Saturday, July 31, 2004

Hello, Den floor...

... nice to see you again. I cleaned part of my den today, something I have been wanting to do for a while, and I feel a lot better about it. As some of you know, the way our marriage settled was I became the cleaner of the house and the things in it. Not that I am super-good at it, but I have been cleaning homes since I was 8, so it made sense to keep doing it. I have gotten better, but if I had to grade my work, I'd still give it a C, possibly a C+. I tend to let things go a bit longer than I should, and my cleaning comes and goes in bursts of activity, followed by periods of laziness.

I have so many things on in my den, that added with the rec room (which shares the same circuit), if I use the vacuum cleaner in here with my computers on, the circuit breaker trips. So I have to shut my 3 boxes down, my monitor, and a few other things, then plug in the vacuum, vacuum (I keep this room pet free, where did all that hair come from?), unplug the vacuum, and power everything back up. Sometimes, it doesn't come back up, and I have to play, "Guess what happened to your systems when they were off?" Today's lesson: what if GRUB (the boot loader) doesn't give you a choice at boot anymore, and defaults to safe mode? Why, edit grub.conf, and make safe mode not the default! That's called a "kludge" and is just waiting for some later corruption to ruin everything!

Bleah.

But my den looks a bit better. I can see most of my floor now, and there are only four piles to contend with: the pile in the closet (close the doors), the pile on the work table (put in boxes), and two small piles on my floor (ignore). I even cleared my desk a little, and found all kinds of things I should have dealt with up to two months ago, but all these tragedies got in the way.

I hope the rest of the weekend is this boring.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:11 AM EST [Link]

Friday, July 30, 2004

High School Drama - Act 3: "Peeking from behind the final curtain"

The last play we did was "Up the River," which was a musical based on the Mark Twain book, "Tom Sawyer." This play was a disaster. First, we were so short of actors in general, no one had an understudy, and many people had to double up parts. I, for example, played Doc Robinson in Act 1, who gets murdered by Injun Joe, and then, in a moment of irony that I am sure was premeditated, play the judge who tries Injun Joe in Act 3. The second issue was that the play was supposed to be a musical, but Mr. Duncan didn't want to deal with the music, musical cues, and dancing. So he took out all the musical numbers, and replaced them with speeches and monologues. Trouble was, he was slow to get going, so the last scene of the last act wasn't written until the day of our first live performance. This upset me because it was the trial scene, my big part, and I had to memorize a monologue in about 3 hours. There was no way. Luckily, no one showed up to our first performance except a few of the parents of the various people onstage, so my complete and total screw-up went unnoticed among everyone else's hasty bumbling and made-up lines.

The big memory associated with this play came a few weeks earlier, though. Mr. Duncan was so apathetic by this point, his roster of who had to show up for rehearsal stopped being selective, and he just left everyone's names up. Problem was, 80% of the people who showed were never called to rehearse. Sure, it was a different 80% each time, but rehearsals last from the end of the school day (2pm) until almost 10pm at night. I hated walking home in the dark, because I have very poor night vision, and half of my fear was not that I'd get mugged, but I'd fall onto something and impale myself. I'd say 30% of my walk was in what seemed to me to be pitch black, using visual clues of distant street lights and the glow of DC. True, I never did get hurt, but it was annoying. It was also annoying doing my homework in those uncomfortable wooden seats, and we had no tables, so we had to write on the sloped floor of the theater.

One day, I got sick. I felt really bad. I showed up to rehearsal, getting sicker and sicker. One actress, a girl named Debbie, said I looked horrible, and suggested I go home anyway. Finally, around 6 or so, I dragged my fever-fogged body to the stage manager, a girl named Ashley Beusing. She was really intense into the stuff onstage, and I asked for the signout sheet. The act they were on, and had been on for days, was really presenting some problems, so Ashley's attention was focused on Mr. Duncan, who kept going, "No, no, NO!" I finally got the clipboard, signed out, went home, and was sick at home for the next 3 days.

When I got back on Friday, it was no surprise I was supposed to show up. Everyone was. But this time, when I got there, Mr. Duncan chewed me out. He tore me a new one up and down, saying I was irresponsible to leave early without telling him, and how I screwed up everyone's rehearsal, and now he was 2 days behind. When I said I was sick, I took his drama class, didn't he notice me missing for the last few days? he said the office didn't know where I was, which was a lie, my mother was sober enough to call me in sick. I had to go to a doctor and everything (it was a flu). He didn't care. He made the argument my fault again. This sudden shock of being yelled at, the fact I was still weak from being sick, the fact I was sick of showing up every day and never getting called, and added to the fact my home life wasn't so hot in general... I snapped. I beat him within an inch of his... ...just kidding.

I put on a play of my own. In a moment I am not that terribly proud of, I completely snapped into some sarcastic martyr thing. Hey, I was 15. A post-punk, semi new wave drama queer. I stared at him for a moment, and suddenly (I was onstage when this happened), belted out for everyone's attention. I called everyone to come around the stage. Everyone kind of paused for a moment, and then kind of shuffled in my direction. I am suspecting some were curious what I was doing, and some didn't want to witness what probably sounded like a prelude to an outburst. What follows next may not be the exact speech I gave, but it had the same feeling.

"I would like to PERSONALLY apologize to each and everyone one of you! John Duncan, our director, has informed me that on Monday, I did not alert him to my leaving. I signed out and everything, but that was not good enough. My SENSELESS act of self-indulgence cost all of you a severe disservice. I have been sick for the last three days with the flu, but that is NO excuse for my APPALLING behavior and my selfish act of cruelty to you all, my friends, my fellow Thespians. I am deeply, tragically embarrassed at my actions, humiliated by my gluttonous ways, and I am forced, by sheer dignity and honor to this who cast, to quit. There is no EXCUSE for what I have done, and I have to leave now before I damage any more of you, waste any more of your time, compromise the honor and integrity that we have tried so hard to build. I am deeply grateful for your indulgence in my senseless and immature behavior up to this point, and rest assured, none of you, least of YOU, Mr. Duncan, will have to tolerate the burden any longer!"

I was holding a roll of masking tape at the time, and I tossed it down at Mr. Duncan's feet, grabbed my backpack, and walked out of the theater. I made a statement, buddy. I was rock-steady. I was ... crying.

Dammit.

I wandered the high school halls for about a minute, and then sat down in a little-used hallway, wiping away my tears, grumbling to myself. I wasn't mad I had quit, at all. I wasn't having a second thought or regret. I felt free. I sat with my head between my legs and calmed down.

Then Ashley came around the corner. With a .44 magnum pointed at my head. No, no, joke joke. Actually, she slowly walked up to me, said nothing, and sat down next to me. We sat in silence. Truth be told (and I am so sorry if you are reading this Ashley), I had the biggest, stomach-wrenching, heart-palpitating, giddy-eyed crush on Ashley. She was so ... pretty. So witty and funny, with a great smile, perfect hair, and even though she was a bit skinny, she looked squeezably soft. But she just sat there, not looking at me.

"Greg," she finally said. "I am so sorry. I knew you were on that list but Mr. Duncan was upset I didn't tell him, and then at 9 o'clock, your set came up, and you weren't there to be murdered, and he just lost it."

I didn't say anything, because I didn't think it mattered. It was over, I had quit, but now I regretted it because ... well, Ashley was upset. I didn't want Ashley to be upset.

"Sorry you got sick," she said. "People missed you and wondered if you were okay in class."

Liar. Then I realized that she was manipulating me. Okay, maybe she wasn't, I don't know, but I couldn't imagine anyone missing me in anything, so that set off a red flag. But her voice was soft and caring, and I was weak and vulnerable ... and had that crush, ugh...

"Come back, it's okay. No one will say anything, and we'll act like this never happened."

I shook my head. "No, don't want to go back. I am sick of Mr. Duncan, I am sick of 5 days in a row of 8 hour rehearsals where I am not even needed, week after week. Get some girl to dress up, how hard can it be to find someone who can stumble around in a badly fitting suit, act drunk, belt out some lines of "No, AIIIIEEE!!!" while being stabbed in pantomime.

"We still need a judge for Act 3. Come on, I know you're mad. You have every right to be, but no one thinks you're a burden, or that you acted cruel. We understand, we're all stressed out. Please? Please come back?"

Oh, it was the "please" that did it, Ashley. It was how you said it, and I am sure you knew. I don't think of this as you being evil or wrong, I am sure you were being nice and thought that you were doing everyone a favor. And, really, you did. I don't know if I really was important, but you made me feel like I was, and that's why I came back. That and the crush.

I came back, and actually, everyone acted like it never happened. No one was awkward or paid any more or less attention to me than they did before the outburst. But the whole experience had made me realize that I had made a decision, and my acting days were over.

That was the last production play I ever did. Well, until 1990 and the Prune Bran players, but that's another story. Actually, that was only 5 years later (it seemed longer....). But even then, I hated being onstage, forced to memorize stuff, even my own works, which I still think was really hypocritical of me. I don't regret my drama days; the biggest skill I have kept from this whole escapade was a total lack of stage fright. I literally don't have the sense that thousands of people are looking at me, or whatever sets off that fear in other people. I mean, I am nervous, but only in preparation issues, and I am the same nervous in front of one person doing that as well, so a crowd is no different. I can't picture any situation where being in front of a crowd would be any worse.

Oh, and to this day? I still can't say the name of what we called "The Scottish Play." I still say, "break a leg," too.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:25 PM EST [Link]

High School Drama - Act 2: "The play within the play"

The next play was Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," where I played Snout, the Tinker, part of a cast within the play that puts on a very bad production of "Pyramus and Thisby" for the royal court. Mark (an aimer) played Bottom, and he played it well. Mark was a little dramatic in real life anyway, so playing carpenter who was an aspiring, yet poor, actor was perfect for him. He stole the show.

Pyramus

O wherefore, Nature, didst thou lions frame?
Since lion vile hath here deflower'd my dear:
Which is--no, no--which was the fairest dame
That lived, that loved, that liked, that look'd
with cheer.
Come, tears, confound;
Out, sword, and wound
The pap of Pyramus;
Ay, that left pap,
Where heart doth hop:

[Stabs himself]
Thus die I, thus, thus, thus.
Now am I dead,
Now am I fled;
My soul is in the sky:
Tongue, lose thy light;
Moon take thy flight:

[Exit Moonshine]
Now die, die, die, die, die.

[Dies]

These scene, where Bottom's Pyramus kills himself because he thinks a lion ate his lovely Thisby, first was only about 10 seconds of dialogue, follow by a self-impaling. Mr. Duncan had a friend, a fellow English teacher, who said he had "majored in Shakespeare, and wanted to help out." This guy was a pro. This guy really threw us into our parts, and was one the best acting coaches I ever had. Shame I can't remember his name. Mr. Estes or something. Anyway, he told us that early Shakespearean actors were overdramatic on purpose, because it helped the "peanut gallery" (the uneducated masses sitting on the floor of the Globe theater, too poor to afford the seated areas) understand what was going on. And it was a comedy, so the louder, the better. Mark really took this to heart, as this death scene got longer and longer. He really pulled off a poor, overacting actor very convincingly (Mark was a good actor, he really was), and by the end, the death scene became almost 5 minutes long, and it was almost impossible to witness this spectacle and not to break down laughing. He pulled Shatner moves that were stunningly appalling, pausing frequently, repeating lines and winking to the queen, and then "the death stagger." Oh, the death stagger was amazing! It was fully half of the act itself. He thrust his cheap wooden sword under his arm over and over with each "thus," and slowly dragging his lines from his mouth across the stage air with the tonic inflection used by Shatner in his cover of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" as if the record was a 45 played at 33rpm. I am still laughing now, thinking about this tall, curly haired kid, sword under one arm, screaming at the moon to exit the stage, writhing on the floor like a dying fish, then getting up, and then staggering down, rising again, staggering down, repeating his last words, "Die... die... die..." and then wen you thought he finally died, and the only sound was all the actors laughing so hard they were gasping and wheezing, he'd pop back up again with another, "DIE!" He never broke down himself, and it was his intense seriousness through the scene that made it so damn funny. No matter how many times we practiced this act, and just when the humor seemed to be too repetitive to be funny anymore, Mark would run through the scene again, add something new, and it was somehow twice as funny as the last run.

