2021 By Month

 Highs

• Bought a car that I've been thinking about since 1998.
• Two road trips, one to Colorado and one through Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Washington.
• Vaccination. (First and second Pfizer, then the booster in November.)
• Hanging out with [vaccinated] friends at the Cal Academy of Science for the first real social experience since the start of the Pandemic.
• Helped my Parental Unit clean up and prepare to move from Colorado to Michigan.
• Got to see one of my sets of aunts/uncles and one of my cousins I haven't seen in a very long time.
• Upgraded my eyeballs to contact lenses.
• Received a work promotion.

Lows

• I feel like I've become even more isolated and estranged from the friends and communities I already had trouble keeping connected to.
• My fuck-off deep sense of loneliness grew deeper this year.  I haven't found a comfortable way to express my feelings more generally with out feeling like a shit heel.
• Helping my sisters and mother deal with the fallout from a scam moving broker who stole my mom's money and left her sitting high-and-dry.
• Realizing that it's more likely than not that I'll never see my aunts/uncles in person again. (And possibly my mom, as well.)
• Learning that one of my dogs has started down the long path kidney failure.

Books read in 2021

Leviathan Falls (By: James S.A. Corey)

Velocity Weapon (By: Megan E. O'Keefe)

Redshirts (By: John Scalzi)

The End of All Things (By: John Scalzi)

The Devil’s Candy (By: Julie Salamon)

Asylum (By: Lindsay Buroker)

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (By: Carlo M. Cipolla, Nassim Nicholas Taleb - foreword)

Ready Player Two (By: Ernest Cline)

The Demon-Haunted World (By: Carl Sagan)

Project Hail Mary (By: Andy Weir)

Tiamat's Wrath (By: James S. A. Corey)

Persepolis Rising (By: James S. A. Corey)

Babylon's Ashes (By: James S. A. Corey)

Nemesis Games (By: James S. A. Corey)

Cibola Burn (By: James S. A. Corey)

Abaddon's Gate (By: James S. A. Corey)

Caliban's War (By: James S. A. Corey)

Leviathan Wakes (By: James S. A. Corey)

One Nation Under God (By: Kevin M. Kruse)

Battle Ground (By: Jim Butcher)

The Rogue Prince (By: Lindsay Buroker)

Console Wars (By: Blake J. Harris)

Layers of Force (By: Lindsay Buroker)

A Hole in the Sky (By: Peter F. Hamilton)

Star Wars: The High Republic: Into the Dark (By: Claudia Gray)

Qalea Drop (By: Joel Shepherd)

The Innovator's Dilemma (By: Clayton M. Christensen)

Planet Killer (By: Lindsay Buroker)

Home Front (By: Lindsay Buroker)

Star Kingdom Omnibus II (By: Lindsay Buroker)

Star Wars: Light of the Jedi (By: Charles Soule)

Extreme Frontiers (By: Charley Boorman)

Couple of days on from Folsom Weekend and I feel disappointed—and a little angry—that I missed it. Plans with friends failed to gel at the last minute without any time to scrape up alternate arrangements so I bounced on it.  Now that I’m seeing the occasional post and pic from friends who did go…well…yeah. It hurts.

I should just give the fuck up.

I'm putting an indefinite pin in migrating out of California.

The reality of the situation is that my primary reason for relocating hasn't existed for thirteen months. The overwhelming driver was to be nearer my remaining ParentalUnit in the event of an incident. That need evaporated when said ParentalUnit announced their intention to move into a senior's community close to one of my SiblingUnits.

COVID-19 shot my secondary relocation reason in the face. My work world shifted 100% virtual nine months ago and will continue to be 100% virtual for the