My blood sugar and A1C had been in the prediabetic range for several years, but this June there was a spectacular increase. This happened just before I spent the weekend at Scintillation (a small SF convention in Montreal), so it was much on my mind at that time, but I wasn't ready to talk about it until things were better.

And then things did get better, but [profile] pddb recently pointed out that I'd totally forgotten to mention it here.

So yeah, I'm now a type 2 diabetic. Thankfully, my blood sugar (which I test daily) is being managed well with some changes in diet and a maximum dose of Metformin. Initially, it was high enough that my diabetes educator had thought I'd need to go on insulin, but for now it's mostly running between 90 and 125. That may not last forever, but with daily testing I'll have plenty of notice. (I did ask about Ozempic, and the educator pointed out that on Medicare it would run me about $1,000 per month out of pocket. So I'm passing on that for now.)

I'm trying to eat more vegetables -- mostly I've become good at making stir-fry with lots of veggies and a few ounces of meat -- and I've replaced sweets and ice cream with fruit. I'm a big fan of watermelon and will be sad when that's no longer in season. And I'm trying to limit carbohydrates in meals to 50 grams or under -- which is still a lot more than during the several years when I was doing much more stringent low-carbing.

I've lost around fifteen pounds (which doesn't show, best I can tell), which I mostly attribute to the fact that one of the side-effects of Metformin is decreased appetite.

Other than that, life goes on pretty much as usual. I'm still spinning a lot, and five of the six items I entered in the Minnesota State Fair won ribbons. Just one blue ribbon, but that one came with a $25 gift certificate to StevenBe, which is a nice bonus. And in January, I'll be taking my longest cruise yet, with friends, to Hawaii. Most of that will be travel time, but I'm looking forward to the entire thing.

I received two Yuletide stories this year, both based on the Chapel Hollow books by Nina Kiriki Hoffman -- one my assignment and one treat. There was one other story in the fandom this year, so now there are five whole stories in AO3. I'm very happy to have more of it to read.

Closest to the Truth (1180 words) by Gammarad
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Chapel Hollow Series - Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Laura Bolte/Tom Renfield (Chapel Hollow)
Characters: Laura Bolte, Tom Renfield, Zandra (Chapel Hollow)
Additional Tags: News Media, Interviews
Summary: It was inevitable that the media would want to interview successful model Laura Bolte.

Growing Up Ilmonishti (1526 words) by fawatson
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Chapel Hollow Series - Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Worldbuilding - Character
Additional Tags: Worldbuilding, Yuletide Treat
Summary: Nick and Laura's oldest child grows up in Arcadia.

**************

For my assignment, I wrote a story based on the four Melendy books. The requestor wanted a story focusing on Mark and Rush, and gave me plenty of room to use my imagination. The story gives them one last adventure before they go off to boarding school (as described in the more obscure Spiderweb for Two: A Melendy Maze).

An Adventure for Two (3357 words) by JanLevine
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Melendy Quartet - Elizabeth Enright
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Rush Melendy, Mark Herron
Summary: It's the end of summer, and Mark and Rush are on a quest and looking for one last adventure before they have to go off to boarding school.</p>

I only realized that I'd matched with the same requestor of four years ago after I'd written and uploaded my story. That was also a Melendy story -- this new one is my third -- and apparently was unsuccessful, since I never heard anything from her. Since people may have seen me grumping about that in a couple of places, let me publicly say that this time she came through today with a long comment and great enthusiasm, well worth the wait.

I think I'm probably done writing Melendy stories, but I'm very happy with my Yuletide experience, despite my last-minute angst.

1. As of October 15, I have (mostly) retired. I'm still working a few hours a week as a copyeditor, but as a contractor rather than an employee. I'm enjoying having the extra time.

2. Lydy and I bought one of those package deals that cover airfare and hotel, and spent four days in Paris in early November. I'd been there once before, in 1979; she'd never been there. We walked around a lot, did the hop on, hop off bus, took a food tour in Montmartre, went to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and visited the Louvre. We also had a nice dinner near the Louvre that was recommended by our food tour guide. Despite two very tight connections on the way home, all the travel worked out the way it was supposed to. I definitely want to do more travel, and this trip proved that doing it on the cheap can be successful.

