Roadside Picnic

Nobody But You

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 01:13:08 GMT

I'm getting up too early and doing too many things on weekend mornings. Breakfast dates and shopping trips and things like that, and I tend to stay up later on Friday and Saturday nights and I'm just not getting enough rest.

Yesterday was Easter, and that did not break the streak. Got up a little before sunrise and could not get back to sleep. Went to Dad's, later than I had planned, actually, but still plenty early. He went to church, I stayed at his home with a couple of books and the Doberman and enjoyed the quiet.

Got out to my first Bats game of the season Friday night. The Bats had gotten off to a good start to the season, winning all four games against Omaha, but the Iowa Cubs were a damned buzzsaw and won all five games here in Louisville. Still, it was a good evening at Slugger Field and I'm looking forward to the next home stand against the Toledo Mudhens.

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Calling

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 01:13:46 GMT

Bought a new phone Friday, an iPhone 16. Very nice pocket computer. Didn't mean it to happen that way, but it was a day shy of the 17th anniversary of my first smartphone purchase, an iPhone 3G that was an utterly badass little machine. The 16 is plenty slick, that's for sure, but, well, I liked the SE's size better and the 4S's form even better that that, but everybody else likes the 6"+ screens, so that's where we are.

In other news, old man yells at clouds.

Today was good. Slept in again, decided that I was going to take it easy again, did so. Repeated my Saturday - read, listened to a few episodes of Cold War Conversations, watched some stuff on Netflix.

I hope that, when I review this in years to come, I can sigh and be relieved that things didn't get worse. That stupid orange bastard is making noise about invading a NATO ally's territory. US Army troops have been activated and look to be deploying to Minnesota, where ICE has murdered a woman and is generally behaving like an occupying force. There's so much more, and so little pushback against it. I don't see any kind of resolution with things as they stand right now, and if I'm being honest, I think we're going to see more violence and a lot of economic and political damage. I'm waiting for it to happen, because that's what it'll take, and even with that blessed event, more damage that can be repaired in my lifetime has been done.

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Arkansas Traveler

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 01:52:08 GMT

This has been a good weekend. Had dinner with a guy I know from a Discord group on Friday. Australian on a lengthy visit to the States. Good times.

Didn't get out of pajamas yesterday. It was cold and I had no demands on my time and I just stayed comfortable and read and played some PS4 stuff. Watched football. Slept late, stayed in bed later, and it felt good.

A little more active today. Grocery run in the morning. Completed the GT7 daily workout. Listened to a lot of Stuff You Should Know. Watched part of the Texans-Patriots game at Roosters. Read more. Picked up some accessories for the new phone. Reveled in the knowledge that I don't have to go to work tomorrow. Priced a shotgun.

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Waterloo Sunset

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 01:06:09 GMT

I got a daylong suspension from Discord this week. Made a comment about how best to observe a proposed day commemorating the podcaster what got killed a few months ago, and someone on the channel didn't like it. Fuck 'em. The joke was worth it and I'll do it again.

Nice domestic Saturday. Got some tilapia at Aldi this morning and that was a tasty lunch before the NFL playoffs started. I've been comfortably lazy today, reading some more after getting in my Gran Turismo workout. Dad had said something about coming up here, but didn't, and while it would have been good to have seen him, it's also been good having very little in the way of demands on my time today.

Panthers-Rams went back-and-forth all game long. Rams won on a late-game field goal and solid defensive stand. Packers-Bears is about to start and it oughta be a good one, too.

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Lost Weekend

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 02:03:32 GMT

I decided around GameConjunction that I was going to skip GMing at the January and spend the time playing games instead. That plan isn't doing so well. It's seven weeks until that one, and there's not nearly enough on the roster to get me to spend my money on a badge. Same locals running the same stuff, and there are some good GMs there, but it's more of the same and more practice runs for whatever Lurking Fears is doing at whatever other cons later in the year.

