stick with me, my story gets better

I've had this entry half-written since Saturday, when it included something about hope for the Capitals, which obviously proved fruitless. And now Dale Hunter's quit as coach, which should be. . . interesting. And now I have no one legit to root for in the playoffs. The Kings have become an acquired taste, but I mostly blame Carter/Ritchie fic and their sassy twitter feed for that.

Ugh, long week, which is kind of weird when I don't actually work, but I had my first dentist appointment in [REDACTED] years, which was still holyfuck nerve-wracking, though in the end it didn't go quite as badly as I'd feared. I need a pile of fillings for small cavities and a crown, so not great, but I'm lucky it's not worse. Tim had a massive work emergency and spent two days 12 hour works days in a location 90 miles away. Left the house at 4:30am, got back at 8pm.

Took a few days break from working on hockey fic because I'd spent too much time staring at the doc and waffling over whether some fairly tasteless jokes will come across as too tasteless now because of PKane's drunken fuckery. In doing so, I accidentally fell down a tiny Teen Wolf rabbit hole. I like Derek/Stiles and all, but I am not huge into the werewolf tropes (knotting, etc), and at this point I'm mostly shaking my fist wondering why is there not more fic about Lydia? And possibly about Lydia bossing Stiles around (but he's not a pushover—seriously, he stands up to pretty much everyone—so yeah, he does what she wants in the end because he likes making her happy, but it's on his terms I think). Since none of that exists, I don't expect it will amount to much besides poking through A03 and Pinboard tags every so often, but we'll see what S2 brings next month.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only geek in the country who hasn't seen the Avengers yet.


And I leave with this:

We live in an end-unit townhouse, which means the neighborhood kids walk around the backyard fence past the side of the house and across the front sidewalk to get from the bus stop (or just out playing) on to the street proper. None of them seem to realize or care that my windows have been open since March, mostly. I hear a lot of conversations. I mostly tune them out, but today I heard a snatch of dialogue that I couldn't really ignore. Two boys, between and 10 and 12, were arguing, and all I could make out was,

Boy 1: "You're, like, double bisexual."
Boy 2: *scoff sound* "I could have a baby right now with my hands tied behind my back."

Which, what? I'm curious to know what they were actually talking about, because with no context I can only conclude that kids these days are playing Mpreg instead of Cops and Robbers.

Also posted at http://dexwebster.dreamwidth.org/15518.html. Comment where you like.

Biopsy's back from my surgery. All's clear for now, but since my body still refuses to cooperate on the whole having a menstrual cycle thing, I am now officially one of those horrible sluts on birth control. You know, so I don't get uterine cancer. Fuck Rush Limbaugh.

The Czarina is settling in well. She had a few days of panic when my sister and nieces visited last week, but she recovered. Still a bit of a scaredy cat, but overall much improved.

That's basically all that's going on, because the rest of my brainspace right now is filled with hockeyhockeyhockey and these days Fuck Raffi Torres in the ear. Which is to say, my descent continues apace. I now have, uh, three? more stories started, and I'm even like, emailing and talking to people about some of them, so something may get finished for once! (I literally saw Hossa's name in a fic and gasped and covered my mouth just at the thought of that hit, in what would've been a really embarrassing fashion if I weren't alone. Ugh. Fuck Raffi Torres in the ear.)

Also posted at http://dexwebster.dreamwidth.org/14961.html. Comment where you like.

I've been waffling about it for a long time, and finally adopted a two year old Maine Coon mix from a local rescue. A couple of the rescue workers call her a diva cat, but the director said it's mostly that she doesn't like other cats--she likes humans fine, but she is not a fan of feline company. Needless to say, I can appreciate someone who's not the most personable with their own kind.

She came with the name Lillian Maxine, which is definitely not a name I would ever have chosen, but we also don't have any real interest in changing, so Lillian Maxine she will stay. She's quickly also acquired the title of "Furr-Czarina of Tokyo". Long story. If it hadn't been Tim's old beloved dog's name, I'd be content calling her Max, but well, awkward. So, so far she's mostly been Lily, and occasionally the Czarina.

