Author: Alyxander James

Walking on Sunshine

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Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! The morning is already getting away from me, and it’s only just after 9am.

It’s been a good week, for the most part. Work has been a little bonkers, but not in an unmanageable way. We’re still totally in love with our dog. Last night we started obedience classes, and she did great – we definitely have a lot to work on at home, but I was impressed by how attentive she managed to be despite the room full of other dogs.

I don’t have a whole lot of really cogent thoughts this morning, so let’s make the end of this blog a gratitude list. Here are a few things that are making me happy these days:

  • The thing about having a dog is that I end up leaving the house a lot more now than I used to, and I’m walking, on average, even more than I did pre-pandemic in Chicago, when I was taking public transit everywhere. I am grateful that my body is making the adjustment to increased activity with a minimum of complaints. (My right leg definitely has some opinions and my sciatica flares up now and again, but it could be so much worse.)
  • Last weekend I had a conversation with some friends about community and what it means to us. I am so grateful that I have multiple places where I can show up as I am and be seen for who I am and have that celebrated. Thinking in particular of my “house church” and my D&D groups, but it’s definitely not exclusive to those two scenarios. I’m a very lucky human.
  • Nova continues to be the chillest dog (*knocks on wood*). I am so grateful that we were able to find this magical being who is already teaching me so much about patience and play and wonder. She really is the best and I’m so happy to have her with us.
Bonus photo of Nova being not-at-all interested in the pizza we were having for dinner.

She’s a Supernova

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Hello, dear readers! Welcome to Thursday. So much has happened in the last week!

I got my first professional haircut and beard trim in 18 months.

Freshly shorn

It feels really good to feel like me again in a way I haven’t I’m a while. Even though I’ve been cutting my own hair every couple of months, I don’t do nearly this good of a job.

The most important news of the week, though, happened on Saturday morning.

Headed home!

We adopted a dog! Nova Sibirsk Hanson-Draeger is a Siberian Husky mix who was originally going to be adopted by her foster, but she didn’t get along with the resident cat. Lucky for us (though we did feel bad that the foster was heartbroken to see her go)!

We had an odd first few days (lots of people in and out, including a couple of friends staying with us Sunday afternoon through Tuesday morning), but she has been an absolute dreamboat of a dog so far. You’d never know by the way she’s already settled in that it’s been less than a week.

We love Nova to pieces already and we’re looking forward to spoiling her rotten for many years to come!

Anticipation

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Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday. I had a bit of a restless night and ended up getting up a bit after 5am this morning. I took a shower, got dressed, and now I’m sprawled on the couch writing this a bit after 6. I’m hoping this doesn’t mean I’m going to crash super early tonight, but I guess we’ll find out.

It’s an exciting week! Tonight after work, I’m getting a real haircut and beard trim for the first time in 18 months. I’ve been doing it myself throughout the pandemic, and while it feels a little weird and extremely indulgent to pay someone else to do it now, I recognize that they will do a better job than I will, and also that it means less cleanup for me at home, which is great.

The other big exciting thing this week is that we’re officially meeting a dog to potentially adopt on Saturday! The last couple of days have involved many emails back and forth with a local rescue about various dogs who we hoped might be a good fit – the first one we emailed about didn’t sound like she was quite right for us, the next two we asked about were already spoken for…but we’re very excited to meet this particular doggo. I’m not going to post any pictures or other details until we know if she’s ours (but if you text or otherwise message me directly, I will share), but suffice it to say she’s very pretty and seems like a great pup. (Evidently her foster was planning to foster-to-adopt, but she’s not getting along with the resident cat.)

The D&D group I am DMing for is getting back into it on Sunday after a couple month hiatus while folks were moving and starting new jobs. I’m nervous but excited about that. I think I have a fun story planned and while I know there are a handful of details I’m still need to plot out, it will hopefully be a good time for everyone. I also might have found a local D&D group to join!

I hope you’re all hanging in there. It’s been a wild week for a lot of folks. If you haven’t been vaccinated yet, please do that. If you can, get your booster shot. Wear masks indoors and in crowds. Take care of your communities and yourselves – it’s the only way we’re going to get through this.

I’m Back!

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Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! My apologies for the lack of post last week – I was on the road most of the day and by the time it occurred to me that I hadn’t blogged yet, it was late enough I decided to just skip it entirely.

