Words are inadequate

I have Returned, and it is Good. Got in around ten-thirty Monday night; had a good sit on the couch with Mr Tuppert, who missed me, and then crashed. I tried to crash "pretty hard" but kept being ... it's not 'woken up' if you haven't fallen asleep, 'disturbed' I guess. Got around seven hours sleep all told.

---

To the extent I had a Game Of The Week I guess it was 18India, an 18xx game where one has a hand of shares one can buy (some randomly dealt, some drafted) rather than all shares being available at all times. The game's doing some other neat things as well, with trains and gauge changes and track-laying. I played once and thought I liked it, then played a variant and thought I hated it. Turned out, when I played the base game again, that what I hated was in fact the variant, and the base game is more to my taste.

I also played a lot of Free Ride, a train game that I'd been thinking of as Friedemann Friese's Ticket To Ride but which Daniel Karp pointed out is more accurately Friedemann's Transamerica. I'd played once a few years ago and enjoyed it well enough but had trouble figuring out where the various European cities were on the uniformly-coloured map. Last year Friedemann came out with a USA version which a) is a more familiar map and b) colour-codes the cities into regions, so it's much easier to play. It's a good game. I'll likely be picking up one or both versions at some point.

And two games of Moon Colony Bloodbath, a sort of shared-event-deck-builder. You're nominally trying to build your moon colony, but really you're trying to have yours not be the moon colony that totally collapses due to bad luck and robot rampages. It's enjoyable but to me it feels like the gaming equivalent of empty calories. Everyone does their own thing, someone wins, shake hands and sure may as well play again. Then again this is how I felt about Dominion (same designer) way back when, and gamers do love them some Dominion, so there's clearly a market for that sort of thing.

Sometimes there are people that one just clicks with. For me at the Gathering that's the Massachusetts folks, who I originally thought of as "the 18xxers" and now only somewhat less accurately consider "Joe R--'s Discord". I don't really know what it is: mindset, outlook, humor, something. But I have a good time with them, and I feel ... better able to relax around them, or something. Always a pleasure.

---

Steph arrived on Friday evening, so I shifted from 'gaming' to 'tourist/date' for the last few days. That was good: relaxing, after a week of Peopling, and comforting, and all such good things. We hit up an indie new/used bookstore on Saturday, of the "three levels and a maze of bookcases" variety. On Sunday we went down to the falls and wandered around.

We both flew out of Buffalo, which extended the goodbye a bit, and that was the right call too.

---

Once more I have brought the plague back from Niagara. Sunday after touristing I started feeling a bit feverish, but tried to blame it on Too Much Sun. Monday, travel-day, the feverish remained along with clogged sinuses, which is No Way to travel by air. When it hadn't improved any by Tuesday I went ahead and tested and yep, two lines, though the one was faint and incomplete.

It's not as bad as last time. Yesterday I was more muzzy-headed than I think I was, but I think that has passed. The chest cough that started up yesterday has gotten slightly more serious. To the left, the sinus stuff may be letting up (or I may just be drugging myself more effectively), and I'm not noticing any taste deficiencies.

I have nowhere I need to be for another week at least, and only the one class. As things go this is about the best time to be laid up. Mr Tuppert approves of the increase in couch time as well.

A couple of weeks ago I had an assignment that needed to get done, that I knew needed to get done, and that I'd been planning for a couple of days on getting done. So of course I procrastinated on it until sometime after lunch. Thing is, I could tell it was a normal (for me) procrastination, and I could also tell that once I got started on it I wasn't going to need to stop every ten minutes or whatever, I'd be able to just keep going. Which was in fact the case. It's so nice to have my brain back to not-working in ways I'm used to and expect. Yay drugs, basically.

This also feels like further evidence for the idea that something happened to exacerbate my lack-of-focus between two and, mm, five, years ago. I'm inclined to blame my case of covid in April '22 but who knows.

Anyway. It has been A Few Weeks, i tel yu whut.

( erin, steph, misc )

Between the rainygrey sky, the end of DST, and the contrast with overly-sunny Tampa, I feel pretty much like I've been in a cave all day.

