Saturday

In the Old Days, each weblog entry was just dated, without any overall title, and therefore without any presumption (presupposition?) of a unifying theme of any kind. Each one was just “Here is what I am writing in my weblog today”.

I could still do that, of course. This one I’ve just titled “Saturday”, but (probably?) one doesn’t want to have too many (even more than one?) weblog entry with the same title, so that won’t do as a recurring pattern.

There’s a short (short-short) story that I’ve had swirling around in my head since some evening, years in the past, when it occurred to me while sitting in some yard of some rental house on I think Linekin Bay. I’ve never quite written it down, and I thought that perhaps today I would, and put it in the weblog here.

So I got up the energy to finally write down a draft, and it’s sitting in Drafts in the ol’ Weblog Content Management System here, but I don’t think I’ll post it today. I can’t decide whether I’m happy with it, or will be happy with it after a bit of fiddling, or if it’s entirely wrong and I should delete it and try again. I suspect it’s that middle thing, and that I’ll fiddle with it some today and tomorrow perhaps, and (perhaps) post it as a weblog entry tomorrow.

It strikes me that in a way it’s thematically similar to this year’s NaNoWriMo novel :) and therefore somewhat thematically similar to some of the others as well, and probably to most of the thoughts that interest me the most. But I won’t disclose any more than that.

I’ve probably already gotten your hopes up too high about this story. :) It’s very short and probably not really All That Much, just so ya know.

What else? Spennix is max level in the new World of Warcraft Shadowlands expansion already. Traditionally that should go in the secret Second Life (and other virtual words and games and stuff) weblog, but I really haven’t written in that in ages, and returning to two weblogs in the same week would require more energy than I’m willing (able?) to devote to it.

Leveling from 50 to 60 was basically a walk in the park. The new content seems mildly interesting, although many of the things in the new expansion are either very much like things in prior expansions (blue people, annoying little servant guys, blobby evil things) or are (rather inexplicably) exactly things in prior expansions.

(I mean, the Drust were one of the big enemy groups in BfA, and just by coincidence they are also one of the big enemy groups in one of the areas of the Universal Afterlife? I mean what a coincidence, eh? Maybe they’ll explain it, but heh. Given that every planet in the universe supposedly sends its dead here, an awful lot of Azeroth seems to be around. And for that matter the place should really be much more crowded!)

It’s the end of the year, and especially given that we didn’t take the traditional vacation this year (we had a place near Portland, Maine reserved with M’s sister’s family, but due to You Know What it was all canceled), I have considerable vacation days left, and am taking lots of them in November and December; I think I have like six working days left in the year (yes, I’m spoiled!). This is nice for relaxation purposes, but not as nice for Imposter Syndrome.

Also it turns out that unlike Previous Employer, Current Employer doesn’t throw away vacation days at the end of the year at all (there’s just a maximum number that you can accrue in total), so there isn’t really any reason to take a whole bunch in December. But I’m used to it, and other people do also, and I reserved them as vacation before I bothered to look up the policy, so here we are!

And today it’s cold and rainy and grey for the second (third? not sure) day in a row, and I feel like just crawling back all warm under the covers, possibly until Spring and/or easy and reliable vaccination. Maybe I will for an hour or two before or after dinner, at any rate. :) Stay comfy!

Warm and Cold Places

Ooh, it’s snowing again!

So the other day (when was that?) when it was very cold, I decided to see a little more of the city, and I went up the stairs and walked on the surface (surface!) from Grand Central Station to Times Square (the route of the S train, basically).

And it was very cold!

In fact I had intended to walk all the way to the Port Authority Bus Terminal (on 8th Avenue, where one picks up the ACE line), but it was so cold that by the time I came across a subway entrance down into Time Square Station I plunged down eagerly.

Also I had forgotten my gloves, but was was okay because I just kept my hands in my coat pockets. Except when I had to take them out to use my phone as a scanner in order to interact with portals and such.

Because I am playing Ingress on my new Smart-o-Phone!

Ingress is a fun ARG (Augmented Reality Game) sort of game that makes you actually move about in the real world and be near certain locations and stuff when you push buttons on your phone, in order to deal with the XM Satellite Radio signals (or something) that are leaking into the world and something something portals and mind-control fields and stuff and also lots of videos that I have not watched.

Your phone, in the game, uses a network of orbital satellites, originally launched for the military, that enables it to tell where you are in the real world to within, in good conditions, like a few feet.

Oh wait, that part is in real life.

Weird.

