Post-fire Recap, part 1
Oct. 1st, 2022 03:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogHere's the first piece of the collected writings of a Saskatchewan puppy girl since the fire.
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September 7, 8:14 AM
Ok, I just managed to get access to this account again. Yay!
The reason I haven't had access is that Miriam and I just lost basically every single thing we owned here in Regina in a fire at our condo a couple days ago. Boo? That's probably the wrong word, but what do I even say?
She and I are both fine, physically. Our dog, Ella, is ok too and with us here with us. Our cat, Seregil, did not survive.
I'm still in shock and figuring out how to process this. More later.
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Septmeber 7, 8:22 AM
News article about the fire. Yes, that was (is?) our condo.
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Septemeber 7, 8:28 AM
I do not have access to my Gmail account at this time, so I will not be able to be in touch with anyone via email right now.
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September 7, 9:38 AM
I may ask for some help and thoughts here on replacing possessions, and I'm looking for thoughts on cell phones.
My phone was in the condo and it seems unlikely it survived, though we'll find out today when we meet the adjuster there. So I need to replace my phone.
In the past, I've always just bought whatever is cheap from a reliable seller on Ebay. However, both because it's easier for insurance purposes and because I need a phone sooner rather than later, we're probably going to buy one at Costco maybe?
I really don't do much with my phone, so I'm just looking at the cheapest things they have. I don't do any games other than stuff like logic puzzles or Picross. It would be nice to be able to do Discord video chats or Zoom calls on it though.
Do folks like Mark or others who know the hardware a lot better than I do have thoughts on these three options? I can only see the price on one of them because I don't have a membership yet. These are all $500 or less though according to the filters.
A stylus would be nice, but I think battery life would be even better. Two phones ago I had a Moto E4 Plus with the extra battery life and I really liked it.
Motorola G Play 32GB
Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 128GB
Moto G Stylus 5G
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September 7, 2:57 PM
I'm running around a lot today, but I thought I'd share a picture of my external drive I retrieved from the condo.
WD Elements. Well, at least *one* element has been here, for sure. I'll leave which one as an exercise for the reader.
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September 7, 4:06 PM
The desktop PC I'm borrowing use of while at our friends' place has colored lights on the motherboard and other places. When they flicker red, orange, or yellow, I sometimes see it out of the corner of my eye and get a little nervous. Yesterday I was using their microwave and felt a little anxiety about leaving it unattended.
This is the first time I've experienced serious trauma after becoming trauma-aware enough to realize, in real-time, that I am experiencing some serious trauma that I'm probably going to need some help (i.e. therapy) to cope with.
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September 8, 2:57 PM
I don't think I said, outside of comments, what caused the fire.
There seems to have been something wrong with the oven. We were running the self-clean for the first time. We started it up, then went out for about an hour to get a couple things from Lowe's. We came back, all was fine, and we left with the dog for the dog park. We came back in another hour and drove up to find fire trucks and police blocking off the road as they worked to finish extinguishing the flames.
The self-clean smell was making it hard for Miriam to breath, so we figured we'd spend a lot of the time the oven was self-cleaning doing errands and things. We left all the doors and windows open to keep the place aired out, except the bedroom to keep the smell out. Because of the closed door, the bedroom is the only room where much of anything survived the fire.
I should add that I had just scraped the oven racks clean with steel wool and a screwdriver, and had cleaned the bottom of the oven with kitchen cleaner. There wasn't any grease or oil in there, or anything else. Just that black char that always kind of builds up on the bottom of an oven.
From Good Housekeeping
"Though you may have heard otherwise and that burning plastic smell may spook you, it’s perfectly safe to run the self-clean feature whether you and your family (yes, babies included) are home or not, says Thermador."
Even Consumer Reports articles like "Is it Safe to Run Your Oven's Self-cleaning Cycle?" only talk about potential damage to the oven, not potentially losing everything you own, your pets, or your life.
From that CR piece: "Don’t Let the Horror Stories Scare You...Casaregola has seen little evidence that running the self-clean cycle is likely to damage your oven." Well, I have to say, our oven got pretty fucking damaged, thank you very much, though that's kind of the least of our concerns.
I know they're probably as safe as any potentially deadly piece of home equipment can be, and that Miriam and I just got really, really unlucky. But I don't know if I'm ever going to feel safe using a self-clean on an oven after this. Ever.
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September 8, 3:14 PM
Huh. Vero just told me the queen of England (and technically Canada) died. I didn't notice: there was other stuff going on.
I've always thought it would be great if, after the queen finally dies, the rest of the royals would get together and say "You know, this monarchy thing is just kind of silly. Why don't we knock it off?"
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September 8, 9:47 PM
Another request for advice: data recovery services
Does anyone have experience with data recovery companies/services? I used to be superficially involved in connecting someone in my company to them, once in a long while, when I worked tech support, but I have no idea how much they cost then ('cause I didn't do the POs) or what companies are doing it and how good they are. That was more than 10 years ago.
