timill

It's been raining. The culverts are full and some are flooding.

Unfortunately, the water table now seems to be higher than the tanking on our basement, so much of it has an inch or two of water.

Particularly the bits with the boxes of books...

They're now all in drier places, and we'll see how long this lasts.

I appear to have a job. Not a wonderful one, but it'll get me back in the swing of things, and mean that my "most recent employer" will have a US address in future (a number of job-application websites won't take a non-US address).

It was supposed to start on Monday, but that group has been cancelled, and it appears that Monday 18th is the probable date.

It's at SITEL, where Marcia works, and it may well be the same contract she's currently training for, which could have Amusing Results.

or another "three things" post.

One of the Comcast boxes appears to be on its way out - it doesn't like me watching HGTV or the Food Channel :-( A reboot sorts it out, but it's come back again.

The kitchen sink has clogged up, but Roto-Rooter say they'll have someone here within the hour.

We now have nice fluffy snow...

Colonoscopy: done. Result: Clear. Come back in ten years.

Went out for dinner at our local diner, only to find it was shut, apparently permanently :-(

Had a response to a CV about a job in Alpharetta on Monday, but nothing heard since :-(

So now that we have medical insurance, I finally got round to registering with a doctor - the same one the family here uses.

Yesterday was the first time I'd been to see him: initial chat and establishing some baselines. Plus blood drawn for tests. First result: my blood pressure is back in the normal region (it was high last year, when I took the medical exam for the Green Card).

Today I got the answers from the blood: nothing showing, though the cholesterol levels are on the high side. This is good news on the PSA front, as my father has had prostate trouble in the last few years.

Coming next: colonoscopy :-( A good thing to have really, as colon cancer was what killed my mother.

Tonight is Marcia's high school reunion. So we get to start with tailgating, and then it's Friday Night Lights, with drinks afterwards at a local hotel.

I could be some time...

but fortunately, not for us.

It being September, all the animals we brought over from England are due for their annual rabies shots. So we started, on Wednesday, with Samson, Leo and Josie, all of whom were also due for their annual immunisations. Fortunately, none of them are difficult to crate, but the bill was still $300 or so...

So yesterday, Leo wasn't interested in supper, and complained at being picked up. He was also not moving easily, so when Marcia came home we wen't off to the Animal ER over on Kingston Pike. Answer: he had a fever, presumably as a reaction to the shots the previous day (though he had perked up noticeably by the time the duty vet got to him - dratted animals, always recovering).

So there went another $150 for examination, fluids, and Metacam. I foresee a quiet month or three...

... unless one of the jobs I've applied for down in Columbia, SC, comes through.

On Thursday, I complained on Cix about the problems of collecting ephemera, in that people think it is either priceless (and won't sell) or worthless (and put it in the trash). On Friday I checked Abebooks for the Chicon III Proceedings, and found there were two copies listed: one in Portland OR, and the other in south Knoxville. An hour later there was only one for sale...

We also finally fixed when Jessie was bringing her children up to visit; Marcia had cleared all sorts of time off for this and Worldcon before we left, but her work had changed their mind without telling her until after we got back from Montreal. Various plans were hatched and dispatched, and we wound up more-or-less back where we started: Jessie came up on Saturday afternoon, we fired up a BBQ for the evening meal, and then on Sunday we went over to Dollywood.

This, it turns out, is well worth a visit, and we'll probably get season passes next year. For the grown-ups, it was mostly a nice walk in the woods while the children rode rollercoasters and so on. Plus shopping. And a proper coal-fired steam railway to ride on later. And BBQ. And funnel cake...

And an early close due to a thunderstorm, which meant we left at a similar time to many others, and hit a cloudburst on the way...