Dreadful Typewriter

Kind of a maddening day today. Went hither and yon, attempting to do some "shopping" or at least some looking for stuff. I accomplished a bit of it, but nowhere near to my satisfaction. Of course, it's "Black Friday" weekend, and there are supposed to be hordes of crazed bargain hunters. Honestly though traffic was a little up yesterday I didn't see much of a difference. Portsmouth isn't exactly a hopping metropolis, maybe it was crazier over in Norfolk or Virginia Beach. And people here don't have loads of money and everything is overpriced... I did buy a lamp that has a little attached table for my "reading area" that is mostly Nikki's luxury sleeping area. (It's an armchair currently covered with fuzzy throws. I mostly sprawl on the couch watching videos.) I have still not decided where to put my home blog. I have all that space on Hosting Matters, or what was Hosting Matters, it's actually under the management of a Canadian ...

 I made it, lads. I'm back on the coast again: Updated my profile with my new location

 Trying something. Not the photo I'd hoped to find. Have this one from 2012.

 Oh goddddd the two dock clerks got at it at work today, out of the blue, towards the end of the day, and I was so not ready. This makes woman three and four to storm into my boss's office to scream and cry and melt down over the course of the past... two years? Three? The first one was myself, of course. (I am speaking of my current boss, a black man in his mid or late fifties who must wonder regularly at his choices in life re: accepting a job as office manager of this particular madhouse in corporate America.) Anyway, I think I was going through some leftover effects of covid, and also our general manager is a little butt who needs his a--*takes a sip of my highball and forgets what I was going to type*. (I am not actually drinking a highball as I didn't buy any unflavored seltzer water and also I gave all my heavy booze to my friend, oh well.) Anyway, the dock office has spawned the rest of the Screaming Women, as it is the center of whatever madness forms in this place. Th...

 Huh, they finally deleted my original blogspot account, which I made in 2000, set up a blog, made a single post, and promptly lost the password for. Good-bye maske.blogspot.com, we barely knew ye. Anyway, watching youtubes lately. I pick only the most relaxing ones - a girl living in Nigeria on her own, a couple of Japanese girls in Japan doing the same, this Chinese-American dude from New York who travels all over the place (he's currently in Taiwan) and films his wanderings, some typewriter ones, some fountain pen ones, a few "lofi hiphop" things that are for mellowing out totally.  Twitter, er, X, is about to beome an eX-website. I just feel it. I'm enjoying shitpoasting on there, but it's also pretty grim. A long time member with a lot of health and poverty problems just died a few days ago. I didn't follow them but their tweet.. posts appeared on my tl for years because lots of other people I followed did. Grim. And E*** just loves n*zis, they are all ov...

 *Another* shooting, begad. Not funny, though, people got killed, though not as many as at that school in Texas. This one happened at a hospital in Tulsa, and the cops got there licketty split, yet not in time, apparently, to prevent some deaths. When someone is intent on killing, they've usually thought it all through and made plans, and all the rest of us have is hope and guesswork and experience of other incidents that are not quite the same as the current one. Anyway. In happier news, I have been mean on the Twitter. I'm not even mad, but there are things I have decided not to put up with any more. I am filtering out as much mention of a certain event in the courts between a couple of actors who I will not name, because I do not care about them beyond the usual "they're fellow humans, hope they get better from whatever their deal is, or shut up about it, whichever." But it's apparently this century's O.J. Simpson trial, because it's all about men t...

 I have a weird pain in my arm. No, not that  kind of weird pain, more like a bruise or something. I was sitting around moping about my future of cancer or whatever then I remembered a couple of days ago I moved the iMac from the sun porch* into the office* and though it's not heavy I bet a corner of it pressed my arm there or something and, as has been happening for years now, the effects took a few days to show up. Also I'm achy in general today. I told M. I finally figured it out, what's bothering me about living up here: I feel like I'm on vacation and I've stayed too long. The same feeling I'd get when the end of staying at my grandparents' place in North Carolina would approach and I'd start thinking of how much I missed my favorite radio station, my own bed, ground that wasn't all tilty, even the beach. (They lived in Highlands in the summer, which is in the mountains, sort of like where I live now.) Only I can't go home, all my stuff is h...

 Looking back on my entries I didn't mention that my sister had pulled her head out of her ass and gone back to not drinking and we're speaking again. So I have tentatively started thinking about moving back to Florida, though not this year. But I want to at least visit, to see if I really can stand the thought of living there again.

