April 21-23: MOAR unpacking, fast food, and driving with out-of-state plates

Monday, April 21

Mostly I did some unpacking on Monday. I tried calling Telnar around 10AM, when I felt like unpacking, but he was having brunch with a friend. I unpacked a box anyway while waiting for Telnar to call me back. When he called back, I did more unpacking.

I don't have places to put many of the things I'm unpacking. Some stuff is just getting piled on top of things. I brought four bookcases with me and somehow none of them have shelves tall enough to fit the tallest books that came with me. I don't know how that happened. I mean, I knew the largest bookcase didn't because it was custom-built for a used bookstore to hold paperbacks (this is what I like about it!) I should check to see if any of the little ones have adjustable shelves, though.

I have checked and two of the small ones have holes as if the shelves were designed to be adjustable, but the shelves themselves have no apparent means of removing them: they're not resting on pegs and there's no indication that they were screwed in place from the side. I guess if I had more shelves I could stick additional ones in using the holes and make the shelves shorter? Weird.

Some stuff I have unpacked and re-boxed to put in the unfinished part of the attic. So far, this is all miniatures & miniature-related things, plus my tiny Christmas tree. I'll probably put my boardgames in there, too, when I've unpacked them. As long as I shuffle and pack stuff so I can make the stacks tall while still being stable, I can get a fair amount of stuff piled in there.

Putting stuff in the attic is a bit of a hazard, because Lyric will go in with me if she can. The attic has a small section with a plywood floor, which is where I've been stacking boxes, and a much larger space that's covered in either puffy white insulation or, for one section, just ceiling (I think this is the section above the porch.) I do not want Lyric diving into the insulation or walking about on the ceiling. D: The attic has this weird half-height door with no knob on the inside, so I can't close it behind me when I enter. She's already followed me inside twice, so I need to stop going in there unless I know the cat is behind a door somewhere else in the house.

The first day I unpacked, I counted boxes as I unpacked them. I haven't been counting since; it's just "at least one per day." I unpacked several on Monday, but I don't know the number. I finished unpacking the first row of boxes in my room, though, so that was cool. For most of it, I was chatting on the phone with Telnar.

K had groceries delivered today, but I wasn't around when they arrived and the home health aide put them away. I kept forgetting they'd actually arrived because I'm not used to there just being more food in the kitchen.

Tuesday, April 22

More unpacking! I started on the second row of boxes in my bedroom. The second row includes two giant wardrobe boxes. I don't have a closet or a wardrobe in my room, so I haven't tried unpacking those. I finished the rest of the second row, though. Tomorrow I can tackle the boxes against the wall. Perhaps I can make enough space to move the wardrobe boxes against the wall. Or maybe my parents will let me consolidate their clothes together in the giant walk-in closet in the bathroom, so that I can put my stuff in there. It doesn't have a lot of free space, though, so I don't know that this would work.

Tomorrow, Kage needs to get his car from the shop, and Sophrani's busy so can't take him. So I'm picking him up to take him. I have a plan for tomorrow! 

So weird, this "having plans" thing. I remembered to tell my mother I had a plan so she wouldn't expect me to do anything else around then.

My mother wanted a sub from Firehouse for lunch today, instead of her usual McDonald's burger. Firehouse doesn't have a drive-through and it's a production for my mother to go into a store: she has to wrestle her walker into the trunk, drive there, wrestle her walker out of the trunk, go into store, repeat process to get home. One time she tried getting by with just a cane and this was a disaster, so she does not try that anymore. This time, she asked me to come with her so I could go inside for her. We placed the order online, too. I could've gone by myself but it was nice to have company. It's a very short drive. There's so much stuff that's within two miles of my parents' house, despite them living in a sprawling retirement community. 

I spent some time today and yesterday going over The Jewel-Strewn Night in ProWritingAid, and finished it. There's two structural changes I want to make before I send it to first readers, but it's pretty close. 

It's after 10PM now and about when I give up on getting anything done with the day. But I will try to write a little fiction just because it's been so long since I've even tried.

Wednesday, April 23

I got up around 9AM and fixed a bagel for breakfast. I bought a bagel pack from Panera on Sunday (13 bagels) and ended up eating 8 of them over four days. It's a good thing I like bagels. I'd thought my parents would eat more but nope. When I sat down at my computer to eat it and opened Fediverse, I saw that Veo's stream had started; I'd forgotten about it. I brought it up and watched the rest of it. I'd been curious how running a city would go in Exile Princes, and the answer for Veo was Very Badly. When the next election came up, Veo didn't run again and that was clearly the right choice. 

Watching it made me want to play it again, but I resisted the temptation and looked at my to-do list instead. The last item I'd put in the "must do in April" category was to return the Google Fiber router and extender. This involved Google Fiber telling FedEx to send me a QR code, and then me bringing the equipment and QR code to a FedEx location, where they'd package and ship it (and charge Google Fiber). Google Fiber had first attempted to get FedEx to send me a QR code on April 7. I had to ask two more times before FedEx finally succeeded at sending me one on April 20. 

I had almost an hour before I had to leave to give Kage a ride to the car shop, so I figured I had enough time to run an errand first. The nearest FedEx store was in the plaza adjacent to the McDonald's my mother always gets lunch from. So I checked that my mother wanted lunch from there and that I should pick up a burger for my father, too. Then I set off. I didn't bring up Google Maps at first because I thought I knew where it was, and then I realized I was thinking of the time I'd been to the USPS location in the same area. And also a UPS store. It's a big retail area. I brought up Google Maps to find the exact spot after I got to the right general area; it was actually in a little plaza tucked behind the big strip mall. 

