Corner of Bourbon & Division

The title is a bit of a misnomer, because it's not like I got any time off for the holidays, so theoretically I've been working as usual the whole time. The thing is, of course, that the holidays always cause a significant slowdown at work. People take more time off to be with their families, other governmental departments shut down for a few days, etc. So I spent a couple of weeks not having to deal with my bosses (they don't come in on statutory holidays and many of them took time off), and having a significantly lighter workload than is the norm. Tomorrow, though, everyone will be back at work, including the bosses, and all the office politics bullshit will start up again, as well as the regular work. I'm not looking forward to it.

The better news, even though it's still stressful, is that my classes at university start again on Thursday. I scheduled all my necessary days off work in order to attend, and so far no one has refused my leave, which is nice, but there's no guarantee that will continue, of course. After they refused to honour their commitment to paying for part of my education, I wouldn't put anything past them. They seem to have gone out of their way lately to not accommodate even the most reasonable of requests from employees. It's a great management technique, let me tell you.

In university news, my grades have still not been posted, and I may have a quiet nervous breakdown about it. Holy shit. They're supposed to be posted this week, but I guess it could be Friday at midnight, technically, or even Sunday at midnight, depending on how they view their weeks. *lies down on the floor dramatically*

I am more than a little sad to be leaving the comfort of the holiday season. I had a great Un-Christmas with my friends, although my parents got sick at the last minute and couldn't come after all. I had a fine old grown-up luncheon at my house, fed six people (in a way it was good my parents weren't there, because there might not have been enough roast for everyone), and had a wonderful time.

Then I turned 40 last Saturday, and for once in my life I decided to celebrate by having a big party, because you only turn 40 once, after all. My mother, when I had told her about my plans, immediately pounced on the idea, and declared that she would organize it and that it would be my Christmas and birthday present all rolled into one. Honestly, the way she went about it made me think that she has despaired of my ever getting married, and this was her way of sublimating all of her wedding planning desires, which was fine by me. The only point of contention was the guest list, because the venue limited us to 30 people, and she kept insisting that I should invite all of my parents' friends, including people I didn't know.

"You should invite the Smiths!"

"Mim, I don't know them. They don't know me! Why on earth would they come to my birthday party?"

"We see them socially!"

"Well, I certainly don't. We exchanged ten polite words about twenty years ago."

Etc. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. ;)

Anyway, I negotiated her down to a reasonable number of "olds" as they all call themselves now (not technically wrong, most of them are over 75, many well over 80 years old): my godparents and some old family friends, which still added up to about twelve people. I ended up inviting a lot more than 30 people, based on the solid notion that not everyone would be able to attend, and I was right. A few sent their regrets right away, and a few people were unable to make it at the last minute: one simply forgot entirely (oops), three were sick, and one had an accident that required urgent medical care.

The ones who did make it were an absolute delight, of course. The party was catered (my mother does not do things halfway), and the food was absolutely delicious. My mother had also ordered the hugest bouquet of various white flowers (lilies, hydrangeas, white roses, and a bunch of others I can't remember), which was glorious. I don't even have words to describe how beautiful it was (I will have to find photos). I wasn't able to take any pictures, because my phone was hooked up to the sound system in order to provide music.

I was also able to give them their Christmas presents at long last, which was tickets to see Cyrano de Bergerac on the big screen (live broadcasts of theatre and opera are the bomb, yo) as well as a new landline phone for their house, because theirs is twenty-six years old an no longer works, no matter how much they protest that it's "fine." (It's not fine.)

It was a great party, but it was obvious my mother found it taxing. She was just recovering from an illness, after all, and at the end of the party when I took her home (it was literally across the street from their condo), she was wheezing terribly and could barely hold herself upright. I had to immediately park her in the kitchen and scramble to get her inhaler-thingy (I'm not sure if it's still called a bronchodilator if it's for emphysema?), and that helped considerably, but it helped to drive home the point that she really is very frail these days.

