The Catch-Up of Catch Ups.

So I popped in on May 4th to let my Gentle Readers know that I was alive and promised to catch you up on life since a LOT of shit has went down since April 13th, the date of my last real post.  I think that happened for many reasons.  The primary reason being, quarantine life has me all jacked up, then add to that it being the end of the semester and I just wasn't willing to make blogging the priority, #SorryNotSorry.  But here we are.  I'm back, you're reading.  Maybe you missed me, maybe you didn't, either way.. I'm about to come at ya like a spider monkey with all the things that have transpired since April 13th.  Expect this post to be quite random and maybe out of timeline order and probably pretty long, like I do.

Let's begin, shall we?

NEW DOG.

Yep.  You read that right.  We got a new dog.  It was accidentally on purpose.  You see, what had happened was.... Teh German had agreed to foster.  Granted, he agreed to fostering a track greyhound, butttttt when I put in my foster application with GPA-Charleston they said, thanks but no thanks, since Corona virus we aren't accepting new fosters.  Rude.  And also, fuck you, dumbasses.  

Sooooo, when Teh Florida Greyhound Wife discovered an Irish Wolfhound on Craigslist, Sighthound Underground (SHUG) came to the rescue and the dog was retrieved from the home.  When the SHUG Director posted a video of this older Wolfie girl, my heart shattered into a million pieces.  She was 7.5 years old and malnourished and wobbled and knuckled and I wanted to love her for the rest of her days RIGHT THEN.  I messaged the Director and inquired about where she would be fostered.  Director informed me that she had considered keeping Sandy, but due to some personal reasons, knew it was best to let her go to another home.  I explained that she was EXACTLY what I was looking for; an old dog that needed a soft place to land and to be loved and cared for and doted on.  Director explained that those who had been interested in her revoked their interest after they found out how old Sandy was and it was the opposite for me.  I knew that Teh German wasn't really set on fostering and definitely didn't want to adopt a 3rd dog.  Yet this was a grey area since it was a long term foster situation.  

This may end up being more of a hospice foster situation, which will ultimately lead me to formally adopt Sandy because let's face it, after we get this old lady fixed up, I'd probably fight someone if they tried to pry her from my loving yet forceful grip.  I believe that Teh German has accepted this.

So, for now, we're working through her health issues.  She's severely underweight and she enjoys 4 meals a day at Teh Ville, in addition to snacks and bully sticks.  She is also undergoing acupuncture treatments to see if this helps with her backend weakness, which we aren't sure what is causing this problem.  Based on her progress from just getting 8 cups of food per day + treats, being malnourished was the biggest cause of the problem.  

Sandra Dee is now correcting her knuckling, demanding attention, and is VERY insistent about going on walks, even though I don't love it.  Not that I don't want her to go on walks, but with her knuckling and dragging her rear feet, she bloodies up her knux (knuckles, let me have my temporary thugness, mkay?) and then comes in my house bleeding and I have to wrap her knux and no one likes that.  I try to walk her in the grass as much as possible, but this old lady does not take kindly to my mothering and does whatever the fuck she damn well pleases.  Today, that meant GALLOPING from 6 houses down back to our house, with me being dragged at the end of the leash because her stride is quite a big longer than mine!  So I mean.. she's doing FANTASTIC.

As for Teh German, it was a battle to get him to agree to letting me foster her.  A literal battle.  There was the not talking about it, then me bringing it back up, and the not talking about it, and his 'no', and ultimately my having to initiate the conversation, despite neither of us wanting to deal with the problem.  

I was pissed off because when I showed him the photo of Sandy and said, "I think this is our foster dog."  He immediately replied, "No."  I'm not sure how well you know me, Gentle Readers, but I feel like we all know that my reaction to being told "no" was visceral and I was livid about his lack of consideration to the situation.  

Ultimately, we ended up on the same page but there were tears and my argument was essentially something along the lines of: 

