The Title Pool Annex

Snow yesterday & last night but not enough to impede the car if we needed to get out so Osirus just shoveled a path to the street and another to the mailbox & called it good.

We're doing okay here, I feel a little guilty about that actually. Apparently I was born for a life of indolence and sloth. But the fridge is full of both leftovers and food-to-be-cooked and we have a decent pantry-stash as well (at Osirus's urging, I started shopping for this in February) so the next excursion won't be until he needs his prescription refilled, and that pharmacy has a drive-up window so we don't even need to go in if we don't want to. It's possible in the next few weeks I will start to get a little wiggy but at the moment I'm good with just the two of us.

We played two games yesterday (technically two iterations of the same game) and last night talked about doing a reverse ABC (so ... ZYX?). I'll be setting up das Zepter von Zavandor momentarily.

The new tentative re-opening date for the library is April 7, but I don't really have much faith in that -- I think we're still going to be in the thick of it. ( Covid-19 stuff )

Anyway, I have no power over anyone but myself, and it's not helpful to expend energy worrying about something that's 15 days away and not even set in stone. I'm going to try to add some words to my fic, and if that doesn't work I've got knitting and a whole shelf of DVDs.

Stay safe, y'all, and I'll do the same. <3

Every morning when I wake up one of my first thoughts now is good, I'm not feverish. The aches and pains are to be expected, of course, I'm an Old.

Chaz is still working AFAIK - seems like a liquor store wouldn't be "essential" but what do I know. It does make me wary of having him over again for dinner + movie on Sunday nights, though.

Aside from that we're doing okay - Osirus is home alone all day anyway, so he's enjoying having me here for a change. And I'm a big ol' introvert who never gets enough Alone Time so ... we're working on that. :) We have enough canned & frozen food for a while (and I bought TP weeks ago, at his suggestion) so the next trip into town will involve picking up prescriptions and maybe fresh veg if it's not too crowded. Stop & Shop has self-checkouts so that's good.

Fic word count stands at 14K or so; some of that is a semi-deleted scene that doesn't fit but I liked it so I saved it, and also my notes on plot &c. The hardest part about AUs is the emotional weight some characters always have from canon. I mean, the minute you mention Alexander Pierce or Rumlow, the reader knows not to trust them. I honestly can't decide if it's better to create someone new so as to get the smack of The Big Reveal -- Pierce being Hydra was SUCH a huge surprise for me, mainly because I grew up watching Redford onscreen and he felt ~trustworthy~ (which I'm sure was a big part of why they cast him). OTOH, there's something about knowing what's going on and watching helplessly while the characters work to save themselves ... I dunno.

That's all I got for now!

I've been wobbling back and forth between not worried at all and freaking the fuck out in my head this past weekend. Somehow on Friday it seemed reasonable to me that I could get my hair cut on Saturday, and I did, but now I feel really angry at myself for doing it. The shop wasn't crowded or anything, I was Precautions Girl, but still. I'm turning 57 in June! What was I thinking?

The library closed to the public on Friday, we announced it right after they closed the schools. Staff were supposed to report today but I used a sick day, and now I've had a text from my director saying we're not expected to go in anymore, I guess until further notice. It's not clear, things keep changing.

I'm very glad I like Osirus as much as I do, since we're stuck in close proximity now. It's been quite a while since I was home for any extended period.

Got some knitting and some writing done today, cooked half-assed Pad Thai for dinner and watched the last ep of S2 Altered Carbon (wow!) and the first ep of The Untamed (... wow?). I'm trying not to scroll Twitter endlessly.

How's by you!

It's been a weird week.

Last Wednesday I picked up Chaz and took him to the garage to get his car, and we were told by Bob-the-mechanic that it needed ~$2k worth of work at least, probably not worth fixing. It's still driveable but for how long? And he's still making payments on it.

So then I thought about helping him out financially, finding a decent car and THEN I thought what if I get a newer car and give him mine?