In the meantime, things have slowly been getting back to normal for me. No more parties, and I've been trying (I failed last night, alas) to get to bed at a reasonable hour. Tonight I'm aiming for bed at 8 pm (in 5 minutes or so) and lights out by 8:30 pm. I started streaming on Twitch again on Monday after a hiatus for the holidays, and it's amazing how much time that eats up. Even for a 3-ish hour stream like mine, there's a lot of prep that goes into making sure things go smoothly. If I'm not careful, it can swallow a whole day without my doing anything else.

Because I mostly didn't play video games during the holidays, I found myself with a bit more free time than usual, and I ended up diving back into The Dresden files early in the New Year. I hadn't re-read them in a while, and some of the newer books I haven't re-read at all yet. It's been fun getting back into that universe, and indeed getting back into reading at all. I've been having concentration issues for a while now that have all but precluded reading any new novels (I'd find myself having to re-read the same chapter over and over because I couldn't for the life of me remember what had happened or who the characters were), but these are like visiting old friends. I remember enough from when I last read them to keep me afloat, and I'm hoping that I will be able to exercise my reading muscle (so to speak) enough to be able to embark on more adventurous terrain in a few months. We shall see.

On that note, it is time for me to go to bed. I'm finding it a little difficult to both make time and to remember to post here, but I will come back as often as I can. See you on the flip side, folks!

 I don't know why I constantly overestimate my level of energy to get things done. I am an eternal optimist, I guess. Anyway, I got a fair bit done this week. I got 95% of my errands done (I forgot a couple of things, because I was silly and didn't make a proper list), I got a tree which I will decorate probably tomorrow evening, I had my therapy appointment and got my blood tests done this morning. All in all, it wasn't too bad.

( Very, VERY boring daily stuff under the cut. )

I've reached the point in my night shifts where I hate pretty much everything and everyone. It usually happens after midnight on my second night shift, but this time around it actually only struck on the third night a couple of hours ago. Now I only have an hour and a half or so before I can go home, so it's not so bad.
 
I've been procrastinating on my term paper, which is due... I was going to say tomorrow, but I guess technically it's today. It's 1/3 done, but I still have the other two parts to write. The first part was the group work component, but I did about 90% of that anyway, so it feels as though I worked on it alone most of the time. It reminded me of why I hate group work. :P I need to sleep when I get home, but the plan is to get up early-ish and finish writing it after that. It's not due until midnight, and I only need to write 4-6 pages, which is eminently doable. I am trying to be better about the procrastination, and I *was* doing a little better, right up until this final paper was due.

I will have to work harder on that next semester, because the further I get into this new degree, the more complex and difficult my coursework is going to get, and I won't be able to get away with last-minute work like this anymore. Not to mention that I work 60-hour weeks, so with school on top of that (plus I'm still streaming on Twitch as a hobby, which takes up another 12-15 hours a week), time is a scarce commodity these days.

I don't have a huge amount to report right now, mostly because I am so tired my eyes are crossing. I am compiling a list of, well, I guess New Year's Resolutions is not a misnomer in this case, although I like to think of them more as goals, because resolutions tend to go by the wayside starting in February. In this case, I'm trying to make my goals as specific as possible, so that I'll have as good a chance as any to make them happen. So I will probably write up an entry with those goals later on, sometime this week, but not until my paper is finished.

Honestly, I will probably have to talk with my therapist about all of this, because she is pretty good at helping me come up with strategies for not crashing and burning. Okay, time to start doing end-of-shift things. I've posted twice in the past three days, so I am moderately optimistic about my odds of keeping on with the posting. Onward!

 I promised an update, so an update you shall have! For all that it feels like nothing ever happens in my life, actually there's a fair bit to catch up on. I can't guarantee it will be interesting to anyone but me, though, fair warning.

