the deep moans round with many voices

I have basically spent Sunday through today sleeping with intervals of reading, and I am so tired of being ill. Since I stopped working retail, I get sick much less often, but upper respiratory ailments still tend to hit me like a tractor-trailer. I am distinctly unfond of the experience.

However today I am definitely on the mend -- I had significantly more physical energy and mental focus, to the point where I pulled myself together enough to order Chinese takeout and actually go pick it up -- so I think I will manage to get ONE day at the office tomorrow.

I might then do a make-up day on Saturday to catch up on photo and video editing (I think tomorrow will mostly be emails and advertising updates), but if not, oh well.

I am also considering signing up for Get Your Words Out in 2025. I think that I will go for a habit pledge rather than a wordcount pledge, because what I need to do is build writing into my daily routine. We shall see.

The Collegetown rental office was eerily quiet today. All of Collegetown was, actually -- and Ithaca in general was subdued. New Hire called out sick (Aunt Boss and I suspect it was stress/grief rather than germs) and Mom Boss stayed home and did a bit of remote work.

Fuck.

Anyway I have set up a monthly donation to the ACLU. Gonna look into some other options next week once I am less numb -- I need to pick things that don't require a big in-person time commitment (or making cold calls, or knocking on doors) because I will 100% flake out on that and it's better to find some activity I can stick with.

In a tiny silver lining it looks like my House district may have swung to a Democratic challenger instead of the Republican incumbent? The margin was very tight, though, so a mandatory recount may be triggered. We shall see.

Today was a very slow day at work, aside from the part where the on-call maintenance guy called to see if I could go let a Collegetown tenant back into their apartment so he wouldn't have to drive to and from Ithaca (90-minute round trip) and charge the tenant a $75 lockout fee.

I said sure, drove up to Collegetown to fix the issue, and promptly got my left rear bumper mangled. *headdesk* Collegetown traffic and parking has always been a disaster, but it's twice as bad this year since several blocks of important roads are totally closed for construction projects, so every other road gets even more gummed up.

Honestly, I am shocked that I have never had any car accidents/damage there before now.

I will call either my Toyota dealer or a bodyshop on Monday and schedule a repair appointment for Tuesday afternoon.

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In better news, this evening I attended an NYS Baroque concert featuring music by Vivaldi and some contemporaries inspired by his work. It was lovely! The instruments involved were harpsichord, violin, cello, lute, theorbo (which is basically a lute with its own attached bass strings), chalumeau (weird period ancestors of clarinets) in two registers, period recorder, period oboe, and period bassoon.

The oboist (Geoffrey Burgess) was very good -- I am a lapsed oboist myself, so I always pay close attention to oboe players and parts -- but I was absolutely blown away by the bassoonist (Stephanie Corwin).

Assorted medical things:

1. I had my annual checkup/physical appointment Wednesday morning. The upshot is that I now have three upcoming medical appointments: a fasting blood draw at the end of the month, a mammogram in April, and an ambulatory blood pressure thingy (basically, they strap a monitor to me in the morning and I wear it all day) the time for which is still TBD, but they'll notify me when it's scheduled.

I also got my 10-year Tdap booster, because while I am unlikely to get tetanus or diphtheria, whooping cough outbreaks are sadly not unknown in the US and I would very much like to NOT get that. (Sweetheart, one of my former coworkers from the smoke shop, got whooping cough some years back and it was brutal. She was sick for months.)

2. Wednesday evening, I started having sore throat symptoms so I drank some tea with honey and went to bed a little early, but my throat got worse and worse through the night and this morning I texted in sick. I don't really have much by way of an externally runny nose, but my throat hurts when I exist and hurts worse when I swallow or try to talk, plus I am exhausted and achey.

I got a Covid test this morning, just in case, and have already received negative results. I also took a long nap this afternoon, and am about to head back to bed because see above in re: exhaustion.

So last night I said to myself, "I bet the front steps will be slippery tomorrow morning, since it's been nearly 40 degrees today and there will be a hard freeze down into the mid-teens overnight. I should salt them."

But did I put salt on the steps? No I did not, because I was in a hurry to make some soup and get ready for the Board of Trustees meeting. And then I'd completely forgotten by the time the meeting was finished.

Normally this would not be a problem, because normally I am cautious on the steps as a general point of policy. However, I was rushing this morning as part of my plan to get to work early and make up for yesterday's time lost waiting at Goodyear, and what did I do?

Slipped on the icy steps and went down like a sack of hammers.

My glasses flew off. I dropped my bag. And I banged the shit out of the lower right of my skull, my right elbow, and my right hip/butt.

Fortunately nothing broke, and I do not have a concussion! But I had to lie on the cold, snow-dusted brick and concrete for a couple minutes, cursing and trying to recover my breath, before I was able to gingerly stand up. (And able to salt the damn steps! *headdesk*)

I spent the morning at work typing left-handed while holding a freezer pack to my head with my right (gloved) hand and felt like I was recovering.

And then, when I was out grabbing lunch, I realized my house keys were missing.

...

...

I texted my neighbors, who hadn't seen them.

I then texted Landlord Dude to ask him to leave my front door unlocked after he finished unclogging my kitchen sink.

Fortunately, he was able to find my keys next to the steps where they'd flown out of my hand when I fell, and has left them tucked under my welcome mat.

So. All's well that ends well, I guess?