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FOMO and Current Events

I expect to suffer MUCH FOMO this coming weekend due to DragonCon happening. We are not going this year for the first time in…? Forever? I’ve been OK with it so far, but this weekend will be tough. Going to try to stay away from media as much as I can. (HA! RIGHT. I’ll be all over it and whining the whole time! LOL)

While I’ve not had much to write about of late, as you know from lack of posts, we feel that things are turning a corner, however, for us and our close friends. One friend got a new job, another finally found a house to rent and yet another is buying the house he’s rented for a decade.

The friend buying the house is particularly relevant to us, because he is using some sort of Fannie Mae plan that offers a GRANT to pay the down payment. This could be OUR ticket to buying this place and getting the full on security we want. Renting is awesome, don’t get me wrong, but when renting from an individual, there’s always the chance of the house being sold – which is what happened to my friend who ended up buying. Anyway, this Fannie Mae product is very interesting to me and I’m going to enquire about seeing if we qualify. The business bankruptcy might cockblock us, but even so, by consulting with our friend the mortgage lender, we can at least get a plan to work towards the mortgage, even if we don’t outright qualify now.

Let me tell you: having something to work TOWARDS will make all the difference, I think.

We have been sort of floating since the pub failure. Now that we’re on firmer ground – with Nick’s new job and my p/t job bringing in more money, we’re getting better all round. We are ready for The Next Thing. And I think that Thing will be securing our domicile.

I also just got an enquiry about catering a large (75-100ppl) party in September. I’m not certain I can handle it – it really depends on what they want to do and if they’ll pay. Prepping, cooking and holding that much food is pretty tricksy in my small home kitchen. We’ll see. Shout out to Lauren for hooking me up with the condos in Buckhead. They loved my food and these people are the ones who contact me for catering. So, THANK YOU LAUREN! XO

I guess we’re in good shape for the shape we’re in. I’ll take it! Oh, keep an eye on the reading list, I’ve been updating it quite a bit. I’ve finished some books and I’m adding more! We were in two Goodwills this week, and you know I canNOT stay out of the books! Ciao ciao and have a great week!

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Change is Coming

Last night we were up late. We did a microdose of shrooms and had a very long discussion about how we feel about the games and where we want to go from here.

We made the decision to not do any cons this year.

Yep, you read that right.

We have been feeling obligated to do them – especially Momo, because we know they keep inviting us as a courtesy. They certainly don’t need our small selection of games, but we’ve been with them for a long time and we REALLY appreciate their continued support of us.

We ADORE FWA, and we hate to bail after only one year, but we must.

We may not do cons again, ever. We are old (no joke) and it’s just too physically exhausting to shlep a dozen games back and forth – even with help.

So, Nick will do SFGE, most likely, and that’s it.

We are going to sell off all games that Nick does not want to keep for his personal collection. If you are looking for a game, please to be following POAS on FB.

And the money we get from this sell off will go towards…something. A project that we BOTH can get into and enjoy. We’d love to get a classic car to futz with, but we don’t have a garage. We might get a classic motorcycle. We might start doing autocross with Romeo. We might get back to doing comics. Nick wants to do some gardening. We’ll probably start yoga again. We will DEFINITELY take a real vacation, godsdammit.

We are tired of being OBLIGATED to the games. They have become an anchor and certainly NOT FUN. We’ll keep our main client (MPB) and rotate games in and out of there so they get played. We are wrapping up the last few private clients and cutting them loose, too. Basically we’re shutting down POAS, but not ending it, since we’ll still have a couple of clients. We’ll keep the site up and field enquiries. I’ve got referrals for repairs and monitors.

We are changing our focus and energy. It needs to happen, desperately. We’ve spent almost 10 years on the games and that is enough. Time to move on. We are grateful for all the support we’ve gotten from everyone over the years. THANK YOU.

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The MEH Continues

The Pollening™ has begun in earnest. Seems early this year? Is it early? I dunno, time has become so fluid now, it is impossible to tell if something happened one or four years ago. Sigh.