Here we go, in order of importance, I guess:

• Sad news first: Sergent died just under a month ago. He was my dog, for those of you who may not be fully up to speed on things. Anyway, he'd been slowing down a lot over the last year--his arthritis was clearly getting worse in spite of treatments, and he became incontinent right after I moved house and basically never recouped his house training after that. Then Father's Day weekend, while my parents were visiting, he got really sick, which usually happened about once a year for him, but this time when I brought him to the emergency vet, he didn't bounce back the way he usually does. He stopped being able to walk, lost all interest in food, water, and his surroundings, and generally made it very obvious to me that he was ready to go. The vet concurred with me that euthanasia was the best course of action, and so that's what we decided to do. He went quickly, and at least at the end he wasn't in pain anymore.
• Not-sad news: I am starting university again in the fall! I took a two-day course in conflict resolution at my workplace, and really loved it. I also spied an opportunity, as the instructor said that they were thinking of expanding the Informal Conflict management program. So I discreetly inquired as to what one might need to become part of said program, and she said I'd need a degree in Conflict Studies from St. Paul University. Uncharacteristically for me, I took the plunge and not only immediately started researching the degree, I actually pulled together all the necessary paperwork to apply, and applied. To my shock, I was actually accepted for a Bachelor of Arts in Conflict Studies. So I start again September 5th, and am freaking out ever so slightly, because it has been roughly eighteen years since I was last in university, and I am pretty sure I have forgotten how to Academia. Still, it's pretty exciting. If I study part-time but manage some summer courses, I can finish in about five years. Possibly less, if I can apply to be fast-tracked to a Masters' Degree, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now, just getting my feet wet again will suffice.
• In weirdly related news, I have resumed going to therapy. There's no official diagnosis yet, but it looks like I might actually have ADHD, or at least some sort of executive dysfunction disorder. ai731 asked me if I'd ever been tested, way back in November, during one of our cooking days, when I YET AGAIN skipped a step in a recipe/forgot an ingredient/whatever. Obviously I've never been tested, but the more I looked into it, the more it seemed to fit. If it is the correct diagnosis, then I'd have what's called the "inattentive" presentation, rather than hyperactivity. So, anyway, I'm working with a therapist who specializes in ADHD and related things, and we've been trying to make me less of a trash fire of a human being. It's slow going so far, but at least she's been keeping me honest about a few things. I think I'll expand on that in a separate entry.
• Work has been chugging along, in much the same way as before. We go through periods where it looks like we'll maybe pull ourselves out of the hole we're constantly in, by hiring people and training them, and then before we know it a ton of people jump ship for various reasons, and we're practically back to square one. Right now one employee is out on maternity leave, another is on paternity leave for nine months, one just up and left after being back only a few months after being out on stress leave and has dramatically declared he's never coming back, and we STILL haven't filled previous vacancies. One was out on bereavement leave for three weeks, one was out for two months on medical leave for two months and is only coming back part-time next week, and won't be full time until probably September. It's a mess. Right now we are 9 full-time permanent employees (including supervisors), 2 full-time contract employees, 1 part-time contract employee, and one guy who is helping us out because he's being super nice and knows we're in trouble. We're supposed to be 16 full-time permanent employees (including supervisors), but that has not been the case once since I started working there. Oh, and our Director just retired and our Staff Sergeant just announced she was leaving in August for another section, so we will have two completely new people above us in the chain of command, who have NO experience in our section and no idea what we do, and it will take a year of work on our part to get them up to speed.
• Related to the above, it's kind of the reason I'm looking to get out of my current position. It's not the only reason, of course, nor even the primary one. The primary reason is that the long weeks and ridiculous rotating shifts are getting increasingly difficult to recover from. I work 60 hour weeks, then get several days off in between, but those days off are increasingly spent sleeping or being useless because I'm so tired from work. I also do much better on a set schedule, and my work schedule is not regular enough for that. It's doing my head in. Another reason I was considering getting out is that my Staff Sergeant seems to have decided that I am super incompetent and that I need to be micromanaged. Now, granted, I did make a mistake. It was a mistake that was mostly minor, but unfortunately it got noticed by officers who were senior to my Staff Sergeant, and so they called her and yelled about it, and therefore that shit rolled downhill to me. I will give her props, she did not throw me under the bus, but I think she's still holding the grudge months later. I have been on the receiving end of irrational grudges from management before, and I wasn't relishing the prospect of continuing working for her, but since she's leaving in a month or so, I'm a lot less worried about it now.
• I'm still streaming on Twitch! I've really found my groove, and am having a lot of fun with it. (If you're interested, you can catch me here: https://www.twitch.tv/ratherastory) I'm part of some great communities, have made wonderful new friends, and have discovered amazing video games it never would have occurred to me to play on my own. I've also started doing cooking streams on my free Saturdays, and am having a blast with that, too. I've been managing to stream on average three times a week, and even have something of a schedule set up for it, as much as my work schedule allows for, anyway.

