two-and-a-half years later

it’s entirely possible one has too many blogs, when you get an email asking you to moderate a comment on a years-old blog post on a blog you entirely forgot you had. but i go to the blog, and there i see my old, personal, wordpress blog. and i see i haven’t posted on it since january 1st of 2009, two-and-a-half years ago.

so i have to remember to type everything lowercase, because i was using that affectation when i was maintaining this blog (which i created so i could learn wordpress, then promptly went on to use tumblr for my primary blogging needs), and i’ll be damned if i remember anything at all about wordpress, except that the dashboard i am writing this on still looks needlessly complicated to me, which may well be why i stopped updating this blog?

it could also be because life has thrown me a couple of big curveballs since january 1st, 2009 — not the least of which was losing my job back around may 1st, 2010. i briefly started a blog i called “unenjoyment diary” on tumblr back then to document my unemployment and search for more work, but that got really depressing and i stopped that after a while. i’m still looking for work, anything involving broadcasting, writing, editing or producing, so the two or three of you who neglected to delete this blog from your rss feeds sometime in the past two-three years? give me a holler if you know of any work out there you think i might be suited for.

in other news, let’s see, this has been one unbelievable year of health problems at my house. my daughter had the last of her wisdom teeth out, then broke her foot, and now seems to have become lactose intolerant. my wife had fairly routine surgery a couple of months ago, only to contract what we think is lyme disease. she spent nearly three days in the hospital dealing with that, only to suffer the onset of bell’s palsy just days after her release, and we still don’t know what the final outcome of all that will be. oddly, i am a middle-aged, unemployed diabetic with occasional lower-back pain and yet i am the second-healthiest person in the house at the moment, outpaced only by my healthy-as-a-horse 15-year-old son, who for the record is playing grand theft auto: san andreas on the tv behind me as i type these words.

it’s independence day here in los estados unidos, a nation that generally hold actual independent thought and action in the very highest contempt and drapes its complicity and cowardice in the flag, then hates you if you don’t bow down and worship that same flag all the while embracing the good ol’ american values of conformity, obedience, and of course staunch public heterosexuality.

yeah, happy independence day, everybody. i’m back.

nothing changes, new year’s day

even though i stayed up until 12:45 in the morning, here i am awake at my regular just-before-dawn timeslot with just a hint of a headache probably from the minor sleep deficit. will i stay up or go back to bed? unknown. my wife is on her way back from connecticut, where she and her parents rang in the new year in a casino. casinos make me nauseous with their noises and lights (and the faint pee smell), so that definitely was out of the question for me. but here i am, 2009, bring it on.

so this is (almost) the new year…

“…and i don’t feel any different,” sang death cab for cutie. well, with 20 hours to go before 2009 gets here, i am ready to feel different. 2008 clearly hated my guts. i am hoping i can charm the pants of the new year in a way that just never happened in 2008.

despite my certainty that the united states will be profoundly changed within the next 365 days, and that a lot of people will learn a lot of hard lessons, i still would like to think it’s at least possible to be optimistic. here’s to hoping that things turn around, that people learn to roll with the punches, and that we all try to be a little kinder to each other, and less tolerant of unkindness in the year ahead.

thanksgiving

i want to be thankful, really i do.

but, pneumonia. and other continuing bullshit that had seemed resolved, but ha ha, not yet, buddy.

thankful? i wish i could feel that way. 2008 has been one of the worst years of my life. and i have pneumonia. i’m not thankful, i’m fucking pissed off.

weeks gone by

it’s been since october 9th, sorry for the lack of updates here; life has continued to be very weird and oppressive, like the universe has a grudge against my wife and i. we took our kids to a comic book convention over the weekend, which was the first fun we’ve had in some time, so even though i spent too much money, i don’t regret it. pics and details on my blog at comic book galaxy.

lots of crappy stuff going on right now that i can’t really talk about, but if you would like to send some positive vibes my way, i’d appreciate it.

