wombat_socho

Well, this is going to be a very skin-of-my-teeth run to Vegas this week. I don't have to worry about feeding myself, but I might wind up putting gas on a credit card, depending on when the VA gets around to depositing my mileage reimbursement to PenFed. 

There was no meatloaf at the Stage Stop tonight, so I had a club sandwich, potato salad, and carrot cake instead. Skipped blogging today and also didn't do any writing either. Just wasn't in the mood - which is really something I need to work on, because I have the feeling I may be needing to crank out the wordage a lot more in the near future. 

ISTR Tom Wolfe saying in The Right Stuff how pilots felt "You could never win against the Reflector Heads; you could, at best, hold your ground." 
Well, I held my ground at the eye clinic bright and early Tuesday morning,  and the gals in the optometry shop said they'd get me replacement frames since mine are a bit wonky. They put some stuff in the left side to help hold the lens in place so it doesn't pop out. 

I stayed at the Cannery this time around, and apparently Priceline has gone back to not listing resort fees, because I got tagged for an extra $33. Welp. Made the mistake of ordering the taco salad at Victory's, which was actually good until I got down to the refried beans, which were just awful. 

So I got up Tuesday morning, hit the Dunkin' for coffee and a couple old fashioned doughnuts, and then the McD's on Losee for a couple sausage McMuffins and a Diet Coke, and then went in for the eye appointment. Afterward, I topped off at Maverik (E15 @$4.099) and took a call from the pharmacy, which wanted to know if it was OK to mail my Ozempic to Tonopah. I told them to just hold onto it and I'd pick it up, which I did.

Then it was back to the Cannery for the 1100 showing of Coyote & Acme, which I got to see for $6.50 thanks to some odd combination of discounts, and would have been worth the full $13.00. You wouldn't have thought Wile E. Coyote could be a sympathetic character, but the movie made him a hapless victim of Acme's consistently defective products. Big ups to Will Forte as Kevin Avery, Lana Condor as his niece Paige, and especially John Cena as Buddy Crane, chief legal eagle for Acme and former classmate of Kevin's. Excellent movie, and I have a good mind to see it again next week after the NSSAB meeting. 

Pep Boys didn't have the tires I needed, so they're going to order them for installation next week while I'm in Vegas. It looks like I'll be spending most of the week there after I get back from the picnic in Reno, between NSSAB and the pulmonary appointment on Friday morning. I'm almost tempted to take Homeko with me in lieu of the Surface, but no. 

The drive back from Vegas Tuesday was rough. My stomach was unsettled after the triple hit of Celsius energy drink, coffee, and Diet Coke, so I stuck to Sprite Zero, and as a result I spent most of the drive home worried that I was going to nod out. I didn't, but I was sufficiently tired after the drive that I took my medicine, ate the last Arby's Roast Beef double, and staggered off to bed around 8 PM, not waking until 0800 this morning. 

Today was mostly taken up with blogging, a phone appointment with Dr. Julie, laundry, and a stop at Raley's for tea (plastic jug since they were out of cans), cream, liquid soap, and some English muffins. 

I'm actually getting to bed before 2300. Go me. 

The Misfit is up on Amazon as an e-book, and I'm going to look at Ingram in a couple weeks when I have money again so I can print off the hardcopies I owe people. It's only about 76 pages, but I promised people they'd get hardcopies, so damn it, there will be hardcopies. And maybe some postcards. 

The Hawk, the Fox, and the Princess underwent a fair amount of revising thanks to the notes L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright sent me, which caught some howlers and minor issues I somehow missed, to say nothing of pointing out a few things that I should have considered but somehow didn't. I have to clean up the TOC and reformat the fourth draft. Also sent off an inquiry to the Imperial Household Agency asking for their assistance with regard to making sure I didn't accidentally insult their agency or the Chrysanthemum Throne. I'll go ahead and launch the Kickstarter tomorrow, I think.  

After a few days of experimenting with it, I'm not overly impressed with Nuun. It's like dehydrated Hint crossed with Alka-Seltzer. I can't taste the stevia that allegedly sweetens it, but I can't taste much of anything else either. I've taken to dumping a couple envelopes of Pure Orange (which I have in abundance) in so it has some taste and some sweetness. Guess we'll find out pretty soon whether Plink! is any better. 

Grok put together a little Free Trader game for me, which has been fun and occasionally amusing. 

I started listening to the Utena soundtracks again. As I recall, I was listening to these a LOT after the divorce. I don't think it helped my head.  

 So as part of the kickstarter for Larry Correia's American Paladin, Ark Press threw three shindigs across the country to celebrate. Once they announced that Travis Corcoran would be there, I squeezed every last penny out of the NSSAB reimbursement check and went off to SLC last Thursday. I loaded up with ice and iced tea, hit Love's north of town for a couple of gallons with the intent of topping off in Ely where regular was fifty cents cheaper. I did this, grabbed burgers at the McD's b/c the Carl's Jr app wasn't working for the Ely store, bought some razors and Diet Coke at the Family Dollar, and rolled on to the Park Inn in SLC. They didn't have a fridge, but aside from that and a bunch of gnats the room was nice enough. Couldn't do any blogging because I stupidly forgot the new password at The Other McCain, but I did finish the second Azur Lane fanfic that had been struggling to get out of my head. 

