wombat_socho

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.

Current Mood: moody
Current Music: Conelrad - Powers of Two

I actually did a lot better than I thought this year. Didn't get anywhere near the 100 returns I did last year, but the 55 returns I got paid for were sufficiently meaty that I'm going to get a bonus check for about $1100. It helped that I didn't give coupons to hardly anybody and had zero overtime.

Had two trips down to Vegas for VA stuff, and I was surprised that they turned around my travel pay from the first appointment quickly enough that it helped pay for the second one. My feet are okay (except for a tiny crack in my left foot) and so is my CPAP machine, although the pulmonary tech advised me to wash the mask and hose more often, suggesting wipes as optimum for the mask.

The season ended for my Senators with a 1-2 series against the division-leading Twins; the Royals went 2-1 against their final opponents and so get the last wildcard slot. Finished the season 79-84, second in my division against the Twins and fourth overall in the AL. Have to wait and see what everyone else's keepers and free agents are before I ask Grok for help in improving the roster. Looks like I have a couple of promising rookies.

It's about time to start working more actively on the convention, I think.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Tangerine Dream - Ricochet (Part One)

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.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Armored Saint - Control Issues

So I'm up to 30 returns cashed out; there are another half-dozen or so sitting in the upload bucket waiting to be paid for. I suspect a lot of those people are going to wait until the 15th to cash out, because they can. I did notice there are a lot fewer Refund Transfer clients than I had last year, which is probably part of that...anyway, I put in almost eight hours today, so at least I have the hours going for me.

In other news today, I ran the dishwasher and came within an inch of flooding the kitchen. Guess I'll get up early tomorrow and call the property manager, have them get a plumber up here or somebody with a Shop-Vac at least so they can suck all the standing water out of there before I get a fresh crop of fruit flies.

Finished Sinister Syndicate of Space. Can't wait to see how he wraps this up in just four more books.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again (YT)

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.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Conelrad - Orange Herald

So I spent about six hours on the clock today working on sundry returns, calling clients to discuss their returns, and firing off messages and e-mails to other clients whose documents were incomplete or nonexistent. So far I have 27 returns done/paid for (really 25 because mine doesn't count and I comped the one I did for #1 Son)and I figure my chances of hitting 100 like I did last year are slim and none. At least I have 30 hours on the clock this last pay period, and a good chance of getting another thirty in the upcoming short week before April 15.

Tomorrow I'm going to make an effort to get outside since I didn't today. Going to skip going downtown for pizza and mail, just going out to get some sun, throw out garbage, see if any cans of Arizona Diet Green Tea came in to Raley's on the Friday truck. It's not like there's anything in the mail I really need to see before next Thursday anyway. Maybe I'll slap together a breakfast pizza to nosh on while I'm working.

Looking doubtful whether I'll be going East next month, and I said as much in an email replying to one Brian sent me earlier in the week in a much delayed response to one I'd sent him last year about helping with towing a (almost certainly inoperable) Toaster from a dealer in Bunker Hill WV, speaking of projects that probably won't pan out. Cash flow is part of it, of course; I am still carrying a stupid amount of credit card debt from Confinement and need to work that down before Son of Silvercon. Got three hotel rooms to pay for, after all, plus the care and feeding of our Guest of Honor and his lovely wife.

Back when things were slow (like, earlier this month/late March) I started going through old entries from LJ that got moved here and re-tagging them, since so many of them are unhelpfully tagged "my life". Like, who else's would they be? I mean, there are a couple of entries Melody made while I was in various hospitals, but even those are about me being in the hospital. Something to keep myself busy with come May, I guess.

Had to re-edit this post several times because using multiple user names screwed up the HTML somehow. *shrug*

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Conelrad - Long Peace

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.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Conelrad - Breakout Capability

Finally managed to get out of the apartment and down to the post office, where I found things from Amazon like a screwdriver for my glasses, a replacement Anker cable for nighttime recharging (necessary since the previous one I'd bought at Smith's broke off in the phone), replacement latte cups (one broke a couple weeks ago), Bob's Red Mill TVP, and last but not least Ozempic from the VA.