I've gotten the impression that service could run from a few hundred dollars up to 1 or 2 thousand, so that won't come as a shock. I'm just wondering if any of you have positive or negative experiences with specific companies.
Thanks!
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September 9, 4:30 PM
The insurance company (one of them anyway: there are at least three involved, maybe more with 8 condo units having been affected) hired a private fire investigator to check out the scene.
Like the city inspector, he concluded it was the oven. He looked at it thoroughly and was able to give me more details.
All the burner elements on the top were off, so that wasn't a factor. I had a moment of near terror though. He pointed out how the two knobs on one side were clearly turned off. When he looked at the ones on the other side, he seemed like he was verbally building up to saying that one of them was turned on. "These two, on the other hand..." but he was actually just saying that because the knobs were missing and the shaft damaged, he had to open up the mechanism to see their status. And they were off too.
There is a vent that allows heat out of the oven in the form of a vertical pipe that opens up right under one of the burners. Looking down into the vent with a flashlight, he showed me that it was mostly, or possibly completely, blocked with something, probably grease.
What likely happened is the blocked vent allowed the oven to get too hot. So hot, in fact that the radiant heat ignited the TV stand (constructed of MDF) that was sitting close by its side. As he laid out his theory, I started feeling bad. Maybe I shouldn't have put something flammable next to the oven? But he pointed out that ovens are made to install directly up against cabinetry, and if a cabinet was pressed up against the side of the stove, it would have ignited too.
He said if I'd been home, maybe I'd have noticed the smoldering before ignition and turned it off. But Miriam and I have already talked about that and decided that we could very easily have both decided to lie down in the bedroom for a nap and died in the fire.
He figured out the stove's brand and located a user's manual for it. He said there aren't any warnings in the manual regarding this, and that there are no recalls for this model either.
So that's probably that.
Our condo is an end unit in a building of 12 condos. Each side of the building is three units long and two floors tall. Every condo except the four on the far end of the building has damage from smoke, water, or both, and everyone living in them has had to find temporary accommodations. I feel a significant amount of shame and sadness about disrupting so many people's lives, some with small children, even though I know rationally it's not my fault.
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September 10, 7:47 AM
I woke from an anxiety dream wherein my partner, some kind of hybrid of Miriam and my ex, had been doing things that hurt me deeply. Taking to Miriam about it helped. We talked about communication in our relationship, the ethics of having expectations of your partner(s), and what we would do if one of us was doing something the other couldn't be ok with. I felt a lot better, and am feeling pretty actively appreciative of the open, self-aware communication Miriam and I have 99% of the time.
And then Facebook showed me this almost disturbingly relevant post of mine from 2013. It is still essentially the way I see romantic relationships in my life, and I will share it here now.
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September 10, 9:12 PM
I a got a few things out of the condo today and took some pictures to help inventory for our insurance claim.
This was my Realistic Lab-2000 linear-tracking turntable (found with original manual at a Goodwill). It took a moment to figure out what it was. The circular thing is the platter.
It was not one of the things that came back with me.
My Klipsch bookshelf speakers were under it. I hadn't gotten them set up yet.
(Tagging Miriam so her friends are able to see these posts as well.)
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September 11, 7:45 PM
I just tried to call Ella and accidentally called her Seregil, and I'd thought an hour or so of crying was enough for today but clearly I was wrong.
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September 12, 8:23 AM
I'm afraid I'm not likely to be talking about much other than the fire here for some time. I was going to say I'm sorry, but I say I'm sorry too much. I'm not sorry. My life is centered on this right now. But if reading about this stuff all the time is stressing you out or just too much for whatever reason, feel free to snooze me for a while or whatever. Self care is important!
If you do read all of this stuff, don't feel obligated to try to find words to respond. Words are hard sometimes! Even just care and heart reacts help me feel cared for and thought of, and that's a lot.
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September 12, 8:30 AM
I'm pricing replacement TVs for the insurance claim and I realize I don't know anything about TVs. We had two, a 50" and a 45", both plasmas. We got one from a seller on Kijiji, and the other one I got for free 'cause it didn't work and I repaired it with $75 worth of parts.
Every TV you can buy now is a smart TV. I don't want a smart TV! I simply want to plug the cable in, select the right input, and see the pretty pictures. That's all I want. I certainly won't be connecting it to the internet!
"Class 4 series" "Dolby Vision". What the heck even are those? I don't know if I care enough to figure it out to be quite honest. Don't get me wrong: I'm perfectly well smart enough and tech-savvy enough to dig into modern TV specs. I just don't care that much. Though maybe I'm going to have to.
I'm going to try my best to find something comparable for the insurance, but plasma TVs haven't been made in a long time now, and the new ones have so many bells and whistles that "comparable" is hard to be sure of, you know?
Just realized I never got to try out the 3D feature of that 50" TV. Oh well. I probably never would have. Those glasses were expensive and not worth the money for a dead media format.
