Category Archives: Life and Stuff

Almost Completely Useless

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On Thursday, I predicted to a colleague that I’d get a migraine on Friday. I knew this because it was the first day of a long holiday.

As predicted, I got my migraine aura and quickly took medicine and coffee. Despite this treatment, my body still punished me for the migraine. I spent most of the day caught somewhere between sloth-like and slug-like.

I did manage to get outside to buy some clothes and feed our youngest, but then I came back home and returned to sloth-like, slug-like mode.

That means it’s early to bed, especially as I’m working tomorrow. I did rough out some reviews for future topics here, and also weighed the pros and cons of doing NaNoWriMo this year. (Short version: It’s cons all the way down this year.)

But more on that in a future post.

 

 

 

The Praise of Neutral Parties

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For us it’s kind of expected. When you hear other people say it, though, it’s kind of cool.

Today was our youngest’s school festival. She would be playing the piano for the singing part of the show and a keyboard for the instrumental part of the show.

I wasn’t as interested as in all this as I had been in the past so I arrived late and left early. In my defense, this is her fifth show and that makes it the least interesting. The first was the most exciting and everyone since then has been less and less interesting whilst my patience with the crowd grows thinner and thinner. Next year will be her last performance in elementary school which will make it both interesting and emotional.

My job at each performance is always the same. Stand taller than everyone else and make a passable video recording of the events. Each class marches in and sings a song. Then they reposition and perform an instrumental. Our youngest had won an audition to play the piano for the singing part.

After the first part was over, the ladies near us commented about how impressed they were by the piano part. Both She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were gushing but we couldn’t actually hear what she was doing as the drums were positioned in a way that made them seem louder than normal and a toddler near us was freaked out by the shockingly loud bass drums.

After it was over, I ran away. I’m sure the open class was interesting but, quite frankly, been there, done that.

 

Ten Ideas But Not Much Point

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It seemed like a good idea. Now it needs some modification

For the past year and a half (ish) I’ve been writing a “daily” list of ten ideas on select, or random topics. They were intended to be part of a morning practice, but for a while they’ve become an end in themselves and it’s time to change them.

Part of the problem I have is that 1) I have no plan to follow up on the ideas and 2) for the past few months the ideas have become an end unto themselves (kind of like this blog) and writing them has taken up time that could be spent on other things.

Because of this, I’ve decided to implement a few new rules.

First, I’ll only write the ten ideas in the morning. Once lunch rolls around, it’s time to focus on other writing.

Second, if I miss a day, I will not attempt to fill the missed days before moving on.Instead, I’ll just start from the current day. Until now, I’ve attempted to catch up by filling in days I’d missed before moving on to the next batch of ideas.

Third, once every couple of weeks, I’ll select ideas at random and attempt to mix and match them with other ideas. After that, I’ll toss out the notebook. (After a quick, cursory search, though.)

Honey Do or Do Not

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I was off work today which meant I got put to work. Sort of. Eventually.

The plan was for She Who Must Be Obeyed and I to brave the dangers and monsters of the variety room closet in order to start winterizing the house. This involves clearing out the the “variety pile” in front of the closet. That is followed by cleaning, breaking down and putting away the summer fans and dragging out the kerosene heater, the electric carpet and the heavy blankets.

Unfortunately, there was a delay as She Who Must Be Obeyed had to take our youngest to a special game event involving the game she likes to play. There was a further delay when they returned and announced they’d have to go back. The event was apparently popular enough that game time had to be scheduled.

This slowed every thing down. Although I could have dragged everything out, I learned a long time ago that it was necessary to wait. As husband, conditioned by decades of commercials and TV shows telling my I am incompetent, I cannot be trusted to clean the fans properly. Because I cannot be trusted, the “variety pile” will have to be moved so that SWMBO can check my handy work (translation: clean stuff no matter how clean it already is).

Not wanting to do the same job twice, I waited.

Eventually we tackled the project and the house is properly winterized. This means it will be unseasonably warm for a few more weeks.

 

Gift Horses Looking You in the Mouth

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I won several things today, but only got to keep one of them. I burned through a lot of chances on the way. I got cranky, but am not sure if I deserved to be.

Today, before my evening class, I stopped by a convenience store to pick up a few things. Because I hit some magic expense number, I was given the chance to draw for something free.

My ticket revealed that I’d won a canned coffee. As I’d be buying one anyway later, I agreed to take the coffee right then. The clerk disappeared for a few minutes. She returned with only empty hands and an apology as that particular flavor of coffee was apparently out of stock.

She told me I could draw until I won something else. The second ticket revealed that I’d one a package of Haribo Gummi Bears. The clerk once again disappeared for a few minutes and then reappeared with empty hands and yet another apology.

