Elephants Dreaming

I suppose this is more or less to say that I'm still here.

Every year I absolutely dread March. Before it's even here I grow depressed, anticipating St. Patrick's, the anniversary of my brother's death, and the guilt of being depressed for Bridgielove's birthday.
I've actually been quite off since November, due to a family issue.

I'd like to just be bloody well done with it all and get on with life.

I suspect most of the people who read this journal read Rey's as well, and are therefore somewhat caught up on the household goings-on. Rey has been jobless for some time, Bridgie was struggling with medication changes, and got that sorted out only to lose her job as well. Since I haven't been working myself, we no longer have any steady, reliable source of income. It's an ugly situation, and one echoed loudly across the country, I suppose. I am confident that we will get by, between unemployment and tax returns and the inevitability that jobhunting will pay off, sooner or later.
I should be doing more to help.

March is always an ugly month in my own book, the time of year when I find myself truly wanting a drink again. There's an anniversary to be observed, the knotted tangles of blood relations to be prodded at, and the ever-distressing holiday wherein I am reminded that alcoholism and being Irish go hand in hand in many people's minds. Bridgie's birthday at the beginning of the month was unfortunately lackluster due to all that's been going on, and I feel badly for that.

Amidst the chaos I shall continue to practice escapism through roleplay. I'm enjoying plyaing The Shadow (evillurks), although the plot has stalled somewhat, again due to the chaos of our lives. I shall try to revive it.

I was reminded I've been tagged on a meme, some time back last month. I believe I'm meant to tag others, but I shan't. Anyone who wishes to do the meme may, and you're allowed to alter any questions you'd like.
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I meant to make this post earlier, and started it in notepad before becoming distracted.
As I do not believe this journal is widely read, I shall simply refer people to Rey's vacation posts, one and two. I will admit I spent most of the time of post one looking forward to the time of post two, although we only had a day and a half to spend there.
Bar Harbor was something of a tourist trap, and what I had hoped was a quaint local boookshop from the outside was, from within, something akin to a Barnes & Noble Lite. In a fit of that mania which grips tourists everywhere, I nearly bought some nautical charts I found in the back, but since I lack the skills to read them and prefer household art on the walls I fought off the urge. I did get a beautiful little compass at Acadia National Park, and thoroughly enjoyed myself at the beach. Despite all attempts at sunblock, my already noticeable nose is red, making me look like an absurd clown.
Alcohol was everywhere, in the form of ridiculously named mixed drinks as well as mouth-wateringly expensive offerings of whiskey and the like. It is a cruel world. Fortunately Rey's orders were too dessert-like to be very tempting. I survived.
The beach was wonderful, rocky and cool, but sadly no less insomnia-inducing than home. I will admit, I was excited to be there, and the sheer joy of being in the place kept me up late. There was also too much to do to allow sleeping in, so I was more than ready for a rest by the time we arrived home.

Ye gods, has it really been precisely one month since I wrote last? I will accept berating in regards to this, particularly since I feel I have little to update with. We went to the state fair, where I purchased some little odds and ends for scrapbooking rather than actual books. I have made a few bookmarks I need to scan and post, but the grey day has rendered me far too lethargic.
I'm playing Aloysius today, and continuing to neglect Thorn. I shall have to send off an e-mail in regards to that Silent Hill plot which never seems to have gotten off the ground. I was truly looking forward to it and have felt adrift with him while waiting. Perhaps I need to throw another character into the Nexus RP, just to re-energize myself about gaming.

Toyed about with the new common knowledge feature on LT, but things were loading slow there. I'll do some more intensive work on it later. Like tagging, I can see this is an easy feature to get lost in and find that hours have passed, everyone else has gone to bed or you're late for something.

I picked up new icons from Morri, he's put up a post with entirely autumn icons, very elegant. It is truly an art form, making these neat compositions in such a small frame, and he is an artist. I adore what I find on jillicons but there seems to be less image manipulation done there.

On a last note, the warm muggy overcast morning has given way to a brief rain, which we were badly in need of. I have not stepped out since but can only hope this has lowered the temperature to more seasonal levels.

