the deep moans round with many voices

Things done today:

1. Bought groceries, which included picking up my Celexa renewal (yay storebought serotonin!) and some vegetable seeds.

2. Bought 2 cubic feet of potting soil plus a refill of my 3-in-1 fungicide/insecticide/miticide spray. While at Agway, I ran into one of my old smoke shop coworkers whom I haven't seen in years. We both apparently had the same reaction upon first seeing each other -- "I feel like I should know this person, but I cannot place them, ack!" -- but he dredged up my name first after which I was like, "Oh right! You! How have you been?" and we chatted a little before he had to go help another customer.

3. Put away the laundry that had been air-drying since yesterday.

4. Arranged phone calls with Cat and Susan, and agreed with Nick to arrange one next week since this week is when he's officially moving out of his apartment and into his new house. (Yay house!)

5. Wrote ~525 words of the Doctor Who/Magnus Archives crossover. Some are totally new, but a bunch were also me going back to rework some stuff to bring it into line with my new plot now that I've figured out the source of the problem and how Rose and Jon are going to fix it.

6. INSTALLED MY AIR CONDITIONER. [link goes to Tumblr photo]

It occurred to me, after complaining about how it requires three hands to install my AC (because my windows are evil), that possibly I could simulate one of those hands with, alternately, a pressure bar to hold up the windowpane and a chair to hold up the AC. It took a bit of finagling, and I damn near smashed my fingers while lowering the windowpane (not an inherent flaw in the process; I just grabbed the wrong spot), but I did it!

And now I am no longer at risk of melting into a gloopy puddle of hydrocarbons and water from the current heatwave. \o/

(If you're wondering about the cardboard nailed to the windowsill, that's something I jerry-rigged several years ago to tilt the AC back the tiny fraction of a inch necessary to make the drainage system actually work. Like I said, my windows are evil.)

7. Got everything set up to repair the lid of my toilet tank tomorrow. It was broken-and-badly-repaired when I moved in, and after 10+ years whatever glue the previous tenant used gave up the ghost. So I'm going to glue the loose pieces back again, and this time try to fill in the gaps with sealant for extra support.

8. Acquired my Uncle Bill's new address so I could re-send his card, which was returned to me. I'd completely forgotten he and Aunt Carol had moved. Also wrote and mailed a card to Cat's mother, who has been rather isolated due to pandemic restrictions.

9. Found yet another dead mouse in my kitchen sink cupboard. *sigh* Disposed of it in the brush pile.

And now I am going to bed, because my current plan is to get up early-ish in the morning and do some serious gardening before the weather becomes unbearable.

...

There are reasons I say you would have to pay me at least a million dollars a year to move anywhere south of Philadelphia!

Okay, so, longer job post!

My schedule is for ~26 hours spread over three days: two 10-hour shifts and one 8-hour shift (less half-hour lunch breaks). I will be working Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. I have the use of a parking spot in one of the lots the company owns (we rent parking as well as apartments), but I think I will only use that on bad-weather days, or if I need to get somewhere rapidly after work or maybe during a lunch break. At the moment, I'm walking to a bus stop and then catching a bus to the neighborhood, and just walking all the way home. (I don't want to walk both directions because oh god hills and I am out of shape for that; also, I don't care if I get home all sweaty but it's bad form to start your work day all sweaty.)

( cut for length and a vague approximation of discretion )

And that was my first two days at work. :)

1. I think I'm doing pretty well in my tax course so far. I got 90% on the first quiz (would've been 100% but I counted dependents instead of exemptions and forgot you can exempt yourself, whoops) and 100% on the first graded review. I have also not had any problems with the software, aside from the known practice environment glitches, and have played around a little to see what making random changes in the case studies' givens will do. In a few cases this has gotten downright weird since I've been messing around with credits and deductions we haven't yet reached in the textbook, but hey, what's the point of a safe play-space if you're afraid to break stuff?

2. I have two prompt!ficlets left to write, and am willing to accept more prompts until October 1 if anyone is still interested. This round has been almost entirely Homestuck, Naruto, and Narnia, but I am more than happy to write in other fandoms if you have an idea you want to see.

