Thursday, February 8
Feb. 8th, 2024 11:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Beautiful hoar frost on everything.
Nothing pressing to do today, so that was nice.
I spoke with Sister E for a while, and it sounds like the transfer of her MIL to a new care facility went well, and that's done now. I hope it works out and everyone feels better about where she is.
I find myself wanting to ramp up the effort to "get rid of broken windows" and deal with things again. Hopefully in a productive and low-drama manner for us both.
I want to start to deal with these things:
1) Planning to buy a new to us truck. This might take a year or two, because my husband refuses to actually do anything useful in this direction. We each have a small car, and then we have a very old truck that is okay for now, and a very old Nissan X-Terra that sits in our yard and is barely ever used.
My husband doesn't want to ever, ever get rid of the X-Terra, but it is NEVER USED. His excuse, is that it is "better for towing than the truck because it is a 4x4 vehicle", which is great except that it pretty much never gets used.
What we need to do, and he does agree (though refuses to do anything) is to buy a good, newer truck that is also a 4x4 vehicle, and get rid of the other two vehicles.
I do not want this to become a situation where we have these two older, not very reliable, not really what is needed vehicles that I cannot depend on, and when something happens and one of our cars is in the shop, we don't have a useful "third vehicle".
Or the truck breaks down when we really need it.
So, I broached the topic with him today, and he keeps saying we can't afford to do this (not true), so I want him to start working on what we need, look at what's available, start figuring out the cost, and set up an account to start saving for it.
Sigh.
2) One of our new windows developed a crack in it shortly after it was installed. He did nothing to address it so I'm assuming the warranty is already done. We need to contact the company in town that installed it, see if we can get another piece made (it's the sliding window, we don't have to replace everything), and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
I am going to call them tomorow.
This is one of those things that isn't a big deal, and could easily go ignored for the next ten years.
3) Start talking to contractors about doing the soffit and fascia this spring. It didn't happen last year because he didn't talk to anyone until it was already summer, and of course they're all booked solid by then. If he can't get anyone to commit, then we need to start planning NOW how it is going to get done.
We are hoping to go to Ikea this Saturday to get some simple cabinets to go in the mud room.
I also want a new area rug for the living room, since ours is just DONE. It is just shredded from the cats.
So, buying things is what he likes doing, the physical work side is much harder to do.
I also picked up one item out of the swamp of things downstairs that I know is garbage, and so does my husband, but he keeps just "setting it back down".
It's an old "notebook" thingy that he says won't even boot up anymore, so it's e-waste. I brought it upstairs and asked him pointedly if he could get rid of it on his way to work (he drives right past a recycling depot). He finally agreed to DO something with it, since it is crap.
Once again, if I didn't just shove things right in front of him and demand action, would it just sit there forever? He hasn't been able to get it to boot up for over five years, I bet.
We did watch more of "The Expanse".
Malaysia: consists of a peninsula that is part of Asia, and part of the island of Borneo.
They have a Federal Constitutional Monarchy, which means they have an elected monarch that is head of state, and a Prime Minister that is head of government. Wow. Considered a "flawed Democracy".
They have a good economy that is expanding from natural resources (petroleum, palm oil, exotic wood) to other commerce (Automotive,is a hub for Islamic banking and trying to develop information-based economy), and has a lot of "medical tourism", people traveling there for medical treatment.
It's main religion is Sunni Islam, but grants religious freedom to others.
Well, kind of. Not great for human rights, no LGBTQ protection. Homosexuality is illegal and punishable by caning and imprisonment, and other crimes are punishable by death, and so on. Not good at all. Not a lot of freedom of the press, either.
A band I like a lot got into some trouble over there, and when you see how scary the laws are there, he's lucky to have not ended up in prison or worse. Yikes.
"In July 2023, The 1975 lead singer Matty Healy slammed the country's anti-LGBTQ laws by kissing a bandmate on stage at a music festival in Kuala Lumpur causing the Ministry of Communications and Digital to cancel the 3 day event.[161]"
Was a colony of Portugal, was invaded by Japan during the Second World War like all of the other places in this region, was freed by the Allies, and struggled internally between communism and other factions as to how to rule themselves.
Became independent in 1963, though shortly after Singapore was expelled to become it's own country.
This is another "megadiverse" region, and some effort is being made to conserve native forests and animals. There is a high level of endemism (native plants and animals).
Lots of railroads, roads, airports, shipping. A reasonably modern place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia
An interesting video in Kuala Lampur: https://youtu.be/J08ERrxGmcA?si=3suIUiZzgmidkSnB
Beautiful hoar frost on everything.
Nothing pressing to do today, so that was nice.
I spoke with Sister E for a while, and it sounds like the transfer of her MIL to a new care facility went well, and that's done now. I hope it works out and everyone feels better about where she is.
I find myself wanting to ramp up the effort to "get rid of broken windows" and deal with things again. Hopefully in a productive and low-drama manner for us both.
