One (7/20)

Description of what I’m doing, and why
I’m writing every day until 20 August.
Why? To get back into the swing of writing.
This is something I’ve done for the past few years. It’s kind of a summer version of National Journal Writers’ Month.
I’m plunking away on this while I’m rewatching training videos for the fourth time. Most of these have multiple-choice tests where they’ll show you which ones you missed. This one, however, doesn’t.
It’s frustrating. Both that I have to spend so much time on this, and that I have to keep watching it until I manage to pick the right tile in the Minesweeper game.
It does make me happy, however, that I’m no longer in Norfolk, where, professionally, your ability to buy chances to play Minesweeper determines your career potential.
But, hey, Virginia Beach actually topped a list! Negative Equity
So, got sidetracked writing this. It may be something very positive. The ability to use the phrase, “make the magic smoke come out,: says a lot.
We’ll see what happens, I suppose.
To quote Forrest Gump, “and that’s all I have to say about that.”
So. Back to the writing. No, I’m not going to post my prompts ahead of time. I have many of them, already.

Twenty-nine (8/17)

I thought earlier today, counting on my fingers, that I was okay on the days.
Nope, I’m still a day early. Oops.
That said, at least someone actually did read some of what I said yesterday. If I was petty about it, I might complain that it only took 28 entries.
So flashback time….

8/17/2011

Pffftbt….
So, the nurse lied to me over the phone last week. I have two new lesions since December, one of which was active during the scan.
Staying on the Copaxone for three more months. Anotehr MRI in November.
There’s now a blood test for the virus that causes PML associated with the Tysabri. I guess about half the population have been exposed to the virus, and, therefore, shouldn’t use Tysabri.
Pfffftbt.
I don’t really know what more to say. Don’t like waking my wife up with less-than-good news.🙁

That definitely feels like another time in my life. Copaxone sucked for a variety of reasons, but it wasn’t the hell that the next two DMDs would be. (Disease Modifying Drugs)
The second seriously had me considering taking the Red Line like Kate Mara on House of Cards.
The third completely screwed up my lower half, and gave me nice hives. I did have another exacerbation on it, too, though the neurologist kept me on it because the flare stopped after IV steroids.
Then I had to find new specialists because none of the ones I’d been seeing accepted my plan from Healthcare.gov. It was awesome.
Back to the Copaxone, though. I wrote that a few weeks before my wife and I went on our year-delayed honeymoon. (Yes, we had our first anniversary in New Orleans. She’d forgotten about it, and was more than a little surprised when flowers were delivered to our hotel room….)
But it was some nice time away. People at work today were razzing me about something NOLA-related. I called someone a Saint. compared to someone else. (I think I called Bill Gates a saint when you look at him next to Larry Ellison.)
So. My usual line about the Saints — “I’ve been a Saints’ fan since before Jim Mora was famous for ‘Playoffs?!'” So before the information about Greggggggg’s bounty scandal came out. Before the hiring of Buddy Ryan Jr.-B. Before #BlewDat.
“Blew Dat” is actually the name of one of my fantasy teams this year. I need to figure WTF is going on with the other league(s).
Something to do this weekend.
But, all in all, a pretty successful week, I think. My ticket queue is nearly empty (and all but one of those is almost finished) I got my Tysabri infusion.
So time to go do weekend stuff.

On Writing

I’ve been picking through past writings. Words used to come so easily; my diary would show that, if you could read all of it. (And, no, even if you’ve got an account there, you can’t. Much of it is only for my own consumption.)
I’m trying to remember how easily this stuff used to come to me. Perhaps my inability to really read many things stops the thought flows. Who knows?
I listen to lots of podcasts. I’ve not dug out my radio from where our stuff is stored. I do listen to some things that are broadcast, but much of it is Intertubes-only.
I also might not have as much time to think as I’d like.
Getting closer on my work setup in the temporary landing spot. Maybe I’ll get it finished soon. *shrug*
Reading old entries, I have to wonder if I actually could handle law school now.
Yes, I can’t see worth a damn. My speech is even slower than ti twas before they know what was wrong with me. But I can still listen. I can still write. Could I be lawyerly?

Timid Wave

Pretty much how I roll these days.
I do need to figure out where all my archives are, and get them properly restored.
In many ways, I’m rebuilding from scratch.
This started this spring when my wife moved to pursue her new job.
About a month and a half later, I got laid off from the hell I was in. Our lease was expiring at the end of May, so off to join her.
I had a job lined up before I left. They were in the midst of a contract recompete. I would move, get settled, and travel to the company’s headquarters on the sinister coast for training.
I barely heard from them on the recompete progress, so I started looking at for other things.
I landed one pretty quickly, and agreed to take the gig. It paid slightly more than the thing that’d gone silent, anyway. I wasn’t thrilled with the location or work situation (no telecommute at all, versus full telecommute after the training week), but money was starting to get tighter than I’d like.
The final week of May I spent throwing darts trying to find something, anything, that’d let me back out of the thing to which I’d agreed.
I finally heard back from the thing with the west coast folks — they lost the contract, but still really wanted me for the role with the new company.
Um.
But they weren’t moving quickly at all, so I started the new job. People were nice, and I think I was trying to figure out what it was they wanted me to do. They, themselves, didn’t really have a firm grasp about what they were supposed to be doing. That I had some familiarity with what they were getting into helped, but I didn’t have a firm grasp.
Last week went okay, and I think I was doing some good work piecing things together.
Then Monday. Let’s do this day-by-day…
Monday:
I heard back from the recruiter for the left coast thing. They’re on Pacific Times, so it must have been about 1030 Eastern.
The message was along the lines of, “I’m not supposed to be talking to you, but email this guy who’s handling things for the folks who won.”
As I was composing an email to him, he phoned.
I had an offer letter by about 1330.
I start Friday. I guess some of the folks with the company that had lost the recompete, and had signed on with the winner, were really excited to get me on the team, still.
I told my supervisor, who’d told me that I needed to tell him if anything was going on, that I would discuss with my wife, and decide.
She gave the greenlight, so I accepted.
I SMS’d the HR manager where I’d been working that I needed to speak to him.
I’m resigning. Please work to figure out my last day.
Tuesday:
I got into the office a couple of minutes late. It’s almost as there was some sort of event going on in the District that rich white folks really wanted to see. After settling in, and getting coffee, I told my boss that I’d decided to accept the position. The HR folks still hadn’t told me when my last day would be. So this is probably about 0900. The HR people didn’t get back to me until probably 1330.
Oh, he can go now if there’s really not a lot for him to do. So a bit of tidying up, turning things back in, and I was out the door at 1600.
Fucking weird.
I’m writing this now just after noon on Wednesday.
I am supposed to start the new job Friday morning.
A grand total of six days on the job.
What is this, I can’t even…
But details on the new thing:

I don’t have to travel to train, get support, anything else. The new overlords are within easy Lyft/Uber distance, but my role is still almost entirely telecommute.
Yes, it pays a bit less than the short-term thing. But I also get paid time off, and paid Federal holidays. I also don’t have to spend $30 a day in ride fare.
I’m somewhat excited by the company. It’s one of the fragments of one of the bigger companies that disinter-grated over the past few years.

On that last thing, maybe I shouldn’t be. In 2016, one of the major parties’ candidates railed against the “gig economy.” (Yes, that might have been the candidate who won all of Virginia’s electoral votes, even though the majority voted against….)
Nobody works for a company for thirty years anymore.
Things like health insurance maybe shouldn’t be tied to your very unstable employment?
But don’t mind me. My brain’s scarred, and I’m missing my treatment scheduled for today because I moved….