mousme: A view of a woman's legs from behind, wearing knee-high rainbow socks. The rest of the picture is black and white. (Random Sentences)
Hello, and welcome to the new people from the friending meme! I am trying to be better about posting. We shall see how long my good intentions last! This is a really nice road I'm paving, I wonder where it leads? ;)

I had a bit of a day today. In the grand scheme of things it wasn't anything terrible, but it felt unnecessarily stressful. My current landlady and I have a bit of a fraught relationship. She's a hot-tempered Italian lady who runs a hair salon. She favours long fake nails, platinum blonde hair, skin-tight white jeans, and an enormous white SUV. Now, I'm not usually one to make a big deal over cultural differences (I will totally cop to being a snob, but I'm a self-aware snob, at least), but I think it illustrates where we have trouble communicating. She tends to perceive a problem and immediately fly off the handle and threatens to evict me (always over voicemail), and then once we've actually spoken in person she calms right down again, because it's never as dire as she assumed it was. This has happened three times now, and each time, once I've seen her face to face, she climbs down off the ledge she's on and apologizes for pitching a fit. It's exhausting.

Anyway, today wasn't a threaten-to-evict-me day, at least. Instead, she called at 16:00 to tell me that she'd hired people to come clean out the air vents, and they were coming at 17:00. Yeah. That's right. One hour later. Actually, she first said they'd be there between 17:00 and 21:00. We had the following exchange:

Landlady: "They're going to be there between 5pm and 9pm."

Me: "I'm working tomorrow, [Landlady]. On work nights I'm usually in bed by 8pm, because I have to get up early."

Landlady: "Oh, GOOD, you'll be home, then!"

Me: "..."

Me: "No, [Landlady], what I meant was, I'm home at that time, but I'm usually asleep."

Landlady: *breezily* "Oh, well, they'll probably be there at 5 anyway."


As it turned out, they arrived at 16:40. Now, new people to this LJ will not be aware that I am, to put it mildly, a terrible housekeeper. Combine that with working long shifts, as well as four cats and a dog, and you may not be surprised to learn that my house is, on a regular basis, a disaster area. Today was not an exception to that, and so I did a bit of a mad scramble to get things moderately presentable so that the workmen could come in and access all the air vents and registers.

The noise terrified all the pets, to the point I had to bring the dog outside so he'd stop freaking out. Two of the cats hid under the shelves in the pantry, one hid on top of a bookcase, and another under my bed. Poor kitties. Then my landlady informed me that ANOTHER crew was coming for furnace maintenance, "between 6pm and 10pm." I showed great restraint and didn't lunge at her throat. Feel free to drop off cookies in this handy container here. *puts box out*

Anyway, the furnace guy actually arrived at 19:30, and was gone an hour later, so it wasn't too terrible. It's now way past my bedtime, but I'm all cranked up from running around after workmen, so I'm trying to wind down by writing an LJ entry. Could be worse.

I got more work done on the garden today, in more exciting news. I obtained some cucumber seedlings and took them, the dog, and some gardening supplies to the community garden. I had spotted a (rather expensive) planter at Costco yesterday, and decided to acquire it today, but it was sold out when I got there, much to my disappointment. At least it saved me some money. So now, unless I decide to squeeze in some herbs, my community plot is completely planted. Time to sit back, water and weed occasionally, then reap the rewards! The tomato seedlings seem to have borne up well overnight, too, which is a good sign. Here's hoping the cucumber holds up as well!

IMG_7226.jpgIMG_7225.jpg

(As someone else said, my potted husky is flowering beautifully!)

I repotted all the mint into a planter on my patio, but ran out of energy before I could get to the basil, thyme, rosemary, and remaining tomatoes. Even if I'd had the energy, it was soon after that my landlady called and set the furnace adventures into motion. I was going to try to get the rest done tomorrow after work, but I just got reminded that I volunteered to help clear out the garden at the Quaker meetinghouse tomorrow evening already. Whoops! Guess it may have to wait an extra day. I'll water the seedlings well and hope they can tough out another day or so.

Someone remind me that, in the next few days, I should talk about D&D! I started watching an online stream/show on Twitch called "Critical Role," which is literally a livestream of a D&D campaign. You know how, very often, watching other people roleplay if you're not in the game is super boring? This show is the exception to that rule! It helps that it's run and played by professional voice actors. I love the show so much that it actually inspired me to get back into D&D and roleplaying, and then somehow some of my Twitter friends ganged up on me and now I'm actually running a game for them. We've had two sessions so far, and I'm pleased to report that, fourteen years after I ran my last game, I no longer suck as a DM. I'm still learning the ropes, but I've figured out a bit of the mental flexibility required to juggle plot lines and the like.

In short, remind me to go into detail about this later on! I mean, most of you may find it boring, but I know for a fact that a few of you are gamers, and therefore I need yell at you about how awesome Critical Role is. ;)

On that note, I should head to bed. Sleep is a precious commodity around these parts.
mousme: A picture of the muppet Forgetful Jones from Sesame Street (Forgetful Jones)
I've been too busy to post. I keep telling myself that I should write posts in here that aren't "here's what I did while I wasn't posting" entries, but I never seem to get around to writing those meaningful, insightful entries. I rather think that I don't have any to write. I've lost the knack of writing analytical text ever since I left university. Besides, I don't know that I'd want to inflict my essay-writing skills on my beleaguered flist, as I seem to recall that I bored myself silly with my own academic writing. I remembered wondering who would ever want to read such dry stuff as I was able to produce. It's not that it wasn't good —it was just really, really dry going.

