tracker7 | Entries tagged with health

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.

Still dealing with this latest sickness. Congested, repeating headache, coughing and sneezing. DayQuil is helping, and having nothing requiring me to leave the apartment this weekend has been nice. Resting, reading, just trying to heal up.

Started last night's CP Red session by asking the players what they wanted to do. I hadn't been able to come up with anything on my own, and the scenario I was going to default to needed a lot of rewriting to bring it up to snuff, so I had the players do some of the lifting. And they went for a fetch quest, and this was a pleasant surprise. It was a short, fun session, doing some favors for contacts. To my surprise, they all said that they were fine with quests like this, and I'm okay with it. There are two fetch quest scenarios in TotR: Street Stories, and they're well written - and I'd written them off because I didn't think the players would go for them. Joke's on me, I guess! The book gets more value late in the game.

Had a very good time at RiverCityCon. Games went well - my DCC sessions, the Castles & Crusades game I played in, and some board games with a couple of Louisville friends I should have spent some time with long before now. DCC at fifth level is just bonkers - characters getting multiple action dice, huge bonuses and big dice for warriors and dwarves and thieves. I stopped reminding players of the second dice after about an hour - I had enough to manage on my side of the screen.

The Tuesday night group wrapped up the Dragonbane campaign last night. I was sick - more in a moment - and sat out the session. They opted for another Dragonbane campaign, and I'm going to sit it out, at least for a while. The monthly OSE game is great. The Tuesday night group is fantastic. But, like things were a few months ago, I'm playing enough fantasy.

Probably unrelated, I've had the hardest time writing a scenario for my Cyberpunk Red game. Players gave me some great ideas; I just haven't been able to do anything with them. I'm experiencing some kind of burnout or more likely a creative logjam. My players deserve good games, darnit.

So, yesterday. Woke up not feeling well - body aches, headache, fever, sore throat. Took a shower, wobbled my way back to bed and emailed the boss to tell her I was taking a sick day. Crawled under the blanket and went right back to sleep. Fever went away mid-afternoon, and many hours of sleep helped. Still had a headache when I got up this morning, but it wasn't enough to keep me home for another day.

I can't seem to get over being tired most of the time. I'm not sleeping as well as I'd like. I feel like I'm just staggering forward at work, succeeding in spite of myself. Last week was bad. I think part of it was the first five-day week in a while, what with holidays and weather. By Friday afternoon, I was moving mostly by the power of spite. I just wanted to have enough energy to get home.

An early bedtime helped. I went to Dad's to pick up a pressure cooker that I'd had shipped there. We had a good low-key afternoon together, a late lunch and some football. Got back to Louisville around midnight, stayed up for an hour or so, went to bed.

Sunday. The Ravens lost a heartbreaker to the Bills, who will play the Chiefs - again - for the AFC championship. I put my trusty printer to work on material for this weekend's convention during commercial breaks, tearing through a couple of ink cartridges and lots of paper - 4th- and 5th-level DCC spellcasters can easily have 15-page grimoires!

MLK Day was a holiday for us. It's still nice and a little bit novel having holidays off like civilized people. I took it as easy as I could, doing more convention prep. I had some vague plans of finding some volunteering to do, but the cold and my own weakness wiped those plans out. And I sure as hell wasn't going to watch that orange bastard's inauguration.

I'm looking forward to the con - seeing friends and playing some games and all that. Unfortunately, I'm expecting some drama with a bad actor. I tag my games as ages 13+, and this dude signs up himself and his kid. A couple of years ago, I let this slide in a Blade Runner game, and it was a mistake - the kid was disruptive and took away from the experience of other players, and I'm not going to let it happen again. I've already talked with the con organizers, and they told me I have final say on who gets seated at my table. So, in the parlance of our times, fuck dem kids.

There's some kind of respiratory virus going around, and it got hold of me and I do not recommend it. It's like a mild case of flu that just won't go away. Been doing all the standard remedies - fluids, rest, vitamins, all that. Reminded again that orange juice is just delicious and I should drink more of it.

