Words are inadequate

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.

The cough from the Xmas Plague lingers, but that's typical for me and coughs. I think I'm more or less recovered other than that.

Yesterday I finished a very good biography of Jim Henson. I wish he'd had more time. The book is pretty clear that the eighties were a period of decline (attributed to the need for Jim to run his evergrowing company, at which he was good but not efficient, and to a tendency for his technology to overwhelm his artistry and storytelling). But it suggests that if he'd lived, if he'd successfully navigated the Disney deal, he wouldn't have had the burden of the company, and could have gotten back into the strictly creative side of things again.

(Sometime in the late 2000s Emily and JMax and I went to see a Henson exhibit at, mm, probably the Museum of American History? They were running some of Henson's old Wilkins Coffee commercials, and they mentioned that "our sketches tend to end in one of two ways: someone blows up, or someone eats someone else." That sensibility comes through clearly in the book, especially in the early days.)

I unloaded around two-thirds of my Go-Away Books at the local used bookstore, in exchange for $50 and volumes two through four of Greg Rucka's spy comic Queen & Country. Also another copy of The Dragon Waiting, because it's a good thing to have spare copies of. And I acquired a mixing bowl and two more black silk shirts at the thrift store, because I can never have too many black silk shirts.

Perhaps most importantly I got the stereo adapter thing installed in Hactar. The first two car stereo places refused to touch it, claiming bad experiences with the company that makes it, but the third said "sure, we can do that, we've got an opening today even." So, for as much in labour as the parts cost (shipped from the states), I now have a stereo that will play music off my phone, and even skip to previous and next tracks in the current playlist with the steering wheel buttons. I believe there's a way to switch between playlists but it looks like it requires a bit of setup on the phone itself, so I'll likely just leave it be.

And maybe tomorrow I'll do my annual State Of The Tucker post.

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.