[6 weeks] Hibernate and calculate

There was a lot of thinking about money this past week, between doing calculations for Q4 estimated taxes (due on the 15th if I was going to owe any) and continuing to look into COBRA and ACA health plan coverage. On the first one, nope, and indeed we're going to get a massive refund because I was over-withholding -- not great, but at least now I know that. I tried to fix withholding for the rest of 2025, but this of course is futile because Zillian is going to withhold from my paychecks as if I were going to be working all year. Which I'm not. (What has it got in its tax bracketses? String, or nothing!) In short, a lot of number crunching, and nothing to show for it but a faint feeling of dismay. Health insurance is going to cost more than I wish, whether we choose COBRA in the short term or not.

I took Caltrop to the vet for a checkup and vaccination, the little hellion going uncharacteristically limp and meek in the exam room out of nervousness.

I went to the office Wednesday and Thursday, struck by its beauty in the way that things strike you when you won't have them for long. So much care has gone into designing the common spaces that I'm tempted to go in just for a photoshoot, one of these weekends before I leave. My work bestie gave me an emotional support dumpster fire (from here, I think), and sure enough there were some dumpster moves from top management. The head of my product was surprisingly forthcoming about not doing mass layoffs in the next few weeks, though, and my own teams' plans for the first quarter got mostly approved on Friday. Very good, very good. My personal course is now fairly clear: performance ratings are released on Thursday, compensation planning is in a week after that, and then maybe I can cruise through to March 1 without significant drama. Things aren't perfect, but I listened in on someone else's quarter-plans and those were even less perfect; I came away feeling that I can likely fly under the radar for a few final, quiet weeks.

This has been a weekend of FOMO for me; unusual. I can usually embrace the joy of missing out with no problem. But this is the long weekend that lots of big things happen; there are several weekend-long events I'm not invited to, and even Helios and Perse flew off for a witchy masquerade out of state that involved fabulous dressing up. I have just been hanging out being responsible, pushing lots of little projects forward (both work and personal), and somehow picking up a new sniffle & sneeziness today (noooooo). I prioritized going to open studio today just to force myself to have some social time.

Also made my first post on BlueSky. So there's that.