Last week I was on PTO all week (it was the week of Song School, and even though we decided not to go this year, I’d requested the time off a while ago and decided I should keep it). It turned out to be a good thing – my in-laws moved to a new house, we had a houseguest for part of the week, and it was just generally busier than I expected it to be, and I don’t think I could have worked on top of all of that. It did make me realize that I need to get better at taking vacations that are actual vacations, though.

Last Thursday I drove down to northeast Iowa to kidnap one of my favorite cousins (with her consent, of course) and bring her up to stay with us for a few days. It was really lovely having her here and getting to just hang out and explore a few more places in the Twin Cities that we hadn’t been to yet. My favorite sorts of houseguests are the ones who are okay with just hanging out a lot of the time, and that was definitely the case here. It was great.

On Friday, I started looking up local pet rescues on Instagram, and stumbled across a very sweet looking dog who was up for adoption. We ended up spur-of-the-moment applying to adopt her. Unfortunately for us (but fortunately for her), the rescue determined over the weekend that she needed another dog in the home in order to really thrive, so she’s not the dog for us. We did put in an application for a different dog with another agency, though, and are both anxiously awaiting a response and anxiously hoping we can get the last few things unpacked here before they call.

Today is my husband’s birthday! Not really sure what we’re doing to celebrate, yet, but I’m happy for the extra excuse to celebrate them.

I think that’s about it from me this week. Hopefully next week we’ll have some updates on the canine companion front! I hope you’re all hanging in there and masking and vaxxing and staying as healthy as possible.

Happy Thursday

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Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It even mostly feels like a Thursday to me this week, which has not been the case very often lately.

I am having a shockingly good week, despite feeling a bit under the weather and very tired (mornings have been a consistent struggle). Our quarter at work is wrapping up, and I’m living in the space of knowing that I only need to make it through two more days of work before I take a whole week off, so that’s lovely. I got some really phenomenal financial news yesterday that’s going to have me flying high for a while. All-in-all, life is good.

I spent some time earlier this week working on worldbuilding for the D&D campaign I am DMing for some friends (we’ve been on a hiatus for a bit as a bunch of us were moving and starting new jobs and stuff, but will hopefully be back to playing soon). I wrote more of the story for our next session, and created a map of the world we’re playing in using dice. I’m really pleased with how things are coming together and I’m excited to get back into the game. I’ve been watching a lot of “actual play” RPG content in the last couple of weeks, too – some stuff from Critical Role and Dimension 20 (basically this means I’m watching a bunch of people play D&D or other RPGs, which might sound horribly dull but I get really into the stories and I love learning how other people handle the stuff that comes up in RPGs). And I’m trying (so far without success) to find some local folks to game with…although with COVID numbers trending in the direction they are, I probably won’t feel comfortable playing in person for a while yet.

I think that’s it from me this week. Please, please, if you haven’t been vaccinated yet and are able to do so, do it. Wear a mask indoors/in crowds. It’s not fun but that’s where we’re at. I hope you’re all hanging in there.

Scattered Thursday Thoughts

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Hello, dear readers, and welcome to a Thursday that for some reason feels like either a Wednesday or a Friday but is, in fact, still Thursday.

This has kind of been the tone of my week – just a bit off-kilter. I finally finished the project I’d been putting off for work, and now that the stress of that is past, my immune system seems to think it’s time to take a vacation, and I’ve been feeling sniffly and achy and generally under the weather the past couple of days. Nothing too awful, mostly just annoying.

My husband made it back from Chicago on Monday after doing the final cleaning of our old place and dropping off the keys with the landlord there. It was weird being in this new place alone for five days.

I don’t have a ton to write about this week. One of the things that’s been occupying my free time is trying to figure out how to find a local D&D group – I am continuing to play with the friends I’ve been gaming with throughout the pandemic, and I’m so, so grateful for those games, but in the interest of meeting some new people, making new friends, and getting to bring some of the characters running around in my brain to life, I’m hoping I can find something local to add to the mix. So far I haven’t had much luck, but it’s been less than a week, so I’m trying to be patient. I knit myself a new dice bag last week that I’m really happy with, because my collection has finally outgrown the bag I knit myself a decade ago:

It doesn’t look that big in the picture, but compared to my old dice bag it’s enormous – it holds all of my dice with lots of room to spare. I also got myself a dice tower and tray from Elderwood Academy (highly recommend, fellow nerds – they’re gorgeous) to make rolling physical dice more fun/less likely to end with me crawling on the floor trying to figure out where they ended up.