Mr. Duncan was not amused, but we didn't care. He claimed that a royal court should not be off their chairs, on their knees, gasping and clutching their sore lungs in spasms of laughter. Mr. Estes said it helped deliver the sarcastic lines they give afterwards better. It totally stole the scene away from Flute, the man who plays Thisby (actually, if I recall, we had a girl play the man ... who played a girl ... many jokes about Victor Victoria commenced), who discovers her lover death from his self impaling, and thus impales herself as well, which many considered a self-referencing "throwback" to Romeo and Juliet.

But Mr. Duncan was so burned out, he never promoted the shows and thus, half our performances were played literally to an empty audience. I recall when no one showed up for our third performance of AMND, one of the actresses called out, "Do we have to keep going?" Mr. Duncan roared, "You need the practice!"

Posted by Punkie @ 01:24 PM EST [Link]

High School Drama - Act 1: "The setup"

I thought I'd sneak in some "much ado about nothing" stories before the next calamity so this site isn't all about how depressing my life can get.

In this same interlude it doth befall
That I, one Snout by name, present a wall;
And such a wall, as I would have you think,
That had in it a crannied hole or chink,
Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisby,
Did whisper often very secretly.
This loam, this rough-cast and this stone doth show
That I am that same wall; the truth is so:
And this the cranny is, right and sinister,
Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper.

-- Snout, the Tinker, playing "Wall" in the opening scene of "Pyramus and Thisby," in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

I played Snout in our High School production of that play. It's kind of funny, but I was looking up "tinker" the other day, and found this in the online New Oxford Dictionary of English:

tinker - noun 1 (especially in former times) a person who travels from place to place mending pans, kettles, and other metal utensils as a way of making a living.

I am kind of a tinker now. I was looking at other meanings in there, and saw "Brit., chiefly derogatory a gypsy or other person living in an itinerant community." That applies, too. I am in fandom, travel around, tinker with things, and fix them for people.

When I was in that play, it was at the end of my "acting career," so to speak (I never made money acting, but I always see it as some career path for some reason). It was going to be replaced by my fandom career a year later (where I HAVE made money), but this play was #2 in a series of three productions we did that Freshman year of High School.

I had gotten bitten by the acting bug in 6th grade, when I played the lead, Scrooge, in a musical version of "A Christmas Carol." For the next two years, I did some theater work for Fairfax County productions and their Children's Theater, tried out for local commercials (no leads), became a member of the Thespian Society, and been to an acting daycamp. I was getting a little jaded because I wasn't getting any big parts, and only my mother approved of this path; my father hated it. He tried, several times, to sabotage it. He walked out on my performances, claiming I was "boring," and he completely discouraged any social life with fellow Thespians.

The blow that killed my acting career, however, was Mr. Duncan. My High School Drama director.

Mr. Duncan wasn't a bad man by any means. He had done some GREAT productions in the past, but I caught him at the end of his teaching career, where he got old and burned out. He was not only the ONLY person that seemed to care if our school had a drama department at all, but he was made to teach Remedial English for "the bad crowd," and was a little toasted from the years of doing that. He still taught drama as a class, which I had him for one year. Drama was considered by most to be a "blow off elective," or "how hard can that be for an easy A?" His desire to bring art and culture into my high school was met with 90% of his class bored and uninterested. Hell, I'd be bitter and burned out, too.

The first play was "The Diary of Anne Frank." There I met some of the veteran Thespians who told me of Mr. Duncan's better days. It was here I learned that Dick Dyszel, or "Captian 20" as local kids knew him (also Count Gore De Vol in the late night creature feature), was as gay and fruity as they come. Dick used to promote our plays on Channel 20 "back in the day," and apparently him and part of his stunningly flaming male crew hit on Mr. Duncan, and even some of the older male actors frequently. But those days were over, and the cast I met were some Senior veterans who were graduating that year, a few assorted juniors and sophomores, and a bunch of eager freshmen. Almost all women. In fact, I would say we only had 5 boys in the entire crew, and even though my audition went terrible, I was accepted because I simply had a male voice. We had girls with deep voices play minor men's roles from time to time, to fill in the gaps. Three of those boys were graduating that year. It seems that the drama department in our school had a "gay" stigmatism, and thus, we called each other DQs, or "Drama Queers."

Mr. Duncan had a rule that all first plays, you worked set. He accepted no actor or actress who hadn't done a play only behind the scenes first. It used to be a year, but he was so short on actors in general, that he shortened it to one play. I signed up for lighting, but since I was "a guy," was put on set. I was so physically unsuitable for the job, and caused a lot of angst and frustration as I couldn't lift heavy things, was completely uncoordinated, and had the art skills of a small child. The girls got "cleaning duty," which they said was sexist, but one of the most amusing arguments of my life came from this struggle; The Boys vs. Girls Pissing Debates. It was started by a guy named Mark, and some other senior girl whose name I have forgotten, so let's call her Jane. Mark and Jane frequently argued about why girl's toilet in the dressing room was a lot easier to clean than the guy's. Mark claimed this was because men had to aim, and girls had to "just squat." Thus started the in-joke about aimers versus squatters that lasted all year. Thanks to my friend Suzi, in 1996, I now know that the lady's rooms can be just as filthy. But that's another topic.

So through the Diary of Anne Frank, I made friends with the lead actress, a short girl named Lauren (a squatter). Lauren had a big influence on my self confidence because she treated everyone as an equal, and always had nice things to say about everybody. Even me. Lauren also had some debilitating bone disorder, and sometimes was so weak, she couldn't walk. Her boyfriend, whose name I think was Drake, was a tall guy who, when Lauren was too weak to move, carried her around the set so she could do her lines. Lauren was only weak physically; mentally, she was still eager for the task and wide awake, laughing and joking. "Take me to front and center, Jeeves!" she joked to her boyfriend. They loved each other a lot, and I hope Lauren got better and they got married. Lauren taught me two things: how to respect myself, that I had a hell of a lot of talent as far as she was concerned, and she taught me how to take a complement, which I was very bad at for a long time. People who praised me got me angry, and I am not sure why anymore. I guess I felt they were patronizing or making fun of me.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:23 PM EST [Link]

Thursday, July 29, 2004

Three days disaster-free

I feel like I'm at an AA Meeting. "Hi, my name is Punkie, and I haven't had a crisis in three days..."

"HI, PUNKIE!!!"

Some of the suckiness from Monday was reversed when I found out that Nate is not quitting (he got this ... counteroffer from my company I am not allowed to talk about, but daaamn...), that I am "still in the running" for the other job, and the semi-pilfered code (which was a remote alert system that used IMs like a kind of chat room) turned out to be more annoying than helpful.

AlertBot21 [1:31 PM]: Lab_serv2: /var/log/messages reports repeated NFS connection attempts - no NFS on this system
AlertBot21 [1:31 PM]: Lab_serv1: df -h shows less that 20% space left on RAID5
AlertBot21 [1:31 PM]: Lab_serv2: /var/log/messages reports repeated NFS connection attempts - no NFS on this system
AlertBot21 [1:32 PM]: Lab_serv7: /usr/lib/samba/smbd daemon stopped responding - restarted clean
AlertBot21 [1:33 PM]: Lab_serv1: Samba share on Lab_serv7 no longer reachable!
AlertBot21 [1:33 PM]: Lab_serv3: Samba share on Lab_serv7 no longer reachable!
AlertBot21 [1:33 PM]: Lab_serv4: Samba share on Lab_serv7 no longer reachable!
AlertBot21 [1:34 PM]: Lab_serv1: Red Wizard needs food badly!
AlertBot21 [1:33 PM]: Lab_serv2: Samba share on Lab_serv7 no longer reachable!
AlertBot21 [1:33 PM]: Lab_serv1: /var/spool/mail is full!
AlertBot21 [1:33 PM]: Jim in DEV: This is getting annoying...
AlertBot21 [1:33 PM]: Lab_serv2: /var/log/messages reports repeated NFS connection attempts - no NFS on this system
AlertBot21 [1:33 PM]: Todd in Lab: Yeah, I have gotten like 12 IMs in the last 3 minutes...
AlertBot21 [1:33 PM]: Jim in DEV: Todd, you dipshit, we all did!
AlertBot21 [1:33 PM]: BobbyW98 4ver: And thanks to you guys talking about the traffic, we now get even more!
AlertBot21 [1:34 PM]: Lab_serv1: Samba on Lab_serv7 share(s) restored
AlertBot21 [1:34 PM]: Lab_serv3: Samba on Lab_serv7 share(s) restored
AlertBot21 [1:34 PM]: Lab_serv4: Samba on Lab_serv7 share(s) restored
AlertBot21 [1:34 PM]: Lab_serv2: /var/log/messages reports repeated NFS connection attempts - no NFS on this system
AlertBot21 [1:34 PM]: PunkWalrus: Heh heh heh...

Ha ha. I could have told them that. I suggested doing a massive IRC chat room, like how hackerbots communicate, but our LAN blocks IRC (probably for the same hackerbot reason), so that was also a dead end.

Since Bloatakon is out this weekend, I plan to slum around, and prepare a little for the next weekend, which is a friend's wedding and a party. I'd mow the lawn, but it's been damp from constant rain, and it's going to rain some more this weekend...

Posted by Punkie @ 01:49 PM EST [Link]

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Man overboard!

I have to stay late at work again... bleah. So, here's a random story.

I have never fallen off a pier.

Part of this grand accomplishment in my life stems from the weird paranoia I have about falling of the edge of piers. I mean, it's not a phobia, it's more like a superstition, or I wouldn't even get near a pier, but when I am on a pier at a marina, I always stay and walk carefully in the middle. I grew up half my youth in a marina, because my father owned that damn yacht. I grew up spending almost every weekend (even winters) from about 1977 to 1985 in Solomon's Marina (now Comfort Inn Beacon Marina) on Solomon's Island in Maryland. During the summer, it could extend to weeks, because it was like my father's version of a cabin. We never went on vacations or went anywhere growing up, just the yacht, which stayed parked in the covered shed about 90% of the time. And the entire time I stayed there, I never fell off a pier.

Now, I saw a LOT of other people do so. I saw grown men, women, and even children tumble over the edge and land in the oily, slightly polluted marina water, along with the crabs, fish heads, ducks, and jellyfish. I always felt that it was only a matter of time, as clumsy as I was, to fall off a pier. But somehow, I managed to get so freaked out about it, I never did. Many people fell off piers because they weren't watching where their feet were, got tangled on something, tripped over something, leaned too far over with a heavy object, or misjudged the distance between open spaces of their boat and the pier. Once in a rare while, I even saw someone get pushed.

I never fell overboard off a boat, either. Except once, and that didn't really count.

I had a few friends growing up there. Most of them were fair-weather friends, and I lost a lot of them for a few years when a particular group of preteens and teens from a single family ganged up against me, and got others to do so as well (their dad was a redneck, football-loving, beer-bellied huntin' man who thought the only way to survival was to be tough and angry all the time). Part of the humiliation was the insistence of my mother to wear a life jacket, even when on land. But aside from that, I did have one friend for about 2 years, a kid named Troy.

Troy had a boat, an inflatable dinghy, and we used to row it around St. John's Creek. We'd visit the small sandbars, navigation pylons, and shipwrecks. Yes, we had shipwrecks across the creek. It used to be an old Naval Yard before WW2, and then it became a collection of abandoned ships which finally sprung leaks and sank. But St. John's Creek was only about 20' deep at its deepest, so some of these ships still poked out of the water. The two big ones were a tugboat that sank in the 1950s, and the wheelhouse poked above the water even at high tide. The other was a much larger and older wooden ship which was on its side, and all that was left was the deck and part of the collapsed hull on the shore. Once in a while, the deck caught fire for unknown reasons (assumed pranks by local youths), so half of the deck was charred as well. This old naval yard was finally sold off and cut in two pieces: one residential piece where someone built their dream house and tried to build a sailboat by hand (for years, all you saw was the large cement hull rising above the stubby treeline), and the other became a marina that was kind of the "ghetto marina" of the area (cheap, rundown, always had some crime happening there).

One day, we went to this ghetto marina, and since they didn't have a proper landing area, Troy dragged his dinghy across a sandy area which was littered with trash, mostly broken liquor and beer bottles. He did his best to avoid the glass, but I suspect he didn't succeed. When we were satisfied the ghetto marina didn't have anything worth of staying around for, we pushed off. It was immediately apparent to me the dinghy didn't have enough air, but Troy said it was like that before we left that morning. We paddled over to another beach, there he satisfied my nervousness by inflating the dinghy some more with his mouth. It didn't seem to improve anything, and I wanted to get back to our own marina before we got stranded.

