Words are inadequate

Me 364.25 days of the year: GET YOUR FLU SHOT IT IS AWESOME AND WILL SAVE LIVES

Me two days after getting my flu shot: my head is wrapped in cotton wool and i have zero energy. dammit flu shot!

Which is to say, Thursday night I went and got my flu shot. They gave me a tetanus booster as well, since I am pretty sure I've not had one of those since just before immigrating (and how is that nearly ten years ago already). So in addition to my standard "mild flu-like symptoms" my upper left arm is too sore to lie on.

Worth it, though. My standard "get yer flu shot story" is of the time I spent an evening comforting a friend who'd just had a bad breakup, and getting cried all over... and the next day she came down with a nasty flu and I walked away entirely fine. So, you know. Especially this year with a co-plague in the form of Covid: get yer flu shot.

As of yesterday morning, I am a Canadian citizen.

This is, I think, the end of a journey that started a little over fourteen years ago, in the wake of GWB's re-election. ("I think" because there's always the possibility that I'll renounce my US citizenship, though I'm not currently planning to. Too much hassle, no real benefit.)

I surrendered my Permanent Resident card and filed into a room with seventy-some other proto-citizens. We watched a video from Justin Trudeau (I may have sniffled a bit when he ended it with "Welcome home"), and heard a short speech from a judge, and spoke the citizenship oath in English and (bad) French, and sang "O Canada". And then they gave me a certificate and told me that I'm not allowed to apply for a passport for another two business days, which seems fair enough.

Erin was there for support, as was ex-roomie Mya, which was lovely on both counts. Emily and I were civil and courteous and not not-speaking, which was also nice. Emily's cheering section consisted of the two people who I know for certain took sides in the breakup, and they ignored me altogether, and that was alright too.

Afterwards Erin and I went for brunch at Chambar, where I had waffles with fancy syrup (very good maple, and I believe raspberry-caramel; Erin had something involving pistachio and rosewater), and acquired a nice cast-iron skillet from a thrift store.

Today I fly back north, and tomorrow I start making headway on unpacking my apartment. Kitchen first, I think, and then maybe trying to figure out where exactly the shelves of books and games are going to go. Wall space, as always, is a problem.

Onward.

November has been a shitshow. To some extent it's been a continuation of a shitshow that started in October due to some of my own poor choices (deliberately vague), but it's also had Just Too Much going on. And work has been ridiculously busy as well, which means I don't have that time as downtime to sort through the Just Too Much.

But some of the ridiculousness is finally starting to let up. The condo sold a couple weeks ago, at asking, more or less immediately. Not as much as I'd hoped to get, probably not as much as we would have gotten if we'd sold in the spring, but eh, it's still free money. And now I have my home back, for a little while.

And I took my citizenship test last Tuesday. Twenty questions, multiple-choice. This was the last real hurdle in the citizenship process: now I just wait for "two to five months" for the actual ceremony.

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I also now own a car, for the first time in seven and a half years. I recall the process as being less stressful last time, but then last time I knew I'd need a car and was willing to finance it, and also I knew what kind of car I wanted (Saturn 3-door coupe) and had found a bunch of them around the DC area. This time I didn't really have a sense of what I wanted other than "under $7500," "traction control," "fun-ish to drive," and "not white or brown." Paradox of choice.

So I spent a lot of time last week and the weekend before poking on Craigslist at used cars, trying to get private sellers to respond to messages, and visiting sketchy used-car dealerships. Among other things I test-drove an Infiniti, which was perfectly nice and had no soul, and a Ford Fusion, which was tempting but had a lot of cosmetic issues that suggested the potential for more serious underlying problems, and an Acura that's basically a Civic that I really wanted to like but that I just couldn't get comfortable in. And a Toyota Solara convertible that was seriously tempting, but taking a ragtop up to the land of ice and snow seems like an exceptionally poor life choice, especially when I don't have a garage for it.