Thanksgiving was just a delight. Spent the day with Dad and Kaiser, grazing on snacks and pizza, reading and watching football. Late lunch on Friday with my brother and sister-in-law, more reading after that. Saturday was the Governor's Cup, and I was fully expecting UK to beat an injury-depleted demoralized UofL team. Yeah, that didn't happen. The Cards ran away with the game, winning 41-0. It was a good end to the season, breaking a three-game losing streak and hopefully making a good enough showing for a respectable postseason game. Felt pretty good after the game and decided to head back home that evening so I could have all of Sunday to do whatever, and "whatever" turned out to be more reading and NFL games and it was good.

Haven't done much this weekend. Some household chores. Picked up my new contacts. Napped. No regrets on that front - it's good to just rest sometimes.

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Crucified Son

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 00:02:25 GMT

Went to Lexington last week to see Heat with Ben P. It's a favorite movie, one I watch at least once a year, and it was good to see it on a theater screen again - the second time I've had that experience, and it was in the same theater that I first saw it 30 years ago.

It remains an incredible piece of work - a sprawling crime drama, procedural, and character film. And it is a very different movie at 53 than it was at 23. There's so much that I see now. There is so much in the movie about loneliness. That's hitting me pretty hard right now. I've parrotted Robert de Niro's line - "I am alone, but I am never lonely" - often, and most of the time it's true. But when it's not, it hits like a sledgehammer.

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Picture Window

Tue, 27 May 2025 01:26:22 GMT

It's been a decent long weekend. Saturday and today were spectacularly lazy - didn't get out of the apartment or my pajamas, even. Ran a decent CP Red game Friday night and a banger of a D6 Star Wars game last night at SYR.

I made myself sleep in, or at least lie in, this morning. Kept playing a new podcast episode every time I woke up and went back under the covers, and it felt fantastic. Finally got up and made breakfast and had some brief thoughts about finding something to do. Decided, nah, let's do some more reading, and that was a good course of action for the day.

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Good Vibrations

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 16:20:19 GMT

April's been a rough month, and I stopped fighting it for a while and took a sick day on Friday. It helped a lot - I've slept so well the last three nights and managed to do some other things for self-care. My shoulders are relaxed, I haven't had anxiety skirmishes, I've painted minis and written little things, and I feel good.

Finally bought a table for the Bambu printer. Setting it up and calibrating and testing and everything else is the order of the afternoon. I'm hopeful that I can get enough of a handle on it to print something useful for May's first CP Red game session.

I feel like I've headed off some burnout by just putting in work instead of reading about someone else's work or endlessly diving into Wikipedia or whatever else caught my attention for the immediate sixteen seconds. I outlined the Star Wars games for May-July, sketched out a few more session ideas for CP Red, and just about settled on Symbaroum for my Charcon games.

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Think of What You've Done

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 22:49:35 GMT

A couple of decent, almost good, days this past week. Friday was garbage, but at least I ended it a little early and tried to take care of myself. The weekend hasn't been anything to get excited about - a lot of sleep and a little bit of game writing and prep.

Still haven't gotten around to buying a table for the printer. Yesterday would have been a good day for that, but, well, didn't happen.

It's Easter Sunday. Mom loved Easter. No matter how old I was, she always got me a chocolate bunny. I'd kill for one of those sweet little gestures today.

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If Trouble was Money, Second Entry

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 00:34:27 GMT

This was one of those weeks. Anxiety started hitting hard and that let a whole stew of brain chemicals run wild for a few days. I found some small comfort in knowing it wasn't just me. Co-workers, clients, friends - we all had some kind of something playing havoc with our minds and emotions.

I had planned to make today a self-care day, and it succeeded. Slept in, ran a short errand, read, slept more. Feeling pretty good this evening.

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Highway 61 Revisited

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 01:50:16 GMT

More revisiting of long-idle projects on Sunday during a couple of races. Dug into some of the Mars stuff that I'd written for Shadow of the Beanstalk years ago. Cut some of the extraneous meandering ideas out, made it a tighter, leaner scenario.

