Gonzai Gallery

Just me, blathering a few thoughts on tonight's GOT:

You know how in Lord of the Rings/Hobbit the Eagles just suddenly show up and deus ex machina all over the place? Any reason the dragons couldn't just fly to Eastwatch and torch the White Walkers? Or at least, send one dragon to snag a Walker and haul it back, easy peasy.

Joe Dempsie has turned into Christian Bale. This is not a bad thing.

Slow your roll on the whole 'Jon is the rightful King of Westeros!' thing. If Rhaegar did indeed get an annulment and marry Lyanna, that means that Rhaegar is an even bigger jerk to his wife than we already knew, and that Jon is legitimate. Fine. However, it doesn't necessarily make him King of Westeros. Daenerys is the Mad King's daughter, Jon is his grandson. Depending on how they do lines of succession (and Targaryens are big on weird family lines) Jon may well be SECOND in line, not the King yet.

Wonder how Samwell is going to find out about his family. He could be Lord Tarly now, if he wanted. (Doubt it.)

If I were Bronn...I think I might take a little non-King's Landing vacay right now.



Oh, and what is the appropriate discipline for a dog who decided it wants outside during the opening credits? And less than 30 minutes after the last outing?

Lots of thinky thoughts about Season 2 Daredevil, some related to my little jaunt to NYC last August http://gonzai55.livejournal.com/#post-gonzai55-500420, some spoilery, some not, but to be safe, putting everything behind the cut.


1 - Kudos to the Daredevil makeup crew for remembering all of Matt's injuries from last season. Good to see a show that doesn't just hand-wave that.

2 - Although they never said so explicitly, Matt had a concussion. Interesting idea to explore the effect of a concussion on someone with supersenses.

3 - I think there may have been too many characters shoehorned in here, although certain cameos were appreciated.

4 - It's about frickin' time Matt told Karen he was Daredevil. Should have done it a helluva lot sooner.

5 - The place I first conked out in Brooklyn, & finally found out where they were filming, was in front of a bar. That bar is where the Irish gangsters were taken out in the first ep and the street scene with Brett, Foggy & Matt is where I was sitting for a rest.

6 - Tony Curran was at Shore Leave last summer, which would have been right about the same time he was filming Daredevil. Wish I'd known.

7 - My pretty little hill where I sat for hours waiting? That's the hill in Ep 4 where Frank collapses on the gravestone and makes his long speech. Jon Bernthal is now forgiven for ignoring me when I was outside the dining hall, he must have been doing some serious getting into character. (Glad Charlie only had to sit and listen to Jon all night, so he could say hi.)

8 - Damn, but the stunt crew were busy bees this season. Good job fellas!

9 - I genuinely thought Reyes or Tower was the Blacksmith. I should know better. How often is Clancy Brown the good guy?

10 - I am amused at how much time and effort was put into putting Daredevil on top of the archway, only for about a 3 second shot.

And now for the big question - what happened to Frank's dog?

A change in year is not helping things at all. This has been one of the worst weeks ever.

Some of it is universal; I may not be the biggest Harry Potter fan, but I did adore Alan Rickman. By Grabthar's Hammer, this sucked. And Bowie. We got cable the same month MTV debuted, so I got my fill of Ashes to Ashes, Fashion, etc., loved the 80s version of Bowie, then went back & discovered that Ziggy Stardust is one of the best records, ever, full stop. Today just heard about Ted Marchibroda, the first ever coach of the Baltimore Ravens. Enough with the death already.

On a more personal level, I hurt my heel in the car accident & it's been getting worse every day. Last week we started using a new software system at work without training or practice, & the data supplied by our client conflicted with the previous set they sent us. I wound up standing at my supervisor's computer for hours at a time while we compared databases looking for the (many errors) sent by our client. That hurt my foot even more. It took us all day Monday to finish fixing the database & printing documents. When I got home, my paycheck was in the mailbox; I usually take it to work in my pocketbook & then to the bank at lunchtime. This will be important later. Monday night, CJ flipped out around 1am, and stayed that way, barking for hours. I finally got up, and after another hour figured out the problem - battery ran low on the smoke alarm. Meanwhile I was freezing & couldn't get back to sleep. Great.