We almost made it. The leak was very slow, but about 40 feet from a shore at our home marina, the dinghy got so saggy, that when Troy realized it was a problem, it was too late. He leaned forward to paddle vigorously towards the shore. This action caused all the air on his side (the bow) to suddenly shift to my end (the stern), like when you play with a long balloon. Now the only thing keeping him from falling in was a deflated bladder of plastic, which had zero buoyancy on its own, so it quickly, yet gently gave out from under him and he dropped into the tea-brown water like someone lowering a battered fritter into hot oil. The second his weight was gone from the craft, all the air on MY side pushed forward, and I was also swimming within seconds. The water tasted salty and oily. Major yuck. I was scared we would hit a jellyfish, and it was "sea nettle bloom season," but miraculously, we didn't hit a single one. After a minute of paddling and trying to rescue the boat and they stuff we had in it, Troy said he could feel the bottom with the tips of his toes, and soon, we waded ashore, soaking wet, dragging the flat bag of remaining air behind us.

Troy got a new dinghy a few weeks later from his dad. Actually, it was a small used fishing boat with a temperamental outboard motor. The hull also had a slow leak, but since it was made of aluminum, you just scooped the water out with a half-cut plastic milk jug before it got too full. The outboard was a bonus, but Troy never had enough money for gas, so we only used the motor for the long stretches of deep water (assuming we could start the thing, it required such a yank, you had to steady the boat on the edge of a pier or something so it wouldn't tip over), and oars for everything else.

Posted by Punkie @ 06:11 PM EST [Link]

They call it fugly yellow... quite rightly!

So, we (Christine and myself) have set aside September as "the month we actually start renovating our house." Since money is tight, it will be a slow process, but if we pace the cost, I am sure that we can manage to get things more modern, up-to-date, and repaired. This is our first major project: the yellow bathroom.

The Yellow bathroom (so named because of its color), or "CR's old bathroom," is condemned. The problems just got too numerous to repair, so we abandoned it. Everything leaked. The walls were fugly. Three sets of homeowners tried to put lipstick on the yellow pig that is that bathroom, and nothing worked. So we're tearing it down. I mean, literally, we're tearing it down to the bare studs. Let's take a tour of this horror, shall we?

I am always reminded of the history of this house by its bathrooms. Built in 1970, the first set of owners so f'd it up, than when the next set of owners bought it in 1984, the whole house could have been condemned. But the new owners, while they DID fix a lot of stuff, they had their own way of repairing things which seemed to be a combination of the cheapest materials they could find, a severe lack of fashion sense, and the concept of "If I can't see it, it's not a problem." The biggest crime those people had was the concept of "paneling will fix all woes." Half the house is paneled in some way, especially the bathrooms. Paneling CAN be done right. It's good for cabins, wainscoting, and under eaves. It should not be a substitute for hiding ugly wallpaper, water damage, or drywall problems (like, say, holes or gaps where the drywall doesn't quite reach the end of the stud).

The Yellow bathroom is fuuu-gly! The floor is a maize yellow tile, the bathtub and sink are a shallow 1970s harvest gold, the cabinetry was painted teal, and the walls were covered with paneling that looks like tile in a cheap mobile home shower. Trouble is, they glued the paneling up with non-waterproof construction adhesive, and so over time it buckled, so they reattached some of the places it buckled with drywall screws, which then rusted. I peeled some of the paneling back (it helped that it was already peeling away from the wall), and found some older (phew, not fresh!) water damage, and the fact they used regular drywall and not greenboard for the bathroom explained a lot of the mildew. I also saw the previous wallpaper: multicolored polka-dot berries that look like the patterns one might find on young girl's panties.

The bathtub is ugly not just because of the color, but there are these permanent "Mickey Mouse Babies" stickers all over the inside of the tub and the walls. I mean, they are stuck fast. I peeled most of the ones off the tile with a razor one day (where it left marks behind, the glue must been an acid base), but the sloping tub walls present a problem, because I don't want to scratch the enamel (there are several places in the house where this was done with the sinks, and they all rusted). The plumbing is the worst feature. It's not attached to the wall in any way, so it swings freely in their sockets, which over time caused them to leak when in use. The drain seal also leaks, and the showerhead is broken. The whole tub has to go, if only because of the color and depth. Luckily, it's a standard 60" long tub, and we have a few inches of leeway in width before it crowds the toilet. Its replacement will be the same size, possibly even the same width, but much deeper. I am tall as well as fat, and I want a deep tub.

The sink matches the tub, but the faucet leaks. The whole counter is just masonite on particle board, which has slightly warped due to water damage. The whole teal cabinet looks like a project a junior high student would make in shop class, and it's being ripped out and replaced as well.

The toilet is new(er), but was one of those discount $29.95 toilets. It flooded often, and the innards were repaired twice before I finally closed the bathroom. It also leaked and sweated quite heavily. I am tossing the whole thing, and getting a decent, low-water-using, well-running toilet, which I got for $110 when I replaced the one in our blue bathroom, and have had no problems with (thanks again to Travis, who helped me install it).

The electrical system is the #1 reason I am ripping out the walls. There is faulty wiring, I am sure of it. How? You can bang on the walls and turn on and off the lights if you hit the right places. This feature seems to have gone away when the bathroom was abandoned and dried out, so I think it's related to a moisture problem. The lights are going to be replaced, as well as the exhaust fan, which is old, rusty, and painfully loud. All wires and junction boxes are going to be inspected and probably replaced.

The biggest worry is the floor. It's take a lot of water damage over the years. I have to tear all the tile up, because I suspect it was never put in place with a proper tile backerboard or anything. Not only will I have it looked at by several people, but I have to see if the floor will support a bigger tub. If not, I will have to rip it out and putting in a new subfloor. I am also considering putting in a drain so if the bathroom floods, it won't flood the lower floors, but I'm not sure how to manage that. I really, really don't want to do any plumbing work or repair the subfloor because I can't afford a contractor to do these things for me.

The total cost of the project will probably be over $1500, with the major costs being in the tub, countertop, and the sink. That's another reason I am taking it slowly. But this has to get done. I am sick of having a fugly multi-yellow nonfunctioning leaky bathroom.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:17 PM EST [Link]

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

I need money... just like everyone else

I could barely drag myself out of bed this morning. I am so exhausted, moreso than I have been in a long time. I was up late, doing bills, which is always depressing when money is tight. Good news is I had enough this month to catch up on all the late bills, so I won't have to worry about shutoff notices for at least another two months.

I feel stupid, having a nice house, and then worrying about paying the bills. I keep wanting to explain when we got the house, costs were a lot lower. I would say the combo of our mortgage, utilities, and transportation have increased by about $700 a month in 4 years. Four years ago, I was almost $500 ahead, and had a growing savings account. Not fair.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:40 AM EST [Link]

Monday, July 26, 2004

No Otakon for me...

I'm really bummed about this, but I got squeezed out of Otakon by those more able bodied people who can drive a car. Because I needed a ride, and because the Katsucon table was already overstaffed, and Otakon didn't give us a free table or badges this year like we give them (me, bitter?), I ended up getting dropped off the A list faster than last week's reality TV star. Another purple "honorable mention" ribbon for my entry in life. And no one to blame but me.

Part of my is kind of glad, or tries to be. Otakon/Baltimore is always hot, crowded, and expensive, I hear they are having a horrible time with their internal security, and I need to save money anyway. But in reality, I know I am saying the grapes are sour, I feel left out, and I am pretty miserable about it (and so is CR). It's like a low blow double combo of A: Not having enough money to afford going myself, and B: not being able to drive there and park.

The cascading effect of this is that Christine thought she'd have the house alone, so I ended up disappointing CR, her, and probably a few other people who are going to wonder where I am. I am hoping that this is God's plan, and if I went, I would have died, or been in some horrible situation, or missed some opportunity at work that I now have because I don't have to take Friday off.

At least Gencon is paid for. I took the whole week off because we're leaving on a Tuesday, and I took off Monday-Monday so when I got back Sunday, I could sleep in.

... still...

Won't you join my pity party?

Posted by Punkie @ 10:55 PM EST [Link]

Bleah... this rotten luck smell still lingers like bad cheese

So, this morning, more shit happens. In comparison to everything else, I couldn't exactly say it's as bad as everything in the last few months (no one died), but it sucks anyway.

I am probably not going to Otakon. Final decision on this to follow, because it could all be some giant miscommunication by someone who was trying to make me feel better about trying to find a ride. I am ... trying ... to be diplomatic. After all, it could have been said in humor and care. Time will tell.

My contact for the new job I was trying to get? Quit. So much for that. I don't blame him, he got a 6-digit salary offer (with another possible 6-digit annual bonus) at another company (although, he has one year to get them stable defense contracts or he gets no bonus and laid off). I am almost certain I didn't get the job because he said his last weeks working here was to train new employees. What sucks more than anything else about this is that Nate is my friend, and while we'll still be friends, he'll be working elsewhere. I'll miss you, Nate. :-(

Two years ago, I wrote some code for this project that went nowhere. Another team is now using it without giving me credit, but they are getting a lot of pats on the back. I know they got it from the CVS they forced us to use because the help menu has the same format down to the misspellings. And the bugs, which is my karmic revenge. "Ha ha, you couldn't figure out how to stop that, either!" I am not going to say anything about it because we already had one programmer get his hand smacked for saying, "Hey, I wrote that!" He got a nasty, "We all work together, here." It's not a big deal, really, since it's not a major breaking point in our process, but on top of everything else, it's sucking at my soul. Oh, and even worse? After I finished typing this, they fixed my code. Made it better. Dammit, what a blow to my ego.

And I got another reminder I am really off track in my book. I only have 6 chapters and an outline done of 23 chapters. If I don't put fire under the coals soon, I may NOT get this done by the end of the year.

I'm so tired. I know I'm depressed. I am so worn out and so wrung dry that I am pretty useless to anyone. Housework goes undone, bills go unpaid, work goes ... whatever work is doing now. Sometimes projects at work are the only thing keeping me going. Something to do, something to keep my mind off things. Otakon was supposed to be part of that, but now that looks bad, so I'll have to look forward to Gencon.

I do try and see some good news in my life. Like yesterday at Scarlet's party I had a good time. Sean and his family always cheer me up. And if I don't go to Otakon, I'll save some money. I'd probably buy crap I didn't need.

Oh, and Christine finally has a Blog! Yay! It's here.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:32 PM EST [Link]

Bowling for Punkie

I used to be on a bowling team. Not a real league or anything, but a previous job had us go to the bowling alley as a team-building exercise on a fairly regular basis. I am not a good bowler, my highest score ever was 109. Today, I got a 64.

I was at Scarlet's 6th birthday party, along with Sean, Lou, the rest of their kids, and assorted family and friends on Sunday. It was at Bowl America. The party went as well as one can expect for a birthday party for a small child, perhaps even better because almost everyone was well behaved. Sean and I bowled a game, and he got 84, a score that he was ashamed of. Of course, I got a 64, so I must really suck.

Several odd "for the little black notebook" things happened today along with this party. The first was that when I entered the bowling alley, I felt kind of like I had been there before. I had this sense of deja vu, and the whole time I just sort of knew where everything was. At first, I thought, "Ah, all bowling alleys must be the same or at least have the same layout." Then, while getting food at the lunch counter with Christine, the older woman behind the grill said they had a new manager, and introduced him to me. That was weird in itself, until she introduced Christine and I as "regulars," and when we said, "Uh, no, we've never been here before," the woman (who seemed to have all of her faculties) asked if we had twins. When I mentioned I used to bowl with a company 5 years ago, she said she knew. It was really twilight-zonish. She then spoke to me as if I knew a lot of behind the scenes action, like "I started here in 1972, when you were little, and..." Those kinds of things. It wasn't scary weird, just... weird.

After bowling, we went back to Sean and Lou's house to open presents. Here I met the kid's 14 year old uncle, who it turns out I had met before when I worked with Lost Dogs Rescue. No wonder we all thought we looked familiar to each other.

Christine and I had been tired all day. Half the day we spent in a sleep-like state, and I swear I had several waking dreams. The most stunning occurred when we went to "On the Border," a kind of inexpensive Mexican place in Reston. It was just our family and theirs ("just the 8 of us"), sort of "winding down" for the craziness of the party and Sean and Lou's family, and I was watching Scarlet talk to her older sister Chance. I like watching kids communicate because it's more exaggerated than adults, and I like to make comparisons. Then, for about 3 seconds, I saw them both as adults, and Scarlet was hugging Chance from the side, saying, "We still have each other. Remember what Uncle Punkie used to tell us? That when we grew up, we'd be there for each other?"... and then it was over. A strange sadness washed over me, because I realized that someone must have died in that future vision. This so shocked me, I had to get up and go to the bathroom to compose myself. I am not someone who claims to have psychic powers ("Somehow, I always knew I'd never be psychic..." as the joke goes), but it was jarring nonetheless. What twisted part of my psyche burst that through my conscious mind?

