Baxil [bakh-HEEL'], n.
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Baxil" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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01:14 pm
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Dear life, still miss you. Signed, me
Hey, looks like this Internet thing is still on.
- Gratuitous Icon Post:
Lake Emo Lake Valley Reservoir*, near Truckee, Calif., just begged for this. Anyone know of any happy-face bodies of water? I foresee great success for LOLakes.
- The end is in sight: I just gave notice at job #2. I doubt that'll get me back any time until after Memorial Day, but moving forward that'll allow me to really streamline my schedule. (tired cheer)
- Waiting for the upgrade: I've just been informed** by the Microsoft Knowledge Base that "Tad's Mouth Doesn't Move" when he speaks. No known workarounds. Well, crap! You'd think with nine months in their testing cycle, my parents could have caught that one before it shipped.
- A modest proposal:
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) roaminrob made the mistake of exposing me to the Screaming Frog very shortly after I discovered Cat Yodeling. And now I know what must be done.
The world needs a Screaming Frog/Yodeling Cat duet remix.
I recommend using them both as backing vocals for Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You."
- Your Baxil has evolved: Comedian Eddie Izzard famously has drawn the distinction between "executive transvestites" and "fvcking weirdo transvestites." Pace Eddie, I'm pretty sure I completed my transition a week and a half ago to Executive Dragon.
It went something like this:
Saturday: Spent the afternoon in the close company of a dozen topless pagan women (and almost as many men), capping off a ritual to Dionysus with an afternoon of overtly sexual competitions.
Sunday: Went home and assembled an investment portfolio.***
Both, for the record, were firsts for me.
(Edited to add: I'm not trying to imply that Saturday was a "weirdo dragon" day. No no no. Random pagan debauchery is good. More like, I'm an executive dragon because I can both do these things and blend in conventionally with some measure of objective success.)
--
* Enter "39.307,-120.585" without the quotes in Google Maps for original. Although I used Mapquest's satellite view for this icon; the color was better.
** Via the hilarious "Funny Microsoft Q Articles" compilation.
*** If you should find yourself in a similar position -- the entire U.S. market is taking a thorough beating right now. I, and my financially savvy father, recommend fleeing into commodities (especially energy) and foreign bonds. Right now, the dollar's in a slight rally, so it's a good time to buy in. The underlying structure of the economy is such that painful inflation is basically inevitable.
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Mood:  okay
Current Music: Michael Johnathon, "The Dream"
Tags: misc life updates
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10:30 pm
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Still not dead
Updates, or fragments of updates, or updates of fragments:
- Somebody shoot me now: My "two-weekend" third job, covering for the departure of a paginator at a local newspaper, metamorphosed into four weekends, then eight. Now their top candidate to fill the position fell through, and I'm being told that they need me until at least late May.
I can't leave until they find a new designer; I can't drop hours at job #2 because the only other person doing my job is quitting; and I can't drop hours at job #1 because the only other person doing my job is quitting.
It's only by the (strained and deteriorating) grace of roaminrob that I'm able to work six days a week right now instead of seven. My social life isn't completely on hold, but it's on life support. And I haven't touched my friends list this month.
- "Day 34. Cops still bored."[*]: Got pulled over by law enforcement today for pulling into a parking space. Did you know that (in California at least) it's illegal to make any U-turns in a business district, except at properly labeled intersections? (I know this, because he said I looked skeptical and showed me the relevant passage in his copy of the Vehicle Code.) This includes pulling into a parking space on the opposite side of the road.
Fortunately, I was either polite enough and/or sincere enough in my protestations of ignorance that he let me off with a warning. At least now I know that our roads are safe from the vile and pernicious evil of business-district u-turn scofflaws.
- First-world problems: There is one fringe benefit to working ridiculous hours -- money to spend. Bought the copy of "Rock Band" I've had my eye on since winter, and have been vainly trying to find both time and friends to enjoy it with.
There is one aggravating thing about Rock Band: ARRRRGGH HARDWARE. I was already aware that you can't use Guitar Hero controllers with it (short version: Activision sucks donkey balls and I'm not picking up any GH games). But it turns out you can't use Rock Band controllers with it, either. I currently have three guitars in my house, at most one of which works*, and have just returned a fourth dead guitar to the store. I'm sure it's a lovely game and I really look forward to playing it. Someday.
