Adventures in Bariatrics

 Another year has passed by without me noticing. Ukraine is still being invaded, though my cousin and aunt have long since moved back to Kiev. I guess it's not as scary there as it was in 2022.

I have decided to lose weight last year, which was a proposition doomed from the start so, one thing led to another and the end result is: I'm getting a bariatric operation this year. In 7 days' time in fact.  

I met with Kate today (well by now I guess it's yesterday) and she convinced me to turn my adventure into a blog, which you can read here (warning: it's going to be in Russian, but with modern translation technologies that shouldn't be a problem.) Possibly I will later turn this into a home-conference lecture on my experience.

I'd ask you to wish me luck, future me, but you already know how this turns out.

Hey, future me, I'm back and it has amazingly not been a year. I spent the week coming back from London sleeping and shirking any work. And I still can't quite concentrate enough at home to do any work. My lady friend doesn't want to talk to me. Don't know why. 

Parents came home from their vacation all tanned and I got a T-shirt out of it. Can't help but feel like they got the better vacation, even despite a longer flight.

 It has been another year and a half. I am vacationing in London while depressed. I was really hopping to meet up with people more, but that isn't happening. What I wanted to talk about is something I did 25 years ago. I have no idea what it was, due to my poor memory and the fact that it wasn't such a big deal for me. My sister, on the other hand, is still pissed about it and refused to meet with me unless I apologize. Like a jackass I didn't want to apologize without knowing for what and now I'm sitting alone in my rat-trap of a room writing this. Perhaps if you find out what it was, you can comment on this post.

My vacation in general is going very poorly- being in London is expensive, few people want to meet up and I can't find anything to do (I guess I should go see a museum or something, but I'm too lazy/depressed)

A word should also be said about the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine. It's happening right now. Aunt Ira and cousin Lisa are at our house, and safe (well as safe as being in the Baltics is, anyway) but uncle Nikita has signed up for the militia and stayed behind. Not drafted, mind you, volunteered for it. I wouldn't in his place, but there seems to have been enough brainwashing in Ukraine to get everyone to pitch in. (Besides, every HOI4 fan knows a defensive war gives +30% war support)

My Corona

Corona virus is back with a vengeance, even though you couldn't tell by looking at people- no one is wearing a mask these days. With my busy schedule (I have drama club on Mondays and Fridays, gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays and therapy on Wednesdays) I have to take the bus home every day and unlike the first time around the busses are full of (potentially infectious) people. I deal with this fact by not thinking about it (in my usual way,)  but if I did it would be terrifying. With my high blood pressure, constant cough and penchant for sweets I am definitely not going to get off lightly when I catch COVID. Hopefully they'll develop a vaccine soon.

 It has been another year. Still holding on to my job, I'm not sure how- I basically didn't do anything for two days straight (didn't even show up for meetings one day.) This worries me. I feel like no one pays attention to my work although thy probably do and I'm slated for a shit review at the end of the year (might even get laid off.) I'm not sure sure how I can worry about being unproductive, while also actively (or one might say passively, eh?) procrastinating and finally long for the sweet release of a lay-off all at the same time, but I do.

On the bright side the Corona outbreak in my country is very minor (compared to the world at large) so I guess we have that going for us.

It's weird, I would think that having a year of time would give me something to talk about, but few tings come to mind: 

• There's the Corona outbreak, but largely it has already passed so your memory of it is as good as mine, probably.
• There's the job I keep whining about, but that is nothing new.
• I've had no success with women. There was one candidate, but she doesn't see me that way and besides we can never find common time to meet.
• There's my newfound disdain for video games. I used to enjoy them so much, but lately I didn't have the energy to fire one up. I Just watch crappy comedy series.
• My birthday is coming up, I have yet to plan it out properly or pick a gift for myself. 

These are all probably good topics for posts, if I get around to writing them. But for now, adieu.

As an adult time flies even when you're not having having fun. I was going to tell you about my new job (well it's not new now, it's been 9 months.) I got one soon after returning from the my psychiatric evaluation (I actually had to get together some references while in there, which I did manage.) The job is ok- the company is nice, and has a better culture then my last one. The money is also, surprisingly decent- they really undervalued me at my last job. I met an old friend- Eugenia from summer camp- we sometimes go to lunch together. Didn't really make new friends though.

So the job- software development, as always - has had it's ups and downs. I was first sent to work on C++ services, which I don't know much about, so with that in mind I was managing quite well. I then got assigned to complete a port of a C++ service to C# (I didn't have to port anything, but I did have to fix/add what wasn't working) that was surprisingly fun. Now I'm in a big C# project where I'm part of a team and I keep feeling (probably correctly) like I'm the least important part of said team, plus I don't even always have something to do. This depresses me.

Looney Tunes

It's been over a year now. Things might be better now then they were before, or they might be the same. So I lost that job. I want to say that I wasn't a good culture fit, but honestly that's not why- I just didn't put in the effort needed. So they waited until I went on vacation and fired me (well, for legal reasons they let me go by mutual agreement.) I got another job, though, so don't worry about your past self.

Getting fired freed me up to do something uncommon- I got sent to the loony bin for evaluation. Voulantary evaluation. That was not a fun month: the problem with loony bins isn't how they feed you (which in terms of hospital food is quite well) or how they treat you (like children) but that there is just nothing at all to do there. I was blessed by having a netbook with me so I could at least binge watch some shows, but it still gets to you. Also, me being a soft introvert, other people (who needed my internet to break their own boredom) bothered me. In short 1 star out of 5, would not do again.

The good news is that they did evaluate me, and prescribed some kind of medication. I don't always feel better, but people said I was so there might be something to this therapy yet.