Once there, the FedEx folks scanned my QR code and took the equipment with no issues. Yay! At 11:15AM, I left the store and went to McDonald's. I thought about texting Kage that I'd be late, since clearly I would be, but figured I'd wait until I knew exactly how late. There was no line in the McDonald's drive-through and I got my order quickly. The man taking the cash recited the order back to me, then peered at me. "You're not the usual woman who places this order."

I laughed and explained I was her daughter. "She'll be back sometimes, though, I'm not always picking it up for her."

He told me to tell her hi. I forgot to relay this anecdote to my mom; I should do that tomorrow.

At the house, I nuked my mother's burger for 12 seconds, got a diet Coke for her, and delivered the food to her and my dad. I forgot to get my mom's bbq sauce from the fridge for her, though. So close! I set out for Kage's place at 11:33, about 10 minutes behind schedule. Not too bad.

Ten minutes from Kage's place, after I'd turned off the interstate, a cop car popped his lights on behind me.  Startled, I pulled over. He pulled in behind me, while I was thinking 'what the heck? I haven't done anything.'

He'd pulled me over for having an out-of-state plate. -_- 

Which is not a crime, obviously, but cops love ticketing visitors because they won't come back to contest the ticket. In my particular case, his excuse was that he couldn't read the state on my plates because, he said, it was obscured by the plate frame.

The plate frame came from the dealership and has been on the car since I bought it eight years ago. It did not obscure the state name. It touched the very top of the letters for the state name. But in his defense: my old state uses a smaller font than my new state, and puts the state at the top instead of at the bottom. I could see him initially thinking the state name was competely hidden because he expected it to be at the bottom, until he'd pulled me over and was close enough to the license plate to read it. (I couldn't read the state name on my plate from more than a car length away, either.) 

He told me he was just going to give me a warning, but asked me first to pull into the adjacent parking lot (we were blocking the exit where he'd pulled me over) and then come sit in the front seat of his car. That was, on the one hand, kind of creepy and outside the norm? And on the other hand, it was less frustrating to sit in his car with his A/C running, where I could watch him check my registration and look for outstanding warrants and whatnot and have an idea of how long this would take, than it would've been to wait for 10 minutes in my own car wondering what the heck he was doing and when I would be able to go. He asked various questions: where I was from, why I was in the area, what I did for a living, etc. I thought about all the "shut the f up" PSAs from lawyers, but answered anyway because the odds that I was actually a suspect of anything seemed vanishingly low and I figured cooperating would get me out of there faster. He let me text Kage to let him know I'd be even later. I did not attempt to explain to Kage via text why I was late, because any short explanation would make the situation look worse than it was.

The whole encounter took maybe 10-15 minutes; unsettling but not serious. I double-checked that the plate frame was the whole issue and getting rid of it would rectify the matter: yup.

At Kage's place, I asked if Kage could get the license plate frame off for me because I knew he had All The Tools and I don't know where mine are, or if I even brought them all with me. Maybe? I remember looking at Lut's socket wrench set and thinking I hadn't used it in years and did I really want to bring it? But I don't remember what I decided. I think I donated it? My parents might have one, though. But Kage's were right there. For some reason, the bolts holding plate & frame on were two different sizes. Weird. The plate didn't want to come out of the frame, after all these years, but Kage got it apart and now there is one less excuse for cops to pull me over. Yay.

This accomplished, I took Kage to the car place and waited with him while he paid and verified that his car was in good shape now. Then he headed back to his place to resume his workday, while I went home.

At home, I had lunch and a few cookies, then contemplated writing or playing The Exile Princes before deciding on napping. 

Post-nap, I had dinner. I fired up Spirit City but still didn't feel like doing anything creative. I looked over my to-do list again, and decided to get new health insurance. Healthcare.gov is state-based, so moving to a new state means I need new insurance. I have 60 days to get it but figured I might as well get it over with. It's annoying to have to switch insurance right after reaching the out-of-pocket cap on my old policy, but there's no help for it.

With that taken care of, I got up to finish unpacking a box I'd started yesterday. I unpacked two more after that for good measure. The remaining boxes and floor are littered with things I do not have a good place for. I unpacked most of the books that actually fit on a bookshelf, though, so that was nice. "I have a place for this!" *shuffles all the knickknacks currently on the top shelves to new spots to make room for the books where they belong.*

After I showered, I chatted with my mother about my day for a bit. When I told her about the incident with the cop, she said, "You know, you're welcome to take my car as long as I don't have any plans to use it."

Me: "Yeah, I was thinking I'd do that next time."

Back upstairs, I had a few more cookies, and played Time Princess and Race for the Galaxy while waiting for Coffee's stream to start. I feel very drained of energy. Tomorrow, I'm going to visit Sophrani, where I'll do some drawing and she'll do quilling. (Kage will be working). A little bit ago, Lyric mewed for me to let her into the attic, which I am Not Doing. She has settled for Garage Time instead. I'll be up for another hour or two, but I don't know if I'll do much of anything before going to bed. I started a monster with a 24-hour timer in 4thewords; I like those because they're big but I don't have to finish them on the same day.