Leaking libraries, kicking trash-bins, drinking with friends, and other diverse elements

BLOT: (22 Dec 2010 - 03:13:38 AM)

Leaking libraries, kicking trash-bins, drinking with friends, and other diverse elements

I am at that moment that happens to all bloggers. Or well, all who blog out of an inclination to talk about daily life and hobbies and musings and not about a given thing. That moment where you have a string of a dozen blog posts stretching out behind you into the nether, distant enough from the now as to be pointless to recollect, and yet almost essential to fill in the gaps. Like all who reach this moment, I can try to catch up and spam the boards for a day or two until I have done so, or I can try and summarize, or I can let go. None is a perfect solution, none a horrible one. I think I will opt for some compromise: a few of those posts will show up over the next couple of days, and most will be let go. I tend to write about immediate things, which can some days be Dickens and some days be tea. Yesterday's news is almost never my forte.

Before I become nostalgic about something that will not be, let's turn to what recently was: this past weekend or so. I have to say, the weekend was mostly without merit unless times that try the souls have merit in their own right. The major-piece details escape me, I see it like a slideshow of various non-positive things drifting across Friday night through Sunday morning. It started, to a degree, on Friday. Or well, Thursday night. I could not sleep. Just couldn't. When I would try, I would get this strange itch or my nose would hurt or something that was enough to jolt me awake. About 6am, I had to get up and get ready to go the library. Luckily, the day was a non-event. There was a Christmas party which I showed up to kind of late and so was able to just quietly snack on food and drink water for about half an hour. Prior to that, I did some campaign design for Shadows of Cthulhu and I read and I answered a few questions and whatnot. However, even a non-event becomes somewhat tiresome after a night of no sleep and so the rest of Friday drifted down into dust. I know I did things, but I barely remember any of them.

Let's rewind slightly back into Thursday. Thursday afternoon, a maintenance man came by to fix my library (this is my personal study, which I'll just call "study" for here on to avoid confusion with the place I work) light. And to repaint a part of the ceiling that had been victim to a recent but not widespread leak. In the midst of this, I was sort of kicked out of my study, which is my respite from the world, and he had to shut down power to get to the light. This was not too big a deal, but in flipping the breakers, he caused a slight surge that caused havoc with both the router and my computer and it took hours to fix it (and even after, it eventually just crashed because of some issues with the swap, which seems fine now). I had a poor Thursday. Then no sleep. Then comes the long day Friday. After I got off work, we did things. What things? I think shopping was involved. I'm sure of it. Seems like other things. At any rate...

We get back home kind of late Friday night. I am ready to pass out but I need my respite. I need my study so I can kick off the world for a few hours. But the newly installed light has water pouring through it and there are many spots coming through the ceiling. Minor, barely damp spots, but many. The chair, which luckily was the only thing really under the light fixture, is soaked in this brown, brackish water mixed with roof tar. We dare not try and shut any power down anywhere because of what happened last night, so we tape the light switch "off" and then we get the chair out and a bucket down and we make sure the splash is not doing any damage to anything else. I got important stuff out. We called the emergency maintenance line and we were told to just put a bucket down and no care was given to the dripping through the light thing. I'll get back to this.

Saturday, then, was mostly spent resting from the night before and doing other various errands. I started to find out things like a gift that I had ordered for Sarah might not be here. In fact, a one-printing only gift might have been lost in the mail (it wasn't, just was given the wrong tracking number which hosed up a small bit of shipping). We were still debating how much we could afford for the three or four people we would be exchanging gifts with. We had several petty fights over dumb things (for instance, one involved the ending to Neon Genesis Evangelion).

The mood had soured enough that on Sunday morning I ended up kicking a trash can. Not enough to do damage but enough to scatter trash. This was in preamble to me taking it out, but still. It was a bad mood to start the day. Eventually, we kind of got moods sorted, kind of, and that night we had a rather relaxed Shadows of Cthulhu game session. I'll discuss all of those when we get the current arc finished. At any rate, the emotional low that started the day followed by the creative energy that ended it led me to fall asleep and hard about 10pm that night.

I slept all the way through until about 6, eventually got up and cleaned up my study and confirmed that the leaks seem to have stopped (for now) and did some deep cleaning in there that I haven't done since Summer, and eventually went back to bed. Got lots of sleep, and by the night cooked a decent meal and Sarah and I sat down and watched TV together.

After dinner, we went out with Katie and Jason to La Alameda to get some quesadilla and drinks. Jason is in the above campaign but I have not seen Katie since October. I ordered a couple of pitchers of Dos Equis and there were various margaritas enjoyed by the rest. I ended up doing about a pitcher and a half myself. The rest all got good and relaxed. We hung out for a couple of hours and just chattered on about this or that. Came back to the apartment. I showed them the clip from the Cronos DVD where Guillermo Del Toro is talking about "Bleak House", which is what he calls his second home which is full of trinkets and doo dads and rare books and all sorts of neat things. I drank a plum wine called umesha that had pickled plums in the bottom (they all sipped it but found it lacking). Again, pretty early, I went on to bed.

Today was mostly relaxing. It has been drizzling which makes me nervous about my library, leading me to check every few hours, but so far there seems to be no additional water issues. Sarah got home and we went to Bridge Street to see about a couple of gifts and to get food. Ate at Sakoa Japanese Grill. This is the second time that Sarah and I have entered with the place completely empty or near it (this time the only other couple was leaving when went in) and by the time our food comes out every single seat in the place is full. I don't know if we come in right before a lunch/dinner crowd or if there is some sort of rule where people see someone going in and then decide to follow suit. Ordered a bento box and a sushi special. I have to say, part of me really likes the place but you have to know what to order. Some of their udons are good. Their miso is good. Some of their sushi is excellent (try the spicy tuna roll, for instance). And some of their stuff isn't that good. Their rice seems pretty bland and their fried rice appeared to be just white rice that had some soy sauce splashed on it with a couple of vegetables tossed inside. Probably really healthy for you but there is an umami quality expected in fried rice and it was lacking from mine. The fish from the bento was strong, which especially drowned out the rice flavor. Ah well. I'll just stick with the udon and sushi from now on, I think.

After food, we went down to the Christmas "tree" (bonus fun, look inside) and listened to the "The Alabama Blues Man" sing some songs. Tipped him after a nice few minutes of relaxing, picked up a couple of items, and then left. Swung by Walgreens, rented four movies from the Redbox and I picked up some stocking stuffers. Came here, proceeded to watch none of them (did an episode of QI, instead) and she went to bed and I went and listened to some Big Finish Doctor Who and some H.P. Podcraft while playing Minecraft and it was awesome getting my respite back.

To end, I am a 30-ish guy who looks slovenly enough that I pretty much either have to be married or hopelessly single. When walking around Walgreens, picking up stocking stuffers, I had two separate women stare at me funny. One actually pulled quite a large face when I walked by with them in my hand. Keep in mind, the items were girly because they were meant for the wife, right? In what fantasy does this woman live in that a dude is at Walgreens at 9pm of the Tuesday before Christmas, kind of wandering around with a look of confusion on his face with girly things in hand is somehow worthy of her scorn? Handful of like aged guys saw me also looking at makeup and socks and girly scents and such and you know what, they didn't even bat an eye.

LABEL(s): Me in 2010, Huntsville Eateries

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 51
BY MONTH: December 2010