Listen to the Rain

No, not, Pesaḥ, that's on Saturday.

So a few years ago, I went on to the website of my internet provider (RCN) and noticed that the plan I had at the time, 150 mbps, did not show up anywhere as an available plan. So I called in, and they confirmed that it was not an available plan and that I could upgrade to 400 mbps and pay $40 per month less than I was paying at the time, so I told them that I wanted to do that. Well, over time the price started creeping up slowly more and more until it was more than I was paying before, and I went online and checked the prices and, lo and behold, the 400 mbps plan that I upgrades to no longer exists. So I picked up the phone and I called in to RCN and we went through the same speech again. I upgraded to 600 mbps for $30 less than I'm paying now, and I'm sure in the future I'm sure I'll have to upgrade once again to 800/900/1gb for $25-40 less than I'm paying now.

This feels like a valid use case for AI, honestly. Check the website of $SERVICE_NAME every month, see if there's a better plan than the one you're signed up for now, sign up for it. Have the AI talk to the company chatbot so I don't have to speak to a soulless machine.

Well, that would work if I hadn't had to talk to a real person to make the switch. She said her name was Mary (based on her accent, it was not) but uniquely, and the reason I write about it, is that she asked me about my day while she was looking something up. That doesn't happen often anymore and now that there are so many soulless machines you have to talk to on the phone, it was nice to have a moment of human interaction. I told her that Laila was playing in the room nearby and I felt lucky that I was able to work from home and see my daughter, and I hoped that she hadn't had to deal with too many angry customers over the course of the day so far. She said she hadn't. Hopefully that's still true.

The saga ends!

Yesterday I was woke up out of bed by a call that the appliance guys were coming in 20-30 minutes, so I threw on some old clothes, we got Laila out of bed, and I hauled everything off of the back stairs and helped sashagee take everything out of the fridge and pack it into the coolers my parents had brought over the last time they came to visit. I went out to go stand on the alleyway corner to make sure the installers came in the back alley like they're supposed to, and while they were thirty minutes late, it was the same people from last time so I needn't have worried. They brought up the dishwasher and got it working first, then hauled out the old stove and fridge and hauled up the new ones. In a couple hours, we had an entire set of new, working appliances.

Our old fridge was totally full. This one takes up the same amount of space in the kitchen, but look:


Tons of space up at the top and in the doors! I might even be able to go back to making shiozake or Japanese-style tsukemono! We'll have to see how the room works out.

All this on sashagee's birthday.

So last time I wrote about the appointment, it was when I called it to get a single appointment. Yesterday I learned that that appointment was silently cancelled without informing me, so I called and got the appointment moved to Wednesday. Well, today I learned that appointment was silently cancelled without informing me, so I called in again and asked what the hell was going on.

Apparently, "the system" won't let them schedule the appointment for reasons that aren't clear to them. Apparently, the lost technology of "writing it down on paper" isn't available, so they need to cross-consult several departments to figure out why the system won't deliver appliances that their records show are clearly available for delivery. And of course I'm trying to coordinate all this with the condo people to make sure that the back stairs are clear.

Never shopping at Best Buy again.

Today was appliance delivery day, when we were going to get a full set of new appliances.

The refrigerator and the over could not be brought up because the downstairs neighbor across the stairway has a big set of utility shelves right at the top of the stairs and the installers said they wouldn't be able to get the fridge or the oven up. And when they looked at the front entrance, they said it was too narrow.

The dishwasher could not be installed because the valves on the pipe leading to it were stuck, so the installers could not be sure they would be able to turn off the water.

We got a new microwave, which was the appliance we least needed a new one of.

Hooray.

Almost 20 years ago, when I first moved out from my parents' house, I had to go get a bunch of furniture. One of those items was a corner computer desk, with an extendible keyboard tray and a couple shelves up above to store things. I bought that desk and it came with me to my new apartment, sitting in the corner, and then we moved to Japan. My parents kept the desk for three years while I sat on the floor under a kotatsu and developed a taste for sitting on the floor. But it's basically impossible to get a floor desk in America, so when we moved back I went back to my old desk even as we had a shikibuton to sleep on and a low, chabudai-style table to eat dinner at. But I never stopped wanting to sit on the floor, and I never stopped trying to find a way to get a floor desk. Shipping one here would have been prohibitively expensive--I checked the reshipper sites and they were all like "The desk costs ¥35,000 and then shipping it to America costs ¥45,000" so of course I didn't go with that option.

