Funeral scribbling
Got back last night from Salem / Roanoke. rhaps and shrewlet let us stay overnight at their place with no notice, and Rhaps even came down to the service on Friday. I’m really glad, too because it was one more familiar face for raininva, and I think that meant much to her.
Dad thought highly of both Rain and Starr, and I felt they should both be there. The family proved their great class by welcoming and supporting them both; I don’t know if I’ve even been prouder to be an O’Brien. Beth, Cathy, Benny and Jamie (old-guard Batron Starfleeters) showed up for the public reception on Thursday too. Interestingly, time_shark‘s name came up a few times, as it turns out that my dad and my dad’s dad knew Nelson Bond’s family pretty well, and I got to reminiscing with some of the Bonds and their friends about the Showtimers and the southwest Virginian fiction community.
My father was involved in fascinating stuff I never even heard about, stuff I can’t even talk about here. There was a long stretch of my life where I wasn’t close to the man, but I thought I had a pretty good idea who he was and what he got up to. I was right in some ways, and completely wrong in others. I wonder what else I missed?
My sister Whitney, of whom you’ve heard me talk almost nothing here because we too have been somewhat out-of-touch, asked me to be a pallbearer. I was honored, and I’m not sure I could have been talked out of at least trying… but this may have been the stupidest testosterone-induced promise I’ve ever made. I’m not supposed to lift over 25 pounds since the hip surgery; to be fair, I violate this on occasion, but usually with discretion. I strained several muscles, and nearly fell over once. Thank goodness no one said anything. At least I did no actual damage to myself.
Whitney’s one-year-old daughter Kennedy was with her for the two Thursday receptions. Baby singing and the throw-the-toy-on-the-floor game was exactly what I needed that day. Everytime the walls started to close in, I’d just look at Kennedy’s innocently quizzical expression, and things got a tiny bit better.
Friday on the way home, I stopped by my Mom’s, and she and Starr and I grabbed some lunch. While trying to dig up some Tintin comics I wanted to re-read, I found my old I.P.M.S. award for the Ether Flyer Thunderchild model, as well as some Pathfinder group shots and another portion of my dice collection. I can’t believe how much of my life is still at Kentland. I despair of fully sorting through it.
This too, is a bit rambly, but I’m getting closer to my center again. Tried to do a little fiction today, but the headspace isn’t there, and I’m determined to write something. I don’t have the luxury that a Conan Doyle character would of six months of “brain fever”. Bills gotta be paid, chores gotta be done, and life goes on.
And on a crass note, Dad was going to take care of my Dragon*Con travel for me. This isn’t an entitlement whine, but a note that I don’t have a Plan B yet. We’ll have to see what I can work out.
Pushing words through the mush in my skull
I mentioned in a Friends-locked entry a few days ago that my father passed away over the weekend. I locked it because I didn’t know almost anything about the situation at the time, and because I wasn’t quite ready to share publically before I talked to all the family. They all know now, and I know more about the circumstances. There’s no need to share much besides the facts that it was apparently natural and quick.
I’m kind of a mess right now, though I don’t think you’d know to look at me. I haven’t been sobbing or screaming or clawing at the walls, but I’ve been pretty depressed all week, and I’ve had fever-like symptoms off and on every day. My appetite’s been weird too. I’m hoping that the reception and service Thursday and Friday will help clear my psyche.
Perfect time to be making a four hour drive each way, huh? Luckily, I can do that completely on autopilot.
Lots of people offered support both online and off. All I can say is that you folks are wonderful. I am absolutely blessed to have so many excellent people offering me their thoughts and prayers… that’s helped more than you can imagine.
Rambling a bit today, and I know it, but well, I need to ramble.
Connectedness
I finished Harry Potter 7 on Monday. You’ll find no spoilers in this entry – I’ll just say I found the book satisfiying, and leave it at that.
Both the forums for World of Warcraft and my LiveJournal Friends had to declare spoiler bans, and I’ve had to politely interrupt friends and co-workers to avoid hearing too much. I still accidentally read a leak or two, though nothing to ruin my fun. (I had decided that even a complete spoil wouldn’t kill it for me – little of the book truly surprised me – I felt more curiosity about the journey than the destination, if you get my meaning.) Still, it took effort to avoid knowing more than I wanted. Somehow, my separate worlds of WoW, LJ, NASA, and my local friends circles all became united by this series finale, and there was Potter discussion in every direction.
