Was a mostly good day, though it started off kind of rough. I had good
dreams, mostly about New York, and how I was planning to drive back to
Texas. But I wanted to take the Staten Island ferry, and they do take
cars, so I had to rearrange plans. Then I woke up. Thing is, I really
do want to take the ferry next time I'm in NYC. It's free, and I've never
done it. The tour guide on the cruise recommended it as one of those
things people don't think to do, plus I've only been to Staten Island
a handful of times in my life.
So I woke up, and felt off. Was going to meet up with Amythest and Nymaz
for soup day prep in a while. So I fiddled around online, and kept
reading things that hit me in the feels. No idea why, just overly
emotional. Decided to just go on down, listened to a Roman mystery
audiobook on the drive and hung out at Chez Amythest's while the other
two finished up soup prep shopping. Hung out, read more of 'Gods of HP
Lovecraft' which is pretty good, some of the authors are people I talk
to online, so I'm a little biased. Helped unload, helped set up the
loaner mega-tv for the watching of Star Wars. We had about 90 min to
kill or so, and I wanted to test the tv...and I had 'Dagon' on my flash
drive, so we watched it. My friends tolerate my weirdness, I now have
a degree of TV envy. Plus, Uxía the squidgirl is epically hot on megatv.
*grin* Soup was prepped, and as I hadn't eaten since breakfast I
dove in a little early, and had a lovely bowl of potato soup.
Some more friends showed up, and some spawning day gifts for the Dec
people were given, along with some cookies to H, who has helped me tons
with resume foo. Then it was soup and Star Wars. Which looked amazing
on the megatv. Since we all could basically quote the movies by heart, we
spent as much time in discussion about the movies and back story and
expanded universe as watching it. I love good geek talk. We got through
Episode IV and most of V, but we all were running low on steam. I left
about 10:30, with lots of leftover soup for nomming. Drove home, listened
to more SPQR. Unloaded the car, watched the last part of Empire Strikes
Back, and started writing this. I'm tired, but I'm not sure I'm
ready for bed, or even bed and book. I guess I'll just fiddle around til
I either decide on something to do, or go finish my book. For now, I'm
just glad I had a good afternoon/evening with nifty people, too much soup,
and Star Wars. Night all.
Well, when last we spoke it was 6:30 in the morning and I was wondering
why the fhtagn I was awake. Post post, I went to the store to do the
weekly shopping, but my stomach decided to stage a mild revolt. So
I got a couple of things I absolutely needed and came home. Ended up
going back to bed for a couple of hours of broken sleep. Got up, went
down to finish up the spring cleaning, which was move some boxes into
storage, and clean that area. Took about an hour, and I came home.
I'm still not feeling good. I think it's pretty much lack of sleep
and something from last night not sitting well in my stomach, with a
side of too much dust in my snout. Probably won't be staying up late
like I planned originally for tonight. Plus, I have my ebook copy of
'The Gods of HP Lovecraft' which is going to be an epic read. So I
may just curl up with Cthulhu and pals and enjoy the eldritchness.
Spent the afternoon watching random movies and doing the usual VM update,
which I didn't do last week due to socialness and lack of time. Also updated
Uxía the laptop to Linux Mint 17.3, which was pretty painless, and was
over before I noticed. Not that the Mint updates are big deals, all
the 17 variants are based off Ubuntu 14.04, so the basic build is the
same, the big changes are with the desktop environment, latest version of
Mate. And as usual, I'll play around for a week or two, then I'll update
Hydra to 17.3. Dagon will stay at 13, which is based off of 12.04, with
assorted customizations I really should document at some point, so that
when I do finally get around to upgrading, I'm not losing my mind trying
to remember how to make $x do $y. But that's not any time in the near
future.
Not much else...sleepy cultist is sleepy. Should probably ponder
dinner too. But, on that note...I shall call this a post. Talk to
you tomorrow, when I'll probably be overfilled with soup. Ciao!
