Dwarf Planet in Purple

Gradually, life here is starting to feel normal again. It's not the same as it was in the condo. But maybe it will be more sustainable.

This morning my landlady came back from her six-week road trip out West. (She is an SCA merchant of tablet-weaving goods and supplies.) Her old RV's transmission died somewhere around Colorado, but she found someone who took it off her hands, and she made the eastward journey in a rental truck. She and her husband met up in Ohio, where they purchased a brand-spanking-new RV that is huge and shiny. It's built on some sort of Ford E-series truck base and has *tons* of nifty features, from the TV in the sleeping loft above the driver's cockpit to a pull-down Murphy bed, three-burner propane stove, tankless water heater and a combination "garage" and rear deck.

This afternoon the boy toy and I helped our landlord and landlady empty that rental truck, which is due back tomorrow. A lot of the stuff we brought into the house and shed will eventually live in the RV's garage, but not yet. They gave us a new single-burner induction cooktop (we can't have a full stove due to zoning regulations). Now I'm the "good" kind of tired.

Can't believe I have a feature article due in 10 days....

OK, I should really get back in the habit of updating this journal.

I left you all hanging, and I apologize. I will try to keep the updates short and sweet.

First of all, housing. The boy toy and I have found an apartment -- namely, an accessory apartment on the property of two longtime SCAdians whom I met at my first-ever SCA event in January 2004. It isn't perfect, but it has some good points, including new floors and a new fridge, plus a big front porch. I will move his stuff in tomorrow (he has been staying with a friend of mine in Baltimore County, but she has other houseguests arriving next month). Then we will move a few essentials from our storage unit to the new place. Then I will move Julia and myself there.

Vehicle: As I figured would happen, the insurance company declared my car a total loss. Fortunately, it gave me a decent amount of money for it (considering that the car was 24 years old). So this week I purchased a 2008 Hyundai Tucson. Still a used car, of course, but with LOTS more carrying capacity than a Corolla. Just what I wanted! It will burn more gasoline, but I will deal with it.

In case you were wondering, here is a list of all the cars I have owned:

1973 Chevy Impala
1981 Chevy Chevette
1979 Toyota Corolla
1985 Mercury Marquis Brougham
1996 Pontiac Sunfire
1983 Plymouth Horizon (inherited from my mother)
1993 Honda Accord
1999 Toyota Corolla

So, yeah, I am finally driving a 21st-century automobile, more than two decades after my Y2K flight.

Church: As I expected, there is a lot of pushback against the unanimous decision by us trustees to sell the church's real estate and find a new home for us. More meetings are coming in the next few weeks. It's not over yet.

Work: I recently finished a feature article and are starting work on another one. Still wish I had a "real" job.

Health: Shortly after the March car accident, I slipped on some mud and did something to my right knee. Now it is still sore off and on. My legs in general feel rather stiff. I wonder if it is an aging thing, a too-much-sitting-down thing, or a transfer of my stress from my brain to my body.

I don't quite remember how much of the stove saga I have posted here earlier. Shortly before the covid-19 pandemic began, I got rid of the stove that came with the condo because its oven hadn't worked for years. I bought a new-to-me range at a dicey-looking joint just over the county line. It had a four-month warranty and the oven stopped working at the six-month mark. The appliance repairman wanted $400 to fix it. I had paid something like $250 for the stove.

Our condo maintenance supervisor, Louis, who lives in my building and does odd jobs on the side, had said he'd keep an eye out for perfectly good gas ranges that somebody was going to throw out during remodeling. He snagged a basic Amana model and brought it over here and hooked it up. The guy who gave it to him said everything worked on it, but as it turned out, he'd shorted out the control panel when he tried to replace the light bulb inside the oven.

Louis pointed out that the oven control panel was a self-contained unit that would be easy for us to replace. Armed with the model and serial and part numbers, I ordered a panel from some website called PartSelect and even paid a little extra for faster shipping.

That was the week before Thanksgiving.

Fast forward through weeks and weeks of checking in with the company behind the website and listening to the news about supply-chain delays and semiconductor shortages. I figured that the relatively simple chips inside a replacement part for an aging stove were low down on the foundries' priority list.

Finally, on March 14 (my half-birthday), the part ARRIVED!

I held my breath while the boy toy installed it ... but it fit in its slot perfectly and it WORKS!

