12 June 2003

The good news is: I'm getting e-mail again, and I can access my webpage. Those of you who have received bounce messages from my account should forward those messages back to me, please. Thanks. The apartment is clean, my dad's birthday presents are wrapped, and almost all is in readiness.

The bad news is: so far, I can't get it to log in and transfer files, so Mark will have to come in and see what he can do when he wakes up. Also, I haven't gotten a lot of the mail that should be trickling in about now. Some of the stuff has shown up -- my message to myself verifying that the stupid system wasn't receiving messages, for example. I'm hoping that the rest of it comes eventually, but I really don't know. I was under the mistaken impression that Jeff's server could back up most of our mail; in fact, it cannot, with our current system. Crud. So I don't know what may have bounced. Re-send, please, if you sent something and it came back to you with a bounce message. I know for sure that I have gotten some of yesterday's messages, and I also know for sure that at least two of them bounced (because those people already re-sent).

Oh, the other bad news is, our AC will not be working this weekend. It's only supposed to be 72 for a high, so it's not like we anticipate needing it. And I am glad that the repairbeing won't be traipsing in and out while we've got family around. But it would have been nice if he could, y'know, repair something. Or at least show up without canceling three times first. It was not his fault that he couldn't fix the AC, though: it's ancient, and he can't order the part to replace the bit that's broken.

He kept acting as though I was a homeowner rather than a tenant. "You should get a new air conditioner!" I kept saying, "Tell that to the management people." Yeah. If we were investing in our home rather than paying rent for a decent roof...things would be different here, let's say. Showerheads that all of us could use comfortably, because one out of three is not such a great figure for that. Ventilation for the hall bathroom -- it doesn't ventilate. It doesn't dry. Half the time I wash the floor, I have to go in and dry the floor with a towel, even though I've left the fan on. The list keeps going.

Cleaning an apartment is depressing to me -- it means dealing with other people's stains over and over again. (Which is sometimes true in a house, but in a house you can say, "These countertops are stained, so let's save to buy new ones.") It has taught me why, exactly, you should buy more expensive carpet when you can get stuff of about the same color for much cheaper -- because this carpet was pretty new when we moved in two and a half years ago, and it looks like crap now. There are some good sections -- in the far corner of the dining room, under the extra chair, for example. But if it's gotten walked on at all, it looks tatty and worn, and there are lumps popping up in it in random spots. The middle of the living room. The end of the dresser. It has taught me the virtue of semi-gloss paint over matte. And I suppose those are good things to know when we buy a house, but...I'm good at learning from other people's mistakes. I could have just listened to my mom saying, "Buy semi-gloss, you'll want to be able to wipe it off better." It would have worked.

Ah well; the place looks reasonably presentable. I still have to fold a load of laundry and clean up my workspace on the end of the dining room table. I also have to make the desserts and take out the last of the recycling. And, of course, I can always find writing to do. Naturally. But I'm doing pretty well for the week's plans.

I just got a call from my dad: they're delayed an hour coming in. There's fog in San Francisco, so that set them back an hour. Fog in San Francisco?!? Whoever could have anticipated that such a thing would happen? Yeah. So, not a surprise. We'll deal. They're still supposed to be in around oneish, so we'll have plenty of time -- we don't need to leave to fetch Mark from Stanford until almost six.

I finished reading The Years of Rice and Salt yesterday afternoon after I finished the cleaning. Then I breezed through Patricia Wrede's Searching for Dragons -- fun, but not particularly special to me. I've now started Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart. So far I'm not particularly impressed, but I've heard that it starts slowly, so I'm trusting the Karina that it will get more interesting.

So the plan for the morning is baking the applesauce raisin bars and chocolate cake, taking care of the last of the house tasks, working, and reading Kushiel's Dart. It'll be enough to keep me from pacing and staring out the window at the gates.

Mostly.