dragosteel loaned me two Phoenix Wright games last Sunday, and I've been plucking away at the first one cheerfully. I guess these confirms what I've always known -- I can't help but love things entirely over-the-top. If you've never played them, or heard of them, you've apparently been living under a rock -- but in any case, they're a courtroom legal drama based on detective work and the infamous cross-examination scenes... well, I only hope I've managed to accurately express how the games are just plain out there. Between the kickass theme music that bursts out every time Phoenix is kicking courtroom ass, and the back-and-forth OBJECTIONS! that have mutated into a meme... yeah. It rocks.

Edgeworth: "OBJECTION!... I was hoping to come up with a question while I was objecting. I didn't."
Judge: "Oh. Well, then --"
Edgeworth: "OBJECTION!"

Which was even more awesome in the game.

...yeaaaaah. I'm just a sucker for anything over-the-top. I really am.

I also picked up the DS Remake of FFIV. That's one HELL of a nostalgia trip: Final Fantasy II was the first RPG I ever really played, barring Crystalis which was really an ARPG so I don't count it, and the memories linger in my brain even now. The voice acting is decent (...Cecil = Sasuke, apparently...), the music is remixed to be better but still very much its old self, and the 3D remake looks pretty nice so far. I still think "Cecil" should have a long E, though I knew it wouldn't before I even picked it up. Oh well; I can't have everything.

Yesterday I had an adventure at the DMV. Needing to get a Viriginia license/title/registration, I went there with paperwork in hand to attempt to navigate the bureaucracy.

An hour and a half later, back I came with papers slightly more acceptable to them. This angers but does not surprise me. I suppose it's a stereotype of the DMV to expect that, but it happened. My next run went a little smoother, though -- despite the many ways I erred on the non-self-explanatory forms -- but then we discovered that somewhere between there and PA an image-verification system had failed, meaning they couldn't identify me.

So I sat down to wait. And wait. And wait. Eventually the system came back up and functioned properly, so they could at last verify my identity and take my picture. So I waited... and waited.... until it eventually came out that the girl taking pictures had just wandered off without doing mine for some reason. Then I finally got my license... whee!

Then, off to MD to hang out with some high-school friends, including a couple I hadn't seen in almost a literal decade. It's comforting to know that, despite all the problems I often voice about friendship and getting to know people, I know a group of people that no amount of time or change in life will change my friendships with. For everything else that hasn't gone right lately, that proved more reassuring than I would have thought. It was a good time.

Unfortunately, all that driving (I assume) must have angered my back, because although I didn't get to sleep till about 5, I woke up at 11 today with excruciating pain. Strange, that doesn't normally happen to me. I suppose all I can do is wolf down some ibuprofen in anticipation of making the drive again, this time to spend Turkey Day at my mom's house.

I hope yours are all going well.

I haven't had much to say in some time, because I haven't had much happen. What little has happened I can't really say much good about.

My insurance company apparently came up with some song-and-dance about how I'm a month behind in my payments, and rather than bill me they sent it straight to a collection agency. Just the sort of grief I need, right? Ah well; I did manage to get a refund on the phone I purchased which ultimately had no signal here, and so that sort of balances out. With no money coming in, we're still living off of savings, though. I guess if I see nothing by the end of this month, I'll have to whore myself out to a temp agency.

Despite the fact that there are dozens and dozens of job openings for people with my exact qualifications around here, there are apparently no openings for me. I apply to every job I can find and yet have come up with absolutely nothing. No calls, no interviews, no evident desire in my existence whatsoever. A depressing state of affairs. I shouldn't be discouraged, I know, but I would have expected at least an interview by now. I could get those while I was still working, even if no one would hire me in the end. At least some sign that SOMEone needed a person at least vaguely like me would be nice. Nice and too much to ask for.

But I am alive, if anyone had wondered. That says something, I hope.

One painful thing that came from the move is that Verizon doesn't really provide phone service to this house. I can't really make or receive calls, unless I've very lucky or standing in one specific spot in the kitchen. To my surprise, however, when I contacted Verizon about waiving my early termination fee so I could switch to a more reliable carrier, they agreed without any complaint or compunction in a very nice e-mail (and within a reasonable time).

Huh, go figure.

I actually watched anime again for the first time in... oh, years. This is what comes of having cable wired straight into my computer once again (and I can watch it while I play WoW very easily, with the only sacrifice being my covered minimap). Despite having read a great deal of Naruto I'd never seen the anime before; it was actually not bad. Blood, I don't even know what the hell it is but it was messed up. And I've also developed a certain fondness for Survivorman (obviously not anime).

