the deep moans round with many voices

1. According to Downstairs Neighbor S, Upstairs Neighbor T got a new job and therefore he, Upstairs Neighbor E, and Mini-Upstairs Neighbor C will be moving away in August. I will miss them. (I am also unsure what's going to happen to the raspberries, as they were Upstairs Neighbor E's pet project. I mean, I'm willing to keep an eye on them -- maybe even acquire some long sticks and a bit of twine to give them stuff to climb on -- but I don't have a lot of use for raspberries myself. Allergies suck, you know? I suppose Downstairs Neighbor S might make them into preserves if enough survive the depredations of our local birds and squirrels.)

2. I made a run out to Target today in search of A) a potato masher, B) a grater, C) a set of plastic hangers, and D) a new shower liner. I acquired all but the fourth, because they had a frosted fabric liner and a clear plastic liner, but no frosted plastic liners. Ugh. So I ordered one online from Bed, Bath, & Beyond.

3. I also walked into the Bon-Ton again while I was at the mall, and lost a good hour and a half clothes-shopping. (Everything was on sale for at least 60% off! And they're pretty good quality clothes, too!) I came away with two new pairs of pants, one super-comfy work-appropriate sweater for this fall and winter, and one work-appropriate t-shirt.

4. When I dumped my kitchen compost into the communal bin this evening, there were so many maggots squirming around the rim of the plastic liner. SO MANY. I mean, they're harmless and a natural part of the decomposition cycle, but still. Gross. Also they grow up to be flies. But I left them alone, because see above in re: part of the natural decomposition cycle. (I am so dragging the bin to the curb for pickup next Tuesday, though. Blech.)

5. I cannot believe it took me an entire year to realize this was an option, but a couple days ago I took my two rescued spider plants out of the plastic bin they'd been sitting in, and put each of them into their own separate plastic saucer. (Which are just repurposed takeout container lids, but whatever, they're saucers if I say they are.) Now they finally have room to properly stretch their leaves without getting in each other's way! :)

6. I've finished two of the three child psych quizzes for this two-week unit, because upon occasion I can be efficient. *wry* I plan to do the third tomorrow, after I read the relevant chapter during slow periods at work. Also, I am very proud of myself for correctly figuring out how Prof. S meant one of the questions to read instead of getting caught up in the technicalities of what he'd actually written. (He screwed up his example so it didn't actually mirror the example from the textbook, but I figured he wanted the answer that did mirror the textbook, and lo and behold I was right.)

7. I hadn't seen Wilson (the house cat, who technically belongs to Diagonal Neighbors Z and T) since before I left for Minnesota, but I ran into her in the stairwell Monday evening on my way home from work, and she was happy to see me. So I sat on the stairs and petted her for ten or fifteen minutes, and she jumped quite eagerly into my lap, which was gratifying. :)

8. I voted in my House primary last night, but we're all still uncertain who's going to challenge Reed in November. The current front-runner is Max Della Pia, but he's only leading Tracy Mitrano by 26 votes and there's potentially up to 1,000 absentee ballots still to count, so... I guess we'll find out in a week or two.

Random things about Wilson (my diagonal neighbors' cat):

1. It turns out Wilson is actually female? Whoops.

2. I left my apartment door open for a bit on Halloween while I was getting myself situated in the stairwell (chair, tissues, Kindle, etc.) to deal with trick-or-treaters, and Wilson slipped into my apartment and made herself at home under my bed.

Have I mentioned that I am allergic to cats?

Anyway, I couldn't fish her out, because trick-or-treaters, but after twenty minutes or so Diagonal Neighbor T came home and I got her to retrieve her cat.

3. According to Diagonal Neighbor Z, Wilson doesn't give a lot of signals for "okay we are done with petting now" before jumping straight to biting your fingers. This actually matches my observations fairly well, which is why I asked him in the first place, hoping he had secret insight.

4. If I sit down on the front porch, back porch, or front yard while Wilson is around and feeling sociable, she will come sit in my lap. This is very warm/friendly, and also probably good for my mental health.

(I am kind of... uh... touch-starved, I think is the term? As in, I don't get a lot of physical human contact. Or really, I don't get any except when I see family or a couple of my oldest friends, and occasional glancing things like handshakes. I would like to change that, but I am legit terrible at turning casual acquaintances into friends. Pets seem like a much more reliable method of getting a regular source of friendly touch.)

A random assortment of stuff done recently(ish):

1. Raked three bags of leaves in the back yard, and texted Landlord Dude to see if he wanted them to use as mulch/winter insulation for his garden. He does, and will come pick them up sometime this weekend.

(I left the front yard and all the verge alone, for Halloween ambiance reasons. *grin* But our back yard gets rather attenuated sunlight as it is, so I wanted to give the grass a few last weeks to fortify itself for the winter.)

