Feral February, day 1

Feb. 7th, 2026 07:51 am
dianec42: (Snowy yard)
[personal profile] dianec42
Yesterday I texted with Mr Diane a bunch and did a workout.

Forgot to call my mom this week.

Today so far I tried to sleep in. The cats let me get an extra half hour in, although that did include dresser gymnastics and a certain amount of duvet acupuncture.

I've awakened to surprise snow. Must... get... into... town... If nothing else I still owe Claudio's kid a postcard.

Edit: Cleared driveway and my car. Made it to open knit at the yarn shop and showed off the Wizard of Oz/Wicked crochet book I got. Bought, wrote, and sent the postcard. Holy kamoly it's too cold to be doing any of this.

Edit edit: Called Mom.

Feral February, day 0

Feb. 6th, 2026 06:27 pm
dianec42: (Sunbeam cats)
[personal profile] dianec42
Today I:

* scored 2 lawn tickets to Paul Simon at Tanglewood in June
* drove Mr Diane to the airport for yet another not-fun family thing
* had lunch at the mall & determined that
** "Albany spicy" is about the same level as "Diane spicy"; and
** mall ramen is pretty decent if you set your expectations appropriately
* went shopping:
** investigated duvet covers at Macy's & took some pictures to show Mr Diane
** exercised my Comic Timing Super Power, Pants edition and scored a pair of black corduroys for like 20 bucks(*)
** bought some magazines and a crochet book at Barnes & Noble
* by which time I accidentally ended up having to drive home through Albany rush hour which is thankfully also pretty mild.

(*) the ONE PAIR of black cords in the entire Macy's; in my size; on sale; fit perfectly; and I HAD A COUPON. The cashier didn't even know they had cords in stock. I'm pretty sure some of these magazines cost more than the pants.

Nimbus is very happy with his Macy's bag. I'll try and get pictures.

Tomorrow will be more yarn shop adventures, and turning on the oil heat because yikes is it going to get cold here. I am unsupervised for the next 6 days. Fun!

Leaving the house

Feb. 5th, 2026 09:16 am
dianec42: (Snowy yard)
[personal profile] dianec42
Borrowing a page from a local introvert friend: Without some outside impetus, it honestly does not occur to me to leave the house.

Luckily, yesterday I was planning on going to the 2:00 open knit/craft session at the local yarn shop, and the aforementioned friend texted to say she was going to the 5:30 session. My brain defaulted to "go out, come back, go out again" when Mr Diane sensibly pointed out I could just go out and stay out.

So in no particular order, yesterday I:
socialized
had tea
got a TON done on my out-and-about stitching project
went to the library
chatted with my friend who works at the library
am now on HER list for a Friday museum outing Real Soon Now (tm)
told several people about the upcoming Paul Simon concert & am assembling a MASSIVE posse for same
went to the quilting store, chatted with the owner about hand quilting, bought supplies for same
browsed at Goodwill (did not buy anything)
shopped at Ocean State Job Lot (bought a purple sweatshirt and some almonds which I ate in the car)
accidentally happened on a not-normally-scheduled movie night at the yarn shop
petted the shop dog (Winston) lots
had cake
had random potluck foods brought by folks who DID know about movie night
sang along to Wicked For Good

and somehow utterly failed to send a postcard to a work friend for his kid's school (they're trying to get a postcard from every state)

Why am I sitting inside playing WoW again?

Free trees in Medford!

Feb. 4th, 2026 12:16 pm
gingicat: deep purple lilacs, some buds, some open (vivid lilacs)
[personal profile] gingicat posting in [community profile] davis_square
For those Davis Square folks over the Medford line:
https://www.treesmedford.org/gettree

"TreesMedford is once again providing free trees for the hottest areas of Medford, MA. If you live in South Medford, Glenwood, Wellington, or Hillside (south of Salem St or the Mystic River) click the button below to further determine eligibility for the program and request a free tree."

(Should we have a tag for South Medford since it borders Somerville?)

Job or no job, that is the question

Feb. 3rd, 2026 09:52 pm
nosrednayduj: pink hair (Default)
[personal profile] nosrednayduj
I have done two job search related activities this week so far; need to do three to qualify for unemployment. Will I do another? I don't know. Last week one of my activities was joining monster.com and letting it rewrite my resume. Maybe it's actually better. Mostly it was reformatting; I did not let its AI do anything significant. I've also been having discussions with my representative at fidelity, who wants to help me invest my 401(k) (now IRA) for my retirement, and had me do a bunch of budgeting things to figure out whether retirement is appropriate. Seems so. (This, however, is not a qualifying job search activity.)

Today I spent "being retired": I went skiing at the local bump, which took up all of the afternoon. It was really great, because there's been all this natural snow, and I waited until it was 35°. I got there right at opening (1 PM) and the main run was beautifully groomed, and there weren't many people yet, so it was "four minutes up, two minutes down" for quite a while. At some point ski clubs and so forth started coming in so it got more populated, but never any significant line. I decided that I was tired around 3:20. Really it was "tired of there only really being one run".
dianec42: (Sunbeam cats)
[personal profile] dianec42
For your viewing pleasure, here are Nimbus and Loki enjoying a sunbeam.

Car woes and action #6

Jan. 31st, 2026 01:46 pm
nosrednayduj: pink hair (Default)
[personal profile] nosrednayduj
Our new car discriminates against the polyamorous.

