mdlbear | Done Since 2024-10-20 (Reply)

This is my fourth "Done Since" post from Schildhaven Centraal. I'd consider making a list of things I forgot to pack, or neglected to do before we left, but it would be embarrassingly long and depressing. It's made for quite a few otherwise-avoidable $A orders. That by itself is embarrassing for reasons that should be obvious.

I also persist in thinking that I'm not getting enough done. The gap between things to do and things I've done may not be quite as wide as my brain weasels say it is, but it's still pretty wide. Quite a lot of writing, both of blog posts and of email, has fallen into that gap. It may be a struggle to haul it out.

Everything else in the week has been overshadowed by our cats missing their flight. The deities of felines and FedEx willing, they'll be here next Friday. If everything else goes as scheduled, G and m will be here Wednesday, which will help with cat-wrangling.

Notes & links:
1020Su
& awake 05:09
* up 6ish;
* abiraterone 05:10; rest of am drugs 07:06; pm drugs
* H2O: ??:c, ??:c
~ frustrating session trying to sign up for internet.
-> Caiway's sales department doesn't work on Sundays (which is reasonable, but it
would be polite to respond to calls with a message rather than simply hanging up,
-> Tried Odidio, but apparently if you don't already have their fiber to your house you
have to wait for them to mail you a kit and then make an appointment with a tech --
whole thing takes at least a month!
-> so we'll call Caiway tomorrow morning
* long but mostly successful shopping trip to the Megastore mall.
-> nice talk with the clerk at Beter Bed, who has parents living on Anacortes
-> N Ordered: one sofa, and one living room chair (both arriving in 6-8 weeks),
-> I ordered a chair and a mattress for my room (both in stock, so arriving soon)
-> mattress was 80% off, bringing the price down from ridiculous to quite reasonable
-> The driver for my mattress will have to be paid by Tikkie
-> so I;ll have to install both that and whatsapp
* SL: * mattress: 90cm. * Recliner/comfy chair for my BR.
* 18:48 desk put together. A bit of a struggle
-> problem: Tikkie requires an EU phone number, which I don't have yet
: For some reason Raven doesn't want to connect to my phone's hotspot. Works fine on
Panther. Which has fan problems, of course. But I could post with it. Also, Raven
isn't charging.

1021Mo
& awake 4:30ish
% felt like I'd wet the bed... apparently not, but put on the mattress protector
anyway -- shot across the bow and all that. I feel old and stupid.
* up 8am (alarm); S=7:36;
* abiraterone 05:22; rest of am drugs 08:03; pm drugs
* H2O: 09:31:c, noonish:c,
: IKEA orders arrived. All delivered to ground floor, which wasn't what I wanted for
mine. Mine was 2 items but 3 boxes (for the wardrobe) which was confusing
-> barefoot all day because it came before I got my socks on
* internet ordered. Installed on Nov. 5, an easy date to remember, remember, ...
-> Comes with TV and 2 unlimited phone SIMs. Account at mydelta.nl
* ordered phones, to go with the SIMs. I got a Pixel 6 pro, enough up from the 6 to be
worthwhile, and better than the 7.
~ 10am vet appointment for the kitties to get their health certs
* 1?pm Janice - here. She helped us unpack, and she and N took my dresser upstairs and
helped put it together, Really a three-person job.
-> it was arduous and took until about 18:00. But a lot of fun as well.
: BECU seems to have fixed their website problem. AX declined a card perhaps because I
wasn't fast enough replying
* bath. Somewhat over 35 minutes (the tub has a timer). Did not try the Jacuzzi
features. Had a near-slip getting out. N told me to stay on this floor tonight;
went upstairs to fetch my drug bag. % I hate being old.
* load drugs. Started tapering down bupropion -- drop the 150 to every other day
(I don't think I have a 3-month supply of that)
: my bedroom, unsurprisingly, has a noticable echo problem
* order bed frame from $A. delivery 1024 - 1028; not sure I can put together a
reasonable Ikea order in time for that to work out better

1022Tu
& awake 2ish
* up 07:30ish (alarm); S=8:57;
* abiraterone 07:42; rest of am drugs 08:40; pm drugs 20:40
* H2O: 08:39, 09:00ish:c, ??:c, 21:21,
* Laundry!
-> The thing beeped with an error message 4C -> needed to open the water valve
-> the manual is, unhelpfully, in several languags, none of which is English
-> got model number off energy sticker. WW90CGC04AAE Dryer: DV90CGC2A0AE
-> downloaded EN manuals from Samsung site
* worry about no email from caiway.nl -> email has arrived, so they have my addr right
* spent pretty much all afternoon putting together the cat tree.
-> there's a smaller one for my room. Might have to take it up in pieces.

1023We
& awake 3ish
* up
* abiraterone 05:57; rest of am drugs 7:30ish; pm drugs
* H2O: 09:50:c,
: both of our phones arrived. N's is a brick - must weigh half a kilo - but it's
waterproof, drop-proof, and so on. That becomes her American phone, because it will
mostly stay home and get used in the tub among other places. The old phone will
become her Dutch phone, Transferring apps etc. is going to take two hours, over my
phone's hot spot. IIRC the SIMS also arrived today.
<- she needs a new email address, at colleens-closet.nl
* assembled the cat tree for my room, after taking it upstairs in three trips. Smaller
than the LR one, but cozy. Only came with one extra pom-pom -- the LR one came with
two, but doesn't say what to do with them. My instructions say to use it as a cat
toy. And it has a little bell,
* 7:30am PDT departure date for the kitties = 16:30CEST.
: there's an import form that I can't sign because I don't have a printer. And don't
have much of an internet connection until I get my new phone set up.
: Simultaneously dealing with the fact that my AT+T phone is apparently over a limit I
didn;t know I had set, of $200. Also, apparently I only get to use international day
pass 10 days/billing period. So I'm kind of screwed there.
: Meanwhile, our new fiber hardware arrived -- it's a combination fiber modem and WiFi
router. I may need to install a switch as well. Self-install instructions in Dutch.
TV interface boxes rather than the TVs I'd asked for. Will have to call tomorrow.
* setting up new phone, apparently not a moment too soon. phone internet works, but
it's dog slow.
! Meanwhile, i have figured out my main source of non-physical stress: uncertainty
...
: meanwhile the cats missed their flight, so they'll be boarded for a week and we'll all
be freaking out.
: meanwhie the new phones don't have internet access, which was a large part of why we
got them. So that sucks.
: got to bed around 1am

