I'm going to be depositing some checks tomorrow or the next day, and I'll have a teensy bit of money that I can spend on something self-indulgent. BUT WHAT?

Poll #1244372
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What should I buy?

I've been consistently overdoing it at the keyboard (woo new job!), and then doing a lot of lifting and bending and standing around during the whole moving process. I've had srs muscle fatigue for like two weeks, now. I was so exhausted and worn out by it all this afternoon that I took a nap, and when I woke up my muscles had all seized to the point where I had to roll out of bed because I couldn't sit up.

So I think yet another hot bath is in order!

I do baths for muscle-easing purposes, itchy-skin-easing purposes and also because they're mentally relaxing. I like to bathe with bath oils or a milk-bath bubble bath, preferably in vanilla or citrus scents. I don't do candles or music, usually - just a paperback book or, if I'm really not feeling well, sometimes I'll set up a laptop so that I can watch a favorite DVD. I like to have water or soda to drink while I'm soaking. Bath water should be, in my opinion, nearly scalding.

I've noticed that Jameson is all about a bath with nothing in the water, though he also seems to like a lavender bubble bath that I bought and then didn't use up (because it makes me sneeze). He likes to watch cartoons in the tub. My mom is a big fan of bath salts with heavy, herbal smells. She washes her hair when she takes a bath, which I don't really like to do - I'd much rather use the bath just for soaking, and wash my hair when I take a shower.

I'm not really going anywhere with this. Just thinking about how people say that "a nice hot bath" will make someone feel better, or relax, etc., but how that phrase can mean lots of different things.

I think I'm going to go with the vanilla-scented, paperback-reading variety in a little bit.

The August issue of Cerise is live, so go forth and check out Fight Like a Girl! We had some really great submissions for this issue, including a start to a new series of academic-flavored articles. Huzzah!

September's theme is "The Socially Conscious Gamer," and for October we're planning a special crossover teamup thing with Girl-Wonder. Get thee to the submissions page for details.

In sillier reading, Belle and Claire are back at Reading by Moonslight after a brief hiatus, posting reader fanart and reviewing "Crystal Starbeam and the Heart Sword of Jamerica."

Since I'm unpacking boxes (some of which have been packed for over a year now) and putting together office furniture and all that, I thought I'd take the opportunity to organize my papers a little better and put all of my scrawled-on-notebook-paper notes into appropriate files (such as "WisCon panel notes" and "poetry drafts" and "interesting doodles made while in anthropology courses"). While I was shuffling through all these bits of paper, deciding what to keep and what to discard, I saw several things that made me chuckle in the various WisCon papers.

1) Something like 25% of all of my WisCon panel notes have Karen's handwriting on them somewhere. Sometimes she's written an on-topic observation about the discussion. More often, she's responding to something snide that I wrote. I should probably destroy the evidence of my own poor behavior. But instead, I am labeling and filing it!

2) I should go ahead and introduce myself to people that I'm impressed by right away, instead of waiting a year or two. I've got "OMG I JUST SAW CAROLINE STEVERMER" written down, and then in the notebook from the next year, I have "CAROLINE STEVERMER TOLD ME HER LJ NAME." See? Cool people will be friends with me if I am brave enough to actually talk to them! ...But I will not stop being a fangirly dork, apparently. (seriously, my margin notes about various people I developed brain crushes on at the first WisCon I went to crack me up in light of how many of them are on my flist, now. "Jed Hartman = clever [underlined repeatedly] guy!!!" is one of my favorites for sheer, enthusiastic geekery. Jed, if you read this, please don't stop thinking I'm cool, okay?)

3) It's probably good that That Guy ended up backing out of the writer's workshop, after all, because my critique was way meaner than I remembered. Though I think "dream sequence on page ten is not [again with the multiple underlining] as interesting as you think it is" might be good advice for pretty much every writer.

The conclusions I draw from all of this are that I am, indeed, a massive geek, and also that I probably underline things too much.

Since Tucson Management, Inc., took over the management of Bellevue Towers shortly after Jameson and I moved in there, we've had nothing but trouble with them. I got stuck in the elevator for hours in October, just before my wedding, and the most I got in response was a patronizing phone conversation (days later) wherein I was called "honey" and told that it wasn't that no one was responding to the emergency alarm button, it was that it's not connected to anything.

After that, they left a threatening note on our door while we were on our honeymoon claiming that we hadn't paid our rent (we had. Mysteriously, the check disappeared). Threatening notes are their communication method of choice. Both of our phone numbers are in their files, but they never call.

