Saga

 Such a weird dream on Saturday night.  Something had revealed magic to people, and I had just enough of a gift to do what was basically unseen servant.  Except my ones had a dumber copy of my mind, while everyone else's were mindless.  Then more gifted casters found they could also put dumb copies of my mind into there magically constructed creatures.  The end result was all magic creatures carrying all of my old grudges.  It didn't go too well for a couple of people.

I guess it was an anger dream.

Otherwise my weekend was significantly filled by reading Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples Saga.  I had read the first 24ish as singles online years ago and then had bought the hardbacks last year (volume 3 might have been at the start of this year, all pre-SARS-CoV-2 time seems so very long ago).  On Saturday I finally started reading my hardbacks.  Motivating my self to reread can be hard, thus having not opened the first volume before - but I was quickly sucked in to the story and really enjoyed the reread and by mid-Book-2, I was on new material and super invested.  Books 2 and 3 were my Sunday.

Book 3 was more brutal than I was ready for.

For dinner I ordered Hells, with a voucher for a free drink and delivery.  The food was fine but the delivery guy ignored the delivery instructions, which was rather annoying.

Today I have been watching too much YouTube.  My head s feeling squishy and ick so I am not doing much.

Though the hot Tenancy Liaison did ring to ask how much bubble wrap I will need to prepare for the move.  I just 'ummed' at him, so am getting 10m of it.

Tricksy sleep

 For the first time in what seems like months I managed pretty close to a full night's sleep last night.  I am assuming the fact I feel even more tired today is to do with the vivid dream disruption the sleep still featured.  I only remember parts of a couple of the dreams, one involved time travelling to bioengineer myself as an embryo (for reasons that were about mind control being evil but physically changing a brain to think more in that direction on its own being fine) to like ice skating (I don't recall why this was important).  Of the other, all I remember is that it involved my 7th form crush (who I don't even remember exists all that often).

Anyway, things I skipped through zoning out.

Wedneday, I vaguely recall roleplaying in the evening so must have left the house.

Thursday I did not wash or dress or leave the house.  My spoons were missing.

Friday, Tina made me pool.  It was all the day I had in me.

Mostly have just been watching my way through Chuck.  It is not good TV.  So internally inconsistent.  And so anti-woke.  Though I guess it happened just before woke took off as a word.

Zoned out

I was mid-writing the last entry and then it was hours later.

Head of fuzziness.

Stupid summer. It should always be winter. But never Christmas.

 Tuesday morning, after I had failed to clean my flat much at all and had a overly keen grocery order arrive (I only just managed to get things into my freezer), I had the tenancy liaisons turn up to sit in my lounge and talk to me about the move.

We now have a vague and tentative move date.

The woman who used to annoy me by being cheerfully patronising was back, the unsettlingly attractive dude was with her (I had hoped he had replaced her).

She was cheerful and patronising but mostly just smiled and left the talking to him.  And he was more interesting in talking about my LEGO and gaming console.  So it wasn't bad.

In the evening I went for Nandos with Simon, Joe and Firmin.  We then watched Knives Out as a group and I think I succeeded at not dropping any spoilers.

People are the worst

Yesterday I fainted in the shower and faceplanted into the wall.  It was not ideal.

And then I still went and hunted junkfood anyway.  I led to buying very disappointing chocolate by accident.  Party edition favourites.  Basically just a box of various Freddo frog insults to confectionery.

Briefly went on to a dating app after someone I went on a date with nine months before I met Shitlord had messaged me.  I was quickly reminded why I hadn't kept in touch.

It led to getting messages from someone new, who it was quickly obvious was probably a romance scammer.  Once he sent pictures a quick google image search revealed he is using pictures stolen from YouTuber/Instagram influencer NavaTheBeast.  And has terrible English while claiming to be born and bred English speaking Texan.

Why are scammers so lazy?

I hurt myself a bunch

I should have less than 1/64th of the radioactive compound left by now.

