Adulting

(Wrote this on Thursday night, forgot to post it)

I have not been much good for getting around to creative things lately, but I do feel like I've gotten some adulting done in its place.

My refrigerator started leaking about a week ago, sporadically -- I cleaned it up the first time and then a few days later there was another spill from it on the floor. Last night there was a third spill. The fridge still works and keeps things cold, and it's clearly the fridge itself that is leaking -- there's no signs of the leak on the interior of the fridge. The best case scenario is something like "something external got into the innards and it's occasionally thawing enough to leak again." But it seems more likely that something is slowly breaking down and eventually the whole machine will break.

So I went to Consumer Reports to pick out a new fridge, because my analysis paralysis is the worst when it comes to stuff like this. Consumer Reports is very nice: I just look through the well-rated options and pick one that's a reasonable price and go with that. In this case, there was one model that was clearly Best Value, with a good rating and like 1/3rd the price of all the others. So I picked that one and followed the Consumer Reports "shop now" link to see if I could buy a fridge online.

It turns out I can! Amusingly, the website said that it would be delivered by 12/20 while I was buying it, and then as soon as I finished the purchase it said "Let's schedule your delivery! Earliest date is 12/22." I guess the 12/20 date is when it arrives at the third-part delivery service, for them to do installation and haulaway (which were options when purchasing; I would not have bought a fridge without those options because there's no way Lut and/or I would handle either one on our own.)

So I am getting a new fridge on 12/23 because fortunately Lut remembered that he has a procedure on 12/22. Which I had completely spaced and selected 12/22, but he was looking over my shoulder while I did it.

Possibly I could have paid a lot more for a fridge that was a little larger, which would be convenient in some ways. Especially a wider fridge. Fridge depth is pretty useless tbh, because anything at the back of the fridge gets forgotten and goes to waste. But the new fridge is approximately the size of the current fridge and, critically, will fit in the same space the fridge presently occupies.

Lut: "You could remove that top cabinet." Me: "I could hire someone to tear out the top cabinet, yes, but then I have to find a contractor who is willing to do a small job and we all know how much success I have had with that." I couldn't even get a contractor to come fix the collapsed ceiling several years ago, and had to hire a friend who used to work in construction to do it instead.

Beyond dealing with the fridge: last night I finally went to healthcare.gov to look at enrollment options and see if I could get cheaper health insurance that offered similar coverage. I found one that will save me about $350 per year and even managed to get enrolled in it. A full day before open enrollment ended! (If I missed open enrollment, it just meant that I'd stay on my current plan for another year and pay a little more than I had to. So not a disaster. Still, nice to save some money.)

Also, I had some credit card rewards built up that I'd never gotten around to using, on a credit card that I'd stopped using because see the first part of the sentence. The credit card sent me a letter saying they would cancel my account and terminate the existing rewards if I didn't start using the card again -- "so either start using the card or cash out your rewards please." And I actually went through all the hoops to get to the rewards and found that they had a cash option and took that. Instead of letting them expire! Which was absolutely what I had expected to have happen. The two combined are not enough to pay for a new fridge but it's still nice to have succeeded at these things instead of being too stressed-out and anxious to even try to deal with them.

But I haven't been doing much in terms of my creative goals. I did write a kind of zero-draft for a new scene of Angel's Grace, and completed two points from the Angel's Grace editing list. So the editing is about 50% done. I am pretty sure I will get to the 75% from my goals for the month, but "100% and published" is looking increasingly unlikely. Especially since I have a friend visiting from out of town this weekend. I don't expect to get anything done this weekend.

But the friend that I visit on Thursdays has canceled for tonight because someone in his household is ill, so I have a little more free time this evening than expected. Maybe I'll do a little editing during that.