The All-New Bunrab

Although there were a couple band concerts in the past couple weeks, which were fun and which I did my part in reasonably well, other than that, I can't say I've made any progress on stuff I should be doing. I did mail off my 1040 - since I owed them a whopping check because of the lump sum Social Security amount in November, I had to make the payment earlier rather than waiting for April 15, to support my case for not charging me penalties for not making estimated tax payments during 2012, which I couldn't have because I didn't KNOW I was going to get money until it was already the 4th quarter, but nonetheless needed a bit of CYA-ing. I haven't done my state taxes, though. Or the extension for the condo association's taxes, or found an auditor for the condo association. I ordered some DIY CPE for my CPA license, because I want to keep it active (there's this vague "just in case" thing in my head, plus an equally vague fear that I will somehow forget the license and let it lapse, if I keep it on inactive status, and a CPA license is NOT something one wants to have lapse) but I haven't started in on any of it yet.

And I have several pieces of music in my head that I need to get written down. And, more short-term, about ten tea reviews to write, including one of some wonderful Sri Lankan tea that Barbara and Jim gave me, that turns out to taste a great deal like an Assam.

I did order a sofa today, finally. My niece is going to take my little loveseat for her first apartment - that'll be several months yet, but I've been wanting a real sofa, and it was part of what I planned to do with the SS money after taxes, and there was a sale over at Home Decorators Collection. And, knowing that there's going to be a sofa delivered in a week or so will FORCE me to clean up one last pile in the living room of stuff that's been: waiting to be mailed; waiting to be taken to Goodwill; waiting to be properly stored in the crafts room; waiting to be moved to my bedroom. So I have those chores cut out for me, and a deadline, which always inspires me more than just knowing that something /should/ be done. The little loveseat will also go in my bedroom for a while, once the sofa comes. The living room here is tiny-ish, and I don't want to block the patio door the way the previous residents did; I /use/ the patio door a lot.

The heating bills have been pretty reasonable - that was, after all, one of the major reasons for moving. They haven't been quite as low as I'd like, partly because this is the first floor so I'm not getting the benefit of anybody else's heat, and partly because when I have guests I do turn the heat up to a comfy temp for them, and I've had several guests in January and February, and partly because there's still a cold-air leak somewhere in my bedroom that I haven't managed to eliminate with the weather-stripping of the windows; I think it may actually be right at floor level under the window (I'd have to draw you a picture for you to be able to tell that that spot is a clear weak point in the overall design of these places) and the solution to that will be a runner rug and/or a door-type draft stopper - I don't think it would look right to run caulk and weatherstripping along the laminate floor and quarter-round baseboard molding. And maybe also next year I'll do that whole plastic-liner-with-the-hair-dryer thing to that window, too, since that would help with the spots I can't weather-strip such as the latches and locks for the sliding parts.

So, goals. Now to attempt to achieve some. In between more books (currently reading Nebula Awards 2012).

Watch the gap! is the LIRR's motto, apparently, and they repeat it more frequently than almost anything else. For that matter, Amtrak says it a lot too, although they are more polite and less New York about it: "Please be aware of the gap between the train and the station platform." I've just been in New York again for a few days, visiting my friend Sally-the-hoarder and helping her throw out some more stuff. We got a lot done. The upstairs of the house is *almost* empty, so that it can be recarpeted and repainted and rented out, which will help a great deal in supplying money for doing long-delayed maintenance and renovation to the rest of the house. We put a whole bunch of small furniture items out at the curb, and, since it's the weekend lots of college students are settling in, almost all of it disappeared within minutes. Except for a sofa in really bad condition, cat-pee-wise. Which is too bad, because other than that, it was in excellent condition. Oh well, it will keep the town sanitation department bulk pickup guys employed. And lots more papers went to recycling, and lots more stuff that she's keeping went into clear plastic bins where it can be stacked neatly and she can see what's in them, instead of losing track and buying duplicates. Progress! Next: convincing her to get rid of some of the downstairs stuff, where she has her grandmother's stuff, including furniture, and ALL her parents' furniture, as well as everything that she has purchased over the years. And she claims to love it all, including the 50-year-old lamps with brittle cords and shades that are in shreds. Sigh. Oh well. A little bit at a time.

