Wookiemonster's Log

This will be a somewhat reflective entry, and probably a little bit whiny-assed. Tomorrow's entry will hopefully be all farted rainbows and barfed sunshine.

But yeah, 2012 rather sucked. And, as I stated on FB, I'm ambivalent about 2013, since the past few years have sucked, each year getting a little worse. This past year, there was all the work drama, and added to that was losing TomTom and YoYo, and damn near losing Rocky.

Financially, I'm about where I was a year ago. For as expensive as all the vet care was, it's been mostly paid off. Still have all that stuff on the GE card. So, yeah, an added bill there. Because of all that stuff, the rest of the credit cards are about in the same spot. I owe less on the engine, but, I still haven't paid off Henry's, and now they won't work on the car until the bill is settled. Meanwhile, the car needs an oil change, a new windshield, and new tires sometime in the semi-near future. Oh, and I found the paperwork for the windshield... Turns out, I had it replaced back in 2007, so, yeah, not covered. And it'll be about $200, parts and labor. On the bright side, the crack seems to have stopped growing, so, I figure I have a little time.

Speaking of things being older than I thought... As near as I can figure, my old HP printer lasted me at least 7 years, if not 8 or 9 years. And I had to replace it because the rollers weren't grabbing the paper anymore. Yeah, I guess it didn't owe me anything. Anyway, the new Canon printer is all hooked up and good to go. I even got the wireless set up, and I can now print wirelessly from the laptop. And yes, it does work. Though... I managed to hit the wrong button and accidentally reset the router. As in, I needed to go into the router and reset the name, passcode, and everything else. Fortunately, I was able to recover the old passkey, which means that my Kindle, PS3, and everyone who uses their laptop here doesn't now need to go in and reset the passkey on their machines. Whew! Though, this is a big thing for me, since I can navigate computers well enough, but absolutely suck at networking. I've got my shit here set up, and that's IT. As is, I gave up on getting the PS3 on the network, and then suddenly, it was connected to the network and updating itself. So, I suck at networking, but have some sort of Force talent with it...

Anyway, not much else. Today was productive in that I managed to finish up with cleaning out old files and folders and getting stuff set up for 2013. Consequently, I have a start on cleaning up my desk. Still feeling crappy. Kind of hoping I'll start feeling better in about two weeks when the new vitamins should start kicking in.

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Some moderate family drama going on that has me a bit...stressed. Mom's a bit upset at my rant against the "relatives" who are mad at her for not being invited to my sister's wedding. As for me, I stand by what I said. Fact is, I stand by the statement that we did nothing wrong, and have nothing to apologize or atone for. Mom's still going to invite them to her wedding, and that's her choice. I have no more right to tell her whom to invite and to not invite than they do to tell us they should have been invited to my sister's wedding. It still bothers me that Mom's kinda sorta inviting them because other people are telling her whom to invite to her wedding, and 2 or more spots are being given to people who aren't worth it, perhaps at the expense of people who are more deserving to be there.

If I ever get married, those people most certainly will not be invited. And that's my choice.

Actually, if I ever get married, and that's a pretty big "if" right now, I might just elope and avoid all this bullshit.

Other than that... Today was busy and productive. I gave myself a haircut this morning. Then I cleaned the bathroom, took care of cat boxes and bird cages, and vacuumed the house. That wipes out most of the rest of the nasty chores and such for the rest of the break. I'll have cat boxes and laundry to do this weekend, but, that's about it. Tomorrow will be another errand day, what with the blood bank, the chiropractor, and the drug store. And maybe getting my new watch resized. But for the most part, the chore part of things is done. What's left isn't too terribly time or labor-intensive, so, time for some R&R. Reading, writing, and gaming. Maybe socializing, if anyone's around.

Actually, the Return to Dance kind of invaded my thoughts last night and today in that I found myself wishing I could go dancing this weekend and get away from everything for a bit. When I was talking to Lydia on Saturday, and she was telling me about having to care for her husband as well as herself and so on, she said that dance was like medicine to her. I'm realizing it's kind of like that for me, too. Cue jokes about being off my meds. Though at the same time, when I left the team, I had to change something, because at that time, the medicine wasn't helping and was in fact creating additional problems.

You know, as I reflect on this past year and life in general, on the bit with family and dance and so on... I don't think people realize how cyclical things are. To quote BSG, "All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again." And we all play roles. Sometimes we switch roles. Sometimes we play the same roles over and over again. And...it takes courage to break the cycle. To break out of the patterns and either form new, positive patterns or start moving linearly or something. Some people never apologize, and the people around them are forever apologizing for being human, apologizing for the sake of friendships or family, forever giving up what they want for the sake of someone else, and until they break the cycle, they will never get ahead. It's hard to break out of these cycles because we're afraid that we'll lose our role and end up lonely. But in that case, perhaps it's most important to break the cycle, risk being alone, end up learning independence, and be stronger for it and more in charge of one's destiny.

And as I write this, I realize I need to take my own advice. With so many things. With sleep... The past few nights, I've been up too late and slowly eroding my progress for a stable sleep cycle. Yeah, there's stress and life stuff and business and excitement at not having to get up early and go to work. But, I need to maintain the sleep habits that work best for me and use the time for writing and such. For eating? I work hard, lose weight, look good, then slowly start gaining weight until I'm fat again. Except for the past decade, where I've just been pretty consistently overweight by 40-60 pounds. Broke the cycle, but not in the way I wanted. Time to change that. Actually, a new cycle was formed. I feel bad, vow to lose weight, manage to stress myself out over it, then give up. The feel bad after a few weeks, vow to lose weight, stress myself out again, and so on. The stress doesn't help, and neither does the resultant sleep loss, and added stress from sleep loss, etc.

So, for 2013, I plan to start breaking bad cycles.

In other news... Rich gave me a rather nice gift card to Amazon for Christmas. I used it to order a new printer. A decent Canon printer/scanner/copier that also does duplex printing. Oh, and can print on CDs and DVDs. Plus, better photo quality printing. And wireless. I'll still connect it via USB to the desktop, but I'll set up the wireless to print from my laptop.

If it gets here before the end of the break, then great! If not, well, 'll be busy after work for a few days. Once it gets here, I plan to clean out and reorganize my desk area, getting rid of old tech (meaning printer cartridges and such that I don't even have the printers for anymore), refiguring everything for the new equipment or even better configurations for old equipment. The goal is to make it all a lot more streamlined and conducive to writing. It's still all kind of in a "student" configuration. Anyway, yeah.

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