This is simply awesome (although my Republican friends might not think so…):

(Hat tip to Steve Benen over at Political Animal for the link.)

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

At work. Trying to work. Somewhat succeeding.

But this gave me a laugh. My gummy worms have faces on them!

Anyway, work is sucking today, big time. So I need as many shiny smilies as possible.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been running around like crazy the last few weeks between the camping trip and then the trip to Redding to paint grandma’s house, but I wanted to come up for a gasp of air and say, “HEY! I’m alive!” I’ve got some photos I want to post, but they’re with my laptop at home and I’m at work, so…it’ll have to wait. Have some things I want to say about how I spent my solstice, but that’ll have to wait. Got things I want to mutter at the garden too, but that will also have to wait.

Maybe this evening. Rumor is, I don’t have a dinner cooking date.

Anyway, the lament in this xkcd speaks to me. I’ve been playing that game every year, “This is complicated, maybe when things are less complicated.” I think maybe I’m just starting to get it through my thick skull that it will never get less complicated. Took me long enough. :P

Anyway, hopefully there’ll be more from me soon. Y’all are still out there, right?

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

Went camping this last weekend. This was Friday night’s sunset. (Don’t worry, the plant is decommissioned!)

Going to Redding on a bit of a “vacation” this coming weekend.

So yeah, I’ve mostly been silent because I’ve been busy. That’s about it. But now I have my laptop back, and might have a chance to type more things.

Or not.

I’m odd like that.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

…yeah. I’m around, just not here and not in a lot of my other haunts. I’ve been out getting fresh air and dealing with a lot of the related crap therapy brings up. No biggie, just if anybody cared why the radio silence, that sums it up.

I’m a little sore right now. You see, there’s something in geocaching called ‘FTF’. That means, First to Find, and it’s — well, kinda like writing ‘first!’ on a blog post, except sometimes people put extra things in their caches to reward those who are first. It’s a bit of fun to discover you’re first, but it’s an added bonus, IMO.

Anyway, yesterday, I went on a geocaching spree, picking up 18 over the course of the day, including one FTF, and when I get home, I’m pretty tired and my dad’s on the computer, so I just go to bed thinking, well, I’ll log my stuff in the morning.

I get it logged this morning. Then I get an email. I’ll leave out the other cacher involved, but here’s the note [this is copied directly out of the original]:

Greetings,

I’m very disappointed in your FTF logging. As FTF logs go its your responsibility to log the FTF in a timely mannor so others can plan their caching day/night.
Up till 8am today May 2nd no log from you or the person after you, both of you logged the paper on the 1st.

I only wish you the best in geocaching and ask you to post on the web site in a timely mannor for the FTF’s.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation and happy future caching.

Meanwhile, he leaves the following note in the cache logs:

Up early this morning and since this cache hadn’t been logged yet I decided to go for it, Only to find it had actually been founf and logged yesterday 1st of May. Its great to cache anytime, but I plan my day on the off beat chance of a FTF when available.

PLEASE all Geocachers, POST your FTF in a timely manner…..

This cache is placed nicely and easy parking nearby, a great cache for the kids. TFTC, TFTH, SL

I notice this, and I sent him a small apology — basically, I got home last night, I was dead tired from being out all day, and the computer was in use so I couldn’t do it immediately. I figured the next morning was timely enough. It’s probably been about 17 hours [I found it about 5 last night, it was probably about 9:30 this morning when I got it logged] since I found it by the time I got it logged, but most of that time, I was sleeping. Besides, I think 24 hours is reasonable. I don’t think I’m in the wrong here — I think somebody’s making too much of a big deal of being the FTF.

(Which, neener neener, I was, so…)</immature>

And now that I’ve vented, I’ll try to push this out of the way — my therapist and I are working on remembering what I can and cannot control, and trying to be better about letting go of what I can’t.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

While stumbling around geocaching yesterday, I found this in the park I was searching:

I open the floor to y’all.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

1. I won’t be at Baycon this year. It’s not the con membership — I earned that, which is why it’s driving me nuts to have to do this. It’s all the extraneous numbers around going. I might be able to eke out the tank of gas for getting over there and back, but I definitely can’t afford the hotel room nor the costs of feeding myself over four days, so I’m simply declaring that I’m not going. The 2011 Baycon doesn’t look so great either, but that’s a function of too many cons in 2011 (Corflu, Baycon, Westercon, Worldcon — the order is Corflu, Worldcon, Westercon, Baycon in terms of attendance) — and if my finances don’t get squared away soon [read: full-time job], my attendance at any of those is likely to fall through. It’s been a rough few months.
2. I’m taking an Intro to GPS class as part of my attempts to become a mapmaker. (Yay GIS!) This means that I’ve been issued a GPS unit for the duration of the class. Then I figured out that my cellphone has the right tools to run as a GPS unit. This means that nearly eight years to the day after first signing up for the site, I made my first Geocaching find. You may all proceed to laugh now. That said, it’s been teaching me a bit of patience as the GPS unit will get jumpy when you’re close, and you need to stop and let it settle before you can find what you’re looking for. Also, a bit of serenity, because sometimes, due to whatever reason — cache no longer there, GPS unit being unusually flaky, you not having a clue what you’re looking for, or even just you being a bit impatient — you won’t find what you’re looking for. In those cases, sometimes it’s best to take a deep breath and come back to cache another day.
3. It’s kinda interesting that the last bit is something my therapist and I are talking about. Maybe the message is starting to sink in about not worrying so much, particularly about the things I can’t control. Even a couple of my coworkers have commented that I seem a little happier.
4. Of course, happiness would be better served with a better job (or at least a full-time one). So, with that in mind, I’m beginning to poke around, starting with getting my federal job application done and in. We’ll see where it goes from there.
5. If I owe you an email or need to mail you something, my computer is currently down for the count, and my work computer isn’t exactly set up to handle some of the stuff I need to do. So please be patient while I work on backing up my laptop and shipping it back to IBM to get fixed.

And right now that is all the news that is news across the nation. We now return you to your regularly scheduled life now in progress.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

I need to sit down and write stuff. All sorts of stuff. Maybe, this weekend, if I get my homework done, such things will be able to happen.

But the point of this post is to point to this: Small and Far Away, a one-shot fanzine created by members of the virtual fanzine lounge at the last Corflu. There’s a link to the PDF on that page. You should read it!

Yours truly, beyond having an article in the issue, is the one who did the layout work.

The next step is getting the first issue of Rhyme & Paradox out. I’ll be calling in favors shortly…

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been feeling the urge to be a bit more private with a lot of things lately. I’m not sure if this is due to free-floating stress, an onset of depression, the ravenous anxiety beast, or other factors in my life. I’m not going to deny they all play a part. Also, time has not been on my side recently, and it’s lead to my being a ghost in the machine — an occassional random comment on LJ or Facebook or Twitter, and that’s all.

But the life of a spectre in a world of digital bits is a quiet and lonely life, so I’m just checking to see if there’s folks out there. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about the privacy urge, because it’s probably better that I get out what’s in my head as opposed to keeping it all bottled in, but I’m not sure where.

And I’m not sure when.

All I know is that I’m trying to get off the anxiety train, a thing which is anxiety-provoking in and of itself. I have taken the first steps of trying to do this, and I have a good therapist. But that’s not enough — I need friends. But I’m not sure I’m capable of being a good friend in return right now, and that’s what worries me.

I will hang on — I do nothing better. But hanging on isn’t living, y’know?

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

I caught this picture of my cat Ebony on accident, but figured it’d make a great caption contest pic.

You all have the floor.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.