I think that's many of the broad strokes of what happened over the past few months. There were smaller things, too, minor drama at work, adventures with friends, cool Christmas parties, but this should give you an idea of where I'm at these days. I'm going to try to update more regularly. If not every day, then at least a couple of times a week. Once upon a time, this LJ was a good way for me to keep a record of what was going on in my life, so it'd be nice if I could start that process up again.

Well, my post-every-day resolution lasted exactly one day, because I forgot yesterday.  Well, it's not the end of the world. You get me today, isn't that fun?

I've made a teensy bit of progress this week in setting up my little home office. I've got bookcases put together, and now I just need to set aside some time to put away my books in the order I want them. You will not be surprised to learn that this can take me quite a lot of time, as there is nothing quite like organizing books to bring out the perfectionist in me. ;)

This is still not the promised post about work. I kind of remembered about LJ a little late today, and that post is going to take me a bit of time to compose properly, I think. In the meantime, I have been alternating in my free time between streaming (to answer an earlier question, I am in fact broadcasting) and watching way too much television.

I got hooked by Stranger Things last year, and happily went back down that rabbit hole last weekend again. It's an adorable show. It's perhaps a little too enamoured of its own premise of being set in the 1980s, and this season especially was pretty short on good plotting, but the character writing is top-notch, and we all know how much I love good character writing. I tried watching Timeless, as I'd heard pretty decent things about it, but honestly it was so US-centric that I got bored during the second episode. Oh noes, the bad guy wants to destroy America in the crib! MEH. I would give up a non-vital body part for an American-written show to also realise that there are other countries in the world with really rich and interesting histories. I think I got spoiled with shows like Sense8 (although it has its own problems), and now I require a little more variety and, dare I say, diversity in my shows. So not even the promise of time travel could keep me watching Timeless. It also doesn't help that I found the two leads pretty boring.

I also have been watching Star Trek: Discovery (although I am not 100% caught up), and... I am ambivalent about it. I desperately want to like it, because it has a diverse cast and is being run by Bryan Fuller, whose work I mostly quite like, but it doesn't feel like Star Trek, if that makes any sense. It almost has more of a Star Trek: Enterprise feel to it, which is a show I didn't really enjoy and stopped watching in season 2, if memory serves. I am told it got better after that, but I haven't yet gotten around to giving it another shot. Sorry, Scott Bakula, I did love you in Quantum Leap. ;)

I could probably chatter on at length about TV, but looking at the time, I can see that bedtime is a better life choice on my part. ;)

Tomorrow morning I will be running D&D for my original group, and I have big things planned for them. Plot-altering prophecies and the like. I need to get up early to finish up some NPC stats for it. Then I need to run errands, as I'll be 

See you on the flip side, everyone!

 I have too many things that have happened, and not enough energy to write about them all. So the question is, what do I pick to write about?

I did mention in my previous post that my poor old MacBook Pro died. I am super annoyed about this, as I got the logic board replaced last November, which means it's not even a year old. The hard drive was a brand new SSD, and I had just added more RAM to it, too. Still, it now falls under the category of "throwing good money after bad," since another logic board would set me back $900 or more, which is ridiculous.

The good news is, I had been saving up money for several months in order to get myself a proper desktop computer, because I've reached the point now where I'm serious enough about video games that I was ready to invest actual  money into a good gaming rig. I originally thought that, with the help of a friend who offered at the time, that I could try building my own. A little bit like this, but with more clothes:

( So l33t )

Anyway, the more I researched, the more I realized that this was a huuuuuuge rabbit hole, and that I was going to get lost in it forever and possibly come out on the other side with nothing but damaged computer components to show for it. So I regretfully informed my friend that I wouldn't be building my own system, at least not for many years to come. The good news is that I found someone local who was willing to build me a custom system for the same price as I would have bought a lower quality computer. 

