the deep moans round with many voices

Today I repotted a bunch of plants. Tomorrow I need to buy some more potting soil because I still have four to go.

I also need to buy a bit of chain for hanging one of my newly potted plants from the ceiling, but that's a less immediately pressing concern.

Some of the plants in question are houseplants, but others are from the Wine & Herb fest and need to go outside once potted.

I actually was going to take one out this afternoon, but when I did I discovered that I REALLY do not trust the structural integrity of my back porch/deck thingy. I must text Landlord Dude and let him know he needs to replace that this summer.

(For context, the deck is untreated wood and I have lived in this apartment since June of 2009. I do my best to keep the deck clean and clear, but there comes a time when decay cannot be staved off any further.)

This evening I realized that my habit of scheduling tax CE virtual class sessions on Tuesdays has betrayed me in November, because I will be working on the 22nd in order to take the 23rd off. This is, of course, because I will spend the entirety of the 23rd driving to Chicago.

(In point of fact, I will start the trip the evening of the 22nd to knock off a couple hours, because I am not the most efficient long-haul driver. My eyes are strongly susceptible to road strain, so I tend to pull off every 45-75 minutes to give them a break, and often to take a little 10-minute nap for good measure.)

Anyway, I rescheduled two classes, and for a third I will just go into work early on Monday the 21st and Tuesday the 22nd to make up for taking a 2-hour break from 10am to noon. Oops.

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In unrelated news, yesterday I did laundry a whole week late -- sometimes life just kind of happens, you know? -- and today I folded, hung, and otherwise put away the majority of the clean items. \o/

I also repaired the pocket in a pair of comfy pajama pants, so I can now once again stash my phone there while lounging around the house.

Oh, and it's Halloween! We (by which I mean the tenants of the four apartments in my house) pooled our money and Downstairs Neighbor S purchased a whole mess of candy for trick-or-treaters. We still ran out before the end of the night, as is traditional. I live in a destination trick-or-treating neighborhood -- lots of local kids; lots of houses close together, many of which are duplexes; slow traffic; good sidewalks; you know the drill -- so we are perennially slammed and never have quite enough even though we keep increasing the money pool.

I also provide a wicker basket and a laminated "Take 2 Pieces" sign (for when we're not around to staff the porch), because if you can't misappropriate the office laminator for personal projects, what is even the POINT of having one around??? ;p

Today, after literally 20 years of living in assorted rental housing situations, I finally bought renter's insurance.

Yes, I know. I have been ABSURDLY lucky to avoid catastrophes this long!

But I was printing out my new car insurance cards just now, and it occurred to me that luck cannot last forever and insurance bundling is a thing, so as long I was logged into Geico anyway -- why not? And now I am insured for a year for the low annual cost of $158.00, paid in full to avoid installment charges. :)

As a random bonus, I can now explain with greater authority to rental company tenants why they should get renter's insurance and how it is both cheap and painless. *wry* Previously I always felt slightly hypocritical about that, the same way I feel slightly hypocritical about selling add-on products to my tax prep clients.

(I mean, I wouldn't pay for most of them... but then again, I actively enjoy doing taxes so I wouldn't pay for tax prep in the first place, and clearly that is not the case for my clients! Just because I personally don't care about paying for audit support and representation doesn't mean it's not a valuable service for other people. *hands* And I do think the Not the IRS tax ID theft protection and identity restoration aid service is a good deal, so that one I do wholeheartedly recommend.)

And now back to spreadsheets. *sigh*

I cannot actually be bothered to install my air conditioner today, particularly since it's already getting too dark for me to usefully prune the lilac bush (it's right next to the window and pruning makes it grow back very enthusiastically, so each year I have to clear a space for the AC all over again), but tomorrow night it's only supposed to get down to about 66 Fahrenheit after a midday high in the low 80s, so tomorrow is AC installation day.

Tonight I will just run all my fans full blast.

Hmm. And I need to buy a fourth fan, to replace the one that died last year. Right now I have the box fan to draw air in, the fan in my bedroom aimed directly at my bed, and the small fan that usually circulates air through the kitchen but is currently acting as my computer room fan. It does an okay job cooling me while I work, but is not adequate for shoving air out of the room once I have the AC turned on.

Right. I will look into that...