But my day has been one of accidentally injuring myself.  Just getting a drink led to painfully stubbing a finger and then slicing my hand open on the corner of a plastic bag.  Because that isn't embarrassing.

It is not a day when I am successfully humaning.

There are several band-aids on several unrelated places where I was bleeding.

It may be the lack of sleep.  It has been quite a while since I have managed a night's sleep.  It has been all short interrupted bursts.

Unhelpful brain.

If the 90ish km/h winds eased back, that might help.

And I have done nothing today but listen to the audiobook of Rachel Bloom's book.

Talking to myself like a fucking crazy person

I have angered my body somehow.  It is doing the weird too-exhausted-to-move-but-rather-manic thing.  Thus chatting to myself, or more accurately thinking out loud.  I vaguely recall this was how changing dose on my anti-epilepsy meds felt but I haven't changed them in years (I had planned to do it this year but then the whole respiratory and thyroid distractions came along).

I guess I just have a day of no filter between thoughts and things coming out my mouth.  Occasionally, poorly, in song.

I am radioactive

Wednesday I was dressed and mostly sorted in time to go to Carla and Ian's for D&D. I rolled nothing but perception checks (which I suck at) all night. I never use my actual abilities, which is oddly satisfying.

Thursday, I did not manage to shower, but did wander to Pakkers for some junkfood.

This morning I got up early (after several nights of mostly not sleeping) and was ready well ahead of time to go to the hospital for my nuclear medicine appointment. I got there early enough that I had been shot up with pertechnetate about ten minutes before I was even due to be there. So I am radioactive. With ionising radiation, the bad sort, if in tiny amounts. The radiologist had given the impression it wasn't the ionising sort. But it is.

The half-life is 6.01 hours according to google, so my being radioactive won't last long.

A bit of research shows this is like getting over 32 x-rays. Or 1/5th of the CT scan I got the other month. This year is just me collecting millisieverts of radiation dose.  Just today I have had an amount of gamma radiation about the same as the average total radiation for a year.

After the test I visited my favourite hospital based person, delivering lollies I have been saving for her and forgetting to give her since April. Then stuffed around a little so as to not pass Shitlord's route to work at a time I have bumped into him before and then headed home.

Yes, I still plan myself around avoiding bumping into my ex. I am an adult. So fucking adult.

And I had to get home for the landlords running a meeting with the tenants of the building. We got a quick look in the new building - it is very white and on the whole I don't love any of the changes.  Open-plan only in unhelpful ways and with reduced storage space for no reason.   But they have given us heatpumps after saying that they would not. Not sure if this was because of all the complaining or if there was a policy from on high that led to the change.

Somewhat irked at how it matches neither plans we were shown or what was put on the sign outside the building.  The sharing of information has not been good.

 

Now dozing in my chair, may not leave the house again for a few days. Or wear pants.

Health and books

Monday. I had a nutritionist appointment.  It was fine, she isn't pressuring me to do anything weight related, it just trying to help with IBS, so it was really just giving me more information and trying to convince me of the usefulness of the Monash FODMAP app.

Then I came home and read Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas.  It rubbed in my utter lack of knowledge of Spanish.  It isn't something that comes up much, here in a country where Spanish is well down the list of most spoken languages.

Afterwards ended up thinking about Piranesi some more.  A week after reading it I am still pretty convinced it is about relationship abuse.  Though still worrying that seeing it that way is a more about me thing.

Today I went to my writing group for crazies.  After lunch I had an attack of the tired and napped, awaking to feeble as useless to go to the writing group with my friends.  The day has been dozing, YouTube and ordering a large delivered dinner.

No-one again, thankfully

I checked my stats and saw that over the last month the Russian bot hits have finally vanished.  And in the last week all I have are a couple of BingPreview hits from the US.

Last week was mostly a waste.

Monday, events of the weekend meant I spend the day in my PJs and mostly in bed.  Seriously overspent 'spoons' coming back to punish me.

Tuesdays, I had to cancel my plans during the day and only finally washed and put on pants so Firmin could take me to Nandos to have dinner with Simon and Joe.  I was very slow moving and even slower witted.  The group of us watched that Netflix comedy movie about Eurovision.