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September 12, 2:14 PM
Life is so crazy and sad right now. But our friends have been a godsend. Especially Vero and Jonathan who have given us their home essentially as our own since the day of the fire.
And this dog though! Her blissfully ignorant happiness is such a comfort sometimes.
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September 14, 9:47 AM
I'm at the condo to get a few last things out and to meet someone to sign something. I'm feeling angry about all this for the first time. It's interesting how we process this kind of event internally.
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September 14, 2:36 PM
I checked the mail while we were at the condo this morning and this had arrived. I'd originally hoped to put it in a window there, and that's sad. But the place we'll be staying has windows too!
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September 14, 10:32 PM
Wow. The internet at our new place.
Quoting a post from Miriam:
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September 14, 11:39 PM
Here's the living room of the new place, complete with bins of stuff retrieved from the condo and tied in garbage bags so we can't smell them.
It's a little hard being on our own after more than a week with Jonathan and Vero. I'm so emotional in general lately, and tonight I shed a few tears of loneliness. Being around good people has been more of a comfort than I can say. But I think we'll be seeing more of them, and that's a joy to look forward to.
The new place is fine. It's yet another new thing to get used to in the midst of all of this loss and change, and I think that's making me a little teary too.
Earlier today, an ambulance drove down our street with lights and siren on while I was bringing stuff in from the car. I kind of rushed inside, realizing I was having a panic attack, and I hugged Miriam and had another brief crying spell.
Things are still really hard from time to time, but they keep getting a little bit better. A long therapy session yesterday was a big help too.
We're getting through, and it's getting better.
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September 16, 8:57 AM
Looks like it's just a day or two past the 12 year anniversary of Miriam and I having met.
I think neither of us could have imagined the internal and external changes we've both gone through. I still keep loving her more and more.
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September 16, 3:32 PM
We picked up Seregil's collar today. It hurts a lot. But it also helps get rid of that ridiculous voice that keeps saying that maybe it's some kind of mistake and maybe he's still ok somewhere.
He's not. He was a good kitty, and he was happy, and we gave him a good home for as long as he was with us. He was very loved, and now he's gone, and it's going to be ok, and it won't always hurt so much.
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September 16, 8:19 PM
The data recovery company received my hard drive today. I got two quotes on the phone and the tech at the second place seemed really competent so I went with them. He thinks that there should still be data on the platters because if the temperature had gotten high enough to demagnetize the platters, the plastic shell would be totally gone. He quoted $500-$2000 if no internal parts need replacement, and up to $5000 if they need to replace heads or what-not. Fortunately, insurance will cover this. (Also, if they do not recover data, there is no charge.)
I'm annoyed that the insurance broker didn't explain better what is and is not covered and what part of the insurance covers it. If I had known that data recovery was covered, I might have gone for a higher cap. I also didn't know that the removal and disposal of what's left of all of our stuff is *also* coming out of our personal possessions coverage. Maybe I'll write more about that later.
For now, I'm really hoping to not lose tens of thousands of photos, as well as so many more things.
Actually, my password database ought to be on there too, and that would be *huge* to get access to again.
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September 17, 10:08 AM
Mark Balliet, Anthony Faust, David Trombley, and other electronics folks:
What would you say the modern equivalent of an HP, analog, 2 channel, 100mhz oscilloscope is? The model is 1741a if that helps.
Or maybe I should just find a used one? There's one on Ebay right now. This is confusing.
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September 17, 10:32 AM
Another in the "Trans? No I don't think I'm a woman, that doesn't make sense." series.
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September 17, 5:40 PM
I photographed records today for the insurance. Good luck replacing this one with trumpet playing by "Sathmo". I found it at a thrift store and bought it as a curiosity. Cursory googling suggested it might be a WW2 era bootleg, but I really don't know.
It got a little crispy on the bottom there...
ETA: I just looked again for Hae Shan records on Google and saw that I was misremembering. It was a Taiwan label of "dubious legality" that catered to US soldiers in the area in the 1960s and '70s.
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September 18, 12:13 AM
I spent a lot of time today inventorying the last stuff from the condo. I worked on a tarp out on the little porch just outside the door to keep the smoke smell outside and broken glass and char off the ground. There wasn't a lot volume-wise, but it was complex.
I autopsied our desktop PCs and photographed all the parts. CPUs, graphics cards, storage, memory, power supplies. Then I put the storage media aside just in case, put the other expensive parts in a bin also just in case, and walked the rest to the dumpster. That was emotionally hard, and I took a break.
I went through my box of records and photographed each one. Miriam photographing as I held up each one was a big help. The records were hard for me too. Some that hurt most were my 5LP set of Laurie Anderson's "United States Live," my three Moody Blues albums, four Tom Lehrer records, and my 2010 pressing of "In the Court of the Crimson King" on heavyweight vinyl. That last one was the first and only record I ever bought new. There's more, too, that I feel real personal loss about. And in general, it pains me to feel like I failed as a steward of these things that there are only so many copies of.
