wombat_socho

You don't realize quite how much work and its schedule drive your life until you're not working for an extended period. The days blur together, and if you're not paying very close attention to the time you look up now and again to realize that an entire week has slipped by you. Minor holidays sneak up on you, because you don't get out every day and fight the traffic, and you don't look forward to the days the Feds take off when it's not quite so awful.

It's one of those things you don't miss until it's gone.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: James McMurtry - Dry River

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.

( Would you like to know more? )

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Sarah Chang/Orpheus Chamber Orchestra - The Four Seasons Op. 8 Nos. 1-4, Concerto No. 2 In G Minor (

I hate to do this, but as Poul Anderson's characters were fond of saying, "Needs must when the devil drives."

After five months of unemployment, I'm at the end of my rope with my former employers, who hold the note on my Kia Sportage, sometimes known as the Brave Little Toaster. Because of my persistent unemployed status, I've gotten behind on the payments, and they've decided that if they don't get a payment by Friday, they're going to call out the boys with the hook, and I'll be left without wheels. Which will make it damn near impossible to work as a substitute teacher here in Alexandria, much less in Fairfax County or Arlington.

I'm not going to ask anyone to step up for the whole payment. Times are tough, people are scratching to meet their own bills, and even if they weren't, two hundred bucks is a lot of money at the best of times. What I am going to ask is that you visit my book store at half.com, see if there's something you like there, and buy it. (There's a bunch of newly-surplus SF and manga, including some vintage Harlan Ellison, being added.) If there's nothing there that catches your fancy, or you just want to contribute, here's a PayPal donation button:

All money received will be dedicated to the Toaster Preservation Fund, which only needs $119.

Current Mood: uncomfortable
Current Music: Schtum - Skydiver

I can't put this any better than OPFOR: "The most quoted DI in history, also hero of the working man!"

Another fine link from Ace's sidebar of headlines.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Joe Walsh - Welcome to the Club

It was supposed to be raining and dripping all day today, but apparently all the precipitation went else where and we wound up with a really nice day instead. Also, I have leftover pizza in the fridge for dinner. Booya.

( books books books )

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Sweet - Ballroom Blitz

I'm not going to link to Rolcats, because if I hated anyone on my f-list that badly I'd just defriend and ban them. The basic idea is good: translate Russian LOLcats into English for the amusement of people who can't read Russian in the original ~~Klingon~~Cyrillic. Unfortunately, the morons who put the site together were either too ignorant or too lazy to do actual translations. Instead they ad-libbed "translations" redolent of Cold War jokes about the Soviet Union and Communism that weren't funny even in the 1960s. Even Yakov Smirnov and Oleg Atbashian couldn't get any laughs with these sucky "jokes". No, Rolcats is a good idea rendered useless by the incompetence of the site owner, which ironically (in a way) demonstrates the fallacy underlying Marx's theory of surplus labor.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Rush Limbaugh

I was inspired to write this after reading Charles Stross' "A Colder War", which is from the American POV. I wondered how it might look from the Soviet side, and this is what came out. Someday I'll get around to writing the front half.
( the end of project k )

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: David Bowie - Jump They Say [Alternate Mix]

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled.
This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria.
So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town.
And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.
While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock.
The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear.
The angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord.
And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger."
And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying:
"Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests."
When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us."
So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger.
When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child.
All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds.
And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.
Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them.

Luke 2:1-19

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Amethystium - Ad Astra (WGTB Blue)

Spent an inordinate amount of time these last couple of days editing the tags on posts so that the "my life" tags have all disappeared, replaced by "domestic stuff", "family drama", "medical stuff" or something else more appropriate to the content. I also browsed through the rather thin "back in the day" category, which I probably need to spend some time bulking up with fresh entries. I'll be wanting those one of these days.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Joe Walsh - Help Me Thru the Night

"Screw this negativity I’m buying."

Words to live by.
Makes me wish I had a couple grand to throw at the Cardboard Box Fund, I tell you.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Helmet - Exactly What You Wanted

Just a reminder - if you don't have an LJ account, you can still comment here.
The sole condition is that you initial your comment so I know who's dropping by.
If you can't be arsed to do that, don't bother commenting, since comments are moderated and anonymous comments will be flushed.

EDIT: Visitors from Goonfleet such as Ex2 can leave their GF handles. I know where to find you. :D

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Rush Limbaugh bumper music

Frak. Left the lights on yesterday after driving home in the intermittent rain, so I'm now waiting for Carlos to show up with jumper cables. Going to pack up the laundry but hold off on the laptop until he gets here.

Somebody in the class of '78 (Oxon Hill HS) is organizing a joint reunion with my class ('77) at the Marriott Waterfront in National Harbor. Announced price is $125, which makes me wonder if this is some sort of formal dance/dinner kind of thing.

Current Mood: grumpy
Current Music: Dire Straits - Lions

Went to the Shoppers to stock up on staples for the next fortnight (lunch meat, bread, eggs, etc.) and was surprised by a small gang of kids P's age...not that they were there, mind you, but I kept hearing bits of half-remembered vocabulary. They looked like they might be...nah, maybe they're Serbs, i thought. Serbian sounds a lot like Russian, just different enough to mess you up. The closer I got, though, the more I wondered. So I asked.
"Vy Russkii?" I asked one of the boys.
"What?" he responded, clearly surprised.
"Are you Russians?"
"Oh! Yeah..."
I nodded. "Thought that sounded familiar. Been a while since I'd heard it." I moved on down the aisle past them, but heard some subdued talk behind me. Yeah. Russian. Too bad I haven't kept up on it much, or I wouldn't have had to ask, I guess.

