Words are inadequate

Not awesome: checking your account balance online and finding two charges you don't recognise (I don't use Skype, and I think I bought something through Plimus once years ago, probably Spectromancer).

Not awesome: leaving for Origins in five days without an ATM card, because I had to cancel this one and the new one might get here on Wednesday if I'm lucky.

Awesome: USAA's customer service, who basically said "Well, that sucks. Looks like it's just your debit card, so at least you don't have to close the checking account. Go get some cash out of an ATM and call us back to cancel the card, and we'll kill those pending charges and start a fraud investigation."

At least it's Friday.

omg New Zelazny coming next February. (via Mr Neil) This looks to be tight and twisty and exciting, if lacking in fantastical elements.

The Velveeta Rabbit, because, as Dr rivka says, shared pain is lessened.

The canonical list of Things I Miss About Blacksburg (Spiel, Zeppoli's, mountains) now has another item, one that should have been on there the whole time: restaurant prices.

I'm in that delightful position where I can afford to, as uilos said, not sweat the small stuff. So if I decide, at four in the afternoon, that I really need something to eat because all I've had today has been tea of varying quality, a cinnamon scone, a bad egg and cheese biscuit, a banana, and a very small "bowl" of some kind of honeyish Chex, I can go get something to eat. And if the apartment guys are finally (finally) hauling a new stove up the walk, a stove that's clearly destined to replace the one that's been in the apartment since the place was built (based on the paint behind it I'm pretty sure this isn't an exaggeration-- and these apartments date from the late sixties), I can go out somewhere else and get something to eat, so as not to be in their way. And if I end up having bad Italian, it doesn't, in the larger scheme of things, matter that I just paid $15 for the privilege of crossing a restaurant off my list of potential places to eat.

The thing about Blacksburg, though: that $15? Would have nearly covered having dinner with someone else to share the pain.

The stove is the stove that used to be in my old apartment (as evidenced by the trail of lint leading across the grass in front of my old lawn). Haven't tested the oven part yet; burners and lights and clock work okay.

Oddities in my feeding schedule yesterday can be explained by having gotten on an airplane leaving Seattle at quarter of midnight. Further details of northwestern Washington excursions (now with 50% more fruit flies!) will be forthcoming.