Alive, Alive-O
Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. (In the immortal words of Ass Dan, "you know I'm going to live forever!" All joking aside, I am not as confident of my immortality.)
The last year was such that it feels like it lasted a very long time and also like nothing discernibly happened at all. I inexplicably did not catch COVID and am now fully vaccinated, which is not a guarantee but I like my chances a lot better now. Lolmom does not seem to have any lasting ill effects, which is a relief, and is now also fully vaccinated. (She's given convalescent plasma and platelets a few times; apparently she has a slightly higher platelet count than normal.)
I never stopped working, though I did go remote for a few months, and have received a raise. It is, frankly, a pretty generous raise. I like my job most of the time, and I like my coworkers, but I can't say I like the utterly insane volume we've been doing. On the one hand, I like overtime and mileage reimbursement, and on the other hand, I like spare time.
I'm in Bloomington at the moment. My lease on the old apartment expires at the end of this month; I'm up here to do some final cleaning and get the last drips and drabs of my shit out of there. (It's not much -- mostly stuff like my toolbox, cleaning supplies, my shower rack, etc.) The vast majority of my shit was moved last month and is now sitting in a storage unit in Newburgh. It seems surreal that I ever lived here, or that I'm leaving now; in the time away, Bloomington has become both familiar and alien. There's nowhere to sleep in the apartment (the bed isn't there anymore and I need to move the loveseat out), so I'm staying at a two- or three-star hotel on the east side. I used to live on this side of town when I was young, when I had just met
tara and
forgottensanity, and I always feel a little melancholy driving around here: something is gone and I can never get it back. Perhaps that's an apt metaphor for my relationship with Bloomington in general.
(...perhaps I haven't actually grieved this as I might ordinarily need to because the plague and the logistics of moving and all the emotional labor therearound have given me my usual opportunity to squash the whole thing down and not really address it. We'll see when I suddenly have a tremendous meltdown for no apparent reason in about five or six months.)
I finally got a membership at the Evansville Y and have been walking the track regularly, which has resulted in some weight loss -- I'm down about 3 pounds in the past month, which isn't nothing but is also not terribly impressive and reflects a lot of ice cream eaten during the worst of the heat and humidity and a certain level of sloth and laziness on my part. This month I've upped my daily step goal and have increased my walks (in terms of both time and distance). I'm also trying to cut sugar because it seems to tank my mental health. (If anybody tries to tell me that fruit is also sugar and that eating a banana is the same thing as going ham on a package of Oreos, I'd like these people to know that they aren't just wrong but also stupid, and then I'm going to do my best Nelson Muntz at the top of my lungs.)
I kind of feel like I maybe want to start dating again, but I keep getting overwhelmed and deleting my profiles, and also my brain is very insistent that the next one needs to be a man. This is already hilarious given that I have very specific tastes in men, and that the men in whom I have very specific tastes would be entirely justified in not finding me attractive. So I don't hold high hopes for this project, and also feel like I need to wait until I actually have something to offer a partner, since "darling, settle for me" isn't really convincing. (Also, who am I kidding? I'm going to always be cynical, masculine, immature, and shitty.)
Not much else going on. My birthday was last weekend and lolmom and I went to the Master Gardeners Tour de Fleur, which is a tour of private gardens; we only saw the first six at the link due to time constraints, but we really enjoyed what we did see. And then we came back home and ate shrimp boil :D
Rose petal and I are firing up a new roleplay, if I ever get around to writing the first post like I said I would, and have two reboots of old ones going. (For some ungodly reason, we like to revisit the same stories over and over again, but it's a 1x1 so we don't have to please anyone but ourselves.) I'm playing samurai with a friend of evenings, and I was playing ancient Romans but then my partner's motivation tanked, so I think I have to write that one off. That's life. The online RP landscape seems to have changed considerably since I was a young warthog, and I'm no longer sure if I want to resurrect Terra Incognita or fire up another game or two. We'll see.
Apparently, Zhou Enlai is my new stupid celebrity crush.
Currently reading: The Bible (King James version), The Rainbow (D.H. Lawrence), Mommie Dearest (Christina Crawford), Amarna Sunrise: Egypt from Golden Age to Age of Heresy (Aidan Dodson), Crow Hollow (Michael Wallace), and SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (Mary Beard).
Currently writing: Not much, and I'm hoping I can drag myself back in. I have an idea for a web serial, and ideas for other things.
I don't know if this post heralds a golden age of my glorious return, or if it means I'll be back in another six months. I suppose there's only one way to find out. In my absence, I haven't really read anyone's back posts extensively, though I have gathered from skimming that some of you are Going Through It, and I'm sorry to hear that.
There is no Stirring Conclusion here. I'm feeling tired and it's time to hit the hay for an exciting day of Cleaning! tomorrow. Not locking this because nothing matters anyway :D This entry was originally posted at https://xifeng.dreamwidth.org/537696.html. You can comment here or there.
