Well, it's less than a week til I head up to Seattle, and then get on a ship to Alaska and back. My biggest trip since I was a kid, with my folks. 11 days away from Château Innsmouth. Going to be...A mix of things. Honestly I'm kind of stressed about things. Travel makes me anxious, and this has all kinds of additional stressors added. But, I'll deal. I've spent today getting my tasks in order. Laundry, shopping, packing (yes I'm packing everything now, rather than flipping out later in the week). Already cut my wardrobe down so I could get everything packed. Of course, I'll probably pull everything out and repack it before the week is out.

So yeah, I'll gone for a long while. Not that I've been all that chatty on here, but I don't plan to be all that connected while on the cruise. I guess that's part of the anxiety, intentionally trying to disconnect for a while. Not completely, as I'm using my tablet for reading as usual. (I will bring a paper book or two just in case). I also will be bringing a bluetooth keyboard so I can keep journal entries on it, or at least notes of our adventures. Also have my camera, though I tend to be pretty lazy about taking pictures. Probably will spend most of my camera time taking sea photos.

Besides the trip, it's been a crazy couple of weeks. Busy with work, trying to get all my allergy shots in on time. Got my new, bifocal glasses today. Adapted to them pretty quick, of course I got the fancy no line/progressive lenses. Will be nice to be able to read small print book again without straining. Been fighting a kind of stalemate battle with my anxiety/depression. Keep trying to dig my heels in so it doesn't get a bigger foothold. Lots of reading, lots of movies. Some socializing, but it's been hard. I like being at Château Innsmouth, it's full of things I like. *wink* Oh well, I'll deal.

Also been plotting on my Providence trip for Necronomicon 2017. It's actually a less stressful trip, even though I'm going solo. Only going to be gone about half the time, and I'm pretty much staying in the same area of Providence most of the time. Of course, there's a lot of social activity, but that's with Lovecraftians, which previous experience tells me I'll find easier than most events. And I can always do my own rambles along Grandpa Theobald's streets. More plotting when I get back I think.

So that's about it. About to call it a night and go to bed. Books to read, and sleeps to have. If I don't post anything before I leave, see you all in August. Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!

It's Sunday. Long weekends are a good thing, even if last night my mood kind of tanked. Woke up kind of off still, but fighting it with Eurohorror, noodles, and a good long shower. Self care, it's what's for breakfast.

Social time yesterday was fun, yay seeing friends. Random hot chocolate craving was sated. Fought off the tanked mood with weird horror movies, and geeking. Starting the process of bringing my OpenSuSE VMs all up to 42.2... just in time for 42.3 to be released shortly. (also updated my Ubuntu VM, but that wasn't any big deal). Went to bed around midnight, so of course a server lit up and wanted attention. Not a hard fix. just there was much eyerolling on my part. Had to do some more basic foo this morning. Need to log into the ticket system and close the automatic tickets generated at some point.

Plans for today are to hang out with Amythest and Nymaz at some point. Before that I need to swing by the office and pickup my laptop (I left it on Friday). I only need it if I'm not at home. Was going to get it yesterday, but I ended up going straight home from the gather. Not a big fan of the work laptop (windows, ugg), but I don't see a reason to buy a high end laptop, or even try to setup my old Thinkpad to play nice with Carcosa either. Laptops have little appeal to me now a-days, I can do most everything with Cthäat Aquadingen (my Nexus 7) when I'm not at home, so why add another device ? (Besides the shiny factor). Hmm, probably should update the Thinkpad, it's been a while.

While I'm waiting on the plan to come together, I've been watching Spanish horror flicks First 'Werewolf Shadow'. Paul Naschy vs vampires (he's the werewolf). Spent half the movie trying to remember where I'd heard the soundtrack, they reused the music from one of the Blind Spanish Zombie Knights Templar movies. Now watching 'Beneath Still Waters', flooded town holds a hidden occult secret. Made by the same production company and filmed around the same time as my beloved 'Dagon'. It's cheese, but it's fun cheese.

That's about all I have right now. Hoping for a quiet and restful rest of the long weekend. Catch you all on the flipside.

Huzzah for Friday. Have had a up and down week. I'm still aiming upwards, but I have had a bunch of anxiety foo dragging me down. Top of it was doing my 6 month self eval. I hate doing them at the best of times, and given my recent stress foo, and a format that I had never used before, well it drove me kind of crazy. But, it's done, and I've gotten a number of things done at work, so I'm trying to balance out the bad with the logical positive. Oh speaking of work, due to the new monitoring system we're using, we've started an oncall rotation. This is my week (Wed to Wed). It's weird to be officially on call, we've always done it on a ad-hoc basis, and it worked well, but since we're working with a separate monitoring group, that really wouldn't work. Oh well, it's only one week out of three. Little stress on that, just oddness.

But, it's a 4 day weekend for me. Very few plans for the weekend, some social time with friends. Some chores, some geek stuff, a lot of reading is also planned. Starting off the night by listening to 'The Haunter of the Dark. one of my favorite HPL stories as a radio play. I'm also working on updates here at Château Innsmouth, physical systems first, then starting to update the VM horde. There will be Spanish Werewolves and other oddness in the movies tonight.

Speaking of oncall, got an alert from a server. Not a real oncall issue, it's a dev version of a ticket system, but I can fix it really quick and be done.

