And honestly something I should've done a while ago.

Just got my Tello sim, sure, my phone can use an e-sim, but just do a search for problems with those. Yeah, I think I'll stick to my physical sims thank you very much. Any how, what comes now is that once my old phone is charged, I'm going to move my Verizon sim back to that one, and put the Tello in my current phone and port Vik's / @Vik-Thor / Lirleni Hankeshe number to it. I'll prolly have to update my phone number with all my gig apps, maybe tweak a few other things here and there, but we should be up and running by the end of the weekend (Monday), just in time for work.

Honestly I should've done this a while ago, I've had his number sitting at Verizon paying... I'm not sure how much a month, in case I want to recover his phone. Frankly I don't think I'm going to be able to recover it, I can get his iCloud through the courts, and we're going with that as we have some other matters that will require the courts for any how, so might as well save the money. Plus according to Verizon I only use around 12G of data for work, so we'll see how well a prepaid works, unlimited data only because its like $2-3 more than a 15G plan. If it doesn't work, I can just swap the SIMs around, and try again maybe with someone else down the road.

I don't think switching from Verizon will really save me that much, the package deal I have going is saving me on Internet and streaming, and I'll prolly lose both of those if'n I leave, so that'll likely eat up any savings I have, but still, I hate spending money unnecessarily. Oh, and there is a prepaid version of the 5G home internet, so that might be a cheap alternative, that just leaves the streaming service, and... Ehhh, not sure I need it. Besides, 🏴‍☠️ is always an option.

So, in a couple hours, assuming I'm not napping (tired from clearing the driveway), we'll start the process and see how many things break.

#cellphone #life #changes #Tello

And I expect it'll be a better one, I'll prolly jinx m'self if'n I claim it can't get worse, but after a year where my husband died less than a month after my birthday, and two or so months later the room mate had to put his cat down, the cat we took care of because she didn't like him..

Yeah, its been a hell of a year. Its not that there can't be other losses, there will be at some point in the future, but with older family members, its sorta expected that you'll outlive them, that's just life, but when they're only 5 or so years older? Yeah, I was starting to rough out plans for our retirement, with an expectation of at least another decade together, hopefully two.

So what's the plan this year?

As someone wisely said, do I look like I have a plan?
Ok, seriously, not much, clear this place out, fix it up (anyone know a good contractor in #stl ?) a little bit, and downsize, the latter likely resulting in me moving out of state, because Republican states suck, but not sure where I'm going, likely Illinois, but Maryland and Pennsylvania are also possibles. First step of clearing this place out was done yesterday, rented two tables at the Sunset Hills community center for the first three flea markets, March, April and May, and while I'll still be selling stuff before that, that'll be when I really get things going.

Speaking of selling, anyone need any clothing?

Any how, that's about all, other than maybe building an electric kei van, finally found an engine small enough. Yes, small enough, there's something you never here with an engine swap.

And now, onwards with #today , grocery shopping and... Pack a few more things up for shipping.

#life
#newyear
#future

Two weeks since my last post, and... Well, not much going on here. Little of this, little of that.
Lets see, 18th I met with the lawyer to wrap up the estate, Vik hadn't planned on going so soon, somewhat surprising after losing his mom a few years, but then there are really two ways to react to that, plan for your time, or try not to think about it. Guess which one he did? Yeah, bunch of accounts don't have a beneficiary, so the lawyer is working on that including subpoenaing companies for the amounts as they're not particularly interested in giving it out to a non-account holder. Well, should be, I haven't heard from them since that meeting, and I do need to pay a retainer and such before they can do anything, so going to have to check in with them.
Thanksgiving was a big nothing, his family which I don't know all that well is 150 or so miles away. I had been thinking of wandering around eastern IL along I70 near to the Indiana border as its possibly where I'll relocate to, but just didn't feel like it in the end, which was prolly good considering the storm that hit today. Instead I've been doing various things around the house, packing up the books my sister wants from Vik's collection, ditto for the comics @RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist wants, though those will likely get repacked into smaller flat rate boxes, as you're not supposed to ship comics Media Mail.
Also moved the altar to the book case the living room TV'd been on, I moved the TV, the unfinished media computer and the power station or whatever you call it into the computer room.

A little cramped compared to the table, but it'll do for now, after all, long term I expect to get rid of that book case as well as some of the others, so it'll be re-located to a semi-permanent home, permanent until I move then.