 I thought work was going to end me this week. One co-worker decided not to take it any more, and she's gone. I don't even have her questionable family and community ties to support me so I'm stuck at the place a little longer (and I even signed a lease for another year here). Anyway, apparently some change was made to the software we use to do our stuff that meant something that had previously worked, ceased to do so. I would like to know who made that spur-of-the-moment decision so I can punch them, or at least fantasize about it. Or if there were meetings had and plans made, I need to find out who I can ask who decided to leave me out of it. I would have loved to know what to expect instead of having five heart attacks and fifteen nervous breakdowns! (Also I used swears , which I don't much... well hadn't been for a while, long enough that everyone was startled! Haha.) Anyway, at least the managers in the office are backing me up, which makes me feel a little bet...

 I'm not sure if I should just make a checklist or something, but I keep thinking "I want that" and then forgetting it, only to remember later when I've spent my month on something else. I may update this list from time to time. Here it is: A proper burr grinder coffee maker, not sure of brand yet A new laser printer And/or a Canon portable printer The Lamy 2000 Makrolon fountain pen, extra-fine nib Possibly to be superceded by the Lamy Black Forest Studio pen, same nib size, which I'll probably get real soon now A vacation at the beach (solo, as isolated as possible as is my practice pandemic or no pandemic)--NOT Virginia Beach I hope, not sure I'll make it to Florida A washer and dryer. Will probably have to wait until I move to some place with it already installed or with hookups To wash my car. Get the car inspected you dope. Money???? Oh well that's what I came up with so far.

 Well. I've been talking to my sister again. She still lives in Miami. She was still with the same guy as she'd been with when I left in 1999, and they'd gotten married a few years ago. She seemed to have turned her life around somewhat--she had stopped drinking and doing drugs, was taking care of her health, etc. She wasn't working, they live in a cruddy studio in a cruddy apartment building in a cruddy area near Little Havana, which considering their income (apparently the husband works as a security guard and does the same as a second job, she seems to think he has lots of money but I doubt it) they are lucky to have. Unlike as it turns out the rest of the people in their building they were paying their rent, so they weren't thrown out in the recent eviction frenzy.  But, that situation seems to have caused her to fall off the wagon. One of her sleazy neighbors plied her with wine and beer, she was inviting these losers into their tiny home "because they had...

I think the problem I'm having with Virginia is I can't find anything to say about it. I've lived here for 11 years now, and I just can't get this place. It's what I dreamed about as a child living in the city of Miami: forests! mountains! four seasons like in all those books I read -- especially autumn! and snow! But as I kept on living here, slowly the dream died. Maybe if I'd moved to another city I'd feel differently, but I moved to a small town--a "microcity" it is true, with a small, liberal, cultured population--and I feel like all I do is go to work and then go home. At first I traveled around a bit, but then I got a job and either had no time (long hours), no money (low pay), and then I started getting sick, so I ended up stuck indoors most of the time. I still haven't completely recovered from being sick, I think. I'm out of shape, basically, but everything seems so far away, and there is still the no money and no time thing. I al...

You know what? Feck it, I might as well just stay here. It's right for me, for a variety of reason. (Note: I've said this sort of thing before!)

Posting on here because it seems to be the easiest method of blogging these days. Also Twitter, my addiction for the past few years, seems to be having a problem . Oh noes, I am forced to actually write my thoughts in a format that accepts more than just 240 characters per entry! I may spontaneously combust! I have actually been trying to blog on my Real Site. So I set up a Wordpress blog, because that's what the hosting service prefers (though they do offer other programs). But I find Wordpress to be exhausting to use for some reason. It's easy to use, that's not the problem. It's just exhausting. Too many choices, maybe? I also made a site on Neocities, which I have promptly abandoned. I don't know if I'm still into that sort of thing, website building from scratch. My real problem is I don't seem to be able to think of things to write about. Well, I do, until I am confronted with the blank page. Then all my thoughts vanish. I felt this writing urge die we...

Well guess who I found, or rather, who found me -- my sister, who I threw out of my life back in... 2003? Because I just couldn't take her any more. Anyway, I signed up on the Site Unmentionable, for reasons, and figured while I'm there, I might as well use it to look up some people from the past. Of course, that went absolutely nowhere, because I'm inept at Faceb--I mean the Site That Shall Not Be Named. Which is a horrorshow of a place, it's as cluttered and unnavigable as Myspace was. (I set up a site on Myspace once and then couldn't figure out how to use it, not being a teenage white boy into Eminem and party drugs.) Anyway, I would check in every once in a while. Put up some cat photos. And then, I found a message, which was put there back in July. Oops.  To make a long story short, we contacted each other, she still calls herself by the same wacky name she was using back then, still lives with the same guy -- they actually got married about five years ago, so...