As the days move forward, it seems to become harder and harder to keep separate all the little facets of my life. Without my involvement, my separate friends groups are merging, my interests are crossing over, my worlds are colliding. I think that the Borg used to be terrifying (pre-Voyager) because we know we are headed in that very direction; a race of minds linked instantly to each other, sometimes even when we’d prefer not to be; a race increasingly unable to escape our dependence on the tools we’ve created without drastic, unpleasant changes in who we are and who we want to be.
I’m not saying it has to be a horrible thing. It’s less stressful, in a lot of ways, to be able to avoid keeping up these compartments in my mind. As well, I’ve gained access to new opportunities and experiences this way. I don’t at all think that we must lose all we treasure about our humanity and become a race of blotchy drones with frickin’ laser beams on our heads; but still, every time I see someone reading e-mail on her Blackberry while talking into her Bluetooth earpiece, I wonder how close we are to the line at which Resistance Will Become Futile.
P.S. Wrote this up on the Newton, moved it to the laptop when I got home, then posted it to LJ. Beep.
Furious slacking
I accomplished very little this weekend, which I think my body and soul needed badly; this morning I went into work quite bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, clearing a lot of tickets over the course of the day. Actually, I slacked a bit too much, as it was my turn to do dishes, dinner, and laundry this weekend, and I only managed 1.5 out of three. Have to do better on that.
I did have a social obligation Saturday, which was nice – got to see some old friends – but the weather had gifted this little cookout with 90-degree temperatures and 90-percent humidity. I was still chugging glasses of water all day Sunday trying to rehydrate myself.
Don’t know if it was related, but I had a weird dream Sunday morning. Someone had physically wrenched the display screen completely off a laptop, and it was my job to fix it with nothing more than a roll of Scotch tape. The dream ended long before I found out how best to approach this little issue.
Mirandala dinged 61 Sunday night, with shrewlet‘s invaluable assistance. Soloing quests in Outland is less practical than in Azeroth, though simply grinding wandering monsters can be good for XP. My last level was in February: at 5 months per, I should hit the level 70 cap around the time they’ve raised it to 90 🙂 Hardcore, yep, that’s me. (Okay, I’d move quicker if I played alts less often. What’s your point?)
Speaking of such – WoW fans are agitating for personal housing in the game. Can the FFXI and SWG players chime in here and tell me what’s so interesting about that? What can you do in your house? Can you watch the magic bard-in-a-box for extra resting credit, or cook special meals for +25 Health bonuses. or throw a party for your friends to get Diplomacy XP? Or is it just fluff? (I like fluff fine, mind you.)
The Running Joke
You’ve probably heard of the “Running of the Bulls”. A WoW guild this week did a “running of the beef”, where around 100 of them created level 1 Tauren (Minotaur) characters; they then ran them as a herd from the peaceful grasslands of their Mulgore homeland all the way the the forbidding, lava-spewing, Blackrock Mountain (an area where a level-one character has no business being). As anyone who’s played the game up to level 45 can confirm, Stranglethorn Vale was the worst bit 🙂
I’m really into this sort of thing – a bit of business which isn’t part of the game, which will net no experience points or loot, and yet was certainly hilarious for the participants. Virtual worlds need more fun like this! There are YouTube videos – search for AIE Bull Run.
Starr and I are a bit socialized out. We really appreciate our friends inviting us places, but we haven’t had a quiet evening at home in days – so tonight will be Azeroth and TV. (What with my <4 hours of play time per week, I think I'm safe from WoW addiction.) Dave and Jodi (ptownhiker & fixitup) were kind enough to invite us to see Pirates 3 last night at one of those dinner movie theaters. There were a lot of fun bits in the movie – plenty of times I laughed out loud – but eventually, the movie just didn’t make any sense. I’m training myself not to mind movie BS as much as I used to, but I still insist on internally-consistent movie BS. I have the terrible feeling that the writers scripted 3 hours of action and double/ triple/ quadruple/ quintuple/ sextuple/ septuple/ octuple-crosses (I’m stopping before the film did) and then suddenly realized that they were going to have to end the flick at some point.
Can’t say it was a wasted evening… it’s not like the movie was lousy, and the company was excellent.