Maybe I need to start bowling again...

Posted by Punkie @ 01:30 AM EST [Link]

Saturday, July 24, 2004

The moral of the story is the facts are immaterial

I saw "Big Fish" today.

Sometimes, people have lives which seem larger than life. I know, I have met many of them. In some cases, I have pulled a "shenanigans" on them, only to look like a fool later when it turns out their claim is true. I haven't met many pathological liars in my experience, and half I thought were PL at first were just people who had interesting lives. I know I have an issue with lying and liars, and part of that comes from the fear of embarrassment that I'll look like a total fool in believing them. That has a root childhood cause that came from an old friend, Ben Standford.

Ben was a great guy. I don't regret being friends with him. I was a friend of his for about 3 years in grammar school, and we stopped being friends when he moved away (it happens... especially around here). Ben told me he was a karate master. He told me all kinds of stuff about karate, the moves he knew, and I was impressed. I was honored that a karate master was my friend.

Along comes Page. Page was one of those Irish Catholic kids with rough and ready parents who had lived through a war, and come out the other side thinking iron discipline was the only key to success as well as basic survival. Page's brother's name was Ike, named after President Eisenhower, who before was a famous general in WWII. I was never in their home, but I can imagine it was decorated with model ships and planes, American flags, and Japanese souvenirs; I'd seen a few homes in McLean decorated in this manner. Page was... insecure. A LOT of the Irish Catholics in our area were like Page; bullies, cowards, angry, repressed, and heavy drinkers at an early age. Future frat party material. Page was also a bit fat, something that was rather uncommon in McLean, as I knew all too well when I was fat from age 12-14.

Page decided one day that he hated me because I was "gay." In the 1970s, the word "gay" replaced the word "sissy," and as far as I know, didn't actually mean homosexuality in the hardcore, anal-sex way. It just meant generally unmanly in an extreme derogatory sense. Profanity was only used in the rarest of situations, and often was so shocking, it could quiet a whole schoolyard. The word "gay" was as close as a kid could come to "shit-eating fuckface" without getting sent home early with a note and several scheduled meetings with the principal for the next month.

One day, Page threatened me to a fight. I never learned to fight. I knew I would lose, pure and simple. I often avoided fights fairly well, because I bowed my head and gave the submissive posture with skill and tact honed by my own dealing with my father. Of course, it didn't always work. Sometimes a bully was just angry. Maybe puberty was confusing him, or he had rejection issues at home. While most bullies postured and fluffed their feathers in typical playground dominance display, Page wanted a fight. He didn't want to win for dominance sake, he wanted to hurt me. Badly.

Page said he knew karate, but I felt he was more show than substance. I knew back then you could always tell who wasn't a real karate student in the playground because of two very distinct things. First, they used really stupid moves they saw on some karate show on TV... there was this one where you hand looks like a cobra and you snap at your victim with your fingers like a striking snake. Maybe this is related to a real deep kung fu discipline I am not aware of, but it's doubtful a 10-year old would master such a move. Second, and this was very crucial, real karate students never actually fought. They certainly didn't instigate fights, but even when attacked, they often ran. Why? because they were told to by their teacher. They didn't want the reputation they were teaching kids how to bully.

Page cornered me near the back of the playground, where a wooden wall was placed for the proposes of PE exercises where you'd run, leap, and scale a small 6 foot wall. Page did this for a good reason, we were out of sight of one of the many teachers who guarded the playground.

So I pulled out my wildcard. Ben. I felt safe, and a little overly confident that Page wasn't going to pull any of his crap with another karate guy around, a REAL karate guy. Or so I thought.

This is when Ben suddenly admitted he didn't know karate, and it was "just a joke." My stomach sank to my knees when Ben sheepishly admitted, with his head down to the ground, and his hands in his pockets, that all the talk for the last year about his awards and such were... made up.

So Page beat the crap out of me. I don't recall everything he did, but two of his friends held me against the wall while Page taunted me and then punched me in me in the stomach. Then Page grabbed me, flipped me over his shoulder, where my back smacked into the small wall, and my head hit the gravel below. Then he left me there. Ben had also slinked away.

Page DID get in trouble. When we got to class, the teacher noticed I "looked odd," and when she asked if I was okay, I burst into tears. Not my proudest moment, and I must admit, I did that a lot as a kid. I was, as they said back then, a "crybaby." I was sent to the clinic, cleaned up, and I was allowed to lie on a bed in the dark until I stopped crying and felt better. Page was sent home. Not only that, but apparently he DID take karate classes, and had to apologize to his dojo, who apparently either threw him out or Page stopped taking the classes out of embarrassment. Page was badly shaken by this intervention, and never bothered me again.

Ben and I remained friends, although the moment of "You... you LIED to me?!" still echoes from my youth to my adult self, where I have, to this day, always been nervous around liars. My parents lied, too, constantly, and coupled with this, I swore upon my solemn oath I would never lie when I got out of the hell that was my childhood, based on the mistaken belief that "adults don't lie."

Puh.

So I see this film, and understand the frustration of this protagonist. He's so angry that his father makes up these stories, and that he gets all this attention. You, the viewer, and lead to believe that most of these stories did happen, at least to some degree. I won't give away the ending to those who have not seen it, but I think most people can guess that this really isn't a film about a pathological liar.

Sometimes I have been "called" on my life. I forget sometimes that not everyone assumes we're all on the same level. I don't consider anything I have ever done or said that makes me any better than another human. But a few times, here and there, someone else thinks I am this way. They think I make up stuff about my life because, in some way, it glorifies me. Some of the stuff that has happened to me is pretty fantastic, which is why sometimes I have to explain things in greater detail, to make people connect and realize that my experiences are no more special than anyone else's.

For example, I met my wife at a science fiction convention. She was working for a witch who sold dragons that fit around your neck, and I was there because I was being set up with a date for another girl who was the main desk receptionist at the AT&T building in NYC. Sounds vaguely odd, doesn't it? So I often try and tone it down for non fandom:

Christine and I met in Baltimore. She was working in traveling sales, and I was meeting another girl on a blind date. We met at a media convention, where she was peddling her company's accessories, and I was waiting to meet my blind date, who was late coming in from out of town.

Of course, if they ask for more details, I do tell them the truth, but I have to over-explain things:

Well, it was at a science fiction convention in Baltimore. Companies that sell science fiction movies, books, and comics have these things all over the US several times a year. Christine was working for a woman who sold crafts out of her home, and had a booth at this convention that sold stuffed toy dragons that went around your neck. Some people like to dress up, you know? Like Halloween. Anyway, I had been set up on a blind date with some friends of friends of mine with a girl from New York City named Marylin. Marylin had this really stressful job where she ran the main lobby desk at the AT&T building in New York and wanted a weekend off, as far from New York City as possible. Trouble was, she was running late. Christine's boss was an old friend of mine, and I was trying to see her as well, because when I last saw her, she had offered me a job, and I declined, and though she might have had some bad feelings about it. She didn't, and introduced me to this pretty young lady from her home town named Christine.

A few years ago, I had an epiphany when some group of people not only accused me of making my whole life up, but denied any proof I had to the contrary. I went nuts, busting my balls to prove I had a wife, a son, written and published a book, as well as did a lot of work at sci-fi cons. Hell, I even took photos while I was on stage, as well as showed them pictures people had taken of me. The reply? "Funny what you can do with Photoshop these days..." Asshats. But it taught me that some people will never believe, even when proof is right in front of them. My dad should have been proof enough of that.

Over time, I have learned that everyone has their story. Sometimes it may not be the factual one if a video tape was replayed of the event. Timing might have been off, some text may have been edited out, or even whole scenes reshot. I have been humbled when I have seen my own past writings that have contradicted what I was saying now (which is one good reason to have this blog, to keep the facts straight, and to curtail memory drift). I have stopped getting angry at other people, who may have seen the same thing I did, start to tell a different story. The mind can soften the edges, and sometimes the only reason one tells of an experience is they are trying to share a lesson. It may not matter who fell off the pier first, the lesson is to watch how far you lean back on a pier. It probably doesn't matter who was or against the decision to hit the hornet's nest with a bat, the lesson was what happens afterwards.

Literal thinkers like me want the straight facts. But truth is so relative, and when a moment in time passes, it fades until it is almost invisible, and only the lesson remains.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:50 PM EST [Link]

Thursday, July 22, 2004

Widget's fine...ish

Widget's health is as good as mine is right now, according to the vets: reacting to extreme stress. While I am a bit peeved (in general, not at the vet) I had to pay $50 to find this out, I am in the end, glad they checked his temp and looked for hemotoma (internal bruising). Widget's just wigged out that Christine is sick, we figure, and the "hot nose" way we were determining he had a high fever was... well, not a fever.

The vet office loves our dog. He's like a celebrity. When he was fixed, for example, they all took turns carrying him around and showing him off to other people. We should rent this dog out to parties, except he's not really a people person. Maybe we should donate time at local retirement centers, because Widget's fine if Christine is holding him.

I am also not fine, and reacting to stress. I have gotten a little calmed down enough to read through my entries here and analyze the series of events. I am seeing signs of me over-reacting, which is part of the exaggerative nature of depression. But, it's there, so I can refer to it, and hopefully not over-react in future periods in THE HELL THAT IS MY LIFE! [joke]

In other news, work is pretty much going in wide circles around the toilet rim, but that's sort of the status quo now. No new news about the possible new job. I had another job lead, but that guy quit, which sucks, because he was also one of my main internal job references. My contact with the new job is thinking of quitting because he's burned out. Not looking good.

I did get to leave work early today for continuation of my dental work. They put in a new crown, and it's higher than the other teeth, but I should get used to it. I had this happen to me once before in 1996, and that's the crown that got infected, leading to the emergency pulpectomy at 3am where the girl with the knockout gass didn't show up. And four root canals later, I was struck in the face with a ladder, shattering 4 teeth on my right side (I avoided dentists for almost the next 6 years). My left side is the only side I can chew on, because a bridge to repair my right would set me back $3000, and at this time, I'd eat applesauce rather than spend that kind of money that desperately needs to go elsewhere to other bills. That's the same reason I don't have hearing aids, although it's getting more and more of a "must have" kind of situation (I am tired of saying "what?" all the time). The procdure went a lot faster than expected (normally, they have to shape, fit, remove, reshape, refit, etc. etc.) but I was done in less than 30 minutes because the original mold held. That meant I have enough time to mow my lawn! Yes, I was in pain, but damn, I may not get a window to mow my lawn for another few weeks.

My shaggy lawn got mostly mowed today before the rains came. The biggest problem with my lawn is that opportunity windows to mow the lawn require two things: one, that it isn't raining or hasn't rained for a few days, and two, I actually have time to mow the lawn on a day that meets those requirements. It gets worse the longer it takes, because taller grass takes longer to dry. You'd think it would be easy; I can mow my lawn on any day but Tuesdays and Wednesdays. But here's what happens: Monday comes, and I see I need to mow my lawn, but it's raining. I can't mow on Tues or Wed, and then I have a work meeting that runs late on Thursday. Friday night I had something planned, and then it rains, wiping out the weekend for mowing. The next Mon I had to do shopping, then Tues and Wed goes by, Thurs and Fri work runs late, and then I have something planned for that weekend. It rains Sunday, so I can't mow Monday, then Tues and Wed goes by, but it rains on Thursday, and I get sick over the weekend. Finally, on Monday, three weeks later, I get to mow. By now my grass looks like an abandoned field. Today, I only got to mow the lawn halfway before the sky opened up. I kind of knew this would happen, so I mowed the front first (so my house looks better from the street), and got part of the backyard done so the doggies could trot around in foliage not higher than their heads.

Hire someone to mow? Local kids are charging $40 per yard, which means I'm out $80 a pop, $160 for the month. It's a competive price, considering Scotts or Chemlawn would charge me $60/lawn, but professional companies also weed and feed, spray for bugs, and are more reliable than the kids. We have had moments where we hired kids who flaked (but didn't get paid, either, so in essence, we lost nothing but time), and then we have the awkward task of calling the parents, who are always apologetic, but are pretty helpless to do anything.