Friday I went out for breakfast at Dee's Family Restaurant in SE SLC, which was very nice, had quite reasonable prices, and excellent service. Then I burned off some flyers for the convention, lazed around in my room for a bit, and then drove over to the Grand American Hotel. 

It was well worth it. Open bar, all manner of tasty tasty snacks, hanging out with Larry and Travis, meeting Larry's lovely wife, passing out many of the flyers, a good talk followed by a Q&A with Larry and Travis. A good time was had by all, even if I lost my Buc-ee's hat. Saturday morning I got up, cleared the hotel and got my insulin out of their fridge, and motored up to the last Maverik  on I-80 before Wendover, where I got gas, ice, fluids, and Bad Things for breakfast because I got there long after breakfast hours. Stopped in Wendover for lunch and a bathroom break, which I wound up taking at Arby's because I think somebody was passed out in the crapper at McD's. Down 93A to Ely, topped off at the Love's, got burger at McD's, and headed on home. 

I'm absolutely broke now but it was very much worth it.  

So I have a Teams appointment with the VA Friday morning to discuss the reduction in my rating that they're considering. That's the good news. The bad news is that I misread the website and thought the appointment was in PDT when in fact it's EDT. So I have to get up at 0300. Ugh. Hopefully I'll get a coffee and an English muffin in me before the camera goes on. Helping my case is that they want to base this decision on one (1) pulmonary exam as opposed to several years of increasing albuterol and Sudafed use, the latter of which has been prescribed for me by my new primary care doc, who I saw last week while getting $2500 worth of AC work done on the Kia. At least I got to ride home to Tonopah in airconditioned comfort, which was nice because the temperature was in triple digits down in Vegas and not much lower in Tonopah.

Speaking of Tonopah, the primary election has come and gone but the work of the balancing board drags on. My boss, the County Clerk, lost her bid for re-election, but I'm okay with the rest of the results here in Nye County. We're going to get one big check at the end of this for our work on the primary, and then we get to chill until the general election in November. 

Based mainly on Anna-chan's reaction, I decided to rewrite the duel scenes in The Hawk, the Fox, and the Princess so they don't resemble the ones from Revolutionary Girl Utena so much, and as a result, they're considerably more bloody than they originally were. I couldn't resist inserting the famous "blood and iron" quote from Bismarck, and being somewhat autistic, I quoted it correctly. 

Next week my work on the balancing board will be interrupted by the NSSAB meeting, which looks like it's only going to last a couple of hours. Well, they're going to reimburse me for two nights at The Mardi Gras, plus mileage and per diem, so I'm okay with that. 

Succeeded in winning the European Theater with Austria-Hungary against the Axis. Interestingly, the Soviet Union collapsed first, and in the peace treaty I confined myself to insisting on independence for Byelorussia, Ukraine, and the Volga German Republic. Germany and Italy followed not long after, and in those treaties I took Silesia, Venice, Trieste, South Tyrol while setting Bavaria, the Papal States, and some other northern Italian states free. The war is still going on against Japan, but I'm pretty indifferent to that since I don't have any colonies in Asia and am uninterested in sending Imperial troops to China or Siberia get involved in that mess. 

I bought some Depeche Mode and Gary Numan CDs, and they're sitting at the post office waiting for me to pick them up. I'll probably do that tomorrow on my way to the courthouse. 

There was a problem with the room block that got sorted out last week with a call to the sales manager, so now we have a renewed confirmation of our room block and a reservation link, which I finally got around to sending to Frank on Friday, and I pushed out the newsletter tonight so everyone knows. Julie had to cancel on us because of a conflict with Writer's Cantina, at which she's going to be presenting, and after looking at their list of guests & presenters I can understand why. Caitlin probably won't be here because of her back injury, so I've contacted Kukuruyo about doing the T-shirt design. 

The bonus check came in last Friday and was a little under a grand after taxes. Most of it went to the Son of Silvercon credit card and I kept the rest in NSB because I have to go down to the lymphedema clinic Thursday. I'll be staying at the Strat again because it's the least expensive venue, as usual, beating out Palace Station by about $30. Gas is above $5 here in Tonopah and just barely below that in Beatty, so it seems wise to hang on to my money. 

I think after the passive-aggressive response to my comments about ICE and the lethal stupidity of protesters in the Twin Cities, I'm going to drop out of StippleAPA, this time for good. With the exception of Jeanne, I don't know any of these people, and with some exceptions, I don't think I want to. The whole experience has given me a bad sense of deja vu, a delayed sense of the way I felt during the Sad Puppies affair. As I was going out to dinner & laundry, I had a momentary vision of a scene from an as-yet unwritten prequel to "They Are Telling Me It Is Time To Go", in which the commanding general of the Minneapolis/St. Paul military district tells the main character  "Minneapolis is not a place one comes back to, Colonel." I think I'll just do one last issue and then drop out without bothering to mention my departure. It's not an airport, after all. 

