cin1607

It's been ages again. I said I'd stop doing that. :P

No news was bad news on the impending house purchase last winter, which is the reason for all the radio silence. To make a long story short, I found out at the last minute that new FEMA laws meant I couldn't get flood insurance for the usual $400/year that property had always carried, and had to get it at the new rate of $2200/year. That put the monthly payments out of my reach, so I had to call the bank and ask them to deny my loan and get me out of the contract. I think I cried for a month--worst Christmas ever.

Fast forward 6 months and I'm now 10 days away from closing on another house. It's a better house than the last one, I know. It's larger (and more expensive, which makes me a little nervous) with some neat architectural features and bigger rooms, in a great complex with an excellent reputation and resale value. And on the western side of town, so no flood insurance required. It doesn't have a garden, which is a bit disappointing, but it does have a nice back deck that overlooks the woods, so it's nice and private and I can do plenty of container gardening.

I'm so completely not attached to it at all. I know this is a defense mechanism, but it's getting annoying. I'd like a little excitement at least to help motivate me to pack, but I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it might. The bank has conditionally approved my loan, and I've met (to the best of my knowledge) all of their listed conditions at this point, but they're eyeballing the line on my paycheck stubs that outlines the "temporary pay" that I've been getting for the last two and a half years for doing three people's jobs. That situation probably won't be resolved until fall, but I doubt all of the reassurances from my director will amount to much with the loan underwriters. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I seem to be slipping into the Captain America/Avengers/Marvel movie verse fandom. Although the BUCKY!fandom would be more accurate. :D I've packed six boxes. After every two, I get to watch another Bucky vid, so I suppose I've got some motivation after all. :)

( Cut for things that will make you want to clean your house right now! )

Boy do I miss interpreting! Can I just go back outside? I never had these kinds of problems in the fort. *g* And in the midst of all of this chaos, I delivered my "I'm serious!" check to my realtor this afternoon and the offer for the house is all signed and delivered now. Hopefully I'll know something Friday.

I haven't posted anything anywhere since Christmas of 2010, so I suppose I'm past due with my annual "I'm not dead" post. So, I'm not dead! :)

Some days I feel like it's a close thing, though. Work responsibilities have doubled in the last 18 months, when everyone stepped up a level to cover for the loss of our senior director to cancer. So I've been in an acting position again, doing a job that is supposed to be done by two people because it manages over 100 staff across two museums. And after the last year, I can vouch to anyone who will listen that IT TAKES TWO PEOPLE, JESUS! I'm working my ass off and barely treading water trying to keep up. After a year-long international search, we're finally getting a new senior director from outside the organization, so I'm expecting all of our acting-position dominoes to fall back into their usual positions. I have a faint hope (faint, because I know what our budgets look like) that I'll stay where I am, so when the domino over me falls, we'll be back to having two people in this position. But we'll see.

So anyway, I've pretty much been out of the fannish loop, but it's been really nice seeing people posting again! So I thought I'd try it! Daily might be a shock, but at least weekly? Although stories about ducks might be all I manage--work's eating my life, and of all my staff, the ducks give me the least trouble. :)

Seriously! Everyone's in a good mood. Staff bring in enough food to put everyone working into a diabetic coma by afternoon. Visitors are happy and laid back, and generally a little slow to to show up first thing in the morning, so we have time to socialize with each other a bit. And we all like each other, so it's particularly nice. Today I'm in costume on the ships. We entertained ourselves for the first hour of the day, sitting on the pier, drinking hot chocolate, and taking turns reading aloud (some more dramatically than others) from Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

This evening after work, I'll make a mad dash to the southwestern corner of the state to my mother's, and hope that I beat the ice storm that's on its way. But at this moment, I'm perfectly happy right where I am.

Happy Christmas everyone! :)

Snow! \o/ Lots of it, too! It's coming down hard and heavy here. I know we absolutely need every butt through the door we can get right now at work, so I feel a little guilty about wishing for a snow day tomorrow, but I have so much to do before Christmas. /o\

Like many people in fandom, I first met minotaurs via one of his "Sex Tips for Slashwriters" panels at a con, in my case, Connexions back in 1999. I can't imagine how red I was by the end of the panel, but I remember laughing throughout it, the way you do when you realize that you're a lot more naive than you thought you were and were more embarrassed by that than the topic at hand. The above quote made an impression; I've never forgotten it, nor the arms-spread finger-waggle he did to illustrate it, and it never fails to make me smile to think of it.

I didn't know minotaurs well, but he was a fixture at cons for me and we always chatted here and there during them. He was smart, funny, and a genuinely warm and welcoming person. He's leaving a huge hole and I'll miss him.