a recitation of events, or, things I did today
1. Gave blood! It's extremely frustrating trying to find a blood drive that fits into my schedule these days. The only times I have free are Tuesday, Sunday, and very early Saturday mornings. Nobody runs blood drives on Sundays, and for reasons that escape me, almost nobody within twenty miles of Ithaca runs blood drives on Tuesdays, either! So it's either wait for a rare Tuesday drive that falls within my eligibility schedule (that is, more than eight weeks past my last donation, but not more than twelve weeks or so because what is the point of wasting time?), or try to find a Saturday drive that starts in the morning instead of around noon.
This time, it was 8:30am, and I had to drive to Trumansburg, but it was worth it. :)
2. Finished creating a spreadsheet for Mom Boss to use to sort which tenants get what renewal email. This was extremely frustrating for two reasons. First, I had to create a Rent Manager report from scratch and it took me three tries to figure out all the fields I needed (and also for Mom Boss to remember some fields she hadn't requested the first time), and then I had to combine them because I'd already edited stuff on the first version and didn't want to recreate the wheel on each successive spreadsheet. *sigh* And then, I had a couple columns that I had to fill in by hand because the information was locked in .pdf files within Rent Manager instead of entered into searchable fields. (One item doesn't even HAVE a searchable field where we COULD enter it. This is one of the main reasons the Collegetown office prefers to use FileMaker, which is a lot easier to customize and also to export from.) But I triumphed!
3. Took down all the staging materials from a studio that rented yesterday and moved them into an as-yet-unrented studio. I am proud of that rental. That was 95% my work. :D
4. Steamed broccoli, and then chucked a bunch of it into my leftover pad see ew from lunch. The local Thai place on the Commons does good food, but as with a lot of American versions of recipes, they don't include nearly enough greenery. So I ate all the provided greens (gai lan, I think?) with my lunch portion, and supplemented with my own greens for dinner.
Note: when I say dishes don't include enough greenery, that's not a criticism of authenticity or anything. Nor is it a request to have a dish that's mostly veggies with just a hint of meat for flavor. I like meat! I just also like vegetables, and I feel they ought to be on at least an equal footing, leaning toward 2/3 veggies to 1/3 meat. American meals lean toward 2/3 meat and 1/3 veggies, and sometimes don't even get past 3/4 meat and 1/4 veggies, which is kind of sad. Meat can stand up for itself! You don't need to insulate it from other ingredients!
...
Anyway, moving on.
5. Audiobooks continue to be a thing. Last week I finished listening to David Barrie's Supernavigators: Exploring the Wonders of How Animals Find Their Way, and have now moved on to another Great Courses series: Introduction to the Qur'an by Prof. Martyn Oliver.
I liked Supernavigators, though I think it suffered a bit in audio version from a lack of clear text dividers. After a while I concluded that the sudden non-sequiturs toward the ends of chapters were likely a sort of... oh, an addendum or a tangent on a similar theme; there just wasn't any spoken "header" to set them off so they felt a bit jarring at first. Also, David Barrie goes for a big thematic reach in the final chapter which I felt was A) not justified by the rest of the book and B) really not thematically in keeping with the rest of the book. It was like a lovely dinner where at the last moment they give you a mint right after you've eaten something citrus flavored. There is nothing wrong with mint! It just doesn't work in that position, you know?
Anyway, I have never actually gotten around to reading the Quran, but it has been on my "someday" list for a long time. I figured it might be helpful to get some context before diving in: hence the Great Courses series. Thus far it's been both interesting and informative, though I suspect it was recorded as a DVD course first and released for audio-only as an afterthought because there are occasional lengthy silences in the audio track where I suspect some visual display is meant to bridge the gap.
6. I gave in to temptation and ordered another tiny clementine tree earlier this week. It arrived today, and I will take yet another stab at keeping a tree alive. (My last one died for reasons I have learned from. The one before that is still alive, though I'm a little worried that I may not have managed to give it enough drainage despite deliberately working to mitigate problems I've had in that direction with previous tiny citrus trees.) I have basically given up on keeping succulents at this point (aside from my jade plant, which is functionally immune to death), but I am going to master citrus plants if it kills me in the process. One of these days I will get it right!