3. The main annoying thing that's been taking up too much of my time has been dealing with health insurance. The Medicare supplement insurance I'd had with my company wasn't eligible for COBRA, even if I'd wanted it (which I didn't at over $900 per month, sheesh). I signed up for a BCBS policy, then had to do it all over again when it was canceled because I'd failed to dot an i or cross a t. I also had to get a policy for medicine (Part D) and set up COBRA payments for dental insurance, which puts off further decisions on that for another eighteen months.

4. MY YULETIDE STORY IS DONE AND POSTED. Every time I've signed up for Yuletide, it's gone to the wire, and this year was no exception, despite my best intentions. I had an entire eight hours of cushion when I hit the upload button, but it's done, modulo a final edit when get my brain back again. Thanks as always go to Pat WINODW for plot noodling and beta reading.

5. I'm trying to get various parts of my life into better order now that I have more free time. My finances are not completely taken care of, but they're much better now than they were at the start of the year. I have good intentions for decluttering the house, but little progress so far. Watch this space (but not too avidly).

And how are things going with you?

Some weeks ago, I noticed that a Ziploc bag of pistachios had a hole in it. I shrugged and rebagged it. Then I noticed a sandwich bag formerly containing brownies was now empty except for crumbs. Oops.

I've never had mice before, but a closer inspection revealed a few droppings. I started asking around for recommendations for exterminators. The very last straw was an avocado that I left in the same area (stupid, I know) that had what looked like a human bite taken out of it -- and a trail of droppings between it and the edge of the counter.

Yesterday, the guy from Rainbow Pest Control came and did a preliminary inspection. He said that I probably only had one or two mice, which was a relief. I had envisioned an entire colony of mice. I'm glad I reacted reasonably promptly. He completed Phase one of the de-mouseification process, which involved setting out cat-safe poisoned bait, and a trap behind the stove. That was around $400.

The next step will be to block all the mouse access to the house. That's going to be another $1,500 or so.

That's one damned expensive mouse.

This time of year is when the fight against clothes moths ramps up as well. I protect my spinning fiber, but I still see the occasional moth flying around, which means there is a source (or sources) for the eggs that I haven't found. I put out the pheromone traps in hopes of reducing the chances of females finding males, and that seems to keep things at minimal level. But I really wish I could find an affordable permanent solution.

I haven't seen any ants so far this year, so possibly the last extermination of those is still keeping them out. That was pre-pandemic, so I'm probably due fairly soon.

Ah, the joys of being a home owner.

There is no chance assembly of people who cannot make lively conversation about drains.
--Dorothy Sayers, in Gaudy Night

About two weeks ago, I did a load of laundry. When I went downstairs to move it from the washer to the dryer, I discovered a large pool of water. Clean water, not sewer water, which was the only good thing. This was on a Thursday night. On Friday, I called Ron the Sewer Rat (this is a company originally founded by Ron, but now it's just the company name). I was told that Monday was the earliest someone could come out, unless I was willing to pay the $450 Saturday surcharge.

I waited things out, which involved no showers, dishwashing, or toilet flushing until Monday.

On Monday, Trent from Ron the Sewer Rat came over. Before he tackled the basement drain, he went to check the main sewer line to make sure there was not a blockage there that was causing the subsidiary drain to back up. Unfortunately, there was. He was able to get his equipment about 25 feet down, but no further. Trent charged around $250 for his work; it was informational if not successful. He said this would need serious excavation work of the sort his company didn't do. He sent me a few referrals to local companies that did the kind of sewer work that involved making holes in the ground.

The basement puddle had slowly gone away over a couple of hours, so he said that it was probably safe to flush the toilet as long as no paper or other solids went down it. Oh, joy.

The first company on the list was Minneapolis & Suburban Sewer and Water. Ron (not a Sewer Rat) said he could come over the next day to check things out and give me an estimate. He wasn't able to get his camera more than a few feet down, which meant more digging and expense than the blockage at 25 feet would suggest. I suggested that we call Trent from RtSR back, since he had the proper sewer excavation tools. Unfortunately, there was no response at that end. Ron came back with more equipment and was able to get his camera to the 25-foot place, thus reducing things to a previously unsolved problem.

He also told me that my sewer pipes were made of something called Orangeburg pipe, which was basically tar paper -- a workaround against postwar shortages -- and it was amazing that the pipes had lasted the sixty years they had.

Before I signed the contract, I did try to get quotes from a couple of other sewer companies, but all of them had a several-week backlog. Ron said that he could start work on Monday, which meant that his company got the job by default (but they were recommended to me more than once).