In lieu of actually writing anything of note, I've been fiddling about playing Thingamabrarian. I've passed the 450 mark, and householders are beginning to make bets regarding how many books we actually have. This is an unstable number, of course, as we can't seem to stop aquiring more on a fairly steady basis. I have weeded out a very small pile that remains uncatalogued because it ought to go to charity, and there's also a small stack of books that Librarything doesn't seem to recognize the ISBN's of. I'll go back and try them again when I've got all the rest, because the database is always expanding, but otherwise I'll have to manually enter them. Scanning in covers slows the process, but it's so nice to see the listing visually reflecting our shelves. It's a silly thing, but it makes me happy.

In other thoughts, I suppose that I've decided to withdraw janitor Thorn from MAHS. I would like to say I'm simply considering it, but I'd be lying to myself. When I look at the community profile and the members, it's incredibly difficult to pick out anyone I know. I realize it's laziness on my part as much as hesitancy on theirs, but it's difficult to play in a community of strangers. There is also the noticeable lack of staff presence, which makes it even more difficult to play him. The community no longer feels moderated, either in or out of character. I have no desire to stop playing him, and I'm putting off composing e-mails to various players to see if I can ensure a place for him in the main Nexus. I'm hoping PRIME could use a janitor, since so many of the people I adore playing with have moved on there and the original Thorn is a student.
I'm very glad for MAHS, it's been a wonderful place to develop the janitor Thorn as a character, but things change and it simply no longer feels welcome. I am very sorry for the loss.

Again, not a writing assignment, but so long as I'm posting I consider the purpose of that idea fulfilled. The consideration of paying for this journal is quite serious. There's a particular layout I've had my eye on for some time, which is utterly gorgeous and artistically put together for me, available only to paid users. I find myself wishing for more icons and I am unwilling to play host to adverts for that purpose.
I have other writing assignments in mind, and I ought to do some book reviews for LibraryThing. I meant to do scrapbooking and I've collected a wonderful selection of supplies for doing so, even made some small test pages. I must cofess that now that I have a blank book at hand ready for tea-dyeing, and whatever other experiments I'd like to do upon it (I couldn't bring myself to mutilate an existing work of literature), the project is simply too intimidating as a start. While mulling over how to begin and re-reading some Kipling with a bit of tissue stuck between pages I hit upon a simpler idea. There are bookmarks in the house, although I never seem able to find them when I actually need one. Most of these are not mine, as people rarely give me bookmarks and I never think to buy one for myself. This last is hardly a complaint, as people tend to give me books instead. Bookmarks make for a simpler form of scrapbooking-altered art-whathaveyou. I'll probably make several more before I feel ready to tackle an entire book, but here are my first two attempts. I rather enjoyed the cutting and pasting, and I'm pleased with the results.
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Hrm. The image filenames make it look as though I'm doing a series by letter, but I think twenty-six would be a few too many. The animal pictures are cut from the backs of old calendars, bought specifically because I loved those pictures. The pictures on the beach bookmark are cut up bits of a single photograph, not one of my own but a shot of somewhere along VA Beach or possibly Nag's Head at dawn, taken by Morri or Bridgie. I'm rarely up at that hour, myself. It was a duplicate but I felt a bit nervous hacking it into bits regardless. There is something at once both intimidating and pleasing about the process of dismantling lovely pictures and bits of paper to create some new collage. I'll post more as soon as I come up with the time to make them.

It's been much too long since I posted anything. It isn't that I've been distracted with RP this time it's simply that I've been distracted away from the computer altogether. We did go through several weeks of the phone lines acting up very badly, which ultimately resulted in the phone people having to come round and muck about with the box up on the pole. In the wake of that business being fixed, I've been unmotivated to update, and let other people have a go at the keyboard.
I do hope that everyone had a good holidays, and will have a wonderful New Year. We'll be off to Bridgie's parents for a bit, but not through until midnight. Rey has work tomorrow early, and I don't really care to be around people that are regular drinkers for an occasion such as this.