"Fostering dogs is something I did before we met and I loved it.  It hasn't been possible for me to foster since I moved to SC other than Meri's brother, so it was something you never saw.  But I believe it is completely unfair for you to say, 'no,' without even considering my side of this.  ANNDDD, I was supportive and said ok when you said you wanted to get a salt water fish tank as "our" anniversary present.  I was supportive and said ok when you said you wanted to get a project motorcycle.  I was supportive and said ok and helped you arrange the money when you told me you'd found your dream motorcycle and you wanted to buy it.  I've supported you through all these things and didn't ask for anything in return.  THIS is what I'm asking for.  I want to foster.  I want to foster THIS dog.  I want to love her through her old age and be her family until she passes or someone adopts her*.  This is my hill.  But I cannot click the checkbox on the foster application that says everyone in the household is aware and happy with the arrangement until everyone in the house IS aware AND happy about this arrangement.  I can't deal with a potential special needs dog AND deal with a passive-aggressive pissed off husband who refuses to accept this.  I won't do it.  You know that if it comes to me having to decide between a dog and you, I'll always pick you, but I haven't asked for anything in a very long time, and this is something I want to do.  It shouldn't affect you other than there being another dog in the house.  I'm not asking you to pay for her vet bills.  In fact, I haven't asked you for money for the vet bills in years.  I would just ask that you love her like you love our dogs and feed her with our dogs when you do feeding time and let her out just like you would our dogs... and maybe let her snuggle with you on your couch."

*Ok, so the "someone adopts her" part was kind of a lie because, let's be honest.. I knew as soon as she got to my house she wasn't leaving, but in the heat of the moment, I had momentum!

Eventually, Teh German did come around, but it took some coaxing and some stubbornness and hard truths.  Now that's Sandy is here, Teh German has no issues with her.  He is just as much of a helicopter parent as I am and had all sorts of questions for me to ask the vet when we went for her first acupuncture appointment (Are we feeding her too much?  (nope) Are there things we aren't doing that we should be doing? (not that the vet could think of)).  Teh German lets Sandy up on his couch and then lets her take over 2/3rd of the couch, leaving him curled up on a single cushion, moderately uncomfortable.

To go and get Sandy, I made a stealth mission to DC/Baltimore.  I wasn't sad about needing to make this trip since it meant I also got to visit Teh Bestie for a few days, despite both of us still having to work.  Just being in the same house was heart soothing for both of us since we'd had to cancel the March race-cation weekend, my graduation went virtual so no reason for her to come down for that, and the GEGR picnic was cancelled so Teh German and I weren't travelling up to MD for that.

The evening of the day I drove up, I was notified by the Director that she'd been advised that she needed to quarantine herself for 2-3 days until her COVID test results came back... and I was almost heart broken.  Because I'm a horrible liar and because I don't keep secrets well and because I don't purposely lie to Husband, I explained the situation to Teh German who was VERY adamant about me NOT picking up a dog who had been loved (and coughed) all over by someone who had the virus.  I was disappointed, but understood and agreed.  Thankfully, the results were negative, so I was still able to pick up Sandy without issue.

Teh Bestie and I made a trip to SHUG HQ to pick up Sandy in the evening and since everything is closed down, traffic in DC was fantastic!  When we got back, we had dinner, I gave Sandy a bath, and it was bedtime.

Since Sandy has been in Charleston, she has continued to progress!  Her rear weakness is improving day by day.  I personally believe that it has a lot to do with just how much food she is getting per day.  Her body can actually rejuvenate what it will.  She likes to leave toys she's played with all over the house and on her bed in the bedroom.  For the first week, she was not using dog beds, but the bed I ordered for her finally arrived and she's started using it and Sandy actually tricked Meri out of her slumber ball and took her spot when Meri came up to me for jealous pettins the other night.

At 7.5 years old, Sandy is an old lady, especially for her breed.  I'm not sure how long she has left, but I'm willing to spend it feeding her and loving her and letting her pull me down the sidewalk while she gallops.

SCHOOL

It's over.  Officially.  Thursday was my last day of school related tasking/events with the exception of the online commencement ceremony.  Truthfully, COVID-19 was a blessing and a curse.  I appreciated not having to live the harried life of going to classes and having to be in the office.  But at the same time, this doesn't feel like closure.  It almost just feels like I quit.  I mean, I quit because it's over, but it doesn't feel as big as it would if things had been normal.

This is not even a humble brag, but a straight up brag:

I will graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and a minor in Cybersecurity after only 3 years (instead of the traditional 4 years that it usually takes to obtain a Bachelor degree; having a degree already help satisfy all the English/history requirements, which helped immensely).  I had to drop the German minor due to a crammed schedule in the Fall and a lack of offerings in the Spring.  I didn't think of it, but I probably could have talked to them about offering an independent study type of situation to get the credit to get the minor since I was only one class away, but it wasn't SO important to me.  AKA, not worth the stress.

