26

I’ve been really bad about publishing my prompts. Lots going on, unfortunately, combined with my body being in protest.
So, what’s a Wednesday look like for me? Check to see if any of my job applications has updated, listen to the repeat that was put out by Mouthy Broadcast. There’s things I could have said about some of the banter, but…..
So, what have I been doing during my unplanned (and unpaid) vacation?
Well…

  1. I watch local news. Sure, I watch one channel more than the others, but I do watch all that I can pick up over the antenna here.
  2. Check social media whatevers. Maybe where my Gen X comes out is that I really don’t pay that close attention to Instagram.
    (Part of that is probably related to how bad my vision is, and that I can’t zoom in easily on photos….
  3. I check my many outstanding job applications. I’m now over the century mark for outstanding Federal stuff. As someone with a disability, I qualify for special hiring preference. I also don’t have to hide who I am, or what’s wrong with me. One of the higher-ups at my last job really didn’t want to know what my major malfunction was. I did end up telling, but it wasn’t until several months after I’d had my first hospital stint.
  4. Work on my long-neglected virtual host. That’s where I host control-h, as well as several other site

I apologize that I really can’t concentrate on this right now. Maybe I’ll write another later today; I owe a couple of entries with the late start.

25

Recycling, again, to see what’s changed since November 2010.
Here’s what I wrote then:

Day 29 — Relearning – 11/29/2010

Have you ever had to re-learn something that used to be second nature?

Yes, I added this as a suggestion. I’ve had to re-learn many things, and still haven’t gotten the knack of all of them. What I had in mind when I left this was running. Since my latest MS flare, I cannot run at all. When I was in bad shape last spring, I could barely walk, really. Since then, my gait is almost normal, but I can’t run at all, really. My feet get tangled up.

It’s kind of incredible when you actually think about everything your body does to run….the signals being sent to your brain to make it happen. For me, that includes signals your feet send every time they hit the ground.

Imagine trying to run when your feet are asleep. My feet feel like that all the time.

Still, there’s been other things that have been affected.

*clutch*

Early on there, driving was difficult.

*clutch*

Oops, caught the brake with my toe….

Some more even basic life functions were and are still out-of-whack.

Some days if I give myself my shot in the wrong place, my diaphragm doesn’t work.

*breathe*

I’m penciled-in for physical therapy in a few months to learn how to jog again. While all this has let me lose a lot of weight, I do want to be able to effectively exercise. Right now, I can’t.e stuff below the waist. I mean, I was potty trained by like three. Urgency, make it to the bathroom on time, then can’t let go…..

What’s your personal fashion statement when it comes to dressing? Which look describes you and what are your signature clothing accessories?

The others weren’t working, so I’ll take a stab at this one….

I guess the most notable one would be button-down shirts. I really don’t like wearing anything else. But not everybody can pull off wearing a white shirt without a suit. I can, so I do. And I do manage to keep them clean most days. 🙂

I also rotate my glasses. I have about four pairs I vary, depeding on what I’m wearing, and what I’m doing. My big black and brown acetate ones are probably most comfortable. I think I paid about twenty bucks a pair for them….

When I need to look nice, I have more stylish stuff. My nerd glasses haven’t gone with a suit and tie…..yet.

I still haven’t bought that brown suit I’ve been wanting. Thing is, I don’t need to wear a suit very often, and I’ve been hesitant to buy something until my size stabilizes a bit more.

Have you ever had to re-learn something that used to be second nature?
Back in the 2010 entry, I was writing about driving.  My vision has gotten so bad that when I moved, I didn’t renew my license.  I haven’t even tried to drive since about the end of 2012.
Quick primer on what MS does to vision.  While I don’t have really bad double vision, my acuity is very bad.  It must have been sometime in 2012, I visited a neurological ophthalmologist, and she wasn’t able to even come close to correcting me to 20/20.  Combined, I was at about 20/50.  In my right eye, I was correctable to 20/60.  She couldn’t even correct me to 20/200 in my left eye.  I am left eye dominant, so this is a big part of the problem.
You really can’t re-learn seeing, but there’s other physical things I’ve had to try to remaster.
Stairs aren’t my friend.  I quipped about something yesterday about dipping my perpetually-numb toes into something (the NYC market, maybe?).  Going up is a lot easier than going down, because I can’t feel my feet hit.  I don’t know that I have a good foothold.
My weird crosshandedness has made things even tougher as my nerve damage increases.
I find myself doing a lot more things with my left hand.  Sinister.
That does include things that I learned how to do right-handed.  I wonder if I was to do some sort of physical activity if now I’d try to do it lefty.
Holding a racket, even throwing.  I’ve batted left-handed since I was about fifteen years old.  I know that I’d still do that if I was able to see well enough to actually make contact….
I hold my cane in my right hand, so my left will be free to do things.  *shrug*
What’s your personal fashion statement when it comes to dressing? Which look describes you and what are your signature clothing accessories?
I really don’t have one.  When I’m home, it’s jeans and a T-shirt.  When I got to work, it’s slacks and a button-down shirt.
This prompt from years ago does start to walk on something that’s bothered me a lot lately; who gives a fuck about my style?
Maybe that’s the sort of thing that’s from a generation prior to mine.  One of the local shady car dealership groups has a flowery jingle telling buyers that YOU can have it all!  *headdesk*
Get over yourself.  You have a car.  You take care of it.  You drive it.  That’s not remarkable, and nothing you do will make it so.
I could launch into a long tirade about this, but I understand that probably nobody is reading this.  Someone from the Me Generation wouldn’t be okay with that.
I am.