Anyway, I've had a busy couple of weeks.
I saw an old friend of mine from high school last Saturday, although we didn't have much time to actually catch up as he had to go back to his office right after lunch (he's a lawyer). We did have a nice chat, and wandered through Atwater Market before he had to go, and it was really nice to see him again. Of all my friends in high school (of which there admittedly weren't many), he was the one with whom I got along the best. We're supposed to meet up again at some point in the near future, which ought to be nice. After that I got treated to a lovely private concert in the living room of some family friends, and spent the afternoon and better part of the evening making slightly awkward small talk with three roomfuls of people I didn't know and with whom I had nothing in common. Still, the concert was quite nice. The violinist was a young man, somewhere between nineteen and twenty-one, and he's quite promising. His playing was very adept, although it lacked depth and intonation, but with time I'm guessing he'll turn out quite well.

Sunday was spent hiding from the world recovering from that stupid migraine which started late on Saturday. Annoying in the extreme, as it was a gorgeous day out.

Monday was a writing jam with [livejournal.com profile] owldaughter, in which I got more writing done in one morning than I had in the past four weeks combined. I'm finally getting back into my ongoing YA novel, and I'd like to have it finished by the end of the year. I might "cheat" and make finishing it my NaNoWriMo project for this year. Either that or I'll write another horror novel, since they appear to write themselves for me.

I forget what I did on Tuesday, but I do remember that I had to be out of the house stupidly early to do it. That's probably why I don't remember: I was still half-asleep. ;)

I met up with [livejournal.com profile] ai731 on Wednesday morning, and she taught me the mysteries of canning. It's a really fun process, I assume more fun because there were two of us. We went through about three-quarters of the 20lb bag of apples I'd picked, and made apple sauce, apple butter (so very yummmy!) and an apple cake based on her grandmother's recipe, which was so very very delicious that I brought it to work with me so that I wouldn't be tempted to eat the entire thing by myself. I brought half to work, and [livejournal.com profile] ai731 kept the other half, naturally. I had to abandon ship just before the end of the session, as I had to go to work, and I just received the last three jars of apple sauce last night. I am very pleased with how the whole thing turned out.

Thursday was spent driving my mother around so she could get some errands done without spending the whole day doing it. Since she doesn't drive, and generally gets around pretty slowly anyway, it's easier for her if I occasionally spend a morning driving her around, and I don't mind doing it in the slightest. I tend to lose my mind if I spend too much time with my parents, but a couple of times a week is enough for me to keep my sanity.

Friday's Ubisoft lunch got canceled for me due to the (not unexpected) passing of my great-aunt Margot at the age of 93. I have very fond memories of her, and of going to her apartment in the Linton for a New Year's Day luncheon every year until I was about eight or nine. After that she moved to a smaller place (I believe it was a residence for relatively independent retired folk who only needed minimal amounts of help to get through the day), and she became a little too frail to be able to put on the spread she really wanted to. None of her three daughters ever kept up with the tradition, and so I sort of lost track of her for a while. We still saw her at the larger family gatherings, but it wasn't really the same.

The funeral itself was interrupted when my cousin Ophelie (the youngest of all the cousins, and one of the two cousins near my age with whom I actually keep up and get along) suffered some kind of seizure or syncope in the middle of the service. She was sitting right next to my father, and the next thing we knew she had turned a horrid shade of green, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she slumped forward. Luckily my aunt (not Ophelie's mother, but another aunt) is a nurse and took over immediately. I was rather grateful not to have to step in and apply my limited first aid skills to the situation. Someone produced a cell phone (a blackberry, I think) and called 911. I spent most of the time keeping people from crowding around, and reassuring people that no, it wasn't taking as long as they thought for the ambulance to get there. I timed it, see, and it took nine minutes from the moment the call was placed to the time the paramedics got there. In times of crisis, people's perception of how quickly time elapses gets seriously distorted.

My mother spoke to my cousin yesterday, as well as my aunt. Ophelie is doing okay, as it turns out, but she's going to have to see a neurologist, as her symptoms were quite alarming (swelling in the throat, stiffening of the extremities, extremely elevated heartrate, etc.). My mother, in true keeping with her nature, has invited her to dinner next Sunday.

After the funeral I took my mother to Juliette & Chocolat for lunch. Egads, it should be illegal to make chocolate that good. I have rarely had anything quite that sinful. I must go back.

Yesterday I got shanghaied by my parents into helping them shop for appliances. God help me. The less said about that, the better. The day improved immeasurably by the time I got to [livejournal.com profile] luvenditti's for dinner, and had a wonderful time with all my friends, chatting about movies and books and games and food and all the usual things we end up talking about at these events. I borrowed the movie "Clue" and watched it last night: it's a great deal of fun.

All right, the rest of my day beckons. More updates when I have something to say. ;)
mousme: A view of a woman's legs from behind, wearing knee-high rainbow socks. The rest of the picture is black and white. (Sleeping Dogs)
I have a real, honest-to-goodness, grown-up bed. As of about 1:30pm today. This thrills me beyond words, as I'd been sleeping on a (very battered) futon mattress on the floor ever since I moved in here two and a half years ago. It had gotten to the point where I could feel the floor through the futon, which was unthrilling.

Now, thanks to [livejournal.com profile] ai731 and [livejournal.com profile] baronscartop's generous loan of their guest bed, I am bedless no longer!

The cats have laid claim to it already, but I banished them a short while ago. Tonight, the bed is all mine. Muahahahahaaaa!

I also have a new-to-me bookcase on loan, also from my landpeople (I like the term better than landlords). I shall be able to transfer books around to my heart's content, and perhaps have fewer of them double-stacked. This is very exciting. :)

I am off to bed. Tomorrow I must be up early in order to pack for my trip to the Godforsaken Howling Wilderness.

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