Random Ramblings CCCXXX · 12:31am Oct 29th, 2018
IN WHICH MOTIVATION DOES NOT EXIST
The brain is a fickle mistress (yes, the brain itself is female regardless of the sex or gender of the individual). Have video!
Sabaton played with Babymetal today (yesterday) at an insane show in Saitama, so I felt this fitting. Anyway, follow me.
Seems like I have to do longish blogs and a page-break to have anyone pay any attention to them. I ask a question and get no response. Fine. Fine! Guess y'all don't want me to finish that Sunsarity fic. Not like I have the drive to work on it right this minute anyway.
Anywho, I'm looking for a good piece of Sunsarity art that isn't by AmpersandXYZ (because like I said before, I don't want to bug him again). One of my followers, can't remember who, had a great piece by an Asian fanartist as their profile pic, but it's not showing up on DB when I search. If ANYONE can help me in my art search I'd appreciate it.
Work continues on the residing of my house. Slowly. The guy in charge of the project is good, but also meticulous and isn't great at delegating, even to one guy, which was all they originally sent besides him. That second guy turned out to be worthless, we lost five working days to rain (he lives in the same state I do, albeit a couple hours away, so he went home; while there he got a more capable guy, and then that guy's dad). Also some mid-level water damage beneath one of my bedroom windows that required shoring up plus some bleach to kill mould that had gotten in.
Actually nearly every window frame on my home has some degree of water damage because the first round of vinyl siding was sealed so poorly. Replacing and patching rotted boards has caused the job to take twice as long as it should have and also adds slightly to the cost. The siding itself, I signed a contract with a fixed dollar amount so that's set, and it doesn't seem like the carpentry work will be as much as I feared, but it will add a few hundred dollars to the final price tag -- considering the siding itself, including labour, costs thousands, it's a drop in the bucket.
We're running up against some hard deadlines -- my neighbour has been out of the country for a month but he returns in one week. My mother and I have been using his driveway (with permission), so that perk goes away. In addition, it's supposed to start raining Tuesday evening. I want the whole thing to be done by then. My mother is upset that they started on the back of the house rather than the front.
She's not the one who signed the contract and is paying for this job; I am. And I don't care the order in which things happen; I only care that things happen. Yes, the front of my home looks extremely White-trash right now because the original wood cladding is visible -- complete with peeling paint and rotting boards -- but I'm really not concerned about that. Why the hell should I care about curb appeal in the middle of what amounts to a construction job on a place I have no intention of leaving anytime soon?
What concerns me is whether I should paint or stain my new front columns. That's important because it will dictate what kind of address numbers I'll have to buy -- the old rotted columns were white so I used black numbers. If I paint the columns white, I'll just get black numbers again. If I stain the columns instead, then I'll probably need to get one of those fancy number plate thingies with gold lettering on a black background so the numbers can be seen from the street.
I'm also thinking about possibly getting a flagpole holder for the other column and, if I can get them, flags that AREN'T the Stars & Stripes (though I'll probably get a 'Murikan flag too if it's made domestically), just to confuse people. Hoist the Union Flag on the Queen's Birthday, the Canadian flag on Canada Day, the Tricouleur on Bastille Day, the Rising Sun during early August (atomic bombings), etc.
On Friday, my dad came over for an early-birthday dinner -- Sea-bass, bisque, twice-baked potatoes, peas & shallots, plus an ice cream cake I ordered. Good dinner. Regrettably, the present I bought for him, turned out he already had it (a CD that I knew he'd love, he bought it himself a week after I got it on Amazon; in retrospect I should have told him not to buy any CDs). On Thursday, the day after his birthday, he gets the breathalyzer taken out of his car. He's looking way too forward to that for my liking. He's been doing fine health-wise the past few months, but if he goes back on the bottle he will die.
He was telling me about some "bucket list" trips he wants to take next year -- visiting all fifty states (he's been to a few more than I have, especially if airport layovers don't count). Of course when you've had two brushes with death like he has, I guess you gotta live in the moment. Just stay off the sauce; I don't want to have to clean up any messes he leaves behind or deal with his cunt-wife until I'm 100% sure I've screwed her out of everything relating to my family.
Have I mentioned I hold grudges for decades?
I haven't voted yet, but probably will tomorrow. My mother and most of my friends did on Friday. It's not much of a hassle as I only live about two miles (five minutes or less by car -- can't walk/bike because shit infrastructure) from the country courthouse.
In some ways my mother living here is a good thing -- I don't have to cook or do laundry -- but on the other it's not -- I've put on weight because, well, she cooks. Left to my own devices, I'll eat cereal and peanut butter for lunch most days and do something simple for supper if I don't eat out. I also don't feel like I can use my own man-cave because she spends all her time in there. I have to wait until she's gone to bed or away for most of the day before I can feel like I can be in there.
Yes, my home was a disaster area (mostly due to my slovenly ex) before mother moved in. But now it's immaculate all the time. She also constantly needles me to do human things like shower and shave -- when most days you wonder if life is worth continuing to endure, you don't care about shit like that. Also, I have long hair and use a neat but time-consuming treatment to keep my scalp healthy. Fortunately I now have a shower cap. But she constantly complains my hair "looks greasy". Hair is supposed to do that.
Obviously I (usually) shower after going to the gym, but I haven't had the drive to go there lately either. That sucks considering I'm paying for the membership. Hopefully this will change after the stress of construction is over and done with.
I am so so SO sorry that I'm not going to have Her Shimmering Sunset completed by Tuesday like I'd hoped. A surprising amount of my time has been spent overseeing the work on my house. Actually spending time outside in natural light. Hiss.
Also a mental block -- I feel like I can't do it, so that makes it more difficult to actually attempt it.
That said, I finished my little "horror" story about a week ago and it will be posted on Halloween either before or after I go back to my hometown to see my dad for his birthday (depends on when I go to sleep and/or wake up). So y'all can look forward to that at least.
There are other stories I have in the pipeline that need more tweaking before I feel comfortable making them public. Two more Burritoverse stories to write eventually.
Is any of it worth it? My friend Dusk Melody asked this question of himself a few days ago, as he's also been seeing diminishing returns on his work. I won't speak for him, but I'm a completionist who hates leaving stuff unfinished. I'd rather not publish a story at all than lead readers along and never complete it. I feel the same way about my arcs & anthologies. Even if it takes a year, I want to get these last stories completed probably more than anyone wants to read them.
I still have other ideas I'd love to present to you, but if there's one thing I'm definitely NOT, it's a multitasker.
I'm hungry. All I've eaten today is cereal and peanut butter… plus a couple of chocolate covered peanut butter crackers. So… yeah. I also need to take a look at today's progress before I've completely lost the light. So I'm going to go now. Sorry for the ranty blog.
Peace out!
Unfortunately I didn't have an answer to your question, and I didn't think it'd be helpful just to respond only to say, "sorry I can't help you."
The flags confusing people sounds like a fun prank.
I hope your Dad will be okay. :O Sounds scary.
I've gotta get to work on my own story eventually. I've been putting off the majority of the work all month.
Oh I love Sabaton they introduced me to the Heavy Metal genre