I developed a solid distaste for used-car lots, which surprised me until I remembered that all my previous car-buying experience had been a) at new-car dealerships and b) with Saturn dealers, which were notorious for low-key sales and customer friendliness. This came to a head on Saturday, in the rain, at a used-car lot that appeared to be run out of the back of a minivan, where I tried out a very cheap SUV that was cheap for a reason or rather several, did not test a Mazda because the guy gave me the wrong key and I didn't feel like arguing with him, and sat in a too-expensive white Volvo and ... didn't hate it.

So while I drove to another dealer who didn't actually have the car I wanted available yet, they were just advertising it, Erin found a different (black) Volvo that looked promising: all-wheel drive, traction control, heated leather seats, etc. On her advice I called the dealer to make sure they had the car. Which turned out to be the right decision, because it was at their offsite location. We drove out there, and they had it out and ready for me. And... it fit, and looked nice, and felt comfortable to drive, and was priced near the top of my range.

We went inside to look at the Carfax report (couple claims, but nothing too serious, and also pretty regular maintenance). The guy wanted to sell it to me for about $8000 after taxes and fees and whatnot. I hemmed and hawed and said something about how I'd take the night to think about it, and Erin came right in with "Our budget's $7000, total."

Ten minutes later he sold it to me for that.

So. I am now the proud owner of a black 2005 Volvo S40 T5 with, near as I can tell, just about all the options. The stereo is gonna require some additional parts to get it to talk to my phone, and either the wiper blades need replacing or the windshield needs some serious scrubbing. Plus proper winter tires and rubber floormats and such. So far, though, I'm pretty happy with it.

Its name might be Hactar. I'm not sure yet, and may not be for awhile.

Permanent resident cards have come in the mail! We are now officially Permanent Residents. The card itself is very strange, incorporating swirly text, two differently-coloured hologram-type things, and a small transparent window that's got a tiny version of the ID photo printed on it, in addition to the large photo. Difficult to forge, I expect, but also rather odd-looking.

In less happy news, I dumped much of a mug of tea onto my awesome keyboard yesterday. For awhile I thought it would survive but some must have splashed into the electronics. Currently the spacebar, back-tick, and right arrow don't, and some of the numbers are flaky at best. So I get to ship it back to Kentucky and have them fix it, for a $30 fee. Yay.

I'm currently using the Alphasmart Neo I bought in Blacksburg as a keyboard. It's... as keyboards go it isn't terrible, but the lack of function keys and Delete key, and the functional lack of an Escape key, are wreaking havoc on my normal computer-usage patterns. Oh well. It's just for a few weeks, and if it's too obnoxious I can either buy a cheap keyboard, or just use it in laptop-mode.

And we move in less than two weeks. I alternate between feeling like we haven't packed ANYTHING and like there isn't really that much more left to pack. I have lost all sense of which of these views is more accurate. It doesn't help that we've almost run out of boxes, either.

I am home.

I am unexpectedly very tired. I may need to eat something.

I miss Wiscon. No great surprise, that. Caught one last interesting panel this morning and had lunch with an interesting Clarion student at the airport, and then it was all over bar the flying.

We landed in Vancouver and then attempted to Land in Vancouver, "landing" being the process by which one becomes a landed immigrant, or permanent resident. We went through the initial border conversation and got a strange scribble on the back of our customs forms, and then found out we had been beaten to the punch by about seventy other people looking for work permits and/or student visas. I couldn't clearly see the two (yes, only two) CIC officers handling the workload but I expect they looked pretty frazzled.

So instead we very politely asked several people if we could just go home and come back later and try again, and eventually we found someone who was willing to stamp our scrangely-scrawled customs forms and let us go home.

There is some amount of dried cat yuke that needs cleaning up but it can wait until after I have some food. Though probably not until after I sleep.

Tomorrow I return to working from home, in the hope that a few weeks away has helped somewhat with the frustration and lack of focus. We shall see.

Went out to the aquarium with Steph and uilos in the rain on Sunday, which was great fun: light-up jellyfish! adorable otters! the octopus!. Also probably an error in judgement, since I've spent the rest of the week in a sinus-infected fog. I've been self-medicating with lots of tea and honey, which tastes faintly terrible but does stop my throat from hurting. It all tipped over from "muzzy" to "miserable" sometime last night. Hoping it's on the upswing now.