In the meantime, I have my zines for APA-V and N'APA to do, the monthly reports for George and the N3F, and a balky wireless printer to kick back to life. The dishwasher is still clogged (John the super is thinking it might be the pump) so I'm doing the necessary dishes by hand as needed. Did I mention that I was elected a Life Member of the N3F? Didn't ask for it, and don't feel worthy, but there it is. 

Finished Soda Pop Soldier and am now perusing Pop Kult Warlord. I'd forgotten what a downer the latter is. 

So it looks like a bunch of my clients cashed out at the last minute, which means I got paid for 55 of the 58 returns I did, and maybe cleared enough to make a bit of bonus. Between the updated Windows app allowing me to have the documents on one screen and Blockworks on the other, and getting Starlink to work in the final week, it was a lot less strain than last year doing the returns; all the strain came from getting returns to work on. Guess I need to be more aggressive about calling the clients next year. 

I did a whole lot of nothing yesterday, as I usually do on the 16th, but I did get caught up on the blogging before getting swept by the Braves. Today I made it out the door to Raley's for tea, burritos, Pringles, and some Nixie sugarfree sodas which I forgot had Stevia in them. Blech. Also lost two of three to the Cubs in Wrigley since none of my "power" hitters could reach the fences except Tom Grieve who started in place of Vada Pinson in Game 3 against Jerry Koosman. 

I'm having fun writing a fantasy with Grok where a mysterious Mr. Henderson comes out of the deserts of Nevada with $30 million from silver mining and sports gambling (never on baseball) and buys the Senators from Bob Short for $20 million in late October 1970 - too late to stop the Denny McLain trade, but early enough to forestall the Curt Flood deal. Grok seems more willing to entertain notions like the Braves trading Phil Niekro for Jeff Burroughs. 

Guess I'll hit the rack and head for the post office later this morning. 

Not all that, really. Finished off a couple of returns, made progress on a couple more, and punted several returns to Monday and Tuesday. That ate up a couple of hours. 

Tonight is normally dinner & laundry night, but I had to play my games against Pete that were originally scheduled for Friday. That worked out well; I swept his Brewers, which means I now have a microscopic lead on the Royals for the last wild card spot. 

Feeling a little tired after consuming an entire kielbasa, a bag of mixed veggies, and probably too many slices of multigrain bread, so Rule 5 Sunday gets bumped to Monday. 

The returns continue to dribble in by ones and twos, and of course the clients who show up this late almost never have their shit together. 
At the rate I'm going I'll be lucky to clear 50 returns this year, and the periodic notes on Teams that the office has almost 200 returns done over last year is pretty hard to take. 

After talking to the community manager Monday about whether I could stick a pole mount up in the back of the building for my Starlink antenna (no), she advised me to just take it out back and throw it on the ground. This I finally did today, cutting a small hole in the kitchen window screen and feeding the cable out through it, and whoa. Blazing speed! I called Frontier to cancel my DSL service, they e-mailed me a QR code so I can send my router back next time I'm in Las Vegas near a UPS store, and now the Optiplex and phone are zooming along at about 10x the speed they were before, especially after I went out back and adjusted the antenna so it was no longer 17% off the optimal orientation. 

Went out to Raley's, and they were still out of canned Arizona Diet Green Tea. So I grabbed a couple of jugs, some Celsius energy drinks that were on sale, got some Tai Pei cartons because they were all out of the Innovasian stuff that was on sale, and all it did was make me miss the China A Go Go. I'll stick to the ramen and TVP for now, I guess.

Started reading Yuval Kordov's Dark Legacies series but it's a little too dark for me right now. Fortunately I have Amelia: Counterrevolution and Sinister Syndicate of Space to entertain me, which are considerably more lighthearted. 

Lost 2 of 3 to Cleveland on Tuesday and since Pete is off at some pinball convention this weekend, I won't play him until Sunday. So close to .500 and maybe making the playoffs. 

An unexpected benefit of having to fall back on Windows Media Player has been finding that I had a dozen or so playlists that had been hiding somewhere on the hard drive, and most of them were still playable. It was a blast from the past listening to the old playlists, many of which are around 20 years old, including the one that horrified Melody (that playlist apparently got amended), and the one about my exes. So that's been fun, mostly; playing them has brought up a lot of memories, not all of them unpleasant.

There's a thread on X asking people the three songs they want played at their funeral. That hits a little close to home for me to want to hang it out in public, but I did ask Grok what it thought the three most appropriate songs to sum up my life would be. It came up with Cake's "Love You Madly" (haha, no), the Butthole Surfers' "Shame of Life" (oookay), and "something classical" like Holst's "The Planets." I thought James McMurtry's "Too Long in the Wasteland" and Beethoven's "Eroica" sympathy would be more apropos for #1 and #3, myself. 

So while I was flipping through old posts about music looking for the second link supra, I wound up listening to more Beethoven, some Tchaikovsky, and finally Dvorak on YouTube. Nice, relaxing stuff.