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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

I also do not like my inability to retain focus, my tendency to get rattled by something even vaguely difficult or tricky coming up, something that might be as simple as "this problem's done, move on to the next one." ... I want my resilience back.

One of the hardest things about my previous job, for me, was the way I would log in to work in the morning and immediately have to absorb a wave of new information. Everyone else on my team worked while I slept (mostly India time, with one in Ukraine). They had a workday of talking to each other, seeing how things were falling out, and generally absorbing everything over the course of eight (or twelve) hours. From my perspective, I'd check my email every day and there'd be three new things demanding my attention, at least one of which superseded or outright contradicted something from last week.

I can roll with changes for a good long while, but it turns out that really isn't good for me as a permanent structure.

The other thing I noticed about working at BMC is that I'd developed an aversion to ... to Learning/Doing New Things. For several months I was meant to be putting together a video, and I just ... couldn't. Brain bounced off it. Couldn't get started, couldn't keep going when I broke it down into smaller tasks.

This is carrying over into classwork to some extent. It's not as strong, thankfully. But I'm noticing my reluctance to dig into certain homework assignments, even when I know they'll be pretty straightforward, just because they're not something I've done before.

Learning how to do new things used to excite me. I miss that.

My ADHD screen is in two and a half hours. I'm back to being nervous about how it will go.

On the other hand I had an actual checkup yesterday with an actual doctor (well, NP, but an Actual Family Doctor), for the first time in five years, and that went remarkably well. We talked medical history & concerns for like half an hour, which in my experience is unheard of. He's running bloodwork again and making vague 'prediabetic' noises, and booked me in for mid-November to get a weird skin thing removed.

So maybe this will be alright too.

Second plague booster acquired. Based on my reaction to the previous three shots, my big plans for tomorrow include "make a big batch of waffles so I can freeze most of them" and also "sleep a lot". Flu shots are free for everyone in the province this year but not available until next week, so I'll get to go back and get stuck again. Probably for the best to not way overtax my system.

Let's see. Heard back from various medical tests, which consisted of "you're fine except your blood sugar's a little high, so exercise and change your diet and lose weight." %&$ Will call in to the sleep doctor on Tuesday for replacement CPAP stuff.

I didn't take care of that last week because I was too busy panicking. I've been losing focus during the workday and it caught up with me at the end of last week. Far as I can tell I'm still employed but on thin ice. I have got to figure out a way to keep myself going that isn't "sheer adrenaline". Which means solving the "i am not sleeping well" problem, which starts with replacement CPAP, but I needed to dig myself out of the work hole first.

Other than that, I dunno. I'm still here. Fall is being lovely and bright and full of crunchy leaves, and biking is a goodness. I'm missing people, and not necessarily just people but the experience of a variety of folks that bring out different things in me.

More energy, more focus. I'd like to have a good routine up and running before the grey of winter pushes me to hibernate.

Bah. I still have a nagging cough and probably will for another couple of weeks, because that is how respiratory illnesses do. I was supposed to go to a work conference this week but was foiled by Regulations (I needed an authenticated covid test from ten days before travel, and the home test I took wasn't authenticated).

On the bright side that meant that I could spend this week working on getting the apartment in order. I got replacement bookcases on Saturday, and at this point they're all pretty much full. I still have a dozen or two boxes, mostly of Misc, but ... it's coming together.

Meanwhile, Wednesday. One thing I have been able to do is read.

What are you reading now?

The chapbook that came with Elizabeth Bear's Bone And Jewel Creatures. I am embarking on a readthrough of her ... you know, I don't know that they have a name, but there's the two Messaline novellas, the Eternal Sky trilogy, and the soon-to-be-complete Lotus Kingdoms trilogy.

I like these. I'd forgotten that I enjoy Bear's writing, after the disappointment of Ancestral Night. I'm looking forward to becoming engrossed. And it feels good to dig into some of my physical books after they've been boxed up for a month.

What did you just finish reading?

Bone And Jewel Creatures, of course. Also Guards! Guards!, of which more tomorrow or Friday.

And Aspects, which I wrote a lengthy bit on elseweb that I shall preserve here:

When John M. Ford died in 2006 he left behind an extremely messy estate and most of the first novel of an ambitious fantasy trilogy. For reasons too arcane to get into here, the novel has finally been published, in its unfinished form. What you get for your time is an introduction to this rich complex fantasy world that is clearly drawing from 1850s England and is equally clearly its own thing, with a society in the midst of a great deal of change and a cast of characters that are hurt and damaged and trying o so hard to be careful and gentle with each other... and the beginnings of the ways the characters crash against that society and how they'll shape it. And then it just stops, with a couple of fragments from what would have been chapter 8, the last chapter of the first volume of the trilogy.

