carbonel

According to https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/discord, there have been problems for at least fourteen hours, though I was able to connect early this morning (around 6:30 am Central). When I try to get to the site, I don't even get an error message, just a blank page.

Anyone have any idea what's going on, and if it's likely to be fixed soon?

In other news, I was vaxxed yesterday, both flu and COVID, and both of my shoulders are swollen and sore, though the COVID one more than the other. At least I didn't have any other symptoms I noticed.

Update: Discord is back for me (at the desktop; I never thought to try the app), but Down for Everyone still says it's having problems.

My blood sugar and A1C had been in the prediabetic range for several years, but this June there was a spectacular increase. This happened just before I spent the weekend at Scintillation (a small SF convention in Montreal), so it was much on my mind at that time, but I wasn't ready to talk about it until things were better.

And then things did get better, but pddb recently pointed out that I'd totally forgotten to mention it here.

So yeah, I'm now a type 2 diabetic. Thankfully, my blood sugar (which I test daily) is being managed well with some changes in diet and a maximum dose of Metformin. Initially, it was high enough that my diabetes educator had thought I'd need to go on insulin, but for now it's mostly running between 90 and 125. That may not last forever, but with daily testing I'll have plenty of notice. (I did ask about Ozempic, and the educator pointed out that on Medicare it would run me about $1,000 per month out of pocket. So I'm passing on that for now.)

I'm trying to eat more vegetables -- mostly I've become good at making stir-fry with lots of veggies and a few ounces of meat -- and I've replaced sweets and ice cream with fruit. I'm a big fan of watermelon and will be sad when that's no longer in season. And I'm trying to limit carbohydrates in meals to 50 grams or under -- which is still a lot more than during the several years when I was doing much more stringent low-carbing.

I've lost around fifteen pounds (which doesn't show, best I can tell), which I mostly attribute to the fact that one of the side-effects of Metformin is decreased appetite.

Other than that, life goes on pretty much as usual. I'm still spinning a lot, and five of the six items I entered in the Minnesota State Fair won ribbons. Just one blue ribbon, but that one came with a $25 gift certificate to StevenBe, which is a nice bonus. And in January, I'll be taking my longest cruise yet, with friends, to Hawaii. Most of that will be travel time, but I'm looking forward to the entire thing.

I received two Yuletide stories this year, both based on the Chapel Hollow books by Nina Kiriki Hoffman -- one my assignment and one treat. There was one other story in the fandom this year, so now there are five whole stories in AO3. I'm very happy to have more of it to read.

Closest to the Truth (1180 words) by Gammarad
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Chapel Hollow Series - Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Laura Bolte/Tom Renfield (Chapel Hollow)
Characters: Laura Bolte, Tom Renfield, Zandra (Chapel Hollow)
Additional Tags: News Media, Interviews
Summary: It was inevitable that the media would want to interview successful model Laura Bolte.

Growing Up Ilmonishti (1526 words) by fawatson
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Chapel Hollow Series - Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Worldbuilding - Character
Additional Tags: Worldbuilding, Yuletide Treat
Summary: Nick and Laura's oldest child grows up in Arcadia.

**************

For my assignment, I wrote a story based on the four Melendy books. The requestor wanted a story focusing on Mark and Rush, and gave me plenty of room to use my imagination. The story gives them one last adventure before they go off to boarding school (as described in the more obscure Spiderweb for Two: A Melendy Maze).

An Adventure for Two (3357 words) by JanLevine
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Melendy Quartet - Elizabeth Enright
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Rush Melendy, Mark Herron
Summary: It's the end of summer, and Mark and Rush are on a quest and looking for one last adventure before they have to go off to boarding school.

I only realized that I'd matched with the same requestor of four years ago after I'd written and uploaded my story. That was also a Melendy story -- this new one is my third -- and apparently was unsuccessful, since I never heard anything from her. Since people may have seen me grumping about that in a couple of places, let me publicly says that this time she came through today with a long comment and great enthusiasm, well worth the wait.

I think I'm probably done writing Melendy stories, but I'm very happy with my Yuletide experience, despite my last-minute angst.

1. As of October 15, I have (mostly) retired. I'm still working a few hours a week as a copyeditor, but as a contractor rather than an employee. I'm enjoying having the extra time.

2. Lydy and I bought one of those package deals that cover airfare and hotel, and spent four days in Paris in early November. I'd been there once before, in 1979; she'd never been there. We walked around a lot, did the hop on, hop off bus, took a food tour in Montmartre, went to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and visited the Louvre. We also had a nice dinner near the Louvre that was recommended by our food tour guide. Despite two very tight connections on the way home, all the travel worked out the way it was supposed to. I definitely want to do more travel, and this trip proved that doing it on the cheap can be successful.