Getting a desktop PCs up and running was a pain in the goddamned ass, friends. First off, I had to buy monitors (I've had Macs all my life, which come with their own monitors), and a webcam (again, my computer came with one), and there are no built-in speakers, either. Everything is extra. My ethernet cables were dead, much to my dismay, and the monitors I bought came with cables that were incompatible with my new tower. It was an adventure, let me tell you. It took days to get it all set up, including a trip back with the computer so the guy who built it could install a component he'd forgotten. He also, for some reason, didn't format the hard drive, which I found out the other day when the computer alerted me that the SSD was almost full. *clutches head*

Anyway, after all those headaches, everything is now pretty much set up. The little room that serves as my office is a mess of empty boxes and packaging, and I still haven't properly unpacked my books. Once I do that (maybe tomorrow? I guess we'll see how much more procrastination I indulge in), I plan to start streaming games on Twitch. It looks like it could be a lot of fun, although part of me is very anxious about putting myself out there. (I'm under the name @ratherastory on there, in case anyone is interested)

I've been too busy at work the past couple of weeks to play much, but things are a bit quieter now, so I'm hoping this week will give me that opportunity. 

Also, in happy computer news, my father has loaned me his iPad on a pretty much permanent basis. He was only using it on trips, and after a few weeks of not having it, he says he doesn't miss it and that I can keep it unless he wants it for a trip in the future. That's a pretty sweet deal, especially since he somehow ended up with the Cadillac of all iPads at the time, and it has 120GB of storage. It's pretty sweet.

It's a statutory holiday here today, so that means I get to wear jeans to work! I have come to deeply loathe and resent having to wear "business casual" office clothing, so God help me if I ever end up having to work in a regular office setting again. Right now I only have to wear the hated clothes about five days a month, often less, when I'm working day shifts during the week, and the rest of the time I can wear comfy jeans, which is my favourite thing to do.

Not much has happened since I last posted. I have been procrastinating like crazy on unpacking the house and doing anything remotely productive when it comes to keeping my life together.

Instead I've been playing Stardew Valley, which is entirely the fault of fearsclave , who, as usual, is a terrible influence. It's a horribly addictive little farming sim game, which is normally not at all my bag, but on top of the farming there is a significant emphasis on social relationships and community building in the game: the goal is not just to become good at farming, but to integrate a small community and become a respected member of society. The village, called Pelican Town, is also disturbingly realistic in some ways when it comes to depicting small town life, and the otherwise cute and lighthearted game has gotten dark on me a few times. There are characters with depression, suffering from isolation and alcoholism, people on the fringes of "civilised" society. Anyway, it's been weirdly compelling, and it has occupied a lot of my free time in the past three weeks. I finally reached some of the artificial goals the game sets this past weekend, so hopefully my fervor for it will die down a little now, and let me be productive in other ways.

I took Sergent to the vet last week for his shots, and also for our third ride on the "Does the Dog Have Cushing's Disease?" merry go round. I was worried because he's been having accidents in the house ever since I moved. I had attributed it to stress at first, but since it had continued for a month after (though with diminishing frequency), and he's been presenting with other symptoms (panting, less energy, whatnot), a lot of the signs pointed to something else going on. $1,000 later, and the good news is that he still doesn't have Cushings. The bad news is that I'm almost out of savings now. *sigh* I have a new vet, one who is much closer to home, which is much better news for both the pets, who hate being in the car for extended periods, and for my sanity, because my previous vet was an hour away by car, which meant that a vet visit before this meant basically writing off the entire day. It will be nice to be able to do other things on Vet Days now.

In more uplifting news, my new friends L. and J. managed to sell their house, and as of last week no longer live right next to the people who harassed them and made their existence a living misery for two years! I'm so excited and happy for them. They're still looking for a permanent place to live (they both suffer from severe mould allergies. which means they have to be very careful about finding a new home), but at least they now don't have to orchestrate their lives around making sure a vehicle is always parked around their home and that they're not alone for extended periods of time. They no longer have to wear their hoods up to keep their faces covered, or be afraid to leave their house during the day (they did most of their moving in the dead of night), or have their neighbours rev their truck engines at them half the night or point floodlights at their house at all hours, or leave threatening notes on their car windshield. In short, this is fantastic news for them. They sold their house to a heterosexual white couple who already have ties in the neighbourhood, so they're confident the new people won't also be the target of harassment, so it's good all around.