Chapters one and five are preceded by sonnets, and the published book includes four additional sonnets (plus a variant on the last one) for the rest of the proposed trilogy. So there are hints, just hints, of where Ford was likely going with the emotional/thematic journey.

It's incomplete. But my god, the characters and the worldbuilding are so, so worth it.

(And there's a lovely introduction by Neil Gaiman, which he put off writing for eleven years. It consists mostly of Neil trying to come to terms with the fact that his friend Mike is still dead, fifteen years later, and there really won't be any more brilliant insightful emails, or World Fantasy Award-winning Christmas cards... or chapters of Aspects.)

What do you think you'll read next?

Book of Iron, the second Messaline novella, and then on into Eternal Sky. Ebook, I have no idea, if anything.

The Gathering was good: lots of people, lots of gaming. No particular highlights/standouts, I think, but no real lowlights either. Played most of the games on my "i am curious about this" list, determined that I do in fact like most of them.

It was also, unsurprisingly, a massive plague chamber. More people started wearing masks on Wednesday, after the first positive test reports trickled in, in the manner of a farmer barricading the door to the barn once the horse has vacated. I had a supply of KN95s and an improvised head-strap so I wasn't relying on the painful-by-day-three earloops, and I seem to have mostly done alright. Random symptoms coming and going (runny nose! coughing! irritable stomach!) but nothing persistent.

Until yesterday, when I woke up feeling run-down and possibly-feverish and woozy. Took a rapid test and got a negative result, but it's my first time doing a test on myself so I may have screwed it up somehow. I'll try again this afternoon. It's also entirely possible it's just a nasty head cold, of the kind I've dodged for the last couple of years. I'll chow down on Tylenol and clean out my CPAP bits this evening (meant to do that yesterday but, well, woozy) and hopefully that will help to shake it.

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Moving-in continues apace. The bathroom is functional but requires a medicine-cabinet posthaste, or at least one of those racks you stand up behind/over the toilet. The bedroom is usable but I haven't finished setting up the bedside table. I am going to try rearranging the furniture in there: the current setup works but feels cramped, and I hope a different setup will feel less cramped and not sacrifice too much in the way of "works". I kind of want someone else to help me move things, though, and that's not happening until this weekend at the absolute earliest and more likely next weekend.

The kitchen is Organized, which is not the same as being unpacked. I need another shelf for one of the cabinets to put the tea on, and I need to unload the random condiments etc into the pantry, and I need to figure out a solution for a couple of pots and pans. It's mostly usable, though, so I also need to do a serious grocery run so I can stop eating restaurant food.

And of course the living room remains a disaster. I may have solved the bookcase problem thanks to Craigslist etc, but I still need to reattach the backs to the survivors, and move boxes so the bookcases can go against the walls that the boxes are currently against. Bah. I was hoping to get some of that done in the evenings, and I probably will, but the endless "move this here to move that there to move this over here" just feels overwhelming.

I am still annoyed at my movers. Jerks. This should have been ... not a non-issue but a solved problem by now.

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I am finally reading Aspects and it is amazing and delightful and I am mad that there won't be any more. So far (halfway through) it is a deeply Fordian character study. It sparks thoughts on, o, friendship, and damage, and the ways close-knit groups shift and work over time. I may have to reread it immediately.

The good news is, I got my new phone, and I got to spend time with some good friends. Other than that, meh.

( all else is commentary )
This weekend Erin and I pop down to Kelowna to look at trucks for her. I am looking forward to this. At the very least it will be less frustrating on a personal level.

Not a whole lot, but that's been the refrain of the last ten months. I've played a lot of Hades, Supergiant's fourth game. It's really good, in ways that really work for me. Gameplay, obviously, but also storyline and art and music of course and the voice-acting and the pacing of how the various story aspects get revealed, and just, it's really really good. I should go back and play Pyre, I never did get around to that one.

I loved Bastion, Supergiant's first game. Then I quite enjoyed Transistor, their second, despite having a ton of complaints and criticisms that boil down to "the pacing is awful in multiple ways". Transistor's art-deco-Tron aesthetic made me quite happy.

... huh, I played Transistor the winter I was laid off. I'm not laid off this winter but I'm working from home and finding it difficult to keep focused on work, due to *gestures at everything*, so it's similar. Supergiant makes games that I'm happy to get lost in, I guess.

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There was an election and the Democrats took the Senate, which was a source of great relief and joy for like twelve hours before it got overshadowed by a literal if disorganized coup attempt. Things are back to "normal," by which I mean we'll see if the Senate Dems can unite among themselves enough to do anything or if they choose to let the minority party dictate what gets passed. I am ... hopeful but not optimistic.