That was the hardest part of today. I'm going to have a really hard time getting myself to throw those damaged records with their water-soaked sleeves out. I took another break.
I also went through the board games. It turns out that the ones inside the rolling suitcase in the closet of the bedroom that didn't burn are ok. The suitcase absorbed any smoke and almost all the water before it got to them.
The games that were in the hall closet, though, are quite toasty. I had to open some of those up individually to document the expansions we owned for some. Though we still have to claim several hundred dollars worth of board games, it was really a relief to find that most of them survived. Precious little else did.
We're going through all the emails, online purchase records, photos, and anything else we can find to document stuff. I've realized both that I had more valuable equipment than I realized after 20 years of searching for hi-fi gear at thrift stores, and also that said gear is kind of difficult to document. To my surprise, it's likely several hundred dollars each for the equalizer and cd changer I probably paid 20 each for. Both had minor problems that I fixed. Mark help me resolder the power line to the display on the EQ. 100-150 for the turntable I paid 20 or 40 for. And the big one, the thousand dollar Marantz 2270 I near-stole for 70 at the Goodwill in Evanston. I opened up that Marantz and replaced burned out light bulbs and the yellowed velum light diffuser behind the dial and it was looking *so good*!
I'm grateful that my little Marantz and my Sherwood receiver are both still in Wisconsin, but damn. I lost most of the fruits of hunting for this stuff for decades. I hope insurance isn't going to fight about it too hard. If I get data back from my hard drive, there might be more pictures on it that could serve as documentation.
I went through my camera gear too. My Canon and my most expensive lens were on the bedside table and seem to be ok, though it's hard to be sure about smoke or dust. My Pentax that I inherited from my grandfather, though, is waterlogged, as are all the Pentax lenses and a couple of Canon ones that were all together in a backpack in the spare room.
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I'm going to leave it there for now. More in part 2.
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September 7, 8:14 AM
Ok, I just managed to get access to this account again. Yay!
The reason I haven't had access is that Miriam and I just lost basically every single thing we owned here in Regina in a fire at our condo a couple days ago. Boo? That's probably the wrong word, but what do I even say?
She and I are both fine, physically. Our dog, Ella, is ok too and with us here with us. Our cat, Seregil, did not survive.
I'm still in shock and figuring out how to process this. More later.
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Septmeber 7, 8:22 AM
News article about the fire. Yes, that was (is?) our condo.
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Septemeber 7, 8:28 AM
I do not have access to my Gmail account at this time, so I will not be able to be in touch with anyone via email right now.
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September 7, 9:38 AM
I may ask for some help and thoughts here on replacing possessions, and I'm looking for thoughts on cell phones.
My phone was in the condo and it seems unlikely it survived, though we'll find out today when we meet the adjuster there. So I need to replace my phone.
In the past, I've always just bought whatever is cheap from a reliable seller on Ebay. However, both because it's easier for insurance purposes and because I need a phone sooner rather than later, we're probably going to buy one at Costco maybe?
I really don't do much with my phone, so I'm just looking at the cheapest things they have. I don't do any games other than stuff like logic puzzles or Picross. It would be nice to be able to do Discord video chats or Zoom calls on it though.
Do folks like Mark or others who know the hardware a lot better than I do have thoughts on these three options? I can only see the price on one of them because I don't have a membership yet. These are all $500 or less though according to the filters.
A stylus would be nice, but I think battery life would be even better. Two phones ago I had a Moto E4 Plus with the extra battery life and I really liked it.
Motorola G Play 32GB
Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 128GB
Moto G Stylus 5G
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September 7, 2:57 PM
I'm running around a lot today, but I thought I'd share a picture of my external drive I retrieved from the condo.
WD Elements. Well, at least *one* element has been here, for sure. I'll leave which one as an exercise for the reader.
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September 7, 4:06 PM
The desktop PC I'm borrowing use of while at our friends' place has colored lights on the motherboard and other places. When they flicker red, orange, or yellow, I sometimes see it out of the corner of my eye and get a little nervous. Yesterday I was using their microwave and felt a little anxiety about leaving it unattended.
This is the first time I've experienced serious trauma after becoming trauma-aware enough to realize, in real-time, that I am experiencing some serious trauma that I'm probably going to need some help (i.e. therapy) to cope with.
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September 8, 2:57 PM
I don't think I said, outside of comments, what caused the fire.
There seems to have been something wrong with the oven. We were running the self-clean for the first time. We started it up, then went out for about an hour to get a couple things from Lowe's. We came back, all was fine, and we left with the dog for the dog park. We came back in another hour and drove up to find fire trucks and police blocking off the road as they worked to finish extinguishing the flames.
The self-clean smell was making it hard for Miriam to breath, so we figured we'd spend a lot of the time the oven was self-cleaning doing errands and things. We left all the doors and windows open to keep the place aired out, except the bedroom to keep the smell out. Because of the closed door, the bedroom is the only room where much of anything survived the fire.