Why the fhtagn am I awake ? Oh yeah, crazed dreams and acid reflux. *sigh*
Do not want. At least the crazed dreams were amusing. Eerie Von from
Samhain/Danzig, and Doyle Frankenstein from the Misfits had formed a band
that did covers of early Danzig tunes. And movie theaters were electrocuting
people. Got out of bed after the last one...as my acid reflux was killing
me.
So I'm sorta awake. Balanced the bank accounts, figured out an update I
kicked off last night crashed and burned. Note to self ZFS works fine
under Linux, but it makes kernel updates...quirky. That's a good work
for it. Not sure if I'm going to try to go back to sleep, or just
start the day off at 6am. Ugg.
Yeah, I probably should go back to bed. reflux is subsiding, the
pissy VM has been placated. *sigh* We'll see. But that's about all I have to
say this am. Hope people got more/better sleep than me, and I'll catch you
all later.
Still having rough sleep, not nightmares or even really anxious dreams,
but I'm not waking up rested. Maybe tonight will be better. Today was
day two of cleaning, got most everything done. Going back tomorrow to
move some stuff and some last minute spot cleaning. Only an hour or so,
Then it's back home to chill out.
Chilling out now, watching the pretty if dorky 'Troy'. Mostly I was
in the mood to see galleys, and the scene with the thousand ships Helen
launched is always good. Not much else to speak of. I'm behind on
stuff this week, chores and projects. I'll get caught up next week
though.
Today I started the spring cleaning (in Dec) for the party this Saturday.
Made a good chunk of progress, even if it was mostly low hanging fruit
(trash/recycling, organizing, sweeping, etc) while doing my laundry. I'm
pushing off my least favorite chore, mopping, til tomorrow because...
I can. Worked about 4 hours, while listening to the first SPQR audiobook.
Audiobooks are best for cleaning, keeps the brain entertained, without
being as distracting as TV/movies. Amythest is due home in a bit,
we'll get some hangout time, as well as I'll get some questions answered.
Like 'do you really think I can fit the shop vac in that closet without
a tesseract ?' Tomorrow I'll be back to swab the deck, and work on other
stuff. So far I think I've got a pretty good first day's work. And it
helps out Amythest and her roommate/sibling, both of whom have a ton of
stuff on their plates already.
Had a rough morning, did not want to get out of bed. No dreams of
decapitation that I remember, so that's a bit of a plus. No motivation
though, until I put on my big cultist's robes and drove on down. Hopefully
I'll have less ennui tomorrow and just get going.
Not much else. Came up with a really workable plot idea for a Ancient
Roman era story with Deep Ones while getting ready to sleep last night.
Problem is, I now only remember fragments of how it worked (stupid sleep
med induced memory foo). The fun and games of mixing history with
tentacles...it's amazing how many things fit together without even
trying. I really should just figure out how many port cities out there
have the word 'Mouth' in them in assorted languages and work from there.
*grin*. Innsmouth, Imboca, Ostia...and probably so many more.
Ok, that's a post. Just got home from running errands with Amythest
after she got out of work. Vegging out, probably bed early again. And
tomorrow will be more labor. Hopefully I'll be done tomorrow, or at least
nearly done. Catch you all later.
Well, yesterday I went to the doc, today my Kia is at the doc. Tire
replacement (which I was hoping to put off til next year), and some other
little things. Got a lift home from the dealership, almost had a panic
attack when I realized I'd left my house key with the dealer...luckily
I had my spare in the Bag of Holding.
General high anxiety day. Started with weird dreams about mega hotels
and severed heads. I think I was the one doing the severing. Don't
worry, I have no axes at home. Well, I do have a gladius, but I don't
think it's sharp enough for decapitation, just stabby self defense.
*sigh*
My original plan was to go down to Amythest's and get working on organizing
and cleaning for the party Saturday. My 'Cthulhumas gift' to her is
to get everything ready for said party. So I have til Saturday to get it
all done. Shouldn't be a big deal, except I have about 0 cope at the
moment. Oh well, I'll get things done one way or another.