Worked on a couple of returns today, one of which I finished and one that maybe needs a 1098E. Still have a couple of AOL returns waiting for people to approve them.

Ran out to Raley's before it closed and picked up more tea (the last five cans of the Diet Green tea), some cocktail sauce and tartar sauce, ketchup, sunflower seeds, some sponges for occasional dishwashing, and a couple of six-packs of Diet Dr. Pepper that were in the clearance rack.

Starlink antenna & associated gadgetry aren't here yet but FedEx claims it'll be here tomorrow. Since it's not even in San Bernardino, I'm pressing X for doubt.

I'm on the edge of a Level 6 win in Civilization V as the Romans. Hit the neighboring Mongols hard when they stupidly tried to take Rome right after I started deploying trebuchets, and it cost them two cities destroyed and one puppeted. Nobody's fucked with me since. I may not be able to to build any fission reactors since I can't find any damn uranium, but I have a big enough lead over one of the Venices that it may not matter.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Klaus Schulze - Synphaera

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.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Dvorak - New World Symphony on YT

There wasn't much going on at work, but I spent an hour and a half doing it anyway, which got me a little over ten hours for the week. Sure hope it picks up in April. Hell, I hope it picks up NOW. ~~Where is everybody?~~

My regular clinician Julie is back from maternity leave (mom & baby doing well) and we talked a lot about my weird BP readings, which should have me passing out or at least being wobbly, but I'm not. We agreed that it would make more sense to take it sitting down at the desk instead of lying down in bed, so starting tomorrow, that's what I'll do.

Lost two out of three to the Royals tonight, which balances the 2-1 series against the Brewers earlier in the week.

This afternoon I had a couple Big Fish, O-rings, and Diet Coke at the BK before stopping at the post office, where I just found junk mail and the current StippleAPA but not the Ozempic the VA sent me. Gave the APA a cursory read-through and laughed at my fellow accountant going apeshit over comments I made that weren't directed to her. Welp. Got a couple weeks to think about it.

Picked up more tea, English muffins, some pistachios and tater tots, which I had originally intended to have with the popcorn shrimp, but after consuming the fish sammiches I felt that would be wretched excess. So I'll eat them next week.

Paid the Frontier bill and the Fission-chan credit card. Also, since I broke one of the latte cups I use for flax muffins, I hunted the original order down on Amazon, threw $50 from PenFed at the Synchrony card, and ordered replacements.

Chuck Norris died last night, and of course the jokes were all over X. So were the savage responses to a limp-dicked obituary in Variety.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Conelrad - Pluperfect Tense

Work has actually been picking up lately, which is nice because I was getting pretty depressed about not carrying my weight on the team. Been finishing roughly one return a day since Friday, a pace which I'm sure will pick up as we get into April.

Winamp had been acting more and more flaky of late, and today I decided I'd just delete it, download a fresh file, and reinstall. Well, that didn't work - it refuses to install except with Administrator permissions - but I have those! There are apparently ways to get around this problem, but they may as well be written in Chinese for all the sense they make to me. Fortunately, Windows Media Player still works, and I'll just have to fiddle with the playlists until I get them right.

In other technical matters, I'm giving up on Frontier's wretched DSL service and ordered a Starlink setup. I'll have to set it up in the bedroom looking out the window, I guess, since there's no good way to set it up otherwise.

Also looked at how much house I can afford given what I'm paying in rent, and it doesn't look too good. May have to wait until next year, pay down the credit cards, and put money away towards a down payment.

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Conlrad - Cable Damage Committee

So I drove down to Las Vegas on Tuesday after spending a couple of hours on a massive return, stopped at the Skye Canyon McD's for baseball and burgers (beat the Red Sox two out of three) and eventually arrived at the Stratosphere early enough to knock out some blogging before I went to bed and slept most of the way through the night.