We just got her Friday night, so she's still super-skittish around the house, but she is getting better. We tried to do a safe space for her in the bathroom, and we were going to keep her in there longer than the whopping day it lasted, but she bolted every time we opened the door. It seemed less traumatic to let her out, though we did block the stairwell to keep her confined to the bathroom + our (mostly empty) bedroom the first few nights at least.

This is her at the rescue. The calico is a little more contrasty in person, and she looks small there compared to her real size, but it's a pretty accurate photo.

Also posted at http://dexwebster.dreamwidth.org/14364.html. Comment where you like.

Had surgery. Went fine, and the less said about the week's worth of nausea afterward, the better. My follow up isn't for a couple weeks, so I'm not sure what the continuing adventures of Dex's Quest For Reproductive good health will hold, but I'm sure it will be annoying.

Beyond that, still alive. Still glutting myself on hockey. Have now developed Opinions. And I'm up to eleven thousand words and counting of Better Living Through Rough Sex, and jotting down ideas all the while (and for other teams).

It's a problem I have with fandoms, mostly RPS ones, that if something tragic* happens, I don't deal with it well and tend to lose all interest. Yes, I have issues. Anyway, I resisted all sports fandoms for a while, because the degree of uncertainty that's always around the corner is honestly a little nervewracking. Injuries! Terrible seasons! Many of them could, in theory, be traded at any time!

A few months ago I wrote a couple of Avengers commentfics and was adamant that I was not in the fandom, because well, I didn't feel like I was. It's fun to dabble in, and I'm sure I'll write in it a bit more, but it doesn't really get me right there. But I'm kind of afraid that hockey does.



*For specific definitions of tragic. In the past, it's mostly been bands breaking up. Popslash just kind of dissolved when 'N Sync "went on hiatus", and Bandom broke my fucking heart in a one-two-three punch.

Also posted at http://dexwebster.dreamwidth.org/13887.html. Comment where you like.

I am putting way too much thought into the world-building for an SGA fic for Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia, a multi-fandom minifest with fic based on A Companion to Wolves. But I'm really caught up in the idea of a Pegasus culture where wolves bond with females as well as males, and how that changes the gender roles and perception of sexuality in the culture, the separation of life/child-rearing partner versus sexual relationships, the structure of wolf-breeding.

I blame John Sheppard.

Really, I blame Vespa, John Sheppard's wolf, because she was too stubborn to bond with anyone else because they smelled like dirt and not air. Her and Tesla, who shocked everyone by following Rodney around like a hyperactive shadow nearly from the moment they stepped foot on Bayanarus, before they'd even considered taking wolves back to Atlantis.

Also posted at http://dexwebster.dreamwidth.org/13254.html. Comment where you like.

I was confused a few weeks ago when I saw a building who'd changed their exterior lights to purple ones. I didn't make the connection until I kept seeing more and more buildings doing it--including the Washington memorial in the city--and office buildings with giant banners on the sides, and finally put two and two together.

We don't own a television, so my old football fannishness has almost entirely worn off, and when it doesn't if I weren't a Skins fan I'd be disowned. But I live a few miles from the Baltimore beltway and the Ravens are playing in the AFC Championship game tomorrow. The grocery stores have dedicated "party zones", and everything down to the donuts is black and purple. The Maryland DMV has a giant Ravens logo painted in full color on the grass.

I had an echocardiagram Thursday. It's hard not to be at least a little excited when even the hospital has Ravens logos stenciled on their sidewalks.

Also posted at http://dexwebster.dreamwidth.org/12867.html. Comment where you like.

. . . in Marvel movie-verse fandom.

That said, should someone write a story where Loki changes the sex of the Avengers, I would offer intimate favors for its completion probably read it.

Steve is freaking out very quietly.

For everyone's sake, they're happy that Bruce wasn't with them at the time. That is one person who doesn't need this kind of potential emotional upheaval.

Clint's just pissed because the tits get in the way of his bow until he gets some proper binders.

If Natasha is freaked, she's not showing it. But she trains extra hard, and says she's just getting used to the new center of gravity and upper body strength.