I earned the following awards/honors:

• Cum Laude honors with a 3.656 overall GPA
• I made Dean's List 6/6 semesters (summer courses don't count apparently, but if they did, then it would have been 7/8, because fucking Calc 2, which is also the reason I graduated with only Cum Laude (3.5-3.69) instead of Magna Cum Laude (3.7-3.9)).
• I made the Gold Star list (4.0 GPA for the semester/straight As) 3/6 semesters (again with summer classes not counting).
• I was named the Swain College of Science and Mathematics 2020 Outstanding Veteran Student.
• I was named the Department of Cyber and Computer Science 2020 Outstanding Veteran Student.

I'm gonna be honest, I never EVER thought I'd obtain a Bachelor of Science degree ever.  It's why I have a Bachelor of Arts degree.  I was afraid of math and science... and I do not know why that was ever the case.  I am GOOD at both math AND science, despite the fact that they are difficult subjects.  I suppose maybe I was afraid of both because it took a little more effort for me to be good at math and science the way I am good at English/languages/humanities/social sciences.  

To me, a 2nd Bachelor degree feels like I got a Masters degree.  Maybe it's not exactly the same, but proportionally considering time/workload, it seems pretty much the same to me.  Maybe the classes aren't quite as demanding at an undergraduate level, but it takes longer to get a bachelor degree than a Masters.. so trade-offs.

Teh German and I were discussing all my new found free time and we joked that I had Stockholm's Syndrome because I kinda missed the busyness of my life and felt afloat without a tether having nothing I HAD to do in my evenings/non work time.

(College) Student AF (hoodie, sweet tea, blue hair (well, kinda), selfie).

In the distance, the building with the big window is where I spent my time on campus.

Final Assignments

Research Class

I had to write a research paper for my data science research class and that was fine and dandy... until my research partner kinda sketched out during the beginning of April and wasn't doing the tasks assigned to her and then she dropped a bomb on me about potentially dropping the class on the last day of the semester but she'd help if she could... YALL.. I lost it on her.  

I straight up told her, if you're going to drop this class, do it RIGHT NAOW.  Don't lead me to believe I can rely on you to help me and then fuck me over at the end of the semester when I have to pull your weight.  I can handle it all if I know RIGHT NOW that is what I need to do.. but don't wait until I've really checked out to drop the class and be like, sorry I couldn't help more.  Additionally, if you're going to stay in this class, then DO THE WORK ASSIGNED TO YOU.  She was assigned the introduction and related works section of our paper.  That was it.  The instructor also wanted her to contribute some graphics to the paper to show she'd done something over the semester.

The instructor and I had numerous conversations about the situation, so she knew where I was with it (I don't want my partner to fuck me over) and I knew where she was with it (I'd be getting an A as long as I submitted something for a final paper, even if my partner's sections were missing).

The very last week of class, the department head announced that those doing research would be presenting their research during a virtual meeting on Zoom and I was pretty stabby about it because I do not generally accept new tasking during the final week of classes.  Sorry not sorry.  But, honestly, we were supposed to have presented our research at the end of March during the Research Symposium, so this is something that should have been simple, but since the presentations had been cancelled, we hadn't bothered to come up with any type of presentation at all, so it was a weird situation.

In addition to presenting during the virtual computer science symposium, the School of Science and Math also decided to do a virtual awards ceremony since they had had to cancel the awards banquet award recipients were supposed to have presented at in March.  Le siiiiiiigh.  Since I already had to create a presentation for the other virtual ceremony, this wasn't difficult so much as it was annoying because the virtual ceremony was 3 days after my final final exam and I was 100% checked out by that point and wasn't overly interested in much of anything.

Despite all my bitching and moaning, both virtual ceremonies were pretty cool.  The computer science one was awesome because I got to hang out with my homies, who I oddly miss very much.  The school one was also pretty cool and I received some pretty significant visibility since General Walters (The Citadel's #1 dude) was on the line, as well as other Citadel leadership, School of Science and Math leaders, plenty of science and math faculty and staff, plenty of alumni, and the 3 award recipients (of which I was one).  

My presentation was first so I jumped right into it.  Honestly, I didn't practice at all since I had 7-10 minute to talk about it, which was way better than the 2-4 minutes I had to talk about my research for the CS meeting.  I was able to fully explain all the things that happened during our research (sans the partner issues) and people actually had question to ask afterward, and more importantly, questions that I could answer.  And the MOST important part of my presentation was after I was done, when one of the alumni/special guests was messaging me about employment potential for a job that was related to data science and intelligence work.  We exchanged information and I hope that once being within 6ft of another person won't get me killed/sick, we can sit down and have lunch and discuss possibilities.  Unfortunately, the specific job that he asked me about is located in DC, but with enough perks, I'm willing to make that DC sacrifice... annnnd is it reallllly a sacrifice if I'm within an hour of Teh Bestie?  I think... NO!

