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Mon, Feb. 6th, 2012, 11:01 pm
Went running tonight and abstained from alcohol. Ate a cylinder of Quorn for dinner with a bowl of red leaf lettuce. Didn't get much else done, but I don't feel so bad about that.
Spent the week mostly sick, but trying to work through it because there's too much to do. Missed both TV Nite and the inaugural meeting of the Elevens Book Club, which was a drag. I need to remember to post a review of Jenny's pick, The Big Year. Too-short weekend. Worked all day and night Friday because ... shit is busy is because. This was the extent of the overclocking I was prepared for for the weekend, but was unexpectedly called in for Saturday day and night because of employee sickness, so that was that. It was 10pm Saturday when my weekend started. Was going to grab cocktails with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/user_ontd.gif?v=88.9) ranai, but that fell through so I just had dinner at Seersucker. Which was fine! Not the greatest dinner I've had there, but whatever. Triggerfish? I've never even heard of em, so that's what I ordered. It was tasty but I'm generally not a fan of fish with an excessively meaty taste or texture, and this had both. Washed it down with a glass of the Long Ireland Brewing Co's Celtic Ale, which was the most mediocre beer I've had in a long time, just completely void of qualities. I ordered an Old Fashioned made with sorghum to scratch my fancy cocktail itch, but it turned out to be undrinkably sweet. Dessert made it all worth it: rice pudding with apples and roasted peanuts, which ruled. I could have eaten a gallon of that stuff. Today was game with the folks at the Aggrodome, and it was a towering epic conclusion to the current campaign storyline. It was dramatic dénouement of the kind that I have so far only aspired to as a dungeon master. In the end, the entirety of Nazi ground forces was occupying Paris (thematically, not literally), and so we sacrificed one of our own to summon Godzilla to raze Paris to the ground, to make sure no Nazi would survive. It was cathartic and carried a real sense of investment in the outcome, and I felt the campaign really, really come together for everyone in the room. The downside - we ran late. So I didn't get home until 11pm, which means, three hours before Maggie gets home from work, answering work e-mails and leveling my character. Then a quick dinner when my baby gets home and then bed and ... back on the crazytrain of work tomorrow morning. Painfully slow progress with my coding education. After looking at it for a week, finally figured out why IdentifyMyParts.x = 2 in one of my textbook's quizzes. Which was, of course, really easy, but I just wasn't getting it. Until I did. Duh, it's a class field, not an instance field. Whatever. The slowness of comprehension makes even the smallest of victories easy to savor. I'd really like to take a vacation with my girlfriend. It'd be nice to get away for just a little bit. Thu, Jan. 5th, 2012, 10:39 pm
Instead of me typing out all my grumpiness, just imagine I extemporized for three single spaced pages about how stressed I am at work, how unhappy I am about the totally nuts hours I am putting in, and how paralyzed I am by the thought that the next eight weeks of my life will be exactly like this one. Then when you're done, drink a beer for me. I'm still sick and avoiding alcohol. When you finish the beer maybe drink some dairy too. For the first time in my life I'm actually avoiding it while sick - it suppresses your immune system? Really? I had no idea. I'd kill for a glass of ice cold whole milk right now. I still look at our Christmas pictures every day and it makes me happy.