- Content stolen from the Internet dept.: "And there were dragons in the earth in those days."
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* One official Rock Band guitar, DOA. One official replacement Rock Band guitar, unusable because I own a PS2 and they sent me an Xbox 360 guitar (not cross-compatible, and it took me a week of research to realize that). One third-party Psyclone Kingmaker guitar, recently returned to store because whammy bar died within a week. One third-party Psyclone Kingmaker guitar, new, still in box. Moral: Using equipment produced by the lowest bidders make the baby Jesus cry.
Current Location: ~/bedroom
Current Mood:  tired
Tags: misc life updates
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11:19 pm
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Oddly appropriate icon
Last weekend, we had a little incident with our clothes washer. By "incident," I mean "flood." And by "little," I mean "half the kitchen and living room, and also through the walls so that both our next-door and downstairs neighbors had to mop up too."
Anyway, I am given to understand that it was unpleasant. I was on my Work Schedule From Heck at the time, so I first found out about it by calling kadyg during the middle of the mopping up. At which point I promptly freaked out and almost didn't make deadline with the night's layout. "Half the living room," it should be belatedly mentioned, included my computer desk.
Most of our books, papers and gear were safely up on desktops or bookshelves. However, the battery backup-qua-surge protector that powered basically everything on that side of the room was happily sitting in a quarter-inch of water by the time Kady and Rob ran out to the living room to take in the disaster.
It was promptly unplugged (and confirmed waterlogged). But I had no immediate way of knowing whether it had shorted out and taken out the half-dozen devices plugged into it.
Kady managed to plug in my monitor and watch it blink to life. An optimistic sign. My lovely, 12.5-month-old Mac Mini, on the other hand, wasn't booting.
Literally. About a week out of warranty coverage.
Got home to find out that this is because its power brick was also sitting on the floor next to the UPS. Picked it up and it dripped.
The good news, as I discovered about 36 hours later, is that when I took my computer in to work and plugged it into a known-good power brick there (my tech support job uses Mac Minis for our work computers as well; that's what convinced me to get one), it worked fine. Bad news is that, having spent the better part of a week drying out my power brick, it still isn't transmitting power to my Mini. Chances are high that I'll have to throw the brick away and buy a new one.
Is there a word that is an exact antonym of "silver lining"? I know I'm feeling tremendously lucky right now that I don't have to replace a $600 computer (and data that hadn't been backed up in months), but somehow I'm still annoyed over the much smaller expense of the bits that did blow out.*
Edited to add: Apple Discussions thread.
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* Total damages: $50 brick, $35 UPS (it's making some death click when plugged in now -- after the same full week of drying out), $50 DSL modem (but we swiped an old spare from work), one $3 DSL filter, several man-hours of mopping, and a modest amount of landlord goodwill. Apparently the UPS had the good grace to ground as it shorted. (Come to think of it, I think the printer power brick was down there as well -- I should check it. But it cost us less than $100, if it comes to that.)
Current Location: ~journal
Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: Jars of Clay, "Flood"
Tags: misc life updates, technology
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08:44 pm
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Note on the run
If anyone's wondering about my recent silence -- I'm temporarily back at my old newspaper job (one of their paginators left and they need some fill-in work). It's good money, but since it doesn't reduce my other obligations, it's job No. 3 and brings me up to about 65 hours/week. I'm currently on Day 12 of what was meant to be a 19-day streak with no days less than 8 hours on the clock; turns out the paper needs me for longer than I expected, and without some emergency schedule rearrangement that's going to be over a month.
My entire social life is basically on hold until at least mid-April.
I would, however, like to wish Lovely Wife kadyg my warmest congratulations for finishing classes today. She has now started her externship, and when that finishes in June she will be able to come home and officially call herself a chef.
Yay!
Current Location: ~journal
Current Music: Stevie Nicks, "Planets of the Universe"
Tags: misc life updates
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03:35 am
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Two things
1) Does anybody (preferably someone at a university, with access to scientific journal archives) have any idea where the species name of the beetle Cetonia baxil came from? Google fails.
