Relentless Inquiry

Must. Not. Melt. Brain.

Client B is supposed to move in slightly over 2 weeks. Many ducks are wandering around quacking rather than being in a row. Some of the ducks are rabid weasels with feather coats. Others are geese, and a few are rarebreed chickens with delicate constitutions and an allergy to damp and stress. I have logged 10 billable hours today, and am pretty much wiped out, but still buzzing with plans and sub-plans and things that need to be written. I would like to go home and take a hot bath. We have a bathtub now. But our hot water heater is shut off right now. My Hitachi gave up the ghost a week or two ago; I have been too busy to get another one.

And I have this move to plan. And our house-move to finish. And our coach-move to storage to finish. And a few zillion boxes in the new place, most of which can't be put away until various cupboards are spritzed out and new liner put down. These boxes are a subset of the set of all the boxes. Some of them can't be put away until the Big Furniture move, which might be Sunday unless we can do the Coach Move, which we should do while we still have a deposit to draw from at the old place. Bad enough that it's costing some of our deposit to keep it there since we're too overloaded to finish moving out right now.

Client A is mercifully gone, Client C is in abeyance, but prospective Client D has materialized and must be responded to, and a prospective High-Status Employer came out of the woodwork to ask for my latest resume and now wants to phone screen me. It's a 'how could I possibly say no' kind of thing, but what if they wanted to move forward? Client B has been making Employer noises as well, and seems to believe that I walk on water and glow with a radiant nimbus of competence. It is a Small Pond in which one might enjoy being a Big Fish for a while.

Tax season is coming. Medical reimbursement forms must be processed before early April, from Mike's previous job, else the money goes bye-bye. Miscellaneous forms need to be filed hither, thither, and yon for address changes and other idiocy. I have to get my long-overdue fasting bloodwork drawn, and also have an appt next week to get my drivers' license renewed…and have to take a subset of the written test again, since it's my first CA renewal.

The hot water heater had a thermocouple replaced today but should be swapped out because it doesn't have an automatic gas shutoff valve (quoth the plumber) but at least it's under our 1-year Buyers' Home Warranty plan. We don't have earthquake bracing, despite it being strongly (and misleadingly) implied that we did, and the mortgage holder insists on earthquake insurance, which our preferred carrier will not provide w/o evidence of bracing.

The replacement hot water heater (should it be approved, which it is expected to be) would be installed on Friday. Friday is also the day that Levitz is delivering our new couches, chair, and ottoman. Friday is also also the day that Home Despot / House of Redwood is delivering our new 5' x 7' shed. There is no redwood in the shed. Perhaps someday there was, but now they are aluminum with fir framing and generic plywood subfloors. There is no way to slip out of work for a few hours and get a load of compost with our friend Monte, of the open truck with the lift gate, before Friday, when our shed will be installed and prevent a truck from backing up alllll the way to the back garden. Dammit. Tomorrow I am signed up for an all-day set of seminars by the license scheduler cluster vendor, and I don't know if I will be able to get away for any of them.

My plants need watering, I had a 10:30 meeting today and was debugging a critical-path problem with the 64-bit VCS compilation environment for one of the engineers and had to dash out the door without watering them. My garden is now tilled, and the snail condominum (elephant-ear bush) removed. The garden is awaiting composting and raised-bed building. The beet seedlings Monte and Laurie gave me on 2/26 are spindly but more than ready to transplant. Sadly, some damped off while on the porch. The pea seedlings are tall enough that they will start falling over in a few days if I don't get them transplanted somewhere they can climb.

I owe several friends letters/emails/visits, and almost everybody address and phone updates (our cell phones stayed the same, thank goodness). Passover is coming.

The sun might have gone out 12 minutes ago. The sky is dark, and the moon has not yet risen.

Later, the moon will rise.

Regardless, I am grateful.