What else...
Cancelled the WalMart+ membership, not out of any belief of striking back at them or anything, its just that now its me as both Vik and the roomy's cat passed, it just doesn't seem worth it, I get very use out of it, the only thing of value in there is the Parmount+ membership, and that's cheaper than the W+ membership. Sure, W+ offers an electric car charging discount, much like they do for fuel, however that's only for Walmart charging, and that's only in like half a dozen states right now, who knows when it'll get here, plus I mostly charge at home.
Ordering a Boox Go7 tablet/e reader tonight, its basically an Android tablet with an e-ink screen, which should work for most of what I use my tablet for. Oddly I can order it direct cheaper than I can get it from WalMart.

Oh, did a small project on T-day, removed the shower doors as I've never been a fan of them. Oddly, I tossed them up on Marketplace for shits and giggles, a set of shower doors, tracks and hardware, dirty but complete free... And they were taken less than 6 hours later. Didn't think anyone wanted them any more, colour me shocked.

Kinda chipping away at various little projects, debating how I want to handle the books and comics, prolly contact Half-Price Books for the former, I have a CSV file with all of them, as for the comics... Not sure, have a store that's supposed to be buying them, but I'll prolly be old and grey by the time they make an offer, so I might just throw the collection on Marketplace at a flat price and see what I get, 10,500 comics with a few graphic novels for... $7K maybe? I think that's a very generous price, prolly higher than a store would give me, but still quite reasonable.

Beyond that, gotta get my insurance situation sorted out, and that's about it other than chipping away at the estate.

#life #death #estate #comics

What a day, slept fine far as I know, not through the night, but I never do that, but wasn't up more than usual. But dreams, I rarely remember dreaming, let alone what I dreamed, but I did sorta remember these, at least in as much as they were weird, very trippy.

So for whatever reason I was dragging this morning, but I did get out of the house close to on time so I could go sit at Bread Co and wait for RoadieXD to drop jobs... And nothing today, action there's been nothing for a few weeks I think, however I haven't had the time to work for them as I've mostly transitioned back to BetterTrucks, so I was checking as frequently, but Tues is a free day, so we were looking for something today. No dice, so I'm going to have to decide what to do with my Tues in the future, maybe back to Better Trucks, or be more careful on Sunday so I can catch when Jitsu drops their Tues blocks, not sure yet. I did however while I was out make a payment on his car, once his burial and memorial is sorted, I'll have to look at what's left of his life insurance and see if'n buying out the car is an option, but with no TOD, taking ownership might be tricky, I'm going to see if'n the Credit Union can help with that by repossessing the car on paper, then selling it to me for the pay off amount and some extra fees, otherwise there's a form to fill that will transfer ownership so long as the car isn't worth too much, and of course probate court is an option, but I'd rather not deal with that if I don't have to.

Either way, came home, finished my usual web surfing, though that took longer than usual as I was still dragging. And sleepy, very sleepy. I did wind up taking a nap, but do need to figure out why I've been sleepy lately, been busy getting the comics ready for sale to the tune of 20 or so hours a week on top of 30 to 35 hours of work, sometimes more on either of those, plus chores. Oh, and the yard work, part of a much larger project that was going to involve me, Vik and our room mate, the latter is helping here and there, but I'm mostly getting the backyard sorted out, it serves as a break from everything else, but its a large project, the yard waste pile is now 6ft or so, and we have piles of pavers and concrete. It is however mostly done, just need a few cubic yards of dirt to fill in some holes, and its done. Might also be thyroid or vitamin, my mom has basically no thyroid function and my sister very little, so runs in the family, but that'll have to wait until I find some insurance (anyone want to help with that?). If its vitamin, that's going to be tricky, I did try to go back to multivitamins, Vik had about a half bottle left here, but they turn my stomach, so that's not an option.

Should've called the cemetery about the burial, but was tired, so napped, then scanned a shelf of comics, and here we are. I suspect the burial is part of my problem last night and today, Vik was often out late whether he had game, town council meeting, pen club meeting, genealogy research, and so on, so him not being here is only unusual in the fact that its for an extended period, since I haven't cleaned out much of his stuff yet, things feel mostly normal here, but planning his burial... Yeah, that kinda hammers things home.

Need to figure out dinner, surf the web and then bed.

