Corner of Bourbon & Division

It's November 1st, and I have a vague memory of saying I would post every day in November to get myself back on track with updating LJ. Then suddenly it was 19:00 and I hadn't done a damned thing about it. Whoops.

 In my defense, I am just coming off a night shift, so most of today was spend sleeping. I actually spent the afternoon streaming Don't Starve, which was a lot of fun. I've been streaming my games for about a week now, and the plan is to do it pretty regularly. I've been watching Critical Role on Twitch for a year and a half, now, but somehow never worked out that Twitch was this huge thing beyond just the Geek & Sundry channel. I discovered the error of my ways this summer, and have been watching other people streaming ever since then. Since it looked like a lot of fun, I decided that when I got a proper gaming computer (for which I'd been saving up), I would make sure that it had the necessary power to also stream reliably.

So that's what I've been up to for the last week. I am still hilariously not good good at video games, so I think the main attraction of anything I stream is the sheer entertainment of watching me flail around, trying not to perish ignominiously. (In case this sounds like your jam, you can find my channel at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/ratherastory). I started out with The Long Dark, which I think I've raved about here before, and then switched to Don't Starve at the request of some friends. I'm still working out the kinks in Twitch and OBS, and so far while it's sometimes a little on the obscure side for a beginner like me, I'm having a great time.

I also have another streaming ambition, which is to stream some cooking. I have no idea how that will work, because my poor laptop is dead, and I can't exactly bring my computer downstairs. I'm consulting with people who understand streaming better than I do what such an endeavour would entail, so I guess I'll keep you posted on how that goes.

Tonight is one of my D&D games, Pax Regina. I'm playing a Firbolg Barbarian named Tauron, who has a 4 in Charisma, which we've decided means that, because he's shy on top of everything else, no one notices he exists. That never fails to be hilarious, as he's nearly 7 feet tall and weighs something like 280 lbs. It's like not noticing a walking brick wall until it's right on top of you.

Tomorrow the plan is to do some more streaming, and get a little bit of cooking done. I have some pasta sauce to use, but unfortunately that requires cooking the actual pasta, too. ;) If I can muster the energy, I may post about work. I mean, I will definitely post, but I'm not sure I want to talk about work. There's a lot to talk about, and a lot of it is not great. Still, it will likely do me some good to put it all down in written forma and process it that way.

November is kicking my ass.

I didn't really notice because I was trying to keep busy, but this week between the new schedule, night shift, and George going AWOL for so long, it kind of all came down like the proverbial ton of bricks.

If you need me, I will be hiding under the nearest available rock.

Apologies to people waiting on a NaNo update from me. I'll get to it, I swear, even if it looks like I won't hit 50K. Right now, it just doesn't feel that important.

NaNoing with tcaptain and mayabanana who came last night for Hallowe'en along with luvenditti. They spent the night, and we stayed up until midnight to celebrate the start of NaNo. We each hit quota, and tcaptain and I finished up with over 2,000 words.

Now we've had a breakfast of waffles and bacon, I have had coffee (very important), and we are about to start writing again. I'm hoping to get a LOT of writing done today, because the days when I'm at work I likely won't have the time or energy to get much written.

So the metro got closed for emergency reasons today, forcing me to walk much of the way to work.

My first thought? ZOMBIES!

Good thing I'm writing the sequel to the zombie novel this year, eh?

I had a very vivid dream the other night (these have become increasingly rare for me, which is sad) that actually involved zombies. I was living in a remote-ish area in a small town not too far from the sea, and had already been doing my preparedness thing for quite some time. I don't know how I knew that there were zombies coming (I couldn't see any), but I remember being quite anxious and starting to board up windows and generally getting ready for the onslaught.

The nifty part of my dream was that I got to be an omniscient observer. This happens a lot in my dreams: I get flashes of "Meanwhile, in a totally different location..." a lot like in a movie. So I the dreamer (not the actor in my dream) knew that there was indeed a real zombie infestation starting in the town. They were coming up out of the ocean, only one or two to begin with, all covered in seaweed and slime, their flesh grey and rotting.