Anyway, I think that’s it from me this week. I hope you’re all hanging in there.

AnxietyBrain

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Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It’s a bit of a weird week here. I’m feeling a bit off my game anyway, and my husband is back in Chicago getting our old apartment fully cleaned out and turning in keys to the landlord there, so I’m alone in a new space, which feels a little strange.

The week started out with discovering a handful of fraudulent authorization charges (thankfully for $0, but still from places I have definitely not attempted to spend money) on my debit card. When I called to cancel the card, the customer service rep “ma’am-ed” me at the end of literally every sentence. When they asked if I wanted to order a new card over the phone or go into a branch and get one instantly in person, I said I’d go to a branch (mostly because I wanted to escape the rampant misgendering and because it sounded faster)…only to realize my bank doesn’t have any branches in downtown St. Paul. I texted a few friends to see if anyone could take me to the bank (we don’t have a car yet), and my college bestie came through. We got to the bank, I went in, and was informed that their card machine had gone down and it was a company-wide problem, so I’d have to come back another day. (Thankfully, I was at least able to get coffee with my friend before we headed home, and it was lovely to see her, so the trip wasn’t a total waste of our time.) I’m planning to have an adventure on the light rail train Saturday morning to try again.

I’ve been rather anxious this week, I think largely because I have some projects I’ve been procrastinating on that I can’t procrastinate on any longer, and I’m regretting my procrastination pretty intensely. Anxiety is a tricky thing – sometimes it can be catalyzing and motivating to some degree, but often it’s just paralyzing, which gets you into the feedback loop of “I didn’t get this thing done earlier and now I’m anxious it won’t get done but my anxiety is making me avoid the thing further and now it’s even less likely to get done…” So that’s a thing I’m working my way through.

Last night I got to go out for drinks with one of my oldest friends (the friend I ran into on the street last week), and it was so wonderful. I love having friends I can just jump back into conversation with even though we haven’t really sat down for a chat in years. We ended up hanging out for a couple of hours, and honestly one of the best parts of the whole time together was realizing how far we’ve come in the time that we’ve known each other. We’re both in really good places overall right now, and it was great to be able to celebrate that.

I think that’s it from me this week. I really am loving our new space as we get settled in. I hope your weeks are treating you gently and that you’re all hanging in there.

Minnesota!

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Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I will admit I have been completely confused about what day it is all week – between taking all of last week off of work to move, and having Monday off for the holiday, my internal calendar is all sorts of turned around. But hey, I’m here. And by here, I mean in our new apartment in St. Paul!

Moving went about as smoothly as it could have, but it was exhausting. I’m so grateful for the help we had from family and friends, and that we were able to afford movers to load and unload the truck. The new apartment is delightful – it’s spacious and feels like a major upgrade from where we were before.

It feels good to be back in Minnesota. It’s also weird. I’m learning how to navigate the fact that I’m now a couple of states away from the team I lead at work. We’ve all been remote pretty much the entire time we’ve worked together, but it still feels different. I’m slowly starting to reach out to friends here to reconnect, hoping that I can reestablish a sense of community in the Twin Cities. I did have the delightful experience of running into an old friend on the street the other day – she works downtown and spotted me from the skyway and it was so fun to get to see her!

All in all I’m feeling good about where we’re at – we have a lovely home that’s honestly more unpacked than I expected it to be by this point. I have an office to work out of, which is a vast improvement from working out of my dining room. We’re figuring out routines.

I think that’s it from me for this week. I hope you’re all hanging in there!

Counting Down

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Hello, dear readers! It is Thursday, and the last Thursday I will wake up in this apartment. Next Wednesday we are packing all our stuff up in a truck and driving to Minnesota, and next Thursday we’re moving into our new apartment!

Related sidebar: there will probably not be a blog next week.

