the deep moans round with many voices

We went to the Corning Museum of Glass -- Mom pointed out, correctly, that the thing about visiting wineries is that you tend to drink a bit of wine, and then usually want a nap afterwards, which would interfere with our relatively early dinner reservation.

So we watched a glassblowing demonstration, wandered through the scientific advancements part of the museum (Dad and I read all the plaques, watched all the videos, and played around with some of the devices -- Mom was more cursory and spent about twenty minutes on a convenient couch waiting for us to finish), and then headed to the 35 centuries of glass exhibit (where, again, Dad and I took our sweet time looking at everything while Mom was mostly off doing other things). Historical glassmaking is really cool, okay? Also, they had a working glass armonica with some headphones that played a recording of actual armonica music. :)

The museum had organized a game where they placed a small but distinctive glass sculpture in one of the exhibits, and if you found it and took a photo back to the admissions desk, you would win a small prize. I found the sculpture somewhat by accident, and won a sticker which is now adorning my laptop.

We had dinner at the Antlers, which is an excellent local restaurant. (I say "local" -- it's actually out in Varna, which is one of Ithaca's ring of hamlet exurbs -- but it takes under 15 minutes to drive there from my house which is local enough.) Mom had scallops au gratin, Dad had the porterhouse steak, and I had the Delmonico steak. Everything was unsurprisingly delicious.

With regard to presents: Nick bought me an art print I had requested, and Mom and Dad got me some useful gift cards plus a new saucepan to replace an old one whose non-stick coating was crumbling off.

Susan and Cat both called or texted to say Happy Birthday, which was nice. I also got possibly the world's funniest birthday card from my Aunt Cara. The front says Socially obligatory folded piece of paper for your birthday, and on the inside is the qualifier: With envelope. :D

Sunday morning we had breakfast at Café Dewitt -- I had their French toast special of the day (it sort of mimicked Honey Bunches of Oats? a bit odd but quite tasty), Dad had a deluxe fried egg sammie, and Mom had a ham-swiss-spinach omelet with a side salad. Then they headed south to New Jersey, where they attended a Superbowl party at my friend Susan's parents' house along with my friend Cat's mom. (I have always been a little confused as to why my parents ended up actual friend with MY friends' parents, but not really with Nick's friends' parents, but that's just how things shook out.)

Meanwhile, I enjoyed having NOTHING TO DO, and spent my afternoon taking a glorious nap and catching up on some reading, as well as watching some more videos for my Coursera class.

-----

Monday was pretty slow, just work as normal up in the Collegetown rental office. The previous new hire quit at the end of December because she got hired for a government job with one of the neighboring counties. It was the right choice for her, but a bit frustrating because she had been picking up the job well and had an excellent work ethic. Fortunately Mom Boss and Aunt Boss found yet another new hire in late January, who thus far seems to also be picking up the job pretty well. I have my fingers crossed that she will stick around for a while!

I managed to do laundry Monday night in case today's east coast storm did NOT miss Ithaca, but thus far we have seen no sign of snow. Over the past few days, it's been kind of funny to watch our forecast go from "OMG SNOW!!1!" to "2-4 inches" to "afternoon flurries, maybe a dusting will stick to the ground." The sky this morning was a bright and gorgeous blue, and I am beginning to suspect that even the flurries may fail to materialize. We shall see.

And now I will return to answering work emails.

Some stuff, in no particular order:

1. I got roped into working in the Collegetown office last Friday, since Mom Boss was out of town for an event that had been scheduled long before the apartment fire***. Anyway, I think me being there reminded Aunt Boss that I exist on days other than Monday, and she has dumped some tasks on me on Wednesday and Thursday which are meant to be downtown-only days. Eh, it happens.

Also I need to create a spreadsheet for apartment inspections by Monday morning, which will be clear, concise, legible, and large enough to mark off with a pencil while fitting neatly on a clipboard. So that's a fun assignment.

2. In re: Yuletide, all I have to say is BEARS!!!

3. I got a nice end-of-year bonus check, and promptly dumped a chunk of that into making estimated tax payments to the IRS and the NY state tax department, because even though I won't have ACA advance premium tax credits to reconcile, bonuses are still money without a withholding mechanism and I would prefer to get a refund than get socked with a tax bill when I file my taxes in... probably early February, going by when assorted documents have reached me in the past.

4. On Tuesday morning my dentist's office called to say, "We see you have an appointment schedule for Tuesday the 20th, but we have an opening today -- would you like to come in this afternoon instead?" And since I do have to work on the 20th and would prefer NOT to get up at 7am in order to make an 8am appointment prior to an 8-hour workday, I said yes.

I got my X-rays updated and my teeth scraped and polished, and the upshot is that I still have deeply iffy enamel and slightly iffy gums, but there's no significant change over the past 6 months and none of my fillings are going weird, which is all I really care about.