Tampa was a delight. As expected, Tuesday post-redeye I had a very limited amount of functionality. I had a nap and Steph shepherded me out to dinner and I slept well that night, and as expected that seems to have done the trick. I will continue to fly redeyes going east. I still don't much care for the Atlanta airport. Tampa's is ... fine. It does have a giant statue of an underwater flamingo, which is pretty cool. Barring very strange circumstances I doubt I'll be through there again, and that's okay too.

Steph spent days at her conference, while I did classwork and walked around a bit in the thirty-degree November weather wtf. Evenings we spent together, having dinner or watching a show or talking, basking in presence.

Thursday evening we went out to the eclectic Tampa art gallery, which featured a largeish exhibit on The Ancient World next to a room filled with contemporary Mexican scuplture next to American Impressionists. I got to see black-figure Greek vases in person for I think the first time, and a Monet, and maybe a dozen or so works that really caught my attention. (In particular there was an unfinished portrait study of a woman with as much character as, and a more forceful presence than, the Mona Lisa.) It's been a very long time since I've been to an art gallery. My recollection is that the Vancouver art gallery is in a terrible space (former courthouse) and not that great a collection, but maybe I'll stop in sometime. Noted: art galleries are a Thing I Enjoy. (Likely extendable to museums in general?)

Saturday we said our goodbyes and I flew off to Toronto (still the worst airport I won't pay money to avoid, and the other option was LAX which I WILL pay money to avoid), where I had a five-hour layover in the fancy lounge. Then the flight was inexplicably delayed for forty-five minutes. I stumbled home at two-thirty in the morning, to a cat who was happy to see me, and proceeded to sleep soundly for all of about four hours until my east-coast-time brain decided I'd slept in long enough.

Today I think I'm mostly recovered from travel. I've done my EI filing and ordered groceries to be picked up in a few hours, and fed myself. There was a nasty windstorm in the lower mainland on Friday night / Saturday morning and it looks like it took out power to the BCIT data centre, so I'm unable to log in for any of my classes. Should be fine: I'm caught up on lectures and homework is done through Tuesday, and I at least have the assignments downloaded so I can poke at them even if I can't complete them.

It's nice to be home, for sure.

And ... that's a draft? 7269 words. There's another couple hundred I can and probably will cut, a short scene that's a useful transition but I'm not sure it's doing enough else to justify its existence. And likely plenty of places I can trim as well.

And of course I've been staring at it long enough that it's reached the point of "this is terrible, why did i ever think this would be good." I will let it sit for a few days and then see what if anything I can do for it on my own, and then I guess I'm looking for critiques.

---

Tomorrow morning I get up far too early to fly to Minneapolis for Stephanie's birthday (early) and a Dessa concert. This is somehow only the second concert I've been to with Steph, and the first in twenty-one years, after it turned out she was going to the same David Bowie (and Moby, and Blue Man Group, and a couple of other acts) show I was and thanks to a no-show friend of Sarah's I could get her a better seat.

I've been listening to Dessa off and on since December, by which I guess I mean mostly "on." It's been a very long time indeed since I've taken this deep a dive into a musical artist. I dunno. Spectacularly dense lyrics, a sensibility that's by turns sharp, wry, and kind, and pop-ish music that all sticks in my head well.

Some music:

• Shrimp (45 seconds, lyric video)
  
• Blush
  
• 5 Out of 6
  
• Matches to Paper Dolls (not a video, sadly)

(She's playing another show in Seattle in early October, which I am strongly considering going down for, depending on how school is going at that point. It's on a Thursday night which may not be ideal.)

Anyway. Concert and Steph, for a couple of days, and then north to Prince George for a couple of days with Erin. Then home again home again and time to sort through my various financial aid options.

I'm not doing everything I'd like to be doing every day, but I'm doing some of it. I'm enjoying where I'm at, I think. Curious to see how slamming into school intersects with that.

I've made it to Niagara, where I can attempt to regrow my brain, at least a little.

This was a rough travel. It didn't help that the night before I only got around three hours' sleep: woke up out of a weird Twin Peaks-ish nightmare before two AM, couldn't re-settle. Or that the Amtrak train from Toronto to Niagara NY was cancelled due to track maintenance, so I had to do the multi-transit hop, light-rail to bus to walk (or, in this case, taxi) to the border to the hotel. In the event I slept minimally on the plane due to a small child kicking my seat, ongoing conversations, and at least one person playing a video game without headphones.