I got back Saturday. Coming back on the LIRR to get to Penn, there were many, many college students, and many, many open cans and bottles of beer, and much shrieking. Which made the conductor change the announcements a bit: "Watch the gap. And take your crap with you. This means you. Take your beer bottles and crap off the train with you." The Amtrak regional back to here was quieter. Train really is a very comfortable and easy way to travel. And do it late enough at night, and the fares are less than half what they are at peak times.

Today we went to the State Fair, as this is the last weekend of it. I looked at all the "home arts" - needlework and cooking, mainly, and I was interested mostly in the needlework - and we went to the Sheep and Goats pavilion and the Swine Judging pavilion and the Cow Palace - skipped the horse barns, since there were signs saying no strollers allowed past this point, and I assumed that applied to my scooter, too. Yes, same scooter that I took to Europe. It makes wandering around several crowded blocks' worth of fairground doable. Let's see, then a tiny chickens-and-rabbits building, then the Exhibition Hall, with vendors of all sorts of stuff Ginsu knives!, waterless cookware!, handwriting analysis!, Jews for Jesus!, Electrostatic brooms! (we bought one of those); candy apples (I bought a couple of those...), cinnamon pecans, Jack Daniels mustard and barbecue sauce! For those of you not familiar with State Fairs in the USA, this is a pretty typical vendor selection. All sorts of crap, mixed with some good stuff, mixed with booths from the political parties and several government agencies and a few more charities and a lot more crap for sale. Then through the 4-H petting area, which included a very attractive llama and a snooty alpaca. Walked through the Midway a bit, and the food pavilion featuring locally made/grown foods - everything from corn-on-the-cob to lamb sandwiches to pit beef, not just junk food but some halfway real food - to get to the last hall, the Agriculture Hall, which featured lots more state agencies' booths, and a John Deere tractor, plus all the prize-winning individual pumpkins and apples and corn and flowers... chatted with the people from the Maryland Insurance Admin for a while, wherein we shared a few laughs about Inland Marine insurance. I don't often get to talk to other people who think Inland Marine is as funny as I do. Outside that pavilion were the armed forces recruiting trailers, and the Motor Vehicle Admin's trailer (guess how many people wanted to visit that) and the county fire department's safety training trailer. And then a last glance toward the Midway, and we were done. We would have spent longer, but they don't have as much of a rabbit show here as they have at the Texas state fair or the Massachusetts state fair, nor nearly as many hysterical-looking chickens. No emus. No pig races. And we skipped the learn-to-milk-a-cow parlor.

So, now that I'm back from being sick (previous post) and going to NY and going to the fair, I have about two weeks worth of y'all's posts to catch up on, ha ha. If there's something I absolutely need to know, give me a comment here so I can go check it out, 'cause otherwise I am going to just read the last couple days' worth.

Manga Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet - really!
Apart from a brief couple of sentences introducing the Montagues and Capulets as rival Yakuza families in Japan, the rest of the words are all Shakespeare's - though there are not all of Shakespeare's words; I miss "hand to hand in holy Palmer's kiss" but most of the puns are there and are made clearer than they would be were the drawings not there. Friar Lawrence is a Shinto monk. Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio dress sort of steampunk to go to the party at the Capulets' domain. Juliet wears some ridiculous clothing, but when she goes alone to Friar Lawrence, she is on her motor-scooter in a full-face helmet and really cool boots. Two things struck me that I hadn't thought about so much before - (1) Paris really is a nerd, and (2) one of the reasons that Juliet's father may have been trying to marry her off so quickly is that she really was a bit of a wild child and he suspected she might already be pregnant. This may be a theory that has already come and gone amongst the Shakespearati, but it's the first time it ever occurred to me.

We got back from TX Tuesday night; Wednesday we spent with our contractor going through the house we're buying, getting estimates on repairs and replacements. Thursday we had to take Gizmo bun to the vet - ear mites :( Friday, um, what did we do Friday? Make about ten thousand phone calls connected with various housey things - locksmith to change all the locks on the house right after we close/settle (which term you use depends on what part of the country you're in) - which will be 11 a.m. Monday. Let's see, somewhere in there we ordered a few pieces of furniture, which will be delivered at various times. The painters will start either Tuesday or Wednesday and should only take a day or at most a day and a half.

