This blog post best read while listening to this playlist.
I keep trying to figure out how to start this blog post. I've started, stopped, pondered, and taken a shower while thinking about it off and on ever since my last post went live back in February. Unfortunately, life in the twenty-first century is.. well, being life in the twenty-first century. The laundry list of things that have taken up most of my time is unfortunately way too long: Java and log4j have cost me more nights of sleep and almost-but-not-quite migraines in the last month or so than I …
Many of the horrors of the last four years are over and not a few of us are sleeping much better, mostly because we have to spend less time keeping our eyes and sensor networks open to catch the latest way that we or people we care about might have the worth of our lives decreased even more. That's not to say that things are perfect, just a couple of points better for more people. The covid-19 plague is still on, unfortunately. Vaccinations are still extremely difficult …
I'm sitting in yet another coffee shop as I write this. Once again it's my birthday and I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing with my life and where I'm going. I've just turned 42 which, as Douglas Adams would have it means I now have the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Or I am the answer. Or something like that. I don't even know what I'm having for dinner tonight, let alone know what life is or is for so I'm probably not the best person to ask.
As I write this, it's roughly a week before my 40th birthday. I'm sitting in a hospital waiting room tapping away on Windbringer while Lyssa undergoes surgery to remove a cataract from her left (and only working) eye.* When this post goes live on the day of my actual 40th birthday, more things will undoubtedly have happened. I don't know how much time I'm going to have in the next few days, so I guess I'd best take advantage of the spare time I have due to how busy I've been lately.
What have I learned this year? What have I done this year?
Let's start with the latter: I've been knocked flat twice by sickness, a record to be sure. I bleached and started dying my hair again, because why not? I can get away with it without any trouble, and I may as well enjoy my hair while I still have it.
I changed jobs, and I'm much, much happier for it …
I just turned 38 years old. Those seem like simple, empty words but they're anything but. Over a third of my expected lifespan is gone now, which is not an easy thing to admit to oneself. Looking at it one way, I've spent that time just trying to figure everything out - learning the …
Home from Pantheacon. Thank you, everyone, for your birthday wishes and greetings - after I got home I slept for a couple of hours due to convention-exhaustion and generally not feeling well at all. I will get back to everyone (and put up my yearly birthday post) in a couple of days, once I'm caught up from being away for four days.
I've already done my obligatory post of some version of the song Birthday by The Cruxshadows what happened this last year that I can look back upon?
It's funny. I was sitting there earlier tonight at dinner (yes, I post-dated this entry so it would match up with the other one) and I came up with a bunch of stuff that I'm kicking myself for not having written down. I guess that's the way it goes - thoughts go in, thoughts go out, but unless you trap them somehow they're probably not going to come back. But I'll take a stab …
No, I won't post yet another video of Birthday by the Cruxshadows. I've done that the last few years, and I figure everybody could use a break. So, I put together a Youtube playlist of music that I listened to a lot last year. Open it in another tab or a new window and plug your headphones in if you've a mind to. Just click the "Play All" button.
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Good, you're back.
I can't say that I expected the last year to turn out the way it did. I always said that I try to demolish …
