missizzy

As usual, I am spending the fourth at home, watching Wimbledon. Though this is another weekend I feel the need to hide at home, because of the kind of people who have likely come to DC to celebrate this year. No doubt feeling very smug about everything being destroyed yesterday. Some of them will likely suffer from it, of course, but I know better than to even hope most the suffering will be by those who brought this all on.
I have other concerns. My mother's denture broke this week, and it's going to be five long days before she can get things fixed. Until then, there's a severe limit to what she can eat. She and I have both been hit with the headaches this week, which is probably mostly the heat; the heat dome's gone, but even the normal temperatures are terrible right now. I don't think that second date's happening. His texting behavior has gotten weird, I don't believe all he's claiming, and I'm currently battling back paranoid thoughts about it all. My sister and I did at least get our plane tickets to San Diego, but she's been having a worse month.
It's nice out in the evenings, though. Coming home from D&D Wednesday night, I got to see fireflies. Last night, I also finally got a Steam account. Their human verification process is now one I've never seen before, clicking where lines cross, but it works just fine. I bought and started Date Everything! but I struggled so much to get out of the office that I called it for the night as soon as I was able to save my progress.

It has officially gotten hot enough out that the upper lock on our front door no longer works; it sometimes refuses to in the heat. The lower lock is still working fine, but we may finally call a handyman to deal with it. If it would be safe for him to do such work with conditions being as they are predicted to be during the upcoming work week. The worst of the heat won't even start to come in until tomorrow, according to my weather app this morning. But even so, I'm basically going to do my handful of errands today almost as soon as I can do so with the dry cleaners being opened when I get there.
It's also complicating arranging a second date. We're both too old to be walking anywhere in this. Though I'm hoping there's a weekday evening we can find some dinner venue we can both easily metro to after work.
My Comic Con badge arrived on Wednesday. We should probably book our flights soon. My mom has actually managed to make arrangements with a friend for company that week, though my sister may get her friends to look in on her again as well.

The tourists have been coming in over the past few days, and they're all here now. My commute wasn't too badly effected, but it was a bad one for those in the library who have to take the metro actually through DC. Despite what the the parking and traffic notices the Pentagon has been sending out the past couple weeks have been trying to pretend, it's not the army's birthday they're going to be celebrating tomorrow.
My sister has outright forbidden either my mother or myself from going to the protests. She's convinced people are going to get killed. And there's a strong possibility she's right. I doubt any of the people currently swarming around DC and probably also Old Town right now would have any bones about it, if anyone dared point out of them how many people of this city they're in have lost their livelihoods these past five months. Some of them are almost certainly hoping for an excuse. I suppose they're unlikely to be on this side of the Potomac tomorrow, but even so, after getting the dry cleaning tomorrow, I may not set foot outside the house until Monday.
We are currently under a flood watch, and there's still a chance there'll be rain during the day tomorrow. Unfortunately, though, it looks more likely that'll be over by morning.

I actually completely forgot about the French Open until last night. I just don't really follow tennis anymore. Though I tuned into today, watched Carlos Alcaraz and Francis Tiafoe play some good tennis, and apparently this event is now streaming on Max, which means I can watch it during my commute and in the gym as well.
Next weekend, on the other hand, I'm hoping to have a date. If the guy's schedule allows for it, anyway. Hopefully my sinuses will have quieted a little by then. They were pretty bad this weekend. I started work on my new song anyway, but I'm not sure whether or not I'm going to stick with my current choice.
When I finished yesterday's episode of Doctor Who, I immediately texted my sister to tell her I had done so. ( She promptly started texting back about... )

This has been a week. It culminated in last night, when mom went to the hospital again, this time for severe abdominal pain-which they could find no cause for, and thankfully it eventually went away, so they let her go home, and she's fine right now.
She's also having more trouble paying the bills. Wednesday morning she initially thought we'd suddenly gotten a phone bill for $666 dollars, which certainly would have been appropriately symbolic for the phone companies, but it turned out that was, instead, how much she'd overpaid them by, since she'd paid last month's bill multiple times. We're going to have to set up some sort of system for keeping track of what's been paid and what hasn't.
But it's not like my memory's very good either, right now. Feels a good deal like a sieve at times. Tends to happen, I've been told, when you country starts descending into a fascist dictatorship. Yesterday, we all got an email saying we don't have to email them five things we do each week anymore, but were required to come up with some way to improve governmental efficiency by Wednesday; and it was very clear once I saw the form they're hoping we snitch on each other. I made a general comment about a less hot-button practical matter I suspect a lot of people will make, one I could avoid blaming anyone for.

I was thinking at this point I was, to some extent, done with Marvel. Back when it was colder out, I found I couldn't be assed to walk all the way to the cinema just to see Brave New World, and I'm still not watching the new Daredevil series. But Thunderbolts had more characters in it I had an affection for, I hadn't heard about the reviews being bad or anyone calling to boycott it, and it was nice out today for a walk. So I went to see it, having read very little about it. ( Read more... ) I suppose I shall be back in a couple of months time for Fantastic Four, unless the reviews are bad.
My experiments with the webcam unfortunately failed; I got audio feedback whenever I raised the volume of my singing even a little. I've actually got a recording on the iPad from yesterday that I initially thought I might post if I didn't get a better one today, but the way my sinuses were I now think I might wait another week to see if I can try to record it a little less hindered.

