tigertoy

After years of being annoyed that I don't have a good place or way to dry my boots after I wash them after working at EFRC, I threw together some bits of scrap wood I have lying around. It's not pretty (I'm a wretched carpenter) but the boots are now sitting on it. And I even put away my tools after I did it.

I've been acting like this since helping my mom gave me a kick in the ass. I hardly recognize this person I am these last few weeks. I hope it lasts.

I have a shelf in my bedroom that I've had for longer than I've had the house. It's a particle board wonder, but it holds up my alarm clock and also is the place where I put my shoes. But I have more shoes than fit on it, which means that extra shoes are part of the perpetual clutter in the bedroom.

It occurred to me that I have boards and a circular saw, which is enough to make me dangerous. I set out to cut a couple more shelves. I'm still rather incompetent at these little woodworking projects, so it took longer and involved considerably more swearing than it should have, but I now have two extra shelves. I'm also out of time, thanks to the swearing -- it's time to head to FNM -- so there's a little more cleanup to do. But I now have an away in which to put 6 more pairs of shoes, and if I have more than that, it's time to throw some of the more fallen apart ones away.

Hopefully I'm learning a little from all the mistakes I'm making. I'm definitely convinced that I need to replace my drill/driver -- I'm reasonably sure I put it away fully charged the last time I used it, and it went dead halfway through this small job.

For years, I've had this notion of how to make a bookshelf. This week, pushed by the fact that I was about to not have the car with the cargo capacity to easily carry larger stuff, I bought the lumber I needed. For the last couple of days, I've been drilling and screwing boards together. There were a couple of bumps along the road, like when I realized that I'd gotten a couple of the wrong boards. But happily, a couple of 6'6" boards fit into a Civic sedan. And as it came together, realizing just how unequal the lengths of a lot of nominally 6' boards were. But I got it all together. And now I have all of my books on shelves, and a certain feeling of accomplishment.

The next person who says anything positive about snow gets kicked in the junk.

When I came home last night at 2:30, at least there were very few other cars on the road. It took almost 40 minutes to make a 25 minute drive. There was only a few inches and I was able to drive into the garage. Unfortunately, it kept snowing for the rest of the night, and by the time I got outside, there was enough of the white crap that I would have to shovel it if I wanted to get out.

I've got a bit less than half of the driveway clear and I'm taking a break. Hopefully I can finish the rest of it before I run out of day, so I can get to EFRC tomorrow.

After I got home from a long day at EFRC, extremely tired and ready to fall over, I put my ice pack back in the freezer, and noticed there was a pool of gunk in the bottom of the freezer. I quickly discovered that all the meat in the freezer is thawed; I have maybe 25 lbs. of meat to throw away. Things don't seem to be cold enough in the regular fridge either.

My fridge is 22 years old -- I bought it when I moved in. So I'm probably due for a new one. But I don't have money for it, even on a non-panic basis. I don't think there's a good time for this to happen but coming home on a Saturday evening, totally exhausted, and with things to do tomorrow other than trying to shop for a new appliance, this seems like a particularly bad time.

Just pulled in from the trip home from GAFilk.  The trip home was trouble free.  Pretty tired, so I don't think I'm going to say very much in this report.

The week leading up to the con was stressful for me, and I've been having trouble coping.  I was far enough down that I wasn't really ready to enjoy the con, and so I didn't get as much out of it as I should have, but it was still good to hear music and be with friends.  The con seemed awfully small this year, but things seemed to go smoothly.

Coming in, the house is at the proper temperature; all indications are that the repair was successful.

I had several places I wanted to be to celebrate the new year, but I decided I would go to spend time with old friends rather than new, so I went to Milwaukee.