24

I didn’t reference Blink 182 for yesterday’s entry, so there’s that. What I’m going to do for today is revisit something I once wrote, and see what’s different today.

Life Review – 2/22/2000

Periodically, I do a full review of everything I do in life. Every little thing. I then rate those things on an evaluative scale: like, dislike, indifferent.

Examples would be like this…..

Like: Reading OD, messing around on the computer, being on the air

Dislike: Doing Dishes, thinking about my psycho ex girlfriend, watching Kathie Lee, doing my taxes

Indifferent: Brushing my teeth, paying bills.

I then try to cut out the things I don’t like, and don’t absolutely need to do. Normally, I can hit upon some things I’m doing that I don’t like, and are really holding me back in life. I haven’t been able to find anything certain in this round.

So why am I in such a funk?

Why do I feel like I’m having so little success?

Why can’t I, for the life of me, find a girlfriend?

Sorry for the bitching, but I’m a bit frustrated right now.

I was twenty when I wrote that.
I haven’t done much in the way of life reviews since about my thirtieth birthday.  To paraphrase someone, the die is cast.  (Yes, I know who it is….)
Likes:  actually building things, spending time with my wife, eating good food, drinking good drinks, trying to follow football and baseball.
Dislikes:  working to just stay above water, MS (and all its negative effects on me), the segment of the population for whom politics has replaced religion.
Indifferent:  There’s too many to list, really.  (And, no, that doesn’t mean I’m really depressed…just that I don’t really get excited or depressed about mundane things.)
Changes are happening in my life, whether I’m ready for them or not.  I fully expect something by the time I finish up this round of writing (20 August).  Whatever those changes entail, I’m good with.
Things are better than when I wrote this two years ago.  Worse than last year, but I was getting frustrated with what I was doing.
I am getting back into things that I really do enjoy, though.  Rediscovering that which made me me.

Three Things

I didn’t get out prompts yesterday.
Much of the afternoon was spent trying to get my mother’s laptop working.
Then my in-laws’ house, the supermarket, and home for dinner.
After dinner and a beer, I was in dreamland.
So, onto a prompt I’m recycling for today….
Tell us about 3 things you have done in the past year that you have never done before, big or small.
1. Spent a night in hospital. One of those bucket list items, I suppose. I ended up spending five nights in three trips between September and June. When you’re killing your immune system every four weeks, bacteria can have a pretty miserable effect.
2. Ditched a day of work to go on a job interview. One of the changes that Amtrak made was extending the Northeast Regional down to Norfolk. I had an interview with a Federal agency, so I went up, interviewed, had lunch with a friend at Union Station, and rolled back home. It’s a long day, and I didn’t get the job, but the whole experience was probably more worthwhile than spending a day analyzing network scans.
3. Considered moving to NYC. This is something that’s come about in the past few months, really, but I’m sick of what I’m seeing here, and want something different.

Double Deuce

The last two years, I’ve written in the month leading up to my birthday.
I also write in November.
I am starting late this year, however.
This week has kind of been a week from hell.  My in-laws had to put their dog to sleep on Sunday.  Tuesday I got laid off.  Again.  Third time in the past four and a half years.
While it hurts, I was actually considering whether or not to give them any notice when I got another offer.  In the IT world, and I can’t help but think this is one of those unwritten side-effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, companies don’t seem to be hiring full-time employees.  Keep everybody as a W2 contractor, and you don’t have to spring for expensive “employer-sponsored” insurance.
The group I was supporting was going through all sorts of fun financial gymnastics, so what was supposed to be a six-month contract-to-hire, became fifteen.
No benefits.  No PTO.  No sick leave.
No paid time off.  That includes Federal holidays.  While others were getting paid for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day, I was just not working, not getting paid.
That I landed in the hospital three times over the past year probably didn’t help matters.  (One night in September, two in October, and another two in June.)
C’est la vie.
But it’s over now.  On to other things.
I need to get up my writing prompts.  My wife said she was going to help me find some, but I’m still open to suggestions.  I will probably dig up stuff from my old diary, and previous writing efforts, but I just haven’t had the time.
I just got my PC up and running.  We had to move very unexpectedly in May, and really haven’t gotten the new place fully set up.
Maybe I’ll get some prompts up this afternoon.  Maybe.

