My Life

[fluffy]

Yeah, if 5mg of XR still has the cumulative effect problem I'll ask about trying IR. Although when that comes I'll also need to do it with a different doctor, and this is going to be supremely annoying.

[sleepysilverdoor]

I recently read there was a strong correlation between being a good computer programmer/software engineer and musical ability. I wonder what the connection between ADD and those two domains is? I mainly bring that up since, well, we're both ADD musician developers on here discussing our adderall usage ...

[fluffy]

Many of the better programmers I've known have had ADHD, so

[sleepysilverdoor]

While sick, I just read Oedipus Rex over the course of a long hot bath.

That play is fucked!

[jb]

Haha I see what you did there

[crumpart]

I just saw that the house we rented in Dublin has come up for sale. Lolling forever at the assertion that “the master bedroom is especially large”. Also, I don’t think anyone has tended the garden at all since I last did, over a year ago.

http://www.brockdelappe.ie/listings/96- ... dublin-10/

[crumpart]

The internet man is here installing. Despite moving only 5 minutes around the corner, we’re going from the worst internet in the country (4g in a pocket of area where we barely had any signal) to the best level of internet we’ve ever had in our lives (gigabit). I can’t fucking wait.

[sleepysilverdoor]

Say what you will about the master bedroom being large (didn't look that large to me either), but that looked like a pretty nice abode, all things considered! And better internet is always a plus.

Completely unrelated, I got the worst funk: Dr has informed me I have Influenza type A. Explains why I feel like I got hit by a truck! Better than Coronavirus served with a slice of Lyme.

[owl]

Eek. Feel better soon!

[crumpart]

Say what you will about the master bedroom being large (didn't look that large to me either), but that looked like a pretty nice abode, all things considered! And better internet is always a plus.

A good photographer, a wide angle lens, a new bathroom and some strategically placed (and broken in more than one case with that house) furniture can hide a surprising number of deficiencies. I discovered a good square metre of floorboards missing when I moved a broken cabinet, placed there solely to cover the exposed earth that the house was built directly on top of. When I moved one of the couches (Irish rentals are mostly furnished, which is a separate issue that drives me mad) I found a giant hole in the wall all the way to the outside where they hadn't bothered to install an actual vent. The doors on the wardrobe swung wildly because they hadn't been installed properly, and there was another huge cupboard beside the bed that they've edited out in the photos which was mostly filled with a boiler, so it couldn't even really be used for storage. The two smaller bedrooms were shaped in such a way that they became useless for anything except storage or single beds (and we don't have kids), and we had to move the double bed that came with the house into one of them when our bed arrived from Australia. Black mould grew on all the windows. The wooden decking out the back became dangerously slippery any time it got wet. The bathroom was new and nice looking, but our estate agents were so useless that the bath was broken for 10 of the 12 months we lived there. The washing machine was broken for the last two. When I moved the fridge across a bit so that I could actually open it properly, I discovered that they'd just painted around it, rather than moving it and painting the whole wall. All the appliances in the kitchen were too big for the cabinets, so nothing closed properly. The oven and stove had been installed so poorly that they couldn't be removed or even turned off at the power point, and there was a fault with the stove that made the starter click every 5 or 10 minutes. It was in one of the most notorious and neglected suburbs in Dublin and our rent was €1800 per month (around $1950 USD), which they raised as much as they legally could after 14 months, because the Irish rental market is fucked. I think the new tenants must have lasted less than 6 months before they left and the owners decided to sell (which they appear to have done in August, at a disgustingly inflated figure compared to what they paid and what it really should be worth). We had to move in at the time because the market is so bad and we had no other options.

Sorry for ranting. That was meant to be one line about the value of hiring a good photographer.

[owl]

Yesterday was awful. After a horrible couple of weeks of pet-crisis involving a seizure and sudden blindness and really intense nursing/medication/hand-feeding and multiple vet visits, we had to put our sweet old cat to sleep. I also got some terrible family news related to the stuff I alluded to in my song this week and had two long, difficult conversations with family members yesterday after coming home from the vet with the empty carrier. My back is killing me because I think all the stress and sorrow of the last few weeks has been stored up inside. And tomorrow I have to go away for a few days for work. It's been a really hideous February so far.

But at least today the sun is shining and it's relatively warm, and the lemon tree I bought from a nursery a couple of months ago in the dead of winter in a fit of homesickness for California is not only alive, but starting to bloom, and the starry little creamy flowers smell heavenly. And I think my friend will take most of our cat's leftover medical supplies for her elderly cat.

I hope everyone's weekend is going better than mine--tell me about some happy things!

[crumpart]

I’m so sorry about your cat owl.

Good things:

After 2.5 weeks we finally finished moving everything from the old house today, got all the cleaning done and left our keys.

I got a haircut today. First time in at least 6 months! All the pissy yellow that the water turns it here is gone and I’m back to short, shiny shiny silver!