and even though new york will go for obama on election day, and even though i have lost all faith in the political system, and even though it almost doesn’t matter who wins now that the dominance of the united states on the world stage is rapidly winding down — i think i’ll still go out and vote for obama next tuesday. mccain and palin have been flipping the bird to me and people who think even remotely like me for long enough that i think i owe it to myself to give them a fuck you right back.

and if mccain somehow manages to win anyway, well, everybody bent over and took it in december of 2000, and again in november of 2004. have you had enough yet, or will you actually do something about it if they steal the election again?

knit cap for nights in the 30s

we’ve had some cold nights the past week, and, reluctant to turn the heat on this early in the season, i’ve been wearing a knit cap to bed to conserve body heat. damn if it doesn’t help me sleep through the night a lot better. my wife laughs at how it looks, but, you know, she’d laugh at how i look anyway, cap or no cap.

kitten rescue

while on  my lunch break thursday, i spotted three small kittens emerging from the bushes on the edge of the parking lot of the queensbury, new york staples. they fled back into the security of the bushes as i approached, but as soon as i backed off they poked their heads out again. eventually i realized there were four of them, no more than a month or so old, and i called the spca on my cell phone and was advised that if i could grab them up, i should bring them to the local animal hospital.

a friend from work brought a can of catfood, and that got them a little braver about venturing forth, but we only ever got as close as nearly grabbing one of them, a little mostly-black one, before he leaped back into the cover of the bushes.

later that day, my wife brought more food to the scene after i told her where to find them, and she reported that the mother cat was there as well, and wary of her presence.

friday, home from work dealing with plumbers and electricians and hazmat teams (oh my), we took a break to grab lunch and my wife wanted to check on the cats again. we brought a can of food and our cat carrier that we use for our cat, chloe. putting an open can of food in the back of the carrier lured three of the kittens out of hiding while the mother cat was off by the nearby red lobster’s dumpster (ah-ha, i thought to myself, no wonder this is where they are).

we managed to get two of the kittens into the carrier (the third one bolted) as they wolfed down the can of cat food, and we drove them immediately to the nearby pet hospital as instructed by the spca. man, there were a lot of barking dogs at that hospital. i forgot how much i dislike the sound of dumb dogs barking loudly for no real reason.

my wife is concerned about the ultimate fate of the kittens we rescued, but i have to believe that with fall here and 40 degree nights a reality, they have to be better off than they would be facing an upstate new york fall and winter out there exposed to the elements, red lobster dumpster neearby or no.

tomorrow we’ll likely see if we can get the remaining kittens and their mother into the carrier and to the relative safety and security of the animal hospital. we’re told if they’re healthy (which the kittens appear to be, the mother not so much, and she in fact may very well be feral), they will be placed for adoption with a shelter in lake george.

the mother is calico, three of the kittens are various shades of orange and white, and the other one is black with some orange. they are all quite cute and look healthy to my untrained eye. i hope we did the right thing bringing in the ones we did, and i hope the others make it through tonight all right. it’s 41f degrees right now, and the forecast is calling for mid-30s. no weather to be outside all night, but bound to be much colder and more unpleasant than even that within a matter of a few weeks.

hazmat teams at home. totally new system at work. and child psychologists.

this is not the worst week of my life, but very likely it is in second place. one more kick in the teeth and i swear my head will explode like a rotten melon.

off to albany for two days

wednesday and thursday i’ll be in albany training on a new digital audio system for work. is this the most exciting thing to happen all week? just possibly, if we discount the season premiere of house.

the most expensive thing i’ll buy this week (i hope)

i bought the new star trek: alternate realities dvd set; 30 bucks, but almost every episode on it is a gem. i’d like to get the time travel and captain’s log sets as well, but this is the must-have one for me.

the episodes on it that i really dig:

“mirror, mirror” (spock with a beard)
“the enemy within” (twice the kirk)
“yesterday’s enterprise” (the return of tasha yar)
“the inner light” (picard’s tragic alternate life)
“the visitor” (one of the few good ds9 episodes)
“twilight” (one of the best enterprise episodes)