So Thursday Osirus and I drove a few cars. Found one I liked, but it was pricier than I wanted. I'd been looking at 2016 CR-Vs but the seats are too narrow for my hips! But the 2018 was wider. And so shiny! So many features!

Had some back & forth with the salesman over email; he'd quoted us a price that was lower then the website (which I hadn't seen because I'd been focusing on the more affordable '16 models) and when I asked about it he completely sidestepped the issue by saying "they" were working on the website, but not confirming the lower price. This didn't endear him to me at ALL.

I did more research and determined that the '17 models were also wider in the seat, so Saturday we went to Cheshire, to a Honda dealership I always say I hate, to try one out.

So now I own a 2017 CR-V EX, and I paid $1600 for the 5-year bumper-to-bumper "new car" warranty because why wouldn't I, have you SEEN how much technology there is to go fzzt? And I'm freaking out a little because it's such a grown-up thing, to have a car this new, and I'm not a grown-up!

Anyway, I pick it up on Wednesday, and hand off the '08 to Chaz, and try to figure out how to deal with his loan.

I still don't have any MCU icons. Hmph.

Also I never did post any Endgame stuff.  Suffice it to say I have a LOT of feelings about That Ending (and the movie in general) and Osirus has heard all of them, as have other people who are fans but not fen, and now I am trying to channel my rage into writing fic. As one does.

(You should know that all of my focus leading up to the movie can be summed up by "I just want Bucky to be okay! And maybe happy!" Imagine lots of pink sparkly hearts. So that was ... disappointing.)

I have about 2500 words of Steve/Bucky (no-powers AU, modern times, all my favorite tropes in a bag) and now I am running into my usual trouble of writing an AU, which is to say: I took a piece out of the puzzle and moved it waaay over there and now I'm afraid the original scaffolding needs support but what? how? who? And I am not sure the narrative structure is going to work the way I'm doing it but where I come from we didn't have CHAPTERS, man, we just stuck a squiggly line between things and called it good, so.

(I'm almost at a point where a beta could maybe read it; is there a kind soul who would want to do that? I'm afraid I have been Too Subtle for fear of wielding As-You-Know-Bob, the Hammer of Clumsy Exposition, and Osirus already knows the gist of it. Hit me up if so.)

Osiris and I saw Endgame last night and I have A LOT of feelings about it, but I've had too much caffeine today and honestly I need to process and maybe see it again after reading allll the commentary

Because look, my initial engagement with anything is going to be really really shallow unless something slaps me in the face but then when I dig deeper I get really MAD about stuff and can't always see the good I saw at first

So instead I will talk a little about my boy Bucky Barnes and how the worst thing that ever happened to him has very little to do with his left arm.

If you know me at all you know I am an absolute SUCKER for the AU in any fandom. (Bonus points if it's pretend-to-date or marriage-of-convenience or epistolary-halfway-in-love-before-they-meet.) And I will read and enjoy your fic even if it's any-two-guys-who-look-like-the-actors, if you give me lots of pining and feels.

But I'm always looking/hoping for the core of the characters to still be present, and I really truly think that being brainwashed and made to kill many many people for literal Nazis is pretty fucking KEY to post-TWS Bucky's mindset. So if you can find a way to give me more of that sort of past betrayal and loss-of-self in your AU-Bucky, rather than fixating on his missing/damaged arm, I will EAT THAT UP WITH A SPOON.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

ETA: FOUND! Thanks to twistedchick for helping me refine what I was looking for. https://archiveofourown.org/works/8325400

So somewhere in the vast reaches of AO3 there is an MCU AU where they (Steve & Bucky definitely, not sure who else) are contestants in a bake-off. I read it once and apparently didn't bookmark it (or I don't grok how to search my bookmarks, which is possible). It's also possible I could learn how to organize my bookmarks better, like with tags or comments. instead of having a huge pile of stuff.

(But what I really wish for is something that would overlay search results and let you know that the fic you're about to click on, the one that seems to tick all your boxes, is actually a hot mess of bad characterization and worse grammar, which you found out last year when you tried to read it.)