I should add that I had just scraped the oven racks clean with steel wool and a screwdriver, and had cleaned the bottom of the oven with kitchen cleaner. There wasn't any grease or oil in there, or anything else. Just that black char that always kind of builds up on the bottom of an oven.
From Good Housekeeping
"Though you may have heard otherwise and that burning plastic smell may spook you, it’s perfectly safe to run the self-clean feature whether you and your family (yes, babies included) are home or not, says Thermador."
Even Consumer Reports articles like "Is it Safe to Run Your Oven's Self-cleaning Cycle?" only talk about potential damage to the oven, not potentially losing everything you own, your pets, or your life.
From that CR piece: "Don’t Let the Horror Stories Scare You...Casaregola has seen little evidence that running the self-clean cycle is likely to damage your oven." Well, I have to say, our oven got pretty fucking damaged, thank you very much, though that's kind of the least of our concerns.
I know they're probably as safe as any potentially deadly piece of home equipment can be, and that Miriam and I just got really, really unlucky. But I don't know if I'm ever going to feel safe using a self-clean on an oven after this. Ever.
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September 8, 3:14 PM
Huh. Vero just told me the queen of England (and technically Canada) died. I didn't notice: there was other stuff going on.
I've always thought it would be great if, after the queen finally dies, the rest of the royals would get together and say "You know, this monarchy thing is just kind of silly. Why don't we knock it off?"
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September 8, 9:47 PM
Another request for advice: data recovery services
Does anyone have experience with data recovery companies/services? I used to be superficially involved in connecting someone in my company to them, once in a long while, when I worked tech support, but I have no idea how much they cost then ('cause I didn't do the POs) or what companies are doing it and how good they are. That was more than 10 years ago.
I've gotten the impression that service could run from a few hundred dollars up to 1 or 2 thousand, so that won't come as a shock. I'm just wondering if any of you have positive or negative experiences with specific companies.
Thanks!
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September 9, 4:30 PM
The insurance company (one of them anyway: there are at least three involved, maybe more with 8 condo units having been affected) hired a private fire investigator to check out the scene.
Like the city inspector, he concluded it was the oven. He looked at it thoroughly and was able to give me more details.
All the burner elements on the top were off, so that wasn't a factor. I had a moment of near terror though. He pointed out how the two knobs on one side were clearly turned off. When he looked at the ones on the other side, he seemed like he was verbally building up to saying that one of them was turned on. "These two, on the other hand..." but he was actually just saying that because the knobs were missing and the shaft damaged, he had to open up the mechanism to see their status. And they were off too.
There is a vent that allows heat out of the oven in the form of a vertical pipe that opens up right under one of the burners. Looking down into the vent with a flashlight, he showed me that it was mostly, or possibly completely, blocked with something, probably grease.
What likely happened is the blocked vent allowed the oven to get too hot. So hot, in fact that the radiant heat ignited the TV stand (constructed of MDF) that was sitting close by its side. As he laid out his theory, I started feeling bad. Maybe I shouldn't have put something flammable next to the oven? But he pointed out that ovens are made to install directly up against cabinetry, and if a cabinet was pressed up against the side of the stove, it would have ignited too.
He said if I'd been home, maybe I'd have noticed the smoldering before ignition and turned it off. But Miriam and I have already talked about that and decided that we could very easily have both decided to lie down in the bedroom for a nap and died in the fire.
He figured out the stove's brand and located a user's manual for it. He said there aren't any warnings in the manual regarding this, and that there are no recalls for this model either.
So that's probably that.
Our condo is an end unit in a building of 12 condos. Each side of the building is three units long and two floors tall. Every condo except the four on the far end of the building has damage from smoke, water, or both, and everyone living in them has had to find temporary accommodations. I feel a significant amount of shame and sadness about disrupting so many people's lives, some with small children, even though I know rationally it's not my fault.
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September 10, 7:47 AM
I woke from an anxiety dream wherein my partner, some kind of hybrid of Miriam and my ex, had been doing things that hurt me deeply. Taking to Miriam about it helped. We talked about communication in our relationship, the ethics of having expectations of your partner(s), and what we would do if one of us was doing something the other couldn't be ok with. I felt a lot better, and am feeling pretty actively appreciative of the open, self-aware communication Miriam and I have 99% of the time.
And then Facebook showed me this almost disturbingly relevant post of mine from 2013. It is still essentially the way I see romantic relationships in my life, and I will share it here now.
An LJ friend posted these words some time back. He got them from elsewhere himself, so I'm afraid I can't credit them beyond that. I've meant for a while to post them with my own commentary. That commentary follows the below lines.
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I promise to love people and things that are not you.
I will not let my fear of losing you stop me from seeking out new adventure.
I will intentionally make plans that do not involve you. I will support you in doing the same.
I will do my best to manage my feelings of fear, exclusion, and jealousy in a healthy way.
