Tag: adulting

Nattering on

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

I’m in a mood again today, and I think it’s social media related; I need to spend less time on … well, everything, really. I’ve done a reasonable amount of adulting today; I rescheduled a doctor’s appointment, made my first dentist’s appointment since before the pandemic (letting people stick their fingers in my mouth before I was vaccinated was not happening) and got some more planning done for next year. I also finished my first bookbinding project, which I was going to share with you but I think I’ll wait until I finish the second one instead. All I can see when I look at this one are the mistakes, so I’m going to give it to my son and make a better one for my wife, which hopefully will be something I’m actually willing to share with people.

You’d think this would have me in a decent headspace, but I just can’t deal with the level of stupid the world is throwing at me today:

I also sat down with the estimate I just got from the fixtures place for our bathroom renovation, and compared it to our initial estimate, which was supposedly based on average prices at that specific location, and I’m going to have to have a stern word with someone about it, because right now we are astronomically over budget, before a single square inch of drywall gets pulled off the wall or a single tile gets laid. To a certain degree I’m willing to blame myself for not paying attention to certain things– like the fact that a shower door wasn’t included in the original estimate, when in fact what I was told was a very basic shower door at this place is thirteen hundred dollars, and a shower door is not exactly an unexpected purchase when redoing a bathroom. But when you tell us that your estimate for the vanity will cover a “custom” vanity for the space, and we in fact pick out a pre-built, non custom vanity, and the vanity still runs three times the estimate? That’s on you. When we are specific across the board that we are looking for mid-range stuff, and we ask you to quote us out for mid-range stuff, and then they show us what they are saying is mid-range stuff, and the estimate is off two hundred percent? I am not taking all the blame for that shit.

So first I have to go over all this with my wife to figure out just how deep in the shit we are, and how much we can afford to crawl out of said shit, and then I need to call my guy who put this estimate together and we’re gonna have us a come to Jesus moment.

So, yeah. I’m in a mood.

In which brain melty need stopping

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

It has been a hell of a day, not in a bad way but in a there is too much information in my head and I don’t know what to do with any of it sort of way. I was out and about for a couple of hours– actual hours! Not just a quick trip to the Target in my back yard!– this morning, mostly running errands for my father-in-law, and I just had a conversation with my wife that ended with not only deciding to go ahead and move forward with LASIK but I also need to look into either a home equity loan or a mortgage refinance tomorrow, and there was a lot of talk about things like new roofs and bathroom and kitchen renovations and my brain has already spent some time today trying to figure out how to rearrange my office so that the layout makes a little bit more sense and that’s a lot of work and there is some work around the house that I need to do and oh a lot of that stuff needs contractors and do we know any contractors or maybe does your dad know any contractors and I really need to repurpose my entire computer setup to be better for video editing because I’m going to have to do a lot of that this fall one way or another and oh America just had its biggest day so far in terms of new cases of COVID so let’s fall down that depressing-ass rabbit hole too while we’re at it.

I need a nap.

7:46 PM, Wednesday June 24: 2,376,263 confirmed cases and 121,932 Americans dead.

This is how much I don’t want to be grading

On By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

There is a new, canonical Benevolence Archives microfiction up at Patreon right now. I don’t update my Patreon nearly as often as I ought to but I’m also prone to not charging people during the months where I don’t update much, and there’s definitely enough content up over there now to justify your $1 or $2 every couple of months. So if the idea of more BA excites you at all, maybe check it out.

In other news, I am watching basketball again. IU is up four on Maryland at the moment with two minutes left; we’ll see if me posting that fact here ends up losing the game for them.(*)

(Yes, I have managed to more or less eradicate paying attention to sports from my life. No, I will never manage to eradicate being deeply superstitious about IU basketball. Never, as long as I live; it’s ground in there too deeply.)

That said, I’ve now blogged, written actual fiction, done a bit of light cleaning around the house, showered and gotten dressed today, so I’m much closer to an adult than I usually am on a typical Sunday and there is at least a chance that some of the ridiculous pile of grading I need to take care of is going to have some headway made on it after dinner.

Just a chance, mind you, not a guarantee. Just because I’m close to being an adult today doesn’t mean I’m a responsible one. 🙂

(*) Did Maryland end the game with a 7-0 run and win by a point, despite the fact that I waited to post this until after the game ended? Yes, they did. Am I nonetheless responsible for the loss, even though I could very well have deleted the evidence and not said anything about it to anyone? Yes. Yes, I am.

I am a grown person

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek4 Comments

Went to Target tonight and bought a Nintendo Switch, along with the newest Zelda and Mario games.  I have high hopes that eventually I’ll want to buy more than those two games but this is a Nintendo console so who knows.

Why, yes, we did get our tax refund this week, why do you ask?