So that is being cold and playing Ingress!

There are lots of other things I have been wanting to weblogify about, but I don’t necessarily remember them all, but I will not let that stop me.

Of course it would help if I could remember what I have already weblogified about, but that is easily done! One moment…

Ha, I see I wanted to weblogify about Ingress, and I have now done that. A little at least. Maybe I should mention that as a neophile I am in the Enlightened faction rather than the Resistance (of course we should cooperate with whatever force is sending mysterious energy into the world to boost mankind into the next phase of evolution; what could possibly go wrong?) (also it reminds me of SMAC, which is nostalgic), and I am currently level (um) five of eight (where each level requires twice as many Whatever Points to achieve than the one before, like old-fashioned Dungeons and Dragons, so eight is wayyyyy off).

Oh, and adventures! Yes yes, that is really the main thing I wanted to write about, because woot.

The other day (longer ago than the day that I did the walking on the surface thing, I think), there was this snowstorm during the day while I was at work, and also it was very cold, and it took me about two hours to make the usually-twenty-minutes trip from The Station to home.

This was because, while not all that deep, the snow was beautiful and fine and powdery and very cold, so driving on it was sort of like driving on lots of little hills and drifts made of teeny tiny ballbearings, which is a thing that ordinary two-wheel-drive cars are not all that good at.

(Here is an Instragram of the faithful car waiting for me in the parking lot, with tiny ballbearings all over it.)

At first it was pretty much fine, driving along the local highway, as long as I did not try to go too fast, and was careful to restrain the car’s natural desire to slide gradually off of the road and into the comfy ditch at the edge.

Then I had to turn off of the local highway onto the even more local highway, and as soon as I turned the wheel slightly the car got very enthusiastic about the whole turning thing, and I left the road several yards before the actual exit ramp, and excitingly went around the wrong side of the Exit sign and up a little bank and down the other side, trying to work the controls so that the car would not stop there in a disrecommended place, and was successful enough that the car and I slid right back onto the exit ramp, about halfway along, and fortunately no one was coming because we continued (if I am remembering right) to slide right through the red light and onto the even more local highway which was where we were trying to be.

So that worked out. :)

Then the even more local highway was fine until I got about even with The Mall, from which point on the road I could tell that the Big Hill leading up toward home was all covered with vehicles with flashing lights and things, so I turned (carefully) into the parking lot of The Mall since there wasn’t anything else obvious to do, and parked, and SMS’d M about how there would be a delay in getting home.

Also I went into the bank’s ATM place to get money out since i was short on cash anyway, and to recharge my phone which was short on electricity and they have a plug there.

(Here is an Instagram taken from inside the bank’s ATM place.)

I clomped about out in the snow a bit (there were very very few other cars or people around; I don’t know what all those other people on the train and parked in the station parking lot ended up doing; very mysterious), and walked over to the bottom of the Big Hill and found out from the fireperson there that the Hill was not closed due to the tiny ballbearings on the road, but rather due to a fire that had happened on a road just off the even more local highway, on the hill, and it would probably be awhile before it was open again.

And from my prior experience, trying to get up the hill in the car over the tiny ballbearings would probably not have gone well even with no emergency vehicles or fires or blinking lights involved.

So I got back in the car again and tried to go around the other way, but found I could not go up even the relatively small rise in the street leading back around the other way, so I stopped at a little (and surprisingly open) convenience store opposite that street, and bought hot coffee, and a muffin, and some of those irresistible soft chocolate chip cookies that come in boxes. And a banana.

Then since I had seen a plow-looking thing go by and there was a good run for getting up to speed by starting from the convenience store parking lot, I tried the street again, and got over the rise, and slid successfully down the other side and onto yet another local highway, and around various corners and through lights and things to within site of The Other Big Hill that was the last thing in the way of getting home.

The whole going-the-other-way thing had been problematic mostly because of this Other Big Hill, which is quite steep for trying to get up in the prevailing ballbearing conditions, but does have a nice long run before it for getting up to speed, so I did the obvious thing and sort of slid up the hill at a comparatively dizzying rate, and skewed around onto Our Street which is a bit before the top of the hill, and slid down Our Street and fishtailed slightly into the driveway and was home.

Woot!

And we had cookies (and a banana) to go with the delicious chili (or possibly chilli or chile) that M had waiting for me. (Here is an Instragram of that; yum!)

So that is those adventures. I do love the winter!

(Oh, and if you are in the neighborhood you should go to the Steampunk Coffeehouse! Because it is good!)