I will make time for honest introspection. I will set goals for myself. I will engage in behaviors that will help me achieve those goals.
I promise to say no sometimes, even when it will disappoint you.
When I am wrong, I will admit it. I will apologize, I will tell you how I am going to change the behavior, and then I will follow through.
And when I am unhappy with YOUR behavior, and I've taken the time to make sure it is about you and not me, I will tell you.
And I need you to know, if our connection ceases to be a positive, growth-promoting, loving relationship and can't be repaired, I will break up with you.
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When I was 20, more than ten years ago now, I had a very romanticized view of romance. Well, I still do. But it's a very different romanticism now. Then, at 20, before I'd ever experienced a relationship, I saw a romantic partnership as something that I would, should, do anything for. It was a view informed by societal convention. Pop culture and media extol it. For me, much of it came from the romances in sci-fi and fantasy novels. (I'll admit it; I used to think the Xanth novels were so romantic. I'm a little scared to read them again....) When I was deeply lonely in high school, I would tell myself what a good partner I would be, if only the right person found me. I daydreamed of finding the one true person with whom to share my life. Around whom I would shape my day-to-day existence. To whose side I would not hesitate to travel to a new personal world, giving up the known and familiar for the magic of love.
I did that, and it was a wonderful experience that I learned a lot from.
However, if I were shaping a child's world view regarding relationships, I would discourage that understanding of love. I believe that placing romantic relationships on a pedestal from which they trump other concerns leads to a lot of unhappiness. I love, and I love fully, in the belief and knowledge that my relationships are necessarily temporal phenomena. I can't know what will happen in the future. When I move for grad school, my relationships will change. I hope and believe they will be sustained, but they will be different. In the same way, I am always changing and becoming a different person. I could elect to stay here in Kenosha and prioritize my partners above advancing my personal goals, but neither I nor they would want me to do that. It's also possible that, someday in the future, one of my partners or I will find that our relationship is not making us happy, and the situation cannot be resolved. Again, my relationship would change or end.
I believe in the possibility of having a life-partner who is with me until the death of one or the other of us. But I don't want any partners I may have, or myself, to feel trapped in a relationship that is not fulfilling our goals and desires. For me, being conscious of the finite nature of relationships makes the ones I'm in very special. I try to appreciate them fully, because they may not last forever, and this moment will never come again. This is my romanticized view of relationships. They are precious and irreplaceable and should be treasured for what they are. Like Richard Feynman's comment about the nature of flowers, I think an analytical view of phenomena like relationships does not take away any beauty or magic. Rather, in looking under the surface, appreciating their fragility and finite nature, they become, if anything, even more sacred.
I would encourage people to view relationships as precious rarities. I would encourage them to not view relationships as claims on their partners' time or love; things which should be freely given. There's some sadness in that I suppose. There's a deep appeal in seeing love as a spark of otherworldly perfection; as something that exists in a special place outside of human experience. In seeing your soulmate as an avatar, the embodied form of a concept beyond rational reality, the bond with whom transcends the restrictions that circumscribe the rest of this existence. Perhaps we would lose that beautiful, terrible, irrationally joyous, soul-crushing experience of immersive love. But I don't think so. For me, love has every bit as much potential to make my heart sing in the heavens, or to destroy my soul.
But I will try not to use love as an excuse for exerting claims of ownership over my partners, or aspects of their lives. I will care, deeply, about my partners' needs, goals, and dreams and encourage them to follow them, even if that means our relationship will end or change. I will do my best to not let my needs, goals, and dreams serve as barriers to my partners fulfilling theirs; not without full, informed discussion about how to prioritize those in our individual lives, as well as in our relationship together. My partners and I should have the freedom to decide, on our own as well as together, how to find fulfillment in our lives rather than be subordinate to a reified concept of eternal love that may only exist in fantasy. Reality is such a beautiful, mystical thing.
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September 10, 9:12 PM
I a got a few things out of the condo today and took some pictures to help inventory for our insurance claim.
This was my Realistic Lab-2000 linear-tracking turntable (found with original manual at a Goodwill). It took a moment to figure out what it was. The circular thing is the platter.
It was not one of the things that came back with me.
My Klipsch bookshelf speakers were under it. I hadn't gotten them set up yet.
(Tagging Miriam so her friends are able to see these posts as well.)
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September 11, 7:45 PM
I just tried to call Ella and accidentally called her Seregil, and I'd thought an hour or so of crying was enough for today but clearly I was wrong.
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September 12, 8:23 AM
I'm afraid I'm not likely to be talking about much other than the fire here for some time. I was going to say I'm sorry, but I say I'm sorry too much. I'm not sorry. My life is centered on this right now. But if reading about this stuff all the time is stressing you out or just too much for whatever reason, feel free to snooze me for a while or whatever. Self care is important!
If you do read all of this stuff, don't feel obligated to try to find words to respond. Words are hard sometimes! Even just care and heart reacts help me feel cared for and thought of, and that's a lot.