This past weekend ended up busier than any other time since I moved. I ran D&D on Saturday for the first time in over two months, and it went pretty well. I planned a non-combat session for my players: a solstice festival which would allow them to roleplay and just have some fun without worrying about getting killed or having larger moral decisions to make. It was a good way to get back into the swing of things, and give me a bit of breathing space to try to plan out the next arc of their story. In a way, Levels 1-5 were there to help them figure out who their characters are, but now I want to try to start pulling things together and introducing them to the larger world I've been creating. It would likely help me if I worked out more of the details of my world, I guess. :P I don't know if they'll make it all the way to Level 20, but I have plans for them if they do, that's for sure. I just have to figure out what I want to see happen in the interim, and how to make it as much fun for them as possible, too. I have a lot of their backstories to play with as well, which ought to be fun.

Sunday I went to Meeting, after missing two weeks due to work. Now that I'm a Member I'm finding it more difficult to arrange my life with so few free weekends. I'm the clerk of First Day School, which means I feel obligated to lead FDS at least once a month, which means I have only one Sunday a month to attend Meeting, and therefore that's usually the Sunday I will sacrifice if I have to make other plans (like go on a trip, or what have you), but it means I sometimes won't attend Meeting for several months, and I feel really bad about that. I have no good solution to this, unfortunately, short of finding a job that doesn't require me to work weekends, or winning the lottery so I don't have to work at all anymore. :P

Meeting was more stressful than usual, too, because we had an elderly Member become unresponsive during worship. I feel especially bad, because I noticed early on that he appeared to have fallen asleep during worship, and was drooling a little at the time, and I debated with myself if I should go check and see if he was okay and decided against it. This happened to him last year (the only two times I've ever seen him attend Meeting, for that matter), and I wondered if it might not be happening again, but I worried about overstepping my bounds, as I don't know him at all. If I end up in a similar situation again, I'm damned well not going to worry about being told to mind my own business, so long as it means I'm not possibly sacrificing someone's health and safety in the name of social delicacy. It was a poor decision on my part not to interrupt Meeting to check on him, and I regret it.

When worship was over, it became obvious that something was wrong, and people were oddly reluctant to call for medical help for the man. A few of his friends said they would just take him home, and so I stepped in then and put my foot down. He was slumped over in his chair and completely unresponsive, his skin was clammy, and his breathing was extremely rapid and shallow. "I'm calling an ambulance," I told them, and then got them to move chairs aside so the paramedics would have room to work, and employed my best crowd management techniques to get well-meaning but unhelpful people and the looky-loos out of the way. An ambulance arrived within about three minutes, which was great, along with a policeman, who was helpful in getting people to move back and also to have someone to act as a point of contact with the gentleman's family, whom we were having trouble contacting during the emergency.

The funny thing is, because I was the one who essentially took charge of the emergency, everyone at Meeting decided I must know everything there was to know about the gentleman who'd collapsed. People kept asking me what his medical conditions were, if I'd contacted his children, all sorts of things, when the truth is that I didn't even know the guy's name. I'd never met him properly: I just knew from last summer, when he'd also collapsed at Meeting, that there was a history of this happening. Anyway, in light of this latest event, I approached the Meeting clerk and told her we should suggest that everyone volunteer to give us emergency contact information, for cases such as these. We got lucky that a few of the Members in attendance that day not only knew the man, but had phone numbers for his children in their cell phone contacts, but those Members could just as easily not have been there that day, and then the children would not have found out for hours or perhaps even days that their father was in the hospital.

Everything turned out okay, as far as I know: the gentleman was already awake and more responsive by the time the ambulance took him to the hospital, so I'm sure he will be fine. Still, it could have gone much better, and I have learned quite a few lessons from what I did wrong yesterday.

