Monday, 11/24/14, 2:16 pm

Working with wireless keyboard at the library, and then, the heater.

This was a different setup for the Wrimoer. She had done this at least once before - to work at the library. Whether she had worked on the wireless keyboard then she could not remember. It felt odd to her to write in public on the keyboard, as she could not do it by looking at the screen. In this case she was using the tablet. She had seen the other day how woozy that made her if she looked at it too long.

There was again the problem of what to write. She had no list on hand. She was also doing it with her eyes closed instead of looking out the window. That made her feel funny to be in a room with people and to have her eyes closed in front of them. In shutting out her view of them, she was letting expressions run over her face that she could feel self conscious over.  But it would seem to feel odder to be looking out the window while typing

away. Her position was not at all close enough to the tablet to be able to check anything she had written. She gave looking out the window a try. It did feel odd. Looking up that way gave that numbing feeling in the neck area. 

She had given her morning class not that long ago. The class had done beautifully on their turkeys. They did some in calligraphic flourish style and then some in stencil drawing style. The stencil drawing was a hard concept for students to understand. One had to color in a shape without have drawn it in line. One was to color in as one went along, but to also try to create a smooth edge so that there would be clean white lines between the dark shapes. It took a lot of exposure to this method before people could get away from their habitual way of thinking of something. It so often got confusing for them. The work had been quite lovely. One student had misunderstood the options for the final piece. That had created a third way to do the final piece that she ha the Wrimoer had not thought of before. Do the calligraphy style and color that in. She must remember to add that to her notes for the lesson.

The weather was wet and wild out that day. A lot warmer than it had been the past few days. A respite from the cold.

The armchairs at the library were very comfortable, except that the armrests were still too high for the Wrimoer. There was no way to prop her legs up these chairs were very firm, well padded and roomy. 

She would not be having the watercolor students in the morning as one was off anyway, and the other was celebrating thanksgiving out of the country.

At the library she had taken pictures of her press releases in the newspapers. The regular paper had printed the kids’ class December offering with one of her demo drawings that was right in the calendar box. She hoped people would finally see that. They had chosen the Chanukah themed drawing though, which struck her as a bit odd. The free paper had finally rewritten the article to include both the adult and kids class, with at least the basic themes mentioned, the dates, and a mention of the patrons sponsoring the kids class that was finally doing it justice she thought. She was very pleased to see they had listed the themes, even differentiating the themes between the two classes.

She knew this typing was going to be such a mess. The Wrimoer had started using the spell check and grammar option on the word processing software, but that would not happen until she got this writing put in into that software, and that meant having to send it as an email message to herself through all the channels. It was so frustrating to know she had hit a wrong key but to be so unsure of what key she had hit. Just where in the word had she been? Every time she tried moving the keyboard, she ended up hitting a key she had not wanted to.  

There was someone sitting at a table nearby who worked with a pad and pencil. It was good to see someone writing by hand. They had talked a bit about that in class that morning just because they were using calligraphy for doing their turkeys. They had done some regular calligraphy stroke practices before their drawings.

She ached to stop writing as she again felt as if she was saying nothing. She could not stand not being able to correct her writing. She should probably have been going slower and more evenly.

2:44pm

She just peeked and found she had written a whole section in upper case letters. She hoped there was an easy conversion feature for that. She would not be able to stomach having to go through that to rewrite it.

2:47pm 31 minutes 858 words 27 wpm

Resume 9:07 pm after running the spell & grammar check. 

She had forgotten to note just how long the spell & grammar checks had taken. Her writing speed had been good from her work at the library, but if it took so long to run the spell/grammar check, that speed increase would seem not to count for much.

When the Wrimoer got home from the library in the late afternoon, the apartment felt cooler than it should have. The winds out had been very gusty and the rain was not that heavy or even cold but its whipping made it feel unpleasant to her. She found that the propane heater had been off, with both the red and green lights. She tried turning the heater on. It came on for a moment then shut off both lights again. She had always wondered just how the heater’s thermostat sensed the temperature or where it was. It seemed as if it handled different weathers in different ways. In this case she could not get the heater to stay on. She did not see why the green light should go off when the red light with the little flame symbol on it went off. This green light had been on all summer. She had never turned the heater off. It never needed to come on in the summer because she had the heat setting at a low setting.