Wednesday, I didn't wash and dress until almost tea time again and again left the house only under someone else's power - going for dinner and a bit of D&D at Ian and Carla's.

Thursday, unwashed in my PJs and resting.  Started watching Chuck as something I knew I had seen a little of the first season.  It is watchable, but doesn't stand up to any thinking.  And the way that none of the female characters really get any character is concerning.  The sister character is the only one whose central role is anything other than as a reward to one of the men.  And even she gets less character development then her boyfriend (a character who has almost no real connection to the plot).  I think McG might be bad at women.

Friday I forced myself to act like I was mostly recovered.  I went aquajogging with Tina.  Then had a GP appointment where I was given a much different version of my test results from someone with much better grasp of the thyroid itself (as circumstances had forced my GP to be very familiar with thyroids going wrong).  Seems I am not necessarily going to have to worry about surgery any time soon (depends on how the next round of tests goes).  I may get away without surgery at all - and just have a lumpy neck.  Though I did notice he avoided the term 'tumour' at all, calling it a 'retrosternal goitre'.  He is also pretty positive about it not growing much more (something the guy from the hospital did not seem at all).  So I guess I will see how it goes.  After the doctors appointment I got satay soup for lunch with Oli.  Then home to be exhausted and back in bed by mid afternoon.

On Saturday I did not manage to do so much as dress.  Or cook, I had delivereasy bring me a burger and a (really good) waffle.

Today was when I managed to wash, something required as my weird probably-autoimmune face thing had flared up and I needed to remove all the peeling dead skin.  Also I still smelled of pool, as the pool showers never get rid of the pool smell that well.  I dressed and wandered to the nearest takeaways.  I also did a very tiny amount of housework (changing and washing linen), which was a miniscule step toward being ready for when the landlord comes to visit next week (to explain the timeline for the building project and when I will need to be ready to move - as they just had tradies refreshing a unit in my building for a new tenant I suspect the move will not be this year).

Kids I know are strange in a way that seems adorable. 

Stranger children seem touched by dangerous madness.

I was on a zoom call with Alyssa Milano

Friday evening I headed to India Garden for dinner out with Carla, Ian and their spawn (who is not keen on anything Indian restaurants have to offer except refined starch and mango lassi).  And thus I got curry on the 2009 Amanda Palmer concert t-shirt that I was wearing to see her.  The food was pretty delicious.

Then Carla and I headed to the Regent Theatre and were in our seats twenty minutes before the start time (so closer to forty minutes before the show actually started).  And the show was good.  I enjoyed it a lot, and was only slightly annoyed by audience members.  She sang a bunch of the songs I like the most, and only let the mayor have a bit of time on stage.

Afterwards, instead of meeting her, I went to a bar, Woof!, with Tavendale and one of his friends before hobbling home in the very uncomfortable new jandals I was wearing.

 

Saturday was the day of going to Kamau Taurua (an island in the harbour) to have more up-close personal time with Amanda Palmer.  I was there as Tavendale's plus one, as he is one of her Patreon supporters.  There were more Dunedin people there than I expected so I am suspicious that some of the patrons brought more than the one allowed guest.

We got a tour of the island from the current guardian, being shown where the old quarantine hospital buildings were and the graveyard full of children....

And we had a mostly very pleasant amount of unstructured hanging out with people I might otherwise not have interacted with.  Only one of whom was super annoying, the same super annoying stranger who had annoyed me the night before by being inappropriate and awkwardly too loud and weird about everything (and who turned out to be one of my sister's friends).  And as part of the mini-concert and chat in an old quarantine building, I sang along background for Amanda Palmer singing on zoom for some thing Alyssa Milano was doing.  I think it may have been vaguely political.

And I got another photo with Amanda Palmer to add to my collection of picture where she looks cool and I look terrible.  Because that is how I roll.