Big day for Mars in gaming today. The crowdfunding campaign for the Terraforming Mars RPG launched today, and of course I went in on it. Reasonable pledge level, the core book and the campaign guide. There's a ton of digital content added on thanks to stretch goals and the like. I love the board game - and its iOS adaptation - and will at least get this on a table at some Nerd Louisville event or another.

Also launching today, the new edition of Cold City/Hot War. Tight, brilliant horror games set in postwar Berlin and post-nuclear London. I had the originals and sadly sold them off in one of my bookshelf purges, and I've regretted doing that for a long time. And now, future me gets a present!

There was even one more campaign that I'd been interested in - books of maps for modern/near-future games. I talked myself out of that one - I use maps and minis rarely enough, and I'm waiting for Loke to deliver on the set that I helped crowdfund last year.

Saw some interesting things today. A Rumpke garbage truck caught fire on 64 this morning - thankfully he was eastbound and it didn't affect my commute and the crew got out safely. In the afternoon, on my way back from a client visit, I saw an unusual locomotive on a bridge over 9th Street. More interesting were the cars it had in tow - a track inspection train! I got a decent short video of it and dug into railpictures.net and found a picture of the very same train during a run through Georgia.

Saw Captain America: Brave New World last night. Did not like it - there's some great talent on the screen with so very little material to work with.

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Why my man Won't Treat me Right

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 01:43:36 GMT

I got around to breaking in the Instant Pot this week. Nothing fancy, sauteing and pressure cooking a couple of pork loins I got at Aldi last week. No problems, but the process seemed to cook a lot of the flavor out of the meat. I used the leftovers in a big pot of stew - using the trusty ol' Crock Pot - and that came out really well.

Last night's Cyberpunk game went well. Short adventure, one from Street Stories that I'd overlooked. As I was packing up, I realized that I had nothing on my agenda for the rest of the weekend. No demands on my time at all. I wasn't entirely sure how to process that. Today's been rather enjoyable and very relaxing and almost productive. I dug up some DCC writing that had been left idle for a while, tinkered with that. Not a bad afternoon.

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Mood Ring

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:46:33 GMT

Valentine's Day ate the CP Red game, and that was okay. Saturday saw heavy rain and thunderstorms and that was good for lying in bed and reading. Sunday's board meeting was blessedly moved online, and weather in Florida did a number on the Daytona 500, so, hey, more reading!

Packed my duffel and took off Monday morning. Drove down to the Corvette Museum, a long-overdue visit. The very fast machines are the focus of the museum, of course, and there is plenty of space given over to the people who designed and engineered and promoted them. I found myself taken with the story of Zora and Elfi Arkus-Duntov - they were a heck of a couple, Elfi was the first Corvette Girl, and she would spell out Zora's name on her body with adhesive medical tape and go sunbathing so his name would be on her. It was a good visit.

Drove to Dad's after the museum. Spent the night with him, then lit out for Dayton early Tuesday morning. I hadn't been to the Air Force museum in several years, and while it was nice to see some of the new exhibits (a Titan 4 stack and a Su-27), I found myself kinda bored. Beautiful machines and stories, but I've seen most of them, you know? And the Presidential aircraft gallery just kept reminding me of that orange bastard, and ... ugh. Hotel was nice.

Wednesday morning, up and off to Point Pleasant for the Mothman Museum. US35 is a heck of a fast road, and would have been even faster without the winter storm I drove through. Fun visit to Point Pleasant, then headed back to Louisville. WV2 was an easy drive down to Huntington, and I-64 brought me home one more time.

Ran an errand with a friend this morning. Going to take care of some business this afternoon - taxes and car licenses and REAL ID documents. No plans for tomorrow, maybe back to BG for a train show on Saturday, then the first ALIEN session at Slur on Sunday evening. Back to work on Monday. Can't wait to see what nonsense went down while I've been gone.

That's a lie. I just don't care all that much.

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And the Bottom Drops Out

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 22:42:00 GMT

Work wasn't great last week, and my normal sources of recharging didn't happen, so I was very glad when Friday afternoon rolled around and I rolled into a three-day weekend. Got home, turned off the work phone, and decided that the most important thing I could do this weekend was to take care of me.

