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I'm mostly on various discords and endlessly scrolling through Tumblr right now.

Anyway, move has gone well, we're settled in, Mom's broken ankle has healed and she's back in her apartment and we've returned her cat to her.

We're down TWO cars at the moment as the Niro broke down when I was driving home from helping Mom move, with the most unhelpful note whatsoever, "Check hybrid system," which means, according to Dr. Google, that it could be pretty much anything. I ended up sheltering from the 105° heat while waiting for the tow truck in a dive bar populated exclusively by middle-aged women, from whom I learned that apparently the secret to life is vitamin B12 and speed. Okay then! The one who said that then told a series of filthy jokes, none of which I remember, alas.

We tried taking the Niro to a local mechanic who reported they were very sorry but they couldn't even get a diagnostic out of it, so it had to be towed back to our place and then yesterday towed to a dealership. It has two recalls on it to get fixed, so it would have to go there anyway. But we were impressed enough with the mechanics' attitude and honesty (plus the recommendation from friends) to get our OTHER car, which had been sitting in the driveway with an oil leak and busted A/C, towed to them to hopefully get fixed up so we can get rid of the rental car we've been driving. We hadn't been prioritizing the other car because our plan, now that we're both working from home, was to drop down to one car and get the second one fixed up and handed over to a friend who has been patiently waiting on the car for months now. So it took us stupidly long to go "Wait, if we get it fixed we don't have to have the rental." sigh.

The new house is near a high school, which is having band practice in the mornings. We're close enough to hear the drums but not much else so I keep thinking that some machine somewhere is boiling--it kinda sounds like a hot water heater--before realizing no, it's the drum corps.

There's probably other things happening that I'm not thinking of right now.

The gas

Apr. 3rd, 2024 10:06 am
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I said in my previous post that we had no gas because of forgetting to change the end—of-service date. Turns out that:

(A) we still had it because they hadn’t flipped the switch yet

(B) the phone call to straighten it out took all of 10 minutes and there was no creating of new accounts or anything like that

(C) the rep even waived the $19 setup fee.

In conclusion: gas company 1, ISP minus several million. We’d use them for the new house but alas they don’t service it, instead it’s a propane area (cue Hank Hill jokes) and the company seems to be run by one guy who’s laidback and ok with texting so there’s that.
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It only took two more phone calls to the ISP but internet was restored last night! Yay!

Of course now we have no heat or hot water because with all the internet mess going on [personal profile] myrialux forgot to call the gas company and update our move-out date, but that’s understandable and MUCH LESS IMPORTANT than the sweet, sweet internet. :)
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OK. So we have bought a house in a city closer to friends and family and rather than try to do All The Things At Once with moving as regards fixing up the new house and fixing up the old while at the same time trying to pack and move, we chose to do it in stages. We got internet set up at the new house so we can go down there and work while meeting with tradespeople and such, and have gotten most of that done. There's painting happening there right now and we've got a few photos sent by the painter so it's looking good.

Anyway. As part of that whole setting-up-internet thing, [personal profile] myrialux called our ISP and discovered that for whatever reason we can't have two overlapping houses on the same account. This seems odd, because there's got to be plenty of people paying for internet at their house in the country, or their college kid's service, or Nana's service. But, whatever. The ISP rep who started setting up the service to transfer canceled out of that and we got a new account set up for the new place. We can't get into the new house account online, although autopay works just fine, we get bills just fine, and the people at the storefront can get into it and tell us it's fine.

Fast-forward to Easter Sunday when we wake up at the old house with no internet. A few power cycles of the modem later we assume it's a more general outage in the area. However there's none reported that we can see on the ISP's website. Note that our house's radiant barrier is VERY GOOD at blocking all sorts of things including cell signal, and the waves of cell signal ebb and flow in our area according to some mysterious criteria of their own, so trying to do anything online using hotspots is futile unless we want to sit outside on the patio furniture that has been marked by feral cats.

It then occurs to me that it's the end of the month, and that might speak to the problem, if for some reason the account was set to turn off at the end of the month, even though we did not specifically request it. [personal profile] myrialux calls in and lo and behold, that's the problem: the original rep actively set our account to close at the end of March, even though we did not yet have a moving date set. The solution should be easy enough, right?

