missizzy

I admit, after a week of hearing more about the blue wave, the various aspects of it, and all the other expressions of hope, I'm actually feeling optimistic at the moment. Though who knows how that's going to change once the lame-duck session of Congress hits next week.
I suppose it'll be interesting if our boss gets impeached. Though I don't even know if that will affect much that's going on in the library.
The week's cheer was also hampered somewhat by most of the other things that happened to me during it. Especially the headaches. I may well try doing to the doctor again over them, because they've been that bad. Also the various technical malfunctions, including my headphone adapter giving out yesterday, though I was able to get a replacement quickly enough. It was to the point that when I started stream this afternoon, I was waiting for Act II expansion mod I was starting play on to have major difficulties. Thankfully it didn't haven anything besides a couple of aspects of incompleteness, like no voiced dialogue, which you can get used to, and no maps so far except for the outside area, which is a bit more annoying. And the visuals are truly beautiful. I was just gazing at them in wonder.

In the past two days I have felt new levels of justification for keeping up that personal website of mine, all these years. Or at least continually putting my new fics up on it. It was Friday morning when I realized I really should replace the head graphic with the Star Trek and Harry Potter graphics on it, so this morning I went searching through my folders of downloaded images I haven't touched in years. I ended up looking for new images of Stephen Maturin and Nelson, Murdock, and Page, as well as a Mighty Nein promo image. It was just after I'd made the change that I realized that the intro to my page still linked to the Wordpress blog I haven't posted on in over ten years! I now link to my Twitch and YouTube channels as well as my BlueSky account there instead.
I've also spent the past two days mourning Patrick Stewart. My formative memories include seeing Star Trek: The Next Generation on TV; my sister was watching it at the time. Upn above my computer, in fact, there's a poster of him as Picard that my sister put up originally, with a bunch of other posters that have since come down, but neither she nor I would take that one down, it seems. The X-Men movies then became a bigger fandom for me, and now, honestly, I care less about seeing Doomsday than just seeing the bits with him and Ian McKellen in them. This is another piece of my childhood dying, and hearing about how good a person he was makes this hit all the harder.

I already knew that Bioware had been a studio that had put out some iconic games. But it seems since they were confirmed as fallen victim to Kushner & co. two days ago, I have learned a bit more of their history, including all they were responsible for. I've also heard the talk about how they went in decline in the past decade and a half-which, I also now have the impression, might have also been partly EA's fault. But whatever mistakes they made, they never deserved this destruction at the hands of right-wing capitalism. I'm almost certain to finish my playthrough of the original Baldur's Gate this Suday, and that's going to be a bittersweet moment.
Yesterday morning I found a little time to load Dragon Age: Origins as well, and reconfigured it into windows mode, which hopefully will make me able to stream it. I want to do a test recording and make sure I can set up OBS to capture it properly, so even though I'm taking Monday off, it may not be until next weekend I take it online, but I am now determined to. At this point, it's a statement of support for the franchise and its creators I want to make. Down the line, I'll still have decide if I'm willing to give EA money for the other three games, but I'm still early in my playthrough, and I think it's going to take me a long time. There's always the hope they'll crash and burn the way they deserve to first-and hopefully then sell the IP to someone better.

Spoke too soon when it came to my mom getting sick. She woke up this morning with symptoms. Then when she called the doctor about it she told her to call 911 for fear she was getting another stroke, and we ended up having the paramedics in, who said they didn't think she was and accepted it when she really didn't want to go the hospital. If those tests I ordered yesterday ever arrive, she can use one of them.
I doubt I'll need all of them anyway, since I'm definitely recovering. I woke up this morning with a terrible headache and night sweats, which apparently can happen in the more recent Covid variants in liu of a fever, but right now I'm barely having any symptoms at all. Of course if things get bad enough with mom, I may be staying home the rest of the week anyway.
At least I got to watch the State of the Role live. I'm actually quite excited to see All Work, No Play is coming back, and the rest of it sounds interesting as well. And I suspect I'll end up streaming the new video game they're involved with. I don't know if I'll be doing any of the live shows next year, though, especially if I do land San Diego badges come Saturday, since the only one in the U.S. is only two weeks after it. I'd actually be more likely to go to the Toronto one, except I still don't like the idea of leaving this country and then having to come back in right now.
ETA: Mom tested negative, though apparently that doesn't necessarily mean much on the first day of showing symptoms. The instructions suggested testing a second time in two days, so we'll see then.