The funk really hit me on Friday. I went home early, had to skip out on the staff holiday party and cancel the evening's Cyberpunk game. Went to bed early that night, woke up way too early, slept and rested as much as I could, repeated last night/this morning.

Tomorrow's going to be a day. Got one of my unhoused clients into one of our transitional houses and I'm moving him in. The other resident has overstayed his time there, has an apartment lined up and paid for through Section 8, but doesn't want to move. Going to have to lean on him a little bit to get this sorted out.

I'm probably going to spend tomorrow night here to recover. Housemate is leaving for his family stuff before my workday ends and having the place to myself for the night sounds delightful. I'll wake up early, alarm or no, get things together, and light out. Should be a good getaway, with a couple of NFL games on Christmas Day.

Read a couple of stories from Burning Chrome yesterday, finished Mechatron (MYZ) today, and started Those Dark Places this evening. Mechatron's interesting, and I guess I'll get more out of it when I read the other MYZ books from a recent bundle purchase.

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.

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.

The cold is sticking around. It's not Covid, at least.

I'm not having much luck keeping things here cheerful. I'm really not feeling much positivity. I do have an interview next week, so there's some hope. Good work would certainly help my mood.

Ex-housemate's probation restrictions have been lifted, and he's moving in a few weeks. I'm going up to Louisville in the morning to collect the last few things still at the little house on Cannons Lane. It was a good home for eight years and change, and all things considered, I wish I was still there.

I'm just not happy, and I'm having a hard time seeing things get better.

The first cold of the season arrived last night. Sore throat, slight headache; woke up this morning to general body aches and weakness. Dayquil and cough drops have been my companions today.

At halftime, UofL's up on Pitt 21-14. It shouldn't be this close. The Cards went into this game 6-0 against Pitt's 1-5 record.

Sad stomach. Maybe stress related, maybe something I ate. Store-brand Pepto-Bismol is helping.

Kaiser is a never-ending source of mostly entertainment, with occasional doses of confusion and frustration. He has the Doberman neuroses, and his attachment to Dad is like nothing I've ever seen in an animal.

JFC, Joe Buck's calling tonight's game. Do your thing, little mute button.

The little skeletal archer turned out pretty well. The wash wasn't so good, and I wound up just painting over it with more base color, and it looks good. Got a somewhat WoW-looking orc next in line, and then I'll look at the barbarian/fighter figures I bought.

Thursday and Friday were okay. Zoom interview Friday morning, and that put me in a good mood.

Today, though. I have got to remember that the boating trips to the lake are just not much fun for me anymore. Running up and down from the landing is, well, it's boring, and there's Dad's inability to communicate with anything like clarity combined with his pissiness whenever something isn't done to his nebulous and/or unspoken expectations. He seemed to figure out that something minor that went wrong was, in fact, his fault, and there was something that could maybe pass for an apology, but ... well, I think I'm just about done with going to Green River Lake for boat rides. This is supposed to be relaxing. It's just not. It's more frustrating than anything, and my mind doesn't need any more of that.

I'm running a CP Red demo at Lemonjuice McGee's tomorrow. In the setting's history, August 20, 2023, is when Johnny Silverhand and the team assaulted Arasaka Tower and somebody set off a "small" nuclear bomb in downtown Night City. I'm going to run whoever's there through the short scenario in Easy Mode and see how things work out.

I am far too tired for 9:20PM. I should have a good two, three hours of nonsense ahead of me. Instead, it's looking like bedtime, and that with some chemical assistance. If I'm lucky, the Doberman will stay asleep until Dad gets back from wherever someone asked him to go to.

I'm camped out at the Casey County library for a while today. Slow (OMG so fucking slow) Internet became no Internet Wednesday evening, and the earliest service window is this coming Monday - which is when Windstream is supposed to come out and complete the fiber-optic connection to the house, so I'm just dealing with it.

I still have the occasional cough, but I'm mostly better. Dad's taking another hit, unfortunately. He's pretty weak, sore throat, proper bad cold symptoms. I hope that we're not just trading viral ickiness back and forth.

Denny Crum died a couple of days ago. Super-classy guy, and will always be a part of UofL culture.