It is great to be using a full-size oven again, especially since the gas is covered in the condo fee while the electricity is not. Just today we cooked a big-ass pizza from Lidl for lunch and then the boy toy roasted a half-turkey that's been sitting in the freezer for a while.

Been a long time, been a long time...

In fact, it took me a long time to actually start getting emails from the Golden Dolphins. It didn't help that the current Order principal had a parent who had just undergone open heart surgery (and believe me, I know what it's like to be the adult child of such a patient). Finally I whitelisted the email address for the mailing list and, presto change-o, I received a huge pile of emails welcoming me to the Pod. So, all is well on that front.

My finances continued the same roller-coaster trajectory until I finished up my latest feature article at the start of December and received my payment for it a week later. Yay, I can finally catch up on some bills.

Except ... I ended up NOT going to Discon III, the World Science Fiction Convention or Worldcon. You'd think that, after hoping for Worldcon to show up in DC for three decades, I would have been first in line. However, I always seemed to be lacking in money for a Worldcon membership every time I went to another convention and saw a Discon III table or party. So I kept putting things off. And then the damned pandemic hit. R. kept dithering over whether or not he'd attend. Mike T. was abruptly diagnosed with Parkinson's disease earlier this year and abruptly moved to Pennsylvania over the summer (did I ever mention that?). Finally, the con was upon us, and even though I now have money in the bank, I honestly could not justify spending $325 on a five-day-long convention. Not when the last in-person Balticon, back in 2019, cost only $77 at the door for four days.

Fortunately, before Discon III started, I was able to spend a Saturday evening and a Monday with my friends Chris and Richard, visiting from Palo Alto. I had not seen them in person since their elder daughter graduated from Drexel University, and it was a total delight!! I received some of their camera and film shipments through the mail, so they didn't have to schlep it across the continent, and they saved some sales tax too (heh heh heh). I drove them out to the Udvar-Hazy museum, which is not on public transportation, and we had a couple of fabulous meals together at Asian-style restaurants. I was SO incredibly glad to see them again, possibly more so than any attendance at the Worldcon.

Let's see, what else is there for me to dish about?

The boy toy painted the "spare room" (the second bedroom), and I rearranged the bookshelves and released some books I'll never read again through Bookcrossing. Gaah, I still own so many books I have never actually read. I need to READ more.

I didn't go to Massachusetts for Christmas again this year. My cousin Tim's wife canceled Christmas Eve after Tim ended up in the hospital for non-covid pneumonia (he was in only for a couple of days, but still). With this new omicron variant of covid-19, I wasn't keen on a long road trip anyhow.

R. is having a prostate procedure tomorrow. Something about sticking microbeads in some of the arteries leading to the prostate to shrink it to a more normal size. It's supposed to be less invasive than regular surgery.

Over the Christmas holiday I have been taking care of a neighbor's three cats (at her house, not mine).

The boy toy and I seem to have avoided all variants of the coronavirus so far. We both have had our booster shots (Moderna, on top of Pfizer for the original two jabs).

I'm sure I'll think of something else once I finish this post. Ah, well.

Over and out.

Tonight is the longest night, with the winter solstice occurring early tomorrow morning. My church had a solstice-themed lay-led service this morning, and also this evening. I attended both, via Zoom of course. The evening ritual was up against the monthly barony meeting, but after all the stress our congregation has been through during the past six weeks or so, I thought I should support that community. The Storvik meeting was over by the time the ritual ended -- oh, well, next month.

I am still on Stove #2. Apparently the current owner of Stove #3 isn't as far along with his kitchen renovations as the maintenance guy previously thought. The boy toy will make another inquiry when he goes to drop off a gift basket for the maintenance guy. We don't normally give him stuff, but he has been SO helpful to us this year with all our issues -- the Thanksgiving 2019 leak from upstairs, the January 2020 leak from upstairs, installation of the $25 dishwasher, the disintegrating bathroom-sink plumbing, the disposal of Stove #1, the break-in at our building's common storage area, the attempts to fix Stove #2, the meltdown of the building's hot-water system, etc. Plus, he lives *in* this building, so he is our neighbor.