Anyways today is my last storytime & craft of the year and we are reading The Magical Snow Garden and also making our own snow gardens and I'll probably post pictures to the Twitter because I think it will be EPIC.

Just wrestled the first two wing joints off the (nearly-thawed) turkey; they are in the oven roasting with the neck and the other bits. I need to saw out the spine next, but my hands were too cold to keep going. Every other year I've had the butcher do the spatchcocking, but I didn't manage to order a fresh turkey this year. Probably should put that on my calendar right now for next year. But I have good poultry shears and determination, which is what one needs for this endeavor, and so I persevere.

The library is being renovated (finally!) and the last few weeks have been kind of maddening. No one knew what was going on, or had any firm idea of a timetable, but last week we closed to the public and they started actual work. And now the kids' room is cut off from the rest of the building and we have to trek outside and in the other door to make copies or use the bathroom (!!) and they haven't even started on the demo of the brick columns yet ... but the noise has been bearable and I got the YA shelves the way I wanted them finally and now I have five days off. And an enormous stack of books.

Chaz is coming to stay over tonight, and tomorrow I guess we're watching a lot of MST3K and cooking some food or something. ;) He's having trouble finding a full-time job right now, which in this area is pretty rough, and he can't really afford to move somewhere the prospects are better. He's already had two out-of-money-error emergencies (car insurance lapsed and gas shut off) so I think maybe I'll poke him again about whether he's got any other pressing bills due. Y'all, his gas bill is like $25 a month, and it had snowballed up to $500, and I wanted to say "did you think they were kidding about shutting it off?" but I have been down in that particular hole looking up and ... yeah. Asking for help is hard sometimes. Luckily, I'm doing okay for money right now, finally sold the ex-house (!!!) so we can handle whatever for a while.

In other news, I bought another sock machine recently -- a Gearhart, another antique, but this one can make smaller socks (60-stitch instead of 72) so I have more range of sizes to offer. I had actually been pricing the new ones at Erlbacher-Gearhart and I ended up paying $750 instead of ~$1500 with shipping, so that's good. I've just about worked out the kinks (it's enough different from the other one to make things tricky) and good thing, too -- there's a craft fair on Dec. 2 and I got a big booth this time.

Which is a fancy way of saying I have work to do! And so I go.

Talked a little about this on the twitter, but I need to get this all down so maybe I can really process it. And believe it. Because damn, that was fast.

Last year our YA librarian H announced she was retiring, and I applied for the job. I got good feedback, but they went with another candidate, S. As it turned out, S is a great fit, and I really like her a lot. I was a little surprised last month when she told me she'd applied for a job in Pittsfield, but it was clearly a step up for her, even though she didn't think she'd get it.

Last month~ish, we got an internal job posting to replace someone who's retiring (L). Sadly, the job was downgraded to PT, with no benefits, but even at the same number of hours it was still an upward move for me (more responsibility, better hours, an actual desk) so I talked to our director P about it. She said she was trying to nudge the hours so it could come with benefits, and to hang tight. It sounded really promising, I was afraid I was reading too much into it but it seemed like a done deal.

Tuesday when I got to work, there was a sign on the whiteboard congratulating S for getting the job. P pulled me into her office and told me that while she couldn't get any benefits for L's position, obviously now everything was changed, and was I still interested in the YA job? She'd have to talk to the search committee because it had been sort of a tie for second place, I guess? but did I want it? (I said yes, duh.)

NOT EVEN HALF AN HOUR LATER she told me I had the job. 32 hours a week, full benefits. And I just. I mean, I'm happy but

Like, if you wrote this into a script you would get dinged for lazy writing. There's no emotional ramp-up at all! Which is maybe why I'm still not really having ~feelings~ about it. It just seems a bit distant, like I can't get invested. And I'm not entirely convinced that it's real.

(It didn't help that when P was telling me when my start-date would be she was talking about how I'd have to sit with L to learn how to catalog and I was like "L? Why not S?" and she said "you're taking L's job" and in my head I was all "I FUCKING KNEW IT, IT'S NOT REAL" and then she corrected herself and I said "jesus fucking christ, P" right out loud because WOW and we all laughed for about five minutes but it was scary for those three seconds.)