Tuesday, I arrived at work to find out that all the documents we'd printed Friday & Monday - over 2500 of them - were wrong. We had to delete some data that we didn't want on the documents; turned out the new software decided to helpfully put it back when we printed. We had to reprint every one of them. Forget going to the bank - I didn't get lunch & almost didn't get a chance to go potty all day. Meanwhile my supervisor & the third member of our office were at each other's throats all day, & it became pretty clear I was not going home at 4 for the second day in a row. After 4, I kept working on documents while my supervisor went to ask the boss some questions. When he came back, he came back with the boss, the office manager & boxes. And started packing his stuff into them. I thought he had quit. Seems there was another issue altogether I didn't know about, & combined with software issues, there was blow up & he was fired. I'm a temp, who was brought on specifically to be his assistant, so I had to ask the office manager if I should come in on Wednesday. Meanwhile, We were still printing the documents, and as a result of the firing, all of the documents needed the supervisor's name crossed out and signed by someone else. Some other workers stayed late, but the whole mess wasn't finished until after 7:30, & I didn't get home until almost 8. (I called the neighbor & asked here to feed/out the dogs.) When I got home, it was 40 degrees in my bedroom - the wind was blowing straight in & the heater couldn't keep up. So I 'slept' Tuesday night on the couch. Didn't actually sleep much & was one hurting puppy in the morning.

So Wednesday was a continuing adventure in frantically trying to print documents & deliver them to various courts, which included broken hand carts, heavy boxes, metal detectors, nosy clerks & my own failure to poker face (the clerk correctly guessed from my body language & refusal to answer questions that things were a mess, & since we'd just filed over a 1000 documents with the name crossed out...well, we handed over a lot of evidence.) Managed to eat lunch but still no time for the bank. On my way home, I discovered that the keyfob to my new car wasn't working.

Thursday was worse; the third person in our office was now the boss, as it were, & she was pissy, surly & wanted someone to yell at. Guess who. Anyway, never stopped working the entire day, no food, no bank, barely made it to the potty & then only when I snuck out when she was smoking. I nearly quit Thursday. & I got in trouble with the higher ups, because my contract with the temp agency requires that I inform them of any 'change in status' so I called them Wednesday & told them what was going on. Between the temp agency & the loose-lipped clerk, a lot of people knew about the firing, & I started to think I was going to get fired because of that.

Friday wasn't quite as bad as Thursday, but not much better. It was worse for the 'new' boss, she almost quit yesterday. And again, no lunch & no chance to go to the bank. Every bit of me hurts like heck.

Then today, I was finally going to take the check to the bank. And...it's gone. Missing. I searched everywhere, but the check isn't in my pocketbook & it isn't anywhere else either. The only place I haven't been able to look is the drawer at work where I keep my pocketbook. I'm hoping beyond hope the check fell out of the pocketbook & into the drawer at some point during the week, but if it didn't, then I'm out a paycheck indefinitely. Haven't gotten this week's check either, so the money thing is is not good. Oh yeah, the keyfob is damaged & can't be fixed without an appointment at the car dealership. Joy.

2016, you are sucking.

I am very, very thankful to have had Mosely in my life this year. And I'm going to share him - he's now a certified therapy dog :)  (Mom's nursing home was bummed yesterday because I didn't bring Mose with me, heh.)

My string of minor successes last week (finished watching Charlie Cox's entire filmography, trivia team won both the final game of the session and the entire session, had two promising possible jobs on Friday) has come to a crashing halt, it would seem. I tried to play trivia last night, an all Game of Thrones night for extra seeding points, but the restaurant had cancelled all Sunday games for the rest of the year (football). However, the trivia company never took it down from their web site, never told the hosts the theme nights were off, and when I called the restaurant to confirm, the woman who answered said yes, they're having trivia tonight. So I skipped part of the Ravens game and drove an hour plus tolls, only to discover nope, no trivia. And got to watch the Ravens implode. Yay.