Thor basically doesn't care. He's happy that Loki has dialed down from malicious to, well, mischievous, and has hope for his brother yet. (Jane, while unaffected herself, is concerned and would like to see everyone back to normal and happy, but on a personal level she is 100% on board until that occurs. Thor went from looking like a Norse god to an Amazonian goddess. Jane went through a Lilith Fair phase in undergrad. She has practice.)

Tony, while not thrilled about it himself, thinks it's hilarious. As he tells Fury during a meeting when he's talking about grounding the team until this is resolved, "If anyone's going to need help, it'll be the psych and medical teams. The number of SHIELD agents thrown into a homosexual panic because Thor and Captain America have shown up looking like Amazons is going to be epic."


Coulson walks around in the same old suit and tie and blank expression and dry wit, infuriating everyone else. If it weren't for the lack of male pattern baldness, they'd barely be able to tell. As far as Phil's concerned, he's SHIELD. A job's a job, and his job is to babysit the Avengers, regardless of his sex or theirs.

Also posted at http://dexwebster.dreamwidth.org/12053.html. Comment where you like.

For anyone who added me on Google +, don't be surprised when you find it gone. Even though my name "passes" as a real name, I couldn't in good conscience support their policy regarding profile names, so I deleted.

(denise has an excellent rebuttal, "Real Name" policies: they just don't work.)

Also posted at http://dexwebster.dreamwidth.org/11597.html. Comment where you like.

I have a Pandora station seeded with Disney songs I started for when I'm with my nieces, but I'm listening to it right now. It's been the kind of day week that needs an auditory sugar rush.

- Our A/C stopped working. Contractor just left a little while ago, we'll be replacing the entire HVAC (outdoor unit and air handler) to the tune of about 5 or 6k, and probably waiting until September to do it, because it will be cheaper. Needless to say, I'm camped out in the basement with a fan pointed at my face.

- Orthopedist appointment. When I had the surgery in March, my doc said we should know by three months whether I need further surgery. Well, this appointment was the three month mark. I'm still on crutches for anything longer than, say, walking into a restaurant and back out (pain management, not by prescription), and we still don't know. His exact words were, "You're not as far along as I would like, but we already know your knees are weird, so we'll wait longer." He's a weird little man with a bone-dry sense of humor and I promise it was funny and not as off-putting as it might sound, but it's still frustrating. And it turns out he's not lying about me being weird. I'm being screened for an obscure genetic disorder in September that might help explain things, and change my surgery options. The upside of having it is that now when someone sees me stretch my arms* and asks how I did that, I'll have an answer!

- We just got the fancy car fixed only to have the daily driver break, so we still have only one car. And double trouble, this time it's the car I can drive (the fun one is a manual V8 Camaro SS with a heavy performance clutch: my leg would fall off). It's technically drivable, but in a way that will wreck the transmission. 3rd gear is not meant for taking off. Replacing the transmission, which we may have to do anyway, will cost as much more than we paid for the car when we bought it a whopping six months ago.

- A righteous battle with an ant invasion. Tim's struggled with ants since before I lived here, but my sister in law threw a bale of hay that was intended to make a scarecrow last Halloween in the garden bed. We found an ant colony--thousands of ants and a clump of eggs the size of a baseball, plus more scattered even closer--living in the rotting hay fifteen feet from the house. Gee, I wonder why we have ant problems.


*Put your arms over your head, clasped together. Now stretch them as far back as they'll go. For most people this goes to about their ears or a little behind. I can rotate my shoulders all the way through and put my hands down behind the small of my back. I've been asked before if I have collar bones.

This entry was originally posted at http://dexwebster.dreamwidth.org/11179.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

( I wish my sister in law had more faces, just so I could punch her in all of them ) This entry was originally posted at http://dexwebster.dreamwidth.org/10255.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

it's come to my attention that I should say hey, hi, home safe from yesterday's surgery. A little wobbly, but doing pretty good. Not feeling too much pain right now, but half my knee's still numb from the anesthetic, and I have been diligently engaging in the the anti-nausea med/snacking/narcotic dance to manage the rest. Between the queasiness and the completely fucked fine motor skills/thought processes, why people ever take this shit recreationally will always be beyond me.