2) Due to sudden and extreme poverty, I am going to have to skip Further Confusion this year. :-(
Between holidays (and being forced to sit out four workdays), a wave of vet bills for Ocras' kidney problems, and a little fiscal miscalculation, keeping up with expenses this month is completely flatlining our slowly dwindling financial reserves. To the point where even the gas for driving down to San Jose and back is starting to look like a luxury expense. Unless someone wants me at the con desperately enough to give me a complete Friday-night-to-Sunday-afternoon free ride, I'll have to take a pass and start saving up for 2009 once kadyg gets out of cooking school.
Unfortunately, it's likely this will be the case for Pantheacon as well. (And kadyg is hosting a ritual downstairs on that weekend, anyway.) Apologies to the people I was looking forward to meeting there.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Mood:  disappointed
Current Music: Indigo Girls, "Hammer and a Nail"
Tags: misc life updates
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10:59 pm
[Link] |
New Year's meme
Via paka. 40 questions about my last 12 months.*
1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before?
I got a tattoo. I dealt with chronic illness. I successfully restored my website from backup. I joined a local Go club. I cashed in savings bonds. I posted to an adult filter in my journal. And once kadyg left for cooking school, I lived (at least for 5 days a week) in a place I wasn't sharing with any other housemates.
( Meme cut )
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* Meaningless footnote added due to complaint from wife about post footnotelessness.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Mood:  calm
Current Music: "Guardian Legend Naju Overture OC Remix," Russell Cox
Tags: meme, misc life updates
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09:50 pm
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Hours worked: 2. Motorcycles seen: 1,700. Old Ones defeated: 1.
Previous post aside, I've had a full weekend. kadyg came home from school, we took our cat Ocras to the vet again (and determined, sadly, there are some permanent kidney problems that we'll need to deal with for the rest of his life), and then I got called in to work to fix someone else's mess that was preventing the restaurant management software from booting.
I left the house expecting that a simple reboot of both machines would do the trick and that I'd be home in five minutes. It took two hours. About a quarter of which was sitting in traffic. They called me in exactly as the local toy run roared through town, and I happened to unwittingly drive to work on the route they were using. So I got the privilege of sitting on the side of the road and taking in the festivities as 1,700 motorcycles drove past.
At least I got home in time for krinndnz's visit. Among the things I learned: If you're going to try to save 1926 Arkham from certain doom, try to save it from the ultimate destruction of Azathoth rather than the cruel enslavement of Chthulu. Because, man, Chthulu really sucks to fight against. (Speaking of which, guys: This is the song that I spontaneously rolled out as we were setting up the board. :-))
Edited to add: And I would like to officially award Krinn 10 Baxil Points for the coolest line of the weekend. As a self-introduction to roaminrob, Krinn said cheerfully, "Hi! I'm from the Internet!"
(I tried very hard to resist the temptation to add: "Krinn's here to glue captions to our cats." I failed.)
Current Location: ~/brainstorm
Tags: misc life updates
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01:33 am
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Failure of nerve
I'm not good with needles. Never have been.
When I get something injected into me, my heart starts racing. When I have blood drawn, I get the cold sweats. I even fainted once (though in my defense, I hadn't had anything to eat that day). I can't even watch injections on medical dramas on TV -- the instant a syringe comes out, my fingers curl into claws, and I have to look away and knead the arm of the chair until I'm sure the moment's gone.
So when my wife's dear cat needed a trip to the vet, I got a bit nervous myself. When early tests came back in showing signs of kidney failure, I felt a subtle sinking feeling above and beyond the pain of impending pet loss.
Then I started reading about feline CRF. And the good news: "CRF cats may be able to live for several additional years with [regular injections of] fluids and the proper diet." Keep in mind that with Kady in cooking school, I'm pretty much it as far as cat caretaking. And the regular injections thereof.
Ocras seems to be responding to antibiotics. I really, really hope this is something acute.
Because he was pretty dehydrated when we got him to the vet. They asked us to give him daily sub-Q (subcutaneous -- which is to say, injected) fluids for a week until we could get him re-checked and re-tested. No sooner had this news been passed down than kadyg had to go back to the city for school ... and it was me alone in the house with a fluid bag, a cat, and a needle.
The first time, Ocras was remarkably placid. Which was good, because I was so nervous I didn't even get the needle into his skin. I opened the fluids' stopper and soaked his back. After a little toweling off and some breathing exercises, beginner's luck kicked in; and 100 ccs of liquid went in before we retreated to the kitchen for cat treats.
Then tonight.
