carbonel

I'm very fond of Kurt Vonnegut's collection Welcome to the Monkey House. One of the stories in there is "More Stately Mansions," about a wife, Grace, who is obsessed with home decorating and a husband, George, who loves her but is mostly ineffective -- as seen through the eyes of the new neighbors. When the neighbors finally get to see Grace and George's house, they realize it's a shambles, that all the decorating has only been in Grace's mind. When Grace has to go to the hospital for two months, George decides to decorate the house the way Grace always wanted. When Grace comes home, she's bowled over -- at how clean the house is, but nothing else. To her, this is how the house has always looked. Though after that, she gets rid of all her decorating magazines.

This story has been rather on my mind over the last couple of days, because I just paid around $7,000 to painters and a handyman to repaint the entire house and garage and do other necessary repairs, including replacing windows and a door in the garage. I didn't change the color of paint, and it was perfectly matched. Which means that I've spent $7,000 for something that is essentially invisible. I can point out the places where the rotted wood was replaced and other minor changes, but no one is going to notice anything unless it is pointed out. (I know this because I tried it on lydy and Pat WINOLJ, the two people who come to my house most often.)

As Vonnegut said in a more dire context, so it goes.

The funeral and three days of shiva are over. I am possibly more peopled out than I ever have been in my entire life -- so of course tonight I'm going to a public event. I won't have to talk much, though; I'm just there to listen to Abby Franquemont, who is a Big Name in the world of spinning.

I'm also taking a two-day course from her over the weekend, which I'm very glad I'm back in time for.

My house is a disaster area, and I don't even know where to start. Note that this is nothing new. It was a disaster area before I left. But two weeks with my neatnik mother makes it look worse than usual. Just before I left, I hired an organizer to help get the place into shape, and then had to put her on hold because of all the other stuff. The essential problems are a) I don't have places for everything, b) I have too damned much stuff, and c) I'd rather do other stuff than organize/clean/put stuff away. I'm working on a) and b), but I'm not sure there's a cure for c).

I've been feeling not-well for over a week now. First I had a toothache (and a root canal). Then I had a sinus infection, and my left nostril became a yucky faucet. I was on antibiotics for both of those, and kept thinking the penicillin would kick in and the drippiness would dry up.

Several days ago, I had to acknowledge that what I have now is a realio trulio coryza cold. I haven't felt particularly hungry (though that hasn't kept me from eating, alas, if food is put in front of me), but I've drunk a lot of tea with honey.

Today, I thought to myself, self, what I really want for lunch is chicken soup. I didn't have any of the good stuff in the house, let alone homemade, but I did have a can of Campbell's old-fashioned chicken noodle soup that I'd bought the last time I was feeling rotten. I nuked it and ate it -- kind of bland, but soothing on the throat.

And after that, I was finally able to pop my left ear, which has been plugged to a painful and hearing-impairing state for the past several days, despite all the tea and Sudafed I offered it. I still feel rotten, but my ear feels a lot better.

Honestly, I don't know if there's a connection, but I think I'll buy a couple more cans for future use the next time I go to the grocery.

The previous weekend was the Northern Lights Handspinner's Guild annual retreat. It's always held over MLK Day weekend, and a couple of years ago we went to staying Friday to Monday instead of Friday to Sunday. It was an enjoyable get-together. I spun up the silk roving that I bought at the 2011 Shepherd's Harvest and had been saving for something special. It was variegated (rooster colorway), and I'm really pleased with the way it turned out -- multicolored and sock weight. One of the people at the retreat had a cowl knitting pattern that she'd created, and I think I'll use that for the silk. We also had a couple of classes -- one on tapestry weaving and one on ways to spin rainbow roving. I learned quite a bit at both, even though I'd attended Virginia Parent's class on spinning rainbow roving at Federation the year before.

The venue wasn't as nice as where we'd gone the past few years, but that one isn't available anymore. The room where we got together was small and L-shaped, and the place had a thick layer of ice between the places we needed to walk (and drive). Up and down icy hills was no fun.

On the way home, I had a bit of excitement. First the car started getting louder and I thought the muffler needed looking at. Then the car dropped down and made a much louder noise, and I realized it was a blown tire. As I pulled over to the side of the road, I saw the rubber part of the tire rolling down the decline to the right of the shoulder. It had completely separated from the rim. (I meant to go down and collect it, but I never did.) I called AAA, and waited. A tow truck drove up soon after, but it turned out to be from the Highway Patrol, and she just wanted to make sure I was okay and that things were in hand. Even with a priority on my call (because I was sitting out in the -7 F cold), it took just about an hour for the AAA truck to show up. When it did, he changed the tire to my donut spare quite rapidly, and I was back on the road, driving slowly and carefully. I couldn't get a new tire that day, because it was still MLK Day.

