tracker7 | Entries tagged with holiday

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.

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.

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.

After a few years of not having holidays from work, the last couple of weeks have been a little bit disorienting. Two days off in the middle of the week last week, a day-and-a-half this week and I have to remind myself that tomorrow is not Monday.

Did something for NYE for the first time in many years. Hung out with a friend from work, watching movies and playing games. We were both pretty sleepy around 11, so we agreed to call it close enough and I headed home. It was a fun evening, and sleeping in this morning was a delight.

I don't expect much to come of it, but we have a heck of a winter storm in the forecast for this weekend. Eight or nine inches of snow on Sunday and sub-freezing temperatures for several days after that. Going to get some emergency supplies, just in case. It's not like they'll go bad.

Having Monday night to myself was a treat. I didn't sleep as much or as late as I wanted, to no real surprise. I got on the road before sunrise amid light traffic and had an easy drive to Liberty.

Dad and I went on a little last-minute grocery run, and did very little else on Christmas Eve. Plenty of cooking on Christmas morning, plenty of food and leftovers to graze on during the afternoon's NFL games. Kansas City beat Pittsburgh (yay) and the Ravens just demolished the Texans 31-2.

Drove back to Louisville, chatted with housemate, put stuff away, went to bed. Felt pretty darn good.

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.

The new iPad feels a little bit faster than its predecessor. It lacks a home button, and in the case, the power button is just awkward enough that I grumble a tiny bit when I try to use its touch ID to unlock the device.

I accepted the nomination and election to the board of directors for a 501(c)3 organization today. I'm going to be working on the events committee, planning and organizing a convention towards the end of the year. I'm looking forward to seeing how this works out, and at the very least I have a new line on my CV.

Last night was the big LeNoue family holiday party. A good time as always, with so much food. I had just about talked myself out of going, but some form of better angels prevailed and I made the drive to Lexington. It was the usual Transy/HEX extended family with a couple of notable absences that weren't missed all that much. I stayed much later than I had planned to, getting home around 1:30AM, and it was so very much worth it.

Christmas is coming. We're closed on the 24th and 25th; I'm planning to light out for Liberty after work on Monday and spend all the time I can at Dad's. There are a couple of clients I'm going to call while I'm gone, just to check in and hopefully keep them from being completely alone on the holiday.

Busy week. In addition to the normal client visits and office work, our holiday party for the clients was on Thursday and that meant lots of extra work. I'm dangerously close to getting one of my folks intro transitional housing and if I can manage that I'll call the first half of the month a win.

Friday was good. Took a half-day as Clayton was in town and sat in on the evening's CP Red game. John C was unable to play, so that saved me from running out to Crescent Hill before and after the game.

Went to Liberty for a presentation at the library and to see Dad for a bit. My iPad suicided during some app updates and it couldn't be fixed, so I bought a new one this morning. Not cheap, but it's a hell of a good tool and I'm very accustomed to having one.

UofL football is going to the Sun Bowl, a New Year's Eve game. Win or lose, it'll be a good end to the season. Since it's on CBS instead of whatever cable network threw money at the NCAA, I'm going to take a half-day and watch the game from my couch before ...

Holy cow, I have plans for NYE! Almost a date, really. I don't quite know what to do with this. Casual plans, just hanging out and watching movies and quite possibly nodding off before midnight.

Thanskgiving weekend fell later in the month this year. I used a couple of personal hours to give myself a slightly early escape on Wednesday afternoon, handled some personal stuff, and headed to Liberty around sunset. Heavy traffic on 64, but nothing out of the ordinary for the rest of the drive.

Good meal on Thanksgiving Day, some okay football, and a water main break in the afternoon. Never a dull moment. Water was still out on Friday evening, so I decided to get a hotel room that night, and that was certainly a decision that I made.

Back to Liberty Saturday morning to wait for a package and play with Kaiser and listen to the UofL-UK game. The Cards won handily, 41-14, the package arrived, and I headed back to Louisville. Light snow around Bardstown, a pileup on 65 at the 264 interchange. It was good to get home and talk with housemate and watch Svengoolie.

So, Sunday morning. Ground's covered in snow. Clothes are being washed. Tomorrow Never Dies is playing. I have a stack of print and PDF books to read and Asimov's Prelude to Foundation on the Kindle app.

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.

I ran through the final season of Star Trek: Picard. Not bad, but it was a heavy nostalgia trip. Most of the TNG regulars got screen time, but one notable recurring guest showed up in one episode only to die, and I wasn't in love with that decision.

Netflix's Beverly Hills Cop movie was enjoyable enough. There's a chase scene that doesn't quite work for me, but the rest is fun. A few years ago, I rewatched the first movie, and was surprised that, wow, that was a genuinely good movie.

Less than six weeks until I can start looking for another position within the agency. I've been watching the postings off and on, and there are some good options. There are parts of my job that I do like, but they're heavily outweighed by the parts that I very much don't.

It sure is July 4. Every doofus around is setting off the fireworks they bought at whatever tent set up in whatever parking lot. I figure there'll be a few rounds of that hit new guessing game Fireworks or Gunshots tonight, and the news tomorrow morning should be good for a few uncomfortable chuckles.