But, recently my father mentioned that in his workshop he had an angle grinder and if I asked, would be willing to grind some angles for me. With that knowledge, I bought a simple desk on Wayfair, gave him the legs and the appropriate measurements, took the legs back with thanks when he was done, and bought a few more things to assemble my floor desk and behold:



Small bookshelf tucked on its side below for extra storage in the part of the L I don't sit in. There's no room for a dual clip-on slide-in keyboard tray assembly--most of them require 33 inches and I only have 27 inches of usable space--so I got a single-point swivel one that can turn around and fold under the desk, and then tuck the floor chair in after it. There's another storage area under the meeting point of the L, where in a full-sized desk you could put the computer tower, but I stuck that behind the two monitors with the fans facing behind the monitors, against the windows (where it should be cooler most of the time). Down below are copies of my alumni magazine that I need to read, the dango daikazoku from Clannad, a Vash the Stampede plush I got from...somewhere, and a few odds and ends. The stuffed animals and souvenirs (a myrtlewood carved seal from Oregon, a statue of the merlion from Singapore, the bells I had on my walking stick when I climbed Mt. Fuji) are on two little shelves I got, though Laila often comes over and steals the amiibo that are visible there. The two foxes were made by redpikachu and the slime and Neko Atsume cat are both from crane games in Japan. The speakers are basic Pebble speakers from Amazon, because my old speakers broke when I was moving everything around between my two desks. The sound is only okay, but most of the time I have my headphones in anyway if I'm doing anything that actually has sound. That's the one part of the setup I'm still waiting for--a hook to attach to the back of the monitor to use as a headphone hook.

I didn't put the Kirby stickers on there, but I had Kirby stickers and sashagee thought they needed to go somewhere.

It's really comfortable to sit in! The keyboard was too high until sashagee noticed that it had an adjustable setting, and now I can sit here with my work laptop on the desk and work and then sit here later and work on personal projects without much problem. Sitting on the floor means I fidget a lot, which is good because sitting in one position without moving is what causes most of the sitting-related health problems, and having to get up and down off the ground helps get me a lot of exercise. I finally have my dream computer setup--hopefully I'll never have to replace it, but with a toddler in the house, we'll see.

Got the checklist for the new appliances and it included "measure the spaces and make sure they fit," so I did. sashagee had measured before and assured me they fit, and she was right, but she hadn't been that careful about the depths. The new microwave would stick out two inches from where the old one was and the fridge was even more so--34 inches deep, compared to our current 28-inch fridge which already sticks out from the counter.

But that made me suspicious. I went back and checked the doorframe on the back door and...33 inches. Even if we take the door off, the fridge won't fit through.

So, no appliance delivery today. Back to looking.

Laila is two now!

sashagee really loves themed birthdays, and online she found an invitation for a "groovy twos" birthday, so she got a bunch of peace and flower themed stickers, balloons, and garlands and got the house all decorated. We were originally going to hold it in a park by the beach, but the weather report kept calling for thunderstorms and changing when in the day they were going to be, so to be cautious we moved it to our house. The weather turned out fine, if a bit cold, but we had plenty of room for people so it all worked out.

Laila had a great time:


We didn't have any birthday candles, but we did have a leftover Ḥanukah candle, so we used that. Laila doesn't have a grasp of blowing out candles yet but she knows what they are since we light Shabbat candles every Friday night.

The party was mostly adults but someone else we originally met at the Mishkan baby group came with her older son and her daughter Laila's age. Laila and her played together with the Sesame Street toys that Laila got--Laila's favorite is the Count; she can already say "Two! Ah ha ha!"--and the other girl's favorite is Elmo, though she also uses Elmo to mean "a Sesame Street character." That meant they spent a while trading characters back and forth and having a great time. I was a bit more worried about the older boy since he was the only person there his age, but he turned out fine. We have a ball pit that's also full of stuffed animals and he immediately went over there and just melded into the ball pit. Even with around twenty adults milling around he was doing fine.

Laila had a great time running around, checking out her presents, eating tacos while sitting on her grandmother's lap, and seeing everyone.

In Laila news, she's using more words. Just today she was in the bathroom and looked at the bath and said "Not now?" and when sashagee confirmed that it wasn't bath time she ran away laughing--sashagee thinks she's happy she was understood. Yesterday I took her to the park and she ran around for fifteen minutes and then decided she had enough--she walked over to the park gate and said, "Go. Go. Gooooooo" and we left. She's started finding foods that she likes and foods that she doesn't like. She's a huge fan of meat and bread, and likes blueberries and bananas. She likes broccoli and cucumbers too but not as much, so I spend some time feeding them to her. Her latest thing is that she's decided she doesn't like sitting down in her chair for meals anymore, she wants to sit on our laps. It makes it much more difficult to eat meals but we know that there'll be a day when she doesn't want to sit in our laps at all anymore, so we let her sit there now. She decided that's what she wants to do one day, and some day she'll change her mind.

