elanya

I mentuioned that we've been having some animal adjustments noqw that I've moved in with longpig and wererogue... especially as regards Maze, my kitty.

We have a set up where the laundry room is latched so he can get out, but the door won't close all the way, so it won't close *on* him. The dog and kids can't get out, so it gives him somewhere to be safe that he can retreat to, but can come out and explore when he's feeling safe.

We've also been leaving the downstairs door open at night. Two nights ago, he came up in to my room to snuggle with me at night, and I escorted him back downstairs in the morning. It was lovely to have him sleeping on my feet again!

This morning.... wererogue woke me up because he was out in the back garden @_@ We must have left the patio door cracked open to let in the cool air, and then the kids closed it this morning. I have no idea how long he was gone for - I assume it was after we all went to bed around 1, but before the kids were up at 6:30. The garden isn't closed off by any means, and there are other animals in the neighborhood...

I'm glad he is chipped and has all his outdoor shots, and that he CAME BACK but D: Scary!

We're going to have to be a little more careful.

So, the last time I managed to update was before I left the US.

( Now I'm in Canada, yaaaaay! )

Welp, here we go - I ma about to leave the town I have lived in for almost 10 years are return to Canada! We're stopping in Tennessee tonight and then up through the border at Detroit. I'm staying in Windsor until my stuff gets in and then off to my sister's place probably next weekend....

Mostly I'm just tired and hungry right now. I may or may not freak out later!

It's really happening :o

My cube got dropped off today, and my storage locker is not cleared out. The latter part was important because I needed my lock :p

I'm going to go star taking stuff out there very shortly :3

I have things mostly ready to go, and getting stuf out of my spaces will help me figure out what's left.

I'm still waffling on what to do about my big filing cabinet though - keep or donate? I'd certainly never need a bigger one, but it is a *pain* to move. Hmmm hmm hmmm

Ahh well - better get started, anyway, it isn't going to pack itself. :D

Woohoo! Long weekend! Gonna do all the things, productive and entertaining, right, yeah!

....except the internet is out at my house as of yesterday afternoon. Thrill! It turns out our modem is archaic and was not compatible with the new IP technology standard. Our ISP updated their network and suddenly it could not communicate. They had apparently sent notices with the bills, but they were being paid without being see so.... yeah. We have a modem that *is* compatible (where 'we' = my roommate), but we can't get it to work because ??? reasons? I don't know. We might get a tech out on Wednesday?

So that's utter balls, because this is my last major weekend to do much of anything at all, and if I want to have any contact with the outside world, I can't be home. It's really frustrating! what I'd like to do is pack a little, play a little - and if I play for longer, do so with privacy and comfort and in charge of my own distractions. That is not so much an option :p I am currently at a café that is a little ways down the street from my place, and there is a bunch of (I think) Chinese grad students hanging out right behind me, chatting loudly and having fun. It looks like they are setting up a board game, actually! Which is good for them but is not an atmosphere very conducive to concentration on much of anything.

Anyway. I am actually doing pretty well for packing. All the books are packed, all the non-essential clothes. There are random odds and ends still. The pod is being delivered on Tuesday, and then I'm (hopefully) going to grab the last few things out of my storage unit, and that will be that! There are a couple of things I still need to dispose of - an old futon, some things to take to half-price books.... and my filing cabinets -_- I have a 5 drawer steelcase filing cabinet! I can't get rid of the darned thing! Honestly I'd prefer to keep it and hoard it forever and ever but that's not really a practical response -_-

I think when I go home tonight, I'll take the art off my walls and pack it and the few things of filing I am actually planning to keep... Then maybe I can offload one of the filing cabinets (the crappier 2 drawer one) tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow early afternoon I'll probably be back here, nursing drinks I don't really need to be buying...

I need to do a job app for a temporary job in Waterloo that I probably can't get because I can't drive. Also I am highly dubious that i can get my license here before I leave at this point, and will have to start all over in Canada, possibly more than once, because getting a license in Ontario is a two year process, and who knows if I will actually *be* in Ontario for two years, and if I move provinces again I'd have to start all over again

I thought I had a plan to get up to Canada, but now everything is up in the air again. The people who offered to help me have some pretty serious stuff to deal with and I understand, but I'm still stuck. Maybe they can still take me, but who knows when I will know. I don't have any other good ideas.

I need to do laundry.

I was supposed to run the second half of my oneshot tomorrow, but I don't know if that is going to happen either. At lest that one is mostly on me to decide. I'm leaning towards 'no,' but I really ought to make that call soon. I can't do it next week either as I'd still be down at least one (different) person and possibly more.

I should be packing.

I was planing to finish up stuff for Jukebox this weekend but I am not sure where I put my motivation.

I need to get stuff out of my storage unit and get rid of some of the other stuff in my house.

On the other hand, with nothing going on tomorrow afternoon or evening, I should have time for all the rest of it, right?

