tracker7 | Entries tagged with work

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.

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.

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.

Unsurprisingly the Gran Turismo movie is just chock full of beauty shots of Nissan GT-Rs tear-assing around race tracks. Kaz shows up in some shots. This is, so far, thoroughly enjoyable.

Had some excitement at work last week. A client had gone off his meds and showed up at the center. Started causing trouble with the front office staff. Made some threats, said he was coming back with a gun. Since I was the staffer lucky enough to have been there and with the willingness to do so, I got to swear out a MIW on him. Dude was arrested when he showed up the next morning.

Today marks my one-year anniversary at the job that brought me back to Louisville. I still don't love the gig, but sometimes I kinda like it. I'm looking for something else, because of the dissatisfaction, but also because who knows if the position will even exist in a year. We're a non-profit that relies heavily on Federal funding, and the stupid bastard in the White House is destroying Federal agencies right and left.

I'm on vacation next week - some time to myself to celebrate a birthday. Not entirely sure where I'm going, but I have some candidate destinations in mind. I really just want to get away for a while. Going to get the Impala's oil changed this weekend and throw my duffel bag in the back seat and point the nose in whatever direction.

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.

Two-and-a-half days at work last week. Didn't see my rural clients because of road conditions, and we got another snowstorm on Friday. I wasn't feeling great Friday morning and went in with the plan of sorting one client's apartment concerns out, then either WFH or taking a half-day and watching the weather from the comfort of my couch.

That didn't happen. When the weather started hitting, the powers-that-be made the sensible decision to close our offices and clinics at 1PM. All good - that fit into my plans. About 12:40 the client mentioned above called, told me he was a couple of blocks from the center and needed a way home. I told him to get to the center and I'd get him home. What should have been a 20-minute drive took a little over an hour. Okay, great, I'm only burning three hours of PTO. I headed for home.

That's when the second call of the day came in. Another client needing help. I judged that the roads weren't too dangerous yet, offered up a prayer to Max Rockatansky, and headed back out. Got him to the grocery and back, and then got my own precious self home.

And that's where I stayed for the weekend, save for a quick trip to pick up a pizza on Sunday afternoon. The second wave of snow wasn't bad, and warmer temps today melted a lot of the snow off.

Today should have been better, but it started off with putting out more of someone else's fires and progressed to wrangling one of my own and then a couple more. Tomorrow,I need to put my people (and myself) first and take care of us.

Let's see how that works out.

Ravens beat the Steelers, and that was the best thing about a good NFL Wild Card weekend. The final game of the weekend is going on right now. It was supposed to be played in LA, but some horrific fires forced a move to Phoenix, to be played in a stadium whose naming rights belong to an insurance company that canceled a load of homeowners' policies in the wildfire area last year. I guess the universe does have a sense of the absurd.

Whatever. We're doomed.

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.

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.

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.

Got the books. The Buick started acting up around Bardstown - lost power, as the dashboard helpfully let me know. Towed it back to Liberty and drove the Frontier back to Louisville early Tuesday. Swapped it out for the backup Impala Wednesday after work. Impala is behaving and will hopefully continue to do so.

The Dodgers are up two games to zero in the World Series. Freddy Freeman hit a walk-off grand slam in the tenth to win the first game. Game Two wasn't as dramatic, but Shohei Ohtani injured his shoulder trying to steal second and that's concerning. Ice Cube performed a version of "Today was a Good Day" to open the game, paying respect to Fernando Valenzeula at the mound.

Running a Trail of Cthulhu game at Slur tonight. Got three players so far, and that's enough to make things work. If people bail, no worries, I'll just go home and watch the evening NFL game.

Taking Halloween and November 1 off. Voting on Halloween, hopefully not for the last time. Going to Virginia on Friday to see folks and a museum and other stuff. I think this is the first vacation trip I've taken since late 2020 - conventions are working vacations, so I'm not counting them. I'm looking forward to the trip, and very much looking forward to not seeing clients and not being at work for those two days.

Sent out a couple of resumes last night. I've given the job the best shot I can, and it's just not working out for me. Time to move on. Again.

