the deep moans round with many voices

Some stuff:

1. Flew out to Minnesota for Christmas and some ancillary visiting -- I left Monday afternoon (12/23) and returned home on Saturday (12/28). The flights out went smoothly, but both legs of my trip home were significantly delayed, which was annoying. Anyway, it was good to see Mom, Dad, Vicky, and Aunt C again.

2. Mom seems to have finally internalized that I am serious about moving to Minnesota this June and is now lightly panicking about logistics and my impending job search, which is... well. I am glad she cares! I am glad she wants to help! But it's also very tiring.

3. I thought I had finished all my Not the IRS paid training by the end of the year, but apparently they lied to me when they said all the training would be in X section of the company intranet. Actually half the training was still on Y section of the intranet (where all of it used to be) so I had to go take care of that portion yesterday. But now, finally, I seem to have ticked off all my mandatory boxes.

4. We rented an apartment to a guy with a start date of January 2 and I wanted to stage/photo/video it before he moved in. However, despite the apartment having sat vacant since FREAKING JUNE, our Maintenance department didn't finish turnover until Thursday morning and then the tenant showed up three hours early, so there went my plans. *sigh* However, I did manage to stage/photo/video a different apartment this morning, which is good because in theory we have someone ready to sign, pay, and move in this afternoon.

5. I am attempting a habit pledge for Get Your Words Out this year, after not writing much at all for a few years. I would like to get back into writing and I think a habit pledge is more useful for that than a word count pledge. :)

And now I think I will go grab some lunch before returning to work.

Thanksgiving was lovely, but unfortunately I caught a nasty case of traveler's crud (not Covid!) and spent Sunday sleeping, drinking excessive amounts of tea-with-honey, and doing things that required no thought or energy (aside from driving to the grocery store to purchase more fruit juice, tissues, and NyQuill).

I also let Mom Boss and Aunt Boss know I would not be at work today, and have thus far spent Monday doing approximately the same as Sunday, though at least today I managed to dress in actual day clothes instead of just putting my pajamas back on.

I don't really feel up to a walk longer than about two blocks, but I may take a small drive shortly just to get out of the house.

I am currently undecided about whether to go to the office tomorrow. I think I will let Mr. Geniality know I may be out, and then decide in the morning based on how well I sleep tonight.

Bodies. Ugh.

...

Probably gonna take a nap soon. I am exhausted.

Bodies are so weird.

( hormones and other nonsense )

Dear endocrine system, what on earth was the plan here.

Yesterday morning I gave blood, after which I was so tired I decided not to go do any office work, let alone stage any apartments.

This, I think, is a side effect of getting older. It used to be that I could donate blood and then work a 9-hour retail shift the same day, but in the past couple years I have been noticeably draggy for a day or two after a donation.

I was still pretty tired today, but I hauled myself up to do coffee hour cleanup at FUSIT. It was more of a production than usual, since coffee hour was doubling as a presentation by the environmental committee and a representative from Cornell Cooperative Extension about energy efficient heating systems and was therefore held up in the annex instead of in the parlor. That meant the hospitality team had to use the annex sink and sterilizer, which are part of the youth group room and don't have much actual kitchen apparatus around to make things run smoothly.

It was starting to rain by the time we wrapped up at 1:15pm, which of course increased my desire to sleep. However, I had pre-purchased tickets to a 3pm chamber music concert by the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, so I ate lunch instead of napping. Today's concert featured a Brahms string sextet and a Schoenberg string sextet (from before he abandoned keys and jumped into tone rows). I made the mistake of sitting next to a radiator and almost fell asleep several times, but the music was very good and I am glad I went.

For obvious reasons, I took a 2-hour nap immediately upon returning home! I have since then been puttering around doing nothing in particular, but the afternoon/evening rain seems to have finally let up, so it's time to take the recycling out to the curb and go to bed.

Most of what I did today at work involved apartment tour videos.

So, tour videos. As part of my job, I stage vacant apartments, take a bunch of photos, and record a narrated video tour (sometimes all on my own, sometimes acting as camera operator for Mr. Geniality). Later I upload the raw footage of each apartment to a photo album in one of our company Google accounts (which I set up and initially paid for but finally remembered to transfer the ownership last year) and I share the albums with our social media guy. I also send him a quick email with notes about extraneous footage to cut and any other unusual elements for each tour.

He then edits the raw footage for each apartment into a finished video, uploads that file to the relevant Google photo album, and shoots me an email to let me know it's ready for review.

I then watch the video and either download it in preparation for posting it on our company YouTube account, OR I let him know that this or that needs to be edited. There were a few edits needed in the videos I reviewed today, mostly basic stuff -- one video had the wrong background music track, one had inaccurate text about air conditioning and heating, one had lost part of the narration when Mr. Social Media was blipping out a creaky door. Little things, but best fixed before we post the video anywhere public.

I also staged, photographed, and videoed a studio whose tenant unilaterally broke their lease two weeks ago, without either giving 30 days' notice OR paying any of their October rent. The furniture had changed since the last staging in 2022, and we like to keep our apartment images as up-to-date as feasible.

Tomorrow and Wednesday I will be at the Collegetown office, and then Thursday-Friday back downtown. I have been working Monday-Tuesday downtown and Wednesday-Friday in Collegetown to plug the gap between Miss Scatterbrained leaving and New Hire number-I-forget-what being hired, and then also to cover while New Hire is in her training period. This is significantly less than ideal for me, but hopefully this week I can walk New Hire through how to process a signed and paid lease after which perhaps I can pull back to 2 days a week in Collegetown and then back to my normal 1 day per week in December.

We shall see how that shakes out in practice.