On line

We're moved in. The kitties are happy, and the net connection is up. We've even used the on-demand free movies.

I'm happy, because we have wildlife here. I've seen something that looked like a small heron, about duck-sized (I think it was a green heron), and I've seen a turtle. This makes me happy, as do the hummingbirds!

On personal development

As some of you know, I work Faire. This is sort of about that.

There are several ways I could be described, personality-wise. I'm shy. I'm a perfectionist. I'm quiet. I generally don't like the spotlight. However, these aren't necessarily good things. When I went for working Faire, I deliberately went for a role that is completely against type. I don't usually deal well with talking to people I don't know; that's what this was all about. I like to consider my words and actions; this role forced me to just do it, and not stop to consider beyond "is this going to really freak the target out?". This role was very much Not Me, and yet I loved it. I was forcing myself outside of my comfort zone, insisting that I do things I really am not happy doing, and making myself see that it really did work out that way. This really helped force me out of the shell I inevitably build around myself. Working this role for almost the entire run of Faire (I worked my arse off, and only missed a couple weekends; those were basically because those weekends, my arse had fallen off) really pushed my limits, physically, mentally and emotionally, and it was a great time. As I said at the time: I wouldn't have let a job kick my arse that hard for $50 an hour, and yet there I was doing it for cookies.

One of the questions asked after the end of the run was "What was your favourite moment from this year's run?". Many people have answered, naming many great, fun things that happened.

Me?

I answered thus: "Every single one I was out there."

I really do feel that working Faire, just this one year, has helped improve me. I was pretty much subjecting my personality to Clarke's Second Law, and that is something that really does help me.

What do you do that you feel improves you?

On the hunt...

Well, our stuff is in, and being unpacked. We've knocked off for the night, though, due to extreme achiness and the stress of a day when NOBODY was on time but us.

Where the crud did my generic equivalent to Aleve get packed?

On Edge.

I find that dealing with setting up services is usually an annoyance of great note. Today was little exception... first, CableCo. I'm not naming names, but they're a cable company. You all know what such entities are like. They have an exceedingly uninformative website, a phone service that's somewhat broken, and exorbitant rates. They're also our only choice, since the only way we could get a southern aspect for a satellite dish would be by bolting it to the roof or the wall, and we can't do that, and we're not going back to over-the-antenna TV. We need our Discovery channel. We've also got no DSL availability there, so CableCo is our only choice for internet (dialup? Screw that!) and we're getting our phone through them also. This meant cancelling the order we'd set up with the Actual Phone Company, for when we thought we were moving into a different place...

Can you tell this is complicated? I don't deal well with complicated.

Now, we also had to figure out DVR service. See, we had a DVR on the satellite TV, and once you have a DVR, You Can Never Go Back. There is just no way you can do it. However, we had to choose between CableCo's offering or dealing with setting up a Tivo (sod their crazy capitalisation, I'm using title case for them and they're going to live with it), and that led to much looking at the net, scratching of heads and passing of notes while the LA was on the phone. We're probably going to go with Tivo, I think we decided, but I got kind of lost.

And finally, because we're using phone service from CableCo, we had to cancel our erstwhile long-distance provider. This was sad; Unitel had given us good prices, great customer service and no hassle at ALL for a long time. As and when we get to pick our long-distance provider again, we'll be going back to them.

And now I want ice cream, or possibly lunch. I may poke around some more with the toaster oven in order to get toasted cheese...

Which reminds me. Must tell the LA that I want a toaster oven once we've moved in...

On the Trip

As the LA has already said, the drive up went pretty well. What she refrained from mentioning was that I had a migraine when we set out, thanks to the presence of phosphoric acid in a bottle of Gatorade. The inadvertent experiment thus performed was brutal in its conclusiveness: Silas gets migraines whenever he ingests phosphoric acid. This means no more cola for me, ever - a fact about which I find myself unable to feel sad. Root beer tastes better anyway, and if I go for Barq's it fills my addiction nicely. There are also gourmet root beers, which isn't the case for colas; about the fanciest they get is Pepsi Max (confusingly, this is not the same as the Pepsi Max in the UK; it's full-sugar, and includes ginseng and guarana, whereas in the UK Pepsi Max is the sugar-free stuff), so overall, the lack of colas is meh. Dr Pepper is included, though, but I'm not so keen on that either.

Anyway. I was pretty well packed in by bags (under my legs) and snacks, including a pack of golden Oreos. Some of my British readers may know the standard Oreo; for those that don't, it's a sandwich biscuit, with "chocolate" flavoured outers and white cream filling of surpassing blandness. It's disappointing, really; the main purpose of it is to come apart cleanly, leaving all the cream on one of the biscuits, allowing the creation of the "double stuff". This version, incidentally, is available readymade in the US, making the creation of quad-stuff and more multiples-of-two easier, although with sufficient patience these may be assembled from single instances (although past quad-stuff, it gets silly). Anyway. There are also variously coloured versions of the basic chocolate version, differing in the flavouring of the cream (such things as mint, peanut butter...), and also, we recently discovered, there is the golden Oreo, which is the basic biscuit without the chocolate. They're rather nice, lacking the carbonised edge of the chocolate ones, and I quite liked them. For some reason, they reminded me of giving blood, and somewhere around Coalinga I finally worked out why this was.

They're custard creams.

And now, as the cats socialise with the grandparents and the LA naps on the huge couch, I shall hope that things work out tomorrow such that she and I can go and catch Indiana Jones at some point. I may also nap a while, and dream of the very good pizza which was today's lunch; I would love a proper stone pizza oven.

On the move...

What the LA said, plus migraine and exploding joints. Seems my body falls apart when I get stressed.

On short notice

The move is... not going according to plan. It's still going, though.

More details once it's sorted.