So I mowed. And got so exhausted because I am out of shape and my dental work hurt so bad, I couldn't even walk up the stairs, so I slept in the guest room for several hours. In other news, my mower is dying. I am not sure how this happened, because the mower was okay last time I used it (before Vegas). But now apparently somehow structural bolts are now missing (don't ask, I don't know how that's even possible), and so the engine rattles around the frame quite loudly. The blades need sharpened, and I have had so many problems with this mower, I'm ready to get a new one, even though this Scotts mower is only about 4 years old. It has been to the repair shop twice, and they always make fun of it, saying I should buy one of their John Deers instead. They point out just how bad my mower is, and it got to the point it was making me uncomfortable to take it there. I repaired what I could, then promptly burned two of my fingers on the red-hot exhaust manifold (doh!).

Oh, what's that sound? Me. Having an "out-of-money" experience. This is getting tiresome.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:04 PM EST [Link]

Now Widget's sick...

So, Christine returns home, then Widget gets sick.

We're not sure what's wrong with him. We've been noticing that since we got back from Vegas, he whimpers in his sleep. He seems normal when he's trotting about, but when he's sleeping, if he gets woken up, he yelps a high-pitched distress call. This subsided, and we thought he was just traumatized by being away from Christine for so long. And he was fine while Christine was gone for the last few days, but when Christine got back, it got much worse. He yelps like he's in pain, but we have been unable to locate the source of the pain with prodding or turning him about. But he's obviously in pain, which gets worse when he's been still for a while. Last night, he yelped about every few minutes when he turned over or was woken from his sleep. He's got a high fever now, so we're taking him to the vet. Even more $$$ I don't have. Great.

I don't need this. Why are the bad forces against us attacking our dog? That's just low.

I am real depressed right now, which probably surprises no-one. I had a stress headache for a few hours yesterday that was so bad, I went partially blind in my right eye, and could barely hear out of my right ear. It wasn't like my normal migraines, which, oddly enough, haven't been as bad in the last month (I have had a few minor attacks, but I think the new BP medicine is working pretty well). I knew it had to be a stress headache because if I moved my neck around, pressed on certain areas of my skull, and stayed upright, the pain wasn't as bad. Four Tylenol and a small nap seemed to cure it in the end, though. But after Widget got sick, I felt like some spectral fist plunged through my chest up to the elbow, leaving me gasping for air. I'm sure it's some psychosomatic stress thing, but my chest and whole body feel tired and shaky.

This sucks. This totally sucks. This sucks so hard, my skull and chest feel like they are going to collapse from the vacuum. God, I need a vacation. A 5-hour massage. Something!

Posted by Punkie @ 09:29 AM EST [Link]

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Christine is better, and out of the hospital

Well, they haven't ruled out anything serious, but they have ruled out anything immediately serious and life-threatening, so they let her go. She's on a lot of heavy antibiotics and some inhalers. She has to go for several more visits and have more scans done over the next few months to check on the progress. Right now, we're hoping she does better on the treatments, and that it all turns out to be just some massively heavy curable infection.

She'll probably be home in bed all week, so you can call her and wish her well. She'd like that. I'd also like to thank the TONS of support, well-wishers, and people who offered and gave us help during all this, back from when Fran died. The names are too numerous to mention, and I don't want to leave anyone out. Thanks to those who cooked, got us food, gave us advice, sent us flowers and cards, sent us prayers, and those that just said they cared. You guys really helped a lot, and I mean that from the depths of my heart. It really made a difference.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:28 PM EST [Link]

The vacuum that is my mattress

I can't sleep. The empty space in the bed next to me makes my stomach hurt.

While I have had my moments of "being alone in a crowd," and while I was obviously neglected as a child, I have never physically lived alone. I lived with my parents growing up, then Bruce, Cheryl, Liska, and Debbie in the FanTek house, then Tim and Anita, and then I got married and moved in with Christine.

When I moved into FanTek, I was kind of worried how I would handle having a house where a whole bunch of... well, really, strangers (as I saw it before I lived with them) lived. We did have our "Real World" moments, but 99% of the time, it was pretty good. I miss a lot of it in some ways. Bruce was a pretty heady person to bounce ideas off of. Tim and Anita, God love them, but I hope they got a divorce, that's all I can say. I'd love to recant the insanity of living with them, but I have forgiven them, and I don't want to paste all the psychodrama of that year all over the Internet because that seems unfair. When I got married, again I worried about living, now sleeping, with someone. I did value my privacy. Now, 15 years later, I still value privacy, but Christine and I have private moments a lot, but have moments together more. I can't imagine living without her.

I'm a mildly paranoid person. In my head, I have plans for events that will probably never happen. "A coward dies a thousand deaths," as the saying goes. One of the scenarios involves what to do if Christine dies. Sadly, this is not a very well planned course of action, because when I think about it, panic and a deep fear of falling takes over, and I have to stop. Suffice to say, if anything happens to her, I will be a mess. If anything happens to both her and CR, I will die. Not by suicide, mind you, but in the same way dogs die a few weeks after their master does. I feel like a coward, but if I did kill myself, I feel all those people I talked out of suicide over the years would think I was a hypocrite. If Christine passes away, I will live for CR. If they both go, I'll try and live for my friends.

I have been so emotionally unstable recently that I have been spacing out for long periods, and have even had short spacing out when in the middle of conversations. Like I'm a stoner or something. It's like I have shorted out, and my emotions are going black, just like they did last March. But to avoid going into that kind of emotional blackout, I have to hold on to the fear and panic, because I have to feel something, even though I am tired and sleepy. Like piloting a ship through some horrible storm when I haven't slept for days, I have been tied to the wheel. I am barely holding it together.

And I swear, if one more person asks how I am doing...

Posted by Punkie @ 01:11 AM EST [Link]

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Christine's staying in the hospital

We're not sure why, but Christine has to stay longer. The heart diagnosis is good, and almost old news by now. So far as they can tell, her heart is fine, but now apparently they have found some lung problems. Christine has always had a chronic sinus infection since we have been married. It comes and goes, and we have seen several doctors about it, and nothing seems to work for very long. Not that the doctors have said anything about it today, but I have always worried about her respiratory system since 1989. They have now ordered a PET scan and other tests.

So that's where we are.

Posted by Punkie @ 07:41 PM EST [Link]

Christine's health so far...

Well, the news is slightly better. In the last few hours, preliminary tests of her heart show no signs of damage, but it's still too early to tell for sure. But they are seeing severe swelling of the lymph nodes, and now in addition to the cardiologist, they are sending in a lung specialist. Calling or visiting her is pretty useless since she's constantly being whisked away for testing. She got very little sleep last night, and had been through a lot of tests.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:27 PM EST [Link]

Christine - No updates yet

I have been trying to call her all morning, but there's no answer, or the main patient line is busy. I have been fielding multiple IMs, phone calls, and e-mails. One of the things I hate is the question, "How are you doing?" I hate it because first, the person asking it means well, so I can't get mad at them, but I am really sick of answering that question. Especially this year, because everything is going so badly.

BAD! I AM DOING BADLY!

And I HATE being reminded of that. I hate thinking about it, I hate trying to take it all in, and then the self-pity that follows. I don't WANT to know how I am doing! I don't want to think about it, I don't want to be reminded of it... I don't want to feel. Feeling hurts.

Yet the people who ask that mean well, and it's a very reasonable question. Hell, even I have used it. So I can't mouth off and bite the gentle hands of those who care. And I can't %$@!# lie, so I spent a few hours early this morning thinking of some dumbass, noncommittal thing to say.

"As good as to be expected."

Posted by Punkie @ 10:23 AM EST [Link]

Monday, July 19, 2004

More bad news - Christine has been hospitalized

I am just a fountain of cheery news, aren't I?

Well, as I have been saying, Christine had been sick for about a month off an on through her whole ordeal. She was sick through Vegas, got better, then got sick again last week, got better, than got really sick last night, and today she went to the doctor. We wondered if she got pneumonia from Fran via her illness never really cured from Vegas, but she was X-rayed and passed as clear. She called me at work, and asked if I could come home early, because she was still feeling lousy.

We got a call from the doctor around 3:15, and he said, "I just got some tests back, rush immediately to the hospital. We think you are having a heart problem!"

They put her in the emergency room, and she's currently at Fair Oaks Hospital in Fairfax being treated for a possible heart condition. They really don't know yet, and so tests will be done for the next 24 hours. It could be a simple lung virus... could be a heart attack. Yeah, that kind of scale.

Last news was that the first round of tests showed no evidence of heart damage, which is a good sign. Even though she had been tested negative for pneumonia and bronchitis, they put her on an antibiotic drip solution, and she told me around 9pm that she felt better, but was terribly bored and wide awake. They still don't know why she's having chest pains, but everything they do points to they have deep suspicions something is horribly wrong, because they keep treating everything with white kid gloves, and they have her doing heart and blood tests until tomorrow night at the least. Her blood pressure is really high, too, so that's not good.

So if I seem grumpy and out of it for a while, please forgive my mopey Goth behavior. I want to be more perky Goth, but I am weak and unable to lie and be cheerful and say everything is going to be okay. I feel really guilty about this, because I am supposed to be there for my family, and be supportive, but again, I am paralyzed by my own fear, and I am unable to do anything useful to anyone. My worry is so bad that the skin on the left side of my body is much hotter than my right, and I feel like it's crawling with tiny bugs, which I only have under severe stress or fear. I have these hand shaking fits from time to time where my hands get into this loop where they won't stop shaking until I sit on them or hold them tight or something. It's like they need to be hugged and reassured. My ulcer is really, really not doing well, but I can't be sick or be the guy who needs help because my job on this earth is to help others. I have to be there for CR, and obviously, since I am in my den typing this blog to keep from going nuts, I am doing badly at that, too. I feel like I have to tell him it's going to be okay, but the last time I did that, it was to Bobbie, and she died two weeks later. I felt so guilty that I lied to her, it was one of the major reasons I couldn't attend her funeral. I know in these situations, you're supposed to put on a fake grin and say, "It's going to be okay, life is great, and nothing will go wrong," but ... I can't lie. I promised myself once I became an adult, I'd never live another lie again, and it was a stupid promise that again, has fucked me over morally. The stress is incredible, and the roaring of my own blood in my ears is deafening. It is only by logical will alone that I haven't gone crazy, and as long as I don't get that call from the hospital asking me what to do with her body, I should be fine in the end.

Please feel free to call Christine at Fair Oaks, as she would love to hear from people since it's really boring and she wants to keep her mind off of things, and obviously I am not helping by being upset and worried and so psychodramatic.

Hug your loved ones for me...

Posted by Punkie @ 10:05 PM EST [Link]

Hot Gaming Days, Fran's Last Party, and CR reaches 14.

The weekend started for me around Thursday, when I had to "steam clean" the carpets for Fran's wake on Saturday. Since Fran was cremated and had no funeral service, Christine needed a wake-like closure. I needed to get the house acceptable, and my cheap, durable Berber rugs were looking dim and dirty. I hate to use the word "steam clean," even though my carpet cleaner says it's a steam cleaner, because it doesn't use steam so much as hot water which you have to use quickly before it cools down. I know, I know, they make the kind that keep the water hot, but they didn't have that kind of feature available when I got this machine in 1998. Of course, I had to fix my vacuum cleaner before I could clean the carpets because the belt broke. But before I did that, I had to find the replacement belts I ordered a few months ago, which were left in my toolbox, which someone went through for a tool, and scattered everywhere (I *hate* that, when someone goes through my stuff, and rearranges things), and I think a dog got a hold of the envelope belts, and I remember seeing it last under a couch which I couldn't get to because the rec room was a mess.... And before I could do that... well, you get the idea. I finally found the bag that had the belts, fixed the vacuum cleaner and vacuumed the rugs, washed the rugs with hot to lukewarm water, and then Christine got really sick, so I had to clean the rest of the house.

I got really sick on Thursday night to Friday morning, and called in sick to work so I could sleep off this horrible migraine. I felt better by the evening to attempt to finish the rest of the house. A big part of the job was to completely clean and sterilize the guest room. Fran, in his unfortunate and forgivable illness, had left a considerable mess. So I cleaned that room from stem to stern, ceiling to floor, and the room looked better than... hell, it looked better than I ever remember it looking. The former owners really used to a cheap paint, so while washing the walls with just warm water caused the white paint to run, when it dried... it kind of left it looking new. And the slight paint smell gave the room a new feeling. I even washed the curtains, so the guest room had a new room smell that smelled slightly like fabric softener. Just ready for any guests that stayed over Saturday night for Fran's wake.

