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.

1. The Goodyear staff fixed my car! It turns out that the front right corner of the under-engine shield had torn loose, so they trimmed off the useless part and refastened the rest with some zip-ties, as one does. Apparently the fender also got knocked a little loose, and couldn't be reattached with complete security because one of the connecting bits snapped off, but it's functional enough and fender replacements are expensive, so I will let it be for now.

I also got my windshield wipers replaced while I was there, because I had the money and they had gotten a little ragged, so why not.

2. Tonight's board meeting ran a bit long but not as long as we feared, and my minutes are in very nice shape if I do say so myself. I also helped formulate a long and complicated motion that we basically wrote in real-time... and volunteered myself for a project, which is less cool, but it needed doing and it's something I can do fairly easily (write a thing and give it to the administrator to send out to the congregation), so eh. I will manage.

3. Landlord Dude was unfortunately unable to come fix my kitchen sink today, but he promised to come tomorrow, so that's also manageable.

I intend to work 9am-6pm tomorrow to make up for being an hour late today (on account of car stuff), and therefore I believe I shall go fall into bed. :)

Today I:

1. Worked in the Collegetown office, which mostly involved a lot of move-ins and several people returning inspection forms (good tenants! you are helping both us and yourselves!), but also a bunch of emails to and from Mr. Geniality about downtown stuff. I think I will not need to head in to work overtime tomorrow morning/afternoon, but I will doublecheck in the morning to see if Mr. Geniality has been swamped and might need aid.

2. Decided not to do laundry after all, and instead to take a brief nap and then faff around in service of my own mental health. Tomorrow.

3. Learned from Landlord Dude that the faucet he ordered did not arrive and in fact is now scheduled to arrive Thursday at the earliest. *sigh* So that's my bathroom sink basically unusable for another few days, but whatever, at least this will force me to wash my dishes more often because spitting used toothpaste foam onto a pile of dirty dishes that I will later have to touch with my actual bare hands is somehow beyond gross.

4. Found a quick 1-credit tax CE course and knocked it off, so that's me officially done for the year! I mean, I have a live online course lined up for September, and I'm working through a couple other things, but that's by way of general edification and keeping my hand in rather than legal requirements with deadlines, you know? So it's totally a different vibe.

5. Started the pre-training homework for a UUA virtual training 3-session course on helpful Board of Trustees habits, which was recommended to my congregation. The first session is tomorrow evening, so I have kind of left this to the last minute but I am super not emotionally invested in this so I don't care. Also the homework is dead simple -- it's basically reading some articles and watching a couple short videos, which, pfft, whatever.

And now I think I will go attack a paint-by-numbers project I purchased last week. We shall see how that turns out.

Five things make a post:

1. Covid-19 test came back negative. \o/

2. The new tenant of a unique apartment that I badly wanted to stage, photograph, and video told us in July that they would arrive on Friday, August 13. I had been putting off staging that apartment because it's a third-floor walkup and I thought I had some breathing room to get more pressing apartments dealt with, and planned to do the staging today. I even brought in some of my own wall-art to help make the unfurnished rooms look good.

Well, it turns out the tenant actually arrived on Tuesday, August 10. Mr. Geniality did not notify me when they picked up the keys (I might have been able to squeak 45 minutes out before they actually moved in), so they've now moved in all their own furniture and whatnot and it is far too late to do anything.

I'm a little annoyed about that. *sigh*

3. My parents got delayed by traffic and will arrive circa 10pm instead of 9pm, so I am kind of killing time for an hour and a half.

4. It continued to be beastly hot and humid, so I decided to wear my pretty, lightweight blue-green broomstick skirt with the purple flower design. It was indeed very comfy! Then I accidentally tore a hole in the back hem this afternoon, when it got caught in the wheel of an office chair. I am unpleased.

5. I successfully remembered to text Landlord Dude about my living room light and bathroom sink maintenance issues, and he said he'll come fix them on Friday. \o/

Dad arrived Thursday afternoon/evening, and was waiting in my apartment when I got home from work. We had steak, broccoli, and rice for dinner, because we could :)

My surgery was at 10:15am on Friday, with a check-in time of 8:45am. On the one hand, this meant I could get up at 7am and take my pills with some cranberry juice before the surgery. On the other hand, it meant I had two extra hours to get hungry without breakfast. But generally everything went smoothly and I now have a sore right hand wrapped up in a lot of bandages.

Dad and I installed my air conditioner Thursday evening while I still had two good hands. On Friday, after my post-surgery nap, I enlisted him as my hands and we slammed through 1) laundry, 2) groceries, and 3) buying potting soil for this year's container garden. We had yogurt for lunch because neither of us was particularly hungry at that point, and Chinese takeout for dinner. I had a strong allergic reaction to something Friday afternoon -- nose running like a faucet, repeated sneezing, itchy/watery eyes -- but I took some Benadryl and it did not continue through the night or recur this morning.

This morning Dad and I had scrambled eggs and banana bread for breakfast (because we could!), and he dropped me off at work where I expect I'll spend most of my day doing light emails and some leases, and I think one tour around 3:30pm.

I also tested my bridesmaid dress for Susan's wedding, and while I CAN still fit into it (a year and a bit after taking the measurements and placing my dress order), it's very tight and I need to lose some weight before the end of June.

Now I am going to rest my right arm on a long ice pack for a while. :)

Yesterday there were two rallies on the Commons -- one for Black Lives Matters (etc.), and one for the police -- which was a little worrying both on a Covid-19 front and also because of the potential for things to escalate when the two groups encountered each other. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have gone beyond some yelling.

The BLM rally was in Bank Alley, a block and a half(ish) away from my office, and didn't disrupt my day at all. The Back the Blue rally, on the other hand, started right in front of my office while I was on my lunch break. People started crowding up against the office door, so I flipped the sign to "closed" and kept the doors locked until they moved east along the Commons around 2:45pm.

Other than that, it was a pretty calm day.

Today I have very deliberately done nothing in particular, aside from mail my November rent check. I got a call from Landlord Dude on Friday asking me to not rake the leaves this year because he feels weird paying somebody to do it. He doesn't exactly pay me, as such -- I've just been in the habit of knocking off $25 from my November or December rent (only one of them, not both) in recognition that raking is a lot of work and also I've had to buy yard waste bags and yard waste disposal tags. I started doing this because Landlord Dude kept not getting around to the yardwork and I do, you know, like having grass in the yard rather than letting the trees smother it. But I guess since he lives closer now (he used to live halfway up the lake, in Locke) he feels more able to handle the yardwork... or else he's going to rope his son into doing it, since I know he's had his son helping out with some mowing and roof work and such this summer and fall. *shrug* I told him I'd put my spare yard waste bags onto the porch and wash my hands of the issue.

...

If he still hasn't raked anything by mid-November, though, all bets are off. An unraked yard is just itchy, you know?

I have also signed up for Yuletide. That's always an interesting experience in years when I forget to participate in the nomination process -- I have to comb through the tagset looking for stuff I want to request, not just stuff I want to offer. But I found four things, all of which would make me very happy to receive, so it's all good. I have posted a placeholder letter and will get the real version up on... Tuesday, probably. Tomorrow will be busy.