Three weekends to go

Before my trip and I really have to get cracking on getting the house ready to decamp. The biggest issue is making sure that Her Ancient and Exalted Highness Delilah Fuzzybutt has sufficient food, water and litter boxes for the duration. She is terrified of strangers, so I really like to just set her up with lots of dry food left out, water dripping into a bowl in the bathtub and about 7 litterboxes lined up down the hall. But I really need to finish clearing out the unfolded laundry in the laundry room, do a boatload of dishes, clean out the fridge and make a sweep through my bedroom and get a lot of books re-shelved. I think I'll probably throw out a few bags of assorted junk too.

I'm almost over the chest and throat ailment that's been making me miserable for the last 3 weeks, so I'm hoping I can get some real traction on those tasks this weekend - as well as - once again - putting new innards in the upstairs loo. The fancy water saver doesn't - so bah humbug, I'll go back to the old sort with the float. However, kneeling on the bathroom floor while unscrewing and refastening all this stuff is definitely NOT my favorite occupation. I thought the first time would be good for 5-10 years - not less than 2 months.

I also have the newest David Weber in advance reader copy form - A Rising Thunder. This is the one where Manticore and the Peeps ally and - I expect - kick the Solly's asses up around their ears and start to deal with Mesa and Manpower. Although I expect THAT part of the story won't be done for several more books. I must resist the temptation to stay up all night reading. In fact, I hope to use chapters as rewards for getting on with assorted tasks - we'll see how that goes.

Waterboarding err, Software Testing

There's a peculiar and miserable sort of torture in the software world called testing and Ms. Packratty has just endured a round of it. The initial part wasn't bad, although it fell during the week when Ms. Packratty lost her still somewhat absent voice. The predeployment testing got finished after the QA person had finished *her* four day week and somehow, Ms. Packratty never got the script for the post-deployment testing. Until this morning. After a night of very poor sleep, Ms. Packratty had finally achieved a comatose state when her phone went off to tell her that it was time to test. So she drove down to the office, since testing on the laptop is a misery because you can't see the blasted reports very well and you can't print them to a non-network computer.
So, 4 hours later she was mostly done after a full handful of fits and starts and Sunday was shot - right between the eyes.
So Ms. Packratty decamped from work in gray drizzle and gassed up Charlie's Buick, picked up her supply of fizzy water and looked up at the lowering sky and said "To hell with this, I want some really good food" and drove straight to the Havana restaurant http://www.havanarestaurantatlanta.com/ for a #17 combo which she brought home and devoured (minus the pickles). With our spirits somewhat mended, we chucked a load in the washer, spent 10 minutes rounding up more hangers and zipped up to the library and checked out a big stack of fluffy reading.
And now, she is going to tell Charlie to shut up and take a nap so that she can shut her eyes and take a nap.

New glasses and a renewed zeal to conquer the laundry room

Ms. Packratty picked up her new specs this morning and will be able to ditch the pair purchased in December of 2010 which she never actually liked. At the time they were the largest lens area frames she could find at her optometrist's shop, most of the glasses available being those miniscule little ovals and rectangles that look good OK on approximately .05% of the population and look like boiled sin on the rest of us. But they were sort of rectangularish instead of the roundy type that Ms. Packratty prefers and now has once again

She is on call this weekend and not enjoying it but given that this is the first weekend in 2 months when there were not 9K things needing to be done IMMEDIATELY, she is attacking the squalid heaps of clean but unfolded and sorted laundry in the hopes of finding all the pieces she intends to pack for her trip.

There's also the matter of cleaning the litterbox and vacuuming and washing the floor in there and also AGAIN replacing the innards in the upstairs loo. the fancy-shmancy new innards lasted - oh 6 weeks - before failing to to cut off the inbound water, leading to another (small) flood and a lot of exasperation. Going back to the sort with a float and a mechanical cut off. We are irritated, but fortunately, the toolbox with all the proper implements is still upstairs right where I need it.

There is also a small boatload of dishes to do, the kitchen drawer to mend (again) and there are books all over the bedroom that need to be wrangled back into their proper places as well as running up to the library to get a new whack of books for the new week. Oh, and we need fizzy water and a tank of gas as well as something to cook for dinner tomorrow. But still, there's only a small plate of tasks as opposed to the normal platter of plenty that confronts most weekends. And with the temperature rather - temperate - right around 60 it makes working conditions rather more pleasant. Chez Packrat is not too warm, nor is it so chilly that we want to retire to the bed and continue our romance with the winterweight down comforter.

Voiceless

The voice is so very definitely AWOL. Had to get the prescriptions filled Friday - more $ gone. This is about the 4th time or maybe the 5th that I have lost my voice since that truly epic bit in 1996 when I lost my voice from Thanksgiving to around Christmas. Not the best ailment for someone who talks for a living.

On better notes, saw the first flying flakes of snow in 2012 Friday, but only briefly. The garden plots at the community garden got a great head start before the freezing weather hit and seem to be thriving. I wish I'd planted more carrots though.

Eyes examined - need new lenses, my left eye appreciably worse, dammit. Frame choice a bit better - I actually had 4 pair of non-tiny frames to choose from, 5 if you count the pair that was just too dark for my coloring. I could have worn them 30 years ago, but now that my hair is mostly white, not a chance. At least I''ll be shed of this pair that I've disliked since the day I picked them up.

Time to try to go to sleep if the cold meds will let me.

One damned thing after another

Ms. Packrat has lost something. Not a piece of paper or a skein of yarn - although a packet of bamboo DPs has gone astray. No. Ms. Packrat has lost her voice. Again. It started with a headache and fever on Monday that kept her out of work for 2 precious days of sick leave and by late Wednesday, she was croaking like a froggy. Thursday dawned after a restless night (hard to sleep when you want to cough all the time) and the voice was ... gone.

Thankfully, Ms. Packrat is mostly engaged in testing software this week, and was able to nip out and see a doctor today and get the standard round of antibiotics and prednisone prescription and a letter telling her manager that she needs to be silent. However, the added expense and the typically long recuperation with winter upon us and a long planned and anticipated trip ahead - just perfect, perfect timing. The co-pay and parking and pharmacy money would have been much more fun to spent in a corner osteria on a plate of pasta. Grumble.

Seriously, though, it could be worse timing, but still. Almost half the sick leave for the year gone in the first month. Of course, some of the coworkers have already used more of theirs, which probably contributed to Ms. Packrat's tired state that probably helped bring this on, but still. Hoovers.

Tonight applying a good stiff drink and an early bedtime to try to avoid having to fill all the prescriptions - a night without hacking like a sick dog would probably help the voice come out of hiding a bit.

Grumble.

Starting off reading

Books to date include:

Conquistadora - so-so
Three bedrooms, one corpse - amusing
Art and Madness - eh
Kingfishers Catch Fire - slim book with lots of texture
Gone - Rumer Godden short stories - lovely bits
Falling palace: a romance of Naples - BORING, read 1/3 and gave up
Subterranean Rome - not just the what, but the why and the hows and great background
The leftovers - interesting
The Cypress House - - ditto, good read
Blood Maidens - slightly different vampires
A secret rage
Shakespeare's landlord
On Borrowed Time
Robopocalypse - scary
All Wound Up funny as always

So that's 15 books in the first 11 days, not including several guidebooks for Rome and central Italy, but can't count as literature.

I also finished a sock, started its mate and have lugged out 3 giant bags of trash and spent a couple of hours on the bookbinding bench.

And am currently enjoying a miserable case of attempted bronchitis (I think I got to the antibiotics in time) but not enjoying the fever at all.