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September 12, 8:30 AM
I'm pricing replacement TVs for the insurance claim and I realize I don't know anything about TVs. We had two, a 50" and a 45", both plasmas. We got one from a seller on Kijiji, and the other one I got for free 'cause it didn't work and I repaired it with $75 worth of parts.
Every TV you can buy now is a smart TV. I don't want a smart TV! I simply want to plug the cable in, select the right input, and see the pretty pictures. That's all I want. I certainly won't be connecting it to the internet!
"Class 4 series" "Dolby Vision". What the heck even are those? I don't know if I care enough to figure it out to be quite honest. Don't get me wrong: I'm perfectly well smart enough and tech-savvy enough to dig into modern TV specs. I just don't care that much. Though maybe I'm going to have to.
I'm going to try my best to find something comparable for the insurance, but plasma TVs haven't been made in a long time now, and the new ones have so many bells and whistles that "comparable" is hard to be sure of, you know?
Just realized I never got to try out the 3D feature of that 50" TV. Oh well. I probably never would have. Those glasses were expensive and not worth the money for a dead media format.
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September 12, 2:14 PM
Life is so crazy and sad right now. But our friends have been a godsend. Especially Vero and Jonathan who have given us their home essentially as our own since the day of the fire.
And this dog though! Her blissfully ignorant happiness is such a comfort sometimes.
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September 14, 9:47 AM
I'm at the condo to get a few last things out and to meet someone to sign something. I'm feeling angry about all this for the first time. It's interesting how we process this kind of event internally.
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September 14, 2:36 PM
I checked the mail while we were at the condo this morning and this had arrived. I'd originally hoped to put it in a window there, and that's sad. But the place we'll be staying has windows too!
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September 14, 10:32 PM
Wow. The internet at our new place.
Quoting a post from Miriam:
So Meghan ( Chris Allen ), Ella, and I are in our new furnished apartment. "Internet included", they said. "Lovely", I said. Then I ran the speed test.
I mean. Is it really possible to get DSL this slow nowadays? (image showing 4.95MB down and .98MB up) The good news is that we can pay to increase the speed to a more reasonable level. But seriously. WTAF.
ETA: so, yes, Sasktel offers these speeds for month to month customers; it is the slowest tier. I guess they are about to get fiber here, which means that the lowest tier will become 25 down, 2 up. Which is still way too slow, but a big improvement nonetheless.
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September 14, 11:39 PM
Here's the living room of the new place, complete with bins of stuff retrieved from the condo and tied in garbage bags so we can't smell them.
It's a little hard being on our own after more than a week with Jonathan and Vero. I'm so emotional in general lately, and tonight I shed a few tears of loneliness. Being around good people has been more of a comfort than I can say. But I think we'll be seeing more of them, and that's a joy to look forward to.
The new place is fine. It's yet another new thing to get used to in the midst of all of this loss and change, and I think that's making me a little teary too.
Earlier today, an ambulance drove down our street with lights and siren on while I was bringing stuff in from the car. I kind of rushed inside, realizing I was having a panic attack, and I hugged Miriam and had another brief crying spell.
Things are still really hard from time to time, but they keep getting a little bit better. A long therapy session yesterday was a big help too.
We're getting through, and it's getting better.
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September 16, 8:57 AM
Looks like it's just a day or two past the 12 year anniversary of Miriam and I having met.
I think neither of us could have imagined the internal and external changes we've both gone through. I still keep loving her more and more.
September 16, 2012
I should have written something earlier, but this weekend has been so full. Research on Friday, and a trip to Argonne on Saturday, and schoolwork today. But before I go to bed, I have to tell you about the significance of this weekend.
It was the second anniversary of my having met Danaeris Annwfn. Somewhat more than two years ago, I'd moved to Chicago on my own after the end of a long-term relationship and decided that I was pretty content to be on my own for a while. That relationships were a very pleasant thing, but I was going to enjoy living really on my own for the first time in my life. And that was going really well, and I was happy.
Then, to my surprise, I met a wonderful woman at a relaxacon who I began dating. I had no real expectations other than getting to know someone really neat and seeing where our gradually developing relationship went.
As it turns out, it went to a very good place. In the past couple of years of shared laughter, tears, and conversation, I've found that she's someone I want to be in my life for a long time. We each have our own path; she in grad school in Chicago, and I in my undergrad program in Kenosha and who knows where from there. But it makes me very happy that those paths meet so well and so often. I believe they will continue to do so long into the future.
Happy anniversary kitty. I love you.
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September 16, 3:32 PM
We picked up Seregil's collar today. It hurts a lot. But it also helps get rid of that ridiculous voice that keeps saying that maybe it's some kind of mistake and maybe he's still ok somewhere.
He's not. He was a good kitty, and he was happy, and we gave him a good home for as long as he was with us. He was very loved, and now he's gone, and it's going to be ok, and it won't always hurt so much.