Still need a new job. Still need to be productive.

Now admittedly when I found out I was stuck for 72 hours this week, I expected it to be a bad week. While tigerphoenix is right to say that I did sign up for this, and I did get myself into this mess, I had honestly not envisioned this! I had anticipated one, maybe two, extra shifts a week -- not the equivalent of four!

But I made my bed and I have to lie in it. Okay, I can adjust to that, mentally reconcile that. No, what's worse is that the cold cruel universe can't be happy with my suffering, it has to throw in a loop of its own.

So for the past three days I've been working large chunks of time alone. One girl has called off her last three shifts, and I have been the one picking up the slack at work.

That was NOT something I signed up for!

So here I am starting day 12 of my fifteen day stretch. 40 hours left in my 140 hours without a day off. And I'm just *exhausted*.

One day off on Tuesday (sort of), nine days of work... and then the vice loosens, the hooks disengage, and I can start to breathe again.

And then three weeks later I have to start moving...

My brain is hungry.

(Also, I am hungry for brains, but that's an overwork/sleep dep zombification, thus an unrelated matter.)

My job is not much for mental stimulation, unfortunately. I serve as a passive instrument, without independant function. They ask me for calls, I make calls. They ask me to admit a patient, I admit a patient. Most of these tasks are fairly simple and defined, and experience has allowed me to strip them down to their simplest levels. It's the volume, not the tasks themselves, that oppresses me.

This makes for a lot, and I mean a *lot*, of mental downtime. My brain does not shut off, nor does it handle boredom well. Usually I can feed it with surrepititious doses of Wikipedia, but the sheer number of hours I've been putting in have pushed my brain to the point where all it wants is about eight straight hours alone and a stack of new, good books. And this sort of craving for stimulation makes the day go even slower, which exacerbates the craving, in a vicious circle.

I wish I had a job where I could use my brain.

I have worked my butt off this week. Or I should say "I am working my butt off this week" since I still have 19 hours of work to go before my day off on Sunday. After which I work -- surprisingly, only 48 hours the next week, which results in two days off rather than one. Sunday is one of those.

I am worn out! Already, making today and especially tomorrow some pretty substantial hurdles for me to vault. Like climbing a mountain. Ironically, even when I have a day off, I don't have the money to DO anything on it but sit at home and play video games...

What aggravates me is that I can't keep my schedule straight. Mostly because I keep forgetting to put my full written-out schedule in my bag, but it's also true that I can no longer just check my schedule in the book here at work. That's a nagging frustration to me. I worry irrationally about showing up to work at Braddock some day when I'm not scheduled to be there... Oh well. I'll pick apart the schedule book later on the 2nd, which is a day I'm sure I'm there. It's written very strangely.

This is just a period of time when I feel like I'm spinning my wheels.

I really need to sit down and dig through agents to query, but my free time is so rare and precious right now I usually spend it in de-stress. My new computer can actually play games, after all, and I'm enjoying taking advantage of that. Dual-core IS better for multitasking.

Though Neverwinter Nights blew a gasket royally when I tried to play it. Apparently it relies heavily on time data from the CPU, and two cores results in teleporting characters and flickering graphics! Luckily there's a simple config fix that made it better. I haven't played it much though.

Been dabbling a lot in RO. That's fun, I wish I could round up more people I knew for the server we play on. Not that I have much time, but it's simple and lighthearted enough that it can be picked up and dropped pretty easily. It'd be nice to have more friends doing it.

...takers?

I don't know what I wanted to accomplish by posting this, except to vent. I just need a break from my life, right now.

Dammit!

I wandered back into the break room to nuke a microwave dinner for my thrilling and exciting food during my overnight shift. While there, I managed to catch three minutes of InuYasha and five of Full Metal Alchemist on Cartoon Network.

And now I really, really want to watch anime again.

I pretty much gave up watching new anime when Revolutionary Girl Utena came out with its last episodes on DVD. After that, there were really few other things I wanted to acquire except DBZ, and I just plain didn't have the money to get more DBZ. Since then, I haven't had the money to get much of ANYthing, which is the biggest obstacle keeping me from watching any new anime.

But now it's years later and I have a huge number of series that I've been reading and would like to watch. So far it's been easy to ignore the existence of the anime -- but then I had to go and see it! Damn and double damn!

Now I'm just bitter and cranky.

When I get very tired, I do weird things in regards to sleeping.