In addition to the other toddler at the party, Laila played with a kid at the park! Little kids are so funny when they're playing since they don't really know how to interact with each other, but there was a little boy who wanted Laila to draw on the slide with chalk, so she did that for a bit. Then she wandered off and the boy was obviously sad she left, but he couldn't talk yet, so he kind of yelled incoherently at her and Laila was clearly like "I don't understand you" and wandered away. Even when he got her attention and handed her a chalk again, she held onto it for a moment, gave it back, and then left. Social skill are skills--they need to be learned.

I'll need to change the tag. She's not a baby anymore!

Insomnia and waking up before dawn--not a good combination.

Today is תענית בכורות ta’anit beḥorot, the Fast of the Firstborn, in commemoration of the innocents who died in Egypt as part of G-d's work to free the Children of Israel. It's a reminder that even in a righteous war, sometimes bystanders suffer, and that freedom from oppression almost always comes with a cost in blood. The story mentions that "G-d hardened Pharaoh's heart" but people often forget that this happens after Pharaoh hardens his own heart multiple times, and when Pharaoh pursued them to the Sea of Reeds, all G-d did was tip Pharaoh over into vengeance since he had already changed his mind about having let the Children of Israel go (Exodus 14:5). And in modern times, it takes no divine prodding for oppressive structures to remain in place. The message of the plagues is that the struggle against oppression is worth fighting, even if it leads to blood, and the message of ta’anit beḥorot is that those who die in the fight should be remembered.

I'm definitely glad that I'm hosting Second Seder this year, not first, and don't have to cook today.

The house is clean! As the prayer goes, may any ḥametz that remains in my house be as the dust of the earth, but hopefully there isn't much because I vacuumed multiple times, put the oven and toaster oven on self-cleaning, washed the counters and tables with boiling water, scrubbed the floor...and yet, I'm sure Laila found some way to secrete some ḥametz somewhere because babies are chaos. I remember seeing a tweet from an archeologist who talked about how they have a specific word for the layer of garbage that often exists in the corners of houses and wondering how our ancestors could ever have let things get so bad, and then it ended with "Now I have a toddler and now I understand." Laila's very cute but she certainly does work against any kind of schedule.

Tonight we're going to First Seder at britshlez's and then tomorrow I'm spending most of the day cooking and then hosting Second Seder. The last time I hosted there were fifteen people in attendance. There won't be nearly as many people this time, but hopefully it will be just as lovely.

Alright, time to get ready for work.

I knew that children were plaguebearers, of course, but I didn't expect that to be the case until she started going to school! Laila got sick from something, somewhere--who knows where--and for her, it was just her being a bit more sniffly than usual. She still doesn't know how to deal with colds, and sashagee noticed that Laila had some gunk coming out of her eyes because her nose was clogged, but a bit of work with one of those baby nose-suckers cleared it right up. That's the extent of the damage that Laila suffered.

Not so sashagee and me. I ran a fever of 38.7° last night and decided not to take any medicine for it, since I read an article a few years ago about how fever is the body's natural antibiotic and fever-reducing medicine can prolong illness as long as the fever isn't too severe. It mostly seems to have worked--I slept terribly, going to bed at 9:30 p.m. and waking up at 8 a.m. but only getting 7 hours or sleep and 0 minutes of deep sleep according to my watch, but I don't have a fever today and feel much better. That's not true for sashagee, who spent this afternoon napping and who feels worse today than she did yesterday. Her health is definitely still more delicate than mine is, though, so that's probably part of why she's having more trouble. I'm going to give her as much help as I can and hope that she's feeling better tomorrow!

Haven't done a generic update in a while.

Last weekend--originally it was going to be Saturday but we moved it to Sunday--we went with my parents to the orchid show at the Botanic Gardens. The last time I went was to the neon-lit night orchid exhibit in 2020, and I'm glad I saw that then because this weekend was back to normal. It was also packed--we nearly didn't make our ticket time because we arrived at the gardens early enough and then joined a long line of cars trying to get in and parked. Everyone wanted to get out into that warm, sunny, 21°C weather. There was someone directing traffic inside the orchid exhibit, which I've never seen before--it's always been popular but still sparse enough that it's easy to move around in. This time it was packed, but no so packed that we couldn't stop for papa to take some family photos:


We brought a stroller, but papa was happy to carry Laila most of the time. It's only fair--when he's over at our home he's usually working on some task and doesn't get to interact with Laila was much as nana does. This time he showed Laila all the orchids, she kept trying to grab and eat the orchids, and a good time was had by all, even with the crowding. Someone even called Laila a beautiful flower.

After we saw all the orchids and the nearby desert exhibit, we were going to go check out the Japanese Garden or the prairie area, but sashagee wasn't feeling her best--we stopped by the smoothie station but it was closed for the season, so we headed home instead and my father got more of a chance to do some dad things, installing a gate at the top of the stairs so Laila won't take a tumble and putting some paint swatches on the wall. Soon our home will be sashageeified! I was fine with just having white or off-white walls, though admittedly that was mostly based on me rarely being home. Now that I'm home all the time, and will be home more often in the future even after the end of the Plague Years, maybe some more colorful walls would be nice. And Laila will certainly like them more.