#today #life

Three weeks since my husband passed. I took this week off in a number of ways, I went back to work, I needed to get some normal back in my life.

Bit of a rough week, little work for me Wednesday and Thursday, so I worked yesterday, and still fell short of goal. Wednesday wasn't a surprise, my main #gig RXD doesn't have much on Wednesday, and most of what they have is garbage, but Thursday was a surprise, I couldn't get a route for the life of me. Also I wasn't available Monday as I was taking care of things at his office.

This week I've got a Better Trucks shift lined up for Wednesday, and depending on how the week goes, I might start signing up for more shifts. Pay wise its better than RXD, however I actually have to work, so... Might go back to my old zone if'n I do, my husband was a good part of why I dropped it, at least until winter, that zone has an 1140 load time and takes 6 to 8 hours, so I'd be getting home after him by an hour or two, no more dinner together. Now though? Yeah, my night vision sucks, so when it starts getting dark at 1700, I'll have to drop it again if'n they don't shift the load time earlier by then.

Any how, as I said, going for a normal week, not dealing with his passing in any way this week, being a little lazy, I do have some proofread work that I should've been doing, I'll just have to make time this coming week to get that done.

Friday brought an interesting phone call from the crematorium, I had been wondering what the delay is. Apparently they're having problems getting his death certificate signed, for some reason his GP was listed, and he refused to sign it for obvious reasons, he works out of SSM DePaul, Vik died at SSM SLU, so no real surprise that he's refusing to sign when he wasn't there. Not sure if'n that was a mistake, or its standard practice out here for his GP to sign off on a nature cause death. I've emailed them about the mistake, and I think they were contacting the city Medical Examiner for some help, so hopefully this'll be sorted soon, and things can get moving, I kinda need the death certificate to close accounts, collect life insurance, and so on. Might also need to grab a few copies of my marriage license as well, might be necessary to prove our marriage.

Got his car cleaned out today, though the interior will definitely need cleaning. Also have a link for sorting out the title as he didn't put down a TOD for whatever reason. Trying to avoid probate court if all possible, I mean my relationship with his family is fine, they expect that I inherit everything, so there's no real reason to get the courts involved, the only thing is on Apple, but if'n I'm reading that right, that'll just get me access to his iCloud, and I'm not sure I need anything there.

So, that's about all the news.

#family #Life #death

And what is there to say, I'm still here. Really, it's not been a really notable one, which I suppose is a blessing in itself, I mean I've lost my father a couple years back, and it's inevitable that I'll lose more in the future, but this year wasn't one of those.

Work, still the perfect job for me, I'm almost undeniably autistic, and have found the perfect place for me. Of course the tariff threats worry me as my job is delivery, which is of course import driven, heavily Chinese imports driven. But what can I do but wait and see? On the work side, we have streamlined things, shut down my LLC, everything I was doing had fallen under the sole proprietor envelope, so no point in wasting money on that and making things more complicated.

Money, we survived, but our backup account is in rough shape, down around $1K maybe. Checking is always depleted, but that's how our finances are set up. Property saving account is going strong, I was originally going to put it into a short term CD, but I'm leaning towards using it for home improvements instead. We will be reducing how much we put into property by $50 every two weeks as well as potentially increasing my pay and lowering the phone bill, so if'n things don't change too much we'll end 2025 better, but time will tell.

And me? I work, read, occasionally proofread fan fics, and that's about it, assuming I even have energy for that, something that's been a problem lately, not sure if'n it's winter issues, or something else. I don't really go anywhere, the world is too peopley for me. Seriously, I mean my job requires about 1 minute of interaction with people, otherwise interaction is option or accidental. I want to retire somewhere rural, maybe southern IL, where there's less people.

I'd post a year end selfie, but I need to shave rather badly.
Whelp, onwards, it's 2025 (time not year) as I type this, that seems appropriate. Bedtime will prolly be within an hour, sleep when I get to it, unless something interesting pops up on one of my apps.

#2024recap #life

Yeah, just not feeling it this year. I supposed compared to many my year has been pretty good, and it has, but the tail end, woo, chaotic, but that was mostly my fault.

