Words are inadequate

So what have I been doing with myself for the last week, since classes ended?

I've been playing a lot of Hollow Knight, a videogame about which more later, perhaps. It's got a pretty big open world to explore, lots of stuff to do, and a decent amount of backtracking but with better equipment so you get to feel powerful as you crush enemies and soar through obstacles that took a lot of work to get past the first time. It is both good and My Thing, which is nice.

I have not yet read the new Murderbot. It showed up right as finals etc were swinging into high gear, and ... I dunno, I haven't quite felt it. It's coming with me this week.

I have Christmased. Parcels are in the mail and should arrive this weekend or early next week. I like buying gifts for people, and buying The Right Gift for people, so it's nice to feel like that's a thing that's a part of my life again. (I also sometimes just start flailing with no idea, which is when you get [REDACTED] and [REDACTED]. Sorry about that.)

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Most importantly I have made my home a better place. I've been meaning to add more light in a vague way since last December, and in specific since mid-November. My sheets (a year and a half old) are also starting to disintegrate, which I Do Not Appreciate. Eventually it occurred to me that Ikea will sell me both of these things, and in fact I had a gift card from Rhonda my realtor that's been just hanging around for almost two years. So I ordered lights and sheets, and some random odds and ends, and various things for Erin, and now my living room has about twice as much light as previously.

It may not be ideal. The extra torchiere (with reading-lamp attachment) is great, but it doesn't provide any more light for the Book Corner. For that I got a pair of clip-lamps, clipped them to the bookshelves, and pointed them up-ish. I got the idea from a couple of lamps I used to have clamped to my headboard. Those took normal light bulbs. These use a small-base, and the bulbs I got from Ikea are optimized for more direct short-range light. This makes for some weird shadows and may be giving me a bit of a headache; I'm not quite sure yet. If so, hopefully "different bulbs" is all it'll take.

Today I've also been to Canadian Tire for additional misc: specifically, a new laser pointer and a sink plunger. I was going to just get new batteries for the existing red-dot but it turns out that a three-pack of batteries is $15, while a new laser pointer (with batteries) is under $5. I'll be mildly annoyed if I'm running through a laser pointer a month, is all. I really wish Mr Tuppert would play with non-battery toys, but mostly it seems that physical things just annoy him. In the case of the Catnip Fishy he'll attack, but things on strings get some "get that out of my face" batting (or mostly ignored if they're tossed towards him on the floor) and then he wanders away, sometimes at speed.

Also the bathroom sink has been draining slowly for months now. It's gotten bad enough that if you're washing your hands you have to turn the water off and let it drain, otherwise you're rinsing your hands through suds. And back when I'd bought this place but before I'd moved in, the stack below the bathroom sink evidently backed up and spat goop into the sink and onto the floor. (Mya, who was checking in twice a week for insurance reasons, was kind enough to deal with getting a plumber in to drill the stack.)

So I finally remembered to pick up a sink-plunger and Plunged The Sink. In the event it only took me a couple of backwashes out the overflow drain to remember that I needed to plug that for plunging to be effective. And whatever it was seems to be cleared!

As a bonus, I also picked up a small under-vanity caddy, so I can stop feeling like everything is just THROWN IN THERE WILLY-NILLY WITH NO ORGANIZATION. I'd still rather have a medicine cabinet, but this will do.

It is ... really nice to remember that I do in fact have some control over my environment and can make changes that improve it. I have a strong tendency towards Just Putting Up With It, whatever It might be. Being more proactive about things in general is good for me.

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Tomorrow I'm heading up north to see Erin for a week and a half. It should be good: there's a new kitten, and a newish puppy who I've met a few times, and of course geese and chickens and pigs. I anticipate lots of dozing and snuggling and talking, and woodstove coziness and cooking of various things. I think it'll be good. Be nice to have the extended time, for sure.

Coming back on Xmas Day, and then ... no real plans until classes start up again on the ninth, I guess.

Keep warm. I miss you.

Power went mostly out last night at 9:30. I say "mostly" because I still had:

• The two overhead light fixtures, though at about half strength
  
• The clock on the stove, though NOT the clock on the microwave
  
• The light for the smoke alarm, which is wired into the electric, fading in and out
  
• The 'standby' light for my CPAP, though that faded out after awhile
  
• The lights on the other side of the building hallway, though not on my side

Wifi was obviously down but the cell towers stayed up. Eventually the strata sent out an email saying in part "Branch Broke, shorted power wire. Knocked out transformers. Building @ 1/3 power. DO NOT USE ELEVATOR!"

