Texty

Fammy's at the vet, at least overnight. They're going to pump her full of IV fluids/nutrition and see if she bounces back at all. But the vet said it didn't look good. I'm trying to stay positive/keep my mind off of it, but honestly... I'm not hopeful.

Then I started poking around with money stuff, trying to figure out the best way to pay for this (undoubtedly expensive) treatment, and got slapped in the face with the fact that our cashflow is currently in negative territory. The reasons why are complicated, and mostly due to unexpected expenses, but it does mean that every dime of what I make with the new job is going to have to go to pay off some bills so we can get that monthly payment money back out of the budget.

Which means--you guessed it--no money for the adoption, yet. It's going to have to wait until I get a contract extension. I'm currently only scheduled to go through February, and I'll probably get another three months after that, but I don't want to count those chickens, so we won't be able to get anything started that direction until we know we have that money coming in. So we're looking at March at the earliest before we can even make the first call.

So, yay, me.

I wish I could tolerate alcohol, because I'd really like to be completely trashed right now.

First impressions: My, it's flat. And has a chewable layer of smog. Ick. Also, there are only about half a dozen buildings with more than ~50 floors. I was somehow expecting a metropolis, I guess. Some rather pretty old architecture here and there, however. Hoping to see more if we can run around a bit.

Was also rather impressed by the massive nuclear plant we saw as we were descending (four cooling towers. Eesh. Dunno if that was GA or MS, tho.)

Other than that, I haven't seen much of it yet. I tried desperately to get some proper sleep last night and it just didn't happen. Finally passed out around 2:30 or 3, and then got right back up at 6. Tried to sleep on the plane--no go, even in first class (yay for mileage plan bonuses.)

This lack of sleep, and my usual annoyance at the first part of travel (Big Fucking Airports, too-close quarters with strangers, eensy beency airplane loos, fucked-up car rental locations...) made me far too tired and cranky to do anything else tonight. Only posting this here now because it's keeping me awake until a reasonable hour to turn in. So I don't, y'know, get used to waking up at 5 am here and then start passing out at home around 8 pm when I get back.

Registration for the con is tomorrow afternoon. Will get the lay of the land then and get a better idea of what I'm doing the rest of the time here. May spend the earlier part of the day driving around in circles.

***

Oh, and in other Texty-licious news: I have a job again. My old team apparently wants me back--so much so that they're foregoing an interview. So I'm starting again the week after we get back. Dunno much in the way of details beyond that, though. Curious what the contract length is, but I'm up for just about anything, really. I'm enjoying my sabbatical, but I'd also enjoy a regular paycheck again.

On the chance that I do have a long contract ahead, I think I'm going to treat this weekend shindig as sort of a last hurrah before going back to the grind. So, tonight's catatonia aside, I plan to party my everloving geeky butt off.

That, combined with shittastic net access and cel signal here at the hotel, means I'll be on the brownout side of Internet Dark for the next few days. Holla if anything interesting happens.

***

Random sad fan note: I actually hauled out M's laptop on the plane so I could watch yesterday's ep of Ideal and jot down the first few grafs of a fic whose bunny was threatening to chew my leg off and beat me with it. Huh.

One of the benefits of this new gig? Even though it's unpaid, it's still more-or-less legit writing work, with a byline and everything. It's silly, I suppose, but that really matters to me.

Aside from my internship--which I loved--I never got much of an opportunity to write either in school or with the jobs I got after that. The vast majority of what I've done has been on the techy side instead. I'm a geek and I enjoy pushing buttons to make web stuff look pritty, but at my core, I'm all about content. I like researching and reporting stories, I like writing them and I like making decisions about what kinds of stories should get the most attention. I'm a journalist, after all, not just someone who knows how to write a bit of HTML and futz around with photo and video editing. My greatest strength is in synthesizing disparate bits of information into a comprehensive package.

So it's really very gratifying to me to be able to do that, to a degree, with this thing. It's not straight reporting--I'm a columnist, more or less, not a news reporter--but I'm still creating stories, which feels really good. I don't consider myself a genius at this, and I may not yet be anywhere near truly following in the footsteps of my beloved Molly Ivins, but I feel a hell of a lot closer to that now than I did before.

Plus, the cool side benefit is that I now feel comfortable actually calling myself a writer when random people ask what I do. The multi-hyphenate Dilbertspeak jumble of what I was doing before never made for great small talk. Now, I can just spit out a word or two, and people both know and respect what that means. Awesome.

One year ago today, we signed the lease on the apartment, thus officially kicking off The Great Uprooting Project.

Amazed at the sheer amount of stuff that's happened since then. And also feel ridiculously accomplished.

Starting next week, I get to actually enjoy the fruits of all that labor. My contract for this gig ends on Friday, and I'll have ~4 months to enjoy my house, and my writing and my friends and all the other stuff I've been too busy to do. I'll start looking for another contract in the fall, but for now? It's time to relax.

Yay. :)

I've probably had about four hours of sleep, but they were interrupted by waking up every hour, and I have a raging headache to boot, now. Hoping a meal and another dose of pain meds kills that and knocks me back out again soon.

