Gonzai Gallery

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.

Christmas Eve, Mike didn't snark too much, except for complaining about our artificial tree.  I told him if he was willing to go out, buy a tree, ship it to my house, put it up, decorate it, take it down after Christmas, take it to recycling and do that *every year*, then sure, we’d have a ‘real’ tree. There were no more comments about the tree.

Christmas…the younger nephew was obsessed with building Lego sets and barely acknowledged anyone. The older one was obsessed with their latest game system (4th system, for those counting) and wouldn’t do anything else. I wound up reading the guidebook to my Kindle because everyone but the little guy was busy playing video games. My brother only acknowledged me to make openly snarky remarks (“people who have *real* jobs don’t work Christmas week”, collecting anything is a sign of mental illness, etc) and finally at dinner, he launched several insults in quick succession at me, I snapped back, and he told me to leave. Then Mom was upset, because I was her ride home so if I left she felt she had to leave and she didn’t want to go, so his in-laws had to talk him into letting *our mother* stay. I doubt I’ll be invited back anytime soon and honestly, I don’t want to go. I’ve had enough crap from Mr 1%.

Yup. Just about got Mom's done too. A few stocking stuffers here and there, and that's it. Phew. Yucky freezer picked up and disposed of professionally, car packed for craft show tomorrow, got CJ a new 'cone of shame', watched a bunch of movies. 'Diabolique' was probably something else when it came out, not too bad now. 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' - verryy slow and atmospheric, but a bit of a drag. 'Safe House' - isn't quite over yet. But quite a rollercoaster ride.

CJ is now home from the doggie dentist. She had to have both lower canines extracted, and the one that was broken to begin with was abscessed. (The other was misshapen and unstable; the dentist said it would either break off or break her jaw in the near future.) The bill so far is $1,680.00. Also known as six weeks' take-home pay. Right before car insurance is due. There will be no Christmas around here, other than what I picked up early in the year. Or much of anything else.

At least, off from the internet, for the most part. I had today off of work (Happy Rosh Hashanah, as applicable) so I took Mom to a Senior Day Center to see what she thought. We were greeted by a dog named Buttercup. I consider that a good sign. Mom thinks it's too expensive, but my brother doesn't, so I'll let him convince her she can afford it. Then lunch at a new sandwich shop, Potbelly's. I think it's a chain. Decent sandwich though, and Mom was happy with hers.

Rest of the day was TV and computer games, as I caught up with nearly everything on the DVR and finally watched last year's 'Whitechapel'. I put that off because series 2 did nothing for me; turns out series 3 was much, much better. I'm taking '2001: A Space Odyssey' a chunk at a time, because I've tried and failed to watch it a few times already. I liked the 'trio' episode of Leverage much more than the rest of this season, and Mom actually liked it, first time in years she's liked the show. Maybe we have our new direction - just let Elliott, Hardison and Parker be the show. Fine with me. I enjoyed Doctor Who, esp. the conversations with the horse. Big surprise, right? We also watched Bill Maher, who I think properly summed up recent events thusly: "Some crazy Christians pretending to be crazy Jews riled up a bunch of crazy Muslims, so Mitt Romney could prove Mormons are even crazier."

Sunday, I was a party host. Can't remember the last time I tried that. But 4 of my gaming friends came over for the 'game', that being Ravens/Eagles, of course. We had an Eagles fan. I seated him near the door and we took turns reminding him we could easily toss him out of it. But he had the last laugh, dammit. But we had a grand time other than the final score, and a couple people stayed after and we played board games until late. I had to let CJ out eventually, but she was nice to the strangers! Total relief, that. The whole thing must have gone well, because the last folks out said we should do this again. My back isn't so sure about that, I'm a hurting pup today (presumably from moving around the furniture) but otherwise, yeah, gamers at the game, why not?

Just home from Game Days, which I left early because I went to the GCOM meeting that ran more than twice as long as they expected, plus I was in the world's most uncomfortable seat. My back is killing me now. Matches my knees, after I walked across a major road during rush hour to pick up my dinner. Hey, if I can see the place, I see no point in driving to it. Besides dinner, I picked up a couple goodies for myself (a GCOM t-shirt and 'Struggle for Catan'), a huge pile of games for the nephews to be divided between birthdays and Christmas, and I started the day by taking CJ to the vet, which surely wasn't cheap. So I blew bucks today. But CJ has a clean bill of health for at least a year and I'm set for all nephew-related gifts for 2012. Phew.