I want to start to deal with these things:
1) Planning to buy a new to us truck. This might take a year or two, because my husband refuses to actually do anything useful in this direction. We each have a small car, and then we have a very old truck that is okay for now, and a very old Nissan X-Terra that sits in our yard and is barely ever used.
My husband doesn't want to ever, ever get rid of the X-Terra, but it is NEVER USED. His excuse, is that it is "better for towing than the truck because it is a 4x4 vehicle", which is great except that it pretty much never gets used.
What we need to do, and he does agree (though refuses to do anything) is to buy a good, newer truck that is also a 4x4 vehicle, and get rid of the other two vehicles.
I do not want this to become a situation where we have these two older, not very reliable, not really what is needed vehicles that I cannot depend on, and when something happens and one of our cars is in the shop, we don't have a useful "third vehicle".
Or the truck breaks down when we really need it.
So, I broached the topic with him today, and he keeps saying we can't afford to do this (not true), so I want him to start working on what we need, look at what's available, start figuring out the cost, and set up an account to start saving for it.
Sigh.
2) One of our new windows developed a crack in it shortly after it was installed. He did nothing to address it so I'm assuming the warranty is already done. We need to contact the company in town that installed it, see if we can get another piece made (it's the sliding window, we don't have to replace everything), and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
I am going to call them tomorow.
This is one of those things that isn't a big deal, and could easily go ignored for the next ten years.
3) Start talking to contractors about doing the soffit and fascia this spring. It didn't happen last year because he didn't talk to anyone until it was already summer, and of course they're all booked solid by then. If he can't get anyone to commit, then we need to start planning NOW how it is going to get done.
We are hoping to go to Ikea this Saturday to get some simple cabinets to go in the mud room.
I also want a new area rug for the living room, since ours is just DONE. It is just shredded from the cats.
So, buying things is what he likes doing, the physical work side is much harder to do.
I also picked up one item out of the swamp of things downstairs that I know is garbage, and so does my husband, but he keeps just "setting it back down".
It's an old "notebook" thingy that he says won't even boot up anymore, so it's e-waste. I brought it upstairs and asked him pointedly if he could get rid of it on his way to work (he drives right past a recycling depot). He finally agreed to DO something with it, since it is crap.
Once again, if I didn't just shove things right in front of him and demand action, would it just sit there forever? He hasn't been able to get it to boot up for over five years, I bet.
We did watch more of "The Expanse".
Malaysia: consists of a peninsula that is part of Asia, and part of the island of Borneo.
They have a Federal Constitutional Monarchy, which means they have an elected monarch that is head of state, and a Prime Minister that is head of government. Wow. Considered a "flawed Democracy".
They have a good economy that is expanding from natural resources (petroleum, palm oil, exotic wood) to other commerce (Automotive,is a hub for Islamic banking and trying to develop information-based economy), and has a lot of "medical tourism", people traveling there for medical treatment.
It's main religion is Sunni Islam, but grants religious freedom to others.
Well, kind of. Not great for human rights, no LGBTQ protection. Homosexuality is illegal and punishable by caning and imprisonment, and other crimes are punishable by death, and so on. Not good at all. Not a lot of freedom of the press, either.
A band I like a lot got into some trouble over there, and when you see how scary the laws are there, he's lucky to have not ended up in prison or worse. Yikes.
"In July 2023, The 1975 lead singer Matty Healy slammed the country's anti-LGBTQ laws by kissing a bandmate on stage at a music festival in Kuala Lumpur causing the Ministry of Communications and Digital to cancel the 3 day event.[161]"
Was a colony of Portugal, was invaded by Japan during the Second World War like all of the other places in this region, was freed by the Allies, and struggled internally between communism and other factions as to how to rule themselves.
Became independent in 1963, though shortly after Singapore was expelled to become it's own country.
This is another "megadiverse" region, and some effort is being made to conserve native forests and animals. There is a high level of endemism (native plants and animals).
Lots of railroads, roads, airports, shipping. A reasonably modern place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia
An interesting video in Kuala Lampur: https://youtu.be/J08ERrxGmcA?si=3suIUiZzgmidkSnB
no subject
Date: 2024-02-10 08:13 am (UTC)Glad to see you're going to make those calls!
no subject
Date: 2024-02-10 10:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-11 07:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-11 08:26 am (UTC)I hate to spend a lot on rugs because with many cats and a dog, it is always going to be a sacrificial item.
We have also had wool moths, and that is part of what has destroyed the previous wool rug that we are replacing. The moths had ruined the pile that was under a chair.
This rug is light weight enough that I can pull it up and hang it outside in the cold in winter, or the sun in the summer for a day here and there as a deterrent to those moths.
I don't have high expectations for rug longevity. If we get a few years out of it, then that's fine.
It is beige, feels nice underfoot, and it should work fine.