Month: November 2023

I didn’t really have a prompt for this one, either.

Again, an incredibly busy day. Eleven hours of work, and I’m not finished. I have something to do in a few hours. Oh well.

IN the meantime, however, I did get notice that, no, I’m not going to be taking my shot tonight because, yes, the med agencies couldn’t get the paperwork completed correctly to get me my medication today

I don’t know what it says that I’m not getting bent-out-of-shape about it. I did nothing wrong. That said, no, I’m not going to be conciliatory about the situation. You all screwed up. I don’t care that it wasn’t you, particularly, but you didn’t call me to let me know that there was going to be a problem until the day thathe problem was going to expose itself.

I could have spent a bunch of time trying to apply more pressure from my end, but it doesn’t change anything.

A kinder person might be more understanding, but I’m beyond the point of either outrage, or conciliation. There’s nothing I can do, so…”Whatever.” /GenX

I looked at past entries, and found this from this day in 2011.

3. How are you similar or different from the person you were 5 years ago? 10 years ago? 20 years ago?
Really, there aren’t a ton of similarities. Five years ago I was in a new relationship, my first significant one in several years. I liked it so I put a ring on it.
Ten years ago, I was trying to finish my degree, and working far, far too much at the same time. Still, I think that fall semester my last year was probably my best academically.
Twenty years ago? I was living in Bremerhaven, Germany. Memories are really fading. I think we were just about getting the hints that big changes were coming to American life in Germany. By May, the immediate changes were already happening. My high school had about 600 students when the 91-92 year finished. The next year, there were only about 150 to start the year. When I left in February, it was down to about 80. I had four lockers.

I’ve got a bunch of faves I apologize. Up too late last night watching Breesus give repeated doses of Manningface…

Let’s see….

Five years ago, I was settling in to my last job, working an insane amount of time. We were coming out of the bad situation around my employment.

I absolutely loved what I was doing in that job. I tried hard to find a reason to stay there, but the money really spoke. Given that that job would have come to an end even before the pandemic started, but at the time, I really did not want to head anywhere else.

(Wow, there was a weird formatting tag in that old §. I’m not sure what that would have been lost without it.)

Kind of replaying the entries from towards the end of NoJoMo a decade ago…

My initial temptation was to say that I was trying to be calm, and make the best of the situation in which I found myself then.

Thinking back on that, though, I really had good reason to be pissed off.

Did I let my emotions get the best of me more than once? Absolutely. But in retrospect, the anger was justified, maybe underplayed.

I was doing so much to really disconnect from the horrid situation in which I’d found myself both personally and professionally.

Kyle Orton’s (Not the former NFL QB who heard a boo..h/t TMac) Substack name — It can always get worse.

Something very British about that outlook.

But I had no idea what was ahead in just a couple of months…..

A missive here about the four-letter company, and the inmates partially responsible for me being there would absolutely be appropriate.

But I’m not going to do that.

I am finished for the day.

And, tomorrow, for the month.

I probably should set out how much I’m going to write on the wrap-up tomorrow night.

Let’s try to do a solid hour.

I’m not working Friday, and don’t really care to see the Thursday Night football game.

Christmas Plans

We are staying home. I am very much okay with this.

I have one day where I’m going into a temporary office facility, but kind of sanguine about it.

I think I’ve got a handle on what I’m planning to do for presents.

But I just thought of something I was supposed to do over the weekend, and forgot about.

I should be able to get that done on Friday since I’m not working that day. I’d scheduled leave for this paycheck, and have already worked more than that.

Let me try one of T2K’s prompts….

What’s your greatest writing strength and greatest writing weakness?

You know, I think I could do better about planning a long project write. What I did for this month really didn’t require a lot of pre-planning.

What I’ve not done this streak is getting a head-start on answers to the individual prompts.

I’ve drawn a lot of inspiration lately from some of what Michael Malice said about his process for writing.

But it requires better planning than I’ve been doing last few streaks.

Many stretches I don’t really have a good list of things I’d like to hit upon. Have your idea, then spend a set amount of time writing on that section. Same time every day.

Obviously, with NoJoMo, writing at the same time has been tough with my work and travel schedule this month. Some days I write in the morning. If I’m working, I might pound out a paragraph or two while listening to a call.

I do tend to write on Saturday Morning after I’ve filled my pill case for the next week.

A lot of what I’m listening to these days is from authors.

Will I get a chance to reach a moment of equilibrium again where I can slice off a segment of time each day to operate?

I don’t know.

I do appreciate how much I’ve actually done this month already. I’m hoping that next month can kind of be a month can actually include some time for relaxation.

