mousme | January 25th, 2026 (Reply)

1- State of the Phnee

It’s been a rather sleep-deprived weekend, entirely of my own doing. I was up late on Friday night for the usual writer’s meeting for Project Nimrod/the Soopar Seekrit Prodjikt I’ve been collaborating on since last September (ish), and then I couldn’t get to sleep right away so I only got about three hours of sleep before I had to get up for work. Then yesterday was the first session of the new D&D Eberron campaign, and once again I was up until about 1am and had to get up at 4am to go to work. *cries in very tired*

It was worth it, though. D&D is amazing, and it’s nice to have a creative outlet for writing again, even if I’m only doing it sporadically.

I have been procrastinating on my Quakerly duties this week. I have to draft the State of Society Report and come up with a draft of the queries for the Claremont Dialogue on hybrid Meetings. I am feeling decidedly uninspired, and I need to learn to write even when I’m not feeling it, because responsibilities and deadlines don’t wait for inspiration.

I’ve also booked train tickets to visit my parents this coming week, which will hopefully go well. My parents and I typically get along really well (ever since I stopped living at home), but after a few days we usually all end up remembering why we don’t live under the same roof anymore. It should be fine, and I do genuinely enjoy spending (limited) amounts of time with them. We will probably have more conversations about the future, because they’re both getting older and dealing with more limitations. In an ideal world I’d build them a fully accessible bungalow on my property, but I don’t have the money for that and they are understandably incredibly reticent to get a loan against their condo in order to finance that sort of endeavour. So in the meantime I am encouraging them to figure out how to maintain their independence as time marches inexorably forward, because I live just a tiny bit too far away to be of real use on a daily basis.

2- State of the smallholding

The polar vortex is in full swing. It’s been -26 Celsius for the past two days, and my poor GSVCO (which long time readers will remember is the name of my 15-year-old Yaris) is struggling a bit in the cold but has been rallying valiantly the whole time. I have been in touch with Steve the Wonder Mechanic because she needs a bit of TLC, but he hasn’t yet got back to me about when he’ll be able to see her. This work was supposed to happen right before Christmas, but he had a scheduling conflict, so things have been pushed back quite a bit since then.

We’re going through a worrying amount of propane to heat the house. When I first signed up in October the nice lady I spoke to said that based on the previous owners’ usage, I could expect to pay about $1,500 a year for heating. However, we’re at the end of January and we’ve already had three deliveries totaling $1,100, so I am starting to doubt those numbers. We’re not even cranking the heat—I’ve been keeping the thermostat at 17 Celsius which, while not cold per se, is still on the cooler side of things. We’ve been averaging one delivery per month, at about $400 a pop, and given that I got accustomed to paying about $100 heating with natural gas, is a bit of a shock to the system, especially since summers are expensive now due to the horrifying cost of air conditioning. I’m not a huge fan of A/C, but it’s non-negotiable for KK, so A/C it is. *sigh*

Part of me is wondering if it’s an insulation problem (at least in part). I’ve basically run out of money at this point, but I’m going to add “fix the basement insulation” to “build a wheelchair ramp” on the list of things I need to do to make the place more accessible and hopefully less expensive in the long run. Somewhere in the next few years I’m going to need to do something about the septic system too, but that is considerably more expensive than the smaller projects (anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 depending on the work, which I very much do not have).

*lies on the floor*

Why is home ownership so freaking expensive? Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to have the place, but I thought I was getting a pretty “turnkey” house, and it turns out that there is still a shit ton of expensive work to be done. Woe.

3- State of the news

*grimaces*

So, uh, this all seems… horrible, to quote Bruce Banner.

Minneapolis is up in arms, and rightly so. ICE has murdered another protestor (and yes, I’m using that word on purpose). Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse out there protesting and filming/observing ICE’s atrocities. He tried to help a fellow protestor who’d been hit with (I think) pepper spray, and when he did that ICE agents swarmed him and executed him on the spot. They’re now trying to spin it, saying he had a weapon (he did by some accounts have a gun for which he had a permit, which he had NOT drawn), calling him a terrorist, accusing him of trying to assassinate ICE agents and whatever other lies they can come up with in the moment. There’s a strong counter-narrative emerging, singing Pretti’s praises and documenting all the good things he’s done in his life, but honestly even if he spent most of his spare time kicking puppies and taking candy from babies, he still would not have deserved to be executed in the street simply for exercising his right to protest.

In less horrifying but still depressing news, Trump is once again threatening tariffs against Canada because we had the temerity to sign a trade deal with China (which Trump was all on board with last week, as I recall, but whatever, we are not expecting coherence out of him). He’s got his panties in a twist about Carney’s speech at Davos, very clearly, and has now started spouting off about “Governor Carney” and the “51st State” the way he did in November of 2024, and you’d be safe it’s getting the same reaction as it did the first time he tried this shit.

Speaking of home ownership being expensive, my township has approved a 5.46 percent increase in municipal property taxes, a 2% increase for water and sewage (not applicable to me since I have my own well and septic) and garbage taxes are going from $165 to $180. It’s not unmanageable for me, at least while I’m still employed, but I can imagine it’s going to be a struggle for the lower income people in my area.

All right, that’s it for me. Catch you on the flip side, friends!