I've been asked a couple of questions recently that all can be blending into one answer, but the answer gets a bit ranty and sob-storyish, be warned.

To paraphrase the questions: What's up? You always seem to be so busy, and recently you seem more stressed than normal.

Answer:

Yeah, it never seems to let up for the last few years, and just recently things have ramped up. In a month or so I'm in a costume contest with my wife and some of our friends as a group entry. I'm still only part-way through constructing a full fursuit for my costume, and I'm not sure I'll get it done in time. The whole idea is a twisted Wizard of Oz cosplay with my wife as Dorothy, and myself as Toto. The twist is that our friends will be subbing in various villainous characters for the others. Scar from Lion King replacing the Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow from Batman being of course Scarecrow, and a Cyberman from Doctor Who as the Tin Man. Oh, and a guest appearance of the third witch from Hocus Pocus (as played by Sarah Jessica Parker) as the witch. I've rediscovered that I hate working with funfur, the stuff just sheds so much and clogs up the sewing machines and serger.

And this last weekend we had to do an emergency move of our sheep to a temporary location. The place we live 'revealed' rules for livestock that we weren't aware of before. We thought it was a rezoning, but what it was actually bringing old rules that nobody remembered to the forefront that basically made our property no longer viable for livestock. Livestock have to be kept a certain distance from all properly lines, and because our place is a long thin strip that just made it all stupid. So we found a place to move them to, and now we have to try to get our current place ready for sale so we can move to a proper farm some time in the fall. Hopefully one that will be big enough to handle the sheep *and* the horses. We had planned on moving in a few years to a bigger place, but this has accelerated the timeline.

My day job is being fun for several months. Awhile back we transitioned a huge bunch of junk to an external vendor, which meant I could go on and do brand new work that would be interesting and new and everything. The external vendor blew it big time, so all of this stuff suddenly re-appeared on me. I've been spending a lot of time trying to restart all the legacy systems, and keep them at least vaguely stable. So my 'new job' is now my 'old job' and I'm a bit burnt out by all of it.

And my wife had outpatient surgery on Friday for dental stuff so she's out of commission for a bit.

Oh, and I'm currently in the process of having a series of biopsies done. So far they haven't found anything. It's all been 'cysts' or 'polyps', whatever the difference is. Biology is *really* not my strong point. I've only got one left, I just have to make time for it.

And whenever I'm at the doctors, it's always in the corner of my mind is the fact I've only got a few years left before I hit 50, and given my family's medical history that means there's a possibility I'll start experiencing the effects of Alzheimer's and/or Hypothyroidism both of which are extremely common in my family.

So yeah, I'm a bit stressed.