This has been the week of repairmen. First, a locksmith. I had a friend over last Saturday night and on Sunday morning when we went out she politely locked the door behind her.... only she used the doorknob lock, which I never touch. I locked the deadbolt, never thinking, and when I came home hours later I had to call a locksmith. Couldn't pick the lock, had to drill it. *sigh*

The new doorknob set matched the two deadbolts in brand, so with my landlady's permission, I had the guy back to set all three locks to the same key.

Same weekend, same friend visiting, the "new" TV I got from Jewelsong decided to go all stripey and die on me. So while I was getting the locksmith back I looked up TV repair people and found a guy who would come to the house and see if it was repairable. He turned up today, and fixed the TV. (If any of you are in the Boston area it was Belmont TV and I highly recommend them!)

Now, the bad thing about these repair guys is that they all want cash. No Visa, no Mastercard. Cash money. On the barrelhead. (That's what ATMS are for, right?) But I have to say... it's been worth it.

Because it's fun to watch an expert at work. And it's nice to have someone who sees a problem explain it to you so you can make a good decision. The locksmith gave me the option of keeping a slightly tricky cylinder on the top lock, or buying new. (I kept the tricky one -- it's not that bad.) And the TV guy didn't go until he'd hooked everything up again -- the RIGHT way -- and made sure that I knew how to duplicate the things he'd done and get the signal through the various inputs. He also told me what kind of new universal remote to buy and why.

So at the end of the week I have a much happier tv set, and a single key that can get me into my apartment instead of three keys. My wallet is flatter -- but all in all, I'm content.

My furnace is not working properly. It's sixty degrees F (15.5C) in my apartment and has been since yesterday morning. Seeing as how this is the week that winter finally decided to show up in Boston, and my windows leak, it's not been the best of mornings. But I'm skipping work to wait for the plumber, and I have DVDs and hot chocolate, so I will survive.

Wrote a drabble for one of surgicalsteel's characters. It's over here.

Man, I miss writing drabbles. Here's hoping inspiration will nudge me again.

( Edited to add the drabble: )

For that next hurt/comfort fic I might write...

It's ridiculously easy to overdo, once you start to feel better.


Ah, well.

Spent part of the day rearranging my bookshelves. I've got about a third of the shifting done now, but it'll have to wait for tomorrow before I tackle any more. I figure that since I can get the shelves now I should put things at least sort of where I want them to be. No fine sorting, in spite of the librarian thing. I just want the fiction over here, the cooking over there, the music around about here, the folktales and poetry somewhere near yonder and the rest of the nonfiction over thataway. Except for the nonfiction that is all about some collection of fiction... mostly... which may end up in with the fiction. *ooh, lookee! Sherlock Holmes!*

I have an edifice of just the pocket sized paperbacks in the middle of the living room, which I intend to sort more finely once I've got the hardbacks and larger paperbacks in their respective homes. Haven't got all of them in the pile yet, and it's already taking on alarming dimensions. By the time I finish building it up I expect I'll be able to throw a blanket over the top and tell people it's the sofa. They'll all end up on the shelves again, naturally, eventually... I just have to stop stopping to read!

;)

My sister has gone back to Texas. I'm certainly well enough to be on my own now, I just don't have any ambition to do anything but read and fall asleep. I did finish the puzzle we were working though.

It's kind of frustrating. I have a perfectly good RPG (Suikoden V) sitting waiting for me and a great big TV, and I haven't turned on either of them. Just reread books I practically know by heart. But I can fall asleep in the middle of them. I wake up, I glance through my flist, gaze at my e-mails, and then tip over. But today I got a package with puzzles (sudoku) chocolate and DVDs of "Good Eats" so tomorrow I may be more ambitious.

I hurt just enough to want the ice pack and the oxycodone. Tried tylenol this morning and it didn't really work -- I think I overdid the stuff the last go round. But gradually I'm using less of the painkiller (because I need it less) so I'm hoping to get back to work next week sometime. Hopefully in the interval my bunnies will stop snoring and wiggle noses a little.

mariole is up to part eight now. It's a very exciting fic. I'd make links, but I haven't got enough brain cells. There needs to be more Sam h/c out there.

I am Sam
Sam I am
Will you write me in a jam?
Will you trap me in a box?
Will you chase me with a fox?
Will you comfort me with beer?
Give my fans a call to cheer?
...

Nope, not even up to doggerel yet...