The last year was such that it feels like it lasted a very long time and also like nothing discernibly happened at all. I inexplicably did not catch COVID and am now fully vaccinated, which is not a guarantee but I like my chances a lot better now. Lolmom does not seem to have any lasting ill effects, which is a relief, and is now also fully vaccinated. (She's given convalescent plasma and platelets a few times; apparently she has a slightly higher platelet count than normal.)
I never stopped working, though I did go remote for a few months, and have received a raise. It is, frankly, a pretty generous raise. I like my job most of the time, and I like my coworkers, but I can't say I like the utterly insane volume we've been doing. On the one hand, I like overtime and mileage reimbursement, and on the other hand, I like spare time.
I'm in Bloomington at the moment. My lease on the old apartment expires at the end of this month; I'm up here to do some final cleaning and get the last drips and drabs of my shit out of there. (It's not much -- mostly stuff like my toolbox, cleaning supplies, my shower rack, etc.) The vast majority of my shit was moved last month and is now sitting in a storage unit in Newburgh. It seems surreal that I ever lived here, or that I'm leaving now; in the time away, Bloomington has become both familiar and alien. There's nowhere to sleep in the apartment (the bed isn't there anymore and I need to move the loveseat out), so I'm staying at a two- or three-star hotel on the east side. I used to live on this side of town when I was young, when I had just met
tara and
forgottensanity, and I always feel a little melancholy driving around here: something is gone and I can never get it back. Perhaps that's an apt metaphor for my relationship with Bloomington in general.
(...perhaps I haven't actually grieved this as I might ordinarily need to because the plague and the logistics of moving and all the emotional labor therearound have given me my usual opportunity to squash the whole thing down and not really address it. We'll see when I suddenly have a tremendous meltdown for no apparent reason in about five or six months.)
I finally got a membership at the Evansville Y and have been walking the track regularly, which has resulted in some weight loss -- I'm down about 3 pounds in the past month, which isn't nothing but is also not terribly impressive and reflects a lot of ice cream eaten during the worst of the heat and humidity and a certain level of sloth and laziness on my part. This month I've upped my daily step goal and have increased my walks (in terms of both time and distance). I'm also trying to cut sugar because it seems to tank my mental health. (If anybody tries to tell me that fruit is also sugar and that eating a banana is the same thing as going ham on a package of Oreos, I'd like these people to know that they aren't just wrong but also stupid, and then I'm going to do my best Nelson Muntz at the top of my lungs.)
I kind of feel like I maybe want to start dating again, but I keep getting overwhelmed and deleting my profiles, and also my brain is very insistent that the next one needs to be a man. This is already hilarious given that I have very specific tastes in men, and that the men in whom I have very specific tastes would be entirely justified in not finding me attractive. So I don't hold high hopes for this project, and also feel like I need to wait until I actually have something to offer a partner, since "darling, settle for me" isn't really convincing. (Also, who am I kidding? I'm going to always be cynical, masculine, immature, and shitty.)
Not much else going on. My birthday was last weekend and lolmom and I went to the Master Gardeners Tour de Fleur, which is a tour of private gardens; we only saw the first six at the link due to time constraints, but we really enjoyed what we did see. And then we came back home and ate shrimp boil :D
Rose petal and I are firing up a new roleplay, if I ever get around to writing the first post like I said I would, and have two reboots of old ones going. (For some ungodly reason, we like to revisit the same stories over and over again, but it's a 1x1 so we don't have to please anyone but ourselves.) I'm playing samurai with a friend of evenings, and I was playing ancient Romans but then my partner's motivation tanked, so I think I have to write that one off. That's life. The online RP landscape seems to have changed considerably since I was a young warthog, and I'm no longer sure if I want to resurrect Terra Incognita or fire up another game or two. We'll see.
Apparently, Zhou Enlai is my new stupid celebrity crush.
Currently reading: The Bible (King James version), The Rainbow (D.H. Lawrence), Mommie Dearest (Christina Crawford), Amarna Sunrise: Egypt from Golden Age to Age of Heresy (Aidan Dodson), Crow Hollow (Michael Wallace), and SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (Mary Beard).
Currently writing: Not much, and I'm hoping I can drag myself back in. I have an idea for a web serial, and ideas for other things.
I don't know if this post heralds a golden age of my glorious return, or if it means I'll be back in another six months. I suppose there's only one way to find out. In my absence, I haven't really read anyone's back posts extensively, though I have gathered from skimming that some of you are Going Through It, and I'm sorry to hear that.
There is no Stirring Conclusion here. I'm feeling tired and it's time to hit the hay for an exciting day of Cleaning! tomorrow. Not locking this because nothing matters anyway :D This entry was originally posted at https://xifeng.dreamwidth.org/537696.html. You can comment here or there.