Partial Lockdown Day 27 (Monday)
Work
I’ve decided I’ve checked on the water at my nemesis enough. I’ve put together a report on my findings and will be sending it off to the roommate to deal with the owners. It was so nice not being in a rush to check my nemesis. I always tried to do it early and around the same time, but today I got to relax and not rush. Which is good, because I ran around and paid a few bills. Preparing all the paperwork for them was time consuming.
What a stupid day! First, I stopped by my nemesis just one last time to look at the water situation and found the pool is leaking! Seems something is wrong with the filter so it’s losing a water. Luckily, it was only a few inches, but I had to disable the pump and close some valves. Hopefully the plumber will get it taken care of.
Then it was off to pick up a package. Got to the office and the business moved! It wasn’t too far out of the way though. Once that was dealt with, it was off to give money to Inland Revenue and pickup a form to request more stuff for my work permit. Oh, and a place I have received no less than three emails about paying wasn’t open, again, when I went by to drop off the weeks-old check.
Once I got back home I reached out to my handyman to see if he could do something for me and I found out the housekeeper has the wrong information about the work she’s doing this week. And of course, I haven’t been able to get ahold of her to clarify/correct it.
Curfew
Today the government is scheduled to make an announcement regarding opening to tourists. I realize that we need them for the business, but personally I’m fine with the border staying closed for a long time. Finally, after at least one false start, they did the announcement. December 1st. The border will be opening for tourists on December 1st.
Mind you, they haven’t announced what it’ll take to come, I’m sure at the bare minimum you’ll be required to test negative within a short period before travel. Lots of people are really happy about this. It’ll be good for my business, but personally I’d rather not. Well, I’d rather just head back to the states but that’s not happening any time soon. I have grown a bit tired of this place.
Partial Lockdown Day 28 (Tuesday)
Work
I ran out before I even ate breakfast to make sure a house was unlocked and ready for the housekeeper. I’ve got her and the handyman going to a house that’s been empty and unused for around six months. All our other houses have had at least someone stay once during this lockdown. Since there’s no other work this month, I scheduled them to be there all day so they can at least earn some money.
Game Development
I spent a good couple hours this morning working on the game. Everything is just so complicated at this point it’s insane! I’m trudging through though, and it felt good to get back to it. I do have a hard time with motivation, I should probably have kept going but hopefully I’ll be back at it tomorrow.
MORE Work
Ugh, so there’s this one house we manage, the owners aren’t the best people to work with. Months ago, before the whole world went down the toilet the roommate was going to fire them. She never did . . . Until today, as I was relaxing and playing games with friends she (and the intern) kept messaging me over and over and over and over about it. It really made it hard to focus on enjoying myself. So I stopped playing early and dealt with all the stuff related to it.
This means one less house to manage, less income for the business. We’re losing our management fee, the monthly pool service fee and any markup on chemicals, and our monthly exterminating fee. But, that means one less pool to clean every week! And it’s a stupid pool too, the whole house is a pain in the ass really. Losing it isn’t a big loss, in any regards, the lost income won’t make a huge difference.
Partial Lockdown Day 29 (Wednesday)
Work
The housekeeper is cleaning my house today. While she’s doing that I’ll be running around a bit getting some things done. I have to go down to my nemesis to see if the plumber has fixed the pool yet, hit up that house we’re dropping to make sure we don’t have anything there, and go check on work permit stuff.
A stop by my nemesis showed no change, gotta follow up with the plumber. Then to the amazing house, looked around and saw nothing that was ours, ready to let that house (and pool) go. Next was the house that’s been empty for 6mo. Had the housekeepers there yesterday cleaning. Good thing I went by, they left three doors unlocked, one in such a way it was likely to blow open in a strong breeze. Otherwise the place was in good shape.
After that was a run to Inland Revenue, but I ran away without even turning my car off when I saw people waiting outside in the heat. I can try dealing with that tomorrow. I finally dropped off a check I’ve been sitting on for a couple weeks, the place was finally open.
Restocking
Once the work stuff was done I hit up a couple grocery stores. I was happily surprised to see they had decent stock. Still couldn’t get everything on my list, but I was able to make a decent dent. I picked up some ice cream, four new flavored creamer, and I finally found more Splenda!
Partial Lockdown Day 30 (Thursday)
Curfew
Looks like the government has relaxed the curfew once again. Now we’re allowed out between the hours of 5a and 8p! Not that it matters to me at all, I barely leave the house as it is. Actually, I prefer not leaving the house if possible. But still, just shows that things are going back to the “New Normal” again.
Work
More running around today. It’s time to pay the bills, fun! I started out running into the plumber. When I asked him about my nemesis he said he was still waiting on me to get the part. I didn’t realize that and I thought he was getting it. One more thing added to my to do list for the day.
