Dispatches from a happy Hullian

I went to my parents' place for a visit on the weekend with the household. Saw some cute critters, walked, talked, ate, and took a side trip to visit a couple of high school friends who stayed in the region — this much was planned! I also caught my brother and his kid leaving (late) for Up North, and then it turned out that some beef (a share of one of my dad's steers) was in my sister's freezer, so we took a bonus side trip to her place and saw her, her partner and both her kids. That probably makes the first 24-hour period where I've seen my whole set of parents, siblings and niephlings since 2019. Some of it was a bit rushed, but I hope we'll be inspired to get together at slower speed soon.

Monday I got together with some people I knew from Peer Support in university. Maybe unsurprisingly we were two therapists and two not-therapists. We had affogatos and talked life, real and potential kids, chicken husbandry, therapy, absent Peers… three afternoon went by really fast; I hope we'll manage to get together again.

Elizabeth had her thyroid surgery today; Doug got get there and back while I was in bargaining and she went to bed early tonight. No complications so far; the kids seem to want her to wear a scarf until the surgical site heals and her stitches are out. We have a "care and feeding" sheet, a full fridge and a few calm days (at least for her) — Oscar is on a school trip to Toronto so there's one less kid to feed and get where they need to be for a couple more days.

Bargaining is going — we got a comprehensive offer from the employer this time, which we'll have to fix but we're optimistic we can get something that will be good for members and justify the trust put in the Central Table team by the bargaining units. It'll be strange — "done" for us just means handing language off to other tables. Last time I was on my group table and Central took until we were almost ready to sign but this time our group is way back from the front runners so a tentative agreement might be months away.

The Ottawa Marathon is on Sunday. Tapering is weird, but I trust that my body will be able to do the thing! I might be finding comrades out there on the day of; Anne had doubts about whether she was going to do the marathon after all. It's going to start comfortably cool but get pretty hot by the end. My 42km in my 42nd year is likely going to happen, though!

So, Monday after I left for work, Oscar managed to face-plant into the dresser upstairs, tooth-first. Elizabeth brought him in to our dentist office, who is just across the street from work, and a nice dentist and technician took a look at the damage and decided that the (90-degree-tilted) tooth would need pulling. I got to hold Oscar (due to slightly less flappability with respect to other people's blood than Elizabeth, i guess). After a little bit of futzing around with topical anaesthetic, the dentist went for the quick approach and plucked the tooth out with gloved fingers. Oscar was highly disconcerted for a few minutes, and I was a little woozy from watching, but by the time we'd walked a few blocks to get some air and acquire some lunch, Oscar was almost back to normal.

Here's Oscar with seven teeth, down from eight:

Elizabeth and I were planning on having a date night on Monday, but having had surprise dentist dealings, we decided to put it off by a few days. In the end, we left Oscar with random and fairestcat Friday night, and went into Little Italy for supper, beer and creamy desserts. Pub Italia is tasty, gloriously decorated and very busy on a Friday — we had a nice meal, some good eavesdropping and a little walk in the chilly autumn air. Some couple time was really nice. Yesterday, Elizabeth's cousin came by for supper and I fired up the Turkish grill (now safely on a pad of a few inches of gravel in a dug hole) and grilled veggie burgers in an attempt to extend summer into September. It was the first time I really got to meet her, as meeting anyone at your own wedding never counts. She seems nice and fun — she had a daughter at 18, and one thing she mentioned struck us both: her daughter will probably be out of the house by the time she's 36, and she mused about "starting again" with another kid. It's unlikely we consider having another kid when Oscar is likely launched and I'm 48.

This week, I'm off to the Washington, D.C. area for a couple of days to attend a short course on disclosure control. It'll be my first time in the U.S. since 2004. I got a fresh passport, I'm partly packed, and I'm looking forward to my more-or-less-annual work-related trip. My mission is more or less to get the big picture and soak up best practices at the course, and meet other people working in the field. I'll try and explore a little bit, too: fairestcat suggests wandering in the National Mall, and if some fellow guardians of respondent privacy in released data decide to see something cool in the evening, I'll probably see what they're excited about.

Even when I'm not on the road, work is pretty stimulating lately — building and disclosure vetting small-geography cancer incidence tables, welcoming new people, agitating to get the computer infrastructure set up to do record linkage better, trying to prepare to help teach a one-day course in November. Part time — the reduced time and the paperwork — is a bit stressful, but for now it gives Elizabeth a bunch of margin to work, take on new students, and have shorter days holed up with Oscar on a regular basis.