Database/PITA Professor

I completed my final project for my database class WEEKS in advance and PITA Professor never graded it until everyone's projects were in.  THEN, I refused to do my course evals until the very last day because the emails annoy me and because I didn't do them when PITA Professor wanted them done, even though he's not actually allowed to do this, he withheld my grade by not posting it to our class site.  I waited a week to call him out after he still didn't post it.  His response: "Sorry.  Your grade is there now.  I had intended to update this the next time I went into CitLearn, but there was never an occasion to go back to CitLearn."  THE OCCASION WAS TO PUT IN MY FUCKING GRADE, ASSHOLE.  

In addition to that conundrum, PITA Professor refused to let us take our exam earlier than the scheduled date/time.  This was annoying for several reasons, #1 being that I could have been done with my exams more than week prior to graduation if he had let us take it early.  Another reason this was annoying is because my life at home is much different than my life if I was going to class in person and it is unreasonable to expect that of people.  

It's over now, but Jesus had to take the wheel for a bit there because I almost lost my fucking mind.

German Things

German was the class where I straight up didn't do some homework assignments.  I was so over it and the idea of watching an entire movie to answer a simple discussion board question was not something I was interested in.  I did have a final project to work on with a partner and we unintentionally waited until pretty close to the due date to finish it.

This is by far the best thing I ever did for any of my German classes:

You see, we were supposed to watch this 1960s performance of a Faust play and this creepy guy was in it.. sooo I made him the creepy Erlkönig, who was the main topic of our project.  My partner wrote the info for the slides and I made the images since we did a modern retelling of a story.  He admitted when he got to this slide he actually laughed out loud because we all agreed this dude was super fucking creepy.  #MeganWin

Stats

LOOOOOOOL.  Stats was my easiest class of my entire degree program, easier than even Photoshop since that guy was an asshole grader.  

RUNNING

I'm super glad to have an accountability partner in Teh Running Advisor because other than the week that I was in Baltimore, we have run every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday consistently.  AND, Teh PT Wife and I have been Sunday Runday accountability partners, so I'm running Sun, Mon, Weds, and Fri and loving it.  I'm working towards some high distance virtual medals and it's a nice change from long distance races.  Being able to do it at my pace and doing varied distances isn't hurting my heart.. or my body.

That said, I would really like for my races to stop getting cancelled and rescheduled because the fall is started to look rather cluster-fucky and that's no bueno.

ETC THINGS

Random Shiznit

-My laptop is still kickin.  Despite Best Buy saying they would send me the packing stuffs and label to ship my computer to Geek Squad, I've never received it.  I'm not surprised.

-I've started tutoring Teh PT Kid and it makes me feel supah smart to still remember these things that he's learning AND to be able to teach him how to take tests and learn things.

 Tutoring AND snuggles.

-To celebrate finishing all my school work tasks, sans that final final exam, I switched it up on Teh German and went on a ride with he and his motorcycle gang.  Despite some difficulties, it was enjoyable.

Eating pizza curbside is now a thing. /shrug

That's 1.35 for regular unleaded.
This is starting to feel like high school again.

This is what my windshield looked like after paying $9 for a car wash.
FML.

Is there a more Megan soap?
No, no there is not.
See also: a few of my favorite things.

I missed out on the strawberry Krispy Kreme doughnuts, but made sure NOT to miss the key lime doughnuts.
ZERO REGRETS.

Cooking

I am still working, so I don't have all the free time ever, but I have been motivated to cook some decent things, so I'm considering it a win.

Mushroom pork chops in gravy.

Tuna casserole

Not pictured: Creamy chicken with mushrooms, pork enchiladas 

DOGS FOR DAYSSSSS

Meri being ridiculous about her butt scratches needs

Secret snuggles

Baby in the corner.. with Dash and Secret

Secret and Olive

Tug with Dash and Secret

Olive is always listening

PUPPAHSSS at SHUG HQ!!

Treat time!

Sandy is a BIG girl!

Monkey sammich!

The muppets. <3

When it's hot AF outside (90°F) and your mom takes too long to open the door to let you in...

/swoooooon

If it fits, I sits. -Sandy

FINALLY using a bed after a week of sleeping on the floor.

This goofs. /love

Beast mode?

The new toy from Teh Bestie has gotten SO much love that it already needs to have it's butthole sewn up!

Sandy sitting on the ottoman, as she will.

So with that.. I think you're caught up.
And maybe now that I'm not overwhelmed with the idea of writing this catch up post, we can get back to regular programming next week???