30 bucks for the set at wal-mart. tried fye first but they never even got them in. their loss.

cereal with sliced bananas for breakfast…

…and peanut butter on a slice of whole wheat bread. this is pretty much everything that’s going on with me at the moment.

the new toaster

spent 30 dollars at the lake george outlets on a new toaster to replace the one that blew up on me a few weeks ago. life without toast? sucks.

took my son aaron to lunch at gg mama’s in glens falls. had a grilled turkey/cheddar/pear sandwich on whole wheat that was outstanding. the boy had a blt, hold the t, and he loved that as well.

bought him another star wars figure, too.

one funny thing about the oral surgery

right after it was over — two weeks ago tomorrow — i remember one of the assistants telling me i probably didn’t remember anything that happened, and i laughed because at that moment i remembered everything that had happened. she explained that that was because i was still coming out of the sedation, and that soon all the memories of the procedure(s) would fade away.

and she was right! it’s hard now for me to even wrap my brain around, but the single memory i still have of the time i was in the chair is the sensation of the surgical thread or whatever they used for the stitches, kind of hanging out of the side of my mouth, and thinking to myself “oh, i must be getting stitches.”

other than that, i don’t remember a thing from the time they started the iv sedation until they told me it was over. eerie.

things making me grumpy today

• people not listening to the words i speak and understanding their meaning.
• extremely late paychecks from one of the companies i freelance for.
• and the concomitant lack of money in my pocket.
• allergies; itchy eyes, tickle in the throat. sneezing.
• residual mouth soreness. could be worse, but should be better.
• i’m not really grumpy, i’m actually kind of apoplectic, to be honest…
• but let’s split the difference and say i just don’t suffer fools gladly.

the weekend

took the boy to see star wars: clone wars in the theater. He really wanted to see it that way instead of on tv, so we went. ate overpriced pizza at sbarro, then saw the movie. it was better than any of the live action prequels, for sure, but seemed to lag on a little in the last half hour or so. i was well and truly glad when it was over, but glad i took him because star wars is an obsession with him right now like nothing i have ever seen him latch onto before. good for him, every boy should have something like that, and star wars is clearly it. even if it baffles me why he (or anyone) would prefer star wars to star trek.

friday with a headache

four ibuprofen have barely made a dent in the throbbing in my head. i wish i could say i am looking forward to the weekend, but i am too broke to do the stuff i really want to do, so it’ll probably be a frustrating weekend of hanging around the house. you’d think i’d be able to take that time to relax and catch up on my reading, but i find that’s not how it usually turns out.

also thinking today about all the blogs and sites i have going on; i was updating kochalkaholic and thinking about whether anyone really goes to it anymore. 18 people stopped by yesterday, with an average daily visit rate of 25. i update it when it seems appropriate, but i admit my passion for it isn’t as powerful as it was when i first started it.

after ten years of writing on the internet, though, one thing i have learned is that everything goes through cycles of passion and periods of lying fallow…there’s a lot of great stuff on kochalkaholic, for example my panel-by-panel look at a two-page zombie story by james kochalka and jason cooley, and my interviews with cooley and others that are specific to the site. there are days i like having all these different places to write about my various interests, and then there are days i wish i could push a button and have them all on one all-inclusive domain. too bad addblog.com got squatted on by a porn site years ago after i dropped it and went back to comic book galaxy. i should have kept that domain, for sure.

and so this is tuesday

despite the sunshine and lovely weather, you can really feel the end of summer in the wind. i wish my allergies would read the memo, because i’m sneezier this morning than i have been for quite some time. funny how every sneeze rattles my jaw and brings back a little of my dental misery. it never ends!

later that day

wow, lunch came to almost fifty bucks. that was a little more than i planned to spend, although it was really good and satisfied my craving for seafood.

shopped at ac moore for some art supplies, got a new sketchbook and some pitt pens, plus i bought the boy a sketchbook of his own and a mechanical pencil to draw with. we hate sharpening pencils in my house. the pitt brush pen is fairly awesome, so i got a set that included one of those and three other pens of varying widths.

