The good:

• Brit and I have been making good progress on our project.
• Chase's mom, Lisa, visited with us for a weekend at the end of April, and it was great to get to know her better since last seeing her at Christmas 2023.
• My long-time friend Cynthia Roeth, whom I know from numerous Objectivist conferences, visited with us the last few days, which was a blast.
• I've had a number of really great days snowboarding at Copper Mountain, and the spring conditions were quite pleasant.
• Even though the total solar eclipse event itself was a bust, Chase and I had a wonderful time visiting with my brother Andrew in Austin and also getting to attend my friend David Crawford's birthday party there on the same weekend.
• After organically spending more and more days per week at the Wolfden, Chase officially moved in with me in March.
• I finally got to meet Chase's good friend Regina, after about a year and a half of our dating!
• I've found a therapist that I'm enjoying working with. She specializes in Internal Family Systems (IFS), which is interesting. It seems a bit corny at times, but I can see the merit in it, and I'm willing to try it on to see how it feels and if it can help with some of the issues I've been wrestling with.
• Chase introduced me to Avatar: The Last Airbender (the cartoon), which I loved.
• My sister Elizabeth matched with her top choice, the Orthopedic Surgery program at USC, for medical residency.
• I've generally been quite disciplined about getting as good of sleep as possible, including going to bed between 20:00 and 21:00 most nights and waking up commensurately early and having decent sleep hygiene.
• Despite going through another round of COVID at the end of March, it was quite mild, and there doesn't seem to be any sign of the Long-COVID symptoms I suffered in 2023. That might have something to do with what was effectively prophylactically using the the Nattokinase, Bromelain, and Curcumin protocol (to help break up the spike protein) or the Nitric Oxide (to help with blood flow) I've been continuing to use for my 2023 symptoms.

The bad:

• My 97-year-old maternal grandfather died at the end of April, following my maternal grandmother's death last August, and I'm on a trip to LA right now for the funeral (which was originally just a trip for Elizabeth's med school graduation), which is going to come with a lot of challenging family dynamics with my mom and her side of the family.
• The fungus gnat problem, while better, is still infuriating.
• Even though I'm financially comfortable by any objective assessment, I find myself very stressed about money and being able to fund all my goals.
• I completed a successful minicut (that I ended a few weeks early because of extreme hunger, low energy, disrupted sleep, etc) and got my ab veins back, but even though I've now been on maintenance for almost two months since then and been really disciplined about not overdoing caloric intake (and suffering too much rebound weight gain), my weight restabilized at almost 10 lbs above my end-of-minicut weight, and I remain very hungry all the time. At least I still have my ab veins, however much they're not nearly as pronounced as I would like.
• I'm frustrated that I seem to never have enough time to address the numerous home improvement projects that are on my to-do list, no matter how small they might be.
• I shattered my Pixel 3 XL phone screen, a rock cracked my windshield on the 470, and I mysteriously chipped my tooth.

The ugly:

• I find myself often extremely irritable and overwhelmed. I desperately long for some peace and equanimity, but I struggle to find it, and I'm wrestling with some interrelated psychological dynamics around irritability, control, loss, grief, risk-aversion, delayed gratification, and longing. I'm pretty good at not directing my frustration at people who don't deserve it, but when Max or Murrby are the triggers of some concrete displeasure (eg, Max's being a punk (not doing what he knows I'm asking for and just defiantly glaring at me) or Murrby's incessant morning howling (because, as a cat, he just wants the opposite of whatever he currently has)), my emotional response is disproportionate to the stimulus. And the consequence is that I'm often very rough and unkind to them, losing control over my behavior, and eroding my relationship with them (especially Max, who can both hold a grudge and learn to fear me).