 Touching down once more on the tarmac of real life after spending the last three days in a Christmas bubble, cooking, drinking, and watching blissfully endless episodes of the Gilmore Girls. Friday I left work and ran home and started prep for Saturday, shopping, picking up the filet mignon tenderloin I'd reserved from Fleisher's, making the applesauce and cranberry sauce. Next day, Christmas eve morning, up early, more shopping, and brought all the groceries over to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=88.9) mordicai and pravda's. Nobody else there yet but us three. We started Gilmore Girls. Season one, episode one. The setup: single mother Lorelai Victoria Gilmore and her daughter Lorelai "Rory" Leigh Gilmore living in the fictional town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut, located approximately thirty minutes from Hartford, Connecticut. It was on. I made some bread. Made an Irish onion soup (basically French onion soup with Irish cheeses and Evil Twin's Yin stout). Then ranai showed up. Then elladorian showed up. Finished up the ancillary dishes and then roasted the tenderloin like a boss, removing once and for all the thorn that's been irritating my paw since last Christmas's epic quail fail. Then James and Lilly dropped in and I had an incredibly hard time getting them to let me make them a plate. They'd brought a meat patty and were ... really insistent on eating it. I made them eat Christmas dinner. Then it was into footie pyjamas and to bed. Then CHRISTMAS MORNING. pravda made fruit and yogurt parfaits that were ba-zerk, and then we opened presents. I got really incredible loot from all my friends. mordicai and pravda gave me/us, among other things, a book of scholarship on medieval porn, Settlers of Catan, and a Christmas-sweater t-shirt that I'm never going to take off. ranai gave me a hand-made cheese diary. Not even kidding. Hand made cheese diary. Maggie bought me new glasses. I actually succeeded in not brooding over why I had no presents to give anyone. I made a white bean and tarragon soup for lunch, and we played a game of Settlers of Catan (fun!). We kept watching Gilmore Girls right through the end of season one (A thousand yellow daisies!) and then it was time for the new Doctor Who Christmas special, it was time for me to start making bread pudding. We watched the special (it was pretty good! tho probably my least favorite Christmas Special of the series. David Morrissey as the Next Doctor still slays me.) Then it was over and we headed home. I gotta say, I can't remember ever having had as stressless a cooking event as that. It was a lot of work, but at no point was I exasperated or scrambling, and, aside from a curdled Welsh rarebit (rabbit, ra-re-bit, rhhurrrrbit) that I happily declined to serve, everything worked out and tasted good I thought. Moreover I did it all according to plan and with remarkably little waste - a lot of the time with big cooking projects, in the aftermath the kitchen is full of products not entirely consumed in the preparation (oh look, I have this new bottle of hazelnut oil I only used one teaspoon of), but at the end of the weekend I think the only things I left behind were some fresh herbs and half a bag of garlic croutons. BUT WAIT! There's more! Today, for St. Stephen's Day, it was the traditional dad's-side family Christmas celebration. Great to see the (almost, but not quite) whole family, drink and eat prodigiously, and laugh like imbeciles about all kinds of stuff. I drank some kind of Russian cherry liquer "traditionally made at home. for men." out of a bottle with a red hat on it. It tasted like Robitussin. It's a little nuts to contemplate the variety of liquors I've drank in the last four days, and their quantities. And now, back down to Earth. Work. Work work work. I gotta say, I was hoping this weekend would recharge me a bit, but I still feel as burned out as I was feeling last week. I'm pretty tired of ... a lot of stuff relating to my job. But hey. Suck it up yo. You gots responsibilities. #ggxmas
Sitting home working while Maggie's out partying with friends til the wee hours. Listening to Bing Crosby and meditating on feelings of Christmasness, trying to think of good reasons to clock out. Thought about having a pint at Mission Dolores, just to get out of the house, and to clear out any lingering cobwebs in how I feel about my neighborhood in the nighttime. IT IS CHRISTMAS TIME. Sitting home doing data entry is not where I want to be. Tired. Extremely difficult to dial down how wired I feel at the end of the night. Liberal application of Irish whisky works well as a nerve tonic, but only up to a point. Then you just cycle back around and find yourself wired and drunk. Despite all that I had a moment of unalloyed joy yesterday when instead of being bummed about getting jacked in front of my house I shifted without prompting into raw gratitude that it had only been me victimized. A shitty thing happened to me the other night ... and definitely did not happen to any of the people I love, which is a pretty amazing gift. I realize that this isn't a zero sum game, but still. Like, people say to me, At least you weren't hurt? Which is true, but doesn't feel like much to be grateful about. But thinking, At least Maggie wasn't with you? Man, that feels fucking great. Cheers to that! I need something to wear on Christmas.
It's game day! Recreation time. We leveled up two weeks ago, but Will was out of town last week and I've been sorely missing D&D. It's a beautiful blue day out, so I'm going to grab some coffee and then cut through the park to get to the aggrodome. Not much to report today. Spent all day yesterday being wired and fussy, but managed to get a decent amount of work done actually. Big project for today is to try to make up a real plan to create structured blocks of time to write (like, fiction) and practice coding. Crap it's late, I gotta run!