Made it to the library, chucked out some garbage and made some progress on cleaning the kitchen. Cleaned the tub, which really needed it. Spent a lot of time horizontal readng Grant Moves South and Grant Takes Command.

Next couple of weeks are going to be tight...not only did that business with the tires mess up the cash flow, but I lost track of things in the checking account and got burned with overdraft fees I could ill afford. Well, I ought to be back on track by the end of next month, barring any further hideous occurrences.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Warren Zevon - Accidentally Like a Martyr

Looks like

chebutykin and the rest of my MN peeps are really sweating today up there in the Great American Desert. Sympathies, m8s.
Oddly, down here it's five degrees cooler, which wouldn't make a lot of difference except that it's also less humid. So all things considered, it's been a lot more comfortable down here.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Salubrious Invertebrae - No. 2

Changed the style and subtitle I was using to something more appropriate, and will probably leave it that way until the interment later this year.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go and read this.

Current Mood: blank
Current Music: Janet Jackson - Control

Went out to deposit paycheck, pick up drugs, get blood drawn, get mail, and hang out with P, more or less in that order, and got everything done except for the mail since I forgot the box key. Oh well; there's always next week. Also got pretty wet when the thunderstorm rolled through town as I was coming out of the video store. Killed the rest of the afternoon playing Civ and re-reading The Palace of Love; quit Civ when the Arabs started to disassemble my empire; next time one of the AI asks for a map and some spare change, I'm going to fork it over.

Apparently my comments on the Rachel Moss deal attracted some Anonymous Cowards looking to do a little trolling. Sorry, kids, I know how to play the game and you aren't getting any scope here. Abuse me all you like on your own blogs & journals; I frankly don't care. The pool of people whose opinions I do care about is pretty small, and those that post here actually have balls enough to use their own LJ handles or other means of identity.

UPDATE: Hey there, Anonymous Cowards! For the benefit of you trolls that can't read too well, comments are moderated here. Which means you don't get to leave a comment unless I want you to. Normally, I let it all hang out, but the winds of my whims have shifted, and your trolling days here are at an end. Buh-bye.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: The Cult - Sun King

This is a follow-on to one of the things I talked about in this post.

olegvolk does some excellent pro-RKBA work.
This is another example, though not nearly as confrontational as, say, this sign.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: UFO - You Don't Fool Me

Being an impulsive retard, I had ordered a dozen roses for delivery today with the intention of giving them to someone I've been seeing occasionally these last few months. Unfortunately for me, she was busy with kids tonight, so I was basically stuck with a dozen mixed red & yellow roses.

As it happened, Marketing Girl was in somewhat of a funk this week (I think she got the same uninspiring news everybody in Accounting got: thanks for busting your ass, but no raise of any significance, kthxbye, get back to work) and I noticed nobody had sent her flowers at work. So I gave her mine. Why not? It cheered her up, she thanked me profusely, and it was all good. Otherwise I would have had to take the damn things home and look up how to make rose hip tea on the interbutts.

So tell me, Internets, how exactly do I go about driving a stake through the heart of the White Knight center in my brain?* It's going to get me in trouble again one of these days if I don't, I just know it.

In other news, I took advantage of my state tax refund arriving to pony up for a 90-day EVE card. BoB is collapsing and I want a seat on the r***train.

*I'm also going to cut its head off and burn the sumbitch. This is no time for half measures.

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: Utopia - Overture: Mountaintop at Sunrise

Wow, that was a weird appointment. The endocrinologist I saw today spent most of his time lecturing me on diet and exercise, which was okay if extremely redundant since I'm seeing a nutritionist in two weeks and starting diabetes ed classes in March. What really annoyed me was his insistence that I needed statins for my blood pressure (which neither my GP or the GI doc thought necessary) and his strong suggestion that I go on Byetta. I told him I wanted to give diet and exercise one last shot since I'm not trying to staff a convention or finish my MA - well, okay, didn't go into that much detail, but I think he got the picture. I'm going to talk to Dr. Langille about the statins; if I can reduce the load on my heart by peeling off the pounds this year, then that's one less drug I need.

Iodoflex not burning nearly so much today, praise Jesus. Didn't have to remove yesterday's pads since they washed off in the shower while I wasn't looking; they do seem to have done a power of good for my poor, leaky, squamous (and occasionally rugose) leg. Here's hoping they can close up the wound before the pool opens here; once I can get swimming a few times a week, that should keep it closed.

In other news, I may be able to get back the taxes Canada withheld from the royalties paid into my IRA by various energy trusts like Enterra, Provident, and Torch. This would be a Good Thing; if I'm correct, this has cost me 15% of the royalties due me over the past few years that I've held shares in those trusts.

Current Mood: cranky
Current Music: James McMurtry - Restless (Radio Free Baja Manitoba)

( It could have been worse... )

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Jason & the Scorchers - Absolutely Sweet Marie [1966]

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wombat_socho

February 2017

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Page generated Sep. 26th, 2017 09:12 am

Entries tagged with miscellaneous

dislocation

So the light came into the world

rattles tin cup

You could always tell he was a standup guy.

A surprisingly pleasant Tuesday

Half-assed humor is half-assed.

something that won't sweeten your dreams

2009 years ago today (more or less)

tagapalooza

stock volatility, LOL

administrivia

forecast: mild dissatisfaction with occasional outbursts of domesticity

chto zhe?

Comparative weather

administrivia

your weekend dose of WTF

Meditation doesn't happen only in churches.

God damn it, I thought I'd killed that part of my brain off already

odd man out

2007 in review