Things and stuff:

1. On Thursday, a potential tenant asked if we had a sample parking lease they could see. I said sure! And then panicked quietly for a minute because while the Collegetown office has a sample parking lease, the downtown office did not, because our parking lease was a terrible jerry-rigged mess that Lawyer Man "coded" in Rent Manager instead of a sensible fillable form Word document, and had to be separately generated for each new parking space.

So I generated a fake parking lease, edited it until it was generic, and emailed it to myself as a PDF (because trying to save documents from Rent Manager to our computers is an exercise in screaming frustration), after which I uploaded that horrible bodge to our website on the forms page and emailed a copy to the prospective tenant.

Then I set about making a proper fillable form Word document parking lease for downtown, based on the Collegetown parking lease but incorporating some aspects unique to downtown, such as the variant payment structures. I submitted it to Mom Boss for approval on Friday morning, made some edits as per her instructions, and now the downtown office has a functional parking lease instead of Lawyer Man's garbage. \o/

I am going to leave this office in SO MUCH BETTER SHAPE than I found it, seriously.

2. I have been subpoenaed to testify in an ongoing civil suit the rental company is involved in. I suspect most of my testimony will consist of a specifically phrased line Lawyer Man has provided (the contents of the statement are true; the exact phrasing is legally relevant), and explaining how none of our ads include any language related to the issue under dispute, because they don't and so far as I know never have. (They certainly haven't since I took over the ads in summer of 2020.) The court date is March 24, and I will have to drive all the way to goddamn Binghamton and back (plus wait for an indefinite period of time, because no court has ever run on schedule in the history of ever) to give my testimony. Ugh.

3. Cat, Susan, and I had a Zoom call Saturday night! It is always good to catch up as a group and not just one-on-one, and also good to be able to see each other. :)

4. I planted my bell pepper and jalapeno seeds today. I also did some prep work for zucchini seeds, but those sprout in about... 7-10 days? and need to be transferred outdoors within 2-3 days thereafter. Thus I won't plant those until early April. so as to reduce the risk of frost.

5. I had been vaguely meaning to read Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small quartet for many years (having loved the Song of the Lioness quartet since I was... 10? 11? Look, I found a copy of The Woman Who Rides Like a Man in the library because it was next to Meredith Ann Pierce's books, managed to track down the first two books over the next couple years, and didn't find book 4 until I was in high school. My childhood library had no YA section so the kid's section was, shall we say, highly eclectic. (I also read the Immortals quartet sometime in high school, though I didn't imprint on that nearly so deeply)), and on Thursday it occurred to me that my current local library might have ebook versions of some of Tamora Pierce's work. In the event, they did! I read First Test and Page in rapid gulps, and am nearly finished with Squire tonight. It is interesting to see the books get longer and the narrative tone change as Keladry grows up. Also, I love Kel. She is the best! ♥

6. I am attempting to do some spring cleaning of my apartment, which is currently a horrendous mess and has begun to annoy me. I got some things tidied up this afternoon after a shift at Not the IRS, but I still have a long way to go. *sigh*

7. Speaking of Not the IRS, today I had a client who got screwed over by Cornell because while they tell graduate students on stipends that some of that money is taxable and none of it is withheld, they don't provide any active assistance with setting up estimated tax payments. So my client got whacked with a significant federal and state tax payment, plus a state underpayment penalty, and I could tell they were upset which made me upset. I tried to give some advice on how to make sure this didn't happen again next year, but it sucks to not be able to help in the moment, you know? :(

8. In brighter news, Friday was Nick's birthday! I called right as he and our parents were sitting down for him to open presents, so I got to be on speakerphone through all of that, which was nice. He continues to suffer from what we are now pretty sure are chronic migraines, but at least the symptoms are slightly less awful? That or he's learning to cope with/compensate for them.

Chronic illness is such bullshit. The human impulse is to make things better, but some things don't lend themselves to being "made better" -- our instincts are all set up for acute events, not chronic conditions. We want a narrative: problem, struggle, solution. And sometimes the narrative is just, "And then they kept on dealing with the same damn thing day after day for the rest of their life," which is not emotionally satisfying and I think a lot of people aren't sure how to deal with that.

...

It's especially annoying because I have a chronic condition of my own (depression) which I manage because there isn't really a "cure" and yet I still find myself struggling with how to talk to Nick about his health. Brains suck sometimes, you know?

...

I think I will now go attempt some more apartment tidying.