30

Recap, reaction.

Well, sixth year complete.

I’m not terribly satisfied with what I’ve written, but I did it again.

It really has gotten the writing moving again. This summer’s month didn’t do that as much.

Same goes for work, which is sorta kicking my ass at the moment. But at least I’m getting paid sort of okay again. It would be nice to have some paid leave, other benefits, but…..

(And a bitchy quip deleted.)

I did have most of my prompts ready before the month started. I had to rearrange several, which I’ll touch on later.

So, what went well…

  • Getting it done
  • Post strategy (first the blog, which sucks, then Prosebox)

What didn’t go so well….
Getting the prompts on the right daysSpelling (excusable by the mode of writing a good portion in a text terminal, and I forget to run ispell)Some of the answers to prompts where I had a lot more to say when I came up with the prompt, then forgot when it came time to write

Obviously, it’s been an incredibly eventful month. I’ve seen some things I never thought I’d say. Most of them I never wanted to see.

(When you see someone changing his profile pic on FB to the Anarcho-syndicalism flag, and more quotes from Noam “Distortions at Fourth Hand” Chomsky, you know it’s been rough.

I also grew just a mustache for the first time since I was a teenager. Ostensibly, it was for November. The reality is that I still can’t grow a beard. I thought that this close to forty, I’d be able to pull that off by now. But bald spots, sideburns that don’t connect. Even just the mustache, I have every natural hair color sprouting.

November is finished, though, and I hope I get some time to relax next month. I need it.

29

What are your holiday plans for Christmas?

There’s not a lot set in stone so far. I know my brother and his wife are coming down to my mom’s place, so we’ll head up there at some point to see them.

We will also go visit my in-laws.

Plan to take a trip with my wife sometime after she finishes her semester. Probably just a couple of nights in DC; maybe a weekend. We’ll see.

I don’t have any leave, and will essentially have to take Christmas as an unpaid holiday.

It’d be nice to go somewhere that we don’t have to worry about much for a week or so, but finances and her school commitments don’t allow it.

Similarly, Bud Light is having a sort of golden ticket promotion for the NFL. Get a golden can, and you win season tickets for your favorite team for a year.

How many Saints’ games could I justify attending?
Is it worth buying a twelve-pack of canned Bud Light?
Would it be better to say I’m solely a Redskins’ fan just I could get more use out of the tickets?

Decisions, decisions.

Now the DC trip has me thinking about Indian food, which is what they serve at the place where my friend works.

28

Free Write.

I thought I might be able to recycle some of what I wrote last week here. I looked, and none of it seems to fit. Oh well.

It was largely about my employment travails over the past almost four years. It comes back to what I wrote about regarding forgiveness. Should I, can I, and will I?

I’ve really had to think more about those with what happened with the four-letter company. The answers are still “no,” “yes,” and “maybe.” I understand what happened. I understand that they were lazy and cheap. But, hey, they’d been doing this a long time, and had all the answers for how to do the work. It’d go perfectly, because of their expertise.

And they got to that level of expertise by wearing white-collared colored shirts, suspenders and a belt, and proving how good they are at <strike>playing minesweeper</strike>buying certifications. (If I had some motivation, I’d find a way to strike through that “buying,” to replace it with the more palatable “earning.”)

I don’t want to talk about that anymore, however. My focus right now is doing what I am paid to do, now, and deal with the remnants of the previous disasters as I have an opportunity. Still progressing through my OODA loops, wishing I could act on several things at once. Unfortunately, my physical limitations definitely affect the length of my OODA loops.

Like today; I was just completely out-of-gas by about 1600.

That sort of explains why this was a little late today. Two more days. I will make it.

27


I bumped the one about Small Business to yesterday, as I had something to say. So, yesterday’s prompt today.

This is coming very early, as I’m all sorts of fucked on my sleep schedule. Thankfully, I don’t think there’s any late football I want to see.