*wanders back to bed*

http://mariole.livejournal.com/72191.html part three
http://mariole.livejournal.com/72362.html part four

I am doing the up and down thing. I feel okay for a bit and then I want to lie down. My sister is having a wonderful time rearranging my living room. This is a major endeavor, as it is full of bookcases, etc. But it's going to look good when she's done.

Right now I'm getting all bruised and green around the incision. Looks yicky, but it doesn't hurt much because I seem to be managing the meds better this round. I just don't concentrate so good. When we can see the door again we'll go for a short walk and that will be nice. The weather is actually really good right now.

Fog, fog, fog, drip drip, DOWNPOUR drip, drip, drip, foggggggg.....

One of the odd things about living so close to the water is having a ship's foghorn suddenly go off two blocks away. Those things are loud!

That cleaning and rearranging house always involves making a horrid mess in the middle of the floor? At least for me it does...

About ninety percent of my clothing, linens, etc. is now either in the closet or the dresser. I've been to the grocery store and there are foods with recognizable shapes and a distinct lack of green fuzz in my refrigerator. Now to just tackle the dishes and the bathroom...

Tomorrow I work again...

Oh, gah, I just remembered that I have to finish the YA fiction cart from home before 5 o'clock tonight. GAH!

well, I go up, then I go down, then I go up, then I go down...

Threw up once this morning, and haven't ventured food again until just now. We'll see how it stays down. But I got my kitchen shelves and closet done! The only day the installer could come was today and so my sister supervised while I watched Emergency! episodes on my little dvd player and fell asleep on them. But the second season has the one where Johnny got the dangerous virus and blacked out on the scaffold! I wonder which season was the snakebite?

I'm going to go back to bed now....

My face is all red, but my sister went up to Walgreens and bought a mommymeter cause we couldn't find mine and my temperature is fine... I'm just silly and achy because I'm not taking the narcotic only tyleneol...

What a difference.

I got a water heater blanket and some pipe insulation because in this apartment I finally have a tub again and sometimes a bath is exactly what my lower back and knees requires, but it has to be a hot bath and in the wintertime the only way I've been able to get the water anywhere near a therapeutic temperature was to run it for a minute until the warm water got to the tap and then add a kettleful of boiling water to the bathwater as well.

Tonight, for the first time, I decided I needed a bath, and I went to turn on the water and checked to see when it switched from cold to hot and it was already warm...

And while I added the boiling kettle, I might have gotten away without it -- although it did mean I could soak until my toes and fingers had gone all happy and wrinkly.

So, until the day I own my own place and can install on-demand hot water, I shall be investing in hot water heater blankets and pipe insulation, regardless of whether or not the landlord hasn't gotten around to it yet.

*aaaahhhhh*


Just as an aside, I was reading The Electric Universe at lunchtime and now I know why warming up your hands makes them less clumsy...

And now my kitchen cupboards are pulling loose from the wall.

I have a stove that works now.

And an oven.

And an overwhelming urge to bake bread.

I have never baked bread in my life...

I'm sitting home waiting for my shelves to come.

The possibility of Spam is quite high.

Doesn't Gollum's song (which they played at the end of Two Towers) make a lot more sense when you've seen Return of the King?

( let the whining continue herein )

Rereading the journey south and realizing how very seldom Tolkien gives us any clue about what sort of foods they took along. Except for lembas of course. And so many of the meals were cold ones! I'm thinking deer jerky, pemmican, and whatever they might find in the way of apples and berries. Aragorn and Legolas had to have gone hunting or foraging some of the time. Either that or they had bags of holding. One pony just can't carry a month's worth of food for nine guys who are working very very hard. Especially not when four of them are hobbits -- and we know from the book that hobbits can eat a prodigious amount of food. Its not just a matter of six small meals here...

Does anyone know of a website where someone else might have done the work of researching hobbit/traveling cookery for me? I already have a possible source for hearth/campfire cookery, but I'm looking for what kinds of ingredients I can get away with.

what am I doing here
I'm in the wrong story!

I pack a little, carry stuff down the *&^%$! stairs, come back up, check lj while I catch my breath... start over...

If anyone's not busy working, do me a favor and point me in the direction of some drabbles... I can't get in trouble reading a hundred words in a five minute break...can I?

Okay. If I keep getting on the internet I'm not going be ready when the movers come tomorrow at 9 a.m. I have to get going. But I'm going to meme first, having borrowed it from jewelsong because I don't really want to work...

( Read more... )