This entry was originally posted at http://dexwebster.dreamwidth.org/10002.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Haven't written much recently, but it seems a bit silly when I feel like I haven't done much of anything.

I started knitting a year and half or so ago. I had completed one scarf and some squares for a blanket before I'd decided I would do a sweater, despite having never done increases/decreases, seaming, stringent gauging, anything. I'm not usually that ambitious, but for once I just kind of jumped in. It isn't perfect, and it's a bit bigger than intended, but it's almost done! I initially cursed myself for a crap gauge (despite swatching), but looking it up online instead of going by what the woman at LYS said, I think it is probably just a tiny smidge bigger than the intended pattern yarn, so it didn't really show itself in the swatch. Either way, it is not outrageously big, and it's intended for Tim to wear over his dress shirt in his chilly office so a little extra is not a fate worse than death. Anyway, I'm in the process of seaming it now and feel very accomplished. And it turns out I really like seaming, which I'd been a little apprehensive about because in everything I've read it seems to get a bad rap.

Between that and buying my first hand-dyed yarn yesterday, I feel like a Real Knitter now. It is a very dark cobalt blue/black, 85% polwarth/15% silk. I am notoriously stingy and hate spending money, but it called to me. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, but for the moment I'm content to just huddle the hank to me chest and pet at it and look at all the different shades. I'm going to take some pictures of both the sweater and the yarn for ravelry.

Oh, and I've watched every available of 'My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which is ridiculous and awesome, and for which I completely blame Stitch n Bitch. Created by Lauren Faust, wife of the creator of Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, both of which she's worked on. Yes, Hasbro wanted a tie-in show for their toys, but Faust has said flat out that she wanted a complex show with female characters that don't suck. It's core cast is an ensemble of six girls who basically never talk about boys. I mean, admittedly, they're ponies, but still: there is no episode that doesn't curve-bust the Bechdel test.

Go. Watch. Come back and try to tell me that the reason Fluttershy is so timid isn't because if she were at her full badass potential all the time, Princess Celestia would have to give up her throne.

I cannot believe I just wrote that sentence.

Moving on.

Other than that I'm mostly getting ready for surgery (next Friday)--my conditioning at the moment is crap because I've been out of commission for so long, so there are some concerns about what my recovery time will be like. I'm generally an All Cooking, All The Time, everything from scratch kind of person, so I'm trying to make sure the freezer is stuffed with food for at least the week following surgery.

I'm also mentally planning a celebratory dinner for when Tim's sister finally moves out in two weeks. She and her husband have finally bought and settled on two houses—his and hers—because can't live together, but won't get divorced. For added drama, he's lost legal custody of his son because of his anti-abortion activism. Ahahaha. At least they make for great stories. If only they'd leave the cat when they move.

This entry was originally posted at http://dexwebster.dreamwidth.org/9840.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I had a big long post here about my life that I somehow lost via an unfortunately timed backspace.

Long story short, I'm a Real Knitter now (almost done with a seamed cardigan sweater), I'm on the insurance (doctor's appt. in two weeks), we have a new car (we are now Volvo people, albeit also 15 year old station wagon people), and my sister in law and nephew have an awesome cat Angel that lives with us. Jay, the nephew, terrorizes him, they neglect and don't deserve him and I want to steal him. I grew up with dogs, so I don't know if I'm a cat person, or just an Angel person, but sometimes he comes over and goes to sleep with his head on my feet and it is not fair that he's not mine.

Most importantly, while pain management may be the word of the day, I am alive.

Hello!

First of all, thank you for signing up, and for liking at least one of the same things I do. I like you already. Putting general dislikes is not that useful with wildly disparate fandoms, because what goes for one will crash and burn in another. This time I can't even say it's all about the characters, because, well, one of the fandoms doesn't really have them.

( on to the fandoms )

I had a car window shut on my face a little while ago. Not the door, just the window. Long story.

It kind of hurts.

That is all.