I am a tightly-coiled ball of anxiety this week. I’m struggling to focus on anything aside from the boxes that need filling and the other little administrative tasks that need doing related to the move. But unlike some past instances of anxiety at this level, I’m not totally paralyzed by it, and I haven’t succumbed to the idea that this is just my life now. I know this is temporary, and that I will get through it and come out the other side relatively unscathed. And that’s a nice feeling.

I’m taking all of next week off from work, both to give myself extra time to help my husband finish packing, and to give us the chance to maybe visit a few favorite Chicago spots to say farewell.

It’s weird saying goodbye. I’ve never been great at goodbyes in general, but…I don’t know. Leaving Chicago feels like a big deal. When we moved away from Minnesota to Chicago, it was different – we knew we’d be moving back eventually, and for me at least, there were things in Minnesota I needed distance from. But now returning to Minnesota, while I know that I’ll be back to visit Chicago as often as I can manage it, I don’t know if this will ever end up being a place that I live again. I don’t currently think it’s in the cards, but I guess we’ll find out. Chicago has been a great home for the past 9 years. So many people I love so dearly are here. I made incredible friends. I figured out a lot of what it meant to be Alyx while I was here, and I’m sure that would have been a very different journey without Chicago. I started writing songs again in Chicago, and actually performed them for people – for strangers! I’m sure the next week is going to bring its fair share of tears as we say goodbye to our life here.

At the same time, I’m really excited to be returning to Minnesota. I’m so excited about our new apartment, and I think it’s going to be a fantastic space for us to grow into. There are friends in Minnesota that I’ve missed terribly who will be minutes away now. We’ll hopefully get to be more involved in our nephews’ lives. I’ve already heard from several friends I’d not talked to in a long time who want to reconnect. I think it’s going to be good to be closer to family. While Chicago feels like home to me now, Illinois doesn’t. Minnesota, on the other hand, is home in a sense I can feel in my bones. I noticed it the most when we were driving back from Song School the first year we went. We were swinging through Minnesota on the way home because we’d borrowed my father-in-law’s car for the trip, and the second we crossed the state line into Minnesota, my whole body relaxed, even though logically I knew I was no safer in that part of the state than it had been in South Dakota. I’ve noticed it since then, too, on road trips back to visit family. Minnesota is in my bones, and it’s calling me home.

Like I said, probably no blog next week (unless I’m really on top of things and write it early, but don’t hold your breath). Next time I write, I will officially be in my new place! I hope you’re all continuing to hang in there. Please take care of yourselves and each other.

Brief Thursday Thoughts

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Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday. It’s going to be a pretty quick blog this week – I have a lot to pack in at work today since they’ve given us tomorrow off in recognition of Juneteenth.

This week I’m delivering performance assessments to my direct reports at work for the first time. It’s nerve-wracking, because I want to be supportive and encouraging and also help them grow and deliver it all in a way that’s motivating rather than paralyzing. The upside is that I was not at all nervous for my own performance assessment this time around – usually I get really in my head about it, but I’ve been so focused on getting assessments written that I didn’t have the brainspace to worry much about it.

Last weekend I dove full-force back into being a social human, and ended up needing to take Monday off to recover (and also because I woke up with a massive sinus headache). Friday night I went out for dinner and drinks with some coworkers, a couple of which I’d never met in person (and then rest of which I’d only seen in person once or twice, basically). It was fun getting to know them a little better IRL, and to see how tall they actually are. Saturday, we got dinner with some dear friends, and then I ended up going over to their house afterward and we wound up playing D&D until 1am (which is SEVERAL hours past my usual bedtime, but it was worth it). I cannot put into words how delightful it was to get to play in person with some of my favorite fellow nerds. And Sunday we got up early to grab coffee with another friend at the park near our apartment, and then I had a virtual D&D game that night (which only went until 10, thankfully). I am definitely swinging wildly between, “I want to see all my friends and do all the things!” and, “I am way too anxious for being social right now.”

We’re down to two weeks away from moving, and I’m trying not to panic. We’ve made good packing progress already. The big thing that’s hanging over my head right now is figuring out how to get rid of the furniture that’s not coming with us to Minnesota. I’m sure it’ll all work out, though.

I think that’s it from me for this week. I hope you’re all hanging in there and taking care of yourselves, whatever that looks like, as many of us start taking our first shaky steps back into social life.