Not much else to say right now. Hopefully I can swing things around and
get back on track. Catch you all later.
Ok, starting the long awaited Chronicles of New York. Post number one,
Saturday's travels and Sunday's wanderings. It's kind of stream of
consciousness, I'm going to try to edit things and make it coherent, but
I promise nothing. So lets wind the clock back to Saturday...
First journal entry from the Big Apple. Travel to La Guardia was not
as bad as I was fearing, even if Mom and Dad's cremains got swabbed
for explosives. *chuckle* they always loved to cause trouble. The
flight was kind of uncomfortable, crammed in like sardines. But I finished
one book, and then another novella. We landed, deplaned, and got on
the shuttle to the hotel, and got introduced to crazy NYC drivers and a
weird tour of 3 boroughs. Checked our baggage at the hotel, got our
NYC pass for all the museums and tourist stuff, then went to Rockefeller
Center to do 'Top of the Rock'. Basically it's a view of midtown from
70 stories up. And it was AMAZING. You could see all across Manhattan,
Central Park (which had a cloud layer that made it look foggy and fae),
and just amazing. I originally was going along because Amythest and
Nymaz wanted to go, but I'm so glad we did...it was an amazing sight.
Oh yeah, while going to get our passes we stopped in a pizza joint,
and I got them their first real NYC pizza...and it was glorious!!!
(additional, randomly walked by a place called 'Dylan's Candy Bar'.
Glorious amounts of sugar of all kinds. I got mostly gummy stuff,
Nymaz found sugar free stuff, including sugar free Poprocks. Amythest
got chocolate. Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area).
After Top of the Rock we came back to the hotel, and checked in. Vegged
for a while, then decided due to a communal lack of spoons, to go to
dinner and call it a day. So we stopped at a interesting fusion place,
steak and sushi was the advertised, but it was more a fusion of Japanese
and Spanish tapas style IMHO. Funny, they asked if we had reservations,
we said no...matire'd said follow me, and took us through a bit of a maze
to a door with EXIT over it...we all thought we were getting shown the door.
But no, fancy nice place, very friendly waiter Jesus from Spain. I had
tuna tartare, spicy tuna roll and eel and avocado roll. Spice tuna was
decent enough, but the tartar was heavenly tasty, and the eel and avocado
was probably the best eel I've had, the sauce was flavorful, but not
overwhelming. We then went back to the hotel to sack out early. I had
issues though. I was having anxiety foo, over all kinds of stuff.
Being not home,
being sweaty feeling, being anxious about being around other people.
I ended up taking a xanax, and a hot shower and reading some Roman
history. Finally sacked out, but had bad anxiety dreams. Boo, much boo.
Woke up Sunday, got into mental gear. Yay friends. We had breakfast at
the hotel, then we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We had some false
starts and
I kept getting turned around, but things worked out. Showed them the
Manhattan that is not epic tourist. Was nice for me too.
The MET was epic. We only managed one floor, Byazantium and Middle
Ages, the arms and armor section where we almost lost Nymaz. Then the
big Egyptian section, including a chapel from Aswan. Wow. We looked
at art from all periods of Egyptian history. Then off to Greco Roman,
with so many things I could just stare at. Which was the one problem...
so much stuff I was interested in, that I just kind of got overwhelmed.
I'd wanted to see the Near Easti Exhibits, maybe find a random Dagon bit
*grin* but we ran low on tentacles. Got
street food, found out NYC finches are hardcore vs pigeons for food, Hot
dogs and pretzels, along with kebobs and stuff. Yay for street food.
We then wandered Central Park, saw the obelisk, aka 'Cleopatra's Needle' and i
Belvedere Castle (and LARPers
practicing) and the 'Alice in Wonderland' statue. Amythest got a little
frustrated, trying to get pictures of it while kids climbed all over it,
but that's part of the tradition of the place. We made our way back to
the hotel to wind down, then we headed downtown to go to The Strand, aka
book Mecca. We stopped at Union Square, wandered the booths, walked by
the street chess players. Before we hit the Strand we stopped at
Forbidden Planet, which I'd forgotten was right next to the Strand.