We are doing pretty well here at the Weasel Lair™. Nick’s job is going, he got the small raise and a bonus to make up for not getting the big raise. I’m still slumming over at MRC. Not sure how much longer that will go, the work with my hands has brought forth a trigger finger on my right ring finger and overall stiffness and pain in both hands. Arthritis, no doubt. Thanks Gran and Mom! BUT the result of the effort is good, we are finally AHEAD on bills and the CCs are being paid down. Progress is good and it’s alleviating much of the doldrums we’ve been in, but MEH is still our overall state.

Shasti had a clean bill of health other than the one gum spot that STAYS gross and infected. Tooth is fine, but that spot is always an issue. She got an antibiotic shot and we are to attempt to clean the area with kitty toothpaste. LOL This should be fun! Dr says, “But she’s SO GOOD!” and I reply “She is for YOU.” This is a quote from TNG episode Genesis:

She is for YOU.
“She is for YOU.”

Everything is trundling along. Time flies. We’ll have been here for TEN YEARS in June. Shasti is probably a bit older than we estimated, likely 11-12ish. I don’t want to think about that. So many friends are losing pets I just CAN’T think about losing her right now.

I feel somewhat untethered of late. Just sort of floating along. I think Nick is the same. We are in the same pool, but not on the same float, if that makes sense. It’ll pass.

We wrapped up our long distance client and Nick is working to wrap up several other clients that have been languishing. Time to move on. We’re selling off a bunch of project cabinets, too. We’ve basically shut down POAS as far as new clients and projects. We’ve not received any invitations to cons this year, so we’re not even sure we’ll do THAT. If they ask, we feel obliged to go – if nothing else, to hold our spot. If they don’t ask, I guess we’ll take the year off. ::shrug:: I wish I cared more, but honestly, cons are fun, but VERY, VERY stressful and tiring. And we’re OLD. Might be time to just stop all of it. We shall see. We’ll just continue taking care of our core client and see how it goes.

Guess that’s about it for what’s going on around here. Like I said: MEH. I’d love to hear from y’all, feel free to comment, it’s open. :)

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State of the Casa

Time for the January State of the Casa™ post.

Still not great.

We’ve cut down the drinking, which has helped with sleep and overall health. Not doing much for my overall attitude, tho.

We’ve got a list of inexpensive places to visit here in town that we never have, or like and want to revisit. Since we are still digging out of $20k of CC debt (thanks a ton, MinuteMan), we can’t afford to have an actual vacay. But it’s been so long since we’ve had one, I guess it doesn’t matter any more, right? Sure. Sigh. Here’s our list of ATL attractions:

Carter Center (never been!)
Cyclorama/Atlanta History Center (never been! it is in a new location in Buckhead)
Atlanta Zoo (haven’t been in decades)
Polaris (restaurant atop downtown Hyatt, never been!)
Sundial at Weston, IF they ever turn on the rotation again (thanks, tourists, for fucking this up for all of us)
Botanical Garden (haven’t been in a decade)
Fernbank Science Center (haven’t been in over a decade, this is the small original one with the planetarium and observatory)
Fernbank Museum (never been! I still call it “the new Fernbank” LOL)
Delta Flight Museum (just found out about it!)
Millennium Gate Museum at Atlantic Station (went a few yrs back for a Japanese exhibit, going to see the Bruno Zupan show coming up!)
MODA (Museum of Design Atlanta in Colony Square) waiting for the next exhibit

It’s another year of staycation for us and that makes me sad. I’m just in a constant state of sadness and defeat these days. As I posted a while back, I’m just TIRED of everything.

Nick’s new job is coming along. He’ll be getting a raise in a few weeks. My prep job is fine, but I’ve blown out my right ring finger (trigger finger), so we’ll see how long I can continue – that is my knife grip hand. OF COURSE something happens to ruin it. OF COURSE. We’re slowly, every so slowly, getting ahead of bills. We had $400 extra after rent this month, which hasn’t happened in YEARS. As long as I can limp along at the prep job, my income will continue to beat down the CC debt.

We need so see the dentist (4 yrs), I need to see the gyno (3+ yrs), Shasti needs her check up (she’s on schedule), but as always, we have to pick and choose due to money concerns. Dentist is about $400 for both of us, gyno is about $200 and Shasti will run me about $150 for whatever she needs – thankfully her gums are OK. Oh, and I also desperately need a haircut, which is $80. I am tired just thinking about all this. Sigh.