I've been tooling around on Google Maps Street View, looking around the area that gave birth to me (in a cloud of sulfur and flame, probably) as it has looked for the past few years. (Some of the shots go back to, like 2015, some are from a few months ago.) And I think I've figured out the problem: this area where I now live, the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, is just too peaceful and pretty. It's even gorgeous in places, and has all those things I thought I loved--at least when I didn't have to experience them every year: seasons, mountains, rocks that were "real" rocks, endless thick forests of Real Oaks and Real Maples and all that sort of thing and well I hate it. I hate the forests because they are dark and scary and full of things like bears and deer (who are Larger than I thought they would be), and also dark. I hate the seasons because they feel like a relentless clock counting down the years, and also winter is too fucking cold and driving in the snow...

OK not much of a title, but I don't care. I'm trying to seriously plan my back-to-Florida move. I know it won't be any time soon unless I somehow win the lotto, the plan now is to wait until my 401K cashes out, which will be in about two and a half years. This of course assumes a number of things: that I'll still be around then, that the 401K will have any money in it at all, that there's no crash happening, etc. Also there is the whole "job" thing, I doubt I'll be able to retire at 59. The ideal is a transition out of this office job into some working from home gig that nets me at least as much as I make now, and hopefully more since Florida isn't cheap if I manage to make it all the way back to Miami, which is what I want to do. If the housing situation stays the same in my old home town, rent will not be cheap, but may be manageable. The outlying areas are of course my best bet, Homestead and around there. I do not want to live in the north part...

I read Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere sometime in the 1990s I think. Spoilers to follow if it matters for a book published nearly 30 years ago... It just occurred to me now how a tell of just how mundane and bourgeois Gaiman is was how he telegraphed the villainy of the "good" angel character by how he got the main characters, a twenty-ish man and a younger woman (who was also, I think, underage -- sixteen maybe? It's been a while) drunk.  His Sandman comics were my main thing for a time. On the surface they were rather progressive (sexually ambiguous characters such as Desire, plenty of gay characters who weren't obvious stereotypes, etc.), but there was an overlying cisheterosexuality that promoted traditional domesticity as an ideal if not one that all the characters were suited for, and that was seen as a semi-tragedy or fatal flaw (Dream can't seem to have a relationship that doesn't end with something horrible happening to his lady friends, Barbie leaves K...

Well, I guess I'm going to keep on ignoring my "official blog" in the space I actually pay for and use this free one, in a space I've been on for... nearly 20 years! Hahaha. I'm so old what the hell happened to my life. Anyway, well. Early this year, around the end of December, I got sick. Then I stayed sick, for like, weeks. Everyone in the office was sick, passing around the same thing like a Christmas gift they were trying to get rid of. Finally I felt better and felt like I was out of the woods. Then at the end of February, I went to the emergency room. "You have bronchitis!" I was told. "But it's not the flu!"  I don't know if I had covid-19 or not. No one was testing up here. But the symptoms I had sound a whole lot like a lot of people who did: fever, body aches, coughing so hard I threw up, getting well for a while and then relapsing. I didn't get pneumonia at least. On the other hand, there's a possibility that I just h...

Gonna put a go plan here. Mostly things to buy and stash in the car for when I finally run away from this hell valley. Ikea seems to have the best prices *and* quality, but Target and Walmart are actually nearby. Oh well, if I choose Ikea: Dinnerware set:  https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/faergrik-18-piece-dinnerware-set-light-green-60318920/ Glass set:  https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/ikea-365-glass-clear-glass-70278358/ I'm fussy about mugs and might keep a few I have but these are super-cheap:  https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/faergrik-mug-stoneware-white-60143992/ Might purchase an air-mattress, which hopefully will resist cat claws. Walmart has those for reasonable. A couple of plain sheet sets (full/queen) can be picked up at Walmart, and I'll need a plain blanket and/or duvet or comforter. The ones at Walmart are too gaudy and the ones at Target are too expensive. So, Ikea again. I can't decide on one right now. Some plain pull on pants and/or leggings, and tops -...