After a day with a stuffy head and voice and having to cancel the bonus stream I was planning to do today, I have just taken my temperature. 99.2. There is contradictory information as to whether that counts as a low-grade fever or is just the high end of normal temperature fluctuations. I'm going to have to take it again tomorrow morning before I decide whether I go into work or not. I can't even know if this is anything infectious when my mom doesn't even seem to be feeling much differently than she usually does, but her health is only continuing to fail, anyway. (She also got the most recent Covid shot not too long ago, since they haven't managed to take those away from people with health insurance of her age and health yet.)
The cats didn't get to have the vet look at them, either. They simply would not let my sister catch them and put them in the carriers when she came over to do so, since that was a task certainly beyond my mother or myself. Around the time Elinor pissed herself in terror she declared she wasn't going to force them; she feared inflicting permanent trauma. We're just going to have to pay a lot more money to get a vet to come here instead. Hopefully said vet will have some experience with animals like this and will have a way to get near them for long enough to actually give them the check-up.

I first got a sore throat last night. It was still there when I woke up this morning, which the symptoms being classic for a sinus flare-up, which very often happens to me when the temperatures start fluctuating, and the pollen may currently be up at well. Naturally I thought that had to be what it was-until I got into work, and learned one of my colleagues had gotten Covid.
It's about twelve hours after that, and I currently think it's probably still a sinus flare-up. It's certainly gotten no worse, and at various points of the day it even seemed to be abating a little. Tomorrow I'll probably just put on the fancy mask to get the dry cleaning and also the Claritin-D; normally I'd wait until next week to try buying it but I really need that decongestant right now.
But we can't quarantine properly even after that, because I'm not the only creature in this house with something wrong with me. Fiona has something visibly wrong with her eye, and my mother has decided that really, we should get checkups for both of our cats, and has scheduled an appointment for Monday evening. And we have to hope the eye doesn't swelling before then.

Things are apparently the "best case scenario" for my brother-in-law; apparently it's not spreading, and he shouldn't even need chemo. My sister's still not in the best way, but things could be a lot worse.
And I, meanwhile, may be joining another D&D group. I went to a looking for group happy hour a week and a half ago, and managed to join one of the groups on offer there. For my character, I'm probably going to bring Tara the wild magic sorcerer out again; the kind of development she got last time I played her seems like it might serve her well for this particular campaign setting. We'll be meeting Thursday nights, which is definitely not my preferred night, but I'll live.
I also reached the big durge scene in Act II today. I'm beginning to understand now why people have said Astarion's a good character to romance as a resist durge. I may well hit Moonrise Towers and lock said romance in next week.

I went on a comic book store run today, my first in a long time. I think it's only the second time I've even been in DC since Trump put the city under occupation. I went a little earlier in the day, before it got too hot out, had lunch while sitting in Dupont Circle, having gotten a print copy of Mighty Nein: Stories Untold, although I've been listening to the audiobook already. The remains of a huge recently destroyed tree still sit in the park-and there are notes pinned to the trunk of people saying their farewell to the tree in question, which is the best thing I've seen with my own eyes in a while. But I also saw the three members of the National Guard standing around, not really doing anything, but probably making most of the people there feel a little less safe.
Then I came home to do an extra stream and my two final attempts at recording my latest song. Neither of them worked out, and I've now gone with the recording I got last weekend.

Title: Off the Grid Help
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Characters: Sam, Bucky, the Fizsimmonses, the Richardses, David Lieberman, Mystique
Warning: Technical issues
Disclaimer: They all belong to Marvel
Note: Just an idea for a would-be movie scene I've had in my head ever since Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D concluded.

( They managed to keep the jet cloaked all the way down, but the landing wasn't nearly smooth enough to not sent gusts of air out all across the cottage's front yard. )

When I got home today, literally the first thing I did after taking off my work clothes was go to my Twitch settings to opt out of being used for AI training. Though if I'm reading the disclaimer right, this will prevent Amazon from using my streams to program their non-Twitch LLMs but there's no refusing to let Twitch use them for their own AI purposes. Apparently they made clear today they will ignore all our objections and assume we can't leave them because all the alternatives are doing this too. Unfortunately they're probably right. The only hope is that the bubble bursts hard enough to make this not worth it for them anymore.
And hells, I think I am going to monetize next year. Even if I never become eligible for affiliate, I can at least force them to giving other streamers something for the bits.