Miriam and I ordered more furniture, including a bed frame, from IKEA on Friday. They said it would be delivered on Saturday, but by the end of the weekend, the status still hadn't even been updated to indicate that it was with TForce, the notoriously bad shipping company IKEA uses. It still said IKEA was preparing our order.

Miriam talked to an agent via chat two days ago and they rescheduled the order for tomorrow the 14th. Status on IKEA's site says that the order has, in fact, been delivered to TForce. The odds don't seem too good that we'll actually get it tomorrow either, but at least there's progress.

Miriam and I have made it back home to Regina.

I'm not catching up on social media yet, but I'm doing some things to make home feel more like home. I'm very much looking forward to having a peaceful span of time here. I hope.

I hung some of the art pieces that Miriam and I brought back with us. Not all of it yet, but enough to make a difference for me in how it feels to look around my living space. (I'm going to move that spectrum allocation poster somewhere else and out from under the map.)

The first piece is an original Ozzy and Millie cartoon strip that I bought at my first Midwest Fur Fest in 2002. I love that the last panel has white-out from Dana Simpson correcting the lettering or something.

The map, a friend in Kenosha gave me. I guess a few people might look at it and think I have it up because of Disney World, and a few might think I have it up because of Cape Canaveral (which is correct, and why the giver thought I'd like it).

The third piece is a logarithmic-scaled depiction of the known universe. The way that one came to me is a complicated story that I honestly don't know what to feel about, but divorced from that, I like it a lot.

( Pictures behind the cut )

I'm taking a course this summer and didn't realize that the first three blocks of work were spaced every 2 days, not every week. I realized a couple days before my parents left, and was behind on the second and third part.

I wrote the professor to apologize, caught up on the first part, and finished catching up on the second part yesterday. I'm still pretty anxious about the upcoming work which involves interviewing, but I'll get by.
I'd been too anxious to look at my grades from the Spring semester. I was convinced (as I often am) that I did not do very well. Miriam looked with me to help, and we found that I had two As for my two classes. For this past semester in particular, I find that really difficult to reconcile with my experience of the classes, but that's probably because I at one of the worst points I've been in for a long time, mental health wise. Still managed to get stuff acceptably done though I guess!

With my parents having left and things less chaotic at home, I've been rearranging. Since Miriam's chronic pain makes sitting in a chair for a long time difficult, she's doing a lot of work from the couch. But we also really like being near each other as we're doing our respective things. So I moved the table we had in the space next to our kitchen into the former office/computer room and moved my computer into its place. Bonus: the computer is now near enough to the router that I can run an ethernet cable!

(I'd say kitchen/dining table, but we never really used it for that. I scored it from our complex's dumpster a couple months ago with the intent of using it for games and meals, but it just kind of collected stuff...)
My parents were staying in the office while they were with us, and between that and moving furniture around, it's hugely disorganized in there right now. I'm going to set up the folding table that I also scored from the dumpster a while back as somewhere to work on electronics. I also need to set up my keyboard (music-type) in there again; right now it's on the floor behind the TV and stuff.

Yesterday and today though, I spent a good few hours organizing my music stuff my parents brought with them. Yesterday I picked up a little two-shelf cabinet on rollers from someone on Kijiji for $10. That's where my receiver, CD changer, equalizer, and turntable are living now.

I spreadsheeted the CDs to figure out what order I want them in, then loaded 236 of them into the changer and typed in labels. The changer has a PS/2 keyboard port, which gives you an idea of how old it is. It's super convenient though. If I was stuck using the rotary knob to enter over two hundred titles, those titles would be waiting to be entered for a very long time.

And that's how *I've* been dealing with the current events dumpster fires and sometimes-crippling anxiety and depression. Feeling like I'm in control of my *stuff* helps me feel a bit more in control of my *life*.

Pictures of organized stuff possibly to follow!

This is the view of the park out our front windows, which face into the interior of Molenwijk.
It's windy and rainy today; typical Dutch winter weather. Weird to think we're so far north of Wisconsin.

To borrow a phrase I like from Kate, my bike will be getting a spa treatment until the 29th. It's a bit of a wait, but Uptown had a lot of customers for their Winter/Spring special! I'll actually be away for a week during that span anyway, and knowing that the weather should be good enough to start riding just about every day by then is exciting!

My condo is a mess because my foot has been hurting too much to stand up very long and clean. It's been about a week now, and I finally feel only reminder-level discomfort from it rather than alarm-level discomfort. I was getting scared that I had a hairline fracture or something. It seemed pretty unlikely given that the pain was in an area of soft tissue at the top of my foot, but it lasted long enough to make me really concerned. I've been giving it lots of rest and had to skip working at the shelter even though I would have loved to be out in this weather. Hopefully I can be more mobile this weekend.

It's going to be a busy weekend! I drove to work today so I can leave to see Erik right after work. I'm staying at his place in Elgin overnight, then driving back to Evanston in the early afternoon to give Danae a ride to the airport to fly to the conference she's going to in Los Angeles. Saturday evening is Queer Contra in the city. I've kept wanting to go to that, and Erik is going to be there tonight and I'd love to get dressed up fancy and go dance, even though I have no experience. Regrettably, I'm not going to because I'm still worried about my foot. Maybe instead I can clean up a bit since after contra is done, Erik is visiting at my place for the night!

I'll have Sunday all to myself. Maybe I can finish the rest of my radio and move on to the next project.

What am I doing with my first night with the condo to myself? Listening to Enigma on my hi-fi and cleaning the living room and bedroom. I know how to party!