recovery, and we went back and forth and all around and basically got our steps in for the day. But she was able to go home for lunch the next day.

So, yeah. Infodump city up there, and most of it not great. Things could be worse, though - I still have a job, and a home, and the repairs being done to me home won't bankrupt me. So... happy 2024, I guess? It can only go up from here? I hope?