5. So Chuck Tingle now has a Tumblr account, and sometimes people I follow reblog his posts, one of which involved a question about plus-sized cover models. He included examples of some of his works in his reply, and I honestly hadn't realized he wrote lesbian erotica as well as gay erotica? Anyway, I bought the three lesbian works he linked to, and they are amazingly sweet, which is not quite what I was expecting. They're also interestingly meta in places, and very big on emotional openness, healthy communication, and generally enjoying life. There are some typos, and I admit to getting repeatedly distracted in the one about the sentient planet Mercury by the way Tingle seems to have confused Mercury with Jupiter, but overall these are genuinely good reads. Also Tingle includes a bonus story in each "book," which is nice because the stories themselves are only about 4000-5000 words long.

I may need to check out some of Tingle's full-length books.

6. Ithaca is currently experiencing the big winter storm that has been sweeping across the country. So far it's been mostly sleet and freezing rain, but apparently that may change to snow overnight? And snow on top of ice is, shall we say, less than desirable for MANY reasons.

I dug out my shovel and am setting my alarm an hour early tomorrow, just to be on the safe side.

-----

***I will make a separate post about the fire at some point. For now, all you need to know is that it happened on Monday the 5th at about 6:15am, NOBODY DIED or was even seriously injured, and 80 tenants were displaced though we have been whittling that number steadily downward.

Today I sent out all downtown renewal and non-renewal emails.

First, everyone who signed a lease after Ithaca passed a new 120-day renewal notification period regulation but didn't sign the waiver on page one got an email saying, basically, "Our records show that you didn't sign the following waiver (text of waiver), which means we will not do X, Y, or Z until January 2023. At that time we'll contact you with renewal information and you'll have a month to think about it. Please note that this restriction only applies to us as your landlord -- if you decide you want to renew, you can contact the rental office at any time."

(Upon reflection, the 120 days may be from sending the notice rather than from the start of the lease, but this is the first year it's existed so I assume most landlords are having some implementation glitches. *hands* I have created a new spreadsheet where we can track that information as we receive signed 2023-2024 leases, so next year we can send the 120-day notifications by September 1, 2023. That way we'll be covered under both interpretations.)

Second, everyone who indicated that they plan to leave Ithaca in 2023 got an email to the effect of, "Our records show that you intend to leave. As such, this is your official notice of non-renewal, and some information about how tours work if we need to show your apartment to prospective new tenants. If you are NOT actually planning to leave Ithaca, please reply ASAP and let us know what's up!"

(There's a variant of that email which reads, "You're currently living in a group apartment on an individual room lease. Because we prefer to rent that apartment to a group, we're not renewing your lease. However, you're welcome to switch to a new apartment in our buildings... or even pull together a group of friends and sign a new lease that lets you stay in your current room!")

Finally everyone who indicated they plan to leave in 2024 or later -- or, you know, not leave at all -- got the much longer renewal email, which provides a whole bunch of information about the renewal process and asks them to pick one of four options: A) I'm ready to renew now; B) please hold my apartment because of [fill in reason]; C) I want to switch to a new apartment; D) I'm not renewing.

And now I get to process responses and mark them all down in my color-coded renewal tracking spreadsheet.

I am very fond of spreadsheets. :)

I think all my artistic/creative impulses are currently getting yoinked sideways into staging apartments (it takes skill to make them look good, okay? I have gotten so much better at it over the past two and a half years!) and then taking photos and shooting video tours, to say nothing of the subsequent photo editing process.

On the one hand, hey, at least I am being creative at something? But on the other, I'd really like to get a solid day or two of writing, or even just make some more progress on my paint-by-numbers kit or a cross-stitch kit. *sigh*

Hmm, what else...

Tompkins County has been in a mild state of drought for a couple weeks, but we had rain yesterday and today, so that should help a little. Unfortunately it was torrential thunderstorms both times, rather than a gentle day-long fall, so a lot of the water will just run off rather than soak in to replenish our groundwater levels.

I have tied up my peppers to prevent them from getting knocked over by storms. They are doing well, and a couple have set buds. My two surviving zucchini are also growing exuberantly, though as yet I have no fruit to harvest.

And honestly, I think I will go fall into bed soon, because I have been wiped out this whole week from hauling staging materials around in godawful heat and humidity. My feet in particular are very near to staging a mutiny, and I would like to head that off. *wry*

We had a thunderstorm today. It was GLORIOUS. :DDD

Also I think we may now be out of elevated wildfire risk, which is good. New York is not an especially wildfire-prone region, but we do have a lot of forested areas, so. The seasonal burn ban (mid-March to mid-May) was over yesterday, but even so, I probably wouldn't burn anything until after we get some more rain tomorrow.

The downside of rain, of course, is increased mosquito breeding. God I hate mosquitoes.