The trip up had some minor bits of stress.  I got going almost on time, but not fully mentally functional, as I would discover as I drove past Rantoul on I-57, only realizing at that moment that I was on the wrong road -- I was supposed to have stayed on I-74 to get to I-39, because I was going to VOTK.  Shortly after that, I realized that when I'd put my snacks in the cooler I'd forgotten to put the sandwich I had made (that I didn't eat on Thursday when I didn't go to EFRC because I felt too crappy with my sinus infection and cold), so I was mentally hitting myself with a hammer.  I had just installed my shiny new IPASS tollway transponder, and I drove through the automatic lane at the toll plaza at the Wisconsin border -- and the transponder didn't visibly do anything.  Wait, the papers they sent with it said it's supposed to have blinking lights.  Shit, I said, I guess it didn't work, now I have to deal with a missed toll when I get back.  But I managed to decide that since I couldn't do anything about it then, I wouldn't worry about it.  Made it to VOTK, an hour later than I meant to.  Although it was slightly above freezing, it was very windy and felt miserably cold.  I took a few pictures of Jasmine, and renewed my membership and got a calendar.  Then on to Milwaukee, where I got to filkart and ithiriel's house, and got hit by the tired bus; I got into the living room and collapsed in a chair.  After a bit of vegging and some cheese and crackers I was able to move; we grabbed a bite to eat at Culver's and then drove to Lytheria.  I found myself feeling more like a spectator than usual.  Filk didn't happen until after the toast at midnight, and it was only me, filkart, wyld_dandelyon, and beige_alert; we ran out of steam by about 2.  The filk was nice but less than I expected.  Got home and fell into bed.

Today, after I got up at noon, we determined that Champion Chicken, the restaurant that is a cornerstone of my friendship with Art, was closed for the holiday, so we went to Athens, where they had a prime rib buffet, a little pricey at $15 for a fairly short buffet, but the food was decent and we all had too much.  Then Art and I went for a short trip to the museum, so I could see butterflies in January.  ithiriel stayed home and made us biryani, which seemed unnecessarily generous.  And then I came home, because I needed to get home before the tired found me again.

Here at home, the furnace is still limping along, but it's still keeping the house warm.  The furnace guy told me he'd call me on Friday to set up an appointment, but he didn't, so I have to try to call him and hopefully fit that in real soon.  I did manage to get logged in on the IPASS site (after more swearing than should have been needed), and my account had been charged for the toll on Saturday.  So I guess the thing works after all.

So, this afternoon before I went out, I went around the house baiting all the mousetraps with the peanut butter I bought just for them.  On both the trip plates and the springs, in the case of the old-fashioned spring traps.  Just now, I looked around to check the traps.

The mice definitely love peanut butter.  They cleaned all the peanut butter off all the traps in the kitchen.  Without tripping a single one.  They don't seem to have found the ones in the office next to the printer.  I'll have to hope they like the poison I also bought, since they seem to be too clever for the traps.

A few minutes ago, I just finished making my way around the outside of my fence.  Just before that, I'd made a pass around the inside, mostly cleaning up stuff that had fallen in from my work in the last couple of days from the outside.  It's not quite all done -- still a few things that need the saw.  But it's a lot better than it's been in years.

I'll remark to the world that my opinion of welded wire on T posts for fencing just keeps getting better.  I put this fence in 20 years ago June.  I chose these materials because they were far and away cheaper than the alternatives, with the thought that if I got ten years out of it, I'd be more ready to afford something more permanent.  In 20 years, the fence has only been compromised at all in one place, where a large tree came down on it a couple of years ago.  I haven't gotten a chainsaw to remove that, but I actually think that when I do, I'll be able to bend the fence back into place.  The wire is rusty of course, but not rusted away anywhere, and it hasn't broken for any of the smaller trees and branches that have fallen on it.

I went to IndyFurCon this past weekend.  I had a good time, got to see some folks I knew from the cons I've been to before, played a few games of Magic and Dominion, laughed a lot at Whose Lion Is It Anyway? and at 2 and Kage, spent a little time at the dance Saturday, took some pix, enjoyed Bucktown's concert, bought a couple of things from the dealers.  Didn't find my way to any parties, and got fewer hugs than I hoped for.

I'm only posting this now because when I got home, my phone was dead.  It's OK at the jack on the side of the house, nothing at the phone jacks in the house.  I'm now connected with a 100' extension cord plugged directly into the outside jack, and I have to figure out to get the inside wiring fixed.