Got up, packed up, hit the McD's on Sahara & Paradise for breakfast, and was only a couple minutes late for my wound care appointment. Dr. Lal was very happy with the progress and strongly recommended that I call the lymphedema clinic and ask for more farrowwraps, since the Velcro on all but one of mine has died. I also took the time to stop by the VSO office where a helpful gent from the state veteran service department filed my claim for unemployability, which I have a good chance of getting since I haven't had full-time work since 2018 and my rating is at 60% already. If it's approved, my rating will go to 100% with a consequent boost in the VA disability pay, maybe as much as $4k a month before the deductions I have in place for insurance.

After that, I hit the Maverik on Tropical for E15 ($4.05 with Nitro, alas), an iced coffee, muffins, a burrito, and a couple bottles of Diet Coke, and after eating the burrito and one of the muffins I went back to the Stratosphere to get my hat, which I'd forgotten since it fell behind the desk last night and I overlooked it in the morning. The Strat was short of security people, so it took a while to get someone to take me up to the room and retrieve he errant hat.

Next on the checklist was getting the oil changed in the Kia, which I did at the Jiffy Lube on Craig & Decatur near the Sonic, where I got fluids and a pretzel after the oil. One stop at the Arby's on Rancho later, I was headed home. Managed not to stop anywhere along the way and finally got home a little after 2015. Finished the huge return I've been working on for most of the week, and now I'm going to call it a night.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Klaus Schulze - Velvet Voyage

The last couple of nights I've been going to bed very early, getting up early, and going back to bed for a few hours. Tonight I'm up later thanks to blogging, so I should be back to my normal sleep cycle tomorrow.

Still not getting a lot of work done at work. Today I finished

troika 's renter's credit return after finding out you had to enter the CRP in Blockworks to do the renter's credit, so at least I know that now in case another MN return comes across my desk, but that was it. I was scheduled 3-8, so I rescheduled my game with the Yankees until tomorrow, but then Lindsey posted the schedules and I'm on from 3-8 tomorrow too. Well, if tomorrow is anything like today, I'll be done well before game time. Meanwhile, everyone in the office seems to be busy but me. I'm starting to think I'm not going to get anywhere close to 100 returns this year unless everyone shows up in April.

The Frontier internet has been absolute shit this week. I think when my next paycheck from Block comes in (or maybe sooner) I'll shell out for a Starlink mini and stick it in the front window. Or maybe the kitchen/bedroom window.

Current Mood: busy

The Guest of Honor was Devon Eriksen, author of Theft of Fire, and instead of doing the normal reading, he played the first chapter of the audiobook version, which is actually more like a radio play, since he hired different voice actors for the three main characters. It was good. I already own the e-book, but I bought the hardback and had it autographed. Also came home with some books from the Baen Roadshow - for those of you who don’t know, this is a slideshow where publisher Toni Weisskopf talks about upcoming books, art, and the publishing business, and it’s usually a lot of fun even without the book giveaways – and a few books Mike was trying to get rid of from an estate sale.
As usual, I spent more time hanging out in the lobby and the consuite (better than the Worldcon and it’s not even close) talking to people than I did actually attending programming – in fact, the Baen Roadshow was the only programming item I actually attended, which isn’t the first time this has happened.