BLOGGING!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting3 Comments

3-in-1-Bounce-House-Bounce-House-with-Slide-and-Obstacles.jpgToday was– this is kind of hard to believe, but it’s true– one of my first moments where one of my friends was in town and we had to come up with activities to Entertain our Kids while they were here, because we’re all adults with kids now.  She has a six-year-old who I haven’t seen in forever and a three-year-old who I met for the first time today, and luckily the three of them appear to have gelled together perfectly well.

An excellent suggestion for this sort of scenario: take the kids to the local House of Bounce, especially since it’s Friday afternoon and we are going to be the only ones there.  Having a big room with four giant inflatables in it is really awesome; the kids can run about to their hearts’ content and exhaust themselves, which means that we get to spend the rest of the afternoon… uh, staring into devices and such.  Like grown-ups.

For those of you who have read my books:  who the hell knows when the next Benevolence Archives book is going to get done.  It’s been languishing for, literally, months.  I know what else I have to write, I just haven’t done it, because <insert excuse here.>

But the cover is done.  It’s been done for a while.

Anybody wanna see it?

In which I enjoy my daddy time

On By Luther M. SilerIn ParentingLeave a comment

13786-3.jpgToday was Parents’ Day at Hogwarts, so I spent the first couple of hours of my morning in the company of many preschoolers.  I’ll admit it; the whole experience actually managed to make me miss teaching a little bit, and the only thing that kept me from randomly wandering the building after my son’s time was over and popping into other classrooms was the absolute certainty that I would eventually be found out and escorted off the property, and I’m not super interested in being banned from my son’s school, at least not before he’s in seventh or eighth grade.

But yeah.  It was fun, and a tiny bit nostalgic; “Yeah, I remember this” sort of stuff.  Even though it’s just preschool, there’s enough commonalities there, y’know?  Tonight, the boy is spending the night at Grandma and Grandpa’s and the wife and I are Going to See a Show: specifically, Wicked, which has been in town for two weeks, a run that ends tonight.  I’ve read the book but have never seen the musical.  I used to be a bit of a fan of Gregory Maguire’s work until realizing that he was on a downward slope with each book he wrote; if he’s done anything since Lost I don’t know about it.

I have failed twice at adulting in the past two days; I spent the entirety of yesterday in bed (again) leaving the several boxes of vinyl flooring still in my car and despite dedicating an entire post to how I don’t want an iPhone 7 last week, once I discovered today that Verizon was gonna let me have one basically for free I caved and ordered it.  Space black, not the jet.  And, uh, a Plus.  Which may prove to be a mistake, honestly, but I want the camera.  So so much for responsibility.

Speaking of, it’s noon, and I’ve done damn near nothing in the hour and a half since I got home.  I’m gonna go… uh.  Yeah.  Do something.  Not in front of the computer.  I just gotta figure out what.

In which I demonstrate restraint

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek4 Comments

compare-iphone-7-201609.pngI am… not immediately pre-ordering an iPhone 7?  Like, for real?  This is a thing that’s not happening?  I don’t understand; I currently own an iPhone 6, and before that I had a 5.  I re-order my phones when a new number comes out.  The 7 is out, or at least it’s about to be.  And yet I paid my phone bill this afternoon, meaning that I went directly to the very place where one might go to order a new iPhone, and yet somehow there is no new iPhone with my name on it either beginning to be shipped to me or being manufactured for my eventual ownership.

I’m confused.  I’m New Tech Guy.  I’m Ooh Shiny Guy.  What the hell?

Actually, I know the answer, if I’m being honest.  I’m perfectly happy with my current phone– the upgrade to the 6 from the 5 was a no-brainer because of the bigger screen, and I’ve got no complaints about it, no matter how hard I try.  And I will have complaints about the 7, because one of the ways I use my phone a lot is in the car, with the phone plugged both into the auxiliary jack on my car stereo and the… well, power thingy.  I don’t mind the idea of ditching the audio port in general, but it interferes with how I use the phone in my current car, and the phone gets a lot of use as an audio device in my car.  I don’t often use headphones one way or another, so the idea of eventually spending $140 on a wireless set doesn’t appeal.  I’m not gonna whine about it much, but right now this change doesn’t work for me.

Additionally, from what I’ve seen the best change to the device is the camera, and the biggest change to the camera is on the Seven plus.  The two-camera thing looks really cool. Being able to shoot bokeh photos with my phone seems really neat.  But I’m not sure I need (well, okay, need has nothing to do with this, I’m not sure I want) the bigger phone that I would need to buy in order to get the better camera– and, again, I have no complaints about my current phone, which includes the camera.  I love the idea of a better camera but I don’t really need it right now.

So… am I, like, maturing or something, or is the fact that I’m thinking new car, then new phone so that my phone can interface properly with the car a sign that I’m actually a bigger idiot than I was before?

(Oh.  Let’s not talk about the new Apple Watch until I have hard data on the battery life.  As soon as I don’t have to charge it every single night, I’ll jump ship.  I love my Pebble, but I’m waiting for Apple to catch up in a couple of key areas and then I’m done.)