Goshdarn Noble Knight already got me to spend some store credit. There's a sale going, and some things I wanted were on the list, so I ordered stuff. Should be here Monday afternoon. I still have a lot of credit, and looking at the production schedules of the few companies that still keep my interest, that credit's going to last me quite a while.

The veracity of this prediction has yet to be determined, but, knowing me, I know how I'd bet.

Wow. There's a book by my favorite writing professor on the shelf in front of me. Allegiance, by the great Gurney Norman.

I gave up on Wednesday and made an appointment with a grocery store clinic. Tested negative for Covid-19 and strep, the latter of which I was getting convinced that I had. The NP read my description of symptoms and the timeline, and said it was very probably a combination of the bad cold I picked up from Dad, convention crud, and a brutal allergy attack. At her suggestion, I bought a supply of Allegra-D, and it's been a helpful, combined with Betadine antiseptic gargle.

Because of the inflamed and constricted throat, I've had trouble eating - not much appetite, either, to be honest. Soup, Boost shakes, and whatever drinks I can force myself to sip instead of guzzle. I managed to get a couple slices of pizza down this afternoon, and then weighed myself. For the first time in decades, I'm under 200 pounds. It won't last - when swallowing isn't painful and I want to eat again, there's going to be a ridiculous meal to celebrate.

Saw some of the turkeys again yesterday. They're still in the same field, so there must be some good grazing over there for them. Still no interest in hunting them, in or out of season; it's just neat to see them roaming around.

Sickness backed off quite a bit Friday evening, and Saturday morning, I felt good enough to drive over to Harrodsburg for a model train show. It was small, but pretty well put together. A half-dozen layouts, plus a few tables covered in large scale stuff. A few vendors with some decent N scale offerings, and I picked up a couple of cars. Stopped off in Danville to stock up at Aldi and get lunch, then back to the farm.

The sick came back with a vengeance Saturday evening. Fever, sore throat, coughing, and I'm salivating like mad. It hurts to swallow, so I'm being disgusting and spitting into a plastic soft drink bottle. On top of that, a case of conjunctivitis joined the party Sunday morning and that was just all kinds of foul. Overall, 0/10, do not recommend.

Also sickening, it's primary election season here, and we are just overrun with awful ads for awful candidates. Motherfuckers loudly and proudly calling themselves "Trump Republicans" and doing their damnedest to attach themselves to the orange son-of-a-bitch. Gods, I cannot imagine voting for a Repub candidate for any office at any level.

Ick ick ick. Ibuprofen is barely working, Dayquil's not doing much either. The home test says it's not Covid-19, but this is right up there with my bout with the thing last year and the sinus infection from a couple of years ago in terms of raw misery. Wasn't even up to a Discord RPG session yesterday afternoon.

There was a nifty little surprise yesterday afternoon. Looked out the front door and there was a flock of wild turkeys out in the field. I counted 13 of the birds, including a pair of solid white ones! A buddy on another Discord channel suggested that I try hunting one for dinner; I could only thank him for his estimation of my marksmanship.

A couple of big turkey drumsticks sounds really good though. Maybe after the discounted packs of chicken things and pork chops I picked up at Aldi are gone.

Where there is a con, there is likely to be con funk, and I have a case of it. Mixed with a cold brought on by wild temperature swings and the hell of allergies that is a part of springtime in the Ohio Valley, this is an ugly round of sneezing and headache.

Anxiety’s hitting tonight, along with an unhealthy mix of restlessness and misanthropy.

I used to be a decent writer, and I can still turn a phrase now and then. As such, I worked up a pretty good blurb for a demo game session - a little atmospheric, maybe, but it fit pretty well with the vibe of the source material. And I find last night that some joker had copied it word-for-fucking-word to promote his own game session. When I confronted him about it, his response was “LOL I could never come up with something that good so I just copied yours. It was meant to be flattery.” Well, look, fucker, “flattery” is “Hey, man, that was really good.” Not plagiarism. So, yes, I raised hell with him and with the event organizer who knowingly went along with this fuckery. The blurb for the game was changed this afternoon, and while I won’t say that I’m happy, I’m satisfied.

