belated update, Friday April 3 to Monday April 6

Been a few days, huh? Anyway, I'm all right. I've just been a little bit... hmmm... faux-hibernating might be the best way to phrase it? That is, eating a few too many snacks and doing very little, particularly anything that involved mental energy.

But here's a short rundown:

1. On Friday at the rental company office, I got through most of the rest of the scanning and uploading project (these are all documents relating to some issues with one of our parking lots, from 10-20 years ago) but didn't quite finish because Aunt Boss wanted me to set up a different scanning project for Miss California to complete on Saturday. So I organized all of those documents and scanned the first few sections (which were messy and weird) as examples and left her the more voluminous but much more coherent later years.

On Monday I finally finished the parking lot documents, and started work on a spreadsheet of our current apartment photos both on our website (via Rent Manager) and in our Shutterfly galleries. This is partly because we're in the middle of refinancing a mortgage on one of our buildings but for obvious reasons the bank doesn't want to send anyone around to view units in person so Lawyer Man needs a list of which photo galleries are best to use for a virtual tour, and partly because we need to know which apartments to focus our summer photography efforts on this year. I think the spreadsheet and Aunt Boss's explanatory email should be enough for Miss California to get through a good chunk of that data entry today and Wednesday.

2. I have been moving my overwintered plants outdoors for the afternoons and then back indoors in the evening. They seem to be enjoying the fresh air and sunlight. :)

On a related note, the majority of the purple carrots that I accidentally overwintered in my fridge and then planted on March 22 are thriving, which is nice. The two volunteer onions I also planted back on March 2 are also doing well, after a period of sadness. One even has the beginning of an flower! (By which I mean, it has a small papery flower-case on a still very short stem, but it's clearly going to be an umbel in a couple weeks.)

3. Attended FUSIT's online service Sunday morning.

4. Steamed some broccoli.

5. Took recycling to the curb Sunday night.

6. Wrote bugger-all.

7. Phone call with Nick Saturday evening, during which we talked some about life in general, some about his new house and his home improvement efforts, and some brainstorming and outlining for a new novel idea he had a week or two ago. Siblings are the best. :D

And that's pretty much it. Like I said, I've been pseudo-hibernating.

daily update, Tuesday April 7

Stuff done today:

1. Cut my fingernails and toenails.

2. Wrote ~600 words of the Narnia/Naruto crossover, bringing the draft up to ~10,000 words. The end is in sight! (...And once I reach it, I will have SO MUCH EDITING, but hey. Fixing something that exists is always easier than creating something in the first place.)

3. Took my plants outside for the afternoon and brought them back indoors in the evening.

4. While I was taking the plants out, my diagonal neighbors' cat, Wilson, got into my apartment. I promptly closed all interior doors so she had limited space to roam, and attempted to pick her up and take her back out. She was very highly stimulated by exploring a new environment, however, and clawed and bit at me in protest (relatively gently, but still) so I left off the attempt and finished moving my plants. Then I shut the back door and opened the door between my living room and front room to tempt her into exploring a new area. She duly crossed the threshold and I shut the door behind us, opened my front door into the common stairwell, and opened the front door of the house to give her a clear line out of my apartment into the wider world. Then I grabbed my keys and went back into the rest of my apartment to prep for a walk and a grocery run.

She was still in my front room when I was ready to leave, but I think watching me walk out my front door persuaded her to follow. She prowled onto the front porch and I promptly shut my apartment door to keep her from reentering.

I should mention here that I cleaned the bites and scratches with a bunch of soap and water, then a generous splash of rubbing alcohol, and then some Benadryl anti-itch gel (generally intended for bug bites, but whatever) to counteract the chemical in cat saliva that is apparently one of the fundamental causes of cat allergies, since the two tooth punctures were swelling up like mosquito bites in a way the scratches weren't. The swelling and itching duly subsided, so score one for antihistamines!

5. Took a walk, nominally with the goal of buying a BLT for lunch, but also just to get out of the house and move around for my physical and mental health. I took a slightly longer way home than necessary because it was a lovely day and it's nice to see people even from a safe distance.

6. Took a nap.

7. Bought groceries.

8. Zoom meeting with my church's Board of Trustees to catch up on the past week and do some preparation for our regular monthly business meeting next week. I have agreed to look over some financial documents in case we decide to apply for an SBA Payroll Protection Program loan. The application isn't really geared to nonprofits, though they are clearly marked as eligible for the loan, so pulling together some of the required information will be tricky.

We are also unsure if we want to apply at all, since although we are going to take a big hit (lost rent, reduced pledges and offering plate intake, may not be able to run our big summer fundraiser) we should be able to limp along through 2020 as-is. It will just be hard, and then we might hit a wall in 2021 if we use up our rainy-day options now. The UUA is in favor of member congregations applying, but some wealthier ones have decided it's morally wrong for them to get loans when they don't need the money. That's cool and I support it! But my congregation doesn't fall into a clear-cut "we definitely DON'T need the loan" or "we definitely DO need the loan" category, so we're waffling.

...

I think I'll go websurf a little more and then fall into bed.