back to the present time

1. Everything is all set for the trip! We are checked in for the flight and all packed except for a few toiletries and stuff that can't be packed until tomorrow morning.

2. I timed this last puzzle just right. Actually finished it yesterday but forgot to include it in my post. This was a 500 piece one, so it went quickly. Very cute, though I'm not sure it's one that needs to be saved, so I probably will put it out in the little library.



3. The neighbors are doing some construction on their garage and I'm glad that we are going to be gone for two weeks. Hopefully they'll be all or mostly done with it by the time we get back. Bad enough having construction on each end of the street, but this is right up against us, so much noisier.

4. It rained last night. Enough to get things wet, but not enough to be a bother, and it started after my evening walk and finished up by the morning, which is really the perfect window for rain, IMO.

5. I got some super cute pics of Molly last night, poking her head out of the curtains.



Just FYI, I will be posting during the trip, but just short text posts, no pics. Cat pics will be posted daily over on bluesky, and I will do massive vacation/Universal Studios/Disney posts when we get back, like last time.

1. I have a decent familiarity with excel but only really use the basic functions and even though I know that there's formulas to do things faster, I usually feel like I don't have time to learn it, so I just do whatever it is manually. Well, today I finally decided the amount of time it would take to do it manually was not worth it and looked up how to use vlookup and now I know how to do at least this one thing and was able to get the work done really quickly.

2. I am working from home today and tomorrow, my last two days of work before vacation, both to save gas money and to reduce time spent around people and lower the risk of getting sick. Thankfully today I had a lot of deskwork to do (though it was made easier by #1 above) and tomorrow I've got meetings that can be done by web plus preparing stuff before vacation, so there's no need to go in.

3. Alex could not find the house keys we gave her last year when we went on our trip, so I went to a locksmith today to get an extra copy made. The front door lock is from when my parents bought the house in the early 70s (at the least) and when I got a copy made last year from a self-service kiosk it wasn't able to do it on the spot and had to have it mailed to me, but there was no time for that this time, so I went to Ace Hardware on Saturday but while their machine is not self-service, it is just a machine and of course the key was not in the machine so they couldn't make it. There are two nearby actual locksmiths but both are closed on the weekend, so I went first thing today and the guy was like wow, this is really old, but was able to make it in like a minute.

4. I think I'm fully used to my new mouse now and can confidently rec the Logitech MS Master 3S. I still miss the Microsoft Sculpt, but this is a pretty good replacement and once my work Sculpt dies, I'll likely buy one of these for work as well.

5. I used to be the sort of person who files my taxes in January as soon as I get my W2, but with the trust, we can't do that, because they need to provide us a document (K-1) and unlike work, which is required by law to give you your W2 by the end of January, they take their time and always get it to us by late March or even early April. I had asked if I could get it earlier this year since we'll still be out of town on April 15th, but they said they'd get it to us when they get it to us. I used to do my own taxes, but the K-1 is really difficult for me to figure out, so I have a tax preparer at H&R Block do it, and this is his third year doing our taxes now, so last year he said I should just submit everything online rather than coming in, so I submitted my W2 and filled out everything except the K-1 info and then told him I would get that to him as soon as possible, and they finally got that to us today, so I uploaded it to him and let him know. He said he should have it done by the end of the week, which means we will already be on our trip, so I downloaded their app to make doing the digital signature easier, but it should be pretty smooth. It's a huge relief to have that taken care of, though. I really wish the trust could get it to us sooner.

6. Suspicious Gemma is suspicious.