the deep moans round with many voices

I spent a significant portion of my workday clomping around apartment buildings that don't have central air (thus no cooling in the hallways) and often no elevators either. Furthermore, we don't leave the air conditioners on in vacant apartments, so those were also stifling.

I mean, making sure turnovers are done correctly is an important part of my job, as is staging apartments for photos and videos (and for that part, I get to turn the AC on and let it run), but yeesh, I usually finish a round absolutely dripping sweat.

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In other weather-related news, a severe thunderstorm blew through Ithaca around 6:15-7:00pm. Mr. Geniality and I bailed out of the office right as the lights began to flicker intermittently, and were heading out of the parking lot right as the sky cracked open and the deluge poured down.

Then the second line of thunderstorms developed a gap over Ithaca, so I wound up doing laundry tonight after all.

I have noticed over the years that a surprising number of severe weather systems somehow skip over Ithaca. Either they fizzle out entirely, or a front splits in half so part goes north of the city and part goes south of the city, but nothing hits us directly. This is probably related to the layout of surrounding hills, urban heat island effects, and microclimates around Cayuga Lake, but I don't know that I've ever heard an in-depth explanation.

This is not to say we don't get rain or snow! We do certainly get rain and snow. Just that weather severity predictions for the city of Ithaca specifically seem to systematically overclaim compared to what actually hits the ground. And that overclaim does NOT extend to the outlying suburbs -- it's specific to the city proper.

Anyway, I need to go retrieve my dry laundry, after which I may fall directly into bed.

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In news that has nothing whatsoever to do with weather, I bought a six-pack of an apricot-infused hard cider the other day, and my initial test results are promising.

We shall see how I feel upon sampling another can tomorrow. :)

Mr. Geniality was out sick today (apparently he has Covid? oh dear), so my plans for the day got thoroughly derailed since I had to cover his three scheduled apartment showings. I did still get several turnover inspections done, though, and one of the tours should result in a lease, so not a total loss.

I also had three phone calls from fake!FBI tenant, which were of varying length and varying degrees of frustration. The context is ( this gets long )

...

He was doing okay-ish for about a month after his extensive hospital stay, but he has clearly stopped taking whatever medications he was prescribed and has slid back into delusions and/or mania. He is not well, he needs help, and our company is 100% not equipped to provide it.

Half day at work today, since I will also be working a half day on Saturday.

Today I have succeeded in my 4-year mission to get good video tour footage of a nice and unique apartment in one of our buildings, as well as matching photos.

We had an extant video tour, but it was from 2020 before I forcibly removed the gimbal and iPhone from Lawyer Man and displaced him as camera operator (I have Opinions about his camera work; they are all negative) and it was one of the videos Lawyer Man had edited himself and therefore full of weird and distracting text effects. (I also have Opinions about Lawyer Man's video editing skills.) Additionally, nobody bothered to take photos while the apartment was staged (I also have Opinions about Lawyer Man's common sense and logistical planning skills), so for two years we had a shitty video and no staged photos.

In 2021, the tenants renewed so we had no window for staging.

In 2022, I was able to do a minimal guerilla staging and shoot photos during a tiny gap (less than 1 hour) between when turnover was notionally complete and when the new tenants came to get keys, but I had no time to also shoot a video. I also got Social Media Guy to re-edit the raw 2020 footage into a video that fit our current house style, so we then had nice staged photos plus an okay-ish video with bad camera work and a staging that completely failed to match the photos.

In 2023, turnover was running so late that the new tenant literally picked up keys before the apartment was ready and had to go cool their heels for two hours, so there was no time to try for either photos or video.

But! This year turnover was complete by 10am and the new tenants aren't arriving until tomorrow (they had a friend collect their keys this afternoon), so I was finally able to get GOOD video footage plus new photos that will match.

This is also important because the apartment used to have a large television, visible in both the 2020 video tour and the 2022 photos. Last year we decided to stop providing televisions in our downtown properties (partly because there was no logic to which apartments had them, but also because anecdotally very few tenants were using them), so I'm working to ensure that our advertising materials no longer show amenities that don't exist.