On a quick note, they previewed The Golden Compass before Pirates. Now, the books impressed me little, and I wasn’t planning on going to see the big-screen version. However, there’s some fair acting talent on board, and the visuals in the preview were gorgeous. I may just go for the eye candy.
I cast “Cone of Politeness”
On another subject, I played a few hours of WoW last night. World of Warcraft has a few different kinds of game servers: PvE, where you only battle other players if you and the other players choose; PvP, where if you enter certain areas, you can be attacked at any time; and Role-Play, where in-game conversations are expected to remain in the persona of your chosen character.
The point of all this is that I’ve begun yearning for a new kind of WoW server: RolePlay-21, where players don’t have to stay in character, but they all have to converse in-game with maturity, manners, and otherwise like people with fulfilling lives outside the Internet.
I’ll move all my characters over there like a shot.
Monday morning musing
This morning, I stared into the shaving mirror while performing my daily skin irritation ritual, and remembered someone at Technicon referring to me as one of the con’s “elder statesmen”. I enjoyed the compliment… but it’s still a little weird trying to think of myself that way.
Didn’t get to stay in bed any later than 9:30 or so this weekend – too much to do! Happy weekend, though. We were celebrating Starr’s graduation from nursing school at the top of her class! I think that excellent things are ahead for her.
My Dad drove up to see me yesterday, and I’m planning to go see my Mom and my sister before long this summer. There’s been a bit of distance, because of how wrapped-up I’ve been in myself lately, and I’m really looking forward to re-connecting with them all this year.
The living-room TV’s flipped its power supply, and we’re down to watching Good Eats on a 12″ portable we had in the bedroom. I was looking at getting an AppleTV in a few weeks, but I suspect I’ll be putting that off a bit. One of the reasons I’m so far behind on my TV watching is that a lot of it’s on the computer, and I just don’t think of my desktop Mac as a media center – more of a creativity, communications, and gaming support device. TV programs are for relaxing in the living room – so, really, that makes me a perfect AppleTV customer. (Another reason I’m behind is that I usually have much better things to do than television. Even really good television. I’m almost to the point of cutting things I like from the DVR schedule that I know I just won’t get around to watching. People keep saying things like “you should start watching Heroes!” and I look at my backlog and think “yeah… next year maybe!”)
Dave S. will be running his Marvel Super Heroes game tonight. I haven’t been able to attend since March, and I can’t wait to catch up with everyone. For the last sessions, I’d had to finish at work and fly right over to arrive fashionably late; with my new schedule I can take it a little easier.
My outlook’s not too bad for a Monday morning.
Best-laid plans gang aft agley
This last weekend I missed the Fire for the first time in years. I was pretty darn disappointed, though we managed to spend our time here in good ways. But as Friday night came closer I had to confront the reality of the situation: the engines couldna’ take the strain.
For the last two weeks, 2 of the early-shift typesetters have been absent from work: one on vacation, and one on family emergency. Doesn’t sound too bad, except I’m the only other one! For those 10 work days, my shifts ran from 10-12 hours apiece.
I kinda rate my combined mental, emotional, and physical energy levels as “main power”, “reserves”, and “emergency”. Reserves is a subjective 25% of capacity – enough to supply me comfortably for an hour’s drive home at 3am after a good party. Emergency is about 5-10% of capacity – if I expect to do anything useful in that state, adrenaline or caffeine should be involved (preferably both).
Well, I’ve been working on “reserves” since two Wednesdays ago, and all I was getting from a night’s sleep was back approximately to that 25%. After a 10-hour Friday shift, I was running at close to emergency levels again. Oh, technically I’m sure Rain and I could have made it to Blacksburg. We’re tough. But did I really want to attend an event with my friends while I operated in total zombie mode? No. That was more fun when I was 18… which was some time ago.
So, we stayed home, and did some cool things around Norfolk and Va. Beach, which I’ll talk about later. Kind of a mixed blessing, to be honest; while we had enough fun to make up somewhat for missing our friends, it was still energy-consuming fun. Even by Sunday evening, I didn’t feel recharged much past 30% or so.
Last night, OTOH, I came home from the shift, nuked some very tasty leftovers, and plunked myself down in front of WoW for about four hours. Say what you want about gaming too much, this was 4 hours of physical rest, endorphin production, and frankly not too much challenge at any point. This morning? Why, I may be up to 40-50%.
Just in time to go to work…