Meh. At least I got my new sock yarn in the mail. It is pretty even though it is much more 'mottled grey' and less 'black and white'.

I guess I can make myself get up and take care of some of that, anyway.

A little update for anyone interested.

This last week it feels like I have accomplished very little. Last weekend I ran the first bit of my the "one shot" I prepped fro Webercon for some people online. Because everything takes at least twice as long online, I got through about half of it. If anyone is curious you can see the lead in and the log here. Only the first log is actually extant, though. I need to schedule the second bit.

Sunday night, a bunch of friends tested a new online version of Cards Against Humanity (Cards Against Originality). The site claims that you need to be in the same room, but what they actually mean is that you need to be in voice contact. We played over Skype and it worked wonderfully, with only a few little connection hiccups.

Monday I did some solo RP scenes for Diablotin, Tuesday I focused on some Wrangling Staff stuff (and tried and failed miserably to get a good connection to naryrising so we could watch the last episode of season 1 of Peaky Blinders, bah). Wednesday was usual datenight shenanigans. Last night I played Arkham Horror (and we defeated Yog Sothoth, but barely).

So I did some things, and some of them were even productive in some sense, but I feel like I have been avoiding some other pretty major things that are coming at me fairly soon. I have decided (I think) that I am going to get rid of my furniture when I leave the US, and try and just take Stuff with me, and take a hard look at my Stuff and offload a lot of it locally if I can. I need to start packing things and sorting things. I need to figure out how to ship things, and to where. I need to figure out where I am going, and when, and how I, and my two animals, are going to get there. I need to go through stuff i my storage unit and decide what I want to keep from that stuff, and I need to start craigslisting or otherwise offloading stuff I want to get rid of. I have a lot of files of stuff that at this point I am ready to check that I was previously holding on to, but can now go. But I also have a lot of weird stuff I want to keep for Reasons that might need closer examination. I also have other Stuff I should do, like get some doctor stuff done, see what shots Jola needs, and Maze needs, look into... flying? with them? I don't have a plan, but I should be making one. Meeeeeh :|

Meanwhile, I have a meeting tonight, I have game on Sunday, I have two trope bingo stories I want to get one (one half done, one not started, lol), and I got my Jukebox assignment yesterday too.... I think I can actually knock that out *relatively* easily though, as I have decided what I want to do for it already :) Now if I could only manage to do any of these things without feeling *toooo* guilty... Or swinging the other way and feeling too defiantly indulgent :p

At least I'm ahead of schedule (again) at work? Huzzah. I should probably keep on top of that :p

Now that I have AC, it is a lot more pleasant to be upstairs. This is no real surprise, and I slept ridiculously well. I had a hard time getting out of bed at 7 to let Jola out to pee, andeven had a hard time getting up at 9 (luxury!) to take her for an exploratory walk through Wolf Pen Creek.

I've been puttering about trying to get more stuff stored away better now, and get my room sorted how I like it. If I get through with enough of that and/or get tired of it, I have a ton of data entry I need to catch up on for my dissertation. I think those two things will keep me pretty busy this weekend, but if anyone wants to do something - give me a call :) Both my phone numbers are working now :) I have been impressed with my ability to find/make space for things so far, but I do have more stuff to go to Goodwill, and some things to go to storage (and some things to come out.... *sigh*) I can't find the pegs for my nice solid bookcase though - does anyone know where I can get replacements? I think it came from Target, but I'm not sure (earis - it is the one I got from you ;p). Once I have things a little tidier I may take some pictures :)

So far, I have done 3 loads of laundry (much nicer now that the house is cooler!), washed the walls and such around where the AC guys were working, vacuumed the stairs and some downstairs (the AC vents were blowing out a bunch of black crud over everything, cleaned the sink in the upstairs bathroom for the same reason, unloaded a few more things from miscellaneous boxes hat are still kicking around, tidied up more of where I'd been living downstairs (put away some books and such, mostly) and some other little odds and ends like that. I still have a bunch more stuff to take care of - some more filing, for instance, finding space for stuff like my towels and excessive bathroom crud, and vacuuming upstairs. I just had lunch, which was, in an endeavour to use up some of the 9 (@_@) bottles of vinegar (6 kinds!!!) was sour dough bread dipped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar with some plain Greek yogurt to go with. I still have leftover pizza from last night, some lentil soup (also good with vinegar @_@), and the makings of Thai curry. I think I'm going to freeze the rest of the soup for lunches.

If anyone local is reading this and is feeling generous, I do have some errands I could use some help running - I need dog food and cat litter, I need to make a run out to the storage unit out further on Harvey (see above), and I have some stuff to take to Goodwill (or some similar place). I can give gas monies and/or provide tasty baked goods for my services - especially now that it isn't too hot to think about using an oven in my house :)


...and then I let this entry sit for three hours @_@ Got filing and towels sorted and a few more odds and ends put away. Finished laundry. Air vents still spewing black stuff in some rooms (not in great quantities, but still...) so i am going to use one of my old 'curtains' 9i.e. destroyed bedspreads) to cover the couch for now...