I did a lot of reading this weekend. Not a lot relative to me in my 30s, but quite a bit relative to me in the past couple of years. A middling sci-fantasy novel from my GoodReads list. Some of the RPG titles I picked up before and at GenCon. Some articles and blogs on video games.

Got in my daily GT7 workouts and completed the weekly challenges. The Aston Martin Group 4 was a nice reward for the latter. Played OSE yesterday - low on action, high on roleplay and building up our little settlement, and logorrhea player was absent. Good times. UofL football started the season with a big win - the opponent wasn't great, but a 62-point win is a statement, no matter what.

So, this evening, I'm feeling good. I'm updating my resume later tonight, with the intent of applying for another position, one more suited to my skills and interests. Dinner turned out well, and I'm enjoying Netflix's Terminator anime. I needed this weekend, and I have very much enjoyed it.

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Birds of a Feather

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 00:11:33 GMT

Our DCC GM is in the process of moving, so the game's on hold for a couple of weeks. So, this past weekend, after Friday night's get-together, I had no demands on my time. That felt really good. I slept late Saturday, spent most of the day on the couch listening to music and reading. It was glorious.

Got up Sunday morning for an early showing of Alien: Romulus, which I didn't like very much. It's gorgeous, has the proper cassette futurism look that I love, but the movie just didn't work for me.

Fallout's pretty good, though, two episodes in.

Not much of an entry. Nothing really on my mind, nothing worth recording, at least.

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Trying to be Cool

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 02:13:10 GMT

After the very good Charcon weekend, the workweek was rough. One of the more troublesome clients brought a ton of trouble on herself, and she went off on me and my team, and I kinda-sorta don't much care what happens to her now. On the other hand, we fired another client after his last round of bullshit. And in hopeful-for-me news, a couple of positions that line up well with my skills and interests are opening up, and darn right I'm applying for them.

Enough about work.

DCC Day went pretty well. Fewer games than I had wanted, but we had a smaller crowd this year, so it worked out. Got some good time in with friends this weekend. Finally got another bookcase assembled and made further way overdue progress in getting some boxes put away.

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You're all I Need to get By

Sat, 06 Jul 2024 19:37:31 GMT

A tornado hit west Louisville on Thursday. A short-lived EF-1, on the ground for about three blocks out around Cypress Street. We have some clients in group homes over there, and I was there for visits on Wednesday afternoon. Not much damage, thankfully.

Good Cyberpunk Red session last night, with a new player dropping in. She got onboard fast and helped drive the game. I hope she sticks around.

Haven't done much of anything today. Napped a lot, got in my GT7 workout, double-checked my Charcon material - still waiting on the GM badge code to arrive. I'm chalking this up to my body telling me to get some rest, and having done so, I'm going to try to get some things done this afternoon and evening, since plans got scuttled. Let's see how that works out for me.

And I'll be darned. The Charcon code just popped up in my Gmail box.

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What About the Children

Tue, 28 May 2024 00:11:19 GMT

Friday wore me out, and driving to Liberty after work was taxing. Brought my bags into the house and planted myself in the recliner and I was asleep in a few minutes. Woke up when Dad got in, chatted with him, and went to bed. Didn't sleep as well as I wanted. Breakfast at the Bread of Life cafe, testing the Lacrosse, and visits to Mom's and Mamaw and Papaw's graves.

Some weather was threatening, so I headed back to Louisville early in the afternoon. This Buick likes to run just as much as the newer version I drove for a couple of months. It has a couple of issues to get taken care of next month, and I want to get the keyless entry and alarm sorted, but I'm pretty happy with it.