      I was going to try and be cheap because of an unexpected expense that cropped up at the beginning of the trip, but that didn’t happen. I ran afoul of Southwest’s new rule regarding extra seats for the overweight, which the website asks you about but the app doesn’t. Fortunately, Tawanda and her crew at McCarran managed to fix me up without charging me a kilobuck I didn’t have, and in fact, since all my flights were less than full, I did get the money for the extra seats back.
At the Nashville Airport, since I was tired and stupid, I forgot that payment for the rental car came at the end when I turned it in, so I got hit with extension charges on Friday when I called to extend my one-day reservation through Monday. Silly me. On the other hand, I did get a free upgrade from the Corolla I originally asked for to a GMC Terrain, which had a really weird gearshift mounted on the steering column. Unlike older column-mounted shifts, this one required you to pull the lever and flip it up or down depending on whether you were driving or backing up. Park required you to push the lever in. What a pain. Some time I’ll get a car that doesn’t require me to study the owner’s manual before I get going, but not this time.
     I didn’t go to O’Charley’s, the rather good fast casual place next to the hotel, but I did hit Whataburger, Waffle House, the Publix (their tuna subs aren’t as good as their cold cut subs, but their sushi is pretty good) and of course, after the convention ended on Sunday, I made the hajj unto Crossville and Buc-ee’s, where I got the barbeque (Carolina style pulled pork, which was meh, and the brisket, which was amazing as usual) along with large quantities of Diet Coke, entirely too many baked goods, a hat, a travel pillow, and some jerky. Because you can’t go to Buc-ee’s and not get the jerky.
I goofed up when I extended my Terrain rental, thinking my flight back to Vegas was at 1 PM, so I agreed to bring the car back at 11 AM. I had hoped to maybe go space available on an earlier flight, but thanks to my lowly economy ticket, I couldn’t do that, so I had to wait until 4:55 PM to check my bag and it was almost 9 by the time I finally boarded the flight home. Good thing I’d picked up a couple of Publix subs on the way to the airport.
     We got in to McCarran at 2 AM Central/midnight Pacific; I got my bag and made my way to the parking ramp, got my Kia out of hock, and decided against stopping at Jack in the Box or McD’s because I really wasn’t hungry but rather dog-tired.
Tuesday morning I made up for that by going to the Omelet House for a mile-high omelet before topping off the tank and going home, where I was so exhausted I went straight to bed and didn’t even drag the suitcase upstairs.

I sent my zine and cover to Jeanne, who informed me that one of the other members was upset that I called them ignorant - which I hadn't, that was a different apahacker altogether - and eventually things got to point where I told her that considering my responsibilities to other APAs, the convention newsletter, and my perszine, that if she felt I wasn't being polite enough maybe I should just drop out. (Again.) We'll see what happens.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Tangerine Dream - Mysterious Semblance At The Strand of Nightmares

The pace of work has picked up a little bit, but I'm still not clocking more than an hour or two a day out of the four or five that I'm on call. Next week's check will at least include reimbursements for the useless Oregon certification, regarding which I'm tempted to sue Oregon for violating the Equal Protection Clause as well as illegal restraint of trade.

One of the door switches in the Kia has gone wonky, so the dome light won't shut off. I don't have the time or money to deal with it now, so I'll just have to hope it doesn't drain the battery while I'm in Nashville.

Weight shot up into the mid-390s after the NSSAB meeting (as usual) and again when I did laundry Monday night. I'm going to try and be moderate with the fressing while I'm at Confinement, but I'm not optimistic. So much to eat there, and so much of it is so bad for me.

Tonight's pre-flight hotel in Vegas is the Mardi Gras, which I've never stayed at before, but the price was right and it's reasonably close to the airport. Going to park the car at the airport and hope I don't get fucked too badly.

Everything is packed up except the insulin and my Kindle, so I'm going to clock in to see if I have any work, scrape my face, and then hit the road. Miles to go and all that.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: David Bowie - Station to Station

Work has been dribbling in, with four returns paid off and a couple more waiting for clients to send me documents or tell me they don't have them. So far the first peak has been a bust; last year I was fairly busy but this year not so much.

The problem with the VA travel reimbursement got sorted and I've collected all my pay for the January appointments; I'll probably get the check for last week's optometry appointment next week right before I leave for Nashville, which is to say around the same time the NSSAB check will drop. Also spoke to the pharmacy clinician and she agreed that Dr. Chow went off half-cocked with the Carvedilol so we're going to drop that back to a 6.25mg tablet and in the meantime, cut the current 12.5 mg tabs in half. She also offered to send a combined Metfprmin/Jardiance pill which if nothing else will reduce the number of pills I have to take. As for the optometry appointment, it looks like I'll be getting new glasses as my eyes continue to slowly deteriorate. No glaucoma or macular degeneration, though.

Before I head down 95 tomorrow I need to stop in briefly at the post office and pick up some prescriptions that have been waiting for me since last week, when I was blocked from getting them by late rising and work that unfortunately coincided with the hours the PO was open.