Friday night's game only ran for a couple of hours, and I wound up leaving a couple bottles of soda and water at the shop. Not my best night.

Did a lot of nothing yesterday. Laid in without sleeping very much. Miami beat Louisville.

Read a good chunk of When Gravity Fails this morning. Worked on more material for Cyberpunk.

Back to work tomorrow, and I'm making a fast trip to Liberty and back to pick up a couple of books from Noble Knight and some documents from Dad. Thought about spending the night and coming back up here early Tuesday morning, but I don't think I will. I'll sleep a little late and attend the morning meeting's via Zoom.

Exhausting day. Went in a little early to work on some applications, and a client came to the center out of the blue. Since I was there, bosslady asked me to see what was going on. Client had left her home and slept on the sidewalk in front of the center. She's been hard to locate, and isn't taking her medications, and there's a lot of family drama - her daughter is her legal guardian - and it's just been a LOT to deal with. I managed to get her in a decent state of mind, and into a shelter for the evening. I talked with her daughter off and on during the day, and daughter swore out a MIW with the hope that client can be admitted to a longer-term stay following the mandatory evaluations.

The afternoon was better. Bolstered by a double cheeseburger at Culver's and some WFH time. Then the good ol' GT7 workout and some episodes of The Crown.

I almost feel like I accomplished something today.

One of my clients was served with a MIW today. I didn't sign off on anything - I'm not a clinician - but I did agree with the decision. Her delusions had gotten much worse, and were reaching a point that we believed that she's becoming a danger to herself. This client and I have a good relationship, and we decided that another staffer should be there when the warrant was served - if it was me, she might consider that a betrayal and that could worsen things. It went smoothly, she's hospitalized for a while, and hopefully she'll get some good results from the mandated medications.

I'm still in the running for the positions I applied for. Supervisor talked with me about it this morning; said that I had followed protocol and she will recommend me for the transfer.

I'm giving some thought to a short road trip around Halloween. Take off a couple of days, drive to see something new to me - North Carolina Transportation Museum or Patriots Point, something like that. It's been a long time since I've had a real vacation, and I'm getting about due. I enjoy my convention trips and all that, but ... yeah. Time to go see things.

Looks like the Buick's water pump failed, maybe a cracked housing. I got it towed home from Cane Run yesterday, took today off to handle things, and wound up buying an Impala. Dad and I are going to share it, a backup vehicle, until and unless we decide to get some work done on it and flip it for a couple grand more than we paid for it. Anyway, the Buick's getting hauled to Liberty in a day or two and it'll get repaired and then we'll go from there.

Updated my resume and applied for a couple of transfers Monday night. Would love to get into something that's more aligned with my education and interests and all that. I'm just over spending half the day driving around Jefferson County with the faint hope that I can find these people.

Short workweeks are always appreciated. I like them better when the day off is a Friday - when the week ends sooner rather than starting later - but I'm not going to complain. This one was busy, with the normal 150-mile drive on Thursday, so at least it didn't seem to drag on. So, here I am on a Sunday afternoon, watching the Colts-Texans game and doing laundry. Getting in some reading, too.

Today is the third anniversary of Mom's death. The pain is gone, and has been for a while, if I'm being honest. It's an emptiness now. An empty space. I miss her.

Friday was Dad's birthday, and I took him to lunch yesterday to celebrate. Heck of a good meal and Copper & Oak in Danville. We had a little other business to take care of, and that was handled easily enough. He's singing with his gospel group this afternoon, and that will hopefully keep him from dwelling on the date too much. They're singing about thirty miles south of Indy next weekend, and I may go up there and see about going early enough to go up to Patachou for one of their fantastic omelets.

I'm diving back into Eclipse Phase, prepping for a SYR game in a couple of weeks. I remember the broad strokes of the game, but so many details are coming back to me on the reread.

Some real glamour shots of Lucas Oil Stadium and Indianapolis in general during the game. I was just there five weeks ago, and I find myself missing it already. My GenCon family isn't what it used to be, but they do still mean something to me.