the boy talked me into getting him some more legos. what is it with him and legos? he loves them.

back to work tomorrow…off to do some reading now.

the first of september

and so begins my favourite month. i have the day off, no specific plans. maybe read some; there are over a dozen books in my “to be read” stack, including some i have read before but want to read again. daughter is going to a bbq with her grandmother, so the boy and i will be home alone for part of the day. i plan to take him out to lunch and maybe go for a drive or something. we’ll see.

splendor in america

had a long meeting today to organize ideas for a major event that could come as early as late winter or early spring of 2009. And then I talked to harvey pekar for a while. this has been a pretty amazing day.

and so this is friday

took my wife out for her birthday last night, had a very nice dinner in lake george, and today she is taking the kids to the great escape, a theme park near lake george. hopefully they’ll all have a great time.

i have a shortened workday, with the office closing early ahead of the three-day holiday weekend. i have a meeting tomorrow in saratoga springs to discuss an upcoming comics-related event i’ve been asked to consult on, but that’s about it as far as my weekend plans. it’s possible my custom-framed lithograph will be ready for pickup in saratoga, and it would be great if that coincided with me being down there for my meeting anyway…

no dry socket

the good news is, i don’t have dry socket. ugh, it just sounds so gross. the bad news is i still have a good deal of soreness and discomfort, which the doctor thinks may be because my diabetes is slowing down the healing process.

in other news, i cut myself shaving this morning. i hate this entire week.

dry socket

dry socket is the most common aftereffect of having a tooth pulled. apparently it’s a very painful condition. i may have one from last week’s dental work. i am not happy. going to the doctor today to have things looked at.

feeling kind of steve ditko at the moment. as in, twenty-five or forty years from now the bbc would want to do a documentary on why i am so reclusive. except of course, they wouldn’t.

back to work

feeling well enough to go back to work today. i actually got the first full night’s sleep I’ve had since last Wednesday night, so that helps.

had a medium-size allergy attack yesterday which somewhat impaired my ability to enjoy taking the wife and kids to the albany institute of history and art, but we still had a good time and an awesome early dinner at garcia’s, probably my favourite place to eat in albany.

sad to learn yesterday that the albany borders store is closing. everything is at least 25 percent off, so i bought a star trek novel by peter david and a trek art book (hey, they were on sale) as well as a magazine for my wife.

i’ll miss the albany borders, it was a great example of why that chain is superior to barnes and noble. i wonder how long it will be before the rest of the stores in the chain go under as well…

by the way, roger

i did skim your post today. forgive me for not wanting to know the details. happy to hear carol is recovering.

unintended consequences

i think i imagined i would miss a meal or two as i recovered from my two extractions yesterday, but the truth is i didn’t eat a real meal until late today, and my mouth was not altogether happy about it.

still sore. and i haven’t slept terribly well.

watched more tv today than i have in any single day in years. cold case on a&e’s hd channel riveted me much of the afternoon. food tv is keeping me company tonight. i also watched my first ever episode of robot chicken. that is some funny shit right there. my kids have good taste in tasteless comedy, and that’s somehow quite reassuring to me.

okay, in retrospect

the two extractions should have been on different days, since they each were on a different side of my mouth. i feel like i’ve gone 10 rounds with mike tyson. hurt.

which, it didn’t until the meds from the iv drip wore off. i was quite happy most of the time during the actual procedure, other than cringing at the noises and the pressure…

shock ending!

oral surgeon had a cancellation. i go for my extractions tomorrow morning. wish me luck, please, and lots of it.

life has been samey

that’s why no updates for a few days. that, and dealing with a trojan called “virtumonde” that has infected my main pc and had me battling it for a few days now. other than that, you know, teeth still suck, getting oral surgery on september 4th, making chicken fajitas for dinner, and that’s about it.

work rules

I like this list of new rules for working.

And here’s a related list, about balancing your work and home life, that’s also very good.