In the meantime, I was warned not to flush the toilet at all, but that it was safe to wash dishes or use the shower. This turned out not to be the case. I did a load of dishes, and ended up with another large puddle of water in the basement. This time it didn't drain away at all. I will spare you all the gross details, but life at Casa Carbonel was not particularly fun.

On Saturday, Ron called and asked about the drainage situation. I said that nothing had changed. He said that he and his brother would come over on Sunday and try to get things sufficiently opened that I could flush the toilet. After an hour or so of work, he said that flushing should be okay as long as there were no solids to block things up again. That was a major improvement in my quality of life, which was a pretty sad thing.

On Monday afternoon (it was supposed to be Monday, but the previous job ran long, you know how it goes), Ron and his brother came over with much heavy equipment and dug large holes in my lawn. They finished the job on Tuesday afternoon. That work cost $6,700, which included an optional $250 for a new outside sewer access point in addition to the existing basement one.

However, Ron warned me that none of the work they'd done affected the basement drain -- which I could easily tell, because that puddle was still there. So I called Ron the Sewer Rat again and explained that we were now back to where we started originally.

Today, Trent came over and tackled the basement drain. There wasn't any one thing plugging it up, just accumulated yuck. He cleaned it out and checked the brand-new sewer line (in good shape, which it damned well ought to be), and for good measure cleaned the downstairs shower where things had backed up. That was another $250.

And now, after two weeks of limited water use and expenses of over $7,000, it's finally done. I plan to celebrate by washing a load of dishes and a load of laundry, and cooking a proper dinner and using all the utensils and pots and pans I want.

Last year, I needed a new hot water heater and furnace. This year, it was the sewer line. I predict that the roof will be the next major expense, since I don't know how old it was when I bought this house in 2003, but that means it's at least twenty years old. But I'm sure the house can provide additional surprises for me.

On another forum, people were talking about their memories of past snowfalls, and I thought I'd post here about the first one I remember.

One of the more memorable experiences of my youth was the Big Snow in 1967, in which Chicago got twenty-three inches of "partly cloudy." It started on a Friday afternoon, and continued snowing steadily for the next day or so. The school district closed down the school I was attending in the middle of the afternoon because at that point they knew it was going to be a lot of snow -- but there were no buses. Kids were allowed to call their parents for pickup. (This was the north suburbs, and there was no useful public transportation.) Unfortunately, my mother wasn't home and no one answered the phone. I'd been moved to a new school in a recent redistricting, and none of the mothers picking up kids knew me or lived near me. My mother finally and fortuitously showed up just about the time one of the teachers was resigning herself that she'd have to drive me home -- my mother was out shopping and ran into one of my classmates' mothers who mentioned that she'd had to pick up her own daughter.

The city pretty much shut down. We were out of school all of the next week while the city dug itself out. For kids (I was eleven then), it was great. It was one of the few time in our lives that we had enough snow to make snow forts, which my friends and I did at a neighbor's house. The house where our family lived had a side yard, and the snow piled up in a hill. We dug out a snow cave from that one. We also made a snow slide.

By the time everything got dug out, we were getting a little low on groceries and I'm sure my parents were greatly relieved to have us back at school, but it still remains a watershed event in my memory.

Tonight is the seventh night of Chanukah. So far, I've remembered to light the candles (and say the prayers) every night. There's a certain sense of satisfaction in using up a complete box of candles.

This is one of my favorite Chanukah songs, and I wanted to share it.



My holiday weekend will be spent reading the Yuletide archive once it goes live, but other than that I nave no real plans. Though I do have one present arriving via FedEx if it shows (it was supposed to arrive yesterday, but it's still in Chicago). I'm warm and safe and I have plenty of food and lots of TV to watch and much fiber to spin.

I hope everyone is having a warm and safe and pleasant weekend, wherever you are, whether you have friends and family to share it with or not.

@naomikritzer kindly sent me five questions.

1. What is something you are much pickier about than the typical person seems to be?

Ordering food in restaurants. To quote the line from When Harry Met Sally, I just want what I want how I want it. But that does mean giving very specific instructions at times. (Also grammar, but that I generally keep to myself.)

2. What herb or spice do you grab the most often when preparing meals?

Most often? Garlic. (Not counting salt and pepper, that is.) There are so many things that garlic just adds a bit of zing for. I'm also very fond of ginger, but that's more for baking than cooking.