I am rereading Behold: Humanity! from the beginning, even though I have some other books I should be reading.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Klaus Schulze - Neuronengesang

I missed a lot of time on the clock last week since I had some kind of low-level ick going on, not that there was anything to do anyway. I did do up my return and fire it off; none of the stuff in the OBBB did anything for me since I basically made no money last year. Well, sure, I had about $4000 from Block and another $1400 for Fidelity, but when you add that all together it doesn't even come close to my standard deduction. So I'll get back what was taken out of my paychecks and the Fidelity withdrawal, and that's it. Lost less money on Son of Silvercon than I did last year, mainly because I didn't deduct the expenses of travel to Confinement, so there's that.

The SSDI dropped today, so I paid all my bills and threw a little more money at the credit cards. I also noted that the VA paid me for my stopover at the lab a couple of weeks ago, so hopefully the reimbursement for the appointment at NWPCC will show up soon. Still haven't heard back from them regarding the podiatry appointment, which they disallowed for some bogus reason; I bitched to the patient advocate and they said they'd have the travel boss call me. Still waiting on that. Next week it's down to Las Vegas again for an optometry appointment, the week after that I'll have the (now quarterly?) NSSAB meeting, and the week after that I'm off to Nashville for Confinement. Which reminds me, I need to call the hotel and get a room. It looks like the airfare will only be about $230 or so, which is a blessing. I just want to be able to manage things without having to stop by Rapid Cash again.

Despite not being on the clock, I was a busy boy today. Before I paid the bills, I went and got sheared and then renewed my tabs at the DMV. Apparently they're now requiring appointments, but I lucked out and there was nobody else in the office. Got some breakfast at the Stage Stop and went home to pay bills after that, and around 8 I changed the toner cartridge on the printer, ran off my application for the Oregon state tax pro license and a copy of the Elucidator for Trish, and wrote checks to Oregon and Frontier, whose payment website was being balky. Dropped all that in the mail along with Jeanne's check after picking up tea, yogurt, eggs (you can't have too many eggs), cream, and English muffins. Forgot to get the fig bars, but I can do without those.

I'll finally get around to doing the laundry tomorrow night, I think.

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Aerosmith - Toys In The Attic

So my new primary care doc (until he retires and I get a new one, which will apparently be happening later in the spring) doesn't like my BP or cholesterol, so he's upping my dose of Carvedilol and adding another med for the cholesterol, which I think I'll research before I blindly stuff it in my gob.

I checked into Boulder Station with no trouble but on getting to my room I remembered why it's my least favorite of the Station properties: the plug that I need for the nose hose is buried behind the bed and is already taken up by the nightstand lamp. Otherwise I slept well, and dined well at Tacos El Pastor Wednesday night even though they were out of suadero. Breakfast on Wednesday and Thursday both was at McD's, and I'm beginning to think the sugar-free vanilla iced coffee may not be for me, at least in the large size; both days I had a somewhat upset stomach for most of the morning.

Today I had the Oregon state tax preparer retest, this time at a place on South Rainbow, and this time I passed, even though I should have brought copies of schedules B and E along with the form 1040, A, C, and SE. Got a 77 and did much better on the final problem solving section because I had (most of) the needed forms. Now I have to shell out another $85 to Oregon for the actual license, the thieves. I'll do that tomorrow after the financial dust settles from the trip.

After the test, I doubled back to the Maverik on Lake Mead to fill up on E15 ($2.55 after the Nitro discount, huzzah) but first I stopped at the local Randy's Donuts (an outpost of the famous LA doughnut joint) and sampled their doughnuts, which are good. I saved the ham & cheese croissant for breakfast tomorrow. After Maverik, I used my BOGO on the Rally's app to get a Big Buford & a Baconzilla, which were smaller than I remembered but just as tasty. I got too many fries, and the drink was kinda small for an XL, but I was going to Sonic on the way out of town anyway. Also I stopped at Walmart and got more melatonin gummies since I'm almost out.