On Saturday, Christine felt a little better, but not much. She tried to game with MSD and me, but the Game Parlour in Chantilly had their AC conk out, and it got really hot. So she left early. Then it got too hot for even us, so we left early. Kory, Allison, and Leah stayed for the wake, which was pretty informal. Moria, in her infinite goodness, cooked a wonderful spaghetti and garlic bread dinner for everyone. Then she bought stuff to make our own sundaes. Bruce and Cheryl brought fried chicken, and a lot of other people brought sodas, snacks, chips, and even cakes. It really helped get Christine out of her funk, and we had guests until 3am. But we had to go to bed because CR's 14th birthday party was the next... er, later the same day.

We woke up late, and cleaned up after Fran's wake to make way for a subdued 14th birthday party. It wasn't actually his birthday, but it was the weekend closest to it. Sean and Louann came with their kids, some of CR's friends from school came (those of you with summer birthdays may remember as kids the curse that you can't have many kids over because everyone is on vacation, camp, or something), and there were presents, cakes, and then a lot of video game playing. Later, Sean and Lou took Christine, me, and their two younger kids to Red Lobster. My food was good, but the place was really kind of run down, as I posted in a previous rant. It really didn't improve much since I last reported. The place is shabby, the bathroom had roaches, and the staff were having a staffing argument over diner's heads, kind of like some weird dinner theater experience. Sean and I made the most of it with humorous glances. Their daughter Scarlet (6) showed off her amazing math and pattern skills.

When we got back, we were exhausted, and pretty much hung out and went to sleep. Christine was having chest pains, so we thought it might be pneumonia, since she was exposed to pneumonia via Fran, and we think her antibiotics she got in Vegas were too weak to do any good. I am STILL having swollen throat issues, plus my jaw still hurts, and then I hurt my back helping Scarlet out of a tree. I kept thinking, "I am too young for these kinds of complaints." But Christine's sounded worse than mine, so I convinced her to go to the doctor the next day.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:39 PM EST [Link]

Thursday, July 15, 2004

...the Beast of Plondshu? What do you roll for that?

Today, work was a bear. But I can't go into it. Too many lies going back and forth. I'm just a programmer. Tell me what to do, dammit, don't waffle and make up stuff! I actually got this line from another manager today: "I don't send requests by e-mail, it keeps me flexible to change my plans." Gee, thanks! "I don't need documentation, my words have to remain worthless." Thank God that guy is not my boss.

Yet.

So. Things in the Larson household are slowly crawling out of the bomb shelter again, as we look for hints of sunlight. This is such a common theme, I wonder if thanking God for the absence of total darkness is a pathetic sign of denial. Well, I try and "look at the bright side," as it were, that both my grandmother and Fran died, and now I don't have to worry about them dying when I am away somewhere (Otakon, Gencon, etc...). Now all deaths in my life are back to 100% surprise!

I'll talk a little about MSD. Kory spoke with me on Saturday about how he does sales. "No high pressure," he states. This is good. He knows gamers. He knows that pressuring our kind, who hate to part with money, will only drive them away. No tricks. Just quality products, and good friendly service. My biggest fear is not knowing anything about the products, so I have been studying them, and of course, going to the game demos. I suspect I'll be GM'ing at some point, as well. Allison also poured the topics and subtopics of gaming culture upon my brain, using names I haven't heard since I was a heavy gamer in the 1980s. There is no hope to remembering everything, but Kory says I will never be alone at the table, so someone is sure to help me out. I also have a lot of products to study, including one "work" they sell which is written worse than The Eye of Argon (which they acknowledge, but they have to sell it as a campaign series, and people actually buy it). The key here is all the goofy-assed names that sound really implausible in any language:

"From the Moors on Truutryk, G'fnar rode his trutsy steed to Qwerty where he hunted the wild Fnidzorks and ravenous Beast of Plondshu. He called to his trusty henchman, Hozz of Ghjkili, and cleaned his golden weapon, The Reaver of Mixiton, and waited in the still night air, like he did as a lad, back in Q'ok Doy Foopawhoppi."

Comedy gold. Especially because they are serious, in a mopey preteen gamer sort of way. That isn't the real text, the real text is even funnier, but I can't publish it on my website, lest we loose their good standing with us (the rest of their products are actually quite good). I don't even think we put that work on the table, but keep it sealed in a foil-lined bag in a steel lock box under the table, handing it to customers with tongs after they sign a disclaimer that we are not responsible for stomach aches after reading words like "Beast of Plondshu." He also showed me some tricks of the trade, including one clever trick where he puts everything, including his display cases, in his catalog, so he can recoup the damage caused by someone stealing or damaging his show booth. "That, sir, is a $500 display rack. I sell it on page 37! Pay up!"

I wonder, with trepidation, about Gencon. I hope I have a good time. I found out that it's the 30th Anniversary of D&D. Heh. Cool. But I hope I don't get bored; I'm not really a gamer anymore. It's a gift to my former self, and a learning experience.

Maybe I'll meet the Beast of Plondshu!

Posted by Punkie @ 06:43 PM EST [Link]

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

The Unbearable Lightness of Fran

Christine got back late Monday night after a long ordeal. She hadn't really planned to stay in West Virginia for several days, so she had to buy clothes for her and CR when they were out there. All in all, Fran didn't want a funeral unless his kids did, and in the end, they decided not to. Fran had two children and two step children, all of them under 21, so I wonder if they fully appreciated their decision. Hope, the youngest at I guess 15, requested her father's ashes.

As a side note, I have always had a soft spot for Hope. I met her when she was 4, then again at 8, then 14, and then this year at 15. Already pregnant, just like her stepsister Erica, who I think is 19 and on her 4th child. The father of Hope's baby looks like a combination of a shady Zoot-suit character from a 1940s character film and a crackhead. I don't see their future as a bright one. But aside from that, when Hope was 8, she lived near the site of Hurricane Andrew. Her town was not directly hit by the devastating hurricane, but she sat down with me, and with a look in her eyes of a seasoned war veteran, told me the horrors that she saw. The wreckage, the looting. I always knew there was somewhat of an "old soul" in her. She reminds me a lot of myself. I find it ironic that her name is hope, because sometimes I think it's all she's got.

As you can gather, Fran's past is not a good one. I won't go into just the details, because we must be respectful of the dead, but Fran suffered greatly from the time he was a child until the day he died. His actions were a result of much of his suffering without any stable structure to hold him up. I never got a chance to speak with him much, but from what little he told me of his life, he paid his dues and then some. I can't say he was honorable, but from what I can gather, I doubt I would have been either.

From a personal view, the whole incident of Fran these last few months have been so parallel to things in my own life, that I have spent many nights in emotional distress not just because of Fran, but what Fran reminded me of. While he was with us, I didn't realize just how... horrible it was living my teen life with an alcoholic mother. I hadn't really missed it, and a lot of the emotional pain lay buried and unresolved. Some of you out there may know what it's like taking care of an adult when you are a kid, and sadly, some of that may be due to alcoholism. Fran wasn't drunk any time he was here, but he was a recovering alcoholic, and we had to hide our liquor.

Just like I did with my mother.

Fran was very sick, and had to be watched nearly 24/7 so he didn't hurt himself.

Just like I did with my mother.

Fran was senile, often forgetting where he was, confused people's names, and tried to do things himself, often creating bad accidents in the process. We had to clean up after him a lot.

Just like I did with my mother.

Living with an alcoholic, especially when you are a kid, grows you up real fast. Maybe that's why Hope is that way. Her brother Brandon is like that, too. He's 20, living on his own, self-employed. Just like I was at 20. No parents to take care of me at all.

I try not to get into self-pity because it's pointless and time-consuming. But it's hard not to, sometimes. The old emotions of "why me?" keep coming up, and the logical, therapist answer of, "well, why anybody?" doesn't seem to soothe the crying child inside. I kept thinking, "Jesus H. Christ, I don't want to remember this shit!!!" Poor Fran probably wondered, at least a little, why I was so awkward around him. I just kept feeling those teen feelings, and how part of me was going, "Oh no no no! You said, God, when I was an adult, I would never have to go back there! You promised! YOU FUCKING PROMISED!!!"

Add to this that my "peace with the past" was already very unstable with my Grandmother dying last month, and my father being so "who cares?" about it (we assume, he's STILL not contacted anyone about it). Just like my mother's death. Clean up the debris, sweep it under the rug with some lies, and act like nothing bad ever happened. The death of someone you care about is just as easy as disposing of their ashes.

Christine always says, "Funerals are not for the dead, but the living." That wisdom reminds me of why I have no closure with my own past. My father had my mother cremated, her funeral done, and in less than 5 days after her death, she was erased. I have nothing. I have no memento, except a few photos, that she ever existed. I got nothing of hers. I have no grave to return to. My father bargained down the funeral director to the cheapest cremation, the cheapest urn, and then when it was over, threw away the ashes. Hell, I didn't even get to mourn because the school sent me to a mental hospital, claiming I was a "suicide risk," so I had to play totally normal to get out. Asshats. Every fucking school official involved in that decision will go to hell, I am sure of that. So my mother's death was this harried sort of ragged ending, like a novel that had written itself into a corner, and the author ran out of ideas. So it abruptly ended with a character you hadn't even heard of solving everything with supernatural powers never mentioned anywhere else in the book. Only my dues ex machina didn't actually solve everything.

I really want to go to Iron Mountain, Michigan, and visit my maternal grandparent's graves. If I could drive a car, I would have already gone. It's only a little over 1000 miles, according to Mapquest. So far away. Just like San Diego and Sweden. I know I have a lot of friends, and a great wife and son, but there are times like these I feel so fucking lonely. I guess I am an ingrate, expecting some kind of TV normal family or something. Best I have is to talk to a pair of graves behind a veteran's hospital.

Christine is very, understandably, depressed. She just go to know her brother again, and after maybe 20 some odd years of abandonment issues, loses him again in just a few months. CR has been wonderful through this, which only reinforces to me how deeply good of a human being he is, and how I don't deserve him. My pathetic parenting can only be hindering him. He was the support for Christine because I wasn't there, and I am sure he did a better job than I would have, because he doesn't have the emotional baggage piled around him like his dad. Honestly, I wonder how my family puts up with my whining and clinging to the past so much. Christine and I discussed having a sort of wake this weekend with some friends of ours to help her cheer up. I don't know who will show up, but we have already a few people saying they would come.

Of course, all this comes at a very bad time. CR turns 14 in less than a week. This whole debacle seriously interfered with both his birthday planning and gift budget. Happy Birthday, CR, here's an IOU... for 2005.

Yes, money is very bad. I guess it could have been worse; we could have been well on our vacation and spent more money on food and fun. I guess we were lucky we got so sick and saved money that way.

Also, at work, there was this HUGE political tumble that is NOT going to end well. Some project manager got his way, and gave up our contract for a rival department who not only doesn't have stable code, but doesn't have an infrastructure in place. I am praying this new job I am applying for goes through. In have to get off this ship before the torpedo hits, you know?

Ugh. I want a blankie.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:50 AM EST [Link]

Sunday, July 11, 2004

Fran Skidmore 1959 - 2004

Well, it's over.

Fran died this morning at around 5am. So much has happened in just the last 24 hours, that's it's kind of hard to collect everything into one entry.

Friday, we knew Fran was really sick, but again, he comes and goes. But he needed to see his hospice nurses so Christine said she'd drive him back a week early. So, come Saturday morning, they all piled into the blue Saturn (the green one has an "engine warning -seek service" light which we have neither time nor money to deal with), and drove to West Virginia. I didn't go because there was barely room for 3 people, much less 4, and we couldn't leave CR alone, and I had an MSD meeting to go to. Christine said she'd drop off Fran, drive back, pick me up from the meeting in Frederick, and we'd all come home.

Of, course, that didn't happen.

It changed when Christine got to West Virginia, where the Hospice nurses said he had to be put in the hospital immediately. So Christine stuck around to hear the diagnosis, and they said he probably wouldn't last the week. She called me at the MSD meeting (which was more of a one-on-one since I was the only one who showed up besides the owners Kory and Allison), and said she wasn't going to pick me up. Kory and Allison said they'd get me home, it wasn't a big deal, because the Game Parlour is three miles away from my house, and they had business to do there anyway. I tried not to think about it by just doing massive brain dumps on those two poor people. They fed me roast beef and lamb, but my jaw has been hurting so much, I couldn't chew very well (the other side of my mouth from the pain is where all those molars are broken, so I have no "good side" anymore). They were really cool about everything. I felt like "Goth Disaster Boy," and really tried not to be some pathetic psychodrama in their living room. I probably failed.