1024Th
* up 7am (alarm);
: apparently enough of the configuration made it over to the new phone that the 7am
alarm was going off.
: Kitties are okay according to N, who has seen photos, except that Cricket is
predictably grunpy about being handled by anyone except _her_ human.
* abiraterone 07:17; rest of am drugs; pm drugs
* H2O: 08:54:c,
* assembled G's downstairs desk.
* Long call with Caiway to get our phones set up. N and I now have Dutch phones and
working hotspots at 5G speed! Fiber scheduled to be turned on 11/11; can't be changed
-> Speedtest on Sable over the hotspot shows 9.23Mb/s down, 1.15 up.
-> put the old phone in airplane mode. It won't receive SMS messages, but everything
else on it works fine. Haven't quite deciided what to do about Signal
-> phone setup helpfully copied over my hotspot SSID and password. Now I have to
decide whether I want something different. FlyingTurtle?
* 11am - 2pm: mattress arriving -> arrived JUST as I was getting whatsapp and tikkie
installed. I _might_ have gotten it paid -- tikkie asked for my bank; then I had to
set _that_ up. But okay.
* called LM bv logistics to arrange for delivering the chair I bought a few days ago.
They told me to send them a picture of the invoice via Whatsapp. Haven't heard back.
18:50 finally got a reply--expensive, but what can you do? Delivery on 10-29
* had to log in on DH and click an email link before it would let me ssh to it, because
I was coming from a new location. That's going to happen a lot, isn't it?
: my scanner appears to be broken. Damnit -- I've only used the thing a handful of times
-> eventually worked. WTF? It's possible that a drained battery was the issue

1025Fr
* up 6ish; S=6:40;
* abiraterone 06:20; rest of am drugs 07:14; pm drugs 19:20ish
* H2O: 9ish:c, 10:24:c, 15:12,
~ cats arrive at Schildhaven -> except they missed their flight. See above, and below
: apparently Nova Launcher automatically backs up your phone's screen layout. Has
trouble with firefox shortcuts.
* order fire and CO alarms
* install fiber modem/router bracket. There really isn't a good place for it. It's
wide, with the connectors and lights on opposite (short) sides
* start working on bed. The little wood screws don't have starter holes, so getting the
ledges that hold the slats lined up is tricky. As Cat's song goes, if it's true to a
sixteenth it's good enough.
% 17:03 tired. Good tired mostly, but it makes it hard to get motivated on some of the
other stuff that needs doing.
* assemble bedframe. Lot of work. Lots of little screws -- good thing I have the drill
% legs, in particular, feeling very weak. N offered to help load the mattress but it
would have required going downstairs for scissors, then back up. nope. It'll wait.
* put mattress on frame, make bed, assemble nightstand. done 23:15, which is not even
too late for a bed-time. The mattress comes to the top of the "headboard", so the
obvious thing to do is to turn it end-for-end and use that as a footboard, and cons
together something else for a headboard. Possibly involving bed parts from m's room.
: need to contact carrier for PUK code -- apparently after reboot this phone requires a
different code from my usual phone PIN. -> "contact carrier for PUK code" -- which
fortunately is on the card the SIM came on. It also had the SIM's PIN, which was
0000. I had the opportunity to change it (e.g. to my phone PIN) but didn't.
: It looks like there's a pull-down screen on my bedroom window. Whether it still works
and would be cat-proof remains to be seen.

1026Sa
* up 7am(alarm); S=7:12; (a few) exercises, teeth, ... Dutch
% back pain - L QL. hope that's not caused by the mattress.
* abiraterone 7:15; rest of am drugs 08:30; pm drugs
* H2O: 10ish:c, 11:00,
* ExpressScripts - stop autoships, change shipping address to J's
* buy: power strip, non-scratching sponges, monitor cable (DP to mini DP).
: I don't seem to have brought any HDMI cables; the monitor came with DP-to-DP
* Dishes! The dishwasher is pretty small, with few but probably sufficient options
* Laundry (again)
: damn -- dental insurance just renewed. need to cancel.
% I have been spending too much time on $A; need to take a break. I've been forgetting
to put things on my list, forgetting to look at the list, forgetting what I've
ordered, ...
% 18:31 I may have been dozing or something for the last hour
% 19:06 feel like I haven't gotten anything done all day. Not entirely true, but...
% one of my problems is choice paralysis. I got used to hauling out my Elfa shelving
or my wire shelving and setting it up to take care all my storage needs. Now I'm
having to look for furniture.. Something similar is happening with printers.
And I'm used to being able to drive out to Office Max or Home Depot or whatever and
getting stuff without worrying about delivery times and cost. Culture shock? Yeah.
* 2min: unsubscribed from REI.
% of course having a bike or a scooter would help. As would not being stuck in the
house waiting for deliveries.
& not quute 10pm yet, but I need to sleep