...
Now I am going to do some more tax prep continuing education and go to bed, because sleep is extra important when you're recovering from significant blood loss. *wry* If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
This time, it was 8:30am, and I had to drive to Trumansburg, but it was worth it. :)
2. Finished creating a spreadsheet for Mom Boss to use to sort which tenants get what renewal email. This was extremely frustrating for two reasons. First, I had to create a Rent Manager report from scratch and it took me three tries to figure out all the fields I needed (and also for Mom Boss to remember some fields she hadn't requested the first time), and then I had to combine them because I'd already edited stuff on the first version and didn't want to recreate the wheel on each successive spreadsheet. *sigh* And then, I had a couple columns that I had to fill in by hand because the information was locked in .pdf files within Rent Manager instead of entered into searchable fields. (One item doesn't even HAVE a searchable field where we COULD enter it. This is one of the main reasons the Collegetown office prefers to use FileMaker, which is a lot easier to customize and also to export from.) But I triumphed!
3. Took down all the staging materials from a studio that rented yesterday and moved them into an as-yet-unrented studio. I am proud of that rental. That was 95% my work. :D
4. Steamed broccoli, and then chucked a bunch of it into my leftover pad see ew from lunch. The local Thai place on the Commons does good food, but as with a lot of American versions of recipes, they don't include nearly enough greenery. So I ate all the provided greens (gai lan, I think?) with my lunch portion, and supplemented with my own greens for dinner.
Note: when I say dishes don't include enough greenery, that's not a criticism of authenticity or anything. Nor is it a request to have a dish that's mostly veggies with just a hint of meat for flavor. I like meat! I just also like vegetables, and I feel they ought to be on at least an equal footing, leaning toward 2/3 veggies to 1/3 meat. American meals lean toward 2/3 meat and 1/3 veggies, and sometimes don't even get past 3/4 meat and 1/4 veggies, which is kind of sad. Meat can stand up for itself! You don't need to insulate it from other ingredients!
...
Anyway, moving on.
5. Audiobooks continue to be a thing. Last week I finished listening to David Barrie's Supernavigators: Exploring the Wonders of How Animals Find Their Way, and have now moved on to another Great Courses series: Introduction to the Qur'an by Prof. Martyn Oliver.
I liked Supernavigators, though I think it suffered a bit in audio version from a lack of clear text dividers. After a while I concluded that the sudden non-sequiturs toward the ends of chapters were likely a sort of... oh, an addendum or a tangent on a similar theme; there just wasn't any spoken "header" to set them off so they felt a bit jarring at first. Also, David Barrie goes for a big thematic reach in the final chapter which I felt was A) not justified by the rest of the book and B) really not thematically in keeping with the rest of the book. It was like a lovely dinner where at the last moment they give you a mint right after you've eaten something citrus flavored. There is nothing wrong with mint! It just doesn't work in that position, you know?
Anyway, I have never actually gotten around to reading the Quran, but it has been on my "someday" list for a long time. I figured it might be helpful to get some context before diving in: hence the Great Courses series. Thus far it's been both interesting and informative, though I suspect it was recorded as a DVD course first and released for audio-only as an afterthought because there are occasional lengthy silences in the audio track where I suspect some visual display is meant to bridge the gap.
6. I gave in to temptation and ordered another tiny clementine tree earlier this week. It arrived today, and I will take yet another stab at keeping a tree alive. (My last one died for reasons I have learned from. The one before that is still alive, though I'm a little worried that I may not have managed to give it enough drainage despite deliberately working to mitigate problems I've had in that direction with previous tiny citrus trees.) I have basically given up on keeping succulents at this point (aside from my jade plant, which is functionally immune to death), but I am going to master citrus plants if it kills me in the process. One of these days I will get it right!
...
Now I am going to do some more tax prep continuing education and go to bed, because sleep is extra important when you're recovering from significant blood loss. *wry* If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)