When I got home, I left Christine a message on her cell I got back safely, and then kind of sat in a depressive funk, trying to convince myself I didn't know Fran that well, and his impending death (which was still sort of a "it's months away" in my head) I had already prepared for. I just sort of stared at the ceiling, lost in some sort of depressive haze. Christine called and said that she was coming home no matter what on Sunday, and that Fran was really sick, and how certain flaky people in her family should go to hell. After the call, I took more Tylenol, and went to sleep, remembering echos of my own mother's death, my mother-in-law's (who was a second mother to me) death in 1998, my grandmother in 2000, and my sister-in-law a little over a year ago, my other grandmother just a month ago. Then a lot of other deaths over the years, like Jo-ann, Nanny, Bobbie, and then the list got too big (I think over 10 people close to me have died in 15 years).

I don't even want to think about it anymore. I am tired of funerals. I don't ever want to have one. I don't want any of my friends to have to boo-hoo over my sorry ass. I want a huge party with a massive Chinese food buffet.

So this morning, I got up, and decided to try and assimilate evrything before I went mad. Then Christine called to say Fran had died, but she didn't tell me earlier because she wanted me to sleep. So I dropped all the stuff I was doing, and started this entry.

Fran didn't want a funeral or anything, but the complication of money came up. Now, we don't have any, his suriving other two sisters certainly don't have any, and his kids didn't have any, either. But luckily, that got sorted out when his biological father said, "Send all the bills to me." Fran's ashes go to his daughter Hope (a girl I always had a soft spot for ever since I knew her when she was 4, then 8, who is now I think 17), but we're not sure if there's going to be a service or anything. Debbie has said that there will be no service if his kids don't come up, so that's what we're wating for.

Christine's coming home tonight, then we're going to the dentist to find out why my jaw hurts so much on Monday, then probably on Tuesday we're all going to pile into the small blue Staurn and go to West Virginia and God knows what else. The plans change by the hours.

Posted by Punkie @ 12:59 PM EST [Link]

Friday, July 9, 2004

The story so far...

I am in misery. My jaw/teeth really hurt. It's hard to tell which, but there's like a thunderstorm in my mouth where all the work was done. Sometimes it's the teeth, sometimes it's some weird line in the middle of my lower lip, and sometimes the gums are just sore. I keep tasting random things, too, like my taste buds are on the fritz. It comes and goes, but it's happening more and more as the days go by. I am also incredibly tired and sleepy most of the time, which may or may not be related. Feh.

Poor Fran. He's not well. The diagnosis changes a lot, as the Hep C and his failing liver ravages through his system. He was feeling better and taking a sabbatical to some of his relatives. Last week, he was staying with his father and stepmother, but then he got real sick, and had to go to the hospital. They gave him some meds and filled him with some fluids, and he felt better for a while. He came to stay with us because his father couldn't handle seeing his son this way, and they were too old to effectively take care of him. So we picked him up from the hospital, and he's been at our house all week, fading in and out. He tried to cook us a meal a few days ago, but he got too tired and we had to finish it. Now it looks like Christine's going to have to drive him home today or tomorrow so he can get back on his nursing care.

In other news, I am planning my next two months. There's a lot going on.

This Saturday, I am having a meeting with MSD about GenCon, and what we need to do there. I will be helping out at the table a lot more than I had planned, mostly because they lost yet another person. It turns out that Cheryl had misunderstood what Kory had said, and the book is NOT selling off the web as briskly as I was led to believe (it's okay), but it was their #2 seller at Balticon, which is saying a lot. I'll probably talk to them about more small writing projects they have.

I will be working at Otakon! CR and I will be working the Katsucon table, and hanging out with Katsu folk, like we have been doing for years. Look for us there the weekend of July 30th, being silly as always.

After all the stress, Vegas sucking, and no summer convention (i.e. Castlecon), Christine decided to have a big party in August. Actual dates and times TBD. We're going to do Legos this time around, as well as the normal gaming and drinking. Okay, I won't game and drink, but I will be working with Legos. I have a 55 gallon tub filled with Legos, but I don't care if no one by me plays with them; I just like the company.

My potential new job prospectus is in limbo. The status is complicated (it would take paragraphs to describe the soap opera they are going through, and might not be wise to say some stuff in a public blog), but let me give you the summary: if I hear anything, it won't be for a few weeks. Apparently, there are two piles of applicants: "junior people" and "senior people." I am at the top of the "junior" pile. He told me "not to worry about being hired," which could mean several things, but is generally a good sign.

Then, on another set, my current work has made hints they want me to stay. Maybe even compensate me in many ways that would be... beneficial. See, we're part of a migration from two groups into one. It's not going well, mainly due to personailty and goal conflicts. On my team, I am "the Perl/Linux guy" and the other team needs me to get my team to move over to a Perl/Linux platform (because our platform is stuck in the 1980s-early 90s)

I also got the barest hint that another company might want to hire me for a lot of money. This is really sketchy at this point, but happened while I was discussing this job development over lunch with a friend. He had been offered two jobs recently in the 6-digit salary range, and asked, "Say... if another company were to offer you the same pay... would you be interested?" Not that I would make 6 digits (I don't think), but it looks like the sort of thing if he takes the job, he might want me to work for him. He asked a lot of questions about why I'd chose to stay with my current company, and what it would take to hire me away. Lot of if's, which is why I call this "the barest hint."

Money is one thing. I like money. It's not the MOST important thing, however. I have friends who make a lot of money, but hate their jobs so much, it's affecting evrything in their life. My friend Brad went through that for a few years, working for 3 soul-sucking companies until he worked at one place long enough to get laid off with a severance package. When he left, he had a lot of money saved, and said he wasn't doing "the tech thing" anymore. Now, he's got a full time job doing "the tech thing" again but it's not soul-sucking. Yet.

Posted by Punkie @ 12:51 PM EST [Link]

Tuesday, July 6, 2004

Submission 2004

I did it.

I submitted my first piece of work to be published (in print) in about... oh... 10 years or so. Yes, with MSD. I am helping out with their new version of Game Master utilities.

Funny, this is exactly what I wanted to do in about ... oh, 1984. Same with GenCon. I would have figuratively KILLED someone to go back in 1983. I read some of the program items in Dragon Magazine back then and drooled with wishes, hopes, and dreams. It became like some kind of Mecca, because it would be another year before I attended my first real convention. Then I got older, stopped gaming, got married, and that was that. I am really going to be with MSD, but I am also sort of going as a kind of "thanks for the crap you had to go through" booby prize for my inner child.

I did sumbit two things to Dragon Magazine. Both declined. One was an article on a new race of creatures I had created and playtested, the Axark. They were a colonial lizard-like race with a queen lizard, and thousands of worker lizards who had daily lives like most people do, but they could not reproduce, and they ultimately had to live for the better of the colony. I still have their whole society to this day, right in my head. I might submit it to MSD someday. The other article was about gaming foods, and what worked well. I felt it was an article sorely needed, but they rejected that, too, with a form letter. At least the Axark letter was slightly personalized (it explained they had some sort of limitation on player races at the moment).

This never really upset me because by this time, all I ever heard about being a writer was the countless rejections you would get, and how you had to be patient. To get upset because you were rejected was whiny, and sorted the serious authors from the wannabes. But see, you have to keep submitting. When I got a "real job" after two years of virtual unemployment (1991-1993), my writing dried right up. It's like my writing career got aborted. It wasn't some money-making machine, no. In two years I bet I made less than $2000 total in book sales, articles, and stories. But again, you have to start somewhere. Trouble is, I didn't keep going, so I kind of have to start all over again.

That's okay. Writing is not something you can squeeze out like a factory machine. It's more like an orchard, and with plenty of time, attention, and patience, you can really get a good harvest, even if you have to wait a lot of years in the beginning.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:44 PM EST [Link]

All bleeding eventually stops...

Let's see...

Okay, when the numbness finally started to wear off, my jaw felt like a bad bruise, but luckily it doesn't show on the outside of my face. I know I wasn't supposed to chew for 24 hours, but I did end up chewing last night because I was so starving, I was going insane. I found that "do not chew" didn't really mean "you'll hurt your temp crown" but meant "you have an open sore in your mouth, and it will hurt like a mofo." Pizza sauce, no matter how delicately chewed on the other side of the mouth... burrrns. I didn't care, though, because I needed food with all that blood loss.

Yes, the blood loss. Right now I am okay, it's stopped for the most part, but sometimes I'll sneeze or cough, and then it rips the wound open again ... bleah. At least each time the wound bleeds less and less. I woke up with my mouth caked with dried blood, and then it tasted so bad, I rinsed with Scope... WTF was I thinking? WAAAAGHHH!!! That hurt like HELL! But hey! My sore throat went away! So it's an even trade, I figure. Maybe it's just in shock. Maybe the germs went, "F**k, they are coming at us with DRILLS! Run away! Run away!" So, through all this, I haven't felt sick on top of it.

But then, of course, Fran is staying with us. Fran was in the hospital this weekend, and it was our job this time around to pick him up and take him in. Fran means well, but when you take a 50 year old guy with a long history of alcohol abuse (although, he's been sober even since this ordeal started), poor education, bad living conditions, terrible friends, heavy medication, and who isn't expected to live to see the end of this year due to Hep C and liver failure ... he's a bit out of it. And so already we've had to deal with a few senile effects, like him wandering around in his underwear, leaving doors open, spilling things and not cleaning them up...

.. and then slipping on them. Last night, Christine slipped on a puddle of Strawberry juice Fran spilled on the floor, on her bad ankle, and twisted her knee. She didn't break it, and it's not terribly swollen, but it's badly damaged nonetheless and so she's mostly bedridden. So through this, we have to keep an eye on him. Which brings back old memories of taking care of my alcoholic mother; even when she was sober, she used to do this crap, too. And I had to clean up after it. This is just been lovely to relive, and there's nothing I can do because it's not like Fran can help it. My blood pressure is really high, and I am wincing a lot.

I want my blankie...

Posted by Punkie @ 10:53 AM EST [Link]

Monday, July 5, 2004

Ibba sobba numbaa ind mybuh mubbuth

Well, the denist visit was fun.... not.

Okay, the issue is, I had a cracked tooth. It was one of the older fillings I have had which had split from nothing more than sheer age, really. The damage was not too bad, but I had to get a crown, which is kind of like this procedure where they take your old tooth, reshape it like a peg, and then slide a fake tooth over it. Right now, I have a temp, which is waiting 2 weeks for a permenant crown. This is the third or fourth one of these I have had in my life. The back of my mouth looks like a cyborg at this point, it has so much metal in it.

My dentist's office is really nice. A few years ago, we stumbled upon a really nice place witha really nice staff, and a very nice dentist, Dr. Sweeney. I sort of made a great impression with them upon my first visit, where I knocked down a door for them (a technician of theirs got trapped: story here under "July 19th"). Later, we made friends with Anya, a hygenist, who it turns out went to my high school a few years after I had graduated.

Today, everyone was really nice as always. But the procedure was REALLY painful this time around, and I had to get a TON of Novacaine (or whatever they use these days). Okay, not a literal ton, but I had to be injected 5 times before they could finish the work. And man, what a lot of blood. Anya drove me home because I was feeling woozy from all the blood loss (and it was raining), so I am glad I didn't have to walk home under all THAT. Normally, the procedure is not this arduous, but this tooth "presented unique issues."

I don't want to be around when the numbness wears off. I am still spitting (okay, drooling) a lot of blood, even an hour later. Maybe I'll just slam my head into walls to knock myself out. I better get started now, since 50% of my head has no feeling.

Posted by Punkie @ 04:48 PM EST [Link]

Dependence Day

So, this weekend, I wanted to get some quality leisure time. On Friday night, I used the last of my antibiotics, and had been feeling fine for the last two days. But by Saturday night, I wasn't feeling so good. My throat was closing in on me again. Were the antibiotics not enough? Did I have something anitbiotics couldn't cure?

I spent most of the day out, because Christine and I wanted to go out because we had been sick for so long for a while, we were sick of bed. We were going to drive to Pennsylvania, but the weather turned ugly, and it rained, so we decided to stay around home. I ended up sorting through my den, trying to clean up some of the mess that has accumulated in the last few months. But by the end of the day, I didn't feel so hot, so I went to bed early, cursing this almost never-ending cold/flu/tonsillitis/whatever...

