Lazy Wolf!
Oct. 24th, 2020 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lupestripeIt has been an incredibly busy week, both professionally and personally, so I am particularly enjoying a rather relaxing Saturday. On the personal front, we managed to get the flights booked for our move to Germany, only to discover later that day that the German government will be introducing new quarantine rules which would come into effect on 8 November, our proposed day of arrival. Considering these would include having to quarantine for five days before taking a test, as opposed to just taking a test on arrival, we quickly rearranged with the relocation company and opted to bring our arrival forward a day. This means that in two weeks' time, we will be in Berlin. We will take a test on arrival at the airport and quarantine for 72 hours, which should be more than long enough to obtain the result. We have just opened our new bank accounts too so we are all set there, although I do have a constant fear that Germany will completely close its borders by the time we can get there. I'm hoping this new policy proves that they won't, but until we are there, I don't think I can fully rest easy.
Professionally, it has been a rather strange week, but things seem like they are coming together. We have a meeting on Monday morning that should determine the future, but effectively a company wants to employ me to run their international websites starting from 1 December and I need to work out whether I can do this through my current company, of which I am a director, or whether we wind the company down and I go work full-time on the sites. There are pros and cons to both and I need to weigh my options carefully, particularly with the move to Berlin to consider too, but I am hoping that we'll end up with an amicable arrangement and I'll see regular money coming in by the end of the year. In addition to this, there has been a major industry conference this week which has sucked a great deal of my time, while I also met up with my former director on Thursday afternoon down at Feed, which will be likely the last time I will get to see him for a while. Feed was surprisingly quiet, with just one other table occupied, but the music there is of the pop-punk variety I like and it was great catching up. Indeed, I went down to Feed twice in the space of 24 hours, with a meeting with the website guy on Friday morning too. Then, I had a great eggs benedict with bacon and black pudding.
Last weekend was a depressive nightmare, with the Leeds Meet being particularly poor. Tonks ran a quiz which was rather geek-heavy, meaning that Seadragom won the 50-question affair by a margin of about 30. It became somewhat relentless amd quite dispiriting. After this, everyone disappeared to play Among Us, which further catalysed my view that I don't particularly fit in. Considering that there is a whole furry world in VR Chat these days, I have felt incredibly detached of late, which hasn't been aided by lockdown and our inability to see people. Fortunately, both Adia and Entei-rah picked up on my mood and we had a rather pleasant conversation over Discord on Thursday, which had been postponed from Wednesday due to Adia having a headache. This certainly made me feel a lot better about things and it was great catching up.
However, last weekend, Wolfie was on edge too and my upset really made things worse. During Stray's excellent Jackbox evening, Wolfie stormed off after throwing his headphones - I had never seen him this angry for quite a while - and this resulted in a real heart-to-heart conversation on Sunday evening during Stray's Music Night (Garbage and Arctic Monkeys, proving how much I love the former and how non-plussed I feel about the latter). He has been incredibly stressed with the Germany move, particularly as he is having to go through seven separate agencies to arrange everything, and me being stressed was something of a final straw. He has also been struggling to sleep so I understand why things became tense. Fortunately, things are a lot better now and this week has generally been good, but things are still a little on edge. There is a lot going on after all.
Last Sunday's Pony Chat was a welcome distraction, even if I didn't particularly feel up for it, while on Tuesday it was just GreyPony who turned up. These late night sessions have been winding down for a while and this week will be the last one I can do, as the timezones in Germany don't make it favourable. I simply can't start a chat at midnight if I have work the next day. The Sunday events are likely still to go ahead though, simply because there isn't much to do in lockdown, and it is a rather nice group with whom I love conversing. I feel we have created something special there and even though there are only ever five or six of us online, it does feel something like a family.
Friday night saw Gothi's rock and metal set, which was a particularly strong one and enabled Wolfie and I to chill with some Gipsy Hill beers. The set sadly ended quite early, so we continued the party by listening to Rob Zombie and a really good London band called Puppy on Spotify. Puppy liked Puppy. I also ended up watching a lot of the excellent Dylan's Travel Reports videos on YouTube, which are great for when the sound is down. It just details his various train journeys throughout Europe, and is surprisingly compelling. I have contriubuted to his Patron too. We didn't end up going to bed until 4am in the end, and we didn't set our alarms today, but it was a really great way to decompress after a busy week.