Charcon's coming up. Still waiting for the GM discount code to arrive. I'm comfortable enough with the adventures I schedule, and should be more so after the test session Tuesday evening. I'm looking forward to this trip - looking forward to seeing some people and getting some breakfast at Tudor's.

I gotta wonder how things are going to be when I read this entry in a year. I figure that things are going to go pear-shaped and that orange bastard will get re-elected and ... the republic ends.

Lexicon is coming up this weekend. I'm scheduled to GM three Coriolis sessions, and as of right now, I have players for two of them. Got some friends I want to see, both at the con and outside it. Should be a good weekend.

At some point, I'll spend the weekend in the new apartment.

Easter weekend was nice enough. Spent most of it in Liberty. Watched the UFL opening games on Saturday. Nice lunch with the family on Sunday. Got back to Louisville Sunday evening, very tired. Watched the first episode of season four of For All Mankind.

So, that's a nice if unintentional perk of the job - company phones are iPhones, so I have to have an app store account with the work e-mail account. And Apple likes to give away trial memberships of their various services, and I'm not too proud to accept three free months of Apple+. Put the reminder to cancel the subscription in my calendar already, of course.

Mess of an entry. I'm still getting my feet back under me.

Saturday night was the annual big-ass LeNoue holiday party. I went up to Lexington a couple of hours early to see Ben Parks for the first time since Lexicon. A good hour and change catching up and just hanging out with one of my brothers-by-choice.

He's living in the same apartment complex I lived in before moving to Louisville, and the place has since seen a big remodel. It's gated now - just theater, since the exit gate is always open - and the units are dolled up a little. Being there spun up some memories - I was pretty happy in the place, really. It ... goddamn it, it felt like home.

The time to head down to Southpoint came soon enough. The LeNoues are lovely people, and always welcoming to someone who is just a friend of their son-in-law. Lots of food, the friends from Transy and that circle.

It was an exciting night, weatherwise. Powerful storms down in Tennessee and western Kentucky. A couple of F2 tornadoes hit around Clarksville. The parents of a friend from UK saw some damage in their neighborhood, but nothing worse than power loss at their home. We got a lot of heavy rain, started hitting on my drive home. The neighborhood is about a mile south of Man-O-War, and at that time of night, getting from there to Danville is about half-an-hour. In the rain that night, it took me a little over 45 minutes. Never quite got to the point where I felt the need to get off the road, and I was glad to see things calm down about the time I got to Danville.

Sunday was nice. Slept late, got up later. NFL games, napping, reading. It was a quiet afternoon and evening, and I sure appreciated it after the socializing and heavy weather on Saturday. Got a call from SCC this afternoon to schedule a second interview - there's tomorrow afternoon locked down. Let's see what happens.

Halloween season has improved my mood a little bit. I've found myself wishing that I'd renewed the ol' WoW subscription because of the holiday-themed stuff that Blizzard does - I've found myself wishing that for a few years now, so clearly it's not that big a deal.

I finally got around to getting a borrower's card at the county library. Checked out William Forstchen's One Second After and its sequels. Given my mental state last week, that may have been a mistake because these are hard reads. Great ideas, very good writing, but fuck me these characters suffer.

Louisville beat Duke this afternoon - a solid 23-0 thrashing. After last week's horrible game against Pitt, this was quite welcome.

Got things prepped for NerdLouvia next weekend. A buddy's putting me up for the weekend, and that's awesome. Going to run a couple of DCC sessions, and after that taking a crash course in Coriolis for January's con.

If the weekend was any indication, this is going to be a rough week. I've been in a bad mood for a couple of days, and the upcoming anniversary of Mom's death isn't going to make things any better.

Thursday morning was good, at least. Took care of some errands early in the day, and yay for even that activity. I'll take what I can get, I guess. Sent out some resumes on Friday.

Saturday, I was in a haze most of the day, until a cousin's party in the late afternoon. Bob's a few years older than me, and we have next to nothing in common, but we've always gotten along swimmingly. So, he's throwing this big to-do, and I went. Lots of food, some people I knew, and for the most part, it was a good time. Could have done without the expectation that I would entertain and/or babysit one of Dad's friends while he was doing his social butterfly thing, but I don't do mindless small talk with my friends, much less some random twit.

Sunday, I let a small frustration well up and really do a number on me, and that's been happening far too often. Napped it out.

Today, I got to mostly be by myself, because the other real option was to go to the lake. On Labor Day. With ten or a dozen other people, and fuuuuuck that. Read a couple hundred pages of a Night's Black Agents supplement, and that was nice.

I hadn't really planned to, but I wound up going to Liberty's Independence Day to-do last night. Went prepared, of course - collapsing keyboard, chair, drinks in the backpack. I set up at the courthouse, close enough to hear the bands but past the real edge of the crowd. The closing band was good, the fireworks show also good. Getting out of the Ag Center's parking area was a goat rodeo, so I found somewhere out of the way - a trend, as you can see - and waited until the fleet of cars and trucks and SUVs and brodozers was gone. Drove home listening to Peter Gabriel at an obscene volume.