Then it was up 95 to home, stopping only in Amargosa Valley for garbage and Goldfield to urinate. Actually got home before 1800 but not before dark...but I'm really tired since I woke up at 0600 this morning long before my alarm was to go off, so I do believe I'll take my meds and insulin and call it a night.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: BTO - Away From Home

By Any Meme Necessary, 2025 Edition

1. Was 2025 a good year for you?

On balance, yes. It was definitely better than 2024 in a lot of ways.

2. What was your favorite moment(s) of the year?

a) Son of Silvercon III with Maxwell Drake as our GoH

b) Hanging out with friends (not enough of them and not for long enough) on the annual Not-For-Balticon Excursion

c) The See Minesota & Die Tour in October.

c) Avoiding serious illness and hospitalization.

3. What was your least favorite moment(s) of the year?

a) Finding out I wouldn't be going back to Reno for second peak because the regional manager threw a fit over my expenses.

b) Having to cancel my trip to Minnesota in October thanks to food poisoning.

4. What did you do in 2025 that you’d never done before?

Drove to Minnesota to hang out with #1 Son and saw parts of Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota (including Wall Drug), Southwest Minnesota, Nebraska, & Colorado I'd never seen before.

5. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I don't do New Year's resolutions because I suck at following through on them.

Having said that, I made serious attempts to:

a) stay rested and on track dietarily - Mostly I managed this, which is probably why I was generally healthier this year.

b) especially during tax season - Since I was home for all of tax season, this wasn't the problem it usually is.

c) keep better track of my money and put more of it away - I kept better track of it, but a lot of it went towards Son of Silvercon and the annual hajj unto Northern Virginia/Western Maryland.

6. Where were you when 2025 began?

At home in Tonopah

7. Who were you with?

Nobody

8. Where were you when 2025 ended?

At home in Tonopah

9. Who will you be with when 2025 ends?

Nobody

10. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Not that I'm aware of.

11. Did you lose anybody close to you in 2025?

Thank God, no

12. Who did you miss?

Various friends and family members, most notably Holly & Oscar Bambolo and their kids,

who couldn't make it to Son of Silvercon again this year. Also my friend RH, who was too sick to meet up with in May.

Also also my blog boss Stacy McCain, who was off celebrating his daughter Reagan's college graduation.

13. Who was the best new person you met in 2025?

Maxwell Drake and his lovely wife.

14. What was your favorite month of 2025?

July, because Son of Silvercon.

15. Did you travel outside of the US in 2025?

No. What for?

16. How many different states did you travel to in 2025?

Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Virginia, and Maryland

17. What would you like to have in 2025 that you lacked in 2022?

A new pancreas. A sugar mama. The usual.

18. What date from 2025 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

October 9th, my 66th birthday.

19. What were your biggest achievements of the year?

a) Not dying, and not even getting seriously ill.

b) Son of Silvercon

20. What was your biggest failure?

Amazingly, nothing went seriously wrong this year.

21. Did you suffer illness or injury?

This year I have been mercifully spared from either.

22. What was the best thing you bought?

I now have a really nice leather trench coat but have no idea when or where I'll actually wear it.

I also have a T-shirt commemorating Goetz von Berlichingen that I bought for Anime Fusion, but nobody got the jokes.

Finally, I came across a Colorado bakery that makes lebkuchen the way I remember them from Germany. I almost cried, they were that good.

23. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Maxwell Drake, who filled in for Tim Powers when Tim had to cancel on us.

24. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

My ex-wife. She can find somebody else's shoulder to cry on and help her with her taxes.

25. Where did most of your money go?

Son of Silvercon and the See Minnesota and Die tour.

26. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Son of Silvercon. I was also excited about seeing my son for the first time in almost ten years.

27. Did you drink a lot of alcohol in 2025?

No.

28. Did you do a lot of drugs in 2025?

More than in 2024. I had a lot more slack time this year.

29. Did you treat somebody badly in 2025?

I didn't think so...

30. Did somebody treat you badly in 2025?

The ex went off on me about a bunch of things in a phone call and an e-mail, most of which I'm pretty sure didn't happen.

