Entries 115
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Fragility of Life
Loss I got a text from the ENT pianist on Monday morning to tell me that a long-time member of our amateur musician group, a soprano who works in higher education, had passed away. It was a s...
Risk Management
A Next Generation The amateur musician group had another concert two weekends ago. I thought the turn out wouldn’t be good, since it was raining and it was in the smaller (and cheaper) performa...
History is Cyclical
And we begin again We visited the ENT pianist a month ago. He just moved to a mansion - and it was a proper mansion, with a two-story two-bedroom guest house, a heated pool with jacuzzi and a p...
As the Season Turns
One Year In It’s been a year since we moved into our house, but it doesn’t feel that long. And the change in environment isn’t as dramatic as when I moved from Manhattan to Plainview. Still, ...
Back To Civilization
So Much Space After 2 weeks living in a cruise ship cabin, returning to a house was a big adjustment. There is just so much space! Getting a jacket now involves waking across the room rather th...
What is Old is New Again
Another season in the bag Our music group had the last concert of the season 2 weeks ago. It went well - it wasn’t packed, but attendance was decent, and a lot more people who came donated this...
Custody
Health Scare After coming back from Binghamton, the rabbit had a vaccine booster shot. After that he started eating cardboard and wicker we had put in his area for enrichment. And he started li...
Escape Hatches
Three Egresses Our meal subscription service sends us our meals weekly in standard-sized cardboard boxes. We always recycle those. But one day I figured if you line several of them up, end-to-e...
My Duties
My Civic Duty I’m writing this in a courtroom waiting in a jury pool. The courtroom is across the street from our house, so it was very convenient for me to get to. And unlike in the city, they...
Burden of Leadership
RTFM I still have people writing to me about not being able to schedule performance in the automated scheduling tool, but with a demo video, it was easy to deal with. I just need to find the ti...
Inconveniences in Life
Chasing deadline The latest version of our software ships next week and we discovered a last-minute bug. And the feature has to be shipped with this latest version. So I had to work on the week...
Uncertain Futures
As an Administrator We had our Carnegie Hall concert audition 3 weeks ago, and both my groups made the cut. There ended up being 12 ensembles and 25 solos (there were a few last-minute withdraw...
This Time of Year
Year of the Snake I usually don’t take note of Chinese New Years, but Wednesday will begin year of the snake, and I am a Snake. That means my age is going to be a multiple of 12. This is the fi...
Year-End Survey 2024
1. What did you do in 2024 that you’d never done before?Sell a house. 2. Did you achieve your goals for the year, and will you make more for next year?Did not make resolutions 3. Did anyone clos...
Best Laid Plans
Breaking water We are supposed to be driving up to Binghampton today, but our water heater is making strange sounds for the last few days, and today La Professor discovered a small puddle of wa...
Done and Dusted
由奢入儉難 We closed on our old house yesterday. It’s nice to get some liquid asset back. The closing itself was quite easy; as a seller we had less documents to sign. However, La Professeure went ...
End of an Era
Welp The rest of our furniture arrived; now that they are here, this place feels more lived-in than before. We ended up buying a modular sofa that La Prof thought was going to turn into a secti...
One Month In
Location, Location, Location It’s been a month and two days since we moved to the new place. A lot of our furniture (dining table, sofas, recliners, big-arse TV) are still back at the old place...
All’s Well That Ends Well
A Bite Our realtor held our first open house last weekend, and this week we signed a contract. Our realtor was right; the house sold fast, and above asking - though maybe we asked too low. The...
In with the New
The Move We moved to our new house on Tuesday. We had packed over the last several weekends, which was hard on the body, but made the move much easier. The movers came and went in 3 hours. We p...
All of a Sudden
Sudden Death On my flight back from California, I was writing the last entry on my tablet, and the screen would blink in and out. I didn’t think much of it, figured that it was a wiring issue, b...
California Trip
Aug 12 We had a late flight, from 6:30pm to 10pm, but it’s pacific time so the flight is actually 6.5 hours. But our flight was delayed for half an hour before we boarded and another half hour w...
Only Have to be Lucky Once
At Home Last weekend, we went to an open house in a really nice town. Its asking price was 0.5% above our revised price range (but 20% above our original), but it was really nice - it has the sa...
In Dependents Day
Holiday We are upstate now at La Professeure’s parents’ for independence day holiday. We arrived on Tuesday and will go back Sunday. It is a bit low-key; La Professeure has a list of tasks to ac...
Carve Our Own Paths
Jabba the Bun We used a small ottoman to form part of the rabbit’s habitat, we call it a “tunnel”, where three sides are surrounded by boxes and covered with a blanket. The rabbit has chewed a h...