Just had a long, hot bath and shaved my legs in anticipation of leaving winter tomorrow and landing in summer in two days time. We get to see @gizo and co soon!

[sleepysilverdoor]

@owl that's horrible! And especially after the multiple vet visits, cause not only are you grieving your pet but those bills add up. I've got a couple of cats myself and I am NOT looking forward to their demise. How old was he/she? At least your lemon tree is blooming! That's a plus. My peach tree and blueberry bushes just started budding this week and I couldn't be more thrilled.

@crumpart Shiny shiny silver, eh? Gotta love a new haircut! Well, I live the idea of a new haircut. I'm severely bald and have been buzzing it for like 7 years now.

You ought to get a collaboration going while you're back in your decidedly not-emerald homeland if the dates line up right.

[fluffy]

I'm so sorry about your cat, owl. Losing a friend is hard. And whatever it is you alluded to in the song doesn't seem pleasant either. I hope it all works out as well as it can.

My good news is I start a new job tomorrow, and I'm feeling like maybe I won't be in excruciating pain for it after all.

[owl]

Thanks for sharing your happy things. It's nice to hear about them <3

@sleepysilverdoor, we don't know exactly how old my kitty was. Our estimate that was on her vet records was 12 years old, but the vet who took care of her as she was dying said she was probably older than we thought, maybe 15 or 16. We had her for 9 years. I have only this vague idea of how much everything cost because we were just kind of numbly signing papers and picking up prescriptions without worrying about it. I know it's going to add up to a lot. I felt guilty and sad in the last few days considering practical things like that, or whether to pick up stuff like another box of litter box liners or treats because I wasn't sure if it would be the last box she would ever need. (And I just remembered we have a standing prescription cat food delivery order I have to cancel.)

@crumpart Yay for new haircuts! How short is it now? I was considering getting a haircut and new bleach/dye sometime soon, though I don't know what color. I wanted pastel pink originally and they couldn't get my hair light enough, so it's always been more bright magenta/fuchsia. Apparently if I want to get it bleached again (my roots are super grown out) I have to wait for all the color to wash out first, and I can't stop myself from re-dying it every time it starts fading.

It will be a relief to be back home without house worries, I'm sure! Seconded on wanting to hear the gizo-HPH-Toshiro-Lollypops collab

@fluffy I'm excited for you to start the new job, sounds like you're really looking forward to it! And fingers crossed for your body to behave.

[sleepysilverdoor]

@owl yeah that's the crappiest part of being a pet owner, right? You you're so busy worrying about your pet you're not even allowed to worry too much about that stuff. Ours lost the tip of her tail in a degloving incident a few months back and thank God we had a vet that operated at a reasonable price...it was still a couple hundred plus having to get the poor thing into a pet carrier where she unleashed torrents of scared pee all over my shoes. Anyway, continued condolences.

More happy news: much like fluffy's news, I officially have a start date for my "new" job. March 2! There was a delay cause the men in black had to do a background check and government papers always move slow. But yay cash money. And I don't have the flu anymore so that's good.

[ujnhunter]

Just realized this year is a leap year while filling out my time sheet at work for the week... I think it's about time that I follow my Lord & Savior (Abbath)'s lead and hop back on that wagon. Teetotaler time again! Seeing I won't be taking any flights any time soon... just got back from Disney World recently. Won't have to really contemplate drinking until that next flight comes up... which will probably be Thailand (36 hour travel time!) next... unless the wife makes us go somewhere before that comes along... here's to a healthy and happy remainder of 2020!

[irwin]

Very sorry to hear about your cat, owl.

[crumpart]

Just finished the longest leg of the flight. Cork > London > Singapore. Apparently there is a butterfly house in this airport. Yes please. But first, terrible, very welcome coffee. Five hours until the last leg.

[fluffy]

I am having so much trouble focusing on work, due to the everything.

[owl]

Ugh, same. But I also can't focus on making anything creative. I started to sew some masks for us but only got as far as cutting the pieces out and ironing them before I got sidetracked (and yes I've seen the guidance about this saying they don't really do much, but it would be just for lower-risk situations where we're currently wearing scarves, and I figure blocking droplets is better than not blocking anything...) I've managed to practice guitar scales a bit, but haven't really been taking pleasure in playing and haven't written anything since this started.

Doing a lot of cooking and exercising and playing Words with Friends, though.

Oh, and cuddling our NEW KITTEN whom we adopted just before everything shut down. Those of you I'm Facebook friends with have seen plenty of pics of her already, but for everyone else, here's Elsie, she's about 7 or 8 months old and is the friendliest, sweetest cat ever:

elsie.jpg (60.13 KiB) Viewed 656 times

[vowlvom]

I'm not sure if I'm having trouble focusing due to crisis, or if I'm just as terrible at working from home as I always suspected I would be. Probably a bit of both. My partner has FINALLY been allowed to work from home from tomorrow so hopefully that will help, she's been so stressed about having to go into the office (for no real reason at all) and I think we'll both feel a lot more comfortable now.