The Childfree Life

^^That’s awesome, LaT! Wish I could put something like that near my desk at work so that people would quit bothering me!

I had Friday off (is Good Friday not a stat holiday in the States? It is here). It was rainy and cold out all day, so I promptly decided that staying in would be the best course of action. I slept in, had a nice snuggle with the cat (she decided she wanted to be the little spoon), then got up, had some breakfast, and spent pretty much the entire day just playing video games. It was glorious. Just me, husband, and the cats, relaxing and doing whatever we pleased. I would never in a million years want to trade what I have for a couple of brats running around.

^^^ No, Good Friday is not a federal/state holiday in the US.

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown

The stock market in the US, however, is closed on Good Friday. And since I work for a financial company, it was a holiday for us. So I took that opportunity to go down to the courthouse and file the paperwork for my name change. My wallet is $435 lighter but the ball is rolling and in about six weeks it will be official. I plan on starting to live full time as a woman about two or three weeks after that. I'm having The Talk (TM) with HR tomorrow or Tuesday.

The best part is that I work three blocks from the courthouse so I didn't even have to pay for parking.

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The admin formerly known as Force10

^^^ Hey! I work for a financial institution and we don't get it off! Stop that!

Seriously, congrats on making everything official. That's got to feel great.

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown

DH and I managed to shake off our headaches (allergies, etc.) and headed out to hike an area we've come to love. It's Southwest of Vegas near a pass headed to Pahrump. Technically, it's part of a major mountain biking complex, but we hike the trails (while paying close attention and giving way to any mountain bikers). Today, we saw tons of flowers, birds, 2 separate bands of wild burros and a huge jackrabbit. There were a few folks out, but all were competent adults (Properly dressed, not playing music or shouting, not chasing the burros) and there were no kids.... It was delightful!

I went to my first karate study group. Sensei (who happens to also be my little brother) taught us some fun techniques in class a few months ago, and he mentioned that a guest instructor would be coming to the study group to teach more of those techniques. I thought it sounded fun, so I signed up.

It was being held about an hour from my place, so we drove down last night. Luckily, I have a friend who lives about 5 min from the dojo, so we had dinner with the karate people, then husband and I went to hang out with our friend and his wife. Had some good scotch and some good weed (legal here) and then crashed at their place.

I was up early-ish the next day to get to the study group, so bro picked me up and we went off to the dojo. I was definitely the least advanced person there (I think everyone else had black belts...thank goodness it was no gi!) but it was still a lot of fun. High energy, but very friendly and relaxed atmosphere. The guest sensei who came in to teach was really good, it was fun and I learned a lot.

Afterwards we swung back by our friends place to pick up husband (who’d spent the day chilling with friends and the cute dog they were puppy-sitting), then drove back home. Husband made dinner and I made cocktails. Then I worked on my knitting a bit and played video games.

Can you imagine how much of a pain in the ass this all would have been if I’d had a kid to look after? Trying to sort out someone to look after the kid while I take off for a day? As it was, the only thing we had to worry about was the cats finishing their kibble early and being hungry for a few hours before we got home.

Now that the wife is working again we actually have money to do stuff on the weekends. Friday night we went to dinner with friends at our new favorite Mediterranean restaurant, then when to see Captain Marvel, since neither of us had seen it and we were seeing Avengers on Saturday so we needed to get caught up. Saturday we went to see Avengers (OMG if you like superhero movies at all just go see this) and then had a late lunch after. On Sunday we went to brunch at Fogo de Chao to redeem the 2 for 1 they gave us when we went on Valentine's Day. On the way home we went grocery shopping. Then we capped off the evening with Game of Thrones (so many feels). Kids would have put a damper on all of that.

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The admin formerly known as Force10

Spent the weekend in Ontario. Cat was purr-fectly happy to stay with my friends, and was apparently no work at all Not something that would have been said had she been a kid!

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Some people meditate. Some people caffeinate and vegetate.

Thursday after work I picked up the spouse from the transit station. After a brief "want to do anything tonight", we decided to see if we could get tickets to Avengers Endgame. I drove toward the movie theater while he checked on his phone to see if there were still tickets available. We scored seats together, a little closer to the screen than I prefer but still totally good. Enjoyed the movie, discussed it as we drove home, and just had veggies and hummus for dinner when we got home (as the usual dinnertime was taken up by gigantic movie). Couldn't have done that if we had kids!

^^Sounds a lot like us yesterday!

Husband picked me up from work, since I had to transport some stuff that was too heavy for the bike. On the way home, we did the “What do you want to have for dinner” - “I dunno, what do you want?” thing, so I was like “Wanna just go out and then see Captain Marvel so we’ll be ready for Avengers?”

Turned out to be an excellent idea. We dropped our stuff off at home, went out for a relaxing dinner and a couple glasses of wine, then saw the movie, which was fantastic! We actually hadn’t been to the movies in a while, I think the last thing we saw was Infinity War. We considered going for ice cream after but the place was too crowded so we just went home.

Nice relaxing evening, made possible by being CF.