Post Labor Day Post

Do you ever have that moment where you're like, Good god, what was I even on about when I was last posting? Who was I? What the heck was I doing?

Real Life Updates:

• Condo! - We have signed an agreement to purchase the condo that I last mentioned in my update. Yay! Which, as I understand it, means that, as long as the credit union is happy with the loan process, we're highly likely to be able to buy the condo. We'll close in early October, and move sometimes in October.There are still some documents and other elements that need to get to the Bank, and moving will be a challenge of it's own kind, but I think we are largely going to be okay. 
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• Apartment! - We are therefore now in the process of letting our landlord show our current apartment to other potential renters. So we spent Saturday cleaning the place like it hadn't been cleaning in months - which it really hadn't, we'd been very busy.
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• Laundry! - By virtue of traveling last week, and cleaning a lot this weekend, there was a massive backlog of laundry to handle. Husbeast, still determined to pay me back for past laundry while he was too wounded to manage stairs, did I think honestly about 8 loads over the weekend. 
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• Friends! - I spent the rest of Saturday helping a good friend clean out her Depression!Funk situation, which was useful and good, but also dusty and I was tired and grumpy towards the end of it, and then went home to mop my own place. Still, it was nice to see her and I am happy that her space is doing better. We're going to do some more on that next Wednesday.
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• Students! - By nature of the fact that I live Massachusetts, and specifically around Boston, every September 1st about 300,000 students move into the area to study at the 50+ universities and colleges in the area. By virtue of the student population, the calendar of the rental market in MA runs September 1- August 31. Which means, every Labor Day weekend is a shitshow of people driving into their new neighborhoods in massive rental trucks and parking in violation all the laws of man and God to unload them.  On my walk from home to church, I saw a Uhaul on every single street I walked down, without exception. September, by virtue of being the month where all the students come back, is one of the worst months to drive or bike anywhere in the Boston area. Even the people who are returning to the area or moving within Boston will be flummoxed by the particularities of their new neighborhoods, and the volume of traffic increases dramatically. 
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• Shopping! - We went to REI. I got some new, orthopedically friendly sandals, and found a new brand of women's cycling gear that I am very excited about (Terry) - imagine, shorts that just actually fit! with pockets! I also got some new knitted waterproof gloves that I hope will be very good for the winter. ( I have Opinions about winter gloves, and what makes a good one, which differ from most people.) Even at REI, somehow, there were massive amounts of students and foreigners (by which I curmudgeonly  mean, people who are not from the greater Boston area) meandering about in small herds like lost sheep. 
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• Boats! - Labor Day Monday, we rented kayaks and toodled round the Mystic. Due to a miscalculation, we did about twice as much paddling as I was expecting, and my arm and chest muscles are mostly noodles today as a result. I also have a lovely waterlilly blossom that I snagged after it became detached, which is floating placidly in a cup of water. 
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• Fridge! - This morning, someone was scheduled to come and see the condo while we are at work, and so we got everything perfectly ready and presentable. And then the smaller of our two small fridges decided, TODAY! Today is the day that I demand to be de-frosted. At which point I became a wreck of anxiety and concern unable to handle life problems, but I got the Husbeast set up with a hair dryer and a lot of towels to manage the task of speedrunning the defrosting of the fridge and handling the resulting mess.  By the time he left the house, about an hour after our planned escape time, the fridge was not only defrosted but freshly cleaned. 

Recommendations: 

Because I owe you some from my last post, cut short, here are some podcasts I am enjoying recently.

[Edit: Dammit, the edit ate some of my post. I lost all my commentary on the last two podcasts I'm recommending while I was posting and then editing bc the rich text buttons had disappeared on my entry. Gr.]

[Edit the second: added the text back!]

• The Worst Sitcom Ever Made - Nonfannish - "Geoff Houtman was part of the team that created the worst sitcom ever made, Melody Rules. It's haunted him for 25 years. Now he's on a quest to find out what went wrong and to see what lessons we can learn about failure in general." 
  • This is a semi-investigative oral-history type story about an attempt to make an American style sitcom in New Zealand, and it is hosted with great humility and thoughtfulness by one of the original writing team who worked on it. It's honestly a delight - full of interviews with people he knows who also worked on the sitcom, each reflecting with typical Kiwi humor and self-deprecation about their experience working on a show that was, really, kind of doomed from the start. 
  • If you liked the Fansplaining episodes with guests who work in TV and who can reflect on what the process of writing for tv is like, like Britta Lundin or Javier Grillo-Marxuach, you might very well like this.

•  Wine and Murder Night - Semifannish-Two friends discuss and drink to their favorite cozy murder mysteries. 
  
  • Two delightful women watch cozy murder, drink wine, and condemn capitalism in detailed and thoughtful critique! 
  • Sabrina and Carolyn are now on hiatus, but there are lots of back episodes to go thru. 

• You're Wrong About - Investigative journalism - Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall go back to something you have already heard about, and go over all the ways that you were given the wrong idea.
  • They are compassionate and thoughtful people talking about complicated ideas with kindness and humor. Their episodes on Maligned Women are great - pretty much always behind every 'conniving bimbo out to destroy a good man' is a bunch of powerful men who got away scot free. 
  • Recommended episodes: Anna Nicole Smith, Enron, Gangs