So many signatures (lease, estate planning, gift plans)

A ridiculously full week.

• Work involved a bit of actually whittling down my inbox (this doesn't impress you only because you don't realize how awful it's been), and a really lovely meeting in which important people appeared wanting to increase priority on some work I've also been trying to get prioritized.


• Good money news: they gave me an unexpectedly large equity grant, one that essentially matches a big grant from 2018 that I'd just finished vesting in (read "just finished slurping up the last of"). I wasn't expecting this at all; it seems they really would like me to stay a while and, with the world seeming like it's on fire lately, I just might. Even if it calls on some creativity. We also got small bonus payouts and mine got eaten nearly entirely by after-tax 401(k) with the exception of, I think, $16.99. Something in "one large pizza" territory.


• The squirrel's dog almost died. This was really sad. An Addisonian crisis out of nowhere, the biggest and worst yet, about two days after treatment for the same. She's recovering for now, but nobody can explain why the collapse happened or assure the humans that the condition can actually be controlled, so there's a sense of possible doom about the whole thing.


• Ingested some art. First the Oscar-nominated live action short films, which were largely a downer but well-done, and then The Art of the Brick, which was all Lego and not sad at all. I also made progress on my own Lego, the Starry Night kit... bag 3 with the bug, bag 4 with the squirrel, and most of bag 5 by myself while on videochat with apfelsingail.


• Finally signed our estate planning documents! Yessssss. That only took 4 and a half months. Glad to have it out of the way for another decade. That same day I signed a gift pledge to MIT for my little philanthropy thing, which relates because it's a thing I'm doing this year instead of in my will.


• Not to be outdone, some tenants signed a 16-month lease on the other half of the squirrel's house! A nice-seeming couple. We joke about having ants... not nine ants, nor yet eleven ants, but exactly ten ants. Next up, petitioning the city to let us classify the cottage as a rentable unit; someday we will have twenty ants.


• I got a mole removed from my back, my biggest mole. It's a crater now. They didn't core it out and stitch it, only shave it off, and I wonder how it will heal up... the dermatologist also froze a kerotoma on my scalp and shot my still-kinda-bald spot full of cortisone, all in a 15-minute appointment. She is the most efficient doctor on earth and I love her.


• I finished up an 8-week program for my Aussie coach (modulo one exercise of the last workout, which I will do in the morning at the gym). Finished pretty strong, too, though one hip is bugging me from the constant compression work. The coach thinks he can help with that.


• My mom had spine surgery on Tuesday and her L4 is now fused to L5. It was an outpatient surgery and she's recovering so well that on Saturday she was complaining and wondering why sitting was uncomfortable even though walking and lying down are apparently fine (!). Perse is recovering really well from surgery too, and is up and about and even driving again. Medicine, so crazy these days when it works.

Oh. Almost forgot. I might be having hot flashes? A few times this week I've suddenly felt too warm, then cooled off again pretty quickly. I'd say I'm running warmer than usual overall. These small events aren't as dramatic as some of the hot flashes I read about, and maybe they're nothing. I'm about the right age though.