Weather went from threatening to dangerous yesterday around noon. Weather stations in lively Shively measured straight-line wind speed at 80MPH when the front came through that part of town. We got a lot of wind and rain and lightning over here, and the power went out around 12:30. I took the opportunity to nap a little while. Kaiju had power, so Slur Your Role was on. Drove over there, ran a short DCC game, went home. Saw lights on around the property and a couple of utility trucks, and power came back on in my unit a couple of minutes after l sat down. I caught some of an evening NASCAR race - and then the second stronger wave of storms starting coming in. We had the whole party for a while - severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings all throughout the area. At least two tornadoes hit the state, one about 45 miles SSW of me, the other further out in the western end of the state. Five deaths, and LG&E currently lists about 1800 outages and better than 50K customers without power right now.

Today has been quiet and very pretty and I have slept through much of it. If I wasn't asleep, I was watching The Crown on Netflix or Masters of the Air or Liaison on Apple+. Hadn't heard of the latter until it was mentioned on the Spybrary FB group, and an espionage series with Eva Green? Of course I'm watching this. Two episodes (out of six) in, and I'm hooked.

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Down to Memphis

Sun, 19 May 2024 00:35:46 GMT

Something else I liked about Civil War - seeing a big ol' Ford Excursion doing what it was built for. Carrying a number of people and their gear on a lengthy trip through sometimes rough country.

Catching up with Donna was good. Don't know when we'll get to see each other again - the rest of May is busy for me, and June and July are going to be busy for us both. She's working towards a move to New Orleans in about a year and a half, and has extracted promises from me that I'll come see her when she's settled in down there.

GenCon badges got sorted out, and I have a three-event wish list ready for tomorrow's registration. Listen closely, friends, around noon Eastern, and you just might hear the servers groan. I've GMed all of the games on my list - Trail of Cthulhu, Shadow of the Beanstalk, and Old Gods of Appalachia - and I'm looking forward to being on the other side of the screen.

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No More No Less

Fri, 03 May 2024 01:20:11 GMT

In the words of Reg Blank, next up, more of the same.

Pinch-hit for our regular GM Tuesday night. He had to bail for a last-minute thing, and I had the unused DCC stuff from Sunday's aborted game, so that's what we played. Honestly, I almost wish that I'd opted for a discount movie instead, but whatever.

So. I have this client. She's really pretty great. She is schizoaffective like anything, but she has fantastic ADL skills and her delusions don't really present a threat to herself or others. It's almost textbook conspiracy - her memories have been swapped with another woman's, the government has put implants in her body to control her, that sort of thing. The biggest complication - up until today - is, according to her therapist's notes, her voices tell her that she and I are supposed to have a non-professional relationship. Therapist and supervisors are convinced that this won't happen, so, we press on. Heck, I spent two hours helping her with errands yesterday, and all was well. Anyway, today. During the morning Zoom meeting, her therapist messages me, asking about a batch of messages client had sent to her and other team members - but not me. Client repeated "they're telling me not to breathe help me." Therapist was near client's home and visited her; client wasn't in danger and told therapist that she had just had a bad morning. This is the first time that client's shown any kind of real expression of harm from her voices, and it's got us concerned. Client is now on our daily visit list.

Life in the big city's mental health care field.

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A Company of Men

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 00:03:40 GMT

Last week was a blur. Not because it went by really fast, but because it was just there. I had my first work-from-home day on Thursday to catch up on some training requirements, and that was nice.

Also nice - the weekend. This was the first really relaxing weekend I've had since mid-February. Had a couple of little errands to knock out in the mornings, and rejoined the OSE game on Sunday afternoon, but very little else demanded my time. So, I read, emptied out a couple more boxes, watched some TV, and recharged. It was good. No convention, no two-hour commutes, not much of anything that got in the way of having some good and much needed rest.

I've been at this job for two months now, and my opinion stays the same. I'm in the right agency, but the wrong position. I really don't have the heart for this, and the clients - most of them, anyway - deserve someone who's more committed to the task. I can do it until August, and that's when I'm either blitzing every promising opening within the agency or looking for a better ship to jump to.