Should probably check in with work while I'm conscious, though. I feel terrible being out like this when we're in the middle of this new project, especially given that I've been making some stupid mistakes lately. Erf.

I'm still employed! For a while, at least.

I start a new (short) contract with the video team on Wednesday, and it'll go through mid-April. That should take me very close to my 12-month time limit, so I can then just take the summer off and start up something new in September or something like that. Should work out very nicely, I hope. It won't pay for the adoption, but it'll definitely get us far closer to paying off some of our house-related debt.

I'll be doing something sort of similar to what I've been doing on my current team, only wrangling video instead. I'm looking forward to it, actually. Video's been the one thing I haven't had a ton of experience with, and I like the idea of filling in that gap. I won't be actually editing any videos or anything. Mostly just looking for good stuff to promote. So if you run across anything, ping me!

Gonna have to find some way to celebrate this weekend, since it's also our 13th anniversary on Sunday.

12+ hours later, I'm finally done with work for the day.

This is in addition to being on-call/working yesterday, too.

Gonna love the overtime pay, but... dang. I have other things to do this week, like buying M a new car (since the insurance check finally arrived), finishing gift shopping, baking, card-writing and sending off all of the above and... Oh, yeah. There's this sleep thing people talk about. Never did get the deal with that.

I enjoy the holiday stuff, but I really, really need some time off. Like... at least 48 hours in a row with absolutely nothing to do but watch movies or sit in my bathtub and read or something. Not forthcoming for a while, however. Social plans for this weekend and I'll probably be working at least part of Christmas weekend. Perhaps the weekend after New Year's Day. That'd be a good time to zone out.

At least I am happily full of the lovely meal that havdrake cooked for me when I got home. I do so love having him around. :)

Have I mentioned lately how much I love having havdrake around? It's been great, especially with M in PDX this week. It's just nice to not be rattling around with just the furbabies for company. I may be sleeping alone, which sucks, but I'm not actually alone, which is great.

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Working both Thursday and Friday this week, which kinda sucks, but I'm at least getting remote access (I hope) so I can work from home instead of trying to brave the tryptophan drunks on Thursday and the shopping-addled crowds on Friday. I should be able to just set up a mail alert for the newswire and otherwise just bake cookies all day or something, which would be nice.

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Am officially sick of all things Twilight. The whiny loser and her stalker boyfriend can go away now, thanks. (Why yes, working in entertainment media occasionally does suck. Sigh...)

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Still seem to be fighting off some random crud of some sort. I've had swollen lymph nodes, muscle and joint aches and stiffness, exhaustion, low back pain, night sweats and occasional mild fevers for months, now, and I can't see any reason for it. I was thinking it was just related to stress and the physical demands of moving, but even when I'm supposedly well-rested and haven't done anything physical, I'm still in near-constant pain. Some days are worse than others, and sometimes come with congestion and a mild cough. There's too much other stuff there for this to be perimenopause, so it's not that. Theoretically, swollen glands and fever mean an infection, but I have no idea where or what kind. It's really quite annoying.

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Kind of looking forward to doing the holiday thing in the new pad, though it'll be scaled back significantly from where it'll eventually be when we're not just coming off the move and work chaos and such. Already planning out my baking, and trying to decide exactly how much hall-decking I have the gumption for. I love the pretty, but getting it there and back again is kind of a pain.

Just as I feared: I can't park in the building anymore unless I get a DMV disabled permit.

FFS, people. I don't want to use handicapped spots. I just can't walk two football fields uphill to get to my damned car.

I'm not sure yet what the workaround is going to be for this. I suspect that M and I will be carpooling again somehow. But since he needs to be at work an hour earlier than I do, and I need to be here an hour later than he does, both of us are going to be stuck with 9- or 10-hour workdays until/unless my schedule changes (which it may when this part of my contract is up in October.)

There's also other frustrating stuff going on, but I'll post about that in a flocked post later.

Relaxing during my last half-hour of work today since I'm mostly just monitoring the (very slow) wire at the moment.

Today was a much different experience than the rest of the week has gone, simply because I was so much more here, mentally speaking, than I was when I was so worried about Otter.

Of course, the little bugger is still worrying, but for entirely different reasons, now. I swear, having him bite my ankle as I left the villa this morning was almost comforting.

Thanks again, btw, for all the support when I was freaking out earlier this week about him being gone. I know some folks think of pets in general--or at least cats--as something that just comes and goes, but my furbabies are family members, and I really do kind of go to pieces when one of them is even sick, so... yeah.

But now he's back, and I can concentrate on the job--not that it really needs a lot of that, seeing as how it's very deja vu.

( Same monkey, more buttons )

Still waiting to hear back about whether our counter-offer is being accepted (or declined, or counter-countered or whatever) by our potential buyer. We were supposed to hear back sometime today, but no news, yet. Not sure if that's a good or bad sign.

More newsy postings later on this eve. For now, I've killed enough time, so I'm going home!