stuff done: Friday-Monday
Dec. 12th, 2016 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfalling1. Went to New Jersey for the weekend. This involved catching a bus to the Ridgewood park-and-ride, whereupon Dad picked me up and we drove to my parents' house. While in New Jersey, I:
2. Attended Mr. M's memorial dinner. The M family (aka, Cat's family) have been family friends for decades. (Basically what happened is, for various and sundry reasons, my parents, Cat's parents, and Susan's parents kind of ended up being friends. So far as I know, this process only happened with one of Vicky's friends' families, and that connection kind of fell apart after Vicky graduated high school. But the connection with the M family and the G family stuck.) Anyway, December 9th would have been Mr. M's... I think 83rd birthday (possibly 84th, I am bad with ages) so Mrs. M thought it would be a good time to hold a little remembrance get-together. (They were not religious and did not like funerals.) It went pretty well, I think, and it was good to see Cat though obviously I wish it had been under happier circumstances.
3. Attended Susan's concert on Saturday night. She is part of a local choral group that does concerts, puts out CDs, and occasionally goes touring, and they do a big December/holiday concert every year, which I had only been able to get to once in previous years. The singing was excellent, and the choice of music was also pretty good (though I think the newest piece -- a musical setting of Yeats's "The Second Coming" -- would have worked better if its first movement/stanza had been only half as long).
4. Got a new phone! It's a Samsung Galaxy JV-3, whatever that even means. It is physically a bit larger than I really wanted -- what is the use of a phone that won't fit comfortably in one's hand? -- but less ridiculously oversized than most new phones seem to be, and so far it's been pretty intuitive. (Except for the 'answer call' function being a directional swipe rather than an icon to press -- that is not intuitive in the least, and the icons are as clear as mud if you haven't already made the jump from 'press the green phone icon' to 'swipe in the direction of the arrows emanating from the green phone icon'. Gnrgh.)
5. Returned to Ithaca Sunday morning.
6. Bought groceries.
7. Finished another three NYS tax training online mini-courses.
8. Boiled more eggs.
9. Wrote some words. Unfortunately they are not for either of my December assignments, nor were they for a three-sentence ficlet, so they will remain unposted for now and that is all I am telling you about them.
10. Paid my January health insurance bill, which means I should now get my new insurance card sent posthaste.
11. Photographed my peppers.
12. Cut my fingernails.
13. Beta'ed someone else's Yuletide fic. Spoiler: it is a very good story! I think many of you would/will enjoy reading it. :D
14. Changed linens.
15. Collected trash from wastebaskets and took the resulting bag to the bin outdoors. Also took compost to the compost bin.
16. Set up my drying rack as a humidifier, by which I mean I soaked two towels (oddly-sized misfits, kept for this specific purpose) until they were sopping wet, and then hung them over the rack and let evaporation make my apartment slightly less bone-dry. This process is not completely effective and needs to be repeated every three to eight hours for the duration of winter, but it's effective enough, and a lot cheaper than buying and running an electric humidifier to boot.
And on that note, I will go soak the towels again and then go to bed, because I have work in the morning.
2. Attended Mr. M's memorial dinner. The M family (aka, Cat's family) have been family friends for decades. (Basically what happened is, for various and sundry reasons, my parents, Cat's parents, and Susan's parents kind of ended up being friends. So far as I know, this process only happened with one of Vicky's friends' families, and that connection kind of fell apart after Vicky graduated high school. But the connection with the M family and the G family stuck.) Anyway, December 9th would have been Mr. M's... I think 83rd birthday (possibly 84th, I am bad with ages) so Mrs. M thought it would be a good time to hold a little remembrance get-together. (They were not religious and did not like funerals.) It went pretty well, I think, and it was good to see Cat though obviously I wish it had been under happier circumstances.
3. Attended Susan's concert on Saturday night. She is part of a local choral group that does concerts, puts out CDs, and occasionally goes touring, and they do a big December/holiday concert every year, which I had only been able to get to once in previous years. The singing was excellent, and the choice of music was also pretty good (though I think the newest piece -- a musical setting of Yeats's "The Second Coming" -- would have worked better if its first movement/stanza had been only half as long).
4. Got a new phone! It's a Samsung Galaxy JV-3, whatever that even means. It is physically a bit larger than I really wanted -- what is the use of a phone that won't fit comfortably in one's hand? -- but less ridiculously oversized than most new phones seem to be, and so far it's been pretty intuitive. (Except for the 'answer call' function being a directional swipe rather than an icon to press -- that is not intuitive in the least, and the icons are as clear as mud if you haven't already made the jump from 'press the green phone icon' to 'swipe in the direction of the arrows emanating from the green phone icon'. Gnrgh.)
5. Returned to Ithaca Sunday morning.
6. Bought groceries.
7. Finished another three NYS tax training online mini-courses.
8. Boiled more eggs.
9. Wrote some words. Unfortunately they are not for either of my December assignments, nor were they for a three-sentence ficlet, so they will remain unposted for now and that is all I am telling you about them.
10. Paid my January health insurance bill, which means I should now get my new insurance card sent posthaste.
11. Photographed my peppers.
12. Cut my fingernails.
13. Beta'ed someone else's Yuletide fic. Spoiler: it is a very good story! I think many of you would/will enjoy reading it. :D
14. Changed linens.
15. Collected trash from wastebaskets and took the resulting bag to the bin outdoors. Also took compost to the compost bin.
16. Set up my drying rack as a humidifier, by which I mean I soaked two towels (oddly-sized misfits, kept for this specific purpose) until they were sopping wet, and then hung them over the rack and let evaporation make my apartment slightly less bone-dry. This process is not completely effective and needs to be repeated every three to eight hours for the duration of winter, but it's effective enough, and a lot cheaper than buying and running an electric humidifier to boot.
And on that note, I will go soak the towels again and then go to bed, because I have work in the morning.
