Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus!

Or Happy Saint David’s Day, to all my fellow Cymry a Cymraesau out there, by birth, heritage, or affinity! Alas, I have neither leek nor daffodil to wear. Oh, well…

I just spent an hour shoveling snow–again–and I’m soaking wet. 🙁 I’m no longer snowed in, at least, but I seldom go out on Saturday. I have plenty of projects to work on!

Among the fruits of February: a new bed and a new exercycle. Both of these were unplanned expenditures–I’ve already spent my tax rebate!–but I’m rather pleased with them both.

I noted below that I’d broken my exercycle on February 8th. I shopped around online and off, including Penny’s (thanks, !), but found nothing in the stores as low as I hoped, which was under $150. I wanted an “upright” model with no moving handlebars–just a fixed, stationary console in front. Online, Dick’s Sporting Goods had a model that I pondered, wondering why a $250 exercycle was on sale for $99 (and about $20 shipping). I also saw a good possibility in Sears for $149. I decided to contact the broken exercycle’s manufacturer and see if they would honor their one-year warranty. They e-mailed back on Friday the 15th, as I was about to leave for Boskone: they would not. Evidently they count it by the month.

I was irked by that. I tried to put through an order to Dick’s, but it crashed and wouldn’t go through. After Boskone, on the 18th, I looked again at Dick’s website, and they no longer had that model listed. I checked the one up at Sears, and it was now on sale–$119, and I could pay online for in-store pickup. That meant I would pay the same for that one as I would have for the one at Dick’s, with shipping. So, I had my new exercycle on Monday night.

I didn’t assemble it right away, however, because I needed to leave a clear pathway through the house for the guys who delivered the new bed. You may recall that I had a very old water bed that was passed on to me by my folks about eight years ago. It was the kind with a firm molded foam “shell” and long tubes of water inside. It had been springing leaks every few months, and the last couple of times it did so, I had been thinking that I really was going to have to replace it. I’d already retired one tube because it was covered with patches.

The morning of Friday the 15th, the day I was leaving for Boskone (and the day of the rapid fire reading, which I not only was organizing, but was giving my own very first public reading in), I woke up 2-1/2 hours early in a cold wet puddle. *sigh* I decided to deal with the bed when I got home on Sunday. Sunday night, when I started to pull the bed apart, I discovered that it was at last past the point of repair. Three of the tubes had sprung leaks simultaneously, one of them irreparable. The vinyl was obviously degrading.

It being Presidents Day weekend, there were plenty of sales on Monday (and wretched weather, pouring rain and dense fog. It’s not often that I’m nervous driving!). For all my shopping around, however, I could find no price that even approached one offered by Mattress Discounters, a company I’ve bought from before. They’re having a 30th anniversary celebration. So on Monday the 18th, I went up there and bought a bed set, and arranged for it to be delivered on Wednesday. Until then, I was on the futon in the front room, to the bewilderment of the cats.

By Wednesday night, I had a brand new bed, and I’d assembled the exercycle and resumed my cycling routine. Mattress Discounters took away the old bedspring, but they wouldn’t take the water bed parts. I chopped up the foam pieces and saved them for projects (I made a new couch cushion from an old foam mattress, for example), saved the vinyl liners for drop cloths or camping ground cover, threw away the tubes, and actually put part of the old water bed top on top of the new mattress because it made it more pillowy. I like my new bed, it’s very comfy and it’s several inches higher than the old one. I love the new exercycle. It’s much more challenging than the old one, whose limits I had about reached.

I offered the broken exercycle on Freecycle and someone came and got it. I didn’t even have to worry about getting rid of it.

I came home from Boskone with a head cold, which I’ve just gotten over–that was a nuisance. Between that, the convention, and the bed nonsense, I’m running very short on sleep.

I thought the rapid fire reading itself went well at Boskone, although the audience fluctuated quite a bit. I said I would read last to make sure everyone else got their time. There were only a couple of audience members at the start, then a number of people came in for the middle. But just as I was about to read, half the room got up and left! I’m not taking it personally–I think they were all heading down to the Art Show Reception, where they had free cheesecake. *wry smile* I thought I gave a good delivery of my reading, and the audience who remained appeared very attentive. (Next time: have cheesecake. 🙂 )

The rest of Boskone had its ups and downs. It wasn’t as easy to “schmooze” and talk with people as at World Fantasy, and I didn’t get to do as much of that as I hoped. But then, I had a lot more friends at Boskone to hang out with than I did at World Fantasy. I’m just going to keep on hitting the cons. Some of the people I met at Boskone I’ll be seeing at Readercon in July.