But cumin should also perhaps get a mention, because I've discovered the joys of that over the past couple of years.

3. You're about to be packed off to a cabin with no Internet for a week, and you can take five books along to read. They must be books you already own in some form but have not read. What do you grab off your TBR stack to entertain yourself?

I have an ebook TBR stack, and these are the literal next five items on it:

Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire
Women's Work by Tanya Huff
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Almost Complete Short Fiction by F.M. Busby
The Pearl Thief by Elizabeth Wein

I've also been rereading the Hilary Tamar series by Sarah Caudwell, but I would only take books I hadn't read previously for this hypothetical trip.

4. You get a free trip to any city in the world you haven't previously visited -- however, you cannot bring a guidebook or your phone, nor can you make contact with anyone you know there, you have to just explore it on your own. Where do you go?

If I can't take my phone or guidebooks or rely on friends, I'd want to go somewhere that English is the most common language. And since it's a free trip, I'll pick somewhere that expensive to get to. That comes down to Australia or New Zealand. And if it has to be one city, that's Sydney. But I'd hope that I could get to where there are sheep, fleece, and spinners as well.

5. Your fairy godmother appears and offers you a boon of significant improvement to any skill. The power is limited such that you'll get more benefit the more narrow you go. What do you choose?

Would it be cheating to ask for an improvement in tidiness? I'd like my ability to housekeep to match my aesthetic, because right now I don't have that. Mostly I'm thinking in terms of "stuff management" -- finding places for things and putting them there on a regular basis.

If that's too open-ended, I'd ask for an improvement in my fiction-writing skills. I'm good at explaining things (thus my career as a technical writer), but not so good at coming up with ideas for fiction and getting them down. The closest I've come there is a handful of fan fiction works.

Today is my birthday. It's not a round number, but it feels a bit momentous to me. That's because I've decided I'm going to retire as of next year's birthday. I'll still work part-time after that, but I'm looking forward to more of my time being my own. And maybe I'll actually get that website set up with my handspun yarn. In the meantime, I sold a bunch of skeins over the weekend at a spinning/weaving retreat, which helps a bit with stash reduction.

I had lovely weather for today (and the past several days, actually). Perfect October weather, with that October smell in the air. Pat and Peg and I walked around Lake Nokomis in the morning, so I actually experienced said weather instead of being my usual fan of the Great Indoors.

And now I'm about to have dinner accompanied by a mini-bottle of Prosecco -- and pumpkin cake for dessert. I call it a good day, if not an exciting one.

How about you? Any excitement or good stuff in your life?

So. My company scheduled an all-hands meeting outside of London for a week at the end of July. In early August, my nephew was getting married in Istanbul (her family is from Iran, but lives in Istanbul). It made no sense to go home in between.

So on July 23, I flew to London. I met up with other people from the company at Heathrow, and we got an Uber to the site, which is out in the country and has lots of outside space. This turned out to be very useful. The meetings went well until the third day, at which point two of the major contributors both tested positive for COVID-19. After that, we carried on (minus them) outside. There was one more case, but that was it.

After the conference, I headed to London on Friday. I met @helenraven at Waterloo Station, where she lent me her spare Oyster card and Kew membership card, and pointed me to the correct bus to get to my hotel. I had a hotel reservation at the Crescent Hotel through Booking.com. The location was great and the price was right. Sadly but not unexpectedly, there was no air conditioning, though there was a fan in the room. The one difficult bit was that the shared bathroom and toilet -- which I knew about -- was a floor and a half away, so I really tried to not need to go there in the middle of the night. I had a very pleasant time walking around Bloomsbury and going to museums.

On Saturday, I spent the day at Kew Gardens.

On Sunday, I met @helenraven for lunch, and then we went to the Globe to see The Tempest. It was a bonkers production, with Prospero as an entirely unsympathetic beach bum sort of wizard, but quite good. We were groundlings, which made for a great view but sore feet by the end.

On Monday, I went to the British Museum.

On Tuesday, I met a friend from Ravelry one day and we went to the V&A in the morning and the Science Museum in the afternoon -- and then spent a couple of hours in a pub drinking cider (me) and ale (her) and chatting.

Wednesday was a day of indulgence. I went to Harrod's for afternoon tea, and in the evening I went to the Shaftesbury theatre to see &Juliet, in which Anne Hathaway decides to do some revision on R&J. Very silly, but also some very good messaging.