This morning, for instance, I woke up around 11-ish (after going to bed at 5:30 and setting my alarm for 1:15pm. Don't judge me! I'm coming off overnight shifts and trying to transition to evenings again). Now, with two hours left to sleep, my logical course is clear: go back to sleep, lunatic! But for some reason, as it often does when I wake up from a sound sleep in the middle of the night, this never occurred to me. Instead, convinced I had to be awake for some reason, I lay there in a half-conscious haze, literally too out of it to think. Normally these states last until my brain finally realizes that I can go back to sleep, that there is no reason whatsoever for me to be up. Luckily this morning tigerphoenix called me and snapped me out of it.

Sometimes when this happens, it's in connection with work. Back when I'd started my short-lived retail job two years ago, I seemed to hover in that half-awake state every night, convinced I had sales to ring up. I remember the half-conscious dreams, if they could be called that, of punching the register keypad... These days, I often have dreams that I'm at work, and have to stay awake to do the orders and answer the phones. How I'm supposed to be doing that while in bed, a fact I am usually aware of in these cases, I don't know. I can only presume that my brain is so stupid and asleep it doesn't even notice these gaping logical gaps. That's what it feels like, remembering those times.

Am I even awake in these cases? Am I dreaming that I'm awake? I really don't know.

Last night I had this strange dream, one of those realistic dreams where you think it's actually happening, where robbers broke in and held my family at gunpoint while one of their member went to take all our money out of the bank. Somehow I managed to get myself alone in the bathroom, and used my cell phone to call 911 for help. Moments later I looked out the window onto the street and saw several police cars passing by to get to my house. Then, abuptly, I was out on the street, walking around to catch up to the police.

This really annoys me. Up till then the dream had been, if bizarre, at least *plausible*, but then my brain had to forget the pesky detail of whether or not I was inside the house because it went for the fancy camera angle. I'm convinced that the vast majority of my dreams are so weird for this precise reason: my brain turns its attention away from some vital detail like who I'm supposed to BE in the dream or who I'm talking to, forgets it, and then makes up something entirely new when it comes back to that detail again.

In conclusion, I hate work.

Whew. Light work night means restless Dragon.

I actually made a post to words_of_infamy tonight. THERE'S a project I've been neglecting, but then again it hadn't garnered much interest back when I initiated it.

Now to find other ways to goof off.

So last night Verizon killed my DSL. Again. When I called the billing office this morning, they told me (essentially) that it was for no good reason. In all honesty, I'm shocked that they got it back up and running without screwing up. Likely it'll go down again sometime this weekend.

I've worked out almost all the kinks on my car donation, which will hopefully prevent the police from showing up and towing it, thus costing me a fortune I can't afford. Hopefully it should be gone by Tuesday. (So what will go wrong? Bets?) I just have to hope my credit union really DOES provide a notary service, or I'm gonna be doing some frantic running before work today.

I need to make a new dental appointment soon. While I'm doing okay overall, I need to have my crown adjusted, and a light layer of material applied to one tooth that has had its enamel worn away. Also, I have learned I need to cut back on the Icebreakers Sours. This sucks. I love them. (But they erode enamel, see problem.)

I'm beat. Life is just grinding me down to a pile of dust.

This morning when I got home from work, I couldn't sleep. The police have evidently been inquiring about my old beat-down car, and are threatening to have it towed, impounded, and generally crap on my life a little more. That seems to be 2006's running theme. I have some leads on a donation which I hope will come back to help me soon enough, but I ultimately didn't get to sleep as much as I hoped today.

I suppose that works out since I work 12 hours tomorrow. And a dentist appointment on Friday which I pray is routine.

Oddly enough I have Sunday off, odd because it's my weekend to work. Still, I can't complain; someone let me know if another game day is happening? Getting some gaming action in my system felt deleriously good.

Swept up, swept away, can't catch up, can't get away.

One very large problem in my life is gone: I have a new car. I now own a 2003 Saturn Ion. It's definitely not a car I expected to end up with, but the price was reasonable, the mileage was good, and most importantly, I fit in it. If you've never had this problem, consider yourself lucky. Eliminating many car models just because you can't fit in them can be frustrating.

So with transportation, I now no longer have worries such as obtaining food, getting to work, and generally getting about in life. Funny that I managed to exist for a year and a half without one, but on the other hand, my social activities and employment were within walking distance, and I subsisted mostly on take-out and convenience store foods.

As opposed to now, where I eat better and have no social life at all. I'd like to change the latter, obviously. It's just a matter of finding people who are available at the same times I am.

kaote, answer my question!

Of course, with a new car comes a dramatic financial pressure. Payments, plus the increase in car insurance, will leave me extremely strapped for cash. I can get by for a couple of months, though. I still look forward to February, where I can begin looking for a more financially stable position. Even a few extra thousand a year will make a significant difference, especially if it means I can work less overtime. I'm fortunate, now, that I have references I can count on, a strong work experience internally, and the ability to pick and choose what I apply for. There's a lot of good I can do any position, if they give me the chance.