Back to better news: I'm slated to go to a fandom convention next week, which I'm really looking forward to. It has changed names, from Wincon to Confabulation, but it's basically still the same con. I'm looking forward to seeing all the friends I made there last time once more, just to hang out and geek out about fannish stuff. It's a convention run by fans, for fans, with no celebrity guests, which keeps the prices mercifully low, and lets us have panels and round tables to discuss all of our beloved things in depth, which is one of my favourite things to do! So I'm pretty psyched about it, even though it's coming at a time when I no longer have the kind of money I thought I'd have before going, due to unexpectedly having to move and two very hefty vet bills in a three-month period. Still, I can swing it, only because I'd been carefully putting money aside for this convention since last year. I just wish this year had been less expensive.


And that's it! Things are starting to happen in my life again, so with any luck I will be around more and posting.

 I got absolutely nothing of value done today. I don't know why I'm in such a contrary mood lately, but I think it might be attributable to the fact that I had no choice but to pack and move house in the last couple of months, and now I'm in a "you can't make me!" phase as a reaction to that. Is it productive or reasonable? NOPE. But there you go.

In short, there's not much to report on. I decided to treat myself to several trade paperbacks of The Walking Dead, so that's my light reading sorted for the next couple of days, I hope. There are also a bunch of new TV shows that I want to try, as well as some that I'm not caught up on. I haven't yet watched Critical Role from last night, and I probably have a few episodes each of Criminal Minds, Elementary, and Blindspot left to watch.

Speaking of Criminal Minds, a few weeks ago I decided to give Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders a shot, and dear God, it is BAD. Not even Gary Sinise can save that Americano-centric, xenophobic piece of garbage. If any of you were planning on watching, do yourselves a favour and avoid it like the plague. I am reasonably tolerant of rah-rah-MURICA stuff when it comes to police procedurals, but this takes it to several new levels of shit sandwich, and it was way too much for me to stomach.

Oh, and on the topic of trash fires, allow me to extend my condolences to my US friends on the passing of the AHCA, in which apparently being a woman is a pre-existing condition and precludes you from getting medical insurance of any kind. I exaggerate only very slightly, which is the sad thing. I can only hope it will be heavily amended in the senate, and that in 2018 all the Republicans who voted for it will be booted out of office. If any Democrats had voted for it, I'd say boot them too, but none of them did, so. I've done most of my yelling about this on Twitter, so that's all I'll say about it here.

Back to TV! 'Cause that's way more interesting... or something. Anyway, yes, lots of new TV shows coming up: Sense8 Season 2 just landed on Netflix, and I'm pretty excited, although an Indian friend of mine has indicated that it is handling the Indian politics aspect of the show in a very worrying way. I've been trying to do my own research as a result, just so I don't come at it with a completely uncritical eye. I am pretty happy about the queer representation, but the fact that many Indian people are indicating that it appears to be supportive of far-right religious extremist politics in India means that the queer representation should not give it a pass.

 Less politically worrying (thus far) is American Gods. I loooooved the book by Neil Gaiman when I read it, and so I really hope that the show will be just as good. The casting appears fantastic, anyway. The same goes for The Dark Tower series (Idris Elba, y;all!). Both of those have either just started or are scheduled to start soon, I'll have to check the dates to be sure. Of course, there's also The Handmaid's Tale, another book I loved (even though it made me want to slit my wrists), but I may need to watch that with a lot of alcohol, given the current political climate.

My summer popcorn shows are coming back, too! Killjoys is coming back for Season 3, and Wynonna Earp, which I just discovered a few weeks ago, is getting a Season 2! They're from the same Canadian showrunner, the one who brought us Lost Girl, and they both do well as low(ish) budget genre TV, with good overall representation and quirky, fun writing. I am looking forward to seeing the stories unfold!

And now, work calls. I'll be working night shifts all weekend. Whee.

 I'm keeping my friend L. company at her house today. Readers who've been with me since January will remember that she and her partner L. are the targets of neighbourhood harassment, so on Tuesdays I go hang out at their place in order for L. to get some work done in peace. 

I'm moving this Friday, and between that and work and other stuff I just haven't had the wherewithal to post to LJ or DW. I will make it up to you all, I promise!

I'm still reading everyone's entries, so at least there's that. Sorry for the relative radio silence, things will be better in May.