On Thursday, I went to the Natural History Museum in the morning and the Wellcome Museum in the afternoon, where I saw Napoleon's toothbrush and Darwin's walking sticks, among other items. That evening, I had dinner at @helenraven's (tomato galette) and dropped off some of my luggage that I didn't want to shlep to Turkey with me.

On Friday, I flew to Istanbul. I allowed four hours -- one hour to get to the airport and three hours at the airport. I needed it all. I lost about twenty minutes to security because the agents wanted a prescription for the bottled water for my CPAP. I ended up tossing that. I'd run out of actual distilled water by then, but it was purified water. The flight was uneventful, thankfully. Uber is hooked into the local Yellow Taxi system, and I was able to get a taxi from the airport to my hotel. For slightly complicated reasons, I made a hotel booking for my first night at close to the last minute, and just picked something from Booking.com that was cheap and in the right area. I lucked out. It was clean, modern, and had working air conditioning.

On Saturday, I left that hotel and went to a Marriott-affiliated one that I stayed at the rest of the time. It was also quite nice, but at about twice the price. I signed up for an all-day tour on Sunday, but there wasn't anything available that appealed for Saturday. I decided to go to the Grand Bazaar. Getting there via Uber/Yellow Taxi was no problem. I spent a couple of hours walking around. I bought a glass of orange juice that I saw squeezed in front of me -- delicious. I bought a few other things, but mostly just rambled and looked. Unfortunately, getting back wasn't so easy. The Yellow Taxi drivers kept canceling with Uber, and I eventually paid a comparatively exorbitant amount to an off-meter driver. After some recovery time, I finally managed to get an Uber driver to take me to the bride's apartment, where there was a gathering. I'd met some in person and some through Zoom, but a lot were new to me.

On Sunday, I took a group tour. In the morning, we went to the Hippodrome, the Blue Mosque, and the Hagia Sophia. Lunch was included as part of the all-day tour. In the afternoon, I had a guide to myself because I was the only one who'd signed up for the tour of the Topkapi Palace. It's an amazing place and full of artifacts, though my major interest was its connection to Pawn in Frankincense, the fourth of the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett. My step counter said I walked around 16K steps, and I was a bit sunburned.

Monday I mostly spent recovering from Sunday. I spent some time at local cafes, but didn't do any official touristing.

Tuesday evening was a night-before-the-wedding river cruise. It was four hours of loud music and dancing and hors d'ouevres and drinking. Once the sun set, it cooled down a bit and was quite pleasant. It was a couple of hours too long for me, but I'm not much of a party girl.

Wednesday was the wedding. My nephew had arranged a shuttle for a bunch of us, including the bride's parents. This turned out to be convenient, because the half-hour trip took almost four times that. Partly it was the horrendous traffic, but partly it was that the driver went to the wrong place. It was a wrong place with the same name, so understandable, I guess. The wedding was lovely. It was secular, but incorporated some of the traditions of the two different cultures.

On Thursday, I flew back to London. I got to the airport way too early because I misread the departure time. I was feeling a bit off, but I assume it was due to being underslept and overheated. The flight was uneventful, and once we landed I made my way to @heleraven's place where I was staying the night. I also collected the luggage I'd left there and recombined everything. I probably should have used my last COVID-19 test at this point, but I didn't think about it. If the US were still requiring a negative test before flying there, things would have been different.

On Friday, I flew back to the US. Tedious but uneventful. After I got home and rested for a while in the air conditioning, and rehydrated, I realized that it probably wasn't just heat and travel stress and potential dehydration that was making me feel off, and I used one of my home COVID-19 tests.

The pink line lit up very quickly, and I discovered I had a slight fever (100.2). After a couple of ibuprofen and some rest, I felt much better. I didn't sleep very well that first night, but that was probably jet lag.

Friday, I felt almost well (and spent the day working, in fact). And now, Saturday, I feel almost recovered, though I'm still testing positive. I'm somewhat congested and my throat is somewhat scratchy, but my temp is normal. I feel as if I'm in the recovery phase of a cold. So I decided to skip Paxlovid, because of the trade-off of side effects. I hope I don't regret that.

(I keep sniffing a bit of chocolate just to make sure my sense of smell is still working. That's one of the nonlethal symptoms that scares me the most.)

And that's how I spent my summer vacation.