Speaking of neighbors, I scored another bargain from a different neighbor, the one who is an archer for Bright Hills. She posted on Facebook that she and her husband were looking to rehome their 55-inch Panasonic plasma TV. I messaged her and asked her what she would take for an offer, like $100, and we agreed to that. When the boy toy and I walked over to pick it up, however, she told me that her husband didn't want her to take any money for the 10-year-old TV. I couldn't see doing THAT -- she already gave me $50 worth of dry cat food a couple of months ago, and I know she is getting a new catalytic converter for her aging Pontiac, and those suckers are expensive. I had five $20 bills with me, so I gave her $40 and she accepted. The TV works fine and is a *lot* larger than the flat-screen TV we had been using in the living room, which is probably about a 32-inch model. So we put the 55-inch set in the living room, moved the newer small TV from the living room to the bedroom, and put the older bedroom TV (which is also a 32-incher, more or less) in the spare room in case one of us gets covid-19 and has to isolate. Dances with TVs!

Another reason why I jumped on the new TV: I had a rear bearing replaced on my car, and the work plus the "winter package" (oil change and other routine maintenance) came to only $300. For some reason I had convinced myself that the job would cost $800 to $1000. Maybe I was misremembering something I'd read on Facebook (like the cost of replacing multiple bearings on a truck or SUV). Anyhow, I was relieved.

Finally ... earlier this month, I had been looking forward to my annual science writers' holiday party, which of course was going to be virtual. I realized that nobody's going to care what I wear, for all that will show up on screen are my head and shoulders. So I got my first professional haircut in two years -- yes! -- and then, on the day of the party, I dyed my hair a Color Not Found in Nature! Specifically, a semi-permanent ruby color designed for non-bleached hair (my hair is way too fine and limp for bleaching).



I think it looks right purty, don't you? I wouldn't have done this if I had a job interview or professional presentation coming up, but since nobody is hiring me for anything, and I didn't do any of the fancy punk 1980s hairstyles when I was in my 20s because I wanted to be all grown up and professional back then, well, what do I have to lose?

1. I am still rocking the two-monitor setup on my desk. The fact that it's an older monitor, with an aspect ratio slightly less "widescreen," actually helps with displaying documents. And when I want to bring the laptop into the living room, it's easy enough to unplug the second monitor. More cheap tech goodness: a few days ago, I scored a free 500-GB external hard drive on Freecycle. Its previous owner had reformatted it, so it was completely empty. My other external hard drive is pretty much full, so it's good to have more space to offload stuff.

2. I thought I was done with a particular project for the European marketing company. I wasn't expecting to hear from the marketeers again, for various reasons. But, after not checking my company email account for a few days, I logged in and found that an invoice for 500 euros was waiting for my approval in the system. YEAH!! That's like $550 after the bank takes its wire transfer fee. Yeah, baby, you can drop five C-notes into my account anytime!

3. Yesterday the boy toy and I put up a curtain inside my bedroom/office to hide my racks of SCA belongings. Having a plain curtain behind me in my webcam's field of view looks more professional than a big IKEA set of unfinished wood shelves loaded with large plastic bins and whatnot.

4. Last night I watched the VP debate. It was somewhat less stressful than the presidential shitstorm, but still not ideal. Did I ever mention that Pence looks and acts like Lord Voldemort? Seriously. Pence's boss is starting to sound even more disturbed than usual. Nancy Pelosi's about to start talking 25th Amendment.

5. Virtual Royal Court in Storvik this weekend! Their Majesties are actually traveling up here to meet with the Baron and Baroness in an undisclosed location (really a small theater in downtown Silver Spring). I wonder what will ensue?

The past couple of days have seen me take steps toward greater productivity.

I have been wondering whether a second computer monitor would help me when I'm doing a Zoom interview or simply writing up my articles. I wanted to get one secondhand, but the cheapest place I know to get one, the Terrapin Trader surplus-goods shop at the University of Maryland, has been closed since the start of the pandemic. And I didn't want to buy a brand-new one in case I ended up not using it as much as I think I will. (I've never worked on a dual-screen computer before.)

Now, Lady Grazia, one of the many SCAdians on my list of Facebook friends, has been posting lists of stuff she's giving away all week long. I think she and her husband are on a decluttering streak. Most of the things she's posted about I have no use for, such as a Japanese calligraphy set -- nice, but since I have had trouble getting going with European calligraphy, I don't think I need any more equipment in that department.

But then she posted that she had five computer monitors sitting around, ready for new homes. So I jumped right on it in a private message, and yesterday afternoon I was heading out to Wheaton to pick up my prize. Grazia offered me a huge two-monitor stand for clamping onto a table, but I knew that such a gadget would never work with my current desk, so I asked for a monitor that already had its own base. The one she and her husband gave me is a somewhat older-model flat-screen, with less of a wide-screen aspect ratio than my laptop monitor, but I'm not fussy.