It turns out that being able to hear other people's electronic devices really grinds my gears. Not just "annoys me" but renders me unable to concentrate on anything else. I ended up putting in my earphones and playing instrumental music just loud enough to drown them out. I couldn't sleep but at least I wasn't fuming.

But I did get to walk across Rainbow Bridge and see the Falls on a gorgeous sunny day, and that helped.

I've made a big grocery-run, including stocking up on cinnamon pop-tarts as usual, and I am very tired. Tomorrow I see Steph for the first time in a decade, more or less, for a second first date. I feel like I should be nervous, and maybe I will be tomorrow. Right now 'tired' is sort of overwhelming everything. Goal is to stay up until at least ten PM.

---

I've been mildly obsessing over work (well, ex-work), too. I figure this is partly because the end was so sudden and partly due to lack of sleep leading me to focus on bad things.

What I know:

• I got laid off.
  
• My grandboss talked about it as though there were a bunch of layoffs happening, as did my boss.
  
• Grandboss also mentioned that profitability was down this year, which goes against all the messaging we'd been getting but whatever.
  
• Everyone who's responded to my 'goodbye' email has sounded shocked.

My working theory at this point: there's a rumour that the company is planning an IPO in the nearish future. For that to go well they want to look Lean And Mean. Grandboss got told to cut staff, and I have been underperforming. Maybe the tech side didn't have cuts, or maybe mine just got announced early because my last day was slightly accelerated (would have been Friday but I'd already planned my vacation).

There's a part of me that wants to take it more personally, to focus in on the 'underperforming' bit. But I got some nice notes from people I've worked with that went above and beyond to let me know that they thought the work I was completing was good, so that helps with that.

I also appreciate that this didn't come down until after the end of the fiscal year. That ought to mean that in a month I'll still get my annual bonus. Assuming there is one, between "me underperforming" and "profitability is down," though honestly I can't imagine they'd zero the bonuses. They aren't my awful previous company, after all.

---

I'm kicking around the idea of getting out of tech writing. This has some appeal: among other things, it might free up the 'writing' part of my brain to do more fun writing, which is historically hard when I'm putting words in a different kind of order all day. Too, every tech writing job I've had (sample size of three), I've been annoyed and frustrated by the end of it, and that point has come quicker each time. Plus I doubt I'll be able to dodge video production forever, and I hate video.

Erin suggested GIS work (I am pretty sure she's suggested a few things but that was one that stuck). I did a little GIS in high school, and I enjoyed it. From the small amount of looking-into-it I've done it looks to be a combination of playing with maps and playing with databases, both of which could be fun?

There's a full-time program at BCIT (the local two-year college) that gets you a GIS "diploma" in nine months. With that I'd be eligible for ... well, for jobs. And (again, thank you Erin for pointing me to this) it turns out that I can take classes and still get EI payments. Probably. There's a process, but it certainly looks like I'd be eligible.

So that's something to consider. Classes start in September so I have at least a little time to make a decision.

Of course my brain also kicked up "what makes you think you'd be able to get a job in GIS, you have no experience and you're competing with younger fresh-outta-school folks." So that made for a fun part-of-evening last night. That one I attribute primarily to being very tired and thus having less defence against jerkbrain.

I dunno. There are options. It's kinda nice.

What I failed to mention last time is that on Thursday afternoon I picked up a cold of some kind from someone at the beach. uilos started developing symptoms a couple of days later. This meant I was facing WisCon in kind of a tired fog, which is not an ideal way to experience a convention. Not showing up until late on Friday and being very tired didn't help matters.

Still a good con, just not as sociable as I'd hoped it would be. Plenty of good panels, plenty of tasty Madison food, lunch with Jerry & family who we know from boardgaming. (Sadly, there wasn't quite enough time scheduled for a longish game on Monday morning, but we tried.)

( Travel shenanigans )

In other immigration news, the office at Ottawa has officially acknowledged receipt of our application for permanent residency. Now they sit on it for 10-11 months. Still, progress.

Also, if you're into that sort of thing, I'm selling off some of my games. Mostly board games, a few old PC games and RPGs.

Yeah. 'Bout time.
( Bowie )

When you feel too introspective, every song takes on a personal meaning.