The catch to us actually moving is this: the sellers have not yet removed the furniture! What's even sillier, they have had to ask us for a week's extension after closing to find someone to haul it off - and we made them put up a $200 escrow so that if they don't haul their stuff off after that week, we can pay someone to carry it away. The old lady who had owned the house for the whole 50 years since it was built passed away last year - her heirs have had over 5 months to remove the furniture. Sheeeesh.

Anyway. That's what I've been busy doing, and why I'm not caught up on reading my flist, and haven't posted.

The gutters have been cleaned.
The lawn has been mowed.
40 boxes of stuff we still haven't unpacked have been moved to the basement so that we can actually WALK through our bedroom.
THe pool maintenance guys gave the pool a good running start, although there's still some stuff we have to do before having them in again to vacuum up the last remaining sludge at the bottom of the pool.
The little rolling cart with the flip up leaves has been assembled (by me) and the new desktop computer has been assembled (by spouse) and put upon the cart. And I am using it now.
And the printer has been moved to the same cart, which frees up the rolling tea cart to go into the kitchen.
And last but not least, the bathroom wall cabinet has been hung upon the bathroom wall, no longer living on the living room floor leaning against the stereo, which is where it had been for the past three months.
So, we have a certain feeling of accomplishment for the week just past. I feel as if I'm getting back to normal.
All of which is pretty boring to everybody else except me and Spouse, and maybe Pickle. The rest of you would understand, if you had been weaving your way around the strange placement of furniture and furnishings we've had since we moved in.

Next up:
Install wire shelving on spare bedroom walls.
Adopt a cat from the Harford County Humane Society, which is suddenly swamped with a case of animal hoarding, and get Pickle to accept said cat. Not to mention Gizmo.
Rip up some carpeting, and replace temporarily with sheet vinyl until we can afford hardwood.
Transfer contents of a couple hundred cassette tapes to mini-disk.
Unpack the 40 boxes in the basement.
Move end table and rocking chair to basement.
Rearrange living room china cabinet and etegeres.
Give the chinchillas a thorough grooming.
Trim bunny toenails.

Not necessarily in that order.

When we were still planning to move up here, and were targeting Catonsville as where we hoped to settle, we talked to people who had already lived up here. Among them, the_curmudgn's spousal unit. She mentioned a strip of stores that they refer to as Temptation Row, which included a yarn shop. Well, we ran across that today. Yarn shop, quilt shop, needlework shop, and what's more, stuff that curmudgn and L wouldn't necessarily have noticed: Baltimore Brass, a band instrument store run by the tuba player for the Baltimore Symphony, for example. And next to that, a furniture store specializing in 50's retro. Since the house we are buying is a 1958 ranch house, it needs a bit of retro. While some stuff from the 50's is hideous (and we both grew up in households that owned some of the hideous stuff; my dad had a turquoise vinyl textured armless fake Danish Modern sofa that I still shudder thinking about) some of it is nice, and there's a couple pieces in there we will go back and try to get if they're still there in a month, when we have the house and know how much space we have.

One piece I really liked is an enormous desk/work table. It's a large desk with drawers and a small hutch with pigeonholes and doors and shelves, but the hutch is on hinges, and flips over to the back to form part of the surface, making it a very large table. I have no idea where we'd put such a thing, unless we replaced the dining table entirely. However, there's another piece, a "Desk in a box" that is similarly clever, folding and hinges and stuff, that we could definitely find room for. There's also a nice streamlined "Modern" china cabinet, which we could use to replace the cheapo mass-produced white country-style absolutely generic china cabinet we've had for years. It's worked for years, but it is such a, a, a stereotyped cutesy cabinet! A used 50's original in medium cherry with chrome fittings, now, that would be something.

Dreams. Still quite a bit of work to do before then.

Hair is cut. That helps. I was beginning to look like some of the more peculiar avatars people have with hair going in all directions.

I do believe ragweed is coming. Achoo and all that.

Incidentally, the high here today was 75.