The next time they failed to call was super-fun, because what they did instead was send a registered letter despite being fully aware that we could not receive it because a) the tenant call buttons do not (and have never, so far as I can tell) work and b) they had closed the office in the ground floor of our building months earlier, so there was no one there to sign for anything. The registered letter was about us supposedly not paying our rent again. Again, we had, but the check "mysteriously" went missing. We went to court because Tucson Management insisted that we should pay their lawyer fees despite the fact that it wasn't our error, where my father was screamed at by Kathy (I believe her full name is Kathleen Lile) in the hall outside the courtroom loudly enough that we could all hear her. In the end we didn't have to pay their fees: yay justice. An extra-fun part of that was that Kathy claimed to have no knowledge of any problems with their elevators when my father was trying to head off her random tangents about how Jameson and I are horrible, unreliable, scheming and cheating tenants (bullshit, by the way, in case anyone is wondering!).

We've been careful to get receipts for our rent checks, which we've had to drop off in person at great inconvenience, since then. Yes, we didn't have to pay their lawyer's fees, but we did have to take half a day off to go to court, and neither of us wanted to deal with that again.

The most recent fun is that we're trying to move out. And they have a problem with this. So instead of, like, calling us, they've been calling our friends who live in the same building. Way to go, Tucson Management! Y'all are awesome, friendly, and total paragons of professionalism!

Jameson went into their office today to try to deal with that as well as some other outstanding issues we've had with them, and Kathy refused to speak with him because she had a phone call to make, saying she'd slip the papers he requested under our door (again with the professionalism!). He waited around in the apartment for a while, then attempted to get Kathy to sign a piece of paper saying that he'd asked for certain documents and hadn't yet received them. And she went apeshit. She screamed, refused to sign anything, refused to accept the original letter for her files (though she did take a copy), and accused Jameson of harassment. Because, you know, he tried to talk to her a second time instead of meekly waiting in the apartment for her to get around to putting something under the door.

I dunno how this is all gonna work out in the end, but I am so glad to be getting out of that place. Tucson Management is unprofessional, exploitative, dishonest and horrific to try to do business with. I can't believe they've been around since 1995, as their website claims.

So our power went out the night before last, during this hardcore rainstorm that also knocked tree limbs from our neighbor's tree down onto our roof hard enough to make sawdust fall out from between the beams (directly onto all of our electronics, naturally). Jimmy and I got out the candles mom and dad had given us as a housewarming gift and spent an hour or so chatting by candlelight before trying to make the best of it by getting to bed at a reasonable hour. It was kind've unpleasant in the dark and the heat with a huge storm outside, but it also felt a little bit like an adventure!

...And then we didn't get power back for eighteen hours.

One of my favorite shows right now is Phineas and Ferb, this bizarre Disney Channel offering revolving around a pair of step-brothers who do highly improbable things every day during summer vacation. In every episode, there's a subplot involving their pet platypus, Perry, who is actually a secret agent, and Perry's nemesis, Dr. Doofenschmirtz. In keeping with my general pattern of unreasonable fondness for villains (particularly villains who aren't very good at villainy), Heinz Doofenschmirtz is by far my favorite character on the show.

And in one episode, it is revealed that he wears a night guard when he sleeps! Just! Like! Me!

I must have an icon, I thought. And lo, I created one!

And just in time, too, because this weekend has been non-stop hectic over-the-top activity, and I can feel my jaw clenching when I am awake.

...So how's everyone else doing?

I'm still getting to know my new backyard. On the critter front, we've got bats, toads, woodpeckers, mockingbirds and quail hanging around the yard. And while we were digging holes for trees and generally tossing soil around this afternoon, Jameson and I uncovered some gigantic, creepy-looking grub things. I think they are probably figeater beatle larvae. Neat.

For plants, we have two mature mesquite trees, one of which is carrying a parasitic mistletoe. Dunno what I want to do about that - first impulse is to cut off the affected limb, but I know that even though mistletoe is a parasite, sometimes it can be beneficial. I shall ponder. We also have a grapefruit and an orange, courtesy of my dad. Jimmy and I will get those planted tomorrow, I think.

And also, we have nightshade. Yep, really. If you eat my yard, you will regret it.

It's not, like, deadly nightshade. It is the less-toxic silverleaf nightshade. You still shouldn't be eating it.

So I have this bookshelf that I stole from my parents forever ago. I think it was originally my grandfather's, actually. Anyhow, it had some scratches and dings on the top of it before I ever got a hold of it, but then in my foolish youth (we're talking pre-teens, here), I put a fish tank on top of it. And then it leaked. And I've never really fixed it.

So here's what the shelf looks like on top:



I'd like to have it in the living room. The details on the front are really pretty, and I like that it's a piece with some history for my family. So I want to fix up the top, but I don't really know what to do. I'm guessing that staining it would be the right course, and probably stripping the existing stain first? I'm hoping that one of you has done something like this before and can point me in the right direction for my research. Anyone?

Here's a picture of the painted headboard I did in our bedroom with the bed in place:
( Read more... )

Annnd as soon as I get my computer up and running and get started on all my delayed work, there's a severe storm warning for my area and I gots to turn off the electronics. Bah!