Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

We had a couple power blips during storms the last two nights. Yesterday morning woke up and the stairway lights were not on, though it was well past the time when they should’ve automatically turned on. By way of background, we’re in a townhouse, or as the husband puts it, a giant staircase with rooms attached. A giant staircase with no windows, I would add, save at the very top, so it’s very dark without lights on. I was an early adopter of Philips Hue lighting, and Amazon Echo devices, so we have automated lights all over the house. It’s nice for things like the front porch and driveway (lights on at sunset, off at sunrise), and a couple floors of the central staircase (on at 6am-ish, brighter at sunrise, dimmer at sunset, off at 10:30; mainly so we don’t trip over a cat in the dark), and definitely for turning on/off and adjusting brightness via the voice controls. We particularly use the dimming feature on most lights as we rarely need them at 100%, unless we have company or workers in the house. Not difficult to set up, but also aging somewhat as we’ve had the basics of it since we lived in DC, and brought that with us to MD when we moved in 2020.

So yesterday morning nothing is on. Check the app, it’s showing none of the lights are connecting. Google that, lots of reddit threads, try several things like turning lights off and on, cycling the hub, etc. Eventually I just unplugged the hub and left it off for a few hours while I did other things. Plug it back in, leave it alone for a bit, go back into the app and see that the lights are slowly reconnecting, so let it be (after turning the staircase on; again, don’t want to trip on a cat, but also don’t want the lights at 100% as that’s way too bright). Eventually everything connects back and I can control it all, but one of the things reddit had me try zapped all my preset routines so I had to remember how all of those were set up and reestablish them. I was grateful it all came back; the idea of having to replace the hub was obnoxious.

Otherwise I’m slowly recovering from the covid bout. Still a little extra snot going on, and a little fatigued, but getting better. Feels like the end of a nasty head cold at this point. Grateful that I never lost my sense of smell. We’re off to get covid-delayed haircuts this morning, and hopefully catch at least the Barbie movie, and maybe Oppenheimer as well, depending on my energy levels.

Afrin for the win, for sleep. I can’t do sleeping formula cold stuff, because my body always ends up fighting the sleepy part, and I sleep worse than if I’d just taken regular medication. The nasal spray, which can be used for a maximum of three days before you get a rebound effect and get even worse sinus grossness, is a good temporary “clear these up so I can sleep through the night while breathing through my nose” option. And it worked like a charm. First decent sleep in days. I still want a nap, but I think that’s just overall feeling run down from the virus now and not lack of sleep.

Apparently after taking paxlovid you can get a covid rebound, which is related to the standard doses sometimes not being quite enough drug to completely knock the thing out. Very annoying. After feeling much better over the weekend, Sunday night my sinuses clogged right back up and I’ve slept for shit the last two nights. It’s been so long since I’ve even had a head cold (thank you working from home) that I lacked most of my usual arsenal for dealing with sinus pressure. Getting some afrin spray tonight so hopefully sleeping through the night will be easier tonight. Add to this the fact that Metro has closed all of our local stations for six weeks. While I can work from home, the husband cannot, so I’m the morning shuttle to the closest Orange line station. Easy enough to do, but it does mean getting up a little earlier. At least he doesn’t have to switch trains with this arrangement.

Welp, I finally got caught by covid. Started coming down with what I thought were really bad reflux symptoms on Thursday, but those morphed into full on cold/flu-like stuff on Friday. Took an at home test this morning and it hadn’t even finished 3 minutes of the 15 that you have to let it sit before it was showing a positive result. I blame the Metro commute to the office on Wednesday. Heaven willing I didn’t pass it to any co-workers. The husband just tested negative, so here’s hoping that masking and kicking him out of the house for a good chunk of the weekend will keep him from getting it. Yuck.

As the random little indie comedy group from Australia says, I always get into stuff, just when it’s finished being cool.

I think half the fun of home ownership is the little things that have to be taken care of. For example, one of the GFCI receptacles in the kitchen died sometime yesterday. There are two in there, and one died about two years ago. They’re original to the house (2010), so it’s unsurprising that they’re wearing out now, but it’s always a surprise. Had to look up the electrician we used last time, and they’re now scheduled to come out middle of next week to replace it (as I told them, inconvenience, not emergency, so I was fine with whatever they had). In the meantime the toaster oven has been moved from one plug to another, and I’ll move the electric can opener if we need to open anything. The kitchen Echo has been relocated temporarily to the island, and I’m debating whether to move the coffee maker or just stick to french press for the next week or so. The funny thing is that I’d bought some beans on a lark yesterday before knowing the GFCI was dead, so I had fresh ones for this morning. Maybe the keurig sensed them and killed the GFCI out of spite. That or Amazon decided I wasn’t spending enough and hoped I’d use them to book an electrician.