One of the advantages of working remotely is being able to put some soup together around noon and let it slowly develop over the afternoon.
So, I want to wish everyone a happy soup year!
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And a soup-er 2021 to you too!
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Let us all take stock of ourselves. While 2020 had broth good and bad, we need to pho-cus on being our best in 2021. Let us not stew over the things that have come before. Embrace the miso-terious future and what is to come.
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Here’s the traditional poem:
Hopefully 2021 will be a much safer, healthier, more prosperous and Happier New Year for us all!
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The big event this week was both a tragedy and a comedy.
Our upstairs neighbors were having plumbing trouble like no water pressure, water would just stop running or slow to a trickle. So on Tuesday the landlord sent out a plumber to replace the well pump. Plumber opened the well and looked baffled. It was full of sand, all the way up to a few inches from the top. He couldn’t do anything so he left.
Wednesday the landlord sent some guys to dig out the well. They had to dig so deep (hauling buckets of sand out on a rope) that the guy inside barely managed to climb out again even with a ladder. But at least it was dug out, right?
So Thursday the plumber came back and said that well wasn’t even operational. That’s when the landlord suddenly remembered - he’d had a new well drilled several years ago and that old one filled up so that no one would fall in and get hurt. The new well (much smaller and more modern) was hidden, buried under some plants because it wouldn’t be right to have a bit of modern industrial machinery poking out of the ground where you could see it.
So they found the new well and dug it up, plumber replaced the pump, and then the other guys had to come back and refill the old well. Of course, whenever you dig a hole and fill it back up, you end up with extra dirt leftover because you loosened it up. And in the process the bird feeders got KO’d. So this is our garden:
Before (summer):
And after:
Tried to shovel some of the sand out so that the plants can come back up in the spring, and realized just how badly I’ve gotten really out of shape during quarantine year. Also our rusty wheelbarrow with the half-flat wheel is really hard to move when full of sand. I did not make it to the back corner of the yard. Just dumped it at the property line. But assuming we don’t get snow and ice, I can maybe take it slow and steady; a half wheelbarrow once or twice per day and it’ll be clear soon. It’ll be good again in the spring.
Oh, also, some of the birdfeeders are back up now, planted in the sand, and the birds are happy about that.
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That “before” is beautiful. Good luck getting it back!
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So you’ve now got a snowy inland beach.
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Bad news:
I thought I was going to have a root canal today
Good news:
That’s not what happened
Bad news:
I have to have a molar extracted, in a few weeks
Good news:
Honestly, I’m less afraid of an extraction than a root canal because I will be sedated during the worst of it.
Bad news:
It’s going to be expensive
Good news:
Later this year, after I heal up, I’ll have an implant put in
Bad news:
That’s going to be really expensive
Good news:
An implant will likely last the rest of my life
Average that out to MEH, because all told, this is what an emergency fund is for, emergencies. I hope to have a lot of years ahead of me, in which I hope to eat a great deal of food, and adequate teeth are vital to that enterprise. Once it’s all over, I’ll be glad to have gone through it.
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I filled out the online hardship-extension form re my property taxes and submitted it about fifteen minutes ago.
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Good luck with it!
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Good luck! I find extractions easier because they’re usually a lot quicker and no drilling - just a yank and done. Also a lot cheaper. But I’ve had several over the years and that makes chewing difficult. I have the foundations for implants in my jaw, but couldn’t afford the tooth part of the implants, so I have to go back and get that done maybe later this year.
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Work is going okay. Still too much to do, but no interruptions which is great.
No interruptions. Not “only a few”, but none.
Oh, right. I rebooted mid morning to stop it from nagging me.
And never launched Teams or Outlook.
Well, I had been having a productive day.
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Sounds like mine.
“Huh. Why didn’t I get an alert on that. Oh, right. I muted the speakers.”
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I sometimes conveniently ‘forget’ to sign into slack when I need to get things done. I’ll still get notifications on my phone if someone directly @ messages me, but they seem to do that a lot less often when you’re shown as away.
Also luckily for the last month I’ve been working with a group that doesn’t do double meetings every day. I have one in the morning and then anything else is handled via message or a channel thread. Still some interruptions, now and then but so much better without all the meeting fatigue. There’ve been times in the past when I’ve lost 3 days of the week to meetings and interruptions.
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Paid off my first student loan.
Eh.
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10+ inches of Snow.
The girls go out to shovel it.
Some of the places they shoveled it to were … less than optimal.
I hope I don’t learn first hand about “heart attack snow”
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I went out to get my hair cut today and I could have sworn the woman at the reception desk was flirting with me. I don’t know if it was genuine or not but goddamn did it ever feel nice.
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I almost slipped on some ice and fell, but didn’t.
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I slipped on some ice and did fall whilst shovelling snow off of my driveway yesterday…but was not injured.
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