I want to give everyone a break and a stress free vacation.

for real. and also a hug or whatever kind of support you need or want.

It is crazy windy here. I was working in DC and my friend who I work with and I left at 3 to avoid trying to make it back during rush hour storms. Thank goodness. But now I need to go out to help try to recruit more riders at the org I do the big ride for every year. Because I promised I'd go and I'd feel guilty if I didn't. Also, there will be pizza. Good thing I'm sturdy and unlikely to blow away!

That sounds perfect, msbelle.

My colleague in DC said they had tornado warnings! We just have rain, not even wind yet. Which is good, since it still took a million years to get home, but at least my umbrella didn't break!

msbelle, awesome.

Roof leaking. Including the threshold I thought I'd (temp) fixed. Steady stream upstairs.

Now need to go check basement. That was/ is a lot of water coming down.

Oh, that's awful for Tim.

AA isn't for everyone, but there are lots of other recovery options out there, and your brother is going to need long-term support. I'm glad he's on the upswing at the moment, though.

Y'all, I'm on my break -- I'm at one of my big songwriting convention type events. I stayed at my prof's place last night on our way up here (me and one of his other students, the guy who does his tech for him). And it's been so great already, but sheesh, these things are so intense on my poor little brain. So much to take in, all the time.

That sounds great, msbelle.

And Liese!

I'm sorry about your aunt, sarameg.

The severe weather has moved on, with minimal damage in my immediate area. I didn't even lose power. Safety~ma to the next people in the storm's path.

Yay for intense and interesting convention, Liese, but I do get that overstimulating is overstimulating, even when it's good. Give yourself some down time too.

Speaking of down time, I guess I took some today? But turns out I don't follow my own advice there very well so I've been beating myself up a bit for not getting more grading done.

Downtime is good!

So, here's an interesting development: there was a groupon, so I ordered some vaping stuff, and I like it! The e-cig thing came with a bunch of goofy flavors, and I even like those. Huh.

Jesse, as a replacement for actual cigarettes? If you want to quit you can also slowly decrease the nicotine in the vape, so you're only psychologically dependent...

Trying to get all my work stuff done before vacation, not sure I will.

Burrell, you probably need down time.

That goes for everyone in NC.

8-ish miles from Calli, my office ended up with hard rain and no drama. No weather drama, anyway, but with a giant open-plan office that we all super hate, the only windowless (non-bathrooom) spaces are the two small conference rooms that seat 6.

So our whole department hung out with the whole marketing department while deploying a code change that required several rollbacks for stupid niggly shit that didn't really do a lot of harm but would've been annoying and couldn't be caught before we went to production because reasons, and marketing is now TOTALLY IN AWE of our arcane knowledge and strange programmer vocabulary.

(Little do they know that most of our deployments involve someone saying in the chatroom "deploying now" and then a couple of minutes later, "done".)