She tried getting in touch with someone, the business office, the landlord, the fellow who was to field the calls about such things. She was a bit panicked at the thought there might be no heat overnight. She worried that there would be no time to get in touch with anyone who might fix this. The fellow who was to look after things while the landlords were on their winter holiday, wanted to come have a look at the heater and at the gas tank. She had thought perhaps there was no gas. He checked the tank and found it full.

He tried jacking the heat way up. It did come on and seem as if it would stay on. That frightened her to have it set that high. She did not want to have to be jumping up and down to be regulating the heat. That would not work through the night. They tried several times to set the thermostat, or what seemed to be the thermostat, to its normal position and then just high enough to make the heat come on. Each time both lights would come on, then the whole thing would shut off, and the green light would go off as well, though the button stayed in its ‘on’ position.

She decided she could always use her electric heater in her bed area. It was blustery out, but not so cold that it would get bad in the apartment. This was weather that came from the South/Southwest, never that cold, but usually wet in the winter. The caretaker was unsure whether to call the landlord. She wanted him to. Had she the number she would have. She had tried to, but that number had not worked. That in itself had been a little disturbing.

She had had a problem a few weeks ago where her smoke alarm had been going off intermittently. She had tried calling the caretaker but there had been no answer. Then had come the power outages of that storm. The smoke alarm had kept going. It was because the battery was low. It only beeped intermittently when the heat got too hot. Then it was fine for several days. It started up again but this time it would not stop when the temperature dropped. She had learned to live with it, but it was not good. 

The caretaker had said he could come later in the day to look at it. He did not come or call. She had tried to call him. There had been no answer and nothing to leave a message on. The next morning he called her early, apologizing profusely. He would come by to look at it in a few hours, since she did not want him coming in the morning.

When he came, he had the replacement battery ready, and again apologized. Still, she wondered what would have happened if it had really been something and there had been no way to get in touch with anyone. 

She had always been able to get in touch with the landlord though he was in another state. This made her feel odd to feel that the only line of contact was through the caretaker, nice as he was. She just did not like having to worry about whether the right information was getting through. 

Now with this heater situation, the caretaker had talked to the landlord. The landlord had said in this warmer weather one had to set the thermostat higher if one wanted the heat to come on. That did not change that the green light was going off. The landlord had at least taken heed about that. The caretaker was to call the fuel company first thing in the morning so they could come check out the heater.

The Wrimoer had been able to take care of a few simple chores. She had made her dinner. Made that wonderful apple cranberry dish. Combed the cat. Swept the cat fur off the bed sheet. Then she gave the heater another try. She had also written up an account of the basic steps they had gone through and what the temps had been. This time she set the thermostat high enough that it should go on for awhile. It did. After the heater had run for a few minutes like that – it seemed as if it ran hotter than it usually did – she turned it down. The heater turned itself lower but kept running, with both lights on. After about an hour, the temperatures in both the kitchen and the living room were up to a normal level. The red light went off and the heater turned off, but the green light stayed on. Still a mystery, but at least it had seemed to work normally.

She called the caretaker to let him know what had happened. She had called him earlier to tell him nothing was improved. When he had left, he was saying that he had a ‘feeling’ the green light would stay on or just come back on, though it was off when he left. This had given her such reassurance to hear him thinking so magically. This kind of faith did not appeal to her at all. Why should the green light magically stay on or come on? It might, yes, but could one assume that it would?

She was to call him around Noon the next day. By then she would have been able to watch whether it reverted. She suspected it was somehow related to either the wet or the direction of the wind. From where she sat she could not see whether the green light was still on. 

c. 9:55 pm

There, the heater had just come on, by itself?  Now to see if it would stay on for a little while. No! – It had shut itself completely off again immediately. No green light.

Would she have to set the thermostat higher again to make it come on? She should check where the winds were now.

9:56 pm 2104 words. 51 minutes 24.4 wpm Wow the spell & grammar check went very fast with this round. Very few errors as I corrected along the way.

She tried raising the thermostat and going through the turning on process. It shut itself off again immediately. It made a little thump sound. She had heard an unusual sound the evening before that had startled her. She had not known where it had come from. She had assumed it had been the cap to the homemade strawberry jam jar that had made quite a loud almost bang or pop in the kitchen sink. She had not been able to get it off the jar without prying it loose with the can opener end. She thought it was this lid popping back into shape against the  metal sink that had made that loud pop or bang. Now she wondered if it had been something in the heater. It had seemed as if it came from the heater’s direction.

10:10 pm 2273 words

31 + 51 +10? minutes = 92 minutes, 24.71 wpm