I have to keep hoping.

I am currently in the throes of a vicious cold. My colds all follow very predictable patterns. The first day, I feel the onset of a sore throat, possibly with gradually increasing nasal stuffiness. That night, my sleep is terrible. Sometimes I'm unable to get to sleep entirely, other times (like last night) I'm only able to sleep in bursts, after which I wake up and need to force myself back to sleep again. I think my body refuses to sleep because it can fight the cold better in a waking state. I do know that the next day I usually don't feel as tired as I ought to for having such terrible sleep.

The second day, today for example, is the worst. Normally my colds confine themselves to throat, nose, sometimes cough. Not on the second day! This is the day when the cold kicks my ass. I feel weak, my temperature fluctuates, I have a perpetual headache and the sort of lightheadedness that is particular to colds. Usually the sore throat and the runny nose are both much worse on the second day. Today my nose is negligible, however, though my throat is more than making up with it. Post nasal drip is hell and a half.

Luckily, once I make it through the day it's all downhill. The throat will subside, and the nose will pick up. Usually a week passes before the symptoms are fully banished, but after today they're more nuisances than misery. On rare occasions the cold will descend to my chest, leaving me with a hell of a cough for its duration, but that happens infrequently.

This weekend I will be going to AnimeUSA in Tyson's Corner, VA, with tigerphoenix and some other people. Sometimes I do wonder why I go to cons. I'm not social, I can never manage to make friends the way other people do. I'd like to make more friends, admittedly, but sometimes I consider that a moot point. Still, I hope to have some fun and relax a bit. I don't know what it'll be like, so I'll see!

I'm technically able to keep afloat on 40 hours a week, but I wouldn't care to try it, especially now with my new expenses. So I put in as much overtime as I can. 48 hours a week is normal; 56 is ideal, in financial terms. And again I wish I didn't have to do that.

I'm a frustrated writer right now. All around me people are producing massive amounts of writing, yet I'm unable to. 12 hour workdays, car searches, colds. All these things simply destroy my ability to write. Most of my days I simply have no time to write. I don't anticipate a real chance to write until next week, when I have some days that are only eight hours. I do make efforts at writing while at work, but they're of course sporadic, and suffer from a lack of resources or other works or previous drafts. And on a day like this, where I'm sick, I just can't think. (Which figures. I could accomplish a lot today if I weren't miserable.)

jameel, remind me to shove the latest GetBackers manga in my backpack for you. I work tomorrow and Thursday both. And ehzoterik, remind me to make you an Akabane icon when I get my DVDs back from jameel. I figure you'd like that.

Speaking of DVDs, I found out Amazon.com had Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" dirt cheap ($15 altogether with shipping), which I had to get, of course. Where the hell is it, though? It's supposed to be here by tomorrow. Not that I have time to watch it, of course, or that I even will watch it till next weekend, but I worry about things going wrong. They so often seem to.

Lately I've been worrying about my usual problems again. What do I have that distinguishes me? What makes me special? What would someone come to me for, ask me, that I could help them better with than anyone else? I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing, and consequently I feel dissatisfied.

Actually, I take it back; I know more about prose writing than anyone I know. But that's worth nothing.

What a long and rambling post I've written. Well, with my update schedule I needed to. It's probably a symptom of stifled creativity anyway.

I feel good for writing. I have actually accomplished a decent amount at work. (Decent when one considers that it IS at work...) I really think my job is being a drag on my ability to write, though. I work a great deal more than 40 hours a week when I can, and 12 hour days and irregular schedules take their toll on a person. Many of my days off are spent recovering and much of my free time, I'm too worn out, worn down, or beat to compose my craft. And of course much of my writing urge goes into the quicker gratification roleplaying offers.

I'm looking forward to being able to seek out a better job. Improved financial position has no downsides.

I'm also looking forward to obtaining a new car. I miss my friends in Pittsburgh, but I can't quite see them without transportation. I say quite sincerely, "Blar."

I miss all of you. I feel somewhat alone and isolated here at work tonight.

I am alive.

This is perhaps to the disappointment of some, but such is life.

Vacation was actually quite enjoyable. Being away from work for a week is always enjoyable, of course, but I couldn't have asked for better company. Hanging out with tigerphoenix was nothing but fun, and teaching her children Munchkin and D&D was quite nice as well.

As usual, I have a lot of thoughts rattling around in my head, but when I sit down to do a post my mind goes blank. Stupid mind.