.

But I’m sure I’ll end up spending time planning the next big thing.

After my company stole the equity I’d built up in the form of Paid Time Off, most of the week before Christmas will be spent paying CxxxXXX’s protection racket rrenewing my certification so I can keep working.

What else?

The cold weather has me really wanting an Irish Coffee. I don’t even know what to say about that.

Exile in Guyville review

My wife had forgotten about the show, so I went solo. Took a taxi up there; does that count towards Small Business Saturday? How about the one drink I bought at the show?

I would say the place was only about 70% full, which I guess makes sense; not many of us GenXers out there.

The opening act was good. I’ll probably look up on Apple Music a few times in the next few weeks when I have some time. I will say that it was tough to hear the lead singer’s voice, however, due to the audio mix. A bit of the same strange levels with Liz, but she was a little easier to hear.

AS it’d been pitched, Liz played Exile In Guyville from stare-to-finish. For the encore, she generally played a hit off of her other albums Was very happy to hear Supernova, and Polyester Bride. (Two tracks that have gotten significant play on my various devices throughout the years….)

This was the first time for me going down to “The Wharf.” I get what they were going for, but there was a lot that screamed some of the pre-planned parts in Tidewater.

Getting in was a bit of an issue. Glad I didn’t have a bag. Didn’t check my coat. Might have needed to do that if it was more crowded, but I had enough space.

The entry was a bit odd, but I finally got behind some other folks who were attending. Once I was inside, it was pretty easy. Didn’t take my normal laptop, but had pockets loaded with some of the things I’d most often need to fetch.

Happy that there was no vaxport stupidity.

The whole experience was closer to kind of what I’d been expecting moving up here.

It’s a nice change from the absolute hell I’d been dealing with for too many years.

So. What’s up for the rest of the month?

A few more days writing. Shot Wednesday that’s, for some reason, giving me a bit of irrational trepidation, then…?

I think I would like to go see a comedy show.

Small Business Saturdays

Oh my. I need to find something. Do the taxi rides I plan to take this evening count?

SBA links the AMEX site.

I did order food last night, though it wasn’t on my AMEX. \^/hatever.

I kinda go out of my way to shop with small, especially local, merchants as much as I can.

I can recall early in my time working where things like computers would be purchased from a local shop for what seemed like an unreasonable price. In retrospect, the markup really wasn’t that much.

And it kept other people working.

It sort of goes with where I am with travel now, too. I could save a few bucks here and there, or I could be taken care of.

I think the bigger part of that, though, is that I was broke back then. There were many instances where I did things the hard way, because that’s all I could afford.

Kind of getting distracted by what I’ve got on in the background.

I’m reminded of Trump talking about dealing with labor unions. You want something don, you go talk to this guy, and it’ll get taken care of.

Part of my company’s annual training involved grease payments. It’s generally okay to bribe peoplepay extra to expedite things that would normally occur.

I mentioned the taxi rides tonight. Full review of what I did is coming later.

Still excited.

OH!

Fits with some of the refreshers on mid-90s Feminism in preparation for… Almost forgot. During the Dolphins-Jets game yesterday. Space Cowboy Jeff’s TV series called something along the lines of Small Duck. (Yes, I did make an effort to STFW and find it…and couldn’t this morning. Don’t care enough to look further.)

Um.

Okay.

I’ve been a dude for a long time. But I can’t think of a single dude with whom I’ve compared the size of my junk. Certainly there were dudes with whom I am acquainted that there’d be giggling among the women about physical size. Then there are stories like Milton Berle.

After a very young age, it became just one of those things. I’ve got a schqantz. You’ve got one, too. Whatever. I’ve never considered, much less been jealous of, another guy’s equipment.

I would say that it’s just another example of me being weird, but I really don’t think so.

It really feels like it should be Saturday.

Thanksgiving recap

I alluded to it yesterday when I was writing — just incredible sleep Wednesday night into Thursday.

I’d made brief reference to it before, but I wound up ordering a Thanksgiving feast from Lena’s in Alexandria.

Very well-received. Probably didn’t need the pumpkin cheesecake I added on at the end. While it’s very tasty, I worry about my wife and I being able to finish it.

Add-on two, extra dinner rolls, was met…a push? My wife had bought different rolls because she didn’t think her mother would eat the brioche rolls. I didn’t find that out until after I’d ordered. They’re bread; they’re not really expensive, so whatever.

Add-on three was very well-received. House-made pasta was incredible.

So. The family who visited were very satisfied.