Thunder Over Louisville is this coming weekend. Airplanes and fireworks and 600,000 people crowding the waterfront on both sides of the river and nope, not for me. I have some options - almost certainly going down to Shepherdsville in the evening, and very probably going to Harrodsburg around midday. I like airshows and fireworks and all that, but I don't want to be around the crowds, and I don't think I'll have a better view of the show than I did a few years ago, when I watched most of the airshow from a vacant floor midway up PNC Tower.

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Photograph

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 23:51:59 GMT

At least for now, I'm back home.

I started the week off with the first half of the Super Bowl. Not the most exciting thirty minutes of football, but it was okay enough. Had to go to bed early, so I could get up early and head to Louisville.

Monday morning, on the road before sunrise, and the start of onboarding. Over to downtown to meet my supervisor and teammates. Then over to the first hotel of the week.

This week was another reminder that I have friends that are far too good for me. My oldest friend offered to spend some of her stash of rewards points to put me up in another hotel for most of the week. So, here I am in a very nice Tru by Hilton and, well, the reminder mentioned above.

Anyway, back to work. Tons of online training sessions, talks with my supervisor and team. Worked from the hotel yesterday, then shadowed another case manager today and met some of our clients.

And I don't think this job is for me. There is a lot of turnover in the position, so I'm not feeling bad about something like doing this for six months or so and then finding something else.

Turned 52 today. Whee.

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Atmosphere

Sat, 03 Feb 2024 15:25:36 GMT

Well, things didn't go as hoped. I picked up the Escape and noticed right away that it wasn't shifting right. Revving too high and gear changes not happening as quickly as they should. Somehow coolant and transmission fluid got mixed. The coolant reservoir fractured, spraying the mix of liquid all over the engine bay and the underside of the hood. Not good at all, and the transmission may be fucked thanks to the contamination. So, here we are again.

New employer pushed my start date back to next Monday. I should have something set up by then. I have to, because I am running out of ... everything down here.

The FNSLGS that became a pillar of support for me during this ill-advised self-imposed exile got hit with some kind of nasty tax liability this week. Bad enough that the state required the store to stop doing business until they can make a downpayment on the bill. Its a backbreaking hit, and the store has launched a crowdfunding campaign to try and stay afloat. I can't help right now, it's kicking my ass. Lemonjuice McGee's is a good store, building good communities in an area that needs them. I hope they get through this.

I'm going to go get in some Gran Turismo time. Taking my refuges where I can this morning.

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We Don't Give up Now

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 21:20:07 GMT

And we find ourselves already halfway through January. We're enduring a heck of a cold snap - it's presently 25F, up from single digits this morning. There's a winter weather advisory, quite nebulous, for the next 48 hours or so. There are a couple of inches of snow on the ground here already, and the upcoming system may bring another couple of inches and a little bit of ice. This may complicate tomorrow's planned run to Georgetown to return some items from a mcjob.

RiverCityCon went off well, according to every report I've seen. Better than 500 individual attendees, good vendor sales, plenty of games. I would have liked to have seen the con put up more pictures of the RPG space - and by that, I mean any - pictures, but what can you do.

I guess I'm back on the Crafty GenCon team. Whoever I'm working for in early August can do without me for a few days. There are a couple of other events between now and then that I'm planning for, and, well...

The past few weeks have been pretty godsdamned dark. A lot of time spent with the kinds of thoughts that might get a person a 72-hour visit to a hospital. Making plans for cons, for seeing friends at them - for whatever reason, that's what my mind latched onto to give me some kind of hope, the will to power through and acknowledge that I'll get through the current circumstance. Things won't be what I had hoped for and dreamed of, but I can make the best of them. There is some light, even if I have to look for it.

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Walls

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 23:42:41 GMT

I feel like a strip of metal that's being flexed and bent and twisted over and over again. Hopeful highs spring up, and then utterly crushing despair kicks in. One minute I'm making plans for handling a long commute and following that up with a move, the next I'm damned near hating just being born. (Thanks, Boss.)

Said the probable goodbye to the Somerset group after Friday night's game. I don't see a way to keep playing there, unless something breaks that way on the job hunt. They're good folks, good players. I'll miss them.

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