Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

After three days of applying and re-applying a skin "healing cream," my fingers are basically back to normal. In particular, typing doesn't hurt my fingertips, my hands just generally look better, and I'm not carefully avoiding touching anything acidic (like oranges). Now I need to remember to keep using this lotion (though not a dozen times per day) even when nothing hurts and there's no obvious damage.

This is I think a recurrence of a problem I'd had in previous winters, possibly made worse by the couple of days of using space heaters while we waited for them to fix (replace) the boiler.

Also, we had someone come today to remove the air conditioners from our windows and carry them down to our basement-level storage area. This is the same person who put them in the windows when we first moved in (we never got around to removing them last winter, which was a mistake, because having them in the windows let cold air leak into our apartment). He again arrived later than he had originally said he would; he may just be over-optimistic about Boston traffic.

Three things: heat, the Boston city council election and the ballot drop box, and the farmers market

The building heat is broken, and it was cold last night. I sent in a maintenance request after breakfast this morning, and a couple of hours later a maintenance person knocked and told us that there was a problem with the boiler, and they had sent for someone to fix it.

A few hours after that, someone knocked to tell us that the problem wouldn't be fixed at least until tomorrow morning, and offered to lend us space heaters. At my suggestion, adrian_turtle accepted two (they offered three, "one for each bedroom"). We had by then gotten out the two space heaters we own, and hadn't used (or needed) since we moved in. We have mostly been sitting in the study, when not doing things in the kitchen (cooking, making tea, washing the dishes from lunch) or exercising: cattitude did some VR gaming with Patricia, and I've done three sets of PT exercises.

I took the trolley to Copley Square today, in order to drop off my absentee ballot for the city council election. When I got there I discovered that the drop box was closed for Halloween. The sign was ambiguous, so I went into the library and asked the information person whether she knew whether the drop box would be available later, but they hadn't told her. So I called 311, and learned that the boxes will be usable again from tomorrow around noon through Election Day, so I will go back sometime in the next few days (or ask Cattitude or Adrian to do so).

While I was in Copley Square I went to the farmers market -- the chance to do that is why I decided to drop off my ballot today. I got a loaf of bread and a slice of a "chocolate loaf" from Hi-Rise Bakery, plus three Macoun apples from one vendor and an unexpected small box of raspberries from another. Those three apples were the only unbruised and unblemished apples in a half-full box; it has not been a good year for local apples, and the Macouns have been small, but tasty.

ETA: This election is for city council, four at-large seats and one for each district. Both the candidates for the district seat seem reasonable; I voted for the challenger (Jacob deBlecourt) rather than the incumbent. For the at-large seats (eight candidates for four seats) I eliminated the two anti-vax candidates quickly; one is also an insurrectionist. That left six people, which came down to three I like and one who seems OK. In the end I voted for Louijeune, Mejia, and Santana, the three I was sure of, and Murphy as my fourth vote, because I really wanted to vote against Vitale and Nelson (they're the anti-vaxers) and Nee-Walsh after she said that Black Lives Matter had set the cause of Civil Rights back by fifty years.

adrian_turtle, cattitude, and I have signed a lease on a new apartment! We still need to landlord to sign it, but at this stage I'm confident it's going to happen. (A couple of other things have fallen through.)

It's in Boston, specifically in Brighton, which I keep having to tell myself is not at/near a beach. We'll be moving in June.

I made an appointment for adrian_turtle and cattitude to look at another apartment in Somerville, this afternoon. They liked it enough that we have asked for a rental application. cattitude urged me to look at the topo map before deciding; I poked at mappedometer, and the elevation graph shows a 1/16 slope up to Highland Avenue, and 1/25 down to Summer Street. [Those are relevant because there are useful buses on both streets, the 88 and 90 on Highland and the 87 on Summer.)

I'm saying "I think" because the landlord could turn us down, or we could look at the lease and find something problematic enough that we need to back out, as happened with the first place we looked at, several weeks ago.

