Thirty

Wrap-up

I really do need to make an effort to go back through old entries various places, and consolidate them here.

I mentioned yesterday that I was looking for inspiration from the past. I’d glanced at something from 11/29/2011, but didn’t have it anywhere. It was on OD, but what I wasn’t the longish survey I’d seen at first glance.

But I didn’t have it here.

Now I do.

I’ve been pretty good about moving things around, but with multiple CMSes, etc., I have a lot of what I’d done in places I really can’t access.

The stuff from OD before it went away for the first time I had in ASCII exports spread far-and-wide. Finding things in there is easy enough — ^F (MM/DD)

I did lose all of the formatting, but I can’t be too upset about that.

I understand that the amazement about your MySpace page was the cool embedded drawing

Maybe you said something incredible.

More likely, however, you were putting up something that looked cool, and distracted people from trying to punch the monkey.

Know Your Meme is failing me on that one. Younger people probably aren’t familiar with the sorts of stupid ads that’d pop up when you were surfing the Information Superhighway back in the day.

Whatever you’d cranked out could be obscured by something annoying put there to distract you into giving away money.

I, on the other hand, tended to use HTML tricks to obscure content. I never do that anymore stopped doing that sort of thing. Or did I?

At the same time, for the most part the content persists in spite of the efforts to hide or delete it.

You can strip things away, and get back to what came out. Since it’s coming form a person, you start in with things like Chomsky’s generative grammar. (Which I’ve seen other langoustines describe as “creationist.”)

At some point, however, something comes out. It’s saved somewhere. Once the buffer is written, the effort it takes to remove it is pretty steep.

Everything Gets deleted eventually.

But you have to work at it to make that happen.

Whether or not you really want to throw things away is another story, altogether.

There aren’t a lot of people who’ll want to read my shit. In fact, I don’t want to read my shit a lot of the time.

But it’s there. It might be spread far and wide, but I can wrangle it back. If I want to.

Doing it is going to require a bunch of time, and I might not want to exert the effort to do it, but I think I know where the bodies are buried.

Eventually I’ll coalesce things into one thing, and store that far and wide.

Maybe all that’ll be a random MariaDB dump where someone can pick through and find what came out of my numb fingers.

Probably not; I’m not that interesting. But it’ll be there for someone to find if he/she wants to see it.

For the past fourteen years, I’ve hammered out whatever’s been seeping from my scarred brain the vast majority of days in November.

I can still type. For the most part.

It’s a skill that’s really second-nature at this point. I’m not sure that writing with a pen or pencil really is.

Am I proud of what I’ve barfed out for the month?

Ummmm.

Maybe I should reword that. Am I really upset about what I’ve generated?

No.

But I am finished.

That’s an accomplishment by itself.

I can use it is proof, even if it’s only to myself, that I can stick to something.


For miscellany vacillating between trying to watch the undercard presidential debate, and the Thursday Night Football game.

Honestly, neither is of much interest. Whichever one I end up with probably won’t occupy my attention all that long.

Oh well.

I can do that tonight because I’m finished.

Tomorrow, fingers crossed, my medication will arrive so I can take that.

And we can slide into December.

shiver

Twenty-nine

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.

Twenty-eight

Really short-arming this one today.

So, start with one of T2K’s prompts…

What would a tree say if it could talk?

What wood it say?

I am so incredibly busy, but just trying to figure out what to do from here.

And no motivation to do much of anything.

Crawled back inside my head to see if there’s something from which I can sample.

Nawp.

Hangover from concert prep — this is running through my head the past few hours.

But it’s kind of one of those situations where I’m distracted enough that I’m forgetting what’s next.

When’s my medication supposed to show up?

Crap.

I’m supposed to take that tomorrow.

*wanders away to check when it’ll get here*

Everything’s on track for your order to arrive by Nov. 29, 2023.

Tomorrows.

I hope a) it gets here on time, since the pharmacy just says “shipped,” and b) there’s enough time to let it warm up so the shot doesn’t bother me too much.

Maybe the earworm is kind of wishful?

Who knows?

Two more days to write. Two more days to work.

I’ve got this.

I think.

I really need to put this entries from 2017 and 2018 into WordPress so I can dig through entries more easily.

Hm. What’s on OD?

2011 there’s a very long survey I did.

Maybe next year. Imma go eat.

Twenty-seven

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.

Twenty-six

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.

Twenty-five

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.

Twenty-four

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.

Twenty-three

Family arriving are probably about an hour out, so I’ll take the opportunity to knock this out for the day.

After a long, actually restful, night of sleep.

Odd distraction in the background…he Bing weird wallpaper has some serious Indian Indigenous People’s CORN surrounding the edges of the browser window.

But back to what I was writing about….

The Macy’s Parade this year had En Vogue with Bel Biv DeVoe.

Yes, hon, we’re getting old.

But, at the same time, there’s a bunch of thirties pupping out for me this Thanksgiving.

I’ve written about my excitement for Saturday night to see Liz Phair on the thirtieth anniversary of Exile In Guyville tour.

If memory serves, Thanksgiving 1993 was spent on a very cold three-cities USO tour through some of the newly-opened countries to westerners.Saw

Saw the Lipizzaner Stallions training somewhere outside Vienna. Z night in a relatively-nice capitalist hotel in Budapest, really cheep Russian Vodka from the gas station next to the hotel, intense interrogation of all aboard the tour bus by Slovak border, and Prague in a cloud of ice fog.

The last The Fifth Column, tied the Argentine election thing back to the ALMA Bombing, which happened the following summer. I mean, I have some memories of the news about that, but we were in the process of moving back to the states right around that time. Getting a tiny Golden Retriever, and settling in to stateside life. The doc I found on Netflix is mostly in Sparkish. Looks to be a few episodes. Tiny type white font on the captions….yeah, it’s gonna take me a which to get through that.

Honestly, July 1994 probably would have been high school football camp coming out of what was probably one of the earliest MS flares I remember. I’d dropped to probably about 155 pounds. So going into football camp with a bunch of central-Pennsylvania boys worked well. They were much bigger and stronger than me, but I was slower, so it worked out awesomely.

Should I do the seemingly-common trope about how things were so much etter in teh 90s?

No.

There was still a lot of things that really sucked.

Okay, I think I’ve gotten enough in for today. Time to go enjoy the day. Am I really giving thanks? Um. Maybe?

Twenty-two

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.

Twenty-one

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….