The service was over but the testimonials had just begun

Yesterday was a day of loose ends, and today too, I think. Every time I sit down to write, some new thing pops up needing my immediate attention, so maybe that's just the universe's way of telling me to take another day. Or maybe I'm making excuses.

The first page is always the hardest.

Speaking of hard things, today I went and mailed off my quarterly tax payment, so that's one nasty task off the list. I don't mind paying taxes, really; I like having roads and sewers, firefighters and police officers, and so on, and I don't feel put-upon when the government asks me to help pay for these things. But Uncle Sam really doesn't make it easy, when you earn your money on a Whenever They Feel Like Paying You basis.

Depending on whose survey you believe, between three and six percent of the American population claims to be psychic. I'm not one of those people, and when estimating my annual income, I may as well be throwing darts at a bank statement.

Last year I overpaid. I let the IRS keep the difference as a buffer against future years when I will no doubt under-pay due to that Failure To Be Psychic penalty.

Hm. What else? Let's see.

Oh yes - as the husband and I were wandering antique/second-hand shops on Sunday, we bought something 100% weapons-grade ridiculous: A Zenith Cobra Matic turntable/radio console, circa 1951. I believe it's a model H880R, but if anyone out there knows better, by all means feel free to correct me.

The thing is in divine condition; its original owner - an elderly doctor who recently passed away - loved it and took good care of it, and a guy who restores old electronics picked it up at the estate sale. Everything is original except for a few of the hidden electronic bits, which have been brought up to speed. It sounds fantastic, works beautifully, and looks like a museum piece.

It's crazypants, I know - but we just couldn't walk away from it. Our reasons were many and varied, but primarily boiled down to these: (1). it was not prohibitively expensive, (2). we were never likely to encounter its equal again, much less at that price point, and best of all (3). we could make our house sound like Bioshock ANY TIME WE WANT.

So...yeah. It came home with us.

Anyway.

The house continues to be awesome. I'm sitting on the front porch swing right now, with a mason jar full of peach-flavored ice tea - not because I'm trying THAT HARD to be a southern stereotype, but because I am out of clean glasses, and I should probably do something about it. Except that it was easier to come lounge on the porch and blog.

Tomorrow afternoon, I get a visit from a princess, which will be awesome. I am, however, chagrined on the princess's behalf that there were exactly zero places in the greater Chattanooga area where she could put on a signing/reading as part of her book tour. Chattanooga: I am disappoint.

[We have a B&N and a Books a Million. So far as new book stores go, I do believe that's it.]

Then on Thursday evening, Laura's coming over, and we'll go trawling through the costume closet - aka, the Room Formerly Known as the Perplexing Back Room's closet. (It's not perplexing anymore because it's a guest room, as well as the room where the husband and I hole up to play video games at night.)

When I was over at Laura's place the other day, she showed me how they'd turned their office closet into her costume/dress-up closet, and I was like, DAMN. I wish I had an extra closet where I could WAIT A MINUTE NOW I TOTALLY HAVE ONE OF THOSE. Our back room's closet is actually the biggest in the house*, and until it dawned on me that I could stash all my dress-up clothes in there, it'd been virtually empty. So I spent yesterday afternoon hauling down all the fun stuff I'd relegated to the attic, and now I have a costume closet of my very own!

Laura and I are roughly the same size - close enough to share clothes, anyway - and we'll see if I have anything that will work for an outfit she needs for this coming weekend. Also I'm sure we will goof off,** but such is the way of these things.

And now ... my husband informs me that he's finished doing some long-overdue upgrades on the Clockwork Century site. This makes him a hero of the revolution, of course - though it also means that I now need to sit down with that sadly neglected place and update the ever-living shit out of it.

I'm hoping that doing so will help put me in the right mindset to begin Fiddlehead. So let's see how that goes ...


* None of the closets are original to the house, natch - and none are huge.
** Playing dress-up is NOT goofing off. It is SRS BZNSS. I'm pretty sure Princess Alethea will agree with us on that one.