1. We are well into summer move-outs and turnovers, though so far we've only had a couple new tenants move in. That should pick up speed over the next week.

I also need to get more on top of apartment staging and photos/videos, but it's been like pulling teeth to get certain important apartments into shape during June. The maintenance department marks them as done, I go to perform a final inspection, I find some things that still need fixing, I note the problems in our shared FileMaker page... and then nothing happens. It is extremely frustrating.

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2. I bought a bunch of mail order pants in May with the intent of wearing some while on my vacation. I wildly misjudged some sizing charts, though, and had to return most of them. I did keep four pairs even though they were also too larger, because they had drawstrings to supplement the elastic waistbands and were therefore functional albeit much less than ideal.

Anyway, last week I ordered another batch of that particular style of pants, in two smaller sizes. Turns out one of those is just right, but the other needs to get returned. I should probably take care of that tomorrow or Saturday.

I am unsure what to do with the too-large pants. One pair I'll just donate since I got a replacement set in the smaller size, but the other three are in colors that I couldn't match in the smaller size, so... I guess I'll keep them around for now? They're fine for mucking around the house, if nothing else.

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3. Twenty years late to the party, I have been reading Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series. I enjoyed Phedre's trilogy very much! Imriel's trilogy is a little slower but still good -- I have temporarily stalled out in book three because I hit a point where all signs point to something Bad about to happen and I was abruptly not in the mood to watch the characters suffer.

So naturally I picked up the first Brother Cadfael mystery instead (A Morbid Taste for Bones), because what is a little bit of religious turmoil and murder along the Wales/England border in the early 12th century if not light entertainment? *wry*

I am not really a mystery genre fan, but I have noticed that the mysteries that do grab me tend to also lean heavily on a second genre, such as historical fiction or sci-fi/fantasy. And also some cozies, which I think also count as leaning on a second genre (the quirky small community full of friends) and which I can rely on not to drop me into excessively dark waters when I just want something fun.

Hmm, been a while, hasn't it.

Anyway, I survived tax season! And it turned out that my dentist appointment was on Wednesday the 17th, not Tuesday the 16th, so I got my day off in full. (It was a lovely day off.)

Some miscellaneous other things:

1. I treated myself to Sunday brunch at the Antlers on April 21, because life's too short not to give yourself nice things when opportunity arises.

2. I went to a Cayuga Chamber Orchestra chamber music concert at 3:00pm on April 21, but slipped out at the interval because I had taken a Benadryl at brunch (so as to eat some of the mixed fruit side dish) and I was 95% sure I would fall asleep if I stayed. The first half was lovely, though!

3. Went to the NYS Baroque final 2023-24 season concert on April 27, which was instrumental and vocal music from the courts of Charles I and Charles II of England. Some of those songs are impressively raunchy!

4. Went to a dish-to-pass lunch celebrating the end of tax season, Office Grandma's official retirement, and Office Grandma's 90-somethingth birthday. I brought lentil sausage soup, which was well received. The other dishes were tasty and filling, and I was able to stay for about an hour before I had to return to work. (This was on a Thursday because weekends had proved impossible for various reasons.)

5. Cornell's spring classes have ended, so we're moving into turnover season. We have had a spate of summer sublets to process, which is always time-consuming. I also finished creating move-out packets on Tuesday evening, so today I spent a couple hours shoving them under apartment doors. These packets contain a personalized instruction sheet on the move-out process, a form to provide your forwarding address (for your security deposit refund check), and a personalized key return envelope. These are a pain to create and distribute, but they forestall SO MANY problems over the course of the summer.

(They also goose a few people who were dilly-dallying over renewals into actually signing and paying, which is nice.)

6. I am slowly taking steps to get back on top of the various household chores I let slide during tax season. I am not remotely where I want to be, but my apartment looks better than it did last month which is all that really matters.

More things have happened, but I think that's enough for one post. :)