Bridgelove and I went to the gardens today with my sister. We try to get her and my little brother over around this time of year. It's like pulling teeth, and I'm tense the whole time she's here, glad when she's gone and feeling guilty for that.
No, we don't get along. I'd desperately like to. She says she's not keeping my little brother from me, but she never wants me to visit. I know it's not intentional on her part, there's just too much... between us.
We walked around the botanical gerdens, and said little, but there's a members night on the eighth and we'll try to get her to come along to see the lights that night and hopefully bring our brother along if he's up to walking around that evening.
I took photos. Those are more pleasant to focus on. It was lovely and I think she did enjoy herself despite being with me.
( photos )

I feel that I must write something. So much of my time these days is spent engaged in online role-play, and while it offers the opportunity to simply write, the medium by necessity suffers from a rampant lack of revision. I had a lovely short story I was working on, and both Bridgie and myself had gone through several edits, but all files were lost in one of our severe computer crashes and I’ve been to lazy to type the whole thing up again from my original ink-and-paper rough. While computers give rise to the opportunity for industriousness, eliminating the need to re-type entire pages due to a few errors too messy for white-out, they also breed sloth. Certainly a story can never benefit from the many advantages of the computer when I cannot be bothered to even create a digital file in the first place. Then, too, there is the dazzling lure of online gaming. It is a step away from the stream of consciousness method. Once a passage is written there is no real point to worrying over missed typos or awkward wording because you have already released it, unalterable, to that most immediate of mediums that is the internet.
Aside from spellcheck, I am not editing this entry. I find myself using even that less often, so that my typos will live on in obscure records that sit on some distant server, unread past the age of a few days and left to sink into the glut of useless information that such technology gives rise to.
I am unlikely to reread this entry more than once.

So there's been rather a messy argument, involving myself, Rey, and Bridgielove. To be honest, I'm still not clear on my part in it, but I do wish people would stop looking gloomy every time I speak to them. I feel a bit off for that alone, as things seem to be otherwise on the mend.
For the record, Rey, you are not the only one guilty of occasionally being selfish, and I see no fault in it. If I have been selfish in a way that left you slighted, you have my most sincere apologies. I know I've said as much, but sometimes it's nice to see things written out for the world at large.
Rey's gone and joined some community where she feels we can talk freely, and Bridgie is planning to establish a new journal to track her own moods and join up as well. If it's family therapy time, I suppose I should put myself down as well, so if the mod should happen to come look here to see who I am before giving approval to join, there you have it. We're not expecting the community to act as a therapist, but it would be pleasant to have someplace to speak with others in a similar situation.
Rey says if she ever rambles on, it's a habit learned from me. Hm. Things must be on the mend if she's back to teasing me.

Christmas was lovely, recieved several puzzles and books, as well as the word that I am difficult to shop for; I don't see why, because I adore puzzles and books, and nearly anything I am given. I suppose it's just that I don't have much attachment to material possessions. I have moved around and lived too long to cling to items, and if there are any items I do cling to, it's books. At any rate, I now have 'the Once and Future King', which completes the trilogy for me. I started reading 'the sword in the stone' to Bridgielove last night. She's come down with something, and her fever managed to spike at 100.6 so it feels as though it was a long night, and yet here I am up earlier than usual. I suppose I'm waiting for her to wake properly and let me know what I need to go out and fetch for her, because that's all I really can do. She does seem to be rid of the fever this morning. Her mother said that of course it can't be the flu, because she got a flu shot, which means someone clearly needs to inform the woman of exactly how a flu shot functions. I am dearly hoping I don't catch it myself, because then I can't take care of her properly, but if I do, I do... it's rather past the point of contagion now.
Mmm. Christmas again. There was little money this year, but Bridgielove did make a donation to the heifer project; a share of a goat in my name, a share of rabbits in Rey's name, and some bees in Morri's. That is by far the best gift, and is becoming an excellent tradition. The first year she got a goat in my name, I was at a loss for words, and it remains one of the best gifts I have ever recieved.
Also this year I am the recipient of much Thorn fan art. I hear Bridgielove stirring, so I am off...