Then there was the temp-to-hire job I was to start today. It lasted less than 4 hours. I went home for lunch and while there got a call from the temp agency that they didn't want me to come back. Work-wise, it seemed okay, I hit it off with my trainer (who turned out to be a neighbor) and it was something I certainly could do, but I'd already realized I could not, in good conscience, work there. And while I hadn't said so, they must have figured that out. The main business of the law firm was finding legal loopholes for their clients to get around firearms background checks, CCW regulations, and generally selling weapons. Their one client this morning was crowing about the new silencer they'd helped him buy. Sorry, but no. Guns may be legal, but that doesn't mean I have to help people get them.

I will be calling the other job in a few minutes to see if, hopefully, that one works out better.

I thought this afternoon's errands/shopping trip would take several hours. It took 90 minutes, if that.

I'm trying to get my mother's wedding & engagement rings appraised, since she has no further use for them & I'm in a bad way financially. (Used the last of my unemployment benefits today; I have $20 some cash left.) So far I've been told $1500, $300, & we only do that one day a month. Today I was told 'pay us $30 first'. If I *had* $30 I wouldn't be trying to sell the damn rings, people. Guess I better get over to the first store tomorrow.

Then I went job shopping in a shopping center. The new place is still under construction; manager says they haven't even begun thinking about hiring yet. Every other place in the shopping center - 5 of them - is a chain store requiring online job applications. I've filled out a bunch of those for a variety of businesses; I get an acknowledgement that I applied & never hear another word again. Has anyone ever gotten a job this way? Because they won't even acknowledge reading it. Maybe they just see I have a college degree & immediately trash my application. But in any event, I'm not sure it's worth the hour per application it takes to never hear from these places again.

Finally, I went grocery shopping (hence the last of the money). What I really wanted was on huge sale, but perishable, & I won't be home the next couple of days. So I just got what I had to get, plus ice cream, my one pleasure in life now. But in the meantime, what is a greater sign that the apocalypse is upon us - Star Wars-themed coffee creamer? Or Christmas flavors before Labor Day? Either way, I'm mortified.

Oh, and it's 95 degrees and humid. Yuck.

I learned something new on Twitter yesterday/this morning. Apparently, if your avatar on the internet is of a dog (oh, hey Digby, Mosely, and a couple dogs I happened to photograph at dogshows) you are a flaming racist. Obviously, I don't subscribe to this theory - I've always thought a dog avatar meant you loved your pet/thought the pic was amusing. Like Avenue Q says, we're all a little bit racist and that does apply to me and everyone else, but how liking your own pets makes you (the Charleston terrorist, for example) baffles me. I'm not sure if I'm more upset that having Mosely as my avatar on Twitter brands me a racist, or that dogs as a whole are now seen as a sign of racism.

WTF, people?

Yes, it's true. For the first time in 5 years, I did art. And reminded myself, painfully, why I quit in the first place. The doctor tells me I've developed carpal tunnel despite not having a job and doing a whopping one piece of art. Dammit.

Anyway, the Daredevil obsession brought this on. I found a nifty screenshot from the third ep


And decided to see if I could render it in scratchboard



If I can get the feeling back in my hands, I'd like to get back on the art horse. I haven't lost the talent, at least, just the physical capacity.

Well, it's supposed to rain, but you get the idea.

Marriage is marriage is the same everywhere!

Things aren't so great for me physically, of late. I've somehow developed what the doctor thinks is carpal tunnel in my right hand (How? I'm not working) One of the 'prescriptions' is to sleep on my back instead of my side. So now I don't sleep worth a darn, and my back, neck & shoulders are killing me.

Today I sucked it up to go buy dog food, knowing it would hurt to move that around, and I began my trip to the pet store by getting caught up in Mosely's leash and in the process of getting untangled, slammed my bad shoulder into the car door. It's getting colorful. And now everything hurts. Dammit.