Some jerk decided to shoot up I-75 yesterday afternoon. Dude bought an AR of some stripe and 2000 rounds for it yesterday morning, then found a spot on an overpass and ... just started shooting. Still at large as of this afternoon.

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'm slowly making my way through the pile of gaming books - print and digital - I acquired in the weeks leading up to and including GenCon, and have finally made some progress on a novel I started reading about the time I ended my exile.

God's Teeth, for Delta Green, is a stellar set of operations spanning 20 years. Even as DG scenarios go, this one is dark as fuck. It does a lot with the idea of leaving the most horrific stuff up to the reader, to good effect. You know better than someone else what'll get under your skin and into your head, after all.

Symbaroum Adventure Collection 4 is alright. I kind of raced through it, as I have no real expectation of ever running either adventure. Still, it's a Free League product, so the writing is good enough to enjoy on its own.

Got a PDF copy of The Morrow Project 4th Edition on the cheap - probably a DTRPG Deal of the Day. This is sure a product of its time. I like rules-heavy systems with plenty of minutiae - heck, I could probably run a Spycraft 2 game on short notice - but I really don't need a couple of charts to determine the wind chill factor and its damage to a character. And let's not even go into the hit locations and damage multipliers and all that. The idea of the game is in my wheelhouse, though, and I could do something with it using a system that doesn't suck the enjoyment out of the room.

Augmented Reality is a darn good system- and setting-agnostic book full of tables for detailing a cyberpunk city. Buildings, people, events, lots of good stuff. I've already started using it in my CP Red game - as much as I like the Donjon, this looks like a much better resource.

Not sure what'll be next. There's the rest of Symbaroum's huge published campaign. A collection of DG operations, one of which I ran for the Somerset store group. The DCC Day stuff. The Cyberpunk Edgerunners box. Outgunned. The Numenera starter box. It's an embarrassment of riches.

Oh, the book! Cahokia Jazz. Pretty darn good detective story in an alternate America where the Native nations held onto power and Cahokia takes the place of St. Louis as one of the Midwest's capitals.

Yesterday was my six-month mark at work. I haven't yet applied for a different position, but I'm making a small list.

No sense in burying the lede. One of our clients died recently.

DK was manic-depressive and his wife died a couple of weeks ago. He was put on our daily visit list, and today was my day to check in on him. Despite our best efforts, no one had been able to locate him since Friday (it's Wednesday, for future reference). I rolled in to the apartment complex and knocked at his unit, no answer. Went to see a neighbor who had spoken with me on previous visits, and after another attempt, we called the security office. This is at a public housing complex that is little more than storage for humans, and it's slated for demolition in the next 18 months. Security showed, and called maintenance to gain access to the unit. Officer went in, came back out after a minute, and motioned for me to step away from the other residents. I figured it was bad, and, well, yeah.

Talked with my supervisor, then with DK's therapist, and then with the EMS sergeant who responded. I'll probably have to talk with someone from the coroner's office, too, to provide some of my agency's information on DK. Supervisor had me come back to the office and file an incident report, and gave me the option to go home for the rest of the day. So, I did.

We're letting the rest of the team know tomorrow. I'll have counseling offers, and will probably sit for a couple of sessions so I don't look like a sociopath or something. I'm not without compassion, but ... well, ultimately this was someone that I was working with, and not one of the clients that I have real rapport with. It's a loss, and people cared for him. Poor guy. He was dead at least a couple of days, half-naked corpse on the floor of a sixty-year-old government housing building. DK was, in my experience, an okay guy, and I hope if there's something else out there, I hope he's at peace.

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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Roadside Picnic

Bright Ideas, Dark Futures

Good Vibrations

Think of What You've Done

If Trouble was Money, Second Entry

Brand New Life

Red Rooster

Addictive

Rambling Man

I Could be Wrong

Please Come Home

Mountain Fever

Get Back

Little Prince

Bite the Hand

Destination Unknown

Nobody's Soldier

Violet

And the Bottom Drops Out

Need Something More

Gimme Shelter

Trying to be Cool

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June 2025

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