the Collegetown rental cycle is ridiculous, you know

We are slowly catching up to ourselves at the rental office. We now have all our units rented for 2018-19 (yay!), though three are only fall-semester leases (boo!) which we will have to rent again for the spring. I need to post ads for those sometime soonish... *makes note*

We have almost all of the 2019-20 prices and lease dates up on our website and double-checked to make sure we haven't created any weird scheduling glitches. I am plonking my way through updating all the NYSEG application forms. (Ugh. So tedious.) I made a very clear list for myself of tasks to do tomorrow, which are arranged in order of importance -- mostly because I will probably be coming in either Tuesday or Wednesday for a few hours to help cover our first tours and make sure the projects don't get lost in general inquiry chaos, and I need to get the computer-based tasks done while I have a dedicated computer. Things like labeling new lease folders and stapling interior note pages into those folders can be done in the back room without interrupting anyone out front. I also need to make about a million photocopies of various tour-related handouts, since we got in a new order of colored paper and I can now make them properly colorful. :)

In other news, my new college advisor was sick on Wednesday and so cancelled our check-in meeting. We are working to schedule a new one for sometime next week -- possibly via phone rather than in-person. My second WebEx live online tax course starts this coming Tuesday, and the third session of my first WebEx live online tax course finishes this coming Wednesday. So far they've been a pretty cool way to take tax courses, though I'm still having trouble getting the cloud-based version of our actual tax prep program to download so I can do the practice exercises. *sigh* I may end up just going to an office and doing them there, since there's no real time limit on that part.

My Spanish class is a weird mix of extreme regimentation and utter disorganization -- that is, the exercises within the online program (Portales) are very organized, but Prof. G can't seem to make sense of Blackboard to save her life. Also apparently we're going to have partner exercises at some point, but aside from posting a list of first module partners, she's done nothing to help us get in contact or to tell us when these partner exercises are due!

My government class is much more organized, though Prof. R comes off as kind of cheerfully self-important and ever-so-slightly tone-deaf. Ah well. He does seem to know his stuff, for which I will forgive many failings. Plus, did I mention he's organized? I will forgive even more failings for that. Give me clear instructions and time frames any day!

I am really looking forward to October, when I should be able to once again have some free time to surf the internet at work, to say nothing of catching up on my homework. *wry*

...

Also, and completely unrelated to anything else in this post, today I got a letter from my dentist, Dr. H, saying that he's retiring from his dental career and over the next several months will be transitioning his practice into the care of a new dentist. Which surprised the heck out of me! But the new dentist, Dr. B, seems like a qualified and decent person -- the mailing included an introductory letter from her as well as a farewell letter from Dr. H -- I really hate shopping around for medical care, and this practice already has all my records for the past... I dunno, ten years or so? So I think I will stay put and see how that goes.

Mini-ficlet prompt meme time again!

I have two remaining Genprompt Bingo squares and a few free hours.

Pick a prompt, add one to three characters plus a scenario, and I will write you a ficlet of at least 3 sentences and/or 100 words.

The open squares are Suicide and Steadfast.

First come, first served.

-----

Obligatory small print:

1. I reserve the right to veto any fandoms I don't know well enough to write, and ask you to please try again.

2. Crossover prompts are fine! On the vanishingly unlikely chance anyone wants to read a snippet from any of my original worlds and stories, that kind of prompt is also fine.

3. Genprompt Bingo fills do not have to be gen! (The 'gen' refers to the squares, which do not automatically presuppose shipping.) Just be aware that I'm not great at romance, so if you request shipfic, it will come out fairly low-key and may end up as ambiguous gen anyway.

[Fic] "Missed Connections" -- Chronicles of Narnia

lyreofsheliak said: Steadfast, Shezan and Susan, taking one another's measure? (575 words)

[ETA: the AO3 crosspost is now up!]

---------------------------------------------
Missed Connections
---------------------------------------------

Rabadash's voice preceded him through the outer doors of the temple as Shezan waited beside a frieze of the goddess sowing famine, not bothering to artfully conceal that she was waiting. "--of Achadith, wife and advisor of Tash, great queen of heaven, harbinger of victory and defeat, lady of the eclipse, the earthquake, and all things out of season."

"You may have received reports of it from your people, this past spring," Shezan added, as the Narnian queen stepped within her domain. Her skin was pale as salt that crusted the heart of the desert and her hair, though properly dark, hung scandalously loose and free.

Susan Pevensie smiled. "So I did," she said. She glanced around the antechamber with its mosaics and carvings, then up to the intricately recessed ceiling with its myriad angled slits to let dappled light dance across the marble floor. "I believe they understated its beauty, O sister of my most worthy suitor, and most noble of Tolkheeras, though not the weight of the goddess's presence one feels in the very stones."

She was not, Shezan noted, wearing Rabadash's courting gift around her neck. Instead, she had woven the silver chain with its tiny pearl-encrusted dagger pendant into the circlet that held her hair back from her foam-white face. An interesting balance between acceptance and rejection.

"To receive your judgment is a most singular honor, O most gracious of Queens," Shezan said, and bowed.

When she raised her head, she caught a glint of buried laughter in the Pevensie tetrarch's eye. Yes, she thought. You know that I know, and I know that you know, and neither of us will ever speak a word of the stitches beneath the surface of the Spring Festival. Not in Tashbaan of the thousand eyes and ears.

"The goddess is ever present," Shezan continued, "but one can feel her will more clearly in some places than others. Come with me to the inner sanctum, where I will teach you to purify yourself and listen for the whisper of the gods. You wait here, O my brother," she added to Rabadash, and graciously feigned blindness to both his frustration and the quickly masked relief on Susan Pevensie's face.

"To hear is to obey," the northern queen said, and nothing in her posture or her voice gave the lie to the earnestness Shezan knew must be feigned.

Shezan allowed herself a moment of mourning that this woman was unlikely to become her sister by law. Barbarian and demon-friend though she might be, she had still been a worthy opponent, and by all reports she had taken to the formalities of the Tisroc's court (may he live forever) with the grace and focus of a falcon at the hunt. If she could give half so much loyalty to Calormen as she had given to Narnia, if she became Takhun at Rabadash's side, their mingled splendor might echo and reflect down a thousand years of history.

Ah well. If it was not to be, it was not to be. There were other ways for Shezan's milk-brother to lead Calormen to the fullness of the gods' intended glory.

Perhaps some of them might even allow Susan Pevensie to survive the insult she would pay Calormen when she broke the promise she had so rashly (or unknowingly, which was but rashness by another name) given Rabadash when she allowed him to place a silver chain around her throat.

---------------------------------------------

End of Ficlet

---------------------------------------------

Note: The necklace is a reference to Tribute, a three-sentence ficlet about gifts.