Staggering home after a 12-hour day, I sit in the kitchen for a bit, waiting for Ocras to lie down so I don't have to simultaneously wrestle him down and handle sharp things. I scoot over a chair once he's calm, and gently thread the needle in.
This time, he winces. It's all downhill from there.
I get everything seated and turn on the water. Again, his back gets wet -- it must have slipped out in the motion. Stop, recenter, wait for his tail to stop thrashing, retry. He gets squirmy again and I'm not able to get a good puncture.
I give up temporarily and retreat to the bathroom, where Ocras likes hanging out. He comes in to join me and settles in. We try again. This time, not only is there wincing and squirming, but also meows of protest.
My hands are shaking, and the nausea is so strong by the time I give up that I have to lie down on the floor of the bathroom for a few minutes to calm myself. Ocras isn't getting his fluids tonight.
A week of this is going to be hellish. For both me and the cat.
--
Update, 11/29: Much easier with an extra pair of hands. Thanks, Rob.
Current Location: ~/couch
Current Mood:  nauseated
Tags: misc life updates, pets
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12:53 am
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Please stand by
We are experiencing ( technical difficulties ). Dealing with today's DSL switchover here at the International House of Ninja is turning out to be a much bigger hassle than expected. Your Baxil will return shortly.
At least I've now got some detailed notes on ...
Steps for switching a Speedstream 5100 to our company's Internet service
- Log in to http://192.168.0.1. Click to edit configuration.
- Enter the "Modem Access Code" printed on the bottom of the device.
- ... Which is set in the firmware and shouldn't be changeable.
- Enter the "Modem Access Code" again because it's not accepting it.
- Assume firmware corruption. Find "Factory Reset" link.
- Reset the modem.
- Repeatedly.
- ... With a large hammer.
- Finish cursing. Locate hardware reset switch on underside of device.
( The fun continues )
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "Green," Afro Celt Sound System
Tags: geekery, misc life updates, my brain now hurts, tech support horror stories, technology, work
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03:57 am
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/3864630/240226) [Link] |
A dragon looks at thirty*
I've got a birthday about to start in just a few hours.** Up until this morning, it was weighing heavily on my mind.
Something in my brain must feel awful betrayed at the rolling of the odometer, because I literally have not been able to think of turning 30 for weeks without the thought flitting past my brain: "It's been a good run." That's not the thought of a man passing a milestone. That's the thought of a man indulging in a little eschatological nostalgia.
Consciously, I know this seems ridiculous; unconsciously, I can't shake it.
It's a contradiction that I've been living with for a while. Take -- for example -- that both of my parents (in their late 60s) are still alive, and my odds at that longevity (the human average) are at least as good. But at the same time, I would already be 12 years dead if it weren't for 20th-century medicine's fortuitous talent for appendectomies.***
That's a sobering thought ... that everything I've made of my adult life is, essentially, time brazenly stolen out from under the nose of a patient and vindictive Death.
And yet ... and yet.
As morbid as my reflection was, it's true. Looking back from 30, it has been a good run. My legacy is one of living, of loving, of creation.**** What more could be done, except to keep giving, and to grow the castle upon that foundation?*****
This morning, something in my subconscious must have come to that realization, too, because I had a dream that threw it all into sharp relief.
It was a simple dream. My family, kadyg and I were all piled in a car, driving through richly forested Washington state, following the Pacific Crest Trail along and occasionally getting out for some day hiking or to offer some trail support to the thru-hikers nearing the end of their journey. The weather was perfect, and I was spending a lot of time basking in the sunshine and taking in the views.
Then the five of us ran across a thru-hiker, and all crammed like sardines into the car in order to take her in to town. "The Rose" was on the radio, and someone turned it up, and we were all singing along. Except the lyrics had been changed.
I am left with the last thing I sang, proudly, full of wonder and contentment, before the alarm clock buzzed: "I have given too many reasons / That bind my soul to life."
And that's it, really. As morbid as I might want to be, honoring the closure of a decade, there's just too much to like here. If something were to happen to me, it has been a good run and I wouldn't have many regrets -- but I would sure regret not getting enough time to take everything in that Earth's got to offer.
Here's to hoping I can say the same for decades to come.
--
* Because we just can't get enough of the cultural references here.
