Dreadful Typewriter

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 -...

I got some bad news the other day. One of my old blogger friends, someone I met back when blogs were a slightly bigger fish in a slightly smaller pond, died of injuries from a car accident. Charles  was a really nice guy. I only met him in person once, on one of his "world tours" (long road trips) that he used to take before he got badly injured in a fall. He came down to where I was mildly rotting in Orlando (when I had no car and was living in the "nice" apartment in Altamonte Springs that turned out to be not quite so nice and had mosquitoes in it) and we had brunch at Denny's and chatted about I don't remember what. Other blogs, the state of the world, etc. I doubt I was a sparkling conversationalist. I never saw him in person again -- Oklahoma City is a long way away from Florida and Virginia, where I eventually moved, even after I had a car. And there was no money, no time... He knew a lot about pop music, and once helped me find a CD by an obscure go...