My reaction was a polite “Gimme Gummi Bears! Me Want Gummi Bears!”. I was then allowed to draw more tickets. The next five or so were losers until I finally won some sort of hand wipes. I then had that odd moment where I was disappointed I was going to win those, even though they were free. I felt oddly guilty that I was happy to discover that those were also out of stock.

At this point the absurdity of it all began to hit me and I was like, just give a me a damned can of coffee, but was instead allowed to burn though a few more tickets until I won a set of dust masks. Those, of course, were in stock.

The masks are useful for emergency kits, but they bring the same joy as getting socks for Christmas. They ain’t Gummi Bears.

Virus Here Fever Here Fighting There

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I’m the only one who’s not sick, but I don’t expect that to last long, and I also have dishes to get done, so this will be a short one.

Our youngest has been home from school a couple days and according to the school she’s not the only one. In fact, because of this, they said not to hurry back. This means She Who Must Be Obeyed has had to miss work which is not something she’s happy about.

Our oldest is a teenager which means getting the dishes done will involve a fight. (It’s actually already started. More on this in a future post.)

Sports Day Without Sports

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It was Sports Day today and we were scattered to the winds. I was home babysitting our youngest, who celebrated sports day and the new cool weather by catching a cold from our oldest.

Our oldest, “fully recovered” from her cold went to a concert somewhere in Tokyo (at least I think it was in Tokyo) with a group of her friends. She Who Must Be Obeyed went to work, even though today was a national holiday.

I used the day to do two important things: catch up on the TV show Bones and organize the variety hoard in the office. Bones has been a lot of fun to watch, most of the time, but is clearly past its prime and is on an obvious death march into it’s last season.

The variety horde, for its part, looks like something the Bones characters have to scrape body parts from. (Sort of.)

The organizing was required because the cool weather. Because it is little more than an uninsulated concrete box, the office is a giant condensation collector/mold factory during the winter.

Anything on the floor often ends up in a bad way. I also  have to move the last of the ink inventory before winter as the cold weather and long delivery times have been known to freeze and burst bottles.

Somewhere in there, I have to do my actual job, too.

 

More or Less a Placeholder Tonight, With Coffee

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It says a lot that my only complaint today involved coffee.

The weather was great. It was unseasonably warm but we were blessed with humidity that had fallen to “tolerable” from “God has forsaken us”. (An actual level; look it up.)

My usual waiting to go to work coffee shop was full and the one table that seemed to be opening up was occupied by a man that seemed to be starting a proper hoard and it was going to take him days to clean it.

Instead I went to a place at the other end of the building. I’d been meaning to go there before because they seem to advertise only coffee and pizza. Once inside I found an impressive oatmeal raisin cookie and ordered an iced coffee to go with it.

To my horror, the iced coffee was half milk. I thought they’d made a mistake, but every one on either side of me had ordered either tea or a concoction involving an Aeropress or a French press so I deduced that I’d received what I ordered.

However, because I was in a good mood, and because there was enough coffee to make the milk brown, I accepted it in good faith. Later, thanks to the shop’s generous second drink pricing, I got an espresso to properly satisfy the caffeine addiction.

Then I had to go to work. I’ll probably go back to that shop, mostly because they have free wi-fi that doesn’t require registration, but I’ll try ordering iced coffee with no milk just to see what happens. It could be fun, but it will depend on what mood I’m in.

Shutting Down Earlyish

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Today turned into another one of those lazy days where I just can’t be bothered.

I did lots of small projects to day, but that was mostly a way of putting off larger projects.

I’ve worked out a plan of sorts for this website, although I balked on doing some of the writing for an intended post (it’s not the writing, its the tracking down sources/necessary URLs).

I’m also plotting the possibility of doing National Novel Writing Month again this year. I suspect I won’t because of those larger projects I keep putting off. They involve a lot of revising. Because of that, NaNoWriMo might become National Novel Revising Month (NaNoReMo?). I like the crazy intensity of NaNoWriMo, but it’s not my biggest priority now.

Other than that, all I did was clean pens and change inks. Oh, and I fed the girls and washed some dishes, too. I also left the house, although not for very long, when I escorted our youngest to her table tennis practice.

Now it’s bed time. Long day tomorrow.

Before Me, Therefore Because of Me.

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Despite my best efforts to hustle, I missed the train by that much.

In fact, when I was halfway up the stair case, I heard the doors close. It then teased a minute by sitting still with the doors closed until I reached the top step. Then the train pulled away.

(Note: yes, everything happens because of me.)

This put me on a later train, that left me a few minutes and a bit of hustle from catching a good train. As I may have mentioned before, If I catch the 10:32 I get home at 11:10 or so. If I catch the 10:44, I get home at 11:44.

Unfortunately, the later train became the “how f@#king late is this thing?” train and I even missed the 10:44.

However, there was an express leaving soon after that and I was shocked at how empty it was. I even managed to get a seat, which was the only good thing about the delays. I ended up getting home at 11:44 and this is the result.

Now, it’s bed time.