First stop was the electric company. The usual long wait to pay a bunch of bills. Then I hit the hardware store hoping to find canned air. No such luck, but I did buy some more planters. Next was the internet provider. Again, the usual wait to pay the bills. After that I was off to the construction supply store where I got the part for my nemesis and some chemicals for pool service.
Once that was done, I hit up Inland Revenue to request the last piece of paper I need for my work permit renewal. Of course, their network was down, so I have to go back again to get what I need. I was going to stop by Social Security to see if they had my work permit paperwork, but since I couldn’t get anything from Inland I just dropped off payment and skipped out on paying the water bill. All that I’ll try again for on Monday.
Accounting
Once I was done with the running around it was time for me to prepare the final statement for the amazing house. It took a little while to do, and a few different versions as I corrected things. In the end we decided to prorate them for part of the management fee since we’re ending things on an odd date. I also almost missed charging them for pest control. And of course, since I was dealing with that, I also went through and made sure I was caught up on my accounting.
Partial Lockdown Day 31 (Friday)
Pools
Man, pools were pretty quick and easy today. I started on top of the hill. I decided to pull the cover off the pool since it was nearly overflowing from the recent rains. I’ll probably put it back on Monday. After that was the easy pool, I didn’t really do much there since it’s mostly clean. I then headed down to my old place, again, pool was in pretty good shape. After that was my nemesis, which I can’t do anything with because it’s still not fixed.
Work
Of course, while I was out working on pools the roommate was bugging me for some information that she could easily put together herself. Luckily, I was pretty much done with my rounds, so I headed home and passively-aggressively sent her the information after having told her she doesn’t have to wait for me and she can find it all herself.
Restocking
I made a run out to get some supplies. First I gassed up the car. Tried yesterday, but both gas stations weren’t an option when I went by. Luckily, today was better. I had a couple 5gal water bottles to fill, but both machines I tried weren’t working. I did get a few groceries while I was out.
Game Development
After sweating profusely in getting things done I headed back home and jumped back into the game. Now that I have gotten the last bit working the way I want it’s time to move onto something new. Not exactly sure what that is yet, so I started dabbling in other things I’ll need later but haven’t fully fleshed out ideas for. I didn’t do a deep dive though, just not in the mood to spend hours on it today.
As it turns out, I decided to go back and tackle something else in the game, audio! It was really easy too. I just totally copied and pasted a scripts from a tutorial and BAM! Now I have in-game audio. I have a feeling I will end up modifying it, maybe adding onto it later. But for now it does what I want.
Partial Lockdown Day 32 (Saturday)
Game Development
Before I had breakfast or even showered I was already digging into my game, sorta. I actually finished the post about work I’d already done on interactions in the game. Then I started on another post about other work I’d done on the sound system within the game. I haven’t actually done any work yet today, though I have collected a little useful information on my next steps.
Work
Before I had breakfast or even showered I ran out to a nearby villa to unlock it and drop something off. The intern messaged me to let me know the electrician is ready to replace some lights there. I figured I might as well just go do it instead of waiting. Then, like an hour or more later the roommate messaged me to say the same thing. . . I wasn’t exactly polite in my response and I think it may have come across a bit aggressively. I definitely felt aggressive sending it, but reading it back it just feels more direct than aggressive. Although the roommate may have taken it as aggressive, or maybe she was just confused.
Accounting
I’ve gotten started on my month-end checklist early. I spent a little while today getting stuff entered into QuickBooks. The fact that we had a single renter this month makes month-end so much easier. I’ve already gotten two-thirds of my checklist completed and there’s still four days left of the month. I have faith that the tasks I’ve marked off my list are done for the month, no new renters or anything like that coming until October. There’s still going to be more expenses, I think, so they’re caught up, but not marked as complete.
Power
Oh goodie! Just what I wanted for my Saturday afternoon, a power outage! As I was in the middle of watching a TV show the power just went without any warning. The sky is blue, the clouds are few and fluffy, and the wind is non-existent. At least I can find comfort in knowing it’s not just me, but a bunch of other houses have lost power. It’s kind of funny, just yesterday I was telling myself a power outage was due since it had been a while. . . I was pleasantly surprised when the power returned less than an hour later.
Partial Lockdown Day 33 (Sunday)
Game Development
I actually finished what I was working on in the game yesterday, and this morning I finished writing up the post about what I did. I implemented an audio system within the game. It was actually pretty easy to do, and now I can hook that into things going forward. Of course, that now leaves me with so much more work to do in the game. So it’s time for me to continue my work, or at least planning my next steps.
Power
JFC! Just as it was time to take a shower the power goes out! Here I was thinking yesterday was an isolated incident, but now I’m beginning to believe this is going to be a regular occurrence for a while. Luckily, it was only off for two hours . . . That was sarcasm by the way. . .
Featured Image
This week’s featured image is another throwback to my first year here. I chose this one because it represents a phenomenon that happens every year, however this year it hasn’t been as bad as that first time I experienced it.