What is your favorite food? (H/T to someone on PB)

I’ve come to appreciate all sorts of things, but I think I’d have to go with things considered French bistro fare. Beef Bourguignon, Coq-au-vin. We’re supposed to be having Croque-Monsieur for dinner tonight before I slog my way back into the office.

I mentioned my oyster experience a few days ago; I’m intrigued by mussels. I do have to admit that I’m more than a little nervous about them, though, after reading somewhere that they were one of the things where you were most likely to get bad food. (Bourdain, maybe?)

One of my favorite places, Bistrot du Coin was something we found by happenstance on a trip to DC years ago. We were up in Woodley Park, and were looking for some nommables. I think I found it on the now-defunct UrbanSpoon app, so we went.

Fries done in duck fat. My wife (then-fiancee) thoroughly enjoyed.

We’ve been back many times since. With my godcousin after my dad’s burial at Arlington. Other times we’ve stayed at the Washington Hilton. On the layover in DC between trains going to New Orleans for our honeymoon.

It’s been more difficult lately, though. Part of what one of my longtime neurologists recommended for me was a diet that’s low in iron. Under that regime, I got four ounces of red meat per week. There’s a lot of beef in French cuisine, unfortunately.

Though I never did see the movie (Julie and Julia?), one year for Christmas, I did get the Mastering the Art of French Cooking books. (Obligatory classic SNL Clip.)

Nice aperitif, glass of wine with the food, digestif or beer after dinner. And I’m in my happy place.

Have I succinctly answered this one? I don’t know. There’s nothing that I could say I could eat every day. (Also, if I was to cop-out, and say something like “good French bread,” would it still only be one if I needed butter for that bread most of the time? Is coffee your favorite drink if you always need something that goes in it? Aside, for my medical procedure a few weeks ago, I couldn’t have creamer in my coffee. I had to use only sugar. I almost never put sugar in my coffee. But it worked. On the few days a month that I do drink coffee, I make it in a single-serving French press. I don’t drink enough coffee to justify anything else.)

So, that’s that. I didn’t do anything other than the pharmacy for Small Business Saturday. Wasn’t feeling up to it. It also seems as if we didn’t win the Powerball drawing. Again, regressive tax, and vice peddled by the Commonwealth, but I can be reckless a few times per year. (Though that doesn’t mean I’m going to order modules in a restaurant that probably doesn’t serve them every day. Or try to cook them myself in our tiny kitchen. Hell, I don’t even cook fish here out of fear of the stench.)

Three days left, but the words are flowing again. I may not see worth a damn, but I still can sorta type.

26

Bumping this up a day, because there’s a lot to say.

Small Business Saturday. Write about small businesses you frequent.

Fitting that this falls on the morning that the death of Fidel Castro goes public. Amazingly, their scientific research into the inevitability of Socialism led them to allow small business a few months ago.

For the American left, small businesses are similarly bad. They do whatever they want with their profits, which may not serve a larger purpose. That money should go straight to Goldman Sachs, right, Senator Schemer?

Perhaps unremarkably, as I look in on Facebook, I’m not seeing a lot of the left comment with despair about their dear comrade’s passing. No, it’s still kvetching about Trump being elected President. Newsflash, y’all, more than half of people voted against Hillary Clinton. Her campaign propaganda convinced me to not vote for Trump, but did nothing to sway me to vote for her.

Castro being gone, though, probably doesn’t mean a lot until the wheezing hulk of his Stalinist dictatorship finally collapses. Even the “good example” of Venezuela is teetering now.

The subjugation of the individual has never worked, and will never work.

But back to those evil small businesses, whose profits don’t flow into Boomers’ inflated 401Ks…

This morning, I went to MacArthur Pharmacy. I had a prescription I needed to pick up, but I also bought a few more things I needed. I also, because I like paying regressive taxes, bought some lottery tickets. It is a vice, but that’s okay so long as I buy it from the Commonwealth.

(If I could support a local liquor store, I’d probably go stock up on gin and rye. I’m low on both. Unfortunately, as I said above, vice is okay in Virginia, so long as you buy it from the Commonwealth. I’d have to go to ABC, which does nothing for small business. I also confuse the shit out of the progressive hipsters when I say if only weed is legalized in Virginia, you should have to buy it from the ABC stores….)

Later, I may head over to CURE for something to eat and drink. I was there during one of their first days open. I’m glad to see they’ve persisted. It is a little amusing to see the hipster intelligentsia complain about how many strollers are present these days. Umm, newsflash, as the last of Gen X, there weren’t many of us to begin with. Compounding the issue, because everyone was so worried about catching “teh AIDS,” we didn’t accidentally many babbies. There’s a lot of people just younger than we who are in prime baby-making age. Deal.