Back at "my" house, my parents had unexpectedly shown up, having been convinced that I was not a loony and that my concerns about zombies were more than legitimate. They pitched in to help me barricade the place, and I was just beginning to feel as though we might get through the initial infestation unscathed, when my mother left the house to go rescue a neighbour she recognized (I'm a little fuzzy on this part of the dream), leaving one of the doors to the house wide open behind her. Before I knew it, the zombies were upon us, and I remember having a moment of clarity, of knowing that there really was no point in trying to hold off the undead hordes, because there would always be that *one* mistake that would undo months and years of work. I remember also realizing that maybe being one of the undead wouldn't be so bad.

That's when the dream took a turn for the surreal (yeah, yeah, moreso than zombies). I once again became an omniscient observer, and returned to the seashore, where I could see Jesus Christ summoning the zombies from the salt water. He waded into the water, and submerged for a few moments, only to re-emerge borne upon a veritable tidal wave of ambulatory corpses (all of them swimming, oddly enough, rather than walking). It's interesting to note that the zombies in my dreams were at least partially sentient and able to talk enough to communicate that they were not unhappy with what had happened, and viewed it as a kind of salvation (tying in with the image of Christ held aloft by zombies, I guess).

As I said, the dream was particularly vivid, and I was quite unsettled by it for the first few hours of the day after awakening. Nice to know that my brain is still being consumed by zombies, two years after the writing of my NaNo novel.

ai731 and baronscartop have generously communicated their Sinus Plague o' Doom™ to me. As usual, whenever I have a cold, my voice goes, and this has proved to be no exception. On the plus side, it should be partially if not fully restored by the evening. My laryngitis is time-sensitive, as always.

So, in anticipation of the fact that I have to go out tonight, I am going to crawl beneath my eiderdown and watch MacGyver.

I am in no mood at all to do any kind of writing, except the whiny LJ-post kind. Turns out that when I'm sick and have nowhere to be, I become worse than most men. I just want to hibernate and nurse my wounded pride alone in a dark cave somewhere. :P

I've been too busy to post. I keep telling myself that I should write posts in here that aren't "here's what I did while I wasn't posting" entries, but I never seem to get around to writing those meaningful, insightful entries. I rather think that I don't have any to write. I've lost the knack of writing analytical text ever since I left university. Besides, I don't know that I'd want to inflict my essay-writing skills on my beleaguered flist, as I seem to recall that I bored myself silly with my own academic writing. I remembered wondering who would ever want to read such dry stuff as I was able to produce. It's not that it wasn't good —it was just really, really dry going.

Anyway, I've had a busy couple of weeks.
I saw an old friend of mine from high school last Saturday, although we didn't have much time to actually catch up as he had to go back to his office right after lunch (he's a lawyer). We did have a nice chat, and wandered through Atwater Market before he had to go, and it was really nice to see him again. Of all my friends in high school (of which there admittedly weren't many), he was the one with whom I got along the best. We're supposed to meet up again at some point in the near future, which ought to be nice. After that I got treated to a lovely private concert in the living room of some family friends, and spent the afternoon and better part of the evening making slightly awkward small talk with three roomfuls of people I didn't know and with whom I had nothing in common. Still, the concert was quite nice. The violinist was a young man, somewhere between nineteen and twenty-one, and he's quite promising. His playing was very adept, although it lacked depth and intonation, but with time I'm guessing he'll turn out quite well.

Sunday was spent hiding from the world recovering from that stupid migraine which started late on Saturday. Annoying in the extreme, as it was a gorgeous day out.

Monday was a writing jam with owldaughter, in which I got more writing done in one morning than I had in the past four weeks combined. I'm finally getting back into my ongoing YA novel, and I'd like to have it finished by the end of the year. I might "cheat" and make finishing it my NaNoWriMo project for this year. Either that or I'll write another horror novel, since they appear to write themselves for me.

I forget what I did on Tuesday, but I do remember that I had to be out of the house stupidly early to do it. That's probably why I don't remember: I was still half-asleep. ;)

I met up with ai731 on Wednesday morning, and she taught me the mysteries of canning. It's a really fun process, I assume more fun because there were two of us. We went through about three-quarters of the 20lb bag of apples I'd picked, and made apple sauce, apple butter (so very yummmy!) and an apple cake based on her grandmother's recipe, which was so very very delicious that I brought it to work with me so that I wouldn't be tempted to eat the entire thing by myself. I brought half to work, and ai731 kept the other half, naturally. I had to abandon ship just before the end of the session, as I had to go to work, and I just received the last three jars of apple sauce last night. I am very pleased with how the whole thing turned out.