Weirdly the important part of the day for me was finding a stranger entirely attractive.  I haven't done that in years.  Maybe I am starting to actually get past the damage from Shitlord.  I may possibly even get to the point that I can actually like someone again some day.  And, so obviously, I didn't interact with him in any way at all.  Still, giant step.  And a tall, well dressed, silver fox, so not at all falling into my usual types.  Change is good, it poses as growth.

Once we got back from the island (we came back on the same ferry as Amanda and her son), I got dropped home had some dinner and fell asleep until 2300 - when I was then awkwardly very awake.

Today I briefly dropped past an old friends 40th that mostly just reminded me how I haven't stayed in touch with her or her entire social group.  Then I met Tavendale for lunch at Buster Greens before a whole afternoon hanging out at Emersons with him and a couple of his friends.  I had a good time even if I was the only person not partaking in the alcohols.

After three days of doing stuff I am feeling kind of destroyed.  Muscles are spasming and I generally just feel very bad.  Stupid being chronically ill and not being able to just human.

Preparing to concert like a cool kid

 Wednesday I went to roleplaying.  Otherwise it would have been a day of no pants.

Thursday I spent in my PJs, watching the Netflix The Worst Witch and judging its many problems.

This morning I went aquajogging with Tina.  It was a nice start to the day.  Though I got very weirded out by some guy starting a conversation with me in the shower.  I guess he is just cliche hot enough that he assumes his conversation is always allowed, but I am not a fan of any sort of interact with naked strangers (one of the many reasons I am bad at being a homo).  So much awkward.

Now I am pottering around home wearing a far too small t-shirt as I ready for the concert.  The AFP t-shirt I got in, I think 2009, seems the right way to be that guy who wears the t-shirt of the band to the concert.

I look awful.  Go me.

Artist?

So I noticed a while ago that a few of the Instagram influencers that I followed when I first started using the site have faces that really annoy me now.

I have solved the why of it.  At the time I added influencers who appealed to me through a filter of my favourite face at the time.  It means they they have staled as Shitlord face became a negative rather than a positive.  I realised I follow a bunch of people who look sort of like my ex, all added when he was just my oft-absentee current.

Stupid my brain.

Anyway....

On Friday I went aquajogging with Tina in the morning.  it was good to catch up with her, I have seen too little of her thins year and I like to pretend I am a passable friend.  I am not anywhere near as there-for-her as I ought be.  After swimming we went along to an art therapy place she was curious about.  She talked to her friend there who makes amazing everythings, and I somehow ended up signing up.

Saturday I went to the Halloween party/housewarming of Oli's cousin Wobbly and hid dick pics (photos of famous Richards) around her house to fit the reverse heist theme.  And I caught the bus home, using my Bee card for the first time, so I had an excuse to leave the party at 2200.  I had been woken up the night before my muscle cramps so an early night seemed important.  The muscle cramps became a trend for the nights following.

Sunday.... I had a PJ day and achieved nothing.  Spades of nothing.

Yesterday, Dad was randomly in town for I know not what reason.  So we went for lunch, which was semi-crashed by that guy I went on a accidental date with about a month ago (so maybe I haven't put him off as completely as I thought and not sure if that is a good thing or if I should try harder at being off-putting).

Today I have done all the things.

Too many things.

I got up as early as my body would let me and went to a morning writing group at that art place.  Then stuffed around, and had lunch and an awkward medical phonecall, before a HIP appointment, which might be the last one as she didn't book me in for another at the end this time.

The awkward medical phonecall was my general medicine registrar getting back to me with my CT scan results.  The ones he received a day or two after the scan.....  So he is ultra-prompt on follow up.  Seems the tumour on my thyroid isn't just going around my neck but is also in my chest cavity.  So at some point it will start interfering with breathing or swallowing and I will require "reasonably major" surgery.  So that is fun.

After the HIP appointment I had my regular writing group that is really just a chat about nerd pop culture.  And then I went to an art exhibition opening and had some Barkers pseudo-Ribena while looking at art.  Then I got Paasha and made a mess of myself eating it on the walk home.