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!