Last week off

I go to work next Monday! I’m excited! And nervous–the first few months at any new job are stressful, and I feel like I have extra to learn, this time, somehow. But I have a crate of decorations (won’t the other Systems folks be surprised when I decorate for Halloween after work on my first day ) and mugs and tea and such, so I’ll be more moved in, my first week, than I was for probably the first six months at BAH.

Other things on my mind: I’m still not unpacked. It’s hard to get up the motivation to do it, after getting so close at the last apartment and having to pack it all back up again. Also, I need more hangers, so a Target trip is in order. I may go after I finish this post, actually; I haven’t left the apartment, yet, today.

I met the group I’ll be gaming with, over the next couple of months. It’s hard to know whether a new group is particularly pleased to meet you, but I was definitely super excited to meet them, anyway. A number of them remind me of people I know and like in Pittsburgh and DC, which is simultaneously really neat and really strange. Dale was impressed that I so quickly stumbled into a group that includes SCAers and [some of] the remnants of the now-defunct [at least, as far as I can tell from Internet research] Anchorage Camarilla. I’m pondering SCA as an activity, though I haven’t decided, by any stretch. (Comment and sway me one way or the other, if you’re so inclined. ) So I am getting Dale to email me Queen of Spades–a parlor larp [think "host a murder mystery"] by Shifting Forest Storyworks–and I’ll read it over a bunch of times and offer to run it, both because I think they’ll get a kick out of it, and because I feel like my gaming karma’s kind of weak, not being willing/able to run a real campaign of anything (at least not soon). Also, because Mirror Room is much too much for a first parlor larp–I know, because it was mine.

So, if you remember, there was what I thought was a broken garbage disposal; it was actually a very messed up set of kitchen pipes, which took the [very nice Cake fan of a] maintenance guy multiple days to fix. I celebrated having my kitchen back by making chili–and then I took a picture, to share with you; note Darth Vader’s head (that’s Dale’s) and my slowly regrowing spice collection. My Facebook friends will already have seen it, but I also carved a pumpkin. The pumpkin seeds came out awesome, and poor Mr. O’Lantern is already wilting pretty sadly; clearly, at least one more pumpkin will be needed. Maybe I can talk a few coworkers into having a pumpkin carving party, so I can make one for work and one for home?

I don’t think my solar-powered Christmas lights are quite going to cut it, in the winter. They’re already fading by 1am, now, when it’s light out until 8pm. I may have to supplement them with more conventionally-powered lights. (Anchorage recommends that everybody have white Christmas lights up during the winter, to help brighten things up a bit. It doesn’t look exactly universal, this early in the year, but I’m betting people leave them out after they put them up for Christmas, anyway.) Also, I hear the university rents out SAD lights and gives you those spiky things you strap to your shoes when you have to walk across ice–we’ll see whether that’s just a rumor, soon, though.

Summit Spice and Tea is going to bankrupt me. But I’ve started drinking echinacea tea (and eating vitamin C gummies) in preparation for going to work at the university. I’ve dealt with fewer people, over the last month, than I normally do, and I worry that it’s left me with less immune system than I’m used to, even as I live alone and would have to take care of myself. (Maybe I’ll buy some canned soup while I’m out, as a backup.) I haven’t taken the flu vaccine, but plan to do so this week, sometime. (I guess I should get on that.) And when the H1N1 vaccine comes out, I’m definitely doing that, if there’s no age limit. I don’t function well when I’m sick, and if it comes between going out for orange juice or staying home and doing without, I know which I’ll do.

It’s been getting cooler. I think I saw frost on the cars when I looked out last night, though it may just have been dew. If my weather widget is to be believed, it’ll stay above freezing for the next couple of days, but may dip down to 31 degrees on Thursday night. During the day it’s mostly been in the high 40s, though I swear it dipped down into the 30s when I was driving down to Portage.

My one really important and incomplete moving-related task is dealing with the car. I’m beginning to get a little concerned about it, honestly: I don’t have the Pennsylvania registration, because I left so soon after buying the car–and it never came to Dale, anyway. Sure, I have proof that I bought it, but the registration hasn’t come yet. So I can’t get an Alaska registration, bureaucracy being what it is. And, while I have 90 days, sort of, the PA tags expire tomorrow. The plan is for Dale to register it online and mail me the stickers when they come. I’ll print up the form they give you, to prove that the registration happened. And, as soon as the paper registration comes (Dale will overnight it), I’ll have to go to the DMV to get my AK driver’s license and tags. I could just wait until Dale gets up here, which is only a tad illegal, but I want an AK ID before the end of December, so I can apply for my Permanent Fund Dividend in 2010. Also, I need to call the insurance company, in case something happens, as it is wont to do in winter; I can’t go living in Alaska, when they think I’m in Pennsylvania.

So I’m a little stressed about that car thing. But I hope it’ll all work out.

Never did find my iPod. And I’ve unpacked enough that it’s pretty much a sure thing I lost it for real. :/ So I may go to the Mac Store (it’s not a proper Apple Store, as such, but it seems like nearly the same thing), sometime soon. After my first paycheck, if I can hold off that long.

I didn’t mean to include those photos in this gallery, but there’s no obvious delete tool, so you can see my army of knitted pumpkins, as well! And a not so good photo of my porch at night.