More stormy weather today. I encountered the microest of microbursts this morning, an utter deluge of a storm maybe 25 yards across. Another very small cell blew through a few minutes ago - a very brief blast of rain and thunder.

I'm going to be social again tonight, I guess. Dad's church is having a midweek fish fry; as good(ish) Protestants, none of this Fridays-during-Lent stuff. I'll go, I'll eat, I'll mostly keep to myself. All will be well. Tomorrow will probably be another story. He wants to go to the lake, and I'm neutral on the idea. If some of his friends invite themselves along, I'll come down with a case of something. I just don't trust 'em, and it's not something Dad can understand.

Charcon's coming up in a hurry. One of my games is sold out, the other is at 50 percent. I'm signed up for Mothership, and I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to the whole weekend, really. Even going to detour through Point Pleasant on my way home to visit the Mothman Museum and some other places around there.

We sure enough got some rain. A few branches down here at the farm; trees down at a church just down the road, and an EF-1 tornado about eight miles from here. Very exciting. On top of that, the storms washed out much of the smoke from the ongoing Canadian wildfires, and the air is the clearest it's been in a week.

Tomorrow's Independence Day, and I don't know if there's much I'm up to celebrating, what with the Supreme Court's recent and ongoing fuckery. It's hard to acknowledge any kind of legitimacy in these black-robed warlocks.

Got my PDF copy of the Old Gods of Appalachia RPG this morning. Haven't done much more than skim it today; I do like what I've seen and I expect I'll run a session or two of this one sometime.

I've got the core of my Cyberpunk Red group back on board, and a couple of folks in mind to take the places of the players I didn't invite back. I'll probably keep parts of the previous story going, and mix in most of the stories from Tales of the Red.

I've had some decent days lately. Rode around with Dad on a clumsy but ultimately successful attempt to find a boat repair place someone had suggested to him. I'm continuing to burn through the Netflix DVD queue before that service sadly comes to an end in a few months - Tubi has helped with that, too.

Got a lead on a Delta Green game, and I'm looking forward to seeing how that shakes out. I thought that last night was going to be the session, but I misread the store's calendar. Saved myself a drive when I checked again before heading out and saw that last night was D&D night, and, no thanks. So, I ordered a pizza and settled in for some reading ... and that became some writing, and hokie-smokes did that feel good.

Today started pretty well. Dad needed a few things for some baking wanted to do for the reunion today, so off we went to the grocery. After that, I felt the need for some tea and the Escape needed fuel, so stopped at the large convenience store/small truckstop for such. On the way out of the store, my clumsiness reared its head - I smacked my left wrist against a doorframe and popped the screen right off my smartwatch. Its battery had started to swell up (it's six years old, after all) and had pushed the screen up a little bit, so it was probably just going to happen eventually. Anyway, it wasn't reparable by my hands, so I just replaced it this afternoon. It's currently syncing with the phone, and I have a shipping label ready for sending the old one off for recycling.

The reunion was okay. I had pie. That was about it.

It's Memorial Day weekend. Somewhere along the line, it became a thing here in the South(ish) to add flowers and decorations and whatnot to the graves of any and all relatives. I'm not much for that, but since I failed to do so for Mother's Day, I got a nice simple bouquet for Mom's grave. It's pretty, quite colorful, and she would have loved it.

Goshdarn it, Mom, I miss you today.

The Indy 500's tomorrow, and coverage of the Monaco Grand Prix, too, so there's my afternoon soundtrack sorted out. Dad's already promised to not ask me to go to church with him.

Monday's the holiday itself, and the Honor Guard Dad's part of will have a part in the town's observance. That, I will definitely attend. He's proud of this continued service and universe knows it does my heart good to see him enjoying this.

The phone and new watch are still syncing, so I think I'm going to get some reading in (Magician: Master, by Raymond Feist, for the record).

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.

Christ, it is cold. The closest reporting station says -2, -24 wind chill, and that is just about obscene for this area. We got a couple of inches of snow last night, and there are power outages scattered around town. Dad kept power, but the water company lost pressure for a while this morning.

So, it looks like I'm going to spend Christmas weekend alone. Dad and I decided that even with tomorrow's relative warmup, travel is just too dangerous. Housemate left for his family's place yesterday and I don't expect him back until Sunday evening. So, I'm going to stay on my couch in warm clothes and under my old UofL blanket and I am going to watch a lot of Hulu and Netflix and Prime Video, and football tomorrow, and there will be some PS4 time, too. Heck yeah some downtime.

I sent the not-going-to-GenCon e-mail last night. No drama, and I'm relieved, so everybody wins.

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Roadside Picnic

Bright Ideas, Dark Futures

Picture Window

Think of What You've Done

Addictive

I Could be Wrong

Neon Signs

Please Come Home

North Pole

Mountain Fever

Free Radicals

And the Bottom Drops Out

You Wanted More

Chaos Angel

Strong Enough

Give me Back my Wig

No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross

Five Get Over Excited

Hey God

Love Lies Bleeding

Fall at Your Feet

Come Back

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June 2025

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