2. Finished my federal tax preparer continuing education requirements. I also got onto a company notification mailing list I'd apparently been left off of, which is good because it contains things like, oh, the mandatory skills training session dates. *headdesk* Fortunately, I will be able to get to that event without much trouble. I'll also start working on my New York CE requirements tomorrow.

3. Harvested two more peppers this evening and made a batch of veggie sidedish.

4. Pinned a pair of pants for hemming. (Ah, the joys of being short...)

5. Vacuumed my apartment.

6. Collected Halloween funds from my housemates (I live in a four-apartment house) and bought a ridiculous amount of Halloween candy. See, I live in the trick-or-treating neighborhood for Ithaca, and we get utterly mobbed every year. I have never yet ended the night with candy left over, though I buy more each year in an effort to satisfy the hordes. Possibly this year will finally be the one I have stocked up enough! (Also I need to collect another $5 from each apartment, since I overran my estimated budget. *sigh*)

7. Tentatively agreed to work an extra shift at the rental office next week, while Mom Boss and Aunt Boss are in Syracuse for a meeting.

8. Plinked tentatively at a few creative endeavors. I have A) given names and jobs to the characters in the urban fantasy/superhero story I'm writing for Susan, B) added a couple hundred words to two longstanding WIPs (one I have never talked about; the other is an Enchanted Forest Chronicles fic I think I've posted excerpts from in the past), C) acquired the canon for my Yuletide fic, and D) prodded an outline for another WIP until it coughed up a few more details.

9. Weeded through my AO3 subscriptions a bit, reducing the "works" section from 25 pages to 23. Some fics I bookmarked (in Chrome for my own reference; I don't bookmark stuff in the Archive itself very often), others I just deleted entirely.

My number one wish for the Archive remains increased functionality for the subscriptions pages, btw. I want to be able to sort stories by fandom! Failing that, I would like the fandoms of each work to even be listed, along with the titles and authors. If freaking ff.net can manage that, I think AO3 certainly ought to be able to reproduce that general effect!

1. Texted Upstairs Neighbor E about leaving her family's seltzer cans in a box outside my door so I don't have to fish through the gross communal recycling bins to collect them. (Her family is not interested in returning them for the bottle deposits. I am.) She said yes, so I have put out a box.

2. Finished one transcript request for my application to TC3. Another one is in progress -- I just need to print, sign, and either fax or mail a document, which I intend to do on Tuesday (taking shameless advantage of the rental company's printer, and possibly also their fax machine). The third transcript request must be done via telephone, so that's a project for Monday.

3. Boiled four eggs.

4. Poked around the Not the IRS continuing education/re-certification website and signed up for an online course. No live in-person events seem to be scheduled for my area yet, but I will keep checking back periodically. (Hopefully district management will also send out an email about that by the end of July.)

5. Washed laundry. Dried laundry. Folded laundry. Put away laundry. Hung other laundry up to air-dry overnight. Laundry is serious business!

6. Changed linens.

7. Made a weekly to-do list and taped it to the wall over my computer, which is another new scheduling hack I am trying in addition to my daily to-do lists.

...

I am considering going to bed very early tonight. I am also considering making a bag of microwave popcorn (courtesy of a former tenant who has yet to cancel their mail-order snack service a month and a half after moving out) and watching Moana on Netflix. I am not yet sure which option will win.

So my narcissus bulb from last year, which began sprouting with such promise in November, turned out to be kind of a bust. Not only did it fail to bloom, it also couldn't properly support its own leaves and is just very sad. :(


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1) old narcissus, Monday, 21 November 2016
2) old narcissus, Monday, 19 December 2016


However!

I went to this year's solstice ceremony on Tuesday the 20th, and the narcissus bulbs seem to have become a tradition because I got a new one. In fact, I got six; there were a bunch left over and the organizers started encouraging people to grab extras as the service broke up into general socializing. :)

I left my new bulbs in a shallow, water-filled dish over the weekend while I was away, and they responded by enthusiastically sprouting roots. So when I arrived home this afternoon, I went to Agway and bought two bags of potting soil (I didn't actually need both now, but I will need a bunch of dirt in March or April for my next batch of peppers and I figured I might as well stock up now) and duly potted them.


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3) new bulbs after a weekend in water, Monday, 26 December 2016
4) new bulbs potted, Monday, 26 December 2016


My ultimate plan is to move the bulbs out to the back yard -- probably between my porch/deck and the scraggly raspberry canes that Upstairs Neighbor E planted last summer (they lived! barely, though, and they produced, I think, one berry between the three of them. drought, you know?) -- after they finish blooming this winter. And then perhaps I will have OUTDOOR narcissuses (narcissi? narcissus? argh, whatever) in April 2018. :D


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