Surprisingly long day yesterday

[unicornduke]

I worked out first thing yesterday which went well even if I whinge the whole time as per normal. I did work stuff in the morning, decent amount of stuff but not a ton and easily taken care of. It was -11F overnight.

In the afternoon, I ran to town to get a torx star bit tiny enough to remove the screws on my unihertz atom l phone which I had gotten a replacement screen for. I was a little worried about my truck starting, it nearly didn't. I think my battery might be going a little bad, so that's something to keep an eye on. I might go buy one of those jump packs. I think it's the original battery, so over ten years old, might be time to get it replaced. It did start better after I went into home depot but not 100% well. I picked up chipolte because I could and left it running while I went in. 

Went home and spent an hour replacing the screen on my phone. It went well actually, the only trouble was that I didn't have adhesive tape to tape the battery back down, but I managed with double sided tape and it seemed fine. The phone works! Yay! Except I'm back to the problem where that phone won't receive group MMS texts. This whole thing was a problem because verizon discontinued it's messages+ app and said we all had to move over to google messages, which won't get the group MMS on my atom L, but will get them on my backup motorola phone. Sigh. My tank mini didn't have a problem. I tried switching to textra which was the solution for my tank mini, but that hasn't worked for the atom l, it might just be too old. 

After emailing back and forth with the unihertz people, they agreed that they would send me a free replacement screen for the tank mini but they don't have any and don't know when they'll get them back in stock. Sigh. So I'm carrying around two phones basically because my atom l has libby, my podcasts, music, all my notes apps and things and the motorola has texting, calling and work emails, but this is a little better.

After that, I did some fleece combing. I'm trying to finish processing a fleece before the move, so I've been working on it everyday. I'm making progress! Then it was game nights with the siblings where we played Vintage Story. My sister's computer was having trouble, so it wasn't 100% good, but it was fun. It was probably 10 by the time I closed up the computer and went to bed. 

And then I could hear water. My paranoia on the water right now is that I left the hose hooked up to the outside hookup. The hose didn't have anything on the end and had been partially drained before it got cold and the water was off. I unhooked the hose and on that 40F day made sure it wasn't cracked. But we've never had weather this cold here before and I didn't drain the line. So my brain in the middle of the night has been telling me that the liquid noise I'm hearing is the line or valve broken and it's leaking everywhere! And destroying our foundation! and I can't convince myself otherwise. So around midnight, I went and turned off the valve to that and finally fell asleep. 95% sure the liquid noise is the upstairs heat, which doesn't usually kick on that much because the downstairs heats it decently and I could hear the water noise after I turned off the valve. I suspect I'm running into hormonal issues because I remember being like this in college before I went on hormonal control, the middle of the night panics, I'd go wander around campus, mostly in the winter as well. Bleh. Hopefully it all stabilizes soon. 

I got up around 7 today and laid in bed and played soothing video games for a bit. It was -14F overnight and the heater is barely keeping up, but this should be the worst night. I've left all the windows covered for now until it hits at least zero degrees outside and the house starts warming up again. I debated whether I should keep the temps at the normal 63 during the day and 57 at night or if I should change it to 63 for overnight. In retrospect, I should have kept it at 63, I don't think it would have made a difference in fuel consumption and it would have given us more of a buffer. I think F probably needs to get the wood stove installed asap if we're going to have winters like this, it would have helped a lot. My dad was smug when I texted him this morning since they have their stove running. But it'll be my stove soon. :) I just checked the temperature in the house and it's at 58 which means the heater is just barely starting to overtake the cold so that's good. 

I'm pretty sleepy right now, but thankfully work isn't busy and I don't need to go anywhere today, so I'll work out this afternoon and keep an eye on things. I've got my heated blanket running, my alpaca blanket over my shoulders and warming my fingers under the heated blanket every so often. 

Comments

[which_chick]

Staying warm is definitely job #1 in this weather. I've been hibernating in the office (upside: all the corporate taxes are done, federal and state, and they've been mailed off and everything) or at home, with brief dashes out morning and evening to check on the ponies (who are very fluffy and eating themselves warm which is fine, we have plenty of hay). Happily the frost-free spigots have not frozen yet and the horse water has a heater to keep it from freezing. So, it's going as well as can be expected. The weather is supposed to be nicer toward the weekend -- I can't wait.

[unicornduke]

I ran out for groceries and to get the battery in my truck replaced this morning and 15F feels positively balmy in comparison! Thankfully, I don't have livestock to worry about, so my irrational fear of the outdoor spigot is unnecessary so I can just turn it off.