recently reconnected with family on my dad’s side. tl;dr on him is that he was a terrible person but his family reached out to see me again, after 10 years. we didn’t talk about him at all, and instead mostly about my dogs. was pleasantly surprised that they were not of a different political affiliation than me, too.

also recently got back into working on my homelab! scored a crazy deal on ebay for a custom built NAS with 8 bays, just missing the hard drives. I want to ideally replace the power supply because the brand seems questionable (it’s 30 dollars for one on amazon) but the other parts are solid and I really like the case. hopefully me and my partner can round up some more hard drives in the future for expansion into the NAS. at current we have a RAID 1 mirror of two 10TB drives in a synology off the shelf NAS. but other than that, I recently wiped everything to start over again, because somehow, my cousin who works in IT thought it was a good idea for me to use root login and I had no means of protection up on the server whatsoever. at least I insisted on using a VPN to connect to it…

other than that, one of my dogs recently had dental surgery (he’s okay!) and I started playing Destiny 2 again with my partner and joined a clan, loving it a lot. did my first raid in years after the last one was such a disaster it was a tipping point in me quitting the game originally.

things are okay? I think? and I’ll take it to be totally honest.

also, nice to be back!

Finally done with reno and in the process of moving into the new space 🥳. With my wife back to wfh I’m able to get out to the gardens for focused work a few hours each day and that has made a marked improvement in my mental health.

This afternoon I’m off to a meeting with representatives of the state library to protest their planned changes for what public libraries will have to do in order to receive funding and access to interlibrary services. There are some libraries here that would lose all their access and funding simply because they’re run by volunteers or because they’re entirely funded by small donations instead of from their town. If you live in Maine, please please go to your local library and find out what they need in terms of help. Actually, come to think of it, go do that regardless of where you live

Its been hard, we lost the girl whose been in our family for 18 years.

Stayed up too late watching election returns. Nice seeing some younger people win.

Went on a trip to see my adoptive grandparents. It’s a multigenerational household of them, their kids, and grandkids.

Thought I’d be in a for a bad time because I hated my hometown while growing up. If you weren’t a part of the in-group, welp. You’re done for lol. And the area is so small and limiting… But I came here for the people, and because I didn’t want anymore regrets with not being close to family.

Ended up being a lot cozier than I thought. I was reminded of the bits of my childhood that were good. I reconnected with people I never thought I’d see again. And although I still think the area sucks, I still adore the people I got to know while growing up here. c:

(Hmm that sounds like a joking sentence, but I genuinely mean it lol. Would never recommend anyone to live here, and I always recommend that people leave. 💀)

I’m in a hotel in South Scottsdale, Ariz. I woke up in Tucson, intending to spread the remainder of my dad’s ashes in the Catalinas, but as these things go, the flooding closed all the parks. So we ended up in Tucson for no reason.

In better news, Mom and I are seeing Elsbeth tomorrow for lunch. She was the person who when I biked around the neighbourhood always had baked goods ready to go and introduced me to Korats. I hope to also see Max, but to mention much more about them risks placing me as a … let’s just say my current commune plans aren’t compatible with the owner of a Rolls Royce and Jaguar dealership.

I don’t intend to ever come back to Arizona again. Eighteen years is enough of a sentence.