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September 16, 8:19 PM
The data recovery company received my hard drive today. I got two quotes on the phone and the tech at the second place seemed really competent so I went with them. He thinks that there should still be data on the platters because if the temperature had gotten high enough to demagnetize the platters, the plastic shell would be totally gone. He quoted $500-$2000 if no internal parts need replacement, and up to $5000 if they need to replace heads or what-not. Fortunately, insurance will cover this. (Also, if they do not recover data, there is no charge.)
I'm annoyed that the insurance broker didn't explain better what is and is not covered and what part of the insurance covers it. If I had known that data recovery was covered, I might have gone for a higher cap. I also didn't know that the removal and disposal of what's left of all of our stuff is *also* coming out of our personal possessions coverage. Maybe I'll write more about that later.
For now, I'm really hoping to not lose tens of thousands of photos, as well as so many more things.
Actually, my password database ought to be on there too, and that would be *huge* to get access to again.
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September 17, 10:08 AM
Mark Balliet, Anthony Faust, David Trombley, and other electronics folks:
What would you say the modern equivalent of an HP, analog, 2 channel, 100mhz oscilloscope is? The model is 1741a if that helps.
Or maybe I should just find a used one? There's one on Ebay right now. This is confusing.
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September 17, 10:32 AM
Another in the "Trans? No I don't think I'm a woman, that doesn't make sense." series.
September 17, 2019
·
Shared with Your friends and Erik's friends
Since I never had before, Erik thought I deserved the chance to wear a princess dress. He deserves the credit for the dress and makeup and photo ideas.
I had a magical weekend with him!
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September 17, 5:40 PM
I photographed records today for the insurance. Good luck replacing this one with trumpet playing by "Sathmo". I found it at a thrift store and bought it as a curiosity. Cursory googling suggested it might be a WW2 era bootleg, but I really don't know.
It got a little crispy on the bottom there...
ETA: I just looked again for Hae Shan records on Google and saw that I was misremembering. It was a Taiwan label of "dubious legality" that catered to US soldiers in the area in the 1960s and '70s.
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September 18, 12:13 AM
I spent a lot of time today inventorying the last stuff from the condo. I worked on a tarp out on the little porch just outside the door to keep the smoke smell outside and broken glass and char off the ground. There wasn't a lot volume-wise, but it was complex.
I autopsied our desktop PCs and photographed all the parts. CPUs, graphics cards, storage, memory, power supplies. Then I put the storage media aside just in case, put the other expensive parts in a bin also just in case, and walked the rest to the dumpster. That was emotionally hard, and I took a break.
I went through my box of records and photographed each one. Miriam photographing as I held up each one was a big help. The records were hard for me too. Some that hurt most were my 5LP set of Laurie Anderson's "United States Live," my three Moody Blues albums, four Tom Lehrer records, and my 2010 pressing of "In the Court of the Crimson King" on heavyweight vinyl. That last one was the first and only record I ever bought new. There's more, too, that I feel real personal loss about. And in general, it pains me to feel like I failed as a steward of these things that there are only so many copies of.
That was the hardest part of today. I'm going to have a really hard time getting myself to throw those damaged records with their water-soaked sleeves out. I took another break.
I also went through the board games. It turns out that the ones inside the rolling suitcase in the closet of the bedroom that didn't burn are ok. The suitcase absorbed any smoke and almost all the water before it got to them.
The games that were in the hall closet, though, are quite toasty. I had to open some of those up individually to document the expansions we owned for some. Though we still have to claim several hundred dollars worth of board games, it was really a relief to find that most of them survived. Precious little else did.
We're going through all the emails, online purchase records, photos, and anything else we can find to document stuff. I've realized both that I had more valuable equipment than I realized after 20 years of searching for hi-fi gear at thrift stores, and also that said gear is kind of difficult to document. To my surprise, it's likely several hundred dollars each for the equalizer and cd changer I probably paid 20 each for. Both had minor problems that I fixed. Mark help me resolder the power line to the display on the EQ. 100-150 for the turntable I paid 20 or 40 for. And the big one, the thousand dollar Marantz 2270 I near-stole for 70 at the Goodwill in Evanston. I opened up that Marantz and replaced burned out light bulbs and the yellowed velum light diffuser behind the dial and it was looking *so good*!
I'm grateful that my little Marantz and my Sherwood receiver are both still in Wisconsin, but damn. I lost most of the fruits of hunting for this stuff for decades. I hope insurance isn't going to fight about it too hard. If I get data back from my hard drive, there might be more pictures on it that could serve as documentation.
I went through my camera gear too. My Canon and my most expensive lens were on the bedside table and seem to be ok, though it's hard to be sure about smoke or dust. My Pentax that I inherited from my grandfather, though, is waterlogged, as are all the Pentax lenses and a couple of Canon ones that were all together in a backpack in the spare room.
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I'm going to leave it there for now. More in part 2.
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Date: 2022-10-02 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-12 12:45 am (UTC)