In the event it did come back on at around seven this morning. So I am not terribly rested but at least I don't have to worry about the food in the freezer thawing out and going bad.

Off to the north for a week. Ex-roomie Mya is coming by daily to check on Mr Tuppert and spend some time hanging out with him, which I greatly appreciate. One hopes he will forgive me sooner than later for abandoning him.

I am still alive.

I am not doing well and I don't know why. I'm not sleeping well, haven't been for weeks, and I don't know if that's down to my CPAP threatening to give up the ghost, my lungs being generally crap, my lungs being specifically crap post-covid, my entire body finally rebelling at the amount of weight I've gained in the last four years, or what. Or it might just be that it's been too warm lately. Turns out that the furnace is on this floor, so anytime anyone needs hot water all the pipes heat up, which heats up the hallway. Which is fine when it's fairly coolish outside but if it's over about twenty the heat just percolates through until it's an unbearable-for-me 25ish. And there's no natural breeze through the unit, there's one large screen door to the balcony and one nigh-unusable window in the bedroom. Bleh.

Anyway. The 'not doing well' had mostly been isolated to being generally low-energy and somewhat low-brain, until today when it smacked me with what I guess is a depressive episode. I blame the cloudygrey weather at least in part but this does not bode well for, you know, literally any time after about September. I held it together long enough to have brunch with ex-roommate Mya and then it's just been a lot of brain-bleh.

Mostly I have watched TV, replayed Hades, and read very little. Oh, and fixed my car to the tune of just under $2k, which has put paid to any thought of going back east until next year sometime. Stupid money. (I am not actually hurting for money, but I am also failing to replenish my savings after going down to essentially zero in the process of first buying the condo, then paying rent-plus-mortgage for a few months, and then moving.)

I am cranky and tired and I do not like this.

Perhaps next week will be better.

I did in fact make it down to Bellingham on Saturday. I shipped out a number of games I'd sold last month, and exchanged most of a tub of books for substantially fewer books and also cash. I did not manage to exchange CDs and DVDs for cash as the place that I normally do that at is not taking either CDs or DVDs these days. Ah well.

One of the books was Dean Spanley, by Lord Dunsany. Which ... did you know they made a movie out of a Lord Dunsany story? Or that it starred Sam Neill and Peter O'Toole? I did not know this, and now I do. The book includes the Dunsany novella, the screenplay for the film, and a number of short essays about the transition from the one to the other. I am looking forward to both reading and watching.

I also had a bison burger for the first time since, well, the last time I was in Bellingham. I like bison. Someone near Blacksburg had a herd, so bison burgers were a Thing at a couple of restaurants there. It's ... smoky? Not really 'gamey,' but maybe that's the right adjective after all. It's got a stronger flavour than ground beef.

And I went out to Whatcom Falls and sat under a tree next to a waterfall and read my book for most of an hour. That felt genuinely soul-healing, forest and water and mostly-quiet and just sitting for awhile. Whatcom also has an amazing stone footbridge that was built by the WPA in 1940, so I admired that for a bit as well.

And then I came home and passed some sort of street festival a couple of blocks from the condo, so I went out and wandered that for a bit and had some sort of Indian tacos for dinner. (Round naan, more or less, with in my case korma and tikka chicken, and a bunch of veggies. Very tasty.) A fine way to end a good day.

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I don't know. Back when everything with Emily was collapsing for the second time, in fall 2009, I had a ... vision, I guess, of walking into an empty apartment in Bellingham that was full of light and windows, and looking around, and thinking, "I could write here." I like the medium-town college-town feel of Bellingham, I like the walkability, I like water and the deciduous trees and the book-overflow of Henderson's.

I don't like that it's in the States, though. Not worth it.

But it's nice to remember that there are places I like. So: noted. I like Bellingham.

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Today I reorganized my booksshelves a bit. I now have a shelf in my bedroom that can hold Random Stuff, and space in the main room for musical instruments in the hope that I'll actually make use of them if I can see and reach them. More importantly, the top of my dresser is clear, which means that there are now several places that can hold Art. Which means that I can break into the Pack O'Art and figure out what goes where.

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And Erin is coming down later this week, which means she'll get to see the place when it's not full of a panicked Tucker and nothing else because the movers were jerks. I am looking forward to that. It's nice.