I am on the mailing list for the Society for Historical Archaeology (of which I am a member and have been since about 2004). Lots of times there is randoms stuff of vague interest and little bits of debate, people looking for artifact identifications, etc. Today there was a link to a website documenting the maritime cultural landscape survey of Shirley Plantation. The plantation is Virginia's oldest plantation, as the site will tell you. It is still fairly intact, and it has had a fair amount of terrestrial archaeology conducted there previously and a very deep historical record. The survey is looking for and documenting maritime landscape features like wharves and jetty's associated with the maritime operations of the plantation. They've done some core sampling as well, to get an idea of how the river has behaved and how deep the submerged archaeological record might be around some of these features.

I'm excited to see this kind of work being done on plantations, which had, and needed, strong maritime connections. In Virginia especially, the waterways were what connected the planters to each other. Its a true cliché to say that the rivers were the main method of transportation, but it goes a little beyond that. They provided a place, as well as a means, of social interaction. I'm excited to see what comes out of this so that I can use it to think through some of my own work a little more. I want to think about how much these connections made, or didn't make, these plantations into maritime communities, and whether you can really draw a clear line. Maybe there were maritime subsets - people on the plantation whose lives were more closely ties to the river - how connected were they to the broader maritime world? Maybe that connectedness (in the sense of being tied in some way to the broader maritime world) is something I need to focus more in my own work. Anyway - if the data is available, I'd love to see if I could use the plantation as a comparative site :D

In completely unrelated news: things that the new household is never going to run out of, ever:
Spices
Dishes (esp plates, utensils, and glasses)
Pans
Books
Towels
Vacuum cleaners

....yeah @_@

I also made the mistake of leaving my aloe plants outside for a few days. They bleached to a translucent off-white and drooped, and now look like some horrible alien tentacle plants. One of them is reviving with water and the relatively cooler temperatures outside (and lack of direct scorching sun). The other may be a wirte of. if I had my camera here, I'd take pictures @_@

I'm also thinking about bringing Jola home, 'cause I miss her :(

Still adjusting to moving. The bank won't let me change my address with them unless I do it in person, so they can wait :p I'm having my mail forwarded. However there is one piece of mail that I'm concerned about - I'm worried that it might get lost in the shuffle, because I waited too long to set up the mail forwarding and I'm not sure how long it takes the post office tro process this stuff. Said mail is, of course, my Super Important Immigration paper that I've been chasing after for months now -_-

Well anyway - I must apologize, as in the weirdly chaotic liminal state that is my life at present, I let my skype phone number expire. It should be working now though! I am supposed to be getting my regular phone switched over too, but I need to find the phone jack in the apartment before I can test that. Someone tried to call me last week, though, and told me they got connected to someone else. Skype number should be working within the hour, and then I can see for myself! (Merc - if you see this, where did you say there was a phone jack? :o)

I have 8 boxes left to unpack, plus other stuff that I just need to find space for. I also have things that may as well go in to storage rather than taking up space, and more things that I want to take to Goodwill. I need to put stuff on the walls (trying to decide where/how), and I need to find the pegs to one of my bookcases so that I can use the shelves. Then I have to do stuf like set up my action figures and other knickacs. Eventually, I need to bring my dog home, though I'm still wary of doing so until we have some kind of AC solution. I miss her though :(

I also have a ton of empty boxes. Anyone need any boxes?

In other news, I've been re-reading my ancient battered copy of J.V. Jones's The Baker's Boy, which I first read waaaay back in highschool. I remember enjoying it greatly then, but now it does really read very much like a first book. It's still very solid and the story is fairly complex (certainly more than it seems at first), but the writing is stylistically simplistic in places, and sometimes a little repetitive. I want to read the rest of the series to watch her improve - I also just ordered the fourth book in her current series, which will be a nice contrast :3 Of course, I really should be doing more work - research and writing - and less fiction reading. But after readingf George R.R. Martin's A Dance With Dragons, a hunger has been awakened @_@ A lot of her cover blurbs compare JVJ to GRRM (and Robert Jordan), and while I can see the parallels pretty clearly, it seems like she doens't get the same kind of attention from fans? I'm not sure, but I couldn't find any fanworks elated to her works at all, and she's published 8 novels. That seems pretty strange to me! So far as I'm aware, she's never taken a strong stance against fanfic.... and I've never seen that really stop anyone anyway. I'm not sure how she is doing in terms of sales. There is a message board on her site at least, but it is not super active. Talking to other fantasy fans I know, they generally have at least heard of her, if not read her stuff. I know I have at least one LJ friend on account of shared interest too.... (*waves* at knight_ander) Anway, I'm rambling. May as well go read, or else unpack.... oh there's a choice :p