The next day, I went out to the car to drive to the tire place. Unfortunately, the donut spare was flat. I called AAA again, and since this time I was in my warm house, no one came for a couple of hours. By the time the guy came, it was getting close to the time the tire place would be closing. And to put the cap on it, he'd shown up ready to change the tire, instead of with air to inflate the existing tire. I was able to get a ride to my Tuesday trivia game, and the tire replacement went on hold until Wednesday -- when all worked as it ought.

Last weekend was mostly a quiet, stay-at-home weekend, and I worked on my copyediting for Transformative Works and Cultures. On Sunday, 1crowdedhour and I went to the Museum of Russian Art. I had a Groupon for admission for two that was expiring in a week or so, and I wanted to use it before that. 1crowdedhour had been there before, but I hadn't. We had a brief snag when it turned out the museum opened at 1 pm on Sunday, not the 12 noon we'd thought (and arrived at). We went to Turtle Bread for tea and snacks, and whiled the hour away pleasantly, while the freezing rain turned to snow.

The museum is small, with three main rooms of exhibits, one on each floor. I believe the collection rotates a fair amount. The ground floor was a special exhibit of cast (rather than painted) icons, and the top floor was a special exhibit of works having to do with spirituality of various sorts. The main floor was items from their collection. I was rather surprised that it was mostly post-Revolution, but 1crowdedhour pointed out a back room that I'd missed. That had a few of the "greatest hits," including some older works. I enjoyed the visit, but I'd prefer not to pay the full $9 admission charge. If I wanted to go there often, a membership would probably be the way to go.

And then I returned to my copyediting. Still not done, but I've made a significant dent.

I voted on my way home from the gym. The polling place is half a block from my house, so usually I just walk there, but since I already in the car (and the weather is Novemberishly rainy), I parked in the school lot. There was no line, so I sailed through the whole thing in about ten minutes.

I'm grateful to naomikritzer and davidschroth for their endorsements and information.

(On an entirely unrelated subject, is there any way to make LJ stop reminding me that I can switch to the new Friends view? From everything I've heard about it, I Do Not Want. Don't even want to look. But the blue reminder still remains at the top of the page.)

I didn't go to the Winnipeg Folk Festival because I wanted to go to CONvergence and see Tamora Pierce. That turned out to be a good thing, because I developed an infection in my foot -- though I should have dealt with my unused ticket earlier (thank you, minnehaha K). It's responding well to antibiotics (the infection, not the ticket), but I'd just as soon stay in civilization (not that WFF is either uncivilized or far from a city, but you know what I mean).

And now I'm coughing pretty much all the time except when I'm sucking on a cough drop, and I have a scratchy throat, and feel rather off, though I don't think I have a fever.

So I think I'll just stay at home and work on my Tour de Fleece over the weekend, rather than spreading whatever germs or viruses I might have among the 5K people at the convention.

I'm not on the SMOFs list, or I'd take this there.

I'm the administrative person (hotel liaison, registration, treasury, etc.) for a cryptographic convention that's happening right now. Because this is a non-fannish convention, there's a lot of hotel catering involved -- snack breaks and a couple of meals, plus a reception last night.

I've been thanking everyone involved, but what's expected in the way of more substantial gratitude? Should I be tipping everyone? Or just the guy I'm specifically dealing with? Or would that be an insult to him? And how much is reasonable? This is a part of the hotel liaison job that I haven't dealt with in a long long time, so advice would be appreciated.

1. The guy from Ron the Sewer Rat (local drain-cleaning service; once it was just Ron, but now he has minions) has come and gone, and it's now safe to flush the toilet and do laundry.

2. Except that I don't need to do laundry anymore, because last night I trundled all the sopping stuff over to Pat WINOLJ's, and did it there. Her washer has a feature I really like: it separates out the times of cycles from the action of the agitator, so you can have a long cycle for delicate clothing. Which I find useful for delicates that have been soaked in water of dubious origin. Also, it turns out that dried cat pee comes out much better than I would have hoped, and doesn't seem to leave lingering stains in most clothing. On the other hand, it dissolved the fabric in the shoulder of a fancy jacket that was made of viscose or some such.

3. I also hennaed my hair while I was there. And made much of the cats. And cleaned up after the one who chose that time to divest herself of her dinner.

4. Tonight I take my car over to a guy in St. Paul to have the timing belt and water pump replaced. This is proactive car management, because if the timing belt breaks, the car dies. And the car has 173K miles on it, and I can't tell when the last time was that the timing belt was replaced. This is the first time I've dealt with a non-authorized mechanic, which I find a little scary. But several people vouch for him, and the cost is about a third of what it would be from my regular garage.

5. And tomorrow, I leave way too early, with Random the cat, to take a plane to New York. Random stays with txanne, and I meet my mother and go on a cruise to New England and Canada with my mother. I haven't packed yet, but I think just about everything is otherwise ready.