** Not true. I wrote the first part of this post in between shifts on what turned out to be a 16-hour workday. I've got another 10 starting in seven four hours. What a way to leave behind my 20s. *sigh*
*** Though packbat brought up this very topic days ago, I wasn't able to catch up on my flist until after I wrote this. Any thoughts of personal mortality are completely my own and not inspired by recent memes.
**** I also, with approximately 15 minutes left to spare, have finally lost my network administration virginity. Yes! For lo, I have hand-crimped my first CAT5 cable.
***** Also, apologies for the halfway-intentional free verse of this paragraph.
Current Location: ~/brainstorm
Current Mood:  reflective
Current Music: "Too Young To Die," David Crosby
Tags: birthday, dreams, hiking, lyrics, misc life updates
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08:26 pm
[Link] |
Well, that was a waste
Dropped kadyg off at the train station much earlier than usual on Sunday -- she had to get back to the city for a job interview. Figured that if I couldn't spend the day with my wife, at least I'd get some productive work done.
As if.
( Graphic descriptions of graphic intestinal issues; high whine factor )
So ... um ... yeah. I'm afraid I'm going to need to call mulligan on the writing meme until I've recovered. First story is mostly done (put in a lot of effort on Saturday evening), but I won't post it until I'm actively working on the writing again.
Current Location: ~/bedroom
Current Mood: sick
Tags: american health care is a piece of shit, misc life updates
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07:11 pm
[Link] |
It was the best of cons, it was the worst of cons
... but mostly it was a sort of giant meh.
I'm back from Baycon - I just spent all of Memorial Day weekend there, as usual, on newsletter staff. It had its moments, and I guess I'm glad I went, but it turned out being a thoroughly tiring experience.
Newsletter staff was plagued with personal and technical issues all weekend; nobody got any real down time. My "go out and have fun" window was mostly limited to six hours on Sunday night. Sleep was at a premium. Half of our staff didn't arrive until Friday evening. There were a few explosions of emotional drama that don't need recapping (and none directly involve me, so I won't do more than mention it by way of context). And I had some Return Of Son Of Intestinal Issues as the con started ... recovered pretty well, but left me physically drained most of the trip. I started the weekend exhausted and finished it exhausted. Going to try to catch up on some sleep tonight.
The newsletter itself felt like work in a way that it usually doesn't. But we got some quality material out of it, at least. As I remarked to my fellow staffers, there was a lot of low-hanging fruit to pluck for our hoax issue (2.2mb PDF at link).
So, bax to the grind.
This was probably my last real vacation, except for MythiCalia, until next year. Money's tight with kadyg in school, the debts from last year's hike are still lurking in the background, and I can't afford to have social ambitions for a while.
--
Edited to add: I don't blame anyone for the issues that cropped up, and I'm not trying to be passive-aggressive by mentioning them. They are things that simply happened, as these things do. A mix of the expected (e.g., a staff member's Friday graduation) and unexpected (e.g., our rented copier ran out of toner on Saturday and we could only get a fraction of what we still needed) just snowballed to the point where everyone was permanently on edge. I know I wasn't the only one cursing, and I wasn't the only one relieved when we booted all our visitors out on Sunday and locked the door. We're done now, and next year will go better.
Update 2: JYHANHEN'S TOOTH, MAKE THE WEEKEND STOP. Was unable to lock up when I left work, and was unable to go inside when I got home, due to mislaying my keyring inside one of my many random Convention Stuff boxes -- finally found it and had to go back and fix everything. Also discovered I left yesterday's leftovers (which were going to be tonight's dinner) out on the counter all night when I came home yesterday. Dropped large bottle of juice while carrying things inside and got it everywhere. Okay, who put Planet Baxil into retrograde? ]B=8p
Current Location: ~yuba
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Markos Moulitsas, "Allston Musings"
Tags: conventions, misc life updates
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10:20 pm
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/3864503/240226) [Link] |
:)
momentrabbit probably didn't mean to start a meme, but this is one that deserves wider exposure:
What's going right in your life today?
For my part, now that my two-job schedule juggling has calmed a bit, I just had my first two-day weekend in over six months.
Not only that, it was Saturday and Sunday ... and this trend will continue. This is the first time in over half a decade that I will be working job(s) that synchronize my two-day weekend with most of the western world's. (A regular schedule is not among the advantages of newspaper work.)