Still going to Cincy for a con this coming weekend, with low expectations. One of my games has all of one seat of five claimed, and the other has three. I signed up for three other events, and do hope to get to play them. Mostly, I’m looking forward to just getting away from work and home for a while. HR’s not happy with it, but that’s their problem.

I am just tired and cranky of late, and my normal level of self-dislike has really cranked itself up lately. I don’t quite hate my life, but I can sure see that state coming around the bend. Too much time spent unproductive, intellectually idle. And that’s just part of the feedback loop that, ultimately, keeps me in this terminal funk. Some nights, I’m able to bang out a couple hundred words, and so help me, it feels good, but when I get home and try to keep things going, I just stall out and go slack-jawed.

I had a good, quiet weekend at the farm. Got there around 1PM Friday, chatted with Dad for a good long while. He wasn't feeling his best, so didn't go out Friday evening. We got up around sunrise Saturday morning and went to the Bread of Life for breakfast and good grief did I eat way too much.

An aside: Some day, I will remember this. While my diet isn't perfect, it is much less unhealthy than it was a few years ago - very little fried food, for example. So, when I have something greasy, boy-howdy does my stomach hurt. Stopped in Danville Friday for some fish. A few hours later, I was miserable.

Dad did go out for NYE. I did not. Stayed home. Watched movies - though not Strange Days - and went to bed around 9PM.

Drove back to Louisville this morning. Heavy fog for about half the drive. The Danville Speedway has/had a stock of real sugar Dew, and I bought way too much of it. Home now, watching The Handmaid's Tale before some football.

One of my best friends signed himself into a psychiatric observation stay this week. He'd posted a few things mentioning some mental health concerns, and we had a brief talk about things last week - as much to shore each other up as anything. He signed himself out this morning following observation and evaluation. We're going have a longer talk in a while, when he's ready.

Ben and have been friends almost since we met back in Lexington. He was one of my GenCon staffers for a few years. I was one of his groomsmen. We've had good times together. He's successful, father to a sweet year-old daughter. He's been there to reel in some of my less-noble behavior. He's going to be okay.

He just posted a lengthy description of what led to this. There's no big single event, lots of things stacking up. The death-of-a-thousand-paper-cuts. I can sure understand this. I'm fighting my own collection of mind-weasels; sometimes winning, sometimes losing, sometimes managing a holding action.

I spent a lot of the last week sleeping. More than usual, I mean. 12, sometimes 14 hours a day in bed or on my couch. A lot of ibuprofen, a lot of orange juice - and why do I forget how delicious orange juice is until I'm sick? This stuff is divine.

Rain, then ice and freezing rain Wednesday and Thursday. Roads were treacherous. Not much more than that, thankfully.

Added a fifth player to the CP Red game. Good decision, both because of the slightly deeper player pool, and Mike is very sharp and entertaining.

Spending a couple of days at the farm with Dad. We have a tiny conundrum - he caught a skunk today, and, well, what do we do with it? Try to let it out of the trap and it'll almost certainly spray us. Probably going to have to just shoot it.

It's been a week.

I bought a varmint rifle. A Savage 93 in .17HMR, nice little bolt-action gun. Factory-installed scope, really smooth action. I was looking forward to going down to Mom&Dad's and breaking it in, but ...

I started getting sick late Friday night. Woke up very weak Saturday morning, you-know-what symptoms. Stayed in bed as much as possible. Same thing Sunday, after sleeping for about 15 hours.

The Bengals beat KC and are going to the Super Bowl for the first time in forever, playing against the LA Rams, at the Rams' home field. This has been the best wildest craziest NFL playoff season I've ever seen.

Anyway, still sick Monday. Scheduled a test, positive result this morning. Whee.

Roadside Picnic

Bright Ideas, Dark Futures

Good Vibrations

If Trouble was Money

Army of Dreamers

Addictive

Please Come Home

And the Bottom Drops Out

We Don't Give up Now

Bright Lights

Make Them Yours

Grounds for Divorce

I'll Take Care of You

Tears Run Dry

Ourselves Alone

Most High

Drop the Pilot

Rebel Rebel

Fall at Your Feet

Shooting Star

Allegheny

Buckets of Baggage

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June 2025

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