Wrong! There is no way a rep can turn the account back on when it's been cancelled! (Note that [personal profile] myrialux is being bounced back and forth between reps and Sales for all of this.) We have to create a NEW ACCOUNT!

It's now Monday or so. Fine. We have a new account created. Great! Does the internet work? NO! Because we have (a) an outstanding bill and (b) the old equipment! More calls ensue. The outstanding bill is just the normal bill from our account due in early April, it's that the account closing terminated auto-pay so we need to pay it manually. OK, no prob. Paid. Why we can't just use the old equipment I will never know, but [personal profile] myrialux wraps it up and takes it off to the storefront. Awesome.

However, the reps at the store can't release the NEW equipment to use until a flag in the account is switched that, presumably, gets flipped sometime after the old equipment's return wends its way through the system. Back home, to MORE phone calls and explaining the whole sordid affair AGAIN to a new rep. By this point, [personal profile] myrialux has actually created a document detailing what's happened and the order it's happened in for both our reference and for showing the storefront reps.

Calls duly made, the switch is flipped and [personal profile] myrialux goes to the storefront AGAIN to pick up the new equipment. Home again, install the stuff and activate.....oh no that would be too easy. The online activation is not working.

And that's where things stand, because [personal profile] myrialux had no spell slots left and missed most of a day of work--he managed to hotspot a while during the afternoon by propping his phone on the living room windowsill and sitting in a chair next to it, but it wasn't ideal. I investigated coworking spaces in our city that would let us book a private office (because of [personal profile] myrialux's many meetings) for 2 (so I could get internet time for various projects) for one day and we've ended up at WeWork, not my first choice, but the one that sat in the middle of the Venn diagram intersection of expense, location and convenience.

(And of course our office has a giant glass wall facing the entrance into the workspaces and I forgot the Seekrit Art Thing I need to work on is using nude figure study reference so this afternoon is probably going to be spent with the computer and me awkwardly rotated to block the screen while I scribble black bikinis over the figures I want to use but that's a thing that can be done.)

Tonight will probably involve more phone calls and possible visits to the ISP storefront, but hopefully things will work out. Blah.
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So you might have noted that we more-or-less went radio silent when we got to Edinburgh. You may not have noticed. You may have assumed it was the usual mid-vacation slump of forgetting to update the travel blog, or you might have assumed what happened.

Yup, we got Covid. We were half expecting it, even with taking what precautions we did, especially since the new vaccine didn't come out until we were already in Scotland. I assume we got the new strain. It was mild as these things go. It felt like I was speedrunning a cold, really, as the symptom occurrence was so compressed. One day I started feeling drainage, and the next I woke up with sneezing and coughing. [personal profile] myrialux felt fine, so I sent him to Boots (suitably masked) for meds and a Covid test, which confirmed my suspicions. I started isolating in the hotel room that day. [personal profile] myrialux masked up and walked around the Old Town and the outside portions of the castle, but started feeling symptoms the next day and stayed in with me.

We notified the hotel, which was glad to give us room service on breakfast (they don't offer it normally) and deliver extra towels, tissues, tea and coffee, etc., and to stay out of the room. We kept the windows open for both ventilation and to cool the room down as the hotel was well-insulated to keep warmth in. I discovered that the Deliveroo app (food delivery service) would take our US phone number so we explored the vast cuisines central Edinburgh had on offer for delivery. I'd lost my sense of smell and taste by then, so I went for textures I thought would be nice.

If we had to get sick, the timing was perfect: we had the hotel room for 6 days, and the NHS said to isolate for 5. And then we moved for 2 nights to the Ocean Mist, a small docked yacht done up as a 1920s gentleman’s yacht. It’s had a long history, including being used in war and being a nightclub, and was a nice place to hole up in for a couple more days. I'd already been to Edinburgh twice before, so not getting to see it wasn't the blow it could have been, though I most regret having to cancel the class where I’d get to learn about and fly a couple of birds of prey. I can’t find anything comparable here in my area.

Anyway, the theme of the vacation was mostly “waiting.” Waiting for trains, waiting for ferries, waiting for check-in times, waiting to feel better.

And of course I got home and had to reschedule three medical appointments and a massage thanks to Covid.

One of which I did today. Medical foo, skip if you're needle-phobic.
Read more... ) End medical foo. Summary: got a thyroid cyst biopsied, will know in a week if there's anything to worry about.