I needed a DVI-to-HDMI cable, but the boy toy ordered one off of Amazon when I got home, and it arrived today. That was only about $6. Most of my work today involved excavating my desk and the scanner table next to it -- SO MUCH excess paper -- so that I could make space for the new monitor and the boy toy could get under the desk and figure out how to plug all the electrical cords in.

So, now I'm all set up!



Once again I realize that I know some amazing people, and I am awed by the power of the universe to provide in the most unexpected ways.

Over and out.

Today the boy toy and I spent some of our time tearing apart a 24-year-old mattress. It felt good, actually.

My mother bought this King Koil mattress and box spring in the late summer or early fall of 1996. I'm not sure because I was down here in Maryland and she was up there in Massachusetts. I went to see her in October 1996 because she was in and out of the hospital three times that month. She complained that the mattress was thicker/taller than the previous one, which she had put on my bed when she got the new one (both beds were full size). One night while I was up there, when she got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, she fell on her butt and it scared me. After that I made her start sleeping in my bed, and I would sleep in her bed, because I was younger and the extra height didn't bother me.

At the time, she didn't seem hurt from the fall. However, she apparently bled a tiny bit into her spinal column because of her blood thinner. And when she had a spinal anesthetic for a minor procedure a few months later, her legs got paralyzed and her condition spiraled out of control and she died.

When I bought my condo in 1999, I needed only one of the two beds in my childhood home, so I took my bed frame and my mother's King Koil mattress and box spring (because it was so much newer than the other one). I've had it all these years, through weight gains and flings and illnesses and whatnot. Supposedly you're supposed to change your mattress every eight years; this one was three times that age and had all kinds of saggy spots and stains and dust and whatnot. The boy toy and I were tired of waking up with backaches.

Despite the pandemic, we did some shopping ... but oy vey, the prices nowadays. We ended up getting a firm spring mattress from IKEA. I know a lot of people complain about IKEA mattresses, but they do have a partial 25-year warranty, and I am pretty sure it will last for eight years. There's just no way I could have afforded anywhere from $600 to $1800 for a freaking mattress, plus delivery charges. I spent less than $250 on that mattress and it was rolled up so tight that it fit in the back seat of Anna Three (my Corolla).

So far, we have been sleeping very comfortably.

We don't want to keep the old mattress around until the next condo "community dumpster weekend" in November, so today the boy toy got out his box cutter, and we cut off all the cloth and foam on the outer layers and bagged it up for trash. At some point we'll have to borrow a metal-cutting tool for the bare springs.

It served its purpose, but no mattress lasts forever.

Got the car. First thing, I broke off the driver's door handle. Another thing to the list of things to be fixed....

Got the article done ON TIME. Despite my computer eating some of my prose. Quite chuffed about that, actually.

Electrical work required by the condo association (replacement of circuit-breaker box) has been completed successfully.

Red Sox win first two games of World Series. YAY!!!!!

Working early voting starting tomorrow. Need to say good night....

Plumbing (and financial) crisis averted. Boy toy concluded that replacing the shutoff valve and the tank inflow thingey was beyond his plumbing expertise. He went over to the condo maintenance shop to ask how to get this thing fixed without shutting off water to the entire building. I started to call the plumber, where I was told that I would have to wait until a building-water shutoff could be arranged on Monday or Tuesday, but then one of the maintenance guys came over and said he could fix it "off the clock" for $75 plus parts. That's at least $20 cheaper than the plumber would have cost me (based on the last time I dealt with the plumber, about four years ago). So the toilet is fixed and a young man has some extra cash in his pocket.

Of course, now the light inside the refrigerator has decided to flash randomly on and off (but mostly stays off). I don't ever remember changing the fridge light bulb in the nearly 18 years I have lived here. And the fridge is roughly 25 years old.

As Gilda Radner said, it's always something....

In other news, my church's ministerial search committee revealed the name of our ministerial candidate at the end of yesterday's service. From what I can tell from her website, she is two or three years older than I am, married young but has stayed married to the guy for 42 years, and has three grown sons who are gainfully employed. Ministry is her second career after civil engineering. Her beliefs and interests align pretty closely to my congregation's. I'm looking forward to meeting her next week.