Anyway, I will start shadowing S and training after the holidays, and January 20 will be my last regular Saturday. And I have a lot to learn but none of it is beyond my capabilities. This is going to be GREAT.

I Did The Thing!!

• Sorted the remaining sock yarn into "regular" and "premium" bins, collected the hand-dyed stuff into another, tetris'd everything back into the linen closet
  
• sorted a BUNCH of stuff that was in bags & boxes strewn about the floor into trash, keep, and figure-it-out-later (a small box)
  
• threw away a LOT of yarn scraps and fleece fabric scraps that were never going to be useful, found a bunch of proto-hats that need sewing and some useful larger pieces of fleece for maybe lining bags or summat
  
• moved the table from the corner to the center of the wall, perpendicular to it, so I can access both sides

STILL TO DO:

• clear a bunch of newly-discovered useful stuff off the table so I can
  
• set up the serger and sewing machine
  
• put the sock machine back in place
  
• deal with the remaining mess on the floor of the closet

Then I made cornbread and heated up canned soup for dinner. Because I was too fucking tired to cook.

I don't know what kind of machinery it is that's making so much noise outside but

1) It's not a snowblower
b) I'm hearing it because the windows are open.

So really that's just fine.

Or: My Brain, She Worries

So ever since the pipe burst at the old house I've been waiting for something else to go wrong, and of course the subsequent furnace repair was related but not immediate, so in my head I'm thinking "there's another disaster; that's two, where's three?"

Mind you, we've now set up an sensor so that if the heat goes below 41F we will be aware, and of course that's tied in to the entry alarm system so we'd know if there was a break-in ....

And I can look on the website and see that everything's fine, get an up-to-the-minute check of the temperature ...

"But!" sez my brain, "what if it's not reporting correctly? How do you KNOW?" Aaaaaand there go the brain-weasels.

Fuck's sake, please, make it stop.

There's just something so satisfying about eating yummy leftovers. Like, Past Me made too much food ON PURPOSE, so that Future Me (and Future Osirus) could have tasty food with very little effort. Thanks, Past Me! You're the best!

I am enjoying the first of two days off with no house guests and no plans other than maybe rearrange the sunporch for better tv-viewing and/or maybe rearrange the Good Room (it's not quite a Great Room, but it's pretty close) so as to have our dream of a table to eat at AND a table to game at.

Tomorrow will be a day of many phone calls, as I:

• touch base with the insurance lady to see if she wants the invoices piecemeal or all at once
  
• get things moving on the cleaning/restoration front
  
• confirm with the furnace guy that we want the burner replaced, as he seems to think we should do
  
• find out when the garage can look at my car and fix the troublesome noise it's just started making (because of course it has)

But just now, cozy slippers and cuppa tea and a whole pile of books to read. I think I win.

Yesterday I had no alcohol, and was in bed by ~midnight (which is usual). Woke up feeling like I'd been on a 3-day bender. There is no justice. And the incomparable Jearl is gone, on the first leg of her trip back home, so it is vewwy vewwy quiet here.

But nevermind all that, for today I must:

• Launder the sheets on the guest bed
  
• Make the guest bed up with fresh sheets
  
• ... do some other laundry? I guess?

Okay, so it's a lazy day. Whatever. I need one. Yuletide means I got three new Losers stories open in tabs, people! I might not even get dressed!

Had a few people over for boardgames last night, sort of a run-up to the NYE festivities. Turns out that when I drink wine, I don't mind playing games I don't like quite as much. But now I know that I don't like Exploding Kittens or Conspiracy, and the zombie game (which I somehow won) needs maybe one more play before I have a real opinion.

The real star of the evening was Codenames, though. I mean, I'm sure there's a group of people somewhere who can play it without breaking up into hysterical laughter every few minutes. It's just ... why would you want to?

I'm now contemplating a shower, followed by trying to find the paella recipe I had in a tab that's no longer open (oops). Happy New Year, y'all!!