3. I may be dogsitting Dottie from late October through the first week and a half of November. Watch this space.

4. My dentist called me today and said it's about the time I usually have an autumn appointment, and would I like to schedule one? I haven't been to the dentist since a year and a half ago, I think, because I've been unemployed and dentists are expensive. I am apparently prone to cavities, though, so I probably should go and even get X-rayed... but X-rays are even more expensive than a basic checkup and cleaning... *weighs options, reaches no conclusion, tables the issue until next week*

5. I will be picking up some extra hours at the health garage next week when another of the front office staff goes on vacation. Yay money!

In other health garage news, we were supposed to switch over to a new computer program today, but implementation was delayed because of various issues. This is not the first time implementation has been delayed; apparently the program in question was originally meant to go live this past spring. O_o

The switch will make part of my job simpler by rendering it irrelevant, but it will make other parts a lot more complicated, because among other issues, the new program does not have any way for the front office to access clients' financial information. Do they have a copay? Do they use a sliding fee scale? Do they owe us a back balance? Who knows! We sure won't! (We do have a kludgy workaround involving manually updated tables in Word documents, but that is a gigantic pain in the neck and I am not looking forward to it. I really hope that issue gets addressed and fixed before implementation actually happens.)

6. Yesterday was Porchfest. As always, Downstairs Neighbor S volunteered our house as one of the stages, so I got to listen to some nice jazz while I took a nap after church. Later in the afternoon I went to hear Boss Lady and her band play a few blocks down my street, and caught up with Sweetheart who was also there to listen.

Porchfest has been getting bigger every year, and this year my church got in on it! We moved Sundae Sunday (which celebrates the invention of the ice cream sundae -- in Ithaca, in 1892, by Unitarians! -- and is an annual church event) from the first day of fall services to the 27th and served ice cream sundaes to anyone who walked past. We also had three musical acts on the porch of the parish house. So that was fun. :D

I mentioned I'd checked out some Daredevil comics from the library, right? So far that means Waid's run up until Matt moves to San Francisco (they don't seem to have anything more recent, alas), the first three collections from Brubaker's run (the fourth is on order and will be mine the moment the person who currently has it checked out returns it), and Shadowland.

( Brubaker )

Moving on!

( Shadowland )

Moving on again!

( Waid )

...

I am thinking really hard about subscribing to Marvel Unlimited for a month or two. Somebody tell me this is a bad idea, please...

Today I am thirty-three years old -- a palindrome year!

My parents are coming up on Sunday to attend a concert at my church and take me out for a nice birthday dinner. They will bring cake and gifts and supplies for champagne cocktails, because that is how we roll. (Mmm, champagne cocktails...) I will keep Dottie overnight, because apparently the price differences between the motel that allows dogs and the motel that doesn't are currently dramatic enough for my parents to decide that saving money outweighs the small logistical inconveniences of leaving her with me.

I got my taxes done this morning, for free -- this is a side benefit of working for Not the IRS. The hill office was crazy busy this afternoon, which I suspect is partly just that we're reaching our peak couple weeks, and partly that everyone who didn't come yesterday because of the weather came today instead.

Vicky gave me my birthday present at Christmas and I duly lugged it back to Ithaca and let it sit untouched on my coffee table for a month and a half, but tonight I got to open it. For Christmas, she got me a Talavera ceramic mug from one of her trips to Mexico, and for my birthday she got me some plum wine, some matcha chocolate pocky, and a bowl, a whisk, and what I think is a tin of powdered green tea, all purchased on her trip to Japan last summer. (The Mexico trips are for work -- she's a linguist and currently does stuff with ESL testing -- while the Japan trip was as a chaperone for her church's youth group.)

I also got ten bucks from one of my maternal uncles, and a cool metal charm with an engraved lucky horseshoe from Aunt Cara. All in all, a good day. :-)

---------------

In less pleasant news, I got an email today from...

Did I ever tell you guys the story of Longwinded Man? I don't think I did. I was too annoyed at the time, and it was a little too personal. But today's event needs context, so.

( cut for length and vaguely personal details )

I just.

ARGH.

I will give him this: it is a shorter email than he usually manages. But it's exactly the same type of emotionally manipulative garbage and making me into an object instead of seeing me as myself that he used to do.

I'm not going to answer. In fact, I'm going to block his email address, like I should have done a long time ago.

And hopefully I will never have any contact with him again.