There's not actually much of a story, and I'm feeling disinclined to dwell on it though I'm sure this'll wind up a longer post than I intend. Was walking on Union around 10.30pm to meet elladorian, ravenface, toughlad at Brooklyn Social, while talking to ranai on the phone (who was also going to meet us). Had just said "See you in a minute" and hung up when some dude got in my way, coincidentally right in front of our building. In the traditional dumbfoundedness and disbelief of the moment, it took me a few seconds to entirely realize he had a 9mm semiautomatic in my face and was telling me to Run my shit. I thought it looked like a Baretta, though I blanked on the actual brand name. Two other dudes came up behind me and while repeating Don't turn around, Don't look at us, put me against a wall and went through all my jacket and pants pockets, occasionally questioning me on the significance of the things in my pocket they couldn't make out in the dim light in that stretch between streetlamps: this was my dice bag, that my hat, those were keys, those were some more keys. It felt like quite a bit of time was passing without pedestrians in any direction and I remember thinking, Is this stretch really this desolate? In the end, all my pockets had been emptied onto the sidewalk (my copy of The Big Year got a bit scuffed) and they split, having taken my phone and wallet, though they did not go through my bag, and left me with my work computer. As they fled I turned and ran after them down Nevins street, and then down Sackett after they turned there. About halfway down Sackett, they stopped running and started either walking or dawdling I couldn't tell. I figured if their backs were no longer necessarily to me while I could see them, they could see me. They didn't appear to be looking in my direction or expecting pursuit, but the streets being otherwise empty in every direction I didn't love my chances if they did notice me. I backtracked to the corner of Nevins to put some distance between us and tried to flag down someone with a phone. For a long time, no one came and I eventually lost track of my attackers. There's a police call box at the corner of Nevins and Sackett actually, but it doesn't work. I worried what everyone must have thought when I didn't show up to the bar, and briefly considered just continuing on my way. I doubled back to my block to knock on my landlord's door, but he was either out or dead asleep. Tried stopping a couple passerby, who actually declined to call 911 on my behalf for various reasons, stated or unstated. I tried to be clear that I wasn't asking strangers to let me use their phone, I just wanted someone to call 911 to have them send a police car to this intersection. A couple young hipster girls actually stopped to talk to me long enough to have a conversation to get the story of what happened from me, but then declined to call, actually chided me for it, on the grounds that "What are the police" - dismissive, self-righteous inflection - "going to do for you? The police can't do anything" and "If I were you I'd just try to get out of here as quickly as possible." Eventually a guy who looked like he was returning from the airport, wheeling large checked luggage, stopped and gave me his phone to use even though I had just asked him to call. Thanks, luggage guy. At this point, about fifteen minutes had passed since I'd been mugged. The police came, and I gave a statement and we drove around for a while. We saw a group of three dudes in similar clothing by the Wyckoff Houses, and it was game on for a second. But I was ... pretty sure it wasn't them. One guy had had a distinctive jacket. We chatted about my old crazy-party-throwing neighbor for a while and then we went back to the station to talk to some detectives, where I gave a statement and looked at mug shots and enumerated the things lost. Everyone thought my phone model - a "Photon", by Motorola - had the craziest name they'd ever heard. I lost a lot of cash too ... roughly equivalent to half a month's rent. One of the detectives let me use his computer and phone to cancel my cards and put my bank accounts on hold. I had sensitive bank info on my phone that was encrypted, but I figured why take chances. Tweeted Maggie. Tried to change my Google pw, but the detective's machine was running IE6 (!) and Google account settings won't even open in browsers that old. The detectives got Sprint to track the phone to 106 Douglass, between Smith and Hoyt, and they started putting on vests and checking guns and gaming on. While they were doing that, I remotely installed a couple tracking apps on the phone that got me bupkis. Phone had been running out of charge when I lost it, and I'd manually turned GPS off to conserve energy. When the detectives were ready, two cars of cops and me rolled over there and ... nothing. There were no people visible, and you can't just go knocking on doors, because you don't know the significance of that trace. Like, those guys could have just been walking by 106 Douglass at the time. They drove me around for a while longer and dropped me off at home around 3am. Gchatted a couple of folks to let them know I was all right. Stayed up wired and awake for a couple hours reading greader, then fell asleep. Today: worse news: inaugural meeting of book club cancelled! Other than that I'm kind of irritable and at loose ends. Yesterday I felt like I had so much to do this weekend, and now I feel like there's nothing, and the weekend feels over already. Gonna walk over to 106 Douglass in a minute in the hopes that maybe the dudes ditched my phone and wallet in a garbage can over there or something. |
