the deep moans round with many voices

1. This evening I did laundry. ALL OF THE LAUNDRY.

My apartment is currently buried beneath air-drying clothes. I maxed out my three drying racks, used all the chair backs, and resorted to hanging items on lamps, on doorknobs, and on the pole for my shower curtain.

There are two reasons for this sudden laundrypocalypse. First, I do laundry on a two week cycle that I have carefully set up to alternate with the two week recycling collection cycle -- in other words, if it's a laundry week, I do NOT put out recycling on Sunday night, but if it's NOT a laundry week, I DO put out my recycling on Sunday night. But my cycle got munged up due to holiday travels and I have been unsuccessful at resetting it for various reasons until today.

Additionally, I bought a number of new clothes to replace some old ones that no longer fit or that I just didn't wear much anymore, and those needed a wash cycle before I started wearing them.

I could have done EVEN MORE laundry, but I decided to leave my linens for tomorrow so as to spare myself at least a little psychic damage.

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2. In other news, a few of the worst glitches in our new tax prep program have been resolved, but new glitches keep popping up. It is very frustrating. This program really was not ready for live beta testing -- it needed another six months minimum of alpha development and testing before anyone unleashed it on actual clients.

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3. My new tax office boss brought in homemade chocolate-covered strawberries because of Valentine's Day. I ate one, because goddamn I miss fresh fruit and sometimes you have to treat yourself. I then immediately took a Benadryl to counter my allergic reaction, because treating yourself doesn't mean ignoring medical consequences. So I got away with the strawberry (which was so delicious), but I did end up leaving work half an hour early and then taking a 2.5 hour nap once I got home, because Benadryl is a highly effective sleeping pill in addition to being a highly effective antihistamine.

And now to bed. :)

I completely forgot that today was the start of Daylight Savings, but fortunately my phone adjusts automatically and my confusion at seeing it disagree with the wall clock early this morning woke me enough that I was able to adjust my alarm clock accordingly before grabbing another few hours of sleep.

I had to shovel snow snowplow leavings out of the driveway mouth before I could head off to work, but fortunately the ice chunks were loosely packed so that only took about 5 minutes.

I acquired an accidental client at Not the IRS this afternoon, whose return is mostly simple, just a lot of tedious data entry. The part that isn't simple I scheduled time to work on during Tuesday morning, when I will hopefully be a little more with it and will also have a chance to pick a coworker's brain about an issue with fuzzy borders. (I talked the client into dropping off their papers instead of sitting with me while I frowned at the data entry. Fidgeting and staring at me while I frown at data entry is not helpful for anyone, honestly.)

I had split pea soup and tea for lunch when I got home around 4:30pm, and then slept for about 5 more hours. I woke around 10:30pm and had a very late dinner of pepperoni-and-brie on bread, roasted Brussels sprouts, and tea. It's a little frustrating to realize I am currently in a state where freaking pepperoni tastes actively spicy to me, but I guess that is what a raw throat and very chapped lips will do to a person. *sigh*

And now I shall return to bed and continue my valiant attempt to sleep this cold into submission.

I got up a bit later than intended, and then took a little longer getting ready to leave than intended, with the net result that I left at 12:15pm instead of 11-11:30am, but my drive was pretty smooth and I made it to NJ before sunset, so it's all good. I listened to the latest episode of Enthusigasm, and then several lectures in my current Great Courses series, which is called "Tocqueville and the American Experiment". (Political analysis courses are always interesting because they date very quickly. This one was recorded in 2004, and there are multiple portions that I am 100% sure would be different if Professor Cook were recording it anew today.)

My poor car is in desperate need of a wash -- there was intermittent snow from Ithaca through about the NY/PA border, and that means a lot of road gunk kicked up into the air which then insta-dries on cars -- but I stopped in Throop to wash my front and back windshields at a gas station, which helped somewhat.

I dropped by Susan's parents' house for a 1-hour visit and to exchange gifts, which was good. Susan's pregnancy is going well so far!