Hmph. I really can't say that this day is going well.

For one, I'm working 12 hours today, and then I come back tomorrow at 7am. This means that I wake up, go to work, work all day, come home, and go immediately to bed. That's no fun, obviously, and it means I'll be sleep-depped and cranky tomorrow.

My schedule for the next four weeks is out, and it also sucks. I'm all over the place, nights and days and evenings. I'm working a lot of 5-day weeks, which I dislike; I must prefer to worker longer days and have more days off. And because the schedule was put out yesterday, most of the overtime openings already got snagged -- so money's gonna be tight for a while.

I envy people who actually are able to save money for nice things.

This morning I woke up to someone moving in to the apartment above me. I'm trying to keep an open mind, but historically these things haven't gone well. Fingers crossed for me!

Meanwhile, I left my lunch in the car. Dammit. I'm such a goddamn idiot in the morning. At least I remember my cell phone..

Which I need to schedule a follow-up appointment from my root canal two days ago! Yeah, life is peachy.

The week's been pretty brutal. I worked three consecutive 12-hours days Wednesday through Friday, had Saturday off, worked 8 hours Sunday and am on my third twelve hour day in a row. What does that add up to? Basically an 80 hour week!

SO tired. So for those of you wondering where I've gone, it's that and the fact that I've been scheduled for mornings this week and the next. I HATE mornings. And tigerphoenix is here.

Going to visit ehzoterik tomorrow! That will rock. Don't let me forget to fix your computer up.

Doing some writing on a story, which I will probably have to rewrite. It doesn't feel like it's coming out the way I want it to.

How are you?

So what's going on in my life. Hmm.

I've started going to a dentist (ably recommended by tlttlotd), and as a consequence have been reciving some filling work. Two a couple weeks ago and I'm going back for another one tomorrow. It was fun and exciting, my ear hurting for a week (damn referred pain). The pain in my lower tooth has subsided to mere sensitivity, but it remains really sensitive to cold. My dentist said I might possibly have to have a root canal for it, depending on if it continued to hurt or not. I haven't gotten any unusual throbs of pain for it, which is good, but the sensitivity to cold is bad. So I don't know. I'm going back on Tuesday for one more, and we'll likely discuss it then.

It's not something I want to go through, really. We'll see.

Pending a review or two from some people whose opinion I'd like, I've prepared my first actual submission to a magazine. I'll send it off very soon, I hope, and cross the line from "aspiring writer" to (most likely) "rejected writer."

That isn't pessimism, just realism, so don't start lecturing me on expecting the worst. And if/when I DO get rejected, I'll kill anyone who posts a long note imploring me not to give up, that rejection is common, etc. etc. I know that!

I saw Batman Begins yesterday with tigerphoenix, which was an excellent movie. I really prefer the simple cape-and-cowl design of Batman: TAS to anything I've seen on the screen; graphite masks seem a bit excessive to me. But it was nevertheless a good movie, and for those of you who understand the reference, I totally get why readnofurther spent the entire movie going, "Morgan! MORGAN!"

Also had a wondeful brunch with kaote. How did I go 14 months without seeing her? Definitely need to make sure THAT doesn't happen again.

If I'd know Barnes and Noble had begun registration for line position at 4, I would have gone earlier. I ended up in the 300-350 block to get Half-Blood Prince, but it only took about half an hour once midnight hit. I ended up staying up till 5:00 finishing the book. Holy damn.

Harry Potter is turning into Daria. Everyone will bitch because it doesn't stay the same, but it can't stay the same.

And that's my epic post at work. How's things with you?

Food tastes particularly good today for some reason.

I had a buffalo chicken pizza earlier today. That was bliss with a crust. Maybe it's just my fondness for BBQ sauce speaking, but what a good pizza that was. I still have some left. Mmmm, good.

I had a granny smith apple. Granny smith apples are, in my opinion, the only apples worth eating straight. I can't stand a mooshy apple, no matter how good it tastes. I have a strong sense of appreciation for the texture of my food, as well as the taste. And that was a firm crisp goooood apple. Hot damn.

I have baby carrots and cheese cubes now. And I just finished a Pepsi with Lime. Everything is just so damn good today. It's a very good way to be.

This is really weird. My clock says it's 7:11, but it's not getting close to twilight. I don't even see the sun in these west-facing windows. In fact, it's gradually been getting LIGHTER as time passes. And moreover, there's this really really weird symbol after the time: "AM." I mean, I've heard of PM, but what the hell is AM? This is so weird. It's like I've stumbled into some weird, alternate time that's not the 7:00 I know.