deathmtn

This is a fantastic name! And good idea.

Strictly Brohibited is a Boston-area screening series and discussion group celebrating the work of non-cis-male filmmakers, aiming to foster a welcoming community for women, nonbinary, genderqueer, and trans movie lovers to talk freely without being interrupted by Film Bros. They hold regular virtual and in-person screenings, organized through a private Facebook group and Instagram.

Large, Costco-sized stores are just bad. They’re hard to search for an item, and when you do find an item, there’s literally twelve versions of that item. This quadruples your shopping time.

OK, I really want our AC (which is 20 years old) replaced by a heat pump before it fails, but the dependency chain for that is:

- Get a Mass Save assessment, in which they'll probably require us to get rid of the vermiculite insulation in the attic (which we want to do anyway).
- Get a guy to get rid of vermiculite.
- Get heat pump.

I did get the assessment scheduled, but it's not for two weeks.

- Dropped off, picked up.
- Returned a non-fitting air purifier filter.
- Job work.
- Enrolled in benefits. (I enrolled a few weeks ago, but they just got slightly improved?)
- Called Verizon; found out that the optical network terminal did have AC power; I just didn't notice that cable among the others. I think I'm a bit fried. The support guy showed me how to disable the battery beeping.
- Cleaned.
- Called a therapy referral line, emailed some therapist (who was full up). I think I'm experiencing a dip in resilience (setbacks lately just make me want to quit, even though that would be self-destructive), and I'm also become uncomfortable with uncertainty. This might be because of a general drop in optimism, but I don't think the optimism is coming back anytime soon, so I should try to adjust.
- Called the electrician and made sure they knew why they were coming.
- Set up payments for the guy's social class. If you ever have to securely send a credit card authorization without a secure web site, you'll appreciate those web sites.
- Put together part of a storage shelf. It's occurred to me that we're going to need a lot more of these if we don't want all of our basement stuff to be in piles. But I dislike the feel of these metal wire shelves. So, I guess we need to search.

The AC and internet came back today, and it rained, which is great because I really did not want to focus on ignoring the heat all weekend. And those portable ACs are really large and expensive.

OK, the AC is fixed! It was the thermostat, which I wish I had thought to change, but I wouldn’t be able to safely do the thing the HVAC guy did where he manually ran the condenser with a jumper thing, which is how he figured out it was the thermostat. We can actually relax this weekend, maybe?

- Dropped off, picked up. Man, I am glad we're going to be walking to school in the fall. I hate traffic.
- Went to the hardware store to get a new garbage disposal, and then some other, more normal supplies.
- Tried to unclog the old, existing disposal, but it was not moving. (The clog was causing the sink and dishwasher to back up. Opening the dishwasher door spilled a ton of water onto the floor.) Called Big Blue Plumbing, who said to call Drain Doctor, who gave me some tips, but said the disposal wasn't in their domain. Called Alewife Plumbing for a possible afternoon visit. They did show up in the afternoon and found a broken knife in the old disposal, installed the new disposal, then the dishwasher was able to drain without a disaster. The plumber was a friendly, sorta childlike dude, who commented that all modern disposals are built without much tolerance for repair or abuse, despite their differences in price.
- Job work. Most of the progress was made at night because there were so many large interruptions during the day.
- Found another normal non-220V outlet in the basement. Moved the Litter Robot, which was blocking up our downstairs half-bathroom, down to the basement. It's nice to be able to use the second bathroom.
- Found out the AC wasn't working anymore. Tried many, many things to try to get it to work. Flipped the breaker, checked the drain pan by the evaporator. Called several HVAC places; found one willing to come by tomorrow afternoon.
- Tried replacing the air purifier filters; only the "pre-filters" were the right size. Running it anyway. The guy's been waking up slightly sniffly. It could be that he's allergic to former owner cat dander. (Like me, he's acclimated to our cats.) Tried dusting yesterday; not sure it mattered.
- Our optical network terminal (for receiving fiber broadband) is an older one that seems to rely entirely on what looks like a little car battery. I think the terminal holder charges it, but there's no way to just plug an AC adapter into the terminal. (The idea is that if you have voice service, it will still work in an outage.) That battery is running down, so it's beeping loudly at us every five minutes. I tried a mythical way to get it to beep only every 24 hours, but it didn't work, so we have to go without internet for now.
- Emailed a friend back.

We've tried to make our own salad dressing before, and we know it should be doable, but they've always turned out bad. Katt made one today that was great, and it feels like the one thing that went right.

Well, the AC broke. Fortunately, we're retaining coolness decently inside, but it's going to be over 90°F for the next four days.

I have a broken disposal, which I could possibly change myself, but the added difficulty is that it's backed up into the dishwasher, which can't be opened without dumping tons of water on the floor. I'm having a plumber do it, and I am eager to see this magic trick done.

- Dropped off, picked up. OK, I am going to have to optimize that camp ommute for traffic, I think. That was an unpleasant commute for me, though the guy just listened to Pikmin music and spaced out about Pikmin.
- Called insurance to file a claim. (I swiped a neighbor's bumper in a U-Haul on the Night of the Terrible Move. The neighbor has been really nice about it.) Hopefully, this gets done quickly, and the neighbor does not have to wait to fix their bumper. This is as mild as a car accident situation gets, but I hate that the move still looms over me.
- Did some laundry.
- Cleaned some things, unpacked a bit.
- Job work. This is a pleasant place to work from, so far.
- Emailed some friends.
- Emailed the kitchen redoers back.
- Spent way too long trying to find the power cord for the printer. I did something dumb at the last minute with it, like stuffing it in an unrelated box.

Two sets of light deadlifts.

I'm not sure where I can put a pull-up bar in this house. I realized I can't put a pull-up bar in the basement because the ceiling is low enough that I'd hit my head when I pulled up. I could set something up outside, but then I'd probably skip a lot in the winter.