The little dog got fed things despite my wife’s objections. Not going to point fingers at the guilty party, but she’s been dealing with an upset GI tract, and, as side-effect of that, missed a dose of her some of her medications.

So she’s not been okay this morning. Hoping that she’ll settle down today as the medications take effect.

Football wasn’t great. I probably paid most attention to the Lions’ game. Ended up disappointed, of course, but I do think that they’re building a football team that I like.

I was losing consciousness during the night game, so I headed to bed.

Too early, it seems, considering how I was awake when the dog started having problems in the we hours…

So. What else today?

‘Do I watch the Jets’ game today? Mmmmm…maybe?’

Maybe I’ll look at some of the “Black Friday” sales. But the only thing on my internal shopping list isn’t going to have any real discounts anywhere. My debate with that is how I should buy it. Do I buy it on my longest-lived line of credit that I got a warning they were going to cancel if I didn’t use it soon? Hmmm…

But it’s late enough that I should go get some coffee.

JFK Assassination 60 Years After

I should look back and see what I wrote on the fiftieth nniversary. But maybe it was the thing from the thing on “The Day The Music Died.” Obama was president at the time. Hey, $Corp_news_show, you do realize that most of the people alive don’t remember that. For that, the President of the United States wasn’t even born yet.

The JFK assassination is something similar.

The Boomers are the lengthiest generation. My early-Boomer parents were in elementary school. My later-Boomer in-laws were very young.

But there’s not a single person from my generation who was alive when JFK was shot.

Sure, there is a Gen X. equivalent…and I’ve brought it up recently when I realized the woman I’d eventually marry wasn’t born when Challenger exploded.

But, even though not all of the Boomers were alive, and there’s many who don’t remembers it, here’s lots of conspiracy ideas surrounding it that persist.

I am pretty sure that Oswald killed JFK alone with a single rifle.

Evidence counter to that conclusion is sketchy at best.

I don’t think there was a wild underlying conspiracy.

But the JFK assassination conspiracies serve as a launchpad to other really off-the-wall stuff. I think, and unfortunately I can’t find it, the progression goes something like this: JFK Conspiracy –> 9/11 Troof –> Hollow Earth –> Birds Aren’t Real.

Occasionally there’s something that really makes you re-evaluate a lot of things (for me all the ammo found on the Lusitania wreck was a big deal…), but anything where you’ve got to do a lot of contortions to get the crazy end.

Maybe I’m boring, but I just don’t have the patience to get where I’m supposed to go.

And, even if I did have the patience, what’s the payoff? How is my life any different?

Is there anything I’ve had to do to get to get a ride on the crazytrain?

So. Oswald, who was so much a loser that he couldn’t find contentedness behind the Iron Curtain, and is enough of a shot to pull off something that’s of medium difficulty for any trained marksman.

Jack Ruby killed Oswald. The reasons for that aren’t clear, but that can be said about a lot of stuff that happens in the New Orleans underworld.

I’ve set something to DVR kind of from morbid curiosity. But I don’t have any interesting expectations.

And I’m skeptical that will be able to change that overall attitude.

Time to go start Thanksgiving. Sorta.

Thanksgiving Plans

I intentionally put this one back, didn’t write about it early because I wanted to stick to what I’d laid out in the intro.

And here it is, and I’m not nearly as excited as I had been.

Go figure.

And every time I get back to this, I seem to get distracted. Work. Broken account on app. Intertubes problems at home.

And so on.

But back to Thanksgiving. We don’t have a lot of space here to cook and dine, really. The guests are going to be in and out quickly, stopping by on their way to an event farther away.

I’d gotten an email from a local restaurant group I like. They had pickup meals, but those were incredibly expensive. Full dinner…turkey, sides, etc.. But the price tag was something around $400.

No, spending that much money for four people is insane. So, too, was driving into the District to pick it all up on Thanksgiving Day.

Let me dig through my myriad local restaurant emails to see who’s got a special.

Oh. Here’s one from the sorta hoity-toity fancy pizza joint. Wood-burning ovens cooking turkeys instead of pizzas. That could work.

Price wasn’t very high, either.

We’ve gotta go pick it up, but I’m hoping it turns out well.

Don’t really have too much else planned for Thursday. It’s looking cold enough that I might be able to justify to myself breaking into some sweet vermouth for some warmer drinks.

During the day sometime Saturday, I’m going to need to do a bit of work. Then the show that night. Girly-Sound is on Apple Music, by the way.

Day of rest Sunday. No idea what football will be on TV. Washington plays in Dallas on Thanksgiving Day; who knows what will be on TV.

Still have a few open days where I need to find things to write about.

I still need to work on what I might want for Christmas….