Mom and I had corned beef and salad for dinner and sampled some of this year's more experimental cookies. Then she and I set up and made the sofa-bed in my childhood bedroom (which is currently acting as a catch-all storage room), after which I wrapped a bunch of presents and caught up on some internet nonsense.

Tomorrow we plan to be at the local Verizon store about 5 minutes before 10am to ensure we are the first customers, whereupon I will upgrade my phone. I have preemptively logged into my work email because I'm not sure how my Microsoft Authenticator app will transfer over, and I need that to, you know, keep an eye out for disasters. *wry* I am pretty sure everything else should transfer fine, but security programs can get finicky.

After that I think we're doing some food and alcohol shopping, and then I will probably hole up and finish some paid training for Not the IRS which I have been putting off on account of being excessively busy.

And now, to bed. :)

So, I am back home in Ithaca! Friday was a LONG day on the road -- about an hour longer than expected, actually, because of snow and sleet and such, starting in eastern Ohio. But we made it and got Chinese takeout for dinner, so that was okay.

Thanksgiving itself went pretty well. We had reserved a takeout order from Maggiano's (which is apparently a chain of moderately upscale Italian restaurants -- this specific one is in the Westfield Old Orchard Mall) that supposedly fed four or five people. Honestly, it would have fed eight with no problem, and quite possibly ten if no one got greedy. So we had lots of leftovers. :)

We picked up the order at 1:30pm and ate around 2pm.

Um. It occurs to me I should describe the hotel a little, yes? Yes. So, we got one suite and one regular hotel room, which were connected via a double door. The suite had a kitchenette (full-size fridge, dishwasher, some cabinets, a two-burner stove with a provided pot and pan), and a small table with two chairs. The living room had a sofa (with a pullout bed), an armchair, and a sort of worktable area. That table turned out to be an exact match for the dining table, so we combined them to make a five-seater table and set up a card table (ours) and an end table (the hotel's) to make a serving area.

Nick and I shared the suite -- he slept on the sofa bed, and I slept on one of the queen beds in the bedroom -- and Mom and Dad shared the regular room.

Aunt Cara arrived around 11am for hors d'oeuvres and conversation, which was nice. I hadn't seen her in... I think going on three years? We cancelled Thanksgiving last year (it would have been this same plan, but the Covid vaccines weren't available yet so we decided better safe than sorry) and in 2019 she got the flu or something of that ilk the day before she would have started driving to New Jersey.

After the Thanksgiving meal, Dad and Aunt Cara took a short walk around the hotel (Dad has been having issues with one of his feet for going on two years, and Aunt Cara has some general mobility issues) while Mom, Nick, and I took a ~1.25 mile walk in a local park next to a tributary of the Chicago River. It was chilly, but not too bad if you had gloves and some kind of head-covering. The path died at a bridge where a local road/highway crossed the stream, and it was starting to get dark so we turned back rather than go exploring.

In the afternoon and evening, we packaged and divvied up leftovers, and then played two rounds of Chronology (specifically the old version, not the 20th anniversary version) and two rounds of Uno (we play old-school, none of this customizable card and special rule card nonsense).

We also drank a possibly unwise amount of wine (I think 4.5 bottles, two of which were champagne equivalents), but that was spread over about nine hours and five people, so eh.

And that was my Thanksgiving. :)

Things done today:

1. Attended the third session of my virtual tax CE course on investment income. Now I just have to do the case study portions and the test will unlock.

2. Set up auto-pay for my car loan. However, that won't kick in until October, so I then went into town and made my first payment in person. I have decided to pay more than the minimum each month so as to A) pay the loan off faster and B) pay less interest.

3. Started a new paint-by-number project. Which reminds me, I don't think I posted about my previous paint-by-number project over here -- that's all been on Tumblr, which has a simpler image posting interface. I will correct that omission at some point.

4. Picked up the second of the two loaves of bread (baked to order) that I purchased at last year's service auction. It is delicious. :)

5. Belatedly did homework for and attended the second session of my virtual church Board of Trustees training course.