It felt glorious to once again have two days in a row! that I didn't have to drag myself out of bed and in to the office(s) for long stretches. I didn't get a whole lot of decompression time -- because kadyg and I went to the Beltaine celebration on The Ridge on Saturday, and I did a lot of driving Sunday while we shopped and I took her back to the train station for school -- but it was a lovely and novel feeling nonetheless.
And I get to turn around this weekend and do it all over again. *happy sigh*
What about you? What's fallen into place lately, or randomly resolved well, or taken a turn for the better?
Current Location: ~yuba
Current Mood:  content
Current Music: "Untitled," Crash Test Dummies
Tags: meme, misc life updates, work
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04:50 pm
[Link] | Good luck to Lovely Wife kadyg, who is going to be MOVING IN! tomorrow to COOKING SCHOOL! And starting classes on Monday! I already can tell she'll make a tremendous chef.
... also, this is sorta short notice, but any of you San Franciscans who might want to wish her luck in person, we should have a few hours on Saturday after we finish unpacking boxes into her dorm room. You can call my cell phone to set something up. (Or call if you just want to pass on good wishes before I drive home Saturday afternoon.)
It's going to be an interesting few months, with her living in the dorm there at school and me holding down the fort here at home. Of course, for the next few weeks I won't really have any time to appreciate the subtleties -- due to some personnel changes at one of my two jobs, I'm going to be spending my life at work for a while.
Tags: misc life updates
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02:55 pm
[Link] |
Nostalgia du jour
I was listening to the local radio station today on my way to work. Mel Walsh was interviewing fellow author Marjorie Hart about her new book on the summer of 1945.
One of the things that came up in passing in their conversation was the events of V-J Day -- it was one of those Historic Moments that everyone remembers, the sort that years later people can tell you exactly where they were when they heard the news.
(Pearl Harbor was another one of these. I recall my father telling me of how a policeman pulled over the car he was riding in on Dec. 7, 1941 ... just to tell them that the U.S. had been attacked.)
Mel opined that the announcement of the Japanese surrender was, for the generation that came of age in the 1940s, their "JFK was shot" moment. Which got me thinking about modern era landmarks.
I'm not old enough to have been around for JFK. But there are three national news moments in my lifetime that stand out in relief:
- The Challenger explosion. I was in my fifth-grade classroom. The principal came into the room in tears. We stopped and watched TV. I think there was an assembly shortly afterward, and I think they cancelled the rest of the school day, but it was that first moment that seared itself into my mind.
- The OJ Simpson criminal verdict. I was in college, taking a fencing PE class. The instructor had sent me off to the school's second gym to retrieve some equipment. Everyone was clustered around the TVs there (there were none in the gym we were using). I hustled back to class with the equipment and the news; when I got there, word had already spread ahead of me. Someone else had heard it on the radio and informed the class.
- 9/11. As a West Coaster, I first heard about it at 7 am on the bus on my way to work. When I got there, everyone was clustered around the one Internet-capable machine trying to find out more, but news web sites were overloaded and unreachable. I helped my coworkers confirm it by finding this Slashdot thread. We were in a downtown Seattle high rise, and they very quickly sent us home -- nobody was certain how many more buildings would be targets that day.
Now I'm wondering -- were there any truly historic, galvanizing moments after JFK? There must have been some in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, but I can't think of any really epic ones other than 9/11. Certainly nothing on the order of a presidential assassination or a World War victory comes to mind.
Current Location: ~calorg
Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: Indigo Girls, "History of Us"
Tags: misc life updates, note to self
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02:13 am
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/59215336/240226) [Link] | "... If you're a transvestite, you get lumped into that weirdo grouping, you know? When I was in New York, there was a guy in the Bronx who was living in a cave … like you do, and he was coming out and shooting at geese and… (chuckles) a lot of weird things going on with this guy; and the police picked him up and they found a collection of women's shoes, and they thought, "Maybe he's a transvestite.” And if he is, he's a fucking weirdo transvestite! I'm much more in the executive transvestite area. Travel the world, yes, it's much more executive."
- Eddie Izzard
I have always tried to personally avoid the "executive $groupname" versus "weirdo $groupname" distinction. It's a real phenomenon, yes, but also a very subjective one. And with the fringes I hang out in, it's useful not to lose the perspective: Any given "executive" member of a subculture is still a weirdo to most people.
Be that as it may, I've been feeling a lot like an executive lately.