The thing is, if the filibuster doesn't go, I give up. At that point the people who've been saying that Democrats are useless are right. They have a chance to make some real, lasting changes: a two-year window to show demonstrable improvements in people's lives and provide reasons to vote for them. If they choose not to do that, not to exercise the power they have, then it's by choice, and nothing will get any better because they don't want it to. Absent real concrete change I am hard pressed to see the Democrats holding the House in 2022 (it's gonna be an uphill slog regardless), even if the Senate math improves, which it might. And then it's two years of Republican intransigence and 2024 is a bloodbath, and watching that will not be good for me.

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I read Ann Leckie's The Raven Tower and meant to write more about it, but it's really good. In a style that I didn't expect to like: the prose is ... not difficult but not transparent. I'm surprised and pleased that it still grabbed me.

After, I reread Brust's Hawk, which is a perfectly cromulent Vlad novel that's a bit too full of itself, and Vallista, which I don't like any better the second time, though I'm happier with the ending than I was with much of the rest of it. And then I tried to read A Memory Called Empire, which lots of people liked, and couldn't get into it, so it sits awaiting another try.

I'm watching Arrow, about halfway through S2. It is not great art or even great television but it's diverting, and I'm enjoying the characters, and the bits of backstory for Legends etc. Erin and I started watching Flash last weekend and I already find myself enjoying it more.

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I've been noticeably shorter of breath than "usual" at least since I came back from Vancouver in July and got a covid test (negative). It got worse over December/early Jan, so I made a doctor appointment. In between I stopped using the humidifier with what turned out to be an unclean filter, and my breathing got better but not back to where it was pre-December. Doctor seemed unconcerned; he sent me for an xray "just in case" and will have another test done once the machine for the test is functional again in February. Meanwhile I'm coughing (less so since I stopped using the lung steroid he suggested I try), but not "none") and still short of breath.

Trying the whole exercise thing again. Hoping I can convince it to stick this time.

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There's stuff about possibly moving that is still rattling around in my head.

Work is stupid but saying it sucks is an exaggeration. I'm not happy there, though. No bites on anything else yet.

Thoughts on autism and gender rattle around in my head and don't settle out into anything worth posting, much less coherent.

I dunno. I'm still here. I guess that's enough for now?

Yeah, I don't know. "Stuck" is the dominant feeling at the moment, for no particularly specific reason but a bunch of vague low-key ones.

I'm keeping up with work, I'm keeping up with counseling. I'm even doing better on the physical-exercise front, yoga or exerbiking more days than not. (My lungs are still crap, which leads me to wonder if I did/do in fact have a very mild case of Covid that my test last month missed.)

I'm not sleeping well, due at least in part to forgetting to clean the CPAP mask daily. Summer means more face oil means the mask doesn't seal properly unless it's been cleaned means the machine makes enough of a noise to keep me awake.

I have a phone interview shortly but I suspect strongly that it's for a 'sole writer' gig, if not a 'first writer.' I have a strong preference to not be the sole writer anywhere, and an even stronger one to not be the first writer at a company. If I wanted that kind of hassle I'd stay where I am.

I did just hear back from a company that I put a lot of interview-time into two months ago, that while they now have actual approval to hire someone they're uncertain as to their budget. I may have been somewhat snippy in my last response to them, along the lines of "Oh, I didn't realise that you weren't looking to pay for a senior writer." One of the few good things about Amazon setting up a serious office in downtown Vancouver is that it ought to exert some upward pressure on tech salaries.

I'm consuming a lot. Reading some; watching more. I sunk a bunch of time into Slay The Spire on the iPad over the last few weeks and I think I need to take active steps to Not Do That, it's just too easy to lose a bunch of time there and it doesn't feel like I've /done/ anything.

Bleh. Stupid plague.

In a surprise to absolutely no one, my next two trips are cancelled. No Vancouver run at the end of the month, because work has gone to "remote work is Highly Recommended." And of course no Gathering in Niagara in April, because getting four hundred boardgamers from all over the world in one place in the US and then sending them home again is highly counterindicated at this point in time. Still an open question as to whether I'm going down to Virginia Beach in May to hang out with my DC gaming group.

It's far from the worst thing, but... feh. Disappointment.

Also, it turns out that when you cook three meals and do two rounds of baking (bread and cookies, because I'm out of both), there are an awful lot of dishes to be done at the end of the day. I miss my dishwasher.

And, insult to injury, my new-ish two-disc special edition of Ronin won't play. Bah. Bah, I say.

Hoping I get some solid sleep tonight.

Being sick is stupid, even when it's a relatively mild sick of "no brain / energy for two days, plus ongoing weird gastrointestinal stuff".

Normal service shall resume at some point, hopefully to include what I mean when I say the prequels look like Star Wars but the new movies don't. (I am not sure I can satisfactorily explain it, even to myself. It may have something to do with how they're shot, and I utterly lack the vocabulary for that.)