With nowhere to sit yesterday morning, because most of the living room furniture was stacked in the dining room and I couldn’t get to any of the dining furniture, the day started a bit disjointed. I had breakfast in the office, in the reading (fireside) chair, then didn’t want to get out of it.
Get out of it I did, though. And my first job was finalising yesterday’s blog post, publishing it, and sharing it to BlueSky and Medium.
My Scrivener and LibreOffice have been freezing, but I’d only asked the Scrivener forum why this might be. I tried a couple of their suggestions, but when those didn’t work, one techie suggested asking Apple to take a look at it or at least answer the question.
So, despite a firm agenda already, the next thing I did was open a Chat with an Apple tech, who then said they’re not allowed to help with ‘work-related’ issues.
Eh? When I bought the new Mac, the first thing we told the sales guy was that it would be a work horse and needed to be substantial and sturdy. That’s why I ended up with a Mac Mini desktop and a MacBook Air instead of only a MacBook Pro, the latter of which was what I went in for.
The techie wanted my phone number and time zone and I said not to worry, I’d contact the shop where I bought it. But as a closing gambit the techie asked me to look at the version and operating system. I did this and the tech told me I needed to upgrade as I was using an outdated system.
Eh? (Again!) I only bought it in August. It’s 2 months old.
Anyway, the reason I’d chosen yesterday to contact them was because my Scrivener binder froze again. But in the time it took for someone to respond to my Chat request, there it was unfrozen! Which suggested that perhaps it was only temporarily freezing while it did an auto-save or auto-backup or something.
Even so, when I finished the Chat call, I updated the existing system but then upgraded to a different system. It took quite a long time and I went around the house doing other things while I waited. Time will now tell if (a) it’s worked, or (b) I just have to wait for them to unfreeze.
While I was in the middle of that, the carpet fitters arrived 2 hours earlier than I was expecting them. Which was great. Fortunately the room was already empty as we did it the night before. But they would have been moving furniture if we were waiting to do it at dinnertime yesterday.
They were here for about an hour, and the carpet looks lovely. But the door needs to come off, have its bottom shaved, and rehung. My dad used to unhang and rehang something like 4 doors an hour, probably more. It will probably take us an entire day just to do one!
A trip to the tip is in our future. We have an entire black bin bag full of carpet waste. But we knew about that when we booked the fitting.
By the time they’d gone and I’d sent the poet pictures, and warned him about the door and the tip, I was starving. So I had something to eat before cracking on with work.
I started with tax return work and ended up spending the rest of the day on that. I’d scheduled it in for an hour a day, but while I was in the swing of it I thought I may as well finish the donkey work. Now all I have to do is transfer the final figures to my online tax return and that’s me done for this year.
Because I gave myself a year’s wages last year to concentrate on my own work, I’ve actually come in at a loss, for the first time ever. I might see if I can offset that loss against this year, but if it’s too much hassle, I’ll leave it.
They’re taking tax out of one of my pensions this year, but I suspect they’ll be giving me that back by the end of this financial year. I gave myself another year’s wages this year, so it will be more of the same when tax return time comes round again. But this year, I really, really, REALLY need to start doing it as I go along…once I’ve caught up with the year so far…
The poet came home and we admired the carpet together for a while before moving the furniture back in. When we were happy with the layout (we’d had a practice run at the weekend), and the poet had shaved the bottom off the door so it closes properly, we had tea in the dining room and not in our laps. Then this morning, I had breakfast at the breakfast table in the kitchen and not in my lap.
Hawley dog is coming to stay with us on Sunday for 2 weeks. Son #1 called us yesterday to see if we could have his dog for one night as well. This means we’ll have Hawley and Poppy dog the weekend after this one. Fortunately, they get on really well. Unfortunately, Poppy’s a bit timid and she’s not used to us yet. So we’re not sure how it will go, but go it will. Animals (and birds) usually like us…
On the agenda today:
- more (hopefully final – for now) tax return work
- proofread client book
- Catch the Rainbow
- 12 Stories in 12 Months (November)
- The Secret of Whitehorse Farm
- publish Paper Roses, release date 4 November (didn’t do yesterday)
- weekly short story market work (didn’t do yesterday)
Pretty much the same as yesterday.
Oh yes, and it’s budget day in the UK too…
Yay on your new carpet! Doesn’t that always make a huge difference?
It’s made a massive difference, especially as it’s fitted. We keep going and admiring it!