I identify as a dragon and still maintain the widely used FAQ for people of like mind. I study magic and talk to spirits. I packed up my life and walked nearly 1000 miles of trail last summer. I'm polyamorous and have been bisexual (and still am both in theory, though in practice my commitment to kadyg comes first).
Yet despite my strange and convention-defying life, the main reaction so far to my tattoo seems to be surprise.
Apparently I come off as an executive freak -- to the point that people who thought they knew me are doing double-takes. I'm just not the sort of person who they would expect to do something as bizarre as ... you know. Label myself.
"Is that henna?" has been popular, though "Oh, that's permanent?" is another strong contender. My boss at the store was the most blunt in her admiration: "You're about the last person I'd have ever guessed would get a tattoo."
Hopefully those of you who read this journal have had a little more warning. I've mentioned it several times as being among my list of ten-year goals. On Saturday, it all fell together; the bookshop downstairs had brought in a ritual tattoo artist, and so underneath a blood moon, I had a sigil inked into my arm.
The tattoo, which you can see closer in my new user icon as well as by clicking on the picture above, is a stylized flame of my own design. I'll explain its significance in a subsequent post -- I just wanted to show it off as I check another goal off the list.
Current Location: ~/computer_desk
Current Mood: inx0red
Current Music: Tom Petty, "Last Dance With Mary Jane"
Tags: goals, misc life updates, tattoo
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04:27 am
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As brief as possible of an update on my life
With my limited net access lately -- and focus on little teensy weensy things like the move and, well, all of the below -- I really haven't been able to type out proper updates on everything that's been going on with my life.
The short answer is: Everything. This is the year it all happens.
First and most importantly. As I explained the last time I summed up, kadyg and I are now engaged. It was a long post and it was a while ago, though, so it's worth saying again. This factors into my future plans, but I'm getting ahead of myself slightly. (I'm also debt-free, which factors into my future plans, but now I'm really getting ahead of myself.)
With that commitment having been penned in to the life calendar, the two of us promptly decided to go out and find a place to move into together. (This wasn't because we weren't already living together; it was because the place we were in was getting too expensive for comfort.) Voila: A month or two of my life sucked down the moving hole.
I've just about had time to catch my breath from that. So, now, naturally, it's time to fling myself off into some mad, whirlwind undertaking that will suck up my life entirely for a while.
( The next five months of my life: Travel, NaNo, marriage, training )
Current Mood:  needing sleep
Current Music: Chicago soundtrack, "We Both Reached For The Gun"
Tags: greece, misc life updates, wedding
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03:22 pm
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You can't go home again
kadyg and I have spent the weekend hauling boxes and furniture. We are now -- until the end of the month, anyway -- the proud tenants of four bedrooms, three bathrooms, two kitchens, and a hallway, all of which look like New Orleans minus the flood water1. Half of which because we're moving out of them, and half of which because we're moving in.
Moving the feesh was probably the single trickiest part of the entire operation. All 17 of them were netted and dumped into a two-gallon holding tank while we drained the 46-gallon aquarium. (Hey, YOU try moving 368 lbs. of water up a flight of stairs with low clearance ...) So far, miraculously, all of them seem to have survived the process -- although we did have a tetra swimming around pointed downward at about a 45-degree angle, so we'll see if he recovers. We also had to uproot and replant all of our water plants. Our Amazon sword seems to have developed quite a root system and hopefully I didn't kill too much of it off. The aquarium has been set back up in the kitchen, and if I ever unpack my camera, I might be able to take some pictures (along with the ring pics I promised some time back).
However, my online access is going to be light for a while. We couldn't carry our DSL service over to the new home, I don't think either of us even owns a regular modem, and so we're netless until we can get our act together.
Contact information for the new place follows in a friends-locked post. I haven't updated my friends list in a while, so if I haven't added you yet, please speak up now.
Also, a special thanks to roaminrob, firestrike and coworker James for making Sunday something less than pure hell.
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1. In one case, with the flood water. Our cat Ocras has developed the habit of knocking over buckets to drink the tasty, tasty water within. We generally humor him by letting him lick up the dregs of the emptied buckets we've filled up the feeshtank with. However, we accidentally left within his reach the full bucket that was holding the tank filter components (which we wanted to keep wet to preserve the beneficial bacteria that keep the tank biosphere running). I arrived back at our new place at 4 a.m. Monday morning after driving firestrike home to find the kitchen, and a few feet of hardwood living room floor, transformed into a shallow pond . Fortunately, the only non-sleep-related casualty seems to have been one or two few cardboard boxes (and none of their contents).
Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: Senator Flux, "Homestead"
Tags: misc life updates
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02:08 pm
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Coming together
Have you ever had one of those time periods where everything goes wrong? Sure you have. Everyone has.
But have you ever had one of those periods where everything goes right?
I sure have. And it's been a long time in coming.
( House sale: Weight off my shoulders )
On top of that, today kadyg and I had our rings delivered. "Rings?" I hear you ask. It's a fair question with a happy answer: We're officially engaged!
My parents' first question when I told them the news was "How did you propose to her?" -- which is probably a more common question than I'm giving it credit for, so I should give more detail here.1 It's sort of a boring story, though. The bottom line is that we've been living together for about a year and a half now, taking things as they've come and gradually giving more thought to our future. We've gotten gradually more comfortable over that time with the idea of spending the rest of our lives together and with the idea of a mutual commitment. (She was shy of the idea at first due to a previous marriage and divorce; I was shy of it for reasons I'll detail in a later post.) So, um, we pretty much just talked about it and decided that the idea was right. No big, life-changing romantic gestures yet, although I'm sure we can come up with one.
( Also, debt-free )
All things considered, I feel better right now than I have in a long, long time. I've closed two chapters in my life that I'm glad to have behind me, and I've opened up a third that I'm excited to get started with. I love you, Kady. ]B=8)
Perseverance, patience, tenderness, and compassion have paid off in a big way, and there's more than enough of them to go around as I continue to chase my other long-term plans and help my fiancée with hers.
( Footnotes )
Current Mood:  w00t!
Current Music: Babble, "Spirit"
Tags: misc life updates, wedding
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12:27 pm
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Another great post overtaken by events
You know ... I had something really clever to say here last night.
My car's engine seized up and died while taking my sister (writer of ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) seguace_blog) to the Sacramento Airport. This could have involved all sorts of inconvenience and badness beyond just the car repair. If it had stopped on the way, we probably would have had to spring for a taxi, and she might have missed her flight. If it had stopped on the way back, I would have been stranded with no cell phone or AAA coverage. As it turns out, by some cosmic coincidence, it died as we were pulling into the parking garage at the airport; she went inside to get her boarding pass and check a piece of luggage, and then came back out to the parking lot, called for roadside service, and helped me get it towed back to Auburn before dashing back inside to board.
If the car had asked me to pick a time for it to die out on the road, there would have been no better golden, shining moment than the one it chose. It was probably going to go in the near future anyway, and if it had seized up during Kady's commute (we've been swapping cars since mine gets better gas mileage), she'd have been stuck in the same no-phone-no-service bind, possibly 10-15 miles from the nearest town along Highway 49.
By an odd coincidence, last night was also when I laid out a story in today's newspaper about a motorcyclist who had a truck fall on him and walked out of the accident. Between that, a few other near misses in my personal life, and some situations a few friends of mine are going through, I was going to make an observation about the age-old debate: Is the (ostensibly ancient Chinese) saying "May you live in interesting times" a blessing or a curse?
The answer is: No. It's a statement unto itself. It implies good luck and ill; it can't be contained by either. It might be more accurately characterized as "WTF?" luck (or some catchy variation thereof, such as "WTL"), I was thinking yesterday. After all, that motorcyclist who nearly got smeared into road pancake is obviously quite lucky he was able to walk away from having a truck fall on him -- but if he'd just left the house ten seconds earlier, he wouldn't have been in the accident at all.
Anyway. I was going to post all that last night. Didn't have time. And then I discovered this morning that the car doesn't need repair, it needs junking. Engine = very no. That's not a good prize.
So, um. Yeah.
"Living in interesting times" is kind of like dodging bullets. It means you're doing alright, except oh wait somebody's shooting at you. And, by definition, you're not exactly living in interesting times any more if you get shot. Then you're just some shmuck who got in a gunfight. Maybe if they liked you they can put the number of bullets you dodged on your tombstone.
Current Mood:  frustrated
Current Music: Gettin' ready to walk to work with my iPod
Tags: baxslang, misc life updates, wordplay
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