So I'm having knee surgery. Lateral release and cartilage cleanup. Fairly run of the mill procedure, works most of the time. Of course, the part of the time that it usually doesn't work are in cases like mine (kneecap doesn't track because my leg is shaped funny: basically extremely knock-kneed)

If that doesn't work, we have two more increasingly invasive and aggressive options.

2) moving and reattaching a muscle

and if that doesn't work,

3) breaking and rearranging the tibia.



It's been a long week.

Tempted to leave it at that, but no way can I be that succint.

We are leaving for the boat tomorrow, and we'll have four days in four days in Eastern Shore/Norfolk, and Monday morning we take off to bring it up to Baltimore, which we're estimating at 3-3 1/2 days of sailing (which is a closer call to Con.Txt than I'd prefer, but it's only because of the con that we're not taking the whole week, so thank heavens for small favors that we have the option of compressing the schedule at all)

The Monday after that will be the start of a whole new ballgame around here, as a) the boat! b) Tim starts a new job and for the first time in almost three years will have only one job -- even with the new long commute, it will be a 10 hour day instead of a 17 hour day.

Fandom obsession is Syfy's Alice miniseries, which is not perfect but has ( so much to love(spoilers) )

Does anyone have or know of anyone who has space for another roommate for Con.Txt? Stuff with bringing the boat up that week is a little haywire, and I think I'll be better off staying in the hotel than relying on access to one of the cars.

Hey! If I'm in the hotel maybe I'll actually make the whole con this time.

So, some people already know this, but I thought I'd make it official-official.

Tim and I bought a boat. For those who haven't seen pictures yet, this is Delight, a 1970 34' steel gaff-rigged schooner. For those of you who have, the red sail in the middle there is the Fisherman I'd mentioned, the smaller red one behind it is a topsail.



With the sails up it looks kind of huge, but in the grand scheme of boats it's really not that big (note the proportion of the guy sitting back near the stern to the size of the deck overall).

We were down at the bottom of the Eastern Shore all last week dealing with it and doing cleaning and maintenance after it was hauled out of the water for the survey last Tuesday. We just got back Monday night, and I spent yesterday mostly researching different boat-related shenanigans (what marina will we put it in up here, what maintenance items need to happen ASAP versus what can wait) and decompressing, given that we stayed the entire week at the home of the now-previous owner. Which was...a bit trying for me, as he is not exactly my favorite person in the world.

From looking at the boat's maintenance, he clearly cared a lot more about the things that would be visible and would draw compliments, and not so much about other things. It's been religiously hauled and prepped and painted every year. This is good structurally, as it's important to keep the rust development at bay, but it's also the biggest thing that will make the boat look pretty. He has a special pennant flag with the boat's name on it that flies at the top of the mast, he's hand-woven rope rugs that sit on the deck. But the kill switch cable for the engine was shot. Between Tim and I we spent most of a day's work chiseling out rust and gunk from under the paint in the bilge under the engine compartment, because instead of really cleaning it he just slapped another coat of paint on it. Every piece of recommended safety equipment is on board (and visible), but all of them are years out of date and need service or replacement. Every one of them.

If I had to pick one person the guy reminds me of, it would be Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice.

( a tl;dr digression on the previous owner )

While I missed the internets terribly, the upside of this is that I completely missed the Wincon brouhaha, which makes my head and my heart hurt, though in very different ways.

Anyway.

Boat!

So about that whole "won't find a boat anytime soon" thing. Tim and I went and looked at a boat in Virginia Beach this weekend.

This is her. Delight.





She's 34' (45' with the bowsprite) gaff-rigged Colvin steel schooner.

The bowsprite is the big pole that sticks out the front of the boat. Gaff-rigged means that instead of the sails going all the way to the top of the mast, like on a "regular" sailboat, they have smaller sails with wooden spars that go diagonally across the top of the sails you can see in the picture. Because they're smaller, the sails are lighter and easier to handle. There are other sails that aren't shown here (including one that would go between the masts and is known as a Fisherman, aka, a Gollywobbler -- I love sail names).

We called to put an offer on it this morning. Assuming everything goes well (survey and sea trial mainly), it should be ours by next month.


(That is not Delight in my icon. I just happen to have an icon of a similar boat -- gee, do you think I have a thing for schooners?)