Catching up
It's been a while. Sorry everyone! It's cliché but I've been pretty busy at work, which makes me tired. And that leads to me not prioritizing journaling.
But let's catch up.
After the last I wrote, Sunny (turtle) escaped the enclosure and was lost. We put up posters and I even got a text that someone saw her on someone's driveway. By the time I got there, she wasn't there. After close to a week of searching, we found her body...
I felt really bad since it was my idea to make her a pond and enclosure. The repurposed wall wasn't secure enough and I probably spent too much time imagining how she met her end...
Eventually, Angie and I discussed what we wanted to do. Initially, we thought of stocking goldfish or the like (too pained for a turtle, especially with the escaping). But after a few weeks, we looked into adopting another turtle.
And I'd say we had no luck with adoptions. Even before getting Alfie, we tried to adopt from our local shelter. We even went there to meet the dog (Scooby) and take him for a walk to get to know him. Then... they just never got back to us. I can understand if he went to another family, but we followed up a couple of times with no definitive answer.
I felt the turtle adopting was similar. Angie did the communications, but it sounds like the same where we were never told no, but the groups just stopped replying. And it was two different groups with follow-ups. So eventually Angie bought one.
We did extra work really securing the enclosure. We used cinder blocks. I felt much better, but of course, Angie sent me this ON THE FIRST DAY!
What a ninja turtle!
Who knew turtles were such brave and crazy climbers. Anyway, we used bricks to top all the corners to prevent that climbing. Eventually, she climbed through the inside of the perpendicular blocks. So we also blocked all of those off. After all of that, there's been no climbing, so hopefully it's finally secure.
Plants in the wall
It was Angie's idea to use cinder blocks and plant in the middle. I was skeptical at first, but I actually think it turned out really well. And Sunny II really likes to explore the enclosure, in addition to swim.
Little beach chairs
And we didn't tell Angie's family that Sunny was replaced. Basically, it was a child's pet then my father-in-law got attached. So Angie couldn't bring herself to tell everyone. I keep quiet on it, but she said Sunny turned back up.
I've been pretty stressed at work lately. I'm transitioning from one project to a new one. Leading my old project was determined to be too much work for me since my role has non-project work built into it. Plus I think they normally have people of a bit higher level lead later phase projects. So instead of just working on it (with someone else leading it), I expressed interest in starting a new project. And in this transitional phase, it's like you're working on both. I should be easing off of my old project, so hopefully things will get better...
And we're going on vacation (Taiwan) for almost three weeks (at least I took three weeks off of work). So it's awesome, but a really long time away while I'm trying to manage two programs. So this last week of trying to get stuff ready for people taking over and/or covering for me, has been stressful. I'm also getting people up to speed on several systems because we're being audited by a health authority, which is good that I'm away, but I still want to make sure people who I'm training will be ready and comfortable.
After enjoying the first season of Silo, I decided to read the book it's based on, Wool by Hugh Howey. There are good things about the book. Like the way it's written is actually pretty different than the series. But at the same time, I'm not sure if I really love the writing. So overall, it was good and I'll likely read the next books, but I'm not sure if I actually like it as much as the series. But maybe I'm just such a fan of Rebecca Furguson.
We watched The Last Voyage of the Demeter at some point. It was okay, not nearly as good as people seem to think. But based on that, I decided to read Dracula. So far, it's been good. I feel like I remember the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula pretty well, so I'm interested in seeing how different or additional the book is. I did find the part regarding Renfield was interesting. I just got through the Demeter part.
Before leaving, we started some winterizing of our home. We transferred several plants inside and having a mix of color isn't bad. The enclosure wall was the first time that we bought annual flowers. The idea of them dying isn't appealing, which is why we normally buy perennials. But the size of cinder holes lead me to want to try annuals. But being a crazy person who doesn't just want to leave things to die, I decided to bring them in and hope they make it through the winter. Additionally, we have our normal lemon plants, banana trees, yam leaves, and Vietnamese spinach which we've been bringing in and out the last few years.
Oh, and definitely not least, my little brother (Harold) got married! So about a year ago, he moved out to Texas for his girlfriend. So it's good that it worked out. The day after Angie and my 15th anniversary, Harold had a wedding. It was nice and probably deserves it's own post and pictures, but likely won't get one.