Chrome Tabs : 62 → 70
Gmail Inbox : 93 → 42 Unread, 99 → 48 Total 
A month or so ago I apparently injured my hamstring and I’ve been trying to slowly recover ever since. I don’t know what first did it, but it’s remarkable how slow it is to heal, even as I do my best to take it easy on it.
A couple years ago I made one of my first independent stock bets (to that point I had mostly just listened to a portfolio manager) and bought AMD stock. It wasn’t at its lowest, but it was before the ascent due to Zen, and I’m pleased to say it really paid off! I decided this past week to sell my position, with over a 400% gain, and I’m rather pleased with that… And then it went up by another $5/share a couple days later. 
Trying to time the market is seldom wise, but I was comfortable with my gains, and I don’t expect to be losing out on another 400% of potential gains by having sold now. I could see AMD going either way at this point, with Intel getting a lot more aggressive in multiple areas, and some early signs of their latest brute-force-approach CPUs besting some of AMD’s top performers. AMD pulled off an amazing comeback, but even if their success lasts to some degree, I think Intel won’t be caught off guard like that again, at least not for quite a while. I may lose out on another 20, 30, or even 50% further gain, but I could just as easily have lost that much, whereas until now it seemed pretty clear AMD was riding to a high.
I was contemplating some solo travel for a fall colors trip, and a return to Oregon, but I realized that I couldn’t justify it so soon after my previous trip. I just didn’t feel right leaving my cat alone for another week. She’s well fed when I’m gone, thanks to my neighbor, but she’s a very social cat and I’m sure she gets lonely. And unfortunately I don’t have a lot of nearby friends who can or want to cat sit. That said, it’s definitely something I need to solve because I do love travel, and I want it to be more of an option again, even though I now have a furry anchor at home. So I’ll be looking into boarding options, as well as seeing if anyone I know would be willing to have her stay with them. I keep nail caps on her, so at least there’s little danger to people’s furniture…
As I’ve mentioned recently, I began Internal Family Systems therapy with a new therapist recently. Meanwhile I have continued to have sessions with my prior therapist while I decide whether I want to continue IFS, how that affects my work with my existing therapist, etc. This past week I decided that IFS is something I want to continue to explore seriously, so it means it’s time to put my relationship with my current therapist on hold indefinitely. We’ve worked together for more than 6 years and I think he has been tremendously helpful, so it is definitely bittersweet. But it also feels like we have done good work together and this is a good opportunity for some reflection and positive closure. I may return to working with him again one day, but for now IFS feels promising (more on that hopefully soon-ish).
I’ve been working toward buying a new sofa for a while now and while I haven’t quite settled on the exact options yet, I did get a loaner this past week from Custom Sofa Co., who I’m planning to purchase from. They are a really nice, family-run business with serious focus on customer service, and as a bonus they have well-priced sofas with tons of options, including numerous fabric choices, cushion styles, etc. I think I’ve settled on the style I want, which is a key first step, and now it’s mostly down to picking out the color. And for that I would love your help!
The loaner sofa is a light orange color, and from that base I’ve done a bit of image editing to hopefully come up with some reasonably accurate representations of a few of the other choices available to me. Check out this gallery and let me know which you like best in this space!
Even with just the loaner sofa, I already feel that room transformed. The first night after we moved it in, my neighbor and I enjoyed some cocktails and a nice conversation just hanging out on it, and it was a remarkably sweet moment. I’ve always expected it to make a big difference in the space, but it’s quite another thing to actually experience it, and have my hopes very much confirmed. I can’t wait to get my very own, and in the right color! After that, a rug and a coffee table and this space will be largely complete. Oh, and some pictures on the walls…
Oh and speaking of my pending sofa, after getting rid of my old shelves a few months back, this room has been understandably rather discombobulated and kind of empty. In anticipation of getting the loaner sofa, I decided to do some rearranging, and in the process I discovered some much better places for certain things. Most notably, I think, is that I realized using one of my angled book shelves as a plant shelf would actually maximize my plant+light space, which is something I’ve really struggled with to this point. You see, the “bar” area in the photos above is also ostensibly the living room and the room with the best light by far, including most of the direct sun that this space gets. That meant I really wanted to be able to maximize space for plants, yet that made it hard to find places for people to sit comfortably. With this new arrangement of things, I think I’ve found a much better balance, and I can’t wait to have people over to test it!
Through much of my life I have been fairly poor at decorating and arranging my spaces, and I tended to get rather stuck with a particular arrangement of a room. I’m glad to say that over the past few years I’ve learned how to handle this better from some good friends, and it really feels great to be able to think through some changes, test them out, and realize how much better you can make things just by putting them in a different place.
I have a sit-stand desk and an Aeron chair, but I still often feel like my long hours at the desk are not that comfortable. One option I’ve used successfully in the past, and wondered about here, was a keyboard tray. I picked one up for free at a recent “stuff swap” with some friends, and was able to install it this week. Unfortunately so far I’m not loving it… I’m sure something else can change to accommodate it, but for the moment I feel like it interferes with my legs going under the desk in a comfortable way. I’ll give it a few weeks to be sure, but at least it’s easily removed if I don’t like it. Simultaneously I’m getting a new office chair, which will become a confounding variable, but I’m hopefully that won’t make it too challenging to decide whether I want to keep the tray.
After upgrading to my first full-frame camera, the A7 III, some months ago, I was planning to find something good to do with my old equipment: 2 SLRs and a small variety of lenses. I had intended to hopefully find a friend to give one or both to, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it. As luck would have it my neighbor recently told me he was hoping to get back into photography, and it turned out his previous SLR was a Pentax, just like one of mine! So it seemed like the perfect opportunity just fell in my lap. I love it when that happens. 
My friend Vrie and I have a weekly shared TV night where she is often nice enough to make the trek across the bay to enjoy my big-screen TV while we watch Ted Lasso or some such (we’ve gone through quite a variety of shows over the years actually!). She was also instrumental in me adopting my cat Sam. So I am incredibly happy to find that she (Sam) is a total cuddlebug and very friendly and social with most people, but especially with Vrie. She laid in Vrie’s arms almost the entire time, stretched out and uber-comy. It was the sweetest thing and I love that she is like this. 