Gonzai Gallery

I thought this afternoon's errands/shopping trip would take several hours. It took 90 minutes, if that.

I'm trying to get my mother's wedding & engagement rings appraised, since she has no further use for them & I'm in a bad way financially. (Used the last of my unemployment benefits today; I have $20 some cash left.) So far I've been told $1500, $300, & we only do that one day a month. Today I was told 'pay us $30 first'. If I *had* $30 I wouldn't be trying to sell the damn rings, people. Guess I better get over to the first store tomorrow.

Then I went job shopping in a shopping center. The new place is still under construction; manager says they haven't even begun thinking about hiring yet. Every other place in the shopping center - 5 of them - is a chain store requiring online job applications. I've filled out a bunch of those for a variety of businesses; I get an acknowledgement that I applied & never hear another word again. Has anyone ever gotten a job this way? Because they won't even acknowledge reading it. Maybe they just see I have a college degree & immediately trash my application. But in any event, I'm not sure it's worth the hour per application it takes to never hear from these places again.

Finally, I went grocery shopping (hence the last of the money). What I really wanted was on huge sale, but perishable, & I won't be home the next couple of days. So I just got what I had to get, plus ice cream, my one pleasure in life now. But in the meantime, what is a greater sign that the apocalypse is upon us - Star Wars-themed coffee creamer? Or Christmas flavors before Labor Day? Either way, I'm mortified.

Oh, and it's 95 degrees and humid. Yuck.

Last year, I barely managed to be at Balticon because of Mom issues. So I was promoted from volunteer to staff. Go figure. This year, I managed to rack up 30 hours on the job in the art show. Except, that's all I did. One pass of the dealer's room, two panels (one of which was in the art show room), never set foot in the west side of the hotel much less in the game room. Just art show and trooping back and forth between the show and the bathroom/registration desk for three days. The con debuted a new computer system which...didn't work as planned...and only one guy knew how to fix it. I swear, my primary job all weekend was to go to registration and drag said guy back to the art room.

Meanwhile, I have only two weeks of unemployment left and no prospects on the horizon, so my purchasing consisted of the con t-shirt (which is gorgeous, BTW) and two inexpensive prints. And breakfast from 7-11/Royal Farms each morning. That's it. A cheap, hard-working weekend. I did manage to trade 'trade secrets' with the Art GOH, Ruth Sanderson, regarding scratchboard, and I went to a sci-fi trivia competition, was teamed with someone I've never met at random, and we creamed everyone. She knew books & anime, I knew TV, movies & games, we rolled.

Next year - for them's haven't heard, it's Balticon 50(!), the GOH is George R.R. Martin and Balticon is headed to the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Baltimore, right on the Inner Harbor. And I'm the 'co-Art Show Director'. My co-director has already told me she prefers pre-con prep to the con itself, so I'm pretty much in charge of the art show. Meep.

Technically Balticon continued today, but I slept in instead. My legs were all bruises and muscles pulls, Mom & CJ were cranky, and there really isn't much to it on Mondays, so I picked up some crabs (first ones this season) and settled in for a bunch of movies on FioS' special free OnDemand promotion. So far, 'Cabin in the Woods' (it was different/twisty, but not the way I thought it would go), 'The Avengers' (NOW I understand why the Avengers panel at Balticon was titled 'And Schwarma After...' ), 'The African Queen', on the 100 films list and hooray, Hepburn's character was NOT a helpless dame in distress. at least not after adjusting to her circumstances; and 'The Hunger Games', credits presently running. What happened to the tribute who saved Katniss at the Cornucopia? But I kinda figured that's how they'd solve the one survivor problem. Hoping to squeeze in one more, probably the remake of 'True Grit'.

Meanwhile, Balticon had hotel issues. The hotel was bought by another chain very recently, and apparently they fired the whole staff and only hired half of them back; they disconnected the reservation system so only people with a paper printout from the previous chain were able to check in without drama; the bathrooms weren't cleaned; a corkage policy was instituted days before the con (grrr), etc. Yippee. Someone apparently decided to rectify this by punching a hole through the men's room wall. The art show had its own issues with artists (which is not unusual) and serious issues with the customers (not usual). At least one, expensive piece has gone missing, a piece was broken, apparently deliberately, and bid sheets kept disappearing either entirely or showing up in other parts of the art room. Trying to reconcile the paperwork was not fun. Sheesh.

The intended family shindig/memorial for my uncle Jim didn't quite go off as planned yesterday, as Jim's best friends couldn't make it and my younger uncle had a diabetic, blind, deaf and partially paralyzed Labrador in tow. Meanwhile my brother's kids were quite overscheduled and a huge storm blew in while we were driving up. But once we got everything settled, we had a good day. Remind me, however, not play hockey with my nephews, at least not for an hour at a time, or on the same day I move a swing set. There's some serious muscle pulls going on here today.

Today was perfect weather-wise, so I took Mom to a couple high end homes. The first one was over 100 years old and had an amazing yard, flowers on top of flowers and a stone gazebo. The second was modern, but had a huge backyard fenced & was patioed perfectly, a huge flowered gazebo and a video arcade in the basement. Desperately needs color, though, it was relentlessly white/cream. Mom enjoyed both homes quite a bit.