On Monday sashagee was still feeling well so we took a walk down to the Middle Eastern Grocery store! I offered to carry Laila but sashagee pushed the stroller, because she said she wanted to be the proud mom pushing a cute baby around, and we did get several people telling us how cute Laila was! We stocked up on hummus and pita and halvah and then stopped by at George's on the way home, so we could get one last ice cream there before they close for good at the end of the month. They didn't have the spicy whiskey and green tea combo that I used to get, but the strawberry and maple nut I got was delicious too.

Sadly, sashagee doesn't seem to be responding well to her medicine. She started it on Saturday, which was why we were able to do so much the last couple days. But yesterday her symptoms started up again, and while today they're better, they're still there. She probably just needs her dosage adjusted, but it's a bit disheartening that after she finally thought she found a solution she's feeling worse again. Hopefully a bit of change is all it takes and then we'll be going on family walks in the sunshine!

One of these days soon I won't be able to use the "Little Baby Laila's Big Baby [X]" construction anymore and I'll be terribly sad.

For the last six months, Laila has slept in our room next to our bed, but she's almost gotten too big for her bassinet. She'd sometimes thrash around at night, unable to really stretch out because she was too long for her bed. The office, where my computer and a couch and TV were, was going to be Laila's room but we didn't want to put her in there in her bassinet (since she could tip it over) and we wanted to keep her in the room with us until she was at least six months old. Well, the time has arrived, so we moved everything else out of the office and prepared to turn it into Laila's room.

We ordered a crib but it was two weeks late thanks to international shipping delays, but last weekend it finally came. We assembled it, put on the mattress cover that sashagee's grandmother sent us, I attached a sticker I bought with a sign to protect Laila from לִילִית‎, and we put her in her crib to sleep the night away.

The first thing she did when she woke up on Sunday morning? Big giant baby stretch.

sashagee has moved most of Laila's clothing and supplies into her room--the only thing left in there from before is the couch we used to watch television on, which sashagee now uses to breastfeed on--and put some dried flowers in a vase that Kaminaka-san made for me the last time I was in Japan. It's her own space and I hope she feels at home in it. But I do worry about her being in there alone.

It's definitely harder to find time to write when there's a baby in the house!

I'm sitting in the sun nook right now, working, but it's more of a rain nook. Summer held on a long time in Chicago--even as recently as a week ago the temperatures were above 20°C--but there's been a storm raging since last night and the wind is currently howling outside. Multiple people I know posted photos of downed trees this morning. It's only raining lightly now but everything is soaked. No more eating lunch on the balcony, at least not this week.

My parents came to visit on Saturday to see Laila, but my father couldn't resist checking on a bunch of stuff around the house. He brought me some bad news, unfortunately--his advice about the master bathroom shower was not to use it. It wasn't in amazing condition when I bought the place, but now the shower door is sticking because the top hinge is bending, the grout is in bad enough condition that water might be leaking through to the floor when the shower is on, and it's in otherwise bad shape. It needs a new enclosure and new tiling and might just need to be ripped out and put back together, which would be expensive right at a time when we need to buy Laila a crib because she's outgrowing her little bassinet. Fortunately we have another full bathroom we can use in the meantime and it's not like the plumbing has any problems, I just won't be taking a shower back there for a while. And I was so excited to have two showers when I moved in.

The last farmer's market of the year was last week, and we got there late so we didn't even really get anything. There weren't nearly as many Farmer's Market Dinner tag entries this year as there were last year because this year, sashagee really loved the Filipino food from Pecking Order, and since Pecking Order was there every other week, that's what we ended up getting half the time. And it's definitely a little harder to make delicious meals every day with a small baby! We've made bigger meals and eaten a lot of leftovers, but we actually go out to eat less than we did when sashagee was pregnant! Today we're slow-cooking shortribs and is making lunch. Yum.

Alright, back to work. Going to try to make my next post sooner than two weeks from now!

As I speak, the dryer is going with the first load of laundry.

As I wrote about a month ago, we had a leak in the wall that required a hefty plumber's bill to fix. I went back and forth with the association for a while trying to wrangle payment out of them and last Friday they finally sent me an email with an image of the full repayment. So I told my parents, and since my father had offered to come fix the wall, he and my mother spent pretty much the entire weekend at our place with him doing the work. I helped where I could, but to my slight embarrassment it ended up being probably 99% my father's doing--the laundry closet is small enough that only one person can fit in there at a time, so I couldn't even really help with painting or holding anything. I mostly just passed tools to him when he needed them and held down baseboard when he was cutting them.

But the laundry room is fixed and redone and now we can do laundry again! Time to do the fluffy new towels we bought.