Nov was spent mostly not working as my truck spent nearly three weeks in the shop trying to find a problem. Three weeks and nearly a thousand dollars by the time all was said and done. I had the money, but that took a bite out of company finances. And of course that means not contributing to the house, no work equals no paycheck after all, so the house is a bit strained right now including back up funds. And there were some bumps with the room mate's share of things, he switched banks and is now in the same credit union as us, however they don't have an easy way to transfer funds between members, it's through a third party, it's manual, and it's slow, like three days assuming you don't hit a holiday or weekend. Once again, nothing big, just disruptive.
Oh, and did I mention getting a new car? Yeah, been meaning to do that for like a year, but the three weeks of repair hell led to it finally happening, and luckily only $2500 out of pocket and no payments. Yes, the company was doing really good.
Heck, and then there was dissolving my LLC, it hasn't been doing anything in a year, but it was the holder of my domain name, so that meant dissolving the company, changing insurance, getting rid of the bank account, changing email, and on. Yeah, that's been chaotic, and it's still going on, though it's at least down to a trickle.

Dec is fine, work's going great, I'm settling into the car, capacity and range, especially winter range was a big concern. Despite having electric cars in the household for three years and being gung ho on electric vehicles, the transition wasn't quite as smooth as it could be because I was still a bit nervous about what the limits would be and how they'd effect the job. Frankly, no real change. Sure, the lack of seat and steering wheel heaters means I have to charge more than I'd planned, and my fuel savings will likely be smaller than expected, but that's basically it, no changes needed, Chevy Bolts are surprisingly roomy inside.
Outside of that, all that's kept me from Christmas shopping and decoration, I mean all the chaos I mentioned, plus work, plus story proofreading equals little spare time, and no real motivation. Wed I finally got the inflatables set up after getting the lights on the garage, but the wind picked up and I didn't feel real safe going up on the roof, so the main string of lights hasn't gone up. And today its 36°F and raining, so that's not happening, ditto for tomorrow. Wed is my last day off, so maybe then if'n the weather is good, otherwise no Christmas lights this year. I think I also have a car costume 'round here, but no radiator grill means how do I put the nose on? And then there's the tree, going to have to figure out how to make some room in the living room, between the record player on the folding chair, the unfinished computer project on the couch and a dismantled desk that no one wants to buy taking up the spare living room space... Ummm, where to I put it?

Any how, that's about where things are here, bit more than a month, and then we'll see how the new admin messes up my life, my livelihood is very much in danger, but no use worrying about something I can't change.

#life #christmas2024 #electriccar

Frankly, I'm just moving ahead as planned, and waiting to see whether things'll get derailed, there are just too many variables.

I've already said that the pride, humanity and pagan flags out front aren't going anywhere, or at least not unless they get replaced with something better, metal signs I can attach to the house would be good, something that can't be torn or burnt. While I don't have the skills to do it, I've suggested starting a liberal party to do what the Democrats won't, and while I can neither start it nor manage it, I'll be happy to loan my help whether an unskilled person can. Oh, and did I forget to mention that I bought an electric car to replace the SUV I was using for delivery?

What else is on the agenda? Well, assuming things don't get real bad, in the next few years, solar panels, wind power maybe, some work on the house... win the lottery and I'll expand it. Maybe get more property, dunno. Ideally I'd retire to rural southern IL, get a few acres, put an off-grid or mostly off-grid shed home together, and start selling plots to others that want a safe place to go, heck, maybe even create a tiny town to go with the tiny home, who knows. Prolly a pipe dream, but I'm certainly not giving up dreaming.

But what about Trump and the Repuglicans?
What about them? Trump's a loud mouth idiot who's nothing without his supporters and yes men. Sure, some of the Reps will definitely kiss his ring, Johnson was no surprise, if he didn't he likely wouldn't be speaker much more, he only got the job as he was the least bad choice. And Cruz will of course, he's a squealer, I can always recognize the squealers... I mean, he's a sell out. I'm wondering all of those that don't have an election coming up any time are going to do, the threat of a challenger, the threat of losing their job I think is what keeps most Repugs in line, but when that threat is gone? It's not going to be good, that's for sure, but it might wind up not being that bad, if'n Trump meets any resistance. And then there's all the faithful who are going to find out just how bad they screwed up voting for him, they're going to be out for blood, so a lot of politicians are going to have to decide who's scarier, the voters or Trump.

In the eighties we all were scared that they were going to drop the bomb, but after a while, we just got on with life, if it happened, we'd deal with it then, best we could do was just go on living until we knew what was coming.

#uspol #life

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