Meanwhile, I talked to my mother this afternoon, and asked about the email I sent her about ten days ago, asking about where her parents had lived, and when my grandmother became a German citizen and, later, when she and my grandfather were naturalized as US citizens. It turns out that she'd written a nice long reply to my questions, and accidentally sent it to herself instead of to me. I now have lots of information, a couple of questions for our contact at the German embassy in London, and maybe one for my cousin Anne. (This is for German citizenship.)

cattitude and I looked over the draft lease, and then I emailed the realtor with a couple of issues, and a bunch of questions: "I don't like this clause about possible rent increases, with blank lines in it" is an issue, and "how will we handle snow removal?" is a question. She emailed the realtor, and then called me with satisfactory answers to our questions (including that the clause we don't like won't be in the final lease).

So, cattitude went over to her office and gave her checks for (a) the security deposit, (b) first and last months' rent, and (c) the pet deposit. We should be getting the actual lease tonight or tomorrow morning, to be signed electronically using Docusign, and then we can relax for a little while before thinking about exactly when we want to move.

We have the current (Somerville) apartment through the end of July, and the lease on the new place in Belmont starts July 1, so we have some flexibility. I have an editorial project with a July 5 deadline, so the second or even third week in July would probably work better for having everything packed up, and taking ourselves and the cats over to the new place.

Also, after several days of sore left hip and knee, I was feeling enough better yesterday to go down to Davis with cattitude to do some shopping, and that went well enough that I went shoe shopping today and walked about a mile, including walking around the Copley Square farmers market and stopping for lunch and then to buy a cheesecake. (My phone says "1.4," but its "miles" are closer to kilometers.)

Tomorrow I hope to sleep late (having been up since about 5:30 a.m. today), get some editing done, and take things easy physically.

The landlord of the Belmont apartment has approved us, with the addendum that he wants a written statement that we take responsibility for the cats; I told the real estate agent I am fine with that, and if there's specific wording he wants, please send it along.

Then they want us to write a check for the security deposit; everything else, the landlord likes to do electronically, meaning we have to find out how to do that with either cattitude's bank or my credit union (or possibly ask both, just in case).

If all goes well--meaning there's nothing problematic in the lease terms--we will go to the real estate office in Belmont sometime next week to do all this, and find out when we will be getting the keys, and start the process of putting utilities in our name, etc.

A few years ago, our apartment building got new windows. The good side is, they're double-glazed and fit better than the ancient ones they replaced. The problem is, they have nylon screens.

Nylon window screens are not very compatible with cats. And either a lot of my neighbors have cats, or there are other things damaging the screens. There were enough complaints that the landlord promised to replace the screens.

I think that was in 2010. They got as far as having someone come in and find out what needed to be replaced. Then nothing happened, and nothing happened, and the Tenants Association eventually made enough noise that something appears to be happening.

A couple of weeks ago, someone came in to see which windows needed new screens. Last week, someone from the window company called to ask if I could be home either Friday or Monday. No (I was going to be out of town). They asked for yesterday, but couldn't promise it would be morning, so we agreed on today. I was told someone would be here between 9 and 4.

At 3:05, the phone rang, and I was told that someone was on his way, and they were calling tenants to make sure of access. That's also when I found out that the man is here to measure the screens, and take them away with him. Apparently having had someone in to note which windows need new screens doesn't tell them enough: they don't know, or didn't tell the window company, how big the various windows are. And/or they plan to reuse the frames.

This means I am going to have to spend another day stuck at home. (Since I am job hunting and doing a bit of freelance, and cattitude has a full-time job, I'm the one who does this, because I can more easily free up a day.) Or maybe ask the super to deal with it. Also, the guy who is currently here removing and measuring things doesn't know how long it will take to get the replacements, and is acting as though he is under orders from the people back at the office not to say anything that might commit them to anything, ever. He did tell me the new screens will also be nylon mesh, so I am making no bets on how long they last.

I am glad of the slide-in metal screens we bought when the mesh first got badly torn; it means I can have some ventilation without worrying about the cat jumping out or wasps getting in. With those, I can either open the window a tiny bit, and hope no flies get in, or open it wide and maybe get too much air.