Lots of stuff going on this week. Got our official Landing paperwork, which will make us permanent residents. It will likely not be acted on until late May, since they recommend you not travel out of the country between the time you land and the time you actually get your permanent resident card, and Feb thru May is when we do most of our travel. Still, that's ... somewhere between "a relief" and "exciting."

Also received an invite to an invite-only gaming convention in Niagara in mid-April, and started looking seriously at the amount of time I'm taking off work in the next few months. It's ... excessive. Twenty days in three and a half months. I think it'll be good for me, though. First up: the week-long Sun Trip at the end of February to ... somewhere as yet undetermined. I suppose I should get on with determining that.

Happy Canucksgiving! Or, happy Dread Pirate Columbus day, for those of you south of the border.

As always I'm most thankful for the people around me. For an introvert with a mild case of misanthropy I do seem to enjoy company. Note that "around" is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence. It covers not only, say, uilos, or the people coming over in a couple of hours to play games and eat turkey, but also the ones I owe email to, and who offer quiet support in comments, and that sort of thing.

(I am also thankful for aged grumpy kittens.)

I'm sort of thankful that every year I move a little closer towards being who I want to be, and every year I redefine what that will look like. Sometime in the past couple of years it's shifted from "being not broken" to "avoiding tripping over the broken bits" to "accepting that being broken is part of who i am, and only part." Baby steps.

And I'm thankful that Citizenship & Immigration Canada believes in underpromising and overdelivering, and that as of Friday they're looking closely enough at our permanent-resident application to request our immigration medical exams.

What I failed to mention last time is that on Thursday afternoon I picked up a cold of some kind from someone at the beach. uilos started developing symptoms a couple of days later. This meant I was facing WisCon in kind of a tired fog, which is not an ideal way to experience a convention. Not showing up until late on Friday and being very tired didn't help matters.

Still a good con, just not as sociable as I'd hoped it would be. Plenty of good panels, plenty of tasty Madison food, lunch with Jerry & family who we know from boardgaming. (Sadly, there wasn't quite enough time scheduled for a longish game on Monday morning, but we tried.)

( Travel shenanigans )

In other immigration news, the office at Ottawa has officially acknowledged receipt of our application for permanent residency. Now they sit on it for 10-11 months. Still, progress.

Also, if you're into that sort of thing, I'm selling off some of my games. Mostly board games, a few old PC games and RPGs.

First and foremost, I/we have ESTABLISHED A PLAN by which, once the immigration stuff is done and the income situation is a bit more stable, I can take some unspecified amount of time off. Said time will be used primarily for actual vacation, and also writing, and generally recuperating from burnout. Downside: this is at least a year away, and probably more like two.

This morning I donated to the Chicago Teachers Union, who've gone on strike as of this morning. I have no kids; I'll never have kids; I still think that education "reform" is among the worst things to come out of the last ten (or thirty) years. Bonus reading: Why the Chicago Teachers Union is striking; Everything You've Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong.

In running news I made it around Lost Lagoon and back home today, for a total of 1.8 miles according to GMap Pedometer, without stopping to walk. 20 minutes running. "Running," rather, not much faster than a walk for the last five-plus, and I remain a crap runner of the "gasping for breath the whole way" variety. Still. It's a thing, and it's faster improvement than I've seen before.

And I clicked the button to list myself as "Going" to a local [REDACTED] event tomorrow night. Eep.

Elseweb a friend asked about personal hinge points, of the "if you could go back and do one thing differently, what would it be?" variety.

Most of the poor decisions I've made were the best decision I could have made at the time. As noted elsewhere, I lacked the tools to make better ones. To have chosen differently or better I would have had to be a different person. This rules out such obvious choices as "don't nearly fail out of college" or "don't give up on writing for the better part of a decade."

Having said that, there are one or two places things could have gone differently. ( For example... )