Our extra freezer died last November, costing us a ton of meat and a lot of aggravation (and stink). Now it appears that at the very least, the freezer part of our refrigerator has quit. Half the stuff in there has thawed, mostly the things on the top shelf or in the door. The basket seems to be OK so far. The fridge itself isn't too cold either. So, I hauled most of the fridge contents (that which was bottled, jarred or canned) to the back porch - the temperature isn't supposed to top 40 until at least Tuesday - and we cooked some of the still decent stuff from the freezer. I was surprised that a repair shop in the area was semi-open on a Sunday; they take calls and set up appointments on Sundays. They're coming over tomorrow, I won't be home and I can't get off work (supervisor is still out) so hopefully Mom doesn't completely freak out.

Very done. Burned a bunch of DVDs, labelled and filed them. Put away two years' worth of paperwork into the appropriate folders and boxes and produced quite a large amount of stuff for the recycling and shredder bins in the process. Went to dinner with Mom, it went better this time and she discovered she likes corned beef. Went house-looking, 3 very nice ones, 1 horrid one and 1 where they wouldn't let us in. Gated community. Claimed they had no idea what we were talking about...and made us back out of a narrow, curving driveway rather than let me turn around, which took 10 minutes and some of my fender. (I checked, the house was listed as open on 3 different realty sites. I wonder how many more people they put through crap.) I told the guard I wouldn't want to live in a place like that and I sure wouldn't subject my friends to it. Assholes. Went to one of the local family markets for the first time, they were expensive but had some offbeat things and a lot of catering options. Caught up with TV. And movies. Three of 'em. Knocked out 'Deer Hunter' (which in turn could have been an hour shorter with no harm done), 'Sunrise' (likewise) and 'The Third Man', which I've seen before but it's damn good movie so I watched it again. I do highly recommend that one to anyone who likes a good mystery/film noir.

It didn't snow much here today, mostly rain. But I didn't go in anyway, partly because we were told we probably shouldn't, partly because I would have been the only there, and mostly because there was a huge accident on the Beltway by my house that woke us. I was disinclined to go and Mom was very insistent I not go. There were at least two more accidents near here, so not much of a mess but enough to make drivers stupid. I got a few things done, laundry, CJ, some computer stuff, but mostly watched stuff on the DVR. Tried calling in to the office, but the phone didn't ring which usually means no power. Tried logging in on the computer, but it came back as computer not on. It was on when I left yesterday, so definitely a power issue. I'll be back in tomorrow, regardless.

Mom managed to both lose her JCPenney card and her bill for something she bought in December. So I had no account number or card to work with, and had to spend an hour on the phone with customer service. We got through most of it...paying the overdue bill and reporting the lost card...except when we were supposed to confirm our address, the rep informed us that there is no 'Baltimore' in the state of Maryland. Yes, really. The week we win the Superbowl, we don't exist. When we finally convinced Baltimore existed, she decided our address must have been 'the name of the city before it was Baltimore'. Um, right.

MY CITY IS REAL, DAMMIT!

I didn't really( make resolutions this year, ) ore like self guidelines. And it would probably work better if I checked in on them monthly instead of waiting for December. That said...

1. The gym. I haven't been there. Not once. I have walked at every opportunity, but that's it. Renewing this plan, because I have absolutely got to.

2. Cleaning. Kinda haven't done much of that, either. Did clean up a section of my bedroom, and this weekend the computer room is getting cleaned, period. Guests for Superbowl and Mom's bridge upcoming, it's got to be cleaned.

3. Media. Kept up with the TV, but didn't make much headway on the backlog. Kept up with the movies and saw A Clockwork Orange, Raging Bull, M, Midnight Cowboy, Forrest Gump, plus downloaded the films that are public domain. TCM will get me a long way on the plan in February, or would if I wasn't going to be home most weekends in February. The goal for music was one recording per work day, did more like half that. Note to self, maybe a variety of artists instead of a dozen by one artists would help on that. Books - DIdn't expect to get through more than one a month, considering I'm on the A Song of Ice & Fire series. Almost finished A Clash of Kings, a week early. So, acceptable but could be better.

4. Wow. Things are looking up. 1.5 car payments left now. When Mom & I were at the bank last week, the banker kept pestering me to get a credit card, which she assured was fee-free. I finally said yes, and she gave me a card - with a $10K limit. !!! The one I have is, uh, a lot less than that. Then she sent me a copy of my credit score, which I haven't seen in years. It's...about 200 points higher than I expected. Add the new card and the paid off card and yikes, I'll have a credit score to brag about. Never thought that would happen. Meanwhile, I've already done my taxes, and I'm getting a fair amount back. I thought I'd owe the State, but I'm getting some back there, too. In the mail tomorrow. So optimistic in this area.

5. So far, the year has not been particularly good or bad. My health sucks, but Mom's health seems to have levelled off. The money situation is better, but work is dicey still, with very little for me to do and money problems there. Not great, but not disastrous.

Back at the end of February...

It feels like I use all of my (few) holidays and (limited) vacation time to try and get things done for my mother, and half the time it still doesn't get done. See: 2.5 hours at the bank trying to get me on her account with power of attorney. This was the second time we tried to do this, the first time the attorney didn't give us the document in time. And it's still not done, because of course, my brother has to be physically present at the bank but he declined to show up because he saw no reason why he couldn't do it by phone. Because it's the bank's policy, not mine, that's why. Grrr. So he's still on the account as a joint owner, and I'm not a joint owner, just POA. Great. Hopefully I can drag his ass in there soon...except that's another half day of vacation.