The living room has come together sufficiently to have people over, which I've done a few times now. One guest is Comfortable, two are Very Slightly Cramped For Space. Hoping to try three and some gaming sometime soon. If that works out, perhaps a larger game-day in August. Larger would of course require significant furniture arranging, but if I can host one game easily I can host at least two and possibly three.

Still to be done:

• Get rid of carpet and broken bedframe
  
• Clear off the top of the dresser (mostly to storage?)
  
• Hang art
  
• Under-bar wire basket, for foil/clingwrap/etc
  
• New kitchen shelf (to be done at Erin's this weekend)
  
• Move more stuff from coat closet to storage
  
• Deal with four bankers' boxes of Office Misc

And that ... that's it, at least I think it is.

There's other small household upgrades I'd like: a medicine cabinet for the bathroom, a new bedframe or at least a headboard, a couple of specific lamps. Pots&pans are stored on top of cabinets & the fridge, which works well enough that I don't think I'll try putting in a hanging rack.

I'm considering trying to reduce my bookshelves by one, which would I think give me a place to hang my stick vacuum. (I forget whether there's actually an outlet behind the bookcase I'm thinking of, and have so far been too lazy to look.) That would entail a Serious Purge sometime in the next few weeks. Not impossible; it's been on my mind anyway, for whatever reason.

It's been a difficult landing indeed, but it's getting there.

Typically the places I've lived have garnered purely-functional descriptive names. Apartment Six, The Hellhole, LisaNeil's. (I referred to Adam et al's large apartment with too many footstools as The Ottoman Empire but I don't know that that ever caught on.)

And this obviously isn't The Condo, that's out in Grandview/Woodland and I've not lived there for well over three years.

Typically names for critters and devices come from my reading. The Crawling Chaos That Is Nyarlathotep and Kai Wren, Godslayer And Lord Demon. Keishi Mirabara Hamster, who like her namesake in The Fortunate Fall lived in a series of tubes. Laptops Tiresias and Taranis and Pelorios and now Patrise.

And right now I am reading Aspects.

As much as I might wish otherwise, this is not Strange House, nor am I Strange (merely strange, ha ha). It can be no more than a very temporary refuge for anyone else.

But ...

I doubt I would like Varic, Coron of Corvaric, but I do respect him, and admire him, and to some extent understand him. He doesn't entirely know himself, of course, though he certainly thinks he does. He certainly doesn't know other people as well as he thinks. Or maybe he does and he just doesn't quite know how to use that knowledge.

"What does 'Varic' mean?" she said.
"'A difficult place to land.' My home country has a very inhospitable coast."
--JMF, Aspects

Corvaric House? Corvaric Manor feels far too grand, except for those archways in the kitchen. Maybe just Corvaric.

(I've been pronouncing it accented second syllable, corVARRic, like Varic with 'cor' on the front. But perhaps it's meant to be accented first syllable, CORvuric. Hm.)

(Quercian isn't Latin, any more than Lystourel is nineteenth-century London or long-gone Lord Falchion is Arthur, and so I am saved from having to interpret "cor varic" as "a difficult heart to land in." However apropos it may be for Varic himself.)

Well. Actually I write this sitting in the living room on the floor, back against the wall, next to where the couch will eventually be set.

My stuff is not here, due to the movers arbitrarily deciding to reschedule my delivery. I was surprised and displeased when I called them on Friday morning to see what time they'd get here and was told "Monday." I'm mostly calmed down about it now. It would be nice to have furniture, though.

(In a nice change of pace, the internet install that was also scheduled for Friday morning went quickly and smoothly.)

I still like this condo. The dishwasher is Really Loud but it's, you know, a dishwasher, which is an improvement. I'm still nervous that I won't be able to fit the bookcases in, and more nervous that I won't be able to fit the kitchenstuff in. I have also developed a fear that the bookcases will be destroyed in transit: the move-out movers were pretty skeptical that they'd survive. They're Ikea flat-pack particle-board and they've already made it through seven moves, so they're certainly beyond life expectancy, but still.

Erin rode down with me, through the fire- and flood-scarred landscape. I am genuinely impressed at the civil engineering done to reopen the highway through the Fraser Canyon after last November's flooding. They have entirely rerouted several sections of highway, including at least one railway underpass, and put in a temporary bridge that seems to be holding up well.

And now Erin's flown back north, and I spend my first night on my own in the new place. On an air mattress on the floor, same as the last couple of nights. It will all normalise eventually.

Only the margins left to write in now. I love you, I love you, I love you.

So, I bought a condo.

( will have bought? )