One Wedding and a Furnace...

My fifth day of NaNoWriMo hasn't been terribly awesome. I did actually write a tiny bit on my project, but I spent most of the day fretting and chasing after things involving our furnace broiler.

Last night we had a little scare. The pressure rose up to 35, almost 40. That's outside of the safe zone by quite a bit. Normally, the pressure hovers between 10 and 20. I did the only thing I knew to do: bleed the radiators. That seemed to work. Only later, it happened again. This went on all night, and I ended up calling Xcel Energy at 11:00 pm. We have a HomeSmart plan with them that covers our furnace. So, they called in the people they work with, KB Furances, and I talked to a very helpful guy on the phone to tried to talk me through the possible problems. BEFORE ALL YOU SUPER-HANDY PEOPLE START OFFERING ADVICE, YOU'RE WRONG! Seriously, you, the Internet and several furance guys all told me the same thing: you need to drain your overflow tank. Yeah, well, no.... Turns out our overflow tank hasn't worked properly in years, nay, probably decades, (I found this out, of course, long after spending several hours and scrapping several knuckles attaching a garden hose while standing on a ladder.) At any rate, after spending the day fussing and worrying and dealing with furnace guys and reading everything about radiators on the Internet, I finally reconfigured the McGyver that had been working for the last several millineum (er, at least since Mongomery Ward sold boilers), and, as Scotty so often says, "She's holdin' steady, captain!"

So my day was kind of shot.

I did, however, commit a bit of fan art, which I'll share at a later date. I'd post it now, but I'd like to be able to link to the completed story that it belongs to--but my friend empty_mirrorsand I are still writing that.

Saturday was a busy, yet fun day. We had a family wedding, which, quite frankly, I'd been dreading. It was for Shawn's neice who is technically a step-neice, and I only mention that because it sort of MATTERS to them in a you're-not-one-of-us way, or at least, we always got the impression that it did. We did want to go, however, because we had the opportunity to hang out with the groom one time when the family gathered for its semi-annual fleischkuekle deep fry, and discovered he was an amazingly nice young man from Argentina named Matyas with a soft-spoken (sometimes deadpan) sense of humor, and we thought, well, we should go for him if nothing else.

Turns out the wedding was kind of awesome. At one point I was pretty sure I was in hell, but that was only because I got cornered by a particular relative with whom I ALWAYS exchange words (and not the pleasant ones.) The ceremony itself was officiated by the very same Unitarian minister who took care not only of our nephew Adam's funeral, but our daughter Ella's as well. She's an amazingly good minister and made the wedding feel spontaneous, genuine and full of laughter.

At the reception we were stuck at the table wedged into the far back corner, which we promptly labeled the Misfits Table. Luckily, when we were joined by another couple, I decided to channel my inner (okay, always outer and always on) best extroverted hostess. I asked all sorts of interesting questions and managed to hand out one of my writing business cards.... because... well, because I ALWAYS DO THAT. (My "stage mom" father should be proud.)

But being that "on" always wears me out, so I slept like a rock, even with the time change.

Sunday, I had an event where I was meant to be the star of a koffeeklatch discussion with MinnSpec (the Minnesota Speculative Fiction Writers group.) I felt sort of babbly and over-shary, but whatever. No one ran from the room screaming and I was able to give away the last of my contributor copies of PRECINCT 13 as freebies. So I call it a win. I also met up with one of my NaNoWriMo local writing buddies, and we chatted a long time afterwards about writing in general and NaNo in specific.

I got home a bit later than expected and discovered Mason's playdate already in progress. Mason's across-the-street buddies invited him and his friend out to play swords and capture the flag and whatever "spud" is. That was lovely, actually, because it meant us grow-ups (which included naomikritzer got to talk without child-filters on, and I always love hanging out with Naomi, regardless.

A good weekend until the whole furnace debacle, actually. As I said on Facebook, I love owning an old home, but I don't always love old plumbing (and other old fixtures.) Also, occassional I miss having a landlord on speed dial to whom I could simply say, "Fix this!" Even if they ignored the problem, it wouldn't be _mine_, you know?

Okay, back to the writing grindstone. I still have Loft proposals to write as well as NaNo projects. *sigh*