The Strand is terrifying, bookshelves up to the ceiling, with random ladders
for clients to go up. '18 Miles of Books'. We only explored the first
floor, I picked up two books, a nice edition of 'The King in Yellow'
(the story collection, not the play itself alas) and 'Carter and Lovecraft'
by Johnathan L. Howard, which grabbed me with random tentacles (on the cover).
I looked at the ancient history section and was so overwhelmed. The store
was pretty overwhelming in general...so much stuff. Actually felt a little
claustrophobic, so we didn't stay long. We headed back towards Union
Square, stopping at a random pizza joint that had some seating, then
got back on the subway and back to the hotel...where we crashed out
hard.
So that's the first two days of the trip. When next we visit our heroes,
they'll walk their feet off for all things nautical.
Went to the pshrink, did the mostly usual song and dance. And given current
situations, the higher anxiety is expected. I'm still functioning within
normal levels so, keep an eye on things and keep doing what I've been doing.
Just got home, nuking an early lunch, or late breakfast. Not sure what
I'm going to do today. I have a strong lack of tentacles ATM. Oh well,
I'll come up with something.
So that's it for Monday morning. *yawn* Catch you all later.
Well last night was soso, ended up going to bed early with a book on life
in Ancient Rome. Slept okish, including dreams about ships in the
Hellenistic/Roman era, and about being a park ranger hunting down poachers.
Woke up late, got ready to head down to Amythest for laundry...came out to
a flat tire. Fix a flat 'fixed' it, but I don't trust it...so I'm staying
home vs driving to Amythest's and back. Tomorrow I have a pshrink visit
I really can't postpone, need my happy meds. Then Tuesday I've got an
appointment with my car dealership, going to go ahead and replace all 4 tires.
They're the same tires I've had on the car since I bought it, and I was
going to have to replace them at my next oil change. Wanted to wait til
I had a job, but I might as well do it now. Oh well, this is why I have
a credit card.
So I'm vegging here at home. Not feeling great. I should work on getting
my post about NYC done, I just haven't felt like writing it. No idea why
I'm having trouble. I just am. Miss the city. Oh well. *le sigh*
At least I know I'm really still a New Yorker at heart, where ever I end
up living.
So yeah, Sunday blahs are hitting. I have a pshrink visit tomorrow early.
We'll see how that goes. The rest of the week will be a mix of job
hunting foo, and helping prep for the Ufies Holiday Party. I've got
free time, so I'll be doing spring cleaning (in the fall). Makes a
good, affordable Cthulhumas gift. Not much else, may try to write some
NYC stuff, or I may just stare at the screen til bedtime. Ok, catch you all
later.
Been a fair unstable emotional day. Woke up anxious again, fidgeted around
the apartment til I decided to head out. Got some nifty chocolate for
Amythest, pre-treat for what's probably going to be a rough week for her
at work. Headed on down and met up with Nymaz and Amythest. We got out
the holiday stuff, she cranked up the music and we got started.
The holidays are always emotional for me...and this is the first one sans
Mom. So when I ran into an ornament that reminded me of one we had as a
kid, my brain kicked over into sad mode. I miss Mom, and Dad. Glad I was
with my musketeers, as they understand things. It got better, but
I still was feeling pretty fragile. We got the tree done, and then
did the outside lights. Once we got things done I ended up canceling on
going to the movies with them, I'm lacking in tentacles, and I honestly
didn't want to watch a movie with feelings. They understood, and
I headed home. Stopping to get Chinese food.
Now I'm thinking it's bad movies and maybe some geekery tonight. Or early
to bed with a book. We'll see. Current mood is quiet, kind of fragile
feeling. Oh well, I will get better. I always do. Catch you all later.