Well, that's about all I have right now. Going to call this a post. Catch you all later.

Hey there cultists, how goes ? It's been a busy week at Carcosa Corp. Got some of my assignments done, or at least within range. I also finally got my passport in the mail. So I can officially enter Canada on my cruise next month. Assuming Canada lets me of course.

Mood has generally improved. Still running into depression ninjas and anxiety, but I'm getting past that with less effort. Books are back to being fun, and I'm not as lacking in focus. These are good things. I'm hoping it lasts.

Spent today watching movies with friends during the day, then came home. My AC is leaking, and I've been trying to stop it, then trying to clean up my bathroom and kitchen so if I have to get maintenance over here, it's not a huge deal. Well beyond hating people in Château Innsmouth. On the plus side, I got some packages, a tshirt from the HP Lovecraft Historical Society and a cast fox skull that glows in the dark from Catalyst Studios. It's good to know nifty geeky people, and buy their things. You should buy their things. *wink*

Not much else, watching a Paul Naschy flick called 'Inquisition'. I do love the 70's Eurohorror genre, especially the period pieces. Sorta like the Hammer horror pieces cranked up to 11. Plus unlike the Hammer pieces, I keep finding new (to me) flicks. Only problem is, they're pretty much an taste I don't share with my friends. Oh well, some things are best enjoyed in private.

That's about it for right now, after the movie I'll head to bed and book and hopefully have a good night's sleep. Night cultists.

More brainmeats foo. Things got worse after Saturday, mood majorly dropped, anxiety went through the roof. Toughed it out for a few days and then called my pshrink, who was able to fit me in today. We talked a bit, and long story short, I'm going back on the seroquel, though a lower dose to start. Hopefully this will help me feel a little better, help me sleep through the night and to not be so stressed and frazzled during the day. Trying to be hopefully about this, but to be honest I'm pretty sans hope feeling right now, hope and cope are in short supply. Maybe tomorrow will be better when I wake up.

Another week, another post. A happier post I think, which is always good.

Mood has slowly crept out of the potato layer this week, it really didn't hit a noticeable crest til I hung out and planned part of the Alaska cruise with Amythest and Nymaz Thursday night. I actually felt excited over something besides sleep. I also worked on some maintenance last night, and I while I got stressed, it never became a real problem, I just kept chugging along and making stuff work. (I also managed to finish one project, and get to about 80% done on another today.)

I don't have any real weekend plans, and I kind of want it that way. I don't want to go to sleep thinking "I have to do X,Y, and Z before doing A,C and Q. Instead, I'll do what I want to do, with the only 'needs' are the usual chores around the house. I've spent tonight watching comfort movies, and I've run the dishwasher, and that's about it. Probably going to go to bed early (for a Friday) with book, and catch up on the sleep I didn't get last night.

So what are my options tomorrow? Full on hermit, quasi hermit and go raid a bookstore or two and get some food, maybe some chores, maybe not. There's geek projects a plenty here at Château Innsmouth, along with apartment rearranging if I feel spry. Or I could spend the day catching up on the books I've been meaning to read. Hopefully there are no emergencies or crisis foo. Just rest and chill. And tentacles, maybe a squidgirl film and tasty noms. Wish me luck.

3.5 day weekend. (Boss's boss told us we could cut out at 2pm, as long as someone was available for coverage) Came home, been watching movies and watching the alert system and company chat software. Haven't even fired up the VM I use to access work. My kind of start to a long weekend.

Head is healing nicely, went back by the dentist yesterday to verify crown coloring, and I got a 5 min exam. I'm healing nicely, not in much pain at all, all is going ok right now. So that's a plus. Speaking of medical foo, I never mentioned how the insurance foo with the TMS worked out. The answer is no, I don't get it. They worked it into a Catch-22 situation that I'm not ever going to qualify for. So, I've conceded that fight, luckily my new med is doing a decent job all things considered. Also, speaking of medical foo, I start my allergy shots come Tuesday AM. That's going to be a ton of fun, but if it helps my crazy sinuses, I'll take it. Glad I'm not afraid of needles.

Weekend plans are vague, usual Friday night hermiting. Tomorrow and Monday I'm spending part of it helping Amythest with the yearly packing of the classroom. Sunday is probably another hermit/chores day. Nothing wild or crazy, but that's ok. Quiet really does sound good right now. And with that, I'll settle down to some horror movies and relaxing. Catch you all later.

Well this week has been pretty bonkers. I've taken the last 3 days off from work due to exhaustion and queasiness. Antibiotics and me are not friends when it comes to stomach issues. This is definitely going to mess with my summer vacation plans *sad fox* Speaking of messing with vacation plans, I got a letter from the passport office, my birth certificate isn't good enough, it seems to be lacking in my parental information. So I just spent $70 to get an expedited copy from New York for this insanity. So add stressed to the list.

My pshrink visit was today, and I got it crossed with tomorrow. Luckily they were nice and fit me in. Things are going ok, with the assumptions that this last week was a bit of a fluke. The new med seems to be working ok, so lets hope it lasts.

Mood is a little better, going to make solid, non pasta food for dinner, which I hope will help things more. Watching 'Angels and Demons', because who doesn't need a symbolist saving the day. Hopefully tomorrow is good and decent things.