Eet eez alive!!!

[arkaycee]

OK I'm maybe back, or back shortly ... at least more back than I've been in a while... well, probably after Thanksgiving.

All of the below has been up with major due dates, etc.:

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• My computer security class that's been taking up over half my work time had its final last week.
• The project for said class is due 12/7, but my manager must sign off on the study (a security assessment of one of our mission-critical systems) and he's at a conference all week so wants it a week early... however, I've made some progress so am not as panicked.
• Another big work project that was not supposed to interfere much with the above, but suddenly my manager decided I was to drop all my coursework on for a couple of weeks.
• My mother's estate had a 9-month deadline for me to file or else an interested creditor can (and the nursing home attorneys have notified me they intend to, and if they do, they can charge attorney fees etc. and so nothing for anyone else likely), and at the last minute I thought there might actually be slightly more money in there than she owed the nursing home (like a week ago I noticed some things about her tax situation)... talked to her old attorney (surprisingly, a stand-up guy, has spent an hour on the phone with me back in April, and 45 minutes now on this, at no charge) who has convinced me that it's a no-win situation for me (long story, but essentially if I do it *he*'d get all the rest of the money, and if I did it as a Small Estate Affidavit, that wouldn't work, long story). Anyway that was a chunk of last week gathering all the paperwork.
• Meanwhile, Carolyn got hot on several remodeling projects at once; which has been cool but she decided like three weeks ago to do probably too many projects at once, and we had to get the house back into shape for company who came yesterday, so lots of cabinets to put up after work, and then clean house and get rid of lots of stuff I've been meaning to ditch. The Re-Use Center has seen LOTS of me, as has the Drop-Off Station (recycling place).

So I've been in those weeks of running to work, plate-spinning between work project and work class project, and then running home and gathering papers and calling attorneys, all between rooms full of half-built kitchen cabinets, while the full bath and shower bath have been unusable (contractors in re-tiling and discovering that the backer board is just ordinary drywall and has been soaked in the past, so they were here lots longer than expected, and the bathrooms cost us roughly 50% more I think than expected -- every time someone has to open something up in a wall in our condo they find some evidence of crappy construction) and I've been "showering" at the downstairs bathroom sink (brrrr cold).

It's been more stressful than usual with C. -- nothing horrible, but she's been more like a woman possessed -- once she got started on the remodeling it was as though she wanted to do ALL of it at once. At one point, she said something about painting the kitchen (this was last week while I was calling lawyers and freaking out about being behind on my work project), and said "... but I guess I'll be doing that alone, because apparently you just don't care about the remodeling very much."

Ah well, that led to a good conversation; I wish I could have afforded to show how much I cared about it last week (which was more limited to on-demand help when a cabinet was assembled with putting it up between phone calls to lawyers and financial folk. I think C was in a place where she'd been obsessed and then was worried she'd bitten off more than she could chew and her sister and sister's b/f were going to show up in an IKEA battlezone). But the past two weekends I've done a ton, and the latter part of last week, and this weekend my back feels like murder today (carrying boxloads of shit-to-be-gotten-rid-of to the car between putting up cabinets in awkward positions, and taking countertops next door where our neighbor Kevin has been very gracious with his table saw). I've learned a helluva lot about power tools I must say.... oops I have to get some work done, but HI everyone... more later, we've company and Thanksgiving this week, I hope to post something in a week or so if not before.