Aug. 12th, 2020

aadler: (NightWatch)

Susan was talking with her closest cousin the other day. She (Susan) is currently enthusiastic about Revolutionary War history, and in response her cousin said, “Oh, so-and-so (some relative) followed out some old records, and just found out that one of our ancestors was with Francis Marion during that war.” Susan freaked … and the funny part was, the cousin had never even heard of the Swamp Fox. Susan wants to document enough genealogy that our granddaughter can have an official status as a Daughter of the American Revolution. (Of course, there’s considerable chance that she’s already a daughter of a different revolution, on her maternal side …)

***

A couple of days ago, I went into the office to clear out my desk. I left it nearly five months ago, and only went back once (and even then I didn’t go there; I’d taken my monitor and keyboard home with me, and didn’t want to carry it back only to have to turn it around and carry it all out again, so I used the equipment at someone else’s empty desk). I was at the new center less than a year; a few more months, and I’ll have been away from it for longer than I spent AT it. Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’.

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We had to close off our home’s pet door because raccoons kept coming in to eat the cat food. I actually caught the cat watching them one day; he was, like, “Whatever, dude. They always bring me more anyway.”

***

Work on our house continues, but slowly. Our contractor/handyman squashed a finger and then that turned into an infection, for which he’s receiving treatment but it affects the pace. The central heat has been repaired and a new A/C system installed; the deck is finished (except for a few places where some painting still needs to be done); the jets in the Jacuzzi tub have been brought back into operation; the spare bedroom is finished (including new ceiling in one spot, new flooring, and new paint on the walls); the main bedroom has been refloored; there’s a new lavatory in the main bathroom; new light fixtures have been installed in the entry hall, kitchen, ‘office’, and spare bedroom. All that’s left is the renovation of the spare bathroom, and new flooring in all the areas of the house that don’t have it yet.

Susan wanted to be done by now and have the house on the market. I figure it’ll be sometime into autumn before we can do that. All the same, the process is … er, processing. Neither of us has given up on the dream of moving overseas (I’m fixed on Malaysia, Susan keeps looking at other places), and I’m thinking it will probably be doable by summer 2021. If we manage it faster, well, that wouldn’t be bad, either.

***

For the Snowflake Challenge in 2016 (link here), I listed out a dozen stories that I was going to try to write that year, averaging one per month. One of the twelve turned out to be undoable — it was going to be “this year’s RemixRedux story”, only RemixRedux wound up not taking place that year— but I’ve done enough other remix stories in the meantime that I consider that particular obligation to have been fulfilled elsewhere. Looking back over my record, I can see that it took me four years to turn out the next dozen stories … and, of the ones I’ve produced, five of the ones I specifically promised haven’t yet been done.

I’m still on it. I didn’t give up, I just postponed.

***

All the Everclear is gone now. I am so far resisting the temptation to replace it. No guarantees, though.

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Sweden — by specifically NOT doing the things we’ve been doing — has reached the level of coronavirus recovery that the U.S. claims to want. Has anyone considered the possibility of attempting to achieve the same result by following the same process? Nah, that’s crazy talk.

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2020 has been … intense. And we’re not even through the two-thirds mark yet. Maybe that’s why the Everclear ‘evaporated’ as quickly as it did.