Back there tomorrow, hopefully for some games for me from the second-hand shop.

After picking up a badge for the internship, I headed out for the final day of New Year's gaming. Getting into and out of games didn't work very well, and I wound up in a cooperative game (I don't like them) that took forever just for me and it kept going for another hour after my character was killed. I tried another game and managed to lose the whole game on the first round. Did eventually land in a game of On The Underground, which I won for the first time ever.

But the real entertainment was yet to come. I had parked two blocks away and walked in with another gamer, Richard, who is disabled and needs crutches and braces to walk. On the wayin , I noticed a lot of trash cans and folding chairs in the street blocking off parking spaces, which is illegal in Maryland. We figured that's why Richard had to park so far away. Well, late in the afternoon one guy goes out to his car to get something and comes back with a letter, purportedly signed by a dozen residents of the street. The letter was rude bordering on nasty, and went on at length about what horrible people guests of this house were for parking on their street and demanding we park on Street B insted of Street A. We all went out & checked our vehicles, all but one had the same nasty letter. (If you guessed I was the oddball, you're right. So I stood in the street and announced that I was insulted and outraged that everyone but me gets a nasty letter. That'll confuse 'em.) The vehicles that had the letters included Richard's handicap-placarded car, a motorcycle, a states attorneys' car with with a universal permit and several cars that were parked on Street B, where we were supposedly supposed to park. Unfortunately for these nitwits, it's a public street; everyone parked in a legal spot; as noted, blocking off parking spots is illegal; and to top it off they claimed we were denying them their 'livelihoods' when there's no zoning or permits for a home business in that neighborhood. And now they've pissed off several attorneys and a disabled guy. Richard is filing an ADA complaint tomorrow. It's war. And gamers know their wars.

I worked most of the day yesterday, then went to the gym, picked up a couple things for Christmas, did some housecleaning, wrapped the rest of my gifts and finished putting together my annual 'music you might like' CD for my brother. Each year I pick out 16-20 songs by artists I don't think Mike is familiar with, but I think he'd like. Generally he likes at least half of them. I hope. Somehow I still had time to watch BBC America's 'Wait Wait Don't Tell Me!' special, (apparently the British aspect was a new panelist from the UK; I don't think Neil Gaiman counts as British, since he's lived in the US for 20 years), and a movie from a few years back, 'Something The Lord Made'. Very interesting film, about Vivien Thomas, a young black man whose college dreams are dashed by the Great Depression, but he happens to get a job working for Dr Albert Blaylock, and becomes Blaylock's right hand man as they pioneered open heart surgery and found a way to cure 'blue baby syndrome'. It also happened to be filmed in Baltimore; there was a lot of 'I know that street' and 'I've seen that house' going on. Good flick.

Something I've never understood about the holiday season: there is absolutely no traffic at all in the mornings, but afternoon is gridlock to the max. Schools and most businesses are open, so where the heck is everyone in the morning? And if they're not at work/school, why the heck are they all going out on the road at the same time?

Speaking of being on the road, we were driving the other day, in a populated suburban area just off the Beltway, and we had to stop. To let deer cross the road. Three of them, just moseying along across one person's lawn, wandering at their own pace across the street in front of us, then down someone's driveway. Like it's no big deal. The distinction between city and rural is really gone...

Poor CJ. I let her out this morning, then heard a ruckus, yelling & barking from next door. I assumed CJ had started something with the neighbor's terrier and raced out to fetch her back in. Turned out whatever was going on, CJ had nothing to do with it; she was in the middle of the yard, mid-poop. Poor dog couldn't decide whether to finish pooping or go to Mommy, so she started hopping on 3 legs, still in her squat, towards the house. I should have filmed it.

Yup. Still got the cold, full blown. Still not sleeping. Tough test in class tomorrow, having to distinguish amongst diseases that have the same symptoms and treatments. But the Ravens did what they're supposed to and now I'm trying to get the study thing done. And hoping I'm actually awake for the class.

Wonder if I could convince Mom to do a Ravens Christmas tree...