You can't have three key fobs. You can only have two. They are connected to the car because of course it's the modern keys with an entire computer inside them. And evidently they just have two slots in the car side of the computer to hold the paired key information. I think we would not have bought this car if we had known. But it's not something we ever thought to check. It's like, we didn't check if it actually had headlights, either. After all, we had multiple key fobs for our Prius, our Leaf, and our Tesla. We just thought it would cost $300 at the locksmith to get the third fob purchased and paired. But then we discovered that no, we cannot at all! The car also only has two driver profiles (where it remembers what you're seating is), but it has a guest profile. Which suggests that you should be able to have a guest key. But apparently not!

Even without supporting polyamory, you would think that people might have adult children who were living at home and needed their own key to a car, or caregivers whom they wanted to have drive children or elders to various places, or just to have an extra key because they are flakes.

It's too late, because we've already paid and done all the paperwork, so we will just have to leave our keys hanging on a hook so that we can take one when needed, and we will have to be careful about "can't just leave the car at the train station have somebody else pick it up without a lot of planning". We also learned this restriction is common with many models of Kia, so buyer beware.

Then, on the way home from action #6, where I stood in my town center with 90 other people holding various signs, the Leaf decided that it didn't need to provide braking normally anymore. So I had to really push hard on the pedal and it was making horrible noises. I guess we need to call the shop on Monday. And hope that it drives (stops) well enough to get to the shop. There is a shop in the center of town that we often use. We thought about going there and just leaving it but in the end decided to bring the car home instead.

Our town is more liberal, so there was more positivity towards our action than in neighboring towns, but we did have a few fingers and long beeps which usually mean "no" whereas a series of short beeps means "yes".
dianec42: (BadAss)
[personal profile] dianec42
Last Friday was a very busy day. We dropped in on our remodeling place, then spent like an hour at the local tile & flooring store picking stuff out, and - more importantly - pointing and laughing at things that looked like Q*bert.

Then, heaven help us all, we went to Costco. Right before the big snowstorm. Inside was only normal levels of Costco crazy, but the parking lot (West Springfield, MA) was Mad Max levels of insane. That parking lot needs at LEAST one traffic light and probably at least one rotary. Luckily Mr Diane volunteered to drive at that point, otherwise we might still be there trying to turn left.

Bonus: I saw all "8"s out of the corner of my eye and thought the register had tilted. No, that was our total. Ouch. And that was WITHOUT booze or chocolate. Weirdly, wine now costs less than mixed nuts.

Over the last few days: the bathroom contractor came out and measured for tile; I phoned the schmancy fixtures store and placed our order; we changed our minds on the cabinet colour yet again, and ordered the cabinets and countertop; faffed around on the tile a little more, finalized the tile order, and put down the deposit on that. Oh and we picked out a paint colour. IT'S HAPPENING!

Meanwhile it's still colder than a very cold thing. I've learned things about taking the trash bins to the street after a big snow that I really could have gone my whole life without knowing. Oh well, all part of the Vermont experience.

Snow day!

Jan. 26th, 2026 10:12 pm
dianec42: (Snowy yard)
[personal profile] dianec42
Oh my goodness did we get some snow yesterday and today.





Sorry about the mostly terrible shots - most of these were taken from inside because it's been INCREDIBLY cold out. We went out in our snowshoes today and did a walk around the pond.

I was supposed to have a dentist appointment this morning. Hilarity ensued.
8:00 AM: The office (nominally) opens.
8:00: I get a text AND an email cheerfully reminding me that I have an appointment at 9.
8:01: I phone the office. No one picks up, so I leave a voice mail cancelling.
8:18: My phone rings with an unknown number in Arlington VT. I'm bored so I answer it. It's one of the employees, who resourcefully took the appointment list home before the snow started, calling to let me know the office is closed today.

Dear makers of automated text and email systems, I HAVE A SUGGESTION. Howzabout you make a feature that replaces the appointment reminder with "WE ARE CLOSED TODAY PLEASE DO NOT COME IN".

Action#5

Jan. 26th, 2026 09:30 am
nosrednayduj: pink hair (Default)
[personal profile] nosrednayduj
I forgot to report on Saturday standing on the street corner holding signs. We went to another neighboring town. This is a more conservative place than our town, and apparently than some of the other places we've been recently. There was a lot of negativity. Balanced by a lot of positivity, but more negativity percentagewise than typical. One guy stopped in front of our group, rolled down his window, and screamed and screamed and screamed. He was really angry, called us child molesters. I think he's confused about who the child molesters are. Our group's policy is "no interaction" and one of the leaders was walking back and forth in front of us saying "don't react, don't react".

There were about 50 protesters. Originally this had been planned for an hour, and then it had changed to half an hour with the wind chill prediction, but in actual fact there wasn't a lot of wind and it was bright and sunny, so despite the 15° we stayed for the whole hour. Naturally I had my heated boots, and I borrowed Ken's heated gloves as well. I think I need to buy a pair for myself.

Ostensibly this was to protest Citizens Bank being a funder of ICE, but people had general "Ice Out" signs. I have begun the process of divesting myself from citizens Bank. It turns out to be quite a lengthy process to get yourself moved from one bank to another, with all the automatic payments, and I feel like I need to make sure that it actually happens to the new bank before I'm willing to shut down the old bank. One of my financial institutions failed to automatically change it, so I have to call them. And recently I noticed an outstanding check, and I need to go email the person to get them to actually cash it. It's for a square dance, and maybe she thinks she should hold on to them until closer to the time. When I'm running a square dance, I just cash checks right away, so I don't lose them. It's not like anybody's getting interest on the money these days. There are some interest-bearing accounts available, but not regular checking and even savings at regular banks. What's up with that?
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