I blocked her phone number and e-mail and washed my hands of her problems.

31. Compared to this time last year, are you:

i. happier or sadder? - I'm a bit happier. Things went moderately well for me.

ii. thinner or fatter? - A little heavier than last year.

iii. richer or poorer? - A bit richer. I acquired a new AmEx card from USAA (which I abused unmercifully for the Minnesota trip)

and some store credit from Amazon.

32. What do you wish you’d done more of in 2025?

Gone outside and touched grass, or the local equivalent of same.

33. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Video games are terribly addictive. So is Twitter.

I could stand to spend a lot less time on both of them.

I probably won't. (And I didn't.)

34. Did you fall in love in 2025?

No, but I lusted in my heart after a fair number of women, mostly of the 2d variety.

35. What was your favorite TV program(s)?

Kept meaning to watch the rest of Fallout before the new season started but never got around to it.

36. What song will always remind you of 2025?

There's no particular song that sums up the year, or even reminds me of a particular time this year.

37. How many concerts did you see in 2025?

None. Concerts are insanely expensive these days - like everything else, only worse.

38. Did you have a favorite concert in 2025?

See previous question.

39. What was your greatest musical discovery?

LoFi Girl on YouTube

40. What was the best book you read?

Didn't buy quite as many books as last year, but I came close. Best fiction was Ralts Bloodthorne's Bright White Light and Those Left Behind, the most recent books in His Behold! Humanity! saga.

Honorable mentions: John C. Wright's Starquest novels and Tom Kratman's 1919 - The Romanov Rising. Best non-fiction was The Last Winning Season, about the 1969 Senators.

41. What was your favorite film of this year?

Didn't actually see any movies, though I bought a copy of Rollerball.

42. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

The Pittman Room was closed for some reason, so I had my borthday steak at the Stage Stop.

43. What did you want and get?

I picked up a used Surface Pro tablet and a cover/keyboard, which were much lighter than Homeko, my HP laptop. It came in very handy on my two excursions to Washington and Minnesota.

Also got a Carhartt jacket which was heavier than I thought it would be and did not have a removable liner. Lastly, I got a really nice leather trenc coat from Secret Goth.

44. What did you want and not get?

A number of non-tangible things.

45. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

[REDACTED]

46. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2025?

"The Festive Color Of My Tribe Is Black". This really hasn't changed; if anything, even more of my clothes are black than formerly.

47. What kept you sane?

I was honestly too busy to get anywhere near crazy this year.

48. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Most of the celebrities and public figures that came to my attention this year

were fairly appalling people, although Elon Musk continues to be an awesome person.

49. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2025.

Nothing that's generally applicable, sorry.

50. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

Nope, no joy here either.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Lofi Girl - Study With Me (YouTube)

So I rescheduled the Oregon state test for this Thursday, booked a room at Boulder Station, and I guess I'll download copies of the necessary forms to a thumb drive in the morning. Postponed laundry from Sunday to tonight, since I was busy thrashing the Dodgers Sunday night after getting my zines ready for StippleAPA. I'd lost track of #376, which was not in the stack with the rest of them next to the desktop, but it turned out to be buried under some office supplies in front of the secondary HP monitor, so I was able to bash out some minimal comments.

The Internet was being uncooperative this afternoon, so instead of knocking out the weekend substackery I had to do that tonight after getting back from doing laundry, and now I am very tired.

I suppose I should do some Obligatory Seriousness about the shit going down in Minneapolis, and crank out new issues of the convention newsletter & Tonopah Elucidator etc., but after spending part of the day gazing into the abyss of X, I just want to fire up Civ5 and get back to the business of conquering the world for King Artoria V and her Celtic Empire.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Lofi Girl - Study With Me (YouTube)

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1: F*** blogging, let's sleep
2: "I'm smiling, but I am very f***ing furious."
3: Planning ahead
4: Waiting for the tendieman
5: A week of idleness and then PAYDAY
6: And Lo, it was Good.
7: Unexpected improvements in the cash flow
8: Convention over - great success!
9: S-day minus three
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