This weekend: a local writer's conference that I’ll be going to since I got the Covid all-clear from my doc. Woo.

tiiiiiired

Jul. 21st, 2023 02:14 pm
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I revised 20,000 words yesterday the first 12,000 or so before getting my ass kicked by the personal trainer, and the rest afterwards.

I am so dead right now, physically, mentally. I'd hoped to get more revising done today but HAHAHAHAHAHANOPE

I've also got some premade romance Christmas-themed covers up on Etsy* that I'll be linking in another post just because my LJ/DW has been around long enough it's got surprisingly good SEO reach for things I post here.


* You may have an impulse to suggest improvements that could be made. Please refrain. Once they're on Etsy, they're done. This isn't like posting artwork to the blog and asking for constructive crit, it's a product that has been manufactured and I'm not going to revisit it until someone who's paid for it asks me to.

Ugh

May. 1st, 2023 08:43 pm
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Yesterday in the grocery store parking lot [personal profile] myrialux had to slam the brakes on to avoid hitting another car whose driver turned into our lane without looking. (They gave a cheery little wave after noticing. We were not amused.)

Anyway, my body slammed into the seatbelt so I wrenched my entire upper body. Not in a terribly bad way, I felt fine yesterday, but this evening I’ve been feeling juuuust slightly sore in lots of places in my arms and back (and, amusingly, butt. I must have clenched). Anyway it all adds up to low-grade overall UGH.

At least I convinced [personal profile] myrialux to play Jedi: Fallen Order while I spectate so I can just sit here and watch. :D He’s just gotten the Force Push, or as he calls it, Force Fuck Off.

*achoo*

Feb. 2nd, 2023 10:37 am
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I'm either having a bad allergy attack or my first cold in 3 years. Already took a COVID test, which showed negative (though I know that doesn't necessarily mean it's true).

And, dammit, after having been trapped in the house by ice for 3 days, I was looking forward to tomorrow's balmy 50°F temps and going to the massage I had booked. I've rescheduled that for the 17th on the basis that both I and she will be happier if I err on the conservative side.

If it's a cold, then our grocery trip on Monday is probably to blame. Bah.

Sora had a small respiratory thing for several days, sneezing a lot (very cutely, as all kitty sneezes are), having goopy eyes, and hiding for most of the day in his office (a cat bed hidden in a corner of the closet in my office), but he was symptom-free yesterday. He was prone to them as a younger cat/kitten, and hadn't had one for a number of years, but the day after a feral tomcat sprayed our front door and managed to aim perfectly through a little gap between the door and the doorframe such that the front of the house stunk of tomcat for a few hours, he came down with symptoms. So I blame that tomcat, even though we could have just as easily brought in a virus or some such on our clothing.

FYI, we have Nature's Miracle enzyme spray and I used it to soak the front door, the brick nearby outside, and the doorframe and floor on the inside. We also got a spare bathmat and put it in front of the door inside so if the tomcat comes back, or if our cats decide to mark their territory in front of the door, we can throw it in the wash.
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Spent most of Thursday reading Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard, and loving it although by the end it definitely needed some editing. XD (For those not in the know, it's a 1000-page book, fitting into the "cozy fantasy" niche.) Did some editing, driving myself up the wall with the beginning, which I have rewritten so many damn times I hate every single word in it, so put out the call for betas to put it back into perspective for me. (I am saving all the responses to read at once, if you're one of the betas wondering abut that...)

Spent yesterday decluttering and re-organizing the main bathroom, which really hadn't had a great purge since we moved in, then we went out for dinner and intended to hit the grocery store afterwards, but it took so long to find a restaurant that didn't have a packed parking lot that we just went home after eating. (But we discovered a new-to-us Tex-Mex place that was very good!)

Today, took a carload of household junk to the dump city drop-off station, then went to the grocery store, then came home and I spackled up the holes in the main bedroom wall preparatory to touching them up with paint, which will happen...one day.

Also here are two funny cat photos...Read more... )
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Today I discovered that it is indeed possible for me to climb from the passenger seat of my car to the driver's seat without pulling or injuring any part of my body, thanks to an ass who parked his ginormous truck close enough that I couldn't open the driver's door enough to get in.

cut for pic )

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