The internet came back up around 10am this morning. It bounced a few times for a couple of hours before remaining stable afterwards.
Too little, too late -- Daisy and I ordered the T-Mobile 5G internet hub three hours before that this morning. It's almost half the price of my current ISP and is supposed to be much better service. It arrives sometime next week, at which point I'll plug it in and see how we like it. We have a 30-day trial period for it. If it turns out it's not our thing, or it doesn't work with our electronics or my work computer, we just cancel and return it. But the goal is to get off the teat of the ISP I'm on now, who couldn't even provide me any reason for outage for thirty hours of downtime. Their statement was "the internet failed because it was cold."
Are you fucking kidding me?
Are you fucking kidding me?
Yeah, that was their official answer. I was one of many people affected, enough to where it made the news here in Omaha -- and that was what they told the press.
Well, no more. I've been a loyal customer of this ISP for thirteen years, but "it was cold" is where I draw the line. It was -17 to -19 for a three or four day stretch earlier this year and my internet didn't die on me then. Sometimes having multiple choices in a free market is a wonderful thing.
The outage still isn't "officially resolved" as of my writing this -- there's still another two hours before they estimate it will be restored for everyone affected.
Anyway.
As the sun sets on December 23rd we hit zero hour for Christmas. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and Sunday is, of course, Christmas Day. Daisy had about six different packages arrive in the mail today. I'm guessing they're mostly presents for me (I've been ordered not to touch anything that is delivered with her name on it, not that I would anyway).
The snow came -- not much of it, but enough to suck -- and behind it came the cold (as, ahem, mentioned above). Today is the first day in three days that the temperature made it above zero:
And let me tell you, that feels positively balmy compared to the -13 it was yesterday morning.
We're not supposed to get back to "respectable" temperatures that accurately reflect what they should be for this time of year until the middle of next week -- when, get this, there's the possibility it will get warm enough to rain and thunderstorm on at least one day of that.
With Christmas approaching and my internet restored (well, for now anyway) I can finally relax a bit and can enjoy the last four days of my holiday vacation in the ways I expected to -- by doing as little as possible and trying to get some real rest, interspersed with holiday activities. Daisy picked up a pack of rechargeable batteries on the way home tonight so that we can play her Wii (we need the batteries for the remotes) and get some quality time together. The next two days will be sort of hectic, but apparently this year we're foregoing the traditional Christmas Eve church service -- I asked Daisy's mother tonight to confirm that -- so while that particular tradition won't be observed, it also means I don't have to get dressed up and can wear sweats all day and all night.
I've yet to confirm the schedules for everything, but I would assume we'll venture over to the parents' sometime tomorrow afternoon and do dinner with them, then return home -- where I will be confined to my upstairs office while Daisy will be awake half the night wrapping Christmas gifts because she always waits until the last minute. On Christmas morning we'll have the customary group voice/video calls with the family, I'll call my own parents, and then we'll have breakfast and open our own gifts for one another before we head back over to the parents' for Christmas lunch/dinner/whatever works. Generally on Christmas night, Daisy and I also drive around the neighborhoods looking at Christmas lights, but as it's been so cold I don't know if she'll want to, or still want to, do that this year. I'm fine either way, honestly.
We're both off on Monday -- which will likely be much-needed decompression time for both of us -- I took the day off in advance and Daisy gets it off from her job as the "holiday observed" day of the calendar. We both return to work on Tuesday, her in the morning and me at night. Her morning will be truncated a bit as it's also the day that our cat gets some stitches removed from a minor mass removal she had done on her face earlier this month.
So, I mean, the next few days will be full of activities but not necessarily anything soul-draining or otherwise unexpected or unpleasant.
Today I did multiple loads of laundry, including stripping the "cat blankets" off the couch and washing them. I also cooked and ate a full meal for the first time in a long time, and ran the dishwasher twice in order to clean up after myself. I brought in every delivered package even though the cold was nut-numbing (even moreso now that I have a shaven crotch) and made sure the cats were fed and happy. I also backed up my hard drive, balanced the checkbook, and worked on some story notes for some of my professional writing.
As we're in a bit of a lull before the real festivities of the season begin, what else has been going on?
Well, I ordered a few new pairs of glasses. I guess that's "news" to an extent. Our FSA dollars run out at the end of the year and don't roll over (Daisy got a completely different provider at work, so whatever isn't used by 12/31 is just gone and we don't get it back). So, taking advantage of the rather large amount of money we have left in there, I got three pairs of glasses (it was buy two, get one free) with the best possible lens upgrades and frames that I won't feel like it's a waste of money to replace the lenses in upon getting a new prescription next summer.