3. The main annoying thing that's been taking up too much of my time has been dealing with health insurance. The Medicare supplement insurance I'd had with my company wasn't eligible for COBRA, even if I'd wanted it (which I didn't at over $900 per month, sheesh). I signed up for a BCBS policy, then had to do it all over again when it was canceled because I'd failed to dot an i or cross a t. I also had to get a policy for medicine (Part D) and set up COBRA payments for dental insurance, which puts off further decisions on that for another eighteen months.

4. MY YULETIDE STORY IS DONE AND POSTED. Every time I've signed up for Yuletide, it's gone to the wire, and this year was no exception, despite my best intentions. I had an entire eight hours of cushion when I hit the upload button, but it's done, modulo a final edit when get my brain back again. Thanks as always go to Pat WINODW for plot noodling and beta reading.

5. I'm trying to get various parts of my life into better order now that I have more free time. My finances are not completely taken care of, but they're much better now than they were at the start of the year. I have good intentions for decluttering the house, but little progress so far. Watch this space (but not too avidly).

And how are things going with you?

I just finished watching Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1957) and listening to the commentary track. I liked the movie and it spoke to me, since it's about growing old and reconciling oneself to one's elapsed life. (I almost said "past life," but that's ambiguous.) However, every time I watch one of Bergman's movies, I always wonder if there's really something there or if it's all just a pretentious house of cards made by an old white man. The symbolism is generally not at all subtle.

With the impending shutdown of Netflix's DVD service, I've been trying to make my way through as many of the works from my 4-star list as I can in the DVD versions. There are more "very long wait" works, which I equate to "not available," since Netflix isn't replacing anything that's gone missing or damaged. I'll be able to find most of the not-on-Netflix movies via streaming services, but I appreciate the extras on DVDs, especially commentary tracks.

There are only five movies remaining at the bottom of the alphabet that I can reasonably expect to get from Netflix, and it's going to come down to the wire. The one I'm about to start watching is Woodstock, which runs over three hours. I haven't checked if there's a commentary track. After that, it's The World According to Garp, Witness for the Prosecution, Wuthering Heights, and Zero for Conduct.

I'm sorry that Netflix is discontinuing the DVD service, because there are still almost a hundred items on my queue that aren't available for streaming -- at least not from Netflix. But with the savings from Netflix, I suppose I can add at least one more streaming service to the Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and MAX (formerly HBOMax) that I already have. The only difficulty will be deciding on which one.

In Minnesota, people need to get new license plate tabs once a year. They can do it online for a modest surcharge or in person. The facility to do it in person is about a mile from my house. But I am a world-class procrastinator, so I left it until August 30. Unfortunately, because I had work-related errands on August 30, by the time I got to the facility it was too late to get a number.

On August 31 (yesterday), I went to the Minnesota State Fair to demonstrate spinning in the morning and didn't come home until evening.

Today, I woke up to a nastygram from the state of Minnesota notifying me that I was out of compliance and could not legally drive that car (but could apply online for the tabs). It used to be that you could drive safely with expired tabs until the fifteenth of the next month, but no longer. Scofflaw that I am, I drove to the facility with my expired tabs and got number 75. I waited an hour and it had only got to 70. I had to go home for a company meeting, so I got a new number (98) and gave my number 75 to a guy in line.

I went home and found that the meeting was canceled.

I went back to the facility and waited another half hour for 98 to come up. When the number was called, the agent asked me for my driver's license to start the process. It wasn't in my pocket. It wasn't in any of my pockets; I checked them all. She gave me a return tag so I wouldn't have to wait in line again and I went home to look for my license.

Luckily, the license was in my gym pants pocket and not lost at the fair as I had feared. I have no idea what it was doing there. I went back to the facility for the third time, and this time I got my tabs and applied them to my car, having checked very carefully that it was indeed my car. (The failure mode some years ago was when I applied those tabs to the wrong black Honda Accord.)

None of this was anyone's fault but my own; by the time I went back the third time, I had gone past aggravation into finding the whole thing funny.

Maybe this will be a lesson to me for next year to be more timely, but the odds don't favor it.

I have a home security system that I've been paying $60/month for quite a while. At this point it's old and creaky, and I need to decide whether to upgrade it (which means tying myself into a new five-year contract) or dropping it entirely. The alarm company wants to keep me as a customer, so it's offering me a new system with free installation at the price I'm currently paying, and sweetening it with a $10/month discount for the first year. The new system comes with a doorbell camera and alarm -- though I have a front and side door, so I'm not sure which is most appropriate.

Do people have general opinions on home security? I've mostly kept this system because it was part of the house when I bought it (plus inertia), but it is an ongoing expense. I live in a low-crime area, at least for now.