Thursday was spent driving my mother around so she could get some errands done without spending the whole day doing it. Since she doesn't drive, and generally gets around pretty slowly anyway, it's easier for her if I occasionally spend a morning driving her around, and I don't mind doing it in the slightest. I tend to lose my mind if I spend too much time with my parents, but a couple of times a week is enough for me to keep my sanity.

Friday's Ubisoft lunch got canceled for me due to the (not unexpected) passing of my great-aunt Margot at the age of 93. I have very fond memories of her, and of going to her apartment in the Linton for a New Year's Day luncheon every year until I was about eight or nine. After that she moved to a smaller place (I believe it was a residence for relatively independent retired folk who only needed minimal amounts of help to get through the day), and she became a little too frail to be able to put on the spread she really wanted to. None of her three daughters ever kept up with the tradition, and so I sort of lost track of her for a while. We still saw her at the larger family gatherings, but it wasn't really the same.

The funeral itself was interrupted when my cousin Ophelie (the youngest of all the cousins, and one of the two cousins near my age with whom I actually keep up and get along) suffered some kind of seizure or syncope in the middle of the service. She was sitting right next to my father, and the next thing we knew she had turned a horrid shade of green, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she slumped forward. Luckily my aunt (not Ophelie's mother, but another aunt) is a nurse and took over immediately. I was rather grateful not to have to step in and apply my limited first aid skills to the situation. Someone produced a cell phone (a blackberry, I think) and called 911. I spent most of the time keeping people from crowding around, and reassuring people that no, it wasn't taking as long as they thought for the ambulance to get there. I timed it, see, and it took nine minutes from the moment the call was placed to the time the paramedics got there. In times of crisis, people's perception of how quickly time elapses gets seriously distorted.

My mother spoke to my cousin yesterday, as well as my aunt. Ophelie is doing okay, as it turns out, but she's going to have to see a neurologist, as her symptoms were quite alarming (swelling in the throat, stiffening of the extremities, extremely elevated heartrate, etc.). My mother, in true keeping with her nature, has invited her to dinner next Sunday.

After the funeral I took my mother to Juliette & Chocolat for lunch. Egads, it should be illegal to make chocolate that good. I have rarely had anything quite that sinful. I must go back.

Yesterday I got shanghaied by my parents into helping them shop for appliances. God help me. The less said about that, the better. The day improved immeasurably by the time I got to luvenditti's for dinner, and had a wonderful time with all my friends, chatting about movies and books and games and food and all the usual things we end up talking about at these events. I borrowed the movie "Clue" and watched it last night: it's a great deal of fun.

All right, the rest of my day beckons. More updates when I have something to say. ;)

My characters are still alive.

There are zombies outside.

I have amaretto and sour mix to hand.

Phear.

Seeing my old school friend on Tuesday depressed the hell out of me. I can't stick my hand in this crazy, it's way too big for me, but it's still not fun watching someone with whom you used to be best friends in the process of completely self-destructing.

Spent the day with toughlovemuse yesterday, and can I say? It's WONDERFUL to have well-adjusted friends. Seriously. I'd forgotten just how f*cked up my friends from high school have become, in some cases.

Got some writing done, and I can't believe November is nearly over. I keep thinking it's about halfway done, but it's not. This is both a good and a bad thing.

Am off to spend the day outside the apartment.

So for those of you not in the know yet, I've been writing a zombie novel for National Novel Writing Month. It's being posted as I write it in my writing LJ, secret_history.

What's very gratifying is that it appears to have attracted some readers who are not, in fact, on my flist. For instance: baronmind had this to say about my humble little offering:

...there's a fantastic zombie story unfolding over at secret_history, currently titled Afternoon Snack of the Living Dead. Despite the jocular title, the story takes itself seriously. The character development is fantastic, the actions and responses realistic, and the entire scenario is horrifically believable. The story is this year's NaNoWriMo effort by mousme -- already past the 50,000 word mark, I might add, which is impressive in and of itself -- and I'd like to thank fearsclave for bringing it to my attention.

With reviews like that, how could you not want to read it? ;)