Did you know that Amazon has an entire storefront dedicated to nothing but FSA-approved items? I didn't until last week. You'd be surprised what's covered under FSA -- heating pads, massage guns, those fancy Star Trek-head scanner thermometers, the works. Believe me, we're going to have some fun doing some healthy shopping after Christmas. I want to buy so much cold and allergy medicine that I get put on some sort of watchlist.
But, I mean, vitamins, probiotics, etc. Personal care products. Face wash. Antimicrobial sanitizers. There are many, many possibilities.
Anyway.
As mentioned briefly above, our cat had to go in for surgery for the second time this year to remove a non-cancerous cyst/mass from her head. The first time was on the top of her head and it was huge; this time it was a beauty-mark like cyst from her face, between her lip and nose. The doctors did a hell of a job of stitching it up, and it looked angry and swollen/painful for our little old girl for a few days before she was back to normal again:
She very much did NOT like the inflatable collar Daisy put her in so that she couldn't tear out the stitches.
I am, however, happy to report that she's been back to her normal self now for about a week, and the stitches do not seem to bother her in the least. If they do, she at least doesn't try to tear at them or pick at them. And they're getting removed Tuesday morning anyhow, so eh. This is the same cat who is in stage 2 of kidney failure, occasionally pees on herself or on the floor because of it, and has to eat special diet food that costs something like $60 a bag. For the small bag. She's old. She's not that mobile or active anymore. We just want to make sure she feels good and is comfortable, because frankly she's likely on borrowed time as it is. Watching my little old girl deteriorate is deeply sad.
But she's a very loving cat, a very sweet cat, and she's definitely a very vocal cat with a "give me all the love" personality. The girls at the vet adore her, and she is my companion every night as I work because her spot on the couch is right next to me at my work desk/computer. She even made the back of the Christmas card this year (a prestigious honor in this household).
Speaking of those cards, I have a group of people who didn't receive one (because, well, I only made 60 of them) who are clamoring for their unveiling on Facebook. I usually do that on Christmas Eve (or thereabouts), so tomorrow is this year's unveiling of the front and back designs. Next year I'll likely need to order 70 or 75, as I've gotten a lot more people added to the list this year.
My goal for the next few days, especially tonight and tomorrow night, is to actually go to bed and sleep with the wife at the same time.
Most people wouldn't think this is a "goal" per se, but the norm. Well, it may be the norm for them, but when you work opposite schedules, sleeping time together, in the same bed, at the same time comes at a premium -- as in, it almost never happens. I will sleep either during the day, or I will fall asleep in my chair before Daisy comes upstairs for the night, or I won't be tired when she goes to bed and won't sleep for many hours after she does so -- etc. Well, I've been waking up at 5, 6, 7 or so every morning this week no matter when I've gone to sleep, and actually did go join her in bed a few nights ago for several hours. I'll be awake during the day for the next few days -- there's no reason or excuse not to go to bed with her when she goes to bed at night.
It's actually been a few days since I slept in the bed -- I do tend to crash out in my chair pretty frequently and pretty hard. As I usually only sleep for about 5-6 hours at a time, if I wake up early I wake up early and can get up -- but I crave the safety and intimacy that sleeping with my wife provides.
I'm sure some of you are reading this as if this is a completely alien concept -- not sleeping with your spouse in the same bed all the time, every night, no matter what -- but it is what it is when I work overnights and she works days. She goes to bed at night when I'm working, and usually has at least one of the three cats sleep with her. In the mornings when I go to bed, if she's working from home that day she can come into the bedroom an hour after I've gone to sleep to find me with two of the three cats, who look at her as if to say "this is our dad sleeping time, go away." There are pictures.
The third cat is our little stitched-up girl above, who never really leaves the couch unless she's drinking water or going to/from the litter pan.
If I take a nap on the couch during the week, on my lunch hour in the middle of the night, my little old lady cat will always walk up and down my body and stick her nose in my face to make sure I'm all right. When I tell her I am, she is satisfied and sleeps on my legs or lays down on my outstretched arm, just so I know that she's there and she's watching over me. Occasionally, Pete -- the wife's cat, and I've now resigned myself to that fact as he loves Daisy more than the world -- will join me as well and try to sleep in my arms or on my chest, but that's rare of him to do on the couch. Every morning he joins me in bed though, without fail.
Thus is my life, I suppose.
Pete does frequently want in my office with me, and most of the time I let him in -- he sleeps on my chair or on my ottoman and doesn't really want anything else other than to be with me. When he wants out, he gets antsy and tries to get into things, and that's when I show him the door.
So yeah, that's really about it for the moment. I'll make sure to give everyone the Christmas rundown once we resurface from the holiday.
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