Author: Jessi Silver

This weekend would have been the weekend that I attended CONvergence 2022, a local media convention that takes place in my area every Summer and which I really look forward to every year, but unfortunately my spouse tested positive for COVID a couple of days beforehand so we both ended up spending the weekend at home. While we assumed we’d end up getting hit with it at some point – because we’re under 50 we didn’t qualify for this most recent round of boosters and my previous booster was back in October 2021 – it kind of sucks that it picked this weekend to make its appearance. Luckily we’re both basically fine; I actually haven’t tested positive at all this entire time, and hubby seems a lot better today as I’m writing this, but we’ve isolated from one-another in the house just to be safe. Not being able to hang out together as normal has probably been the most frustrating aspect of the entire situation, honestly.

The unexpected free time did give me a chance to catch up on some anime writing, though admittedly I probably could have done a bit more if I hadn’t also been trying to make progress on a couple of knitting and crochet projects as well. Having multiple plates spinning at once is just how I operate the best, though. I’m essentially done with seasonal first impressions – late as usual, but at least they’re done now. I’m still trying to decide whether or not to touch on some of the short form series from this season, especially since one of them runs a quarter hour per episode which is a length I’ve usually reviewed in the past. I suppose I’ll see what I have the time and motivation to deal with.

I’m lucky enough to be able to own a home rather than rent, but of course that situation brings with it a lot of unpredictability. Case-in-point; before we bought this house, one of the conditions was that the seller replace the underground sewer drain leading from the house out into the street. This is a common issue with houses of this age – the old pipe deteriorates and collapses, leading to really fun things like sewage backing up into the basement. In any case, they agreed to do that before we took ownership of the house. Unfortunately the people they hired to do that job seem to have been a really slap-dash outfit. Their work wrecked part of our front walkway which they refused to fix for several weeks, and when they finally did they just use some cement sealing material which lasted for about a month. Annoying but we’ll get it figured out at some point. The bigger issue, which we found out this past weekend, was that when they tied the new PVC part of the main drain pipe into the existing cast-iron waste stack, they both mis-measured the angle slightly and used an incorrect connector, not to mention incorrectly bracing the cast-iron (it was basically resting on top of the PVC). End result – water dripping out of the gap between the two which had slowly worked its way open over the two years we’ve lived here.

My spouse and I are fine – there was no major damage because luckily I noticed in time, but we did have to shell out some $$$ to get it remediated properly. Kind of the high point of the whole ordeal is that we also got our ancient hot water heater replaced, so at least we’ll have nice hot water (rather than aggressively lukewarm water) once winter rolls around.