Today continued that vein - we had intended to go to Nomadic's tap takeover with the Elusive Brewing Company but the foul weather and high COVID infection rate locally has really put us off. We would love to support them, but I am very much in the mood for a chill day of doing very little aside from odd little jobs that needed to be done. Furthermore, I think Wolfie wants to go into the garage and work on my pony harness some more so it made sense to stay here really. Money is also a little tight - I am still in my furlough money rather than my redundancy cash, but the Germany move will see a significant outlay and I want to keep things cheap while there is still so much uncertanity. After all, my income isn't particularly great right now and while things are looking promising, nothing is over the line yet.
Professionally, it has been a rather strange week, but things seem like they are coming together. We have a meeting on Monday morning that should determine the future, but effectively a company wants to employ me to run their international websites starting from 1 December and I need to work out whether I can do this through my current company, of which I am a director, or whether we wind the company down and I go work full-time on the sites. There are pros and cons to both and I need to weigh my options carefully, particularly with the move to Berlin to consider too, but I am hoping that we'll end up with an amicable arrangement and I'll see regular money coming in by the end of the year. In addition to this, there has been a major industry conference this week which has sucked a great deal of my time, while I also met up with my former director on Thursday afternoon down at Feed, which will be likely the last time I will get to see him for a while. Feed was surprisingly quiet, with just one other table occupied, but the music there is of the pop-punk variety I like and it was great catching up. Indeed, I went down to Feed twice in the space of 24 hours, with a meeting with the website guy on Friday morning too. Then, I had a great eggs benedict with bacon and black pudding.
Last weekend was a depressive nightmare, with the Leeds Meet being particularly poor. Tonks ran a quiz which was rather geek-heavy, meaning that Seadragom won the 50-question affair by a margin of about 30. It became somewhat relentless amd quite dispiriting. After this, everyone disappeared to play Among Us, which further catalysed my view that I don't particularly fit in. Considering that there is a whole furry world in VR Chat these days, I have felt incredibly detached of late, which hasn't been aided by lockdown and our inability to see people. Fortunately, both Adia and Entei-rah picked up on my mood and we had a rather pleasant conversation over Discord on Thursday, which had been postponed from Wednesday due to Adia having a headache. This certainly made me feel a lot better about things and it was great catching up.
However, last weekend, Wolfie was on edge too and my upset really made things worse. During Stray's excellent Jackbox evening, Wolfie stormed off after throwing his headphones - I had never seen him this angry for quite a while - and this resulted in a real heart-to-heart conversation on Sunday evening during Stray's Music Night (Garbage and Arctic Monkeys, proving how much I love the former and how non-plussed I feel about the latter). He has been incredibly stressed with the Germany move, particularly as he is having to go through seven separate agencies to arrange everything, and me being stressed was something of a final straw. He has also been struggling to sleep so I understand why things became tense. Fortunately, things are a lot better now and this week has generally been good, but things are still a little on edge. There is a lot going on after all.
Last Sunday's Pony Chat was a welcome distraction, even if I didn't particularly feel up for it, while on Tuesday it was just GreyPony who turned up. These late night sessions have been winding down for a while and this week will be the last one I can do, as the timezones in Germany don't make it favourable. I simply can't start a chat at midnight if I have work the next day. The Sunday events are likely still to go ahead though, simply because there isn't much to do in lockdown, and it is a rather nice group with whom I love conversing. I feel we have created something special there and even though there are only ever five or six of us online, it does feel something like a family.
Friday night saw Gothi's rock and metal set, which was a particularly strong one and enabled Wolfie and I to chill with some Gipsy Hill beers. The set sadly ended quite early, so we continued the party by listening to Rob Zombie and a really good London band called Puppy on Spotify. Puppy liked Puppy. I also ended up watching a lot of the excellent Dylan's Travel Reports videos on YouTube, which are great for when the sound is down. It just details his various train journeys throughout Europe, and is surprisingly compelling. I have contriubuted to his Patron too. We didn't end up going to bed until 4am in the end, and we didn't set our alarms today, but it was a really great way to decompress after a busy week.
Today continued that vein - we had intended to go to Nomadic's tap takeover with the Elusive Brewing Company but the foul weather and high COVID infection rate locally has really put us off. We would love to support them, but I am very much in the mood for a chill day of doing very little aside from odd little jobs that needed to be done. Furthermore, I think Wolfie wants to go into the garage and work on my pony harness some more so it made sense to stay here really. Money is also a little tight - I am still in my furlough money rather than my redundancy cash, but the Germany move will see a significant outlay and I want to keep things cheap while there is still so much uncertanity. After all, my income isn't particularly great right now and while things are looking promising, nothing is over the line yet.