I’m just existing. I am depressed. I’m going to see if I can find a yoga class we can take, maybe that will help at least get our bodies unwound a bit. I have been thinking about some creative artsy things to do, but my depression is keeping me from even bothering. I’ve had some level of depression since the Pub Debacle™, it is sometimes worse than others. We are in a worse phase, which is typical for this time of year. I have begun doing a one card tarot pull every day. So far, not much in the way of help from that. I’m probably too unfocused to get anything from it, but I’m trying to set a habit. Got a new deck for xmess, so why not? I also got some books about the sabbats, in an effort to reignite my witchy side.

I’ve been trying to cook more as well. I’ve got less free time now, so I try to cook early in the week, like today (Sunday) and tomorrow (Monday). Cooking is still a salve to my raggedy soul. Guess I should see what I can cook this week. Ciao.

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It’s That Time of Year!

Halloween and my birthday are looming. Temps have dropped and leaves are turning. Aaaaaah!

For us, it has been a season of much change. Nick got a new job at a large format printing company and will be doing much of the same things he did at NuVision back in the day. It’s an all Mac shop (as it should be!) and he’ll get to do IT as well as prepress work. The pay is only $20 to start, but this will go to $21 in 60 days, with another evaluation at 6 months. We are confident that he’ll get towards the rate he should be making within a year or so. He’ll never make $75k like he did at NVG, but being around the $55-60k mark would be about right for what’s left of the print industry. He’ll be doing two jobs, after all, so compensation will be commensurate.

I picked up a p/t prep job at a nearby cafeteria. It’s simple work: veg and salad prep. I’m making $15/hr, which is pretty much minimum these days. The place is on autopilot – there really is no leadership at all. The line cooks run the kitchen and the food they cook is MEH on a good day. They do a few things right, but overall the food is bland and boring. One really funny thing is the “mac n cheese”. I put that in quotes because they do NOT make mac n cheese. This guy makes some sort of abomination that is egg, (YES EGGS IN MAC N CHEESE!!!) milk, cheddar cheese and elbow macaroni. It breaks when it’s cooked (no binder such as flour) and it is NAISTY. I dunno where he learned THAT recipe (yes I do, it’s from S&S cafeteria, GROSS), but that is NOT mac n cheese! Aside from nasty food, the work is fine. Since there’s no management, I come in and manage myself. PERFECT! No one bothers me, no one asks me how long it takes me to poop (YES this happened at TJX) and I enjoy observing how the kitchen works. One thing this job has also done for me is to confirm that I do, indeed, know a LOT about running a kitchen and overall restaurant ops. I work a coupla days a week, but the manager has already detected that I can work pretty much any position, so he’s asking me to pick up shifts outside the kitchen. I like being an all purpose employee. Variety suits me. :) [Unfortunately, they steal wages. I have to leave. And I have to report them. SIGH.]

We saw Weird Al on Friday night. We don’t recommend this tour AT ALL. Emo Phillips opened, and while I’m glad I can say I saw a set by him, it was overall, very sad and not funny. As for the Al part, when the band came out and SAT DOWN, I knew this was not going to be a typical Weird Al show – and it wasn’t. This tour is pretty much all B sides, so no one knows the songs. The crowd was not very engaged and we left early. Nick had been overserved, was not happy with the music and became agitated, so we bailed. The good news is that we earned enough $ this weekend to cover the cost of the Weird Al debacle.

That’s really all I got for updates. We dealt with a LOT of anxiety in the weeks before Nick was hired and now we’re getting through the last week of his MM employment on the other side of town. The new gig is about 15 minutes from here with NO INTERSTATES!! That alone will make all the difference. Well, that and his having a REAL job, not just some shitty print shop where it’s all about volume and he’s just a brain attached to a PC.

My birthday is Nov 11th and I don’t want to discuss the number. It freaks me out a little. Suffice it to say, I don’t look it, I don’t act it and I certainly do NOT feel it.

DON’T FORGET TO VOTE!!!

Happy Halloween, y’all!