On Sunday, we were to go to Sean's house to have a kind of 4th of July party and keep Bruce and Cheryl occupied so they didn't have to think about not having a Castlecon. I mean, I know they didn't want to do them anymore, but this was first time period where they didn't have one, and we knew that they were going to feel like something was missing. Cheryl even said she didn't want to be in the house. So we had a party at Sean's house. It started out with just Sean, his family, my family, and Bruce and Cheryl, but then more guests got added until the guest list was over 20 people (double what we expected). I guess luckily, not everyone showed up. I think there were maybe 15-17 people. Many of them people who USED to work at my company, but some odd coincidence.

But during the party, Christine got a call that Fran was admitted to a hospital near Harper's Ferry. So half the party was calling her sister Debbie back and forth, trying to get information about Fran. Apparently, he was visiting his stepdad, and got real sick, so he was admitted to the emergency room. Later, as this unfolded, it didn't seem so bad, but Christine is going to see him today, and possibly, if he's well enough, take him

Also at the party, I heard from Cheryl that Kory at MSD really, really likes me as an employee. I hope I live up to those kinds of standards. My book is also selling well, and while I don't know how well yet, I had forgotten that while some of my friends would be getting one... other people who buy MSD products would also buy some. I undersold myself. Well, we'll see what the next few weeks, and Gencon, have to bring me. I told Kory I didn't have electronic copies of the old book (I used to, but they were in some weird publishing format on 5.25 inch 360k disks which I am not sure I could find anymore), and he said, "We have a team of typographers and data entry people if we need to do reprints..." If there is a reprint? I am going to edit it a little. Not change the stories per se, but maybe... fix a few things, if Kory lets me. There were a few mistakes that go through, mostly where pages were, and over time, I noticed some slight grammatical errors that got through.

I hope they will publish my second book, though! It's been in the can for a while. That I *do* have electronic copies of. Poor Kris Trader did those wonderful illustrations and now maybe they'll finally see the light of day...

In other news, work had a major snafu. There's a saying in our group about never doing any changes in production over a weekend, especially a long weekend. Well, some team decided that they HAD to get this test done THIS weekend, and honestly, I don't blame them. But doing a dialing stress test over a weekend where phone call volumes are low anyway is not going to yield the results they want. Plus, we had to do all this new stuff in a hurry, and communication was broken down between departments, so my software didn't work as well as it should have because some people who set up these machines didn't use the settings I told them to use.

Bruce and Cheryl told horror stories that some yahoos that live on their block set off real fireworks, the big kind, Friday night (before the big rains), and they were afraid these idiots would set the whole neighborhood on fire. Luckily, the police and the Fire Marshall showed up and shut them down. In Virginia, we are allowed to have small fireworks, but where they live in Maryland, I think even sparklers and snakes are illegal. So what possessed their neighbors to set off HUGE ones that lit up the night sky is beyond anyone. I mean, you KNOW you can't do that without someone seeing you, and tracing down where you are pretty quickly.

The party was pretty good, but we ended up leaving a little earlier than normal (and for our friend's parties, that's like 11:30). And when we leave, then everyone else leaves. Man! Can't you people entertain yourselves? Seriously, though, we had a lot of fun, the kids got to see fireworks, and those that didn't want to see them got to stay behind and sit in nice air conditioning and talk.

Speaking of dependence... so I get paged from work, on a holiday, that all hell has broken lose today. Things are not where they are supposed to be and my software "failed" and I am "in the doghouse." I retorted back that they did not listen to me, use my documentation, or use common sense. Hilarity ensues. They want me to come in. I can't, because during this time, I have to clean the house and get ready for Fran to stay. They are not happy. Luckily, Roy at work saves my ass by coming in, and was fairly good about it. I also have to get dental work done. But Christine has to go, so I have to walk to the dentist's myself. Wonderful. At least he's only a mile away and it's not as hot as it could be. And since it's hot, it won't make me sicker... right?

Because I have a helluva work day ahead of me tomorrow. Calling in sick is not an option. I just hope I still have my voice so I can defend myself. And get everyone else what I have because I am too mad to care right now.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:51 PM EST [Link]

Friday, July 2, 2004

If it make you feel any better... things suck!

Okay, I have to rant about this "comforting phrase" people have been using ever since I was a kid, and probably way before...

Punk: Man, work was hard today. I wanted to leave early, but that's not going to happen at this rate.
Dude: If it makes you feel any better, I can't either, and I have a bad head cold.

No. No it does NOT make me feel any better to hear of other's suffering. Other people suffering bums me out, especially if that person is a friend or coworker. What a ghoulish thing to wish. It has never made me feel any better, like some weird superiority thing, that people are doing worse than I. Now I am bummed that my day sucks, and now it's affecting other people. Maybe there's a general malaise and now everyone's day is going to suck and there's nothing I can do about it. There's also a second way this is used...

Punk: Man, I am sick today. And my boss says we might have to take another pay cut.
Dude: Eugh... I am sorry. I guess you don't want to hear I had a good day and got a job promotion.

Why do people do this? I'd love to hear someone had a great day, it gives me hope to go on! Do people actually relish in other's misery? I guess maybe they are afraid I would be jealous, but that's just wierd.

Punk: Man, work was hard today. I wanted to leave early, but that's not going to happen at this rate.
Dude: If it makes you feel any better, I can't either, and I have a bad head cold.
Punk: Oh, thank God! Jesus, I am glad I am not you! Ha HAH! In your face, Mr. Sniffles!
Dude: I guess you don't want to hear I had a good day and got a job promotion.
Punk: No, you insensitive prick. God, how I hate you. I wish you would fall into a hole an DIE!

Is that the way other people converse?

Posted by Punkie @ 02:04 PM EST [Link]

Thursday, July 1, 2004

An Extreme Linguistic Rant

[apologies to Neal]

Okay, according to the geeks at Ars Technica, the word "Extreme" will be henceforth stricken from the public vocabulary. This word and all subtle variations will be removed from all advertising and product naming conventions.

I concur.

The other day, I noticed that some of the foods in the supermarket have been "Extreme" for some time. The New Oxford Dictionary of English defines extreme as "reaching a high or the highest degree," which I can only imagine would not have limitations that normal foods would have. For instance, I saw a variety of chips called "eXtreme Ranch flavor," and I said to my son, "No, we want normal Ranch." I could only surmise what "eXtreme Ranch" might be like...

Julie was wearing spandex this morning, Punk noted. Over her rather uncharacteristically athletic garb she wore a faded "Tintin 50th Anniversary" T-shirt. On her head was a racing bike helmet and welders goggles.

"What's the occasion?" he asked.

Julie smiled and put the goggles down over her eyes. "I am trying the Extreme Ranch flavored corn flakes," she said. "And I am taking precautions. Your helmet and goggles are on the end of the chair."

"Can I have my coffee first?" asked Punk, waving his coffee mug up and down as if to further illustrate the term "drinking coffee" to any deaf roaches that might be in the kitchen.

"I wouldn't advise it." Julie looked at the back of the steel-rimmed box. "It may have a bad reaction with the caffeine."

Punk shrugged. Had he been more awake, he might have been hesitant, but as it was, without coffee he was pretty docile and Julie liked taking advantage of this state of mind.

"Sit down and put on the gear," Julie commanded. "I am going to open the box." She turned to her CD player, and started a tune from Siouxsie and the Banshees called, "Carousel." Since Punk had such a big head, Julie couldn't find goggles that had a headband big enough, but she did manage to rig a welder's mask, and she waited for Punk to get the blast shield in front of his face before she pulled out her beaten Leatherman, and pulled the metal tab to open the box labeled, "K-Rad Korn Flakes, Yo: Extreme Ranch Flavor," with a smaller warning in red letters, "Not to be taken Internally."

The second she ripped the jagged metal tab away from the side of the box, a pressurized sigh escaped along with a strange wisp of glowing smoke. The most intense onion smell punctured the air, along with an aftershock of dill, chives, and a sour buttermilk flavor. Two rats that lived in one of the lower cupboards awoke from a deep slumber, and sniffed the air in concern. A roach that had been hiding behind the toaster scuttled to a crack that led to another room. A garlic smell crept from hiding deep within the box, and skulked around the table like a drunken hippo awoken from a very bad dream. 2

"Woah," said Punk. Julie simply nodded. She hadn't even opened the top all the way back, and already she was having second thoughts. Could she handle such an extreme Ranch flavor? She took a deep breath, and pulled the top back.

What happened next could only be described like a horrible Bjork video. A pale greenish glow thrust itself from the box, sending the metal straps that contained the sides peeling back like broken springs. One of the straps whipped across Julie's hand, leaving a deep gash. Another smacked into the sugar shaker in the middle of the table, sending it spinning across the kitchen, into the hallway leading to the main dining area, and smashing into a supernova of sugar and broken glass against a wall.

Julie didn't have the reaction time required to push herself back fast enough before the aroma of a thousand hell-driven onions grabbed her by her long black hair and smashed her face repeatedly into the laminated kitchen table, screaming, "REMEMBER VIETNAM, LITTLE GIRL??? HANOI THIS!!!" Chives crawled out of the box like a thousand mechanical centipedes while the springs of dill and flakes of parsley erupted out of the box like a plague of locusts.

Punk was far enough away to spin away from the possessed gateway of released Ranch Demons, but not fast enough to leave the chair before the dill sprigs and parsley flakes swarmed around his face, stinging the welder's mask with such ferocity, it was leaving BB-sized dents in the metal.

"Punk, auuughhh!! DOO INTENSE!" screamed Julie, turning her head to one side. Her face was already swollen and covered with blood from her broken nose. "Gedd helb!" she screamed before a swarm of chives overtook her and dragged her to the floor.

"Julie, no!" screamed Punk, but he was pushed back by a sudden tidal wave of buttermilk and mayonnaise that erupted from the box. A huge demon made of garlic cloves and carrying a whip impregnated with shards of salt was riding the wave on a surfboard made from the bones of a thousand damned souls who had died in the wasteland known as Hidden Valley. It flexed its chest, and laughed with such maniacal power, that all the kitchen windows exploded outwards.

Every bird everywhere suddenly took flight.

Several thousand miles away, the Pope clutched his chest, his eyes rolled back, whispered, "Tutti siamo persi..." before falling into a coma, his face frozen in mortal terror.

Punk rolled on his back and stared at the sun through his broken ceiling, which was being blotted out by a sickly green fog. "What hath God wrought?" he wondered. Could such an evil even exist? He quickly thought about what he could use to defeat such a demon. Oil and vinegar? A balsamic? He would certainly need more than a thousand islands to defeat this vile creature. We watched helplessly as tendrils of foul Ranch flavoring oozed into the sky, leaving pale green stains across the clouds. He knew if he didn't do something soon, the world would be lost.

Punk tried to get up, but the demon grabbed Punk with its whip, and tossed the helpless pinniped against the walls back and forth like he was some kind of ragdoll. 'YOUR WORLD IS MINE ALONE TO DO AS I WISH!!!" he screamed, finally making good use of the author's "Caps Lock" key. "AND NOTHING CAN STOP ME!!!! AHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!!!"

"Do!" screamed Julie, pulling herself free and swatting at the parsley flakes. "Dis wold is dot for you! Go bag to bere you cabe frob, bile debon! Tage your Ranch hellspawn and begon frob dis wold! I rebuke dee!" And she held aloft her huge green gem.

"AS YOU WISH, LITTLE GIRL...!!! BUT HEED WELL MY WARNING, SOMEONE ELSE WILL RELEASE ME, AND THEN WE SHALL FIGHT AGAIN!!!!" And with that, the demon began to fade, the pale green glow waned, and after a minute, the ravaged kitchen lay bare of any demon influence.

Punk pulled himself off the kitchen counter, too bruised to keep himself upright. Julie kicked around some of the kitchen debris with her foot. She wiped her face, and stared at the blood smeared in her hand.

"Well," she said finally. "Dat certainly bas extreme. I dink my dose is broken ... along wid several ribs."

"Let's not buy that cereal again," said Punk. "In fact, let's not ever buy any product labeled 'Extreme,' again..."

"Oh, you god dat right! Damn straight!" said Julie.

But back in her bedroom ...

...deep in her backpack

... lay a stick of gum.

It lies sleeping.
Dreaming.

...Until something awakens the Extreme mint that is to come.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:00 AM EST [Link]