Today started with a guy being hit by a car right in front of me. I was waiting for the bus when he seemed from my vantage point to just be flung forth from the car! Fortunately one of the other bystanders was a trained first responder, so he was able to take care of the guy until the ambulance arrived. He seemed pretty lucid and I think he stood up on his own power before they put him on the stretcher. My normal bus ended up being redirected, and I had to wait anyway for the cops to get around to asking what I saw (not much, since I was on the wrong side of the road to see the hit itself; I basically confirmed to them he landed where he'd been when they showed up.) I got on the next one and got to the library half an hour later than usual, but the Chief Librarian was very understanding. Honestly, I felt unnerved by how routine the rest of my commute was, and vaguely shaky for an hour or so, but perfectly fine after that. (Until everything started aching this afternoon, but that's a separate matter entirely. I think.)
I just hope that guy's going to be all right. Unfortunately, I may never know.

Since Patch 8 came out Tuesday, I've been on a bit of a photography spree through my old savefiles, taking photos partially to add to my tumblr entries, and also just for fun. It's been harder with the first two acts, though, since I deleted way too many saves in my quest to reduce my lag issues. I've had to replay parts of the game just for screenshots. And I can't get back to the magic lesson with Gale, because the new patch has put multiple scenes with Astarion in the way! I don't know if I would get that scene if I started that playthrough now. I'm starting to understand why people are mad about him getting all the content.
Another thing that happened this week: "Even if We're Just Dancing in the Dark" has now gotten multiple kudos for the third day in a row, though it got more yesterday and Thursday. My Daredevil fics have been getting plenty kudos in recent weeks, but rarely more than one or two for any one fic per day. I'm wondering if someone recced it somewhere. I'd really like to know who did, if so...

This morning, the thing I knew I'd being doing today besides Hotelpocalypse would be a morning run to the Giant. It started Sunday night, when I realized we failed to get bread, and I'd already added tinfoil, menstrual pads, and painkillers to the list of things we needed right away even before mom also asked for milk this morning. It was too much for my single bag to carry; I walked home holding the bread in my other hand. I got there to an email from the IT guy saying he was coming immediately, which meant I'd be dealing with both him and the DMV today, too, since I'd have the afternoon left for the latter.
It was be a good thing he came to actually look at the computer, since it turned out the amount of thermal paste I'd put on was just fine; the problem was instead the power cables getting loose. He tightened them, installed a different piece of Samsung software to support the SSDs then the one they started with, told me I'd done a good job assembling it, and left with the computer working with half an hour to go before noon. I've tested it properly with some Baldur's Gate since, and it does seem to be fine at the moment. The red light's still flashing, but he insisted it's supposed to do that.
My sister got into the hotel submission form eight minutes into the sale. I got in at about twelve minutes. My brother-in-law didn't get in for 23! Normally things would not look good for us getting anything from it, but I've seen at least one comment since that it might have gone a little slower this time than previous years, so maybe my sister will get us rooms at some downtown hotel; we all asked for two. Though she's actually not even sure she'll be sent to SDCC right now, and I'm not sure what happens if she books the rooms and then has to bail.
In contrast to the hotel sale, applying for the real ID took much less time than I anticipated. Even when there was a long line to check-in at the DMV, the process itself was quick enough I was only there about an hour. They sent me home with a pair of stamped papers which are officially a temporary license; the card will apparently be in the mail. It's okay. I don't need it until July.

As if my gaming PC not working and IT not getting back to me since Wednesday wasn't bad enough, Friday things came to a head with my phone, where the headphones weren't working properly with either adapter I have on hand, one of them recently bought, and restoring to backup did nothing. A little research later, I came to believe Apple has started making the ones for lightning lousy, and I didn't want to shell out a crazy amount for headphones that would only plug directly in until I inevitably have to replace the phone in a few years, so I tried buying an adapter from another company. That meant I was without headphones on AwesomeCon weekend. I ended up taking Lyfts there both days, but very much missed them on the metro home today!
The Con itself went fairly well. Yesterday I spent most of my time on the floor, got a lovely piece of Imodna art and a few other things, and attended a panel that was weakly put together, but did still teach me a bit about modern Chinese culture. Today I got to play D&D again, rolled much better than I have either of the other two times I've played at AwesomeCon, and ended up making my tiefling paladin character much more tragic than I initially thought I would. Indeed, today was the first time I was looking at my character possibly about to die, and was absolutely fine with his story ending that way. Ultimately he survived, though. Characters I spotted included some of the queens from Six, a Mayrina with a "Have you seen this hag?" sign, a Molly McIntire, an Arlo Black, a Manamana guy with the pink muppets on either shoulder, and more Lord of the Rings characters than I've seen possibly ever. Although that last might have had to do with a panel this morning with a bunch of the cast members. (The line apparently started forming at eight. I was never going to be that ambitious.)
The adapter arrived while we were eating dinner tonight, and right now the headphones are working properly through it. I'll have to see how long that remains the case. If the IT guy doesn't contact me tomorrow, I'm going to have to do something, but I'm not sure what.