There is no chance assembly of people who cannot make lively conversation about drains.
--Dorothy Sayers, in Gaudy Night

About two weeks ago, I did a load of laundry. When I went downstairs to move it from the washer to the dryer, I discovered a large pool of water. Clean water, not sewer water, which was the only good thing. This was on a Thursday night. On Friday, I called Ron the Sewer Rat (this is a company originally founded by Ron, but now it's just the company name). I was told that Monday was the earliest someone could come out, unless I was willing to pay the $450 Saturday surcharge.

I waited things out, which involved no showers, dishwashing, or toilet flushing until Monday.

On Monday, Trent from Ron the Sewer Rat came over. Before he tackled the basement drain, he went to check the main sewer line to make sure there was not a blockage there that was causing the subsidiary drain to back up. Unfortunately, there was. He was able to get his equipment about 25 feet down, but no further. Trent charged around $250 for his work; it was informational if not successful. He said this would need serious excavation work of the sort his company didn't do. He sent me a few referrals to local companies that did the kind of sewer work that involved making holes in the ground.

The basement puddle had slowly gone away over a couple of hours, so he said that it was probably safe to flush the toilet as long as no paper or other solids went down it. Oh, joy.

The first company on the list was Minneapolis & Suburban Sewer and Water. Ron (not a Sewer Rat) said he could come over the next day to check things out and give me an estimate. He wasn't able to get his camera more than a few feet down, which meant more digging and expense than the blockage at 25 feet would suggest. I suggested that we call Trent from RtSR back, since he had the proper sewer excavation tools. Unfortunately, there was no response at that end. Ron came back with more equipment and was able to get his camera to the 25-foot place, thus reducing things to a previously unsolved problem.

He also told me that my sewer pipes were made of something called Orangeburg pipe, which was basically tar paper -- a workaround against postwar shortages -- and it was amazing that the pipes had lasted the sixty years they had.

Before I signed the contract, I did try to get quotes from a couple of other sewer companies, but all of them had a several-week backlog. Ron said that he could start work on Monday, which meant that his company got the job by default (but they were recommended to me more than once).

In the meantime, I was warned not to flush the toilet at all, but that it was safe to wash dishes or use the shower. This turned out not to be the case. I did a load of dishes, and ended up with another large puddle of water in the basement. This time it didn't drain away at all. I will spare you all the gross details, but life at Casa Carbonel was not particularly fun.

On Saturday, Ron called and asked about the drainage situation. I said that nothing had changed. He said that he and his brother would come over on Sunday and try to get things sufficiently opened that I could flush the toilet. After an hour or so of work, he said that flushing should be okay as long as there were no solids to block things up again. That was a major improvement in my quality of life, which was a pretty sad thing.

On Monday afternoon (it was supposed to be Monday, but the previous job ran long, you know how it goes), Ron and his brother came over with much heavy equipment and dug large holes in my lawn. They finished the job on Tuesday afternoon. That work cost $6,700, which included an optional $250 for a new outside sewer access point in addition to the existing basement one.

However, Ron warned me that none of the work they'd done affected the basement drain -- which I could easily tell, because that puddle was still there. So I called Ron the Sewer Rat again and explained that we were now back to where we started originally.

Today, Trent came over and tackled the basement drain. There wasn't any one thing plugging it up, just accumulated yuck. He cleaned it out and checked the brand-new sewer line (in good shape, which it damned well ought to be), and for good measure cleaned the downstairs shower where things had backed up. That was another $250.

And now, after two weeks of limited water use and expenses of over $7,000, it's finally done. I plan to celebrate by washing a load of dishes and a load of laundry, and cooking a proper dinner and using all the utensils and pots and pans I want.

Last year, I needed a new hot water heater and furnace. This year, it was the sewer line. I predict that the roof will be the next major expense, since I don't know how old it was when I bought this house in 2003, but that means it's at least twenty years old. But I'm sure the house can provide additional surprises for me.

Tonight is the seventh night of Chanukah. So far, I've remembered to light the candles (and say the prayers) every night. There's a certain sense of satisfaction in using up a complete box of candles.

This is one of my favorite Chanukah songs, and I wanted to share it.



My holiday weekend will be spent reading the Yuletide archive once it goes live, but other than that I nave no real plans. Though I do have one present arriving via FedEx if it shows (it was supposed to arrive yesterday, but it's still in Chicago). I'm warm and safe and I have plenty of food and lots of TV to watch and much fiber to spin.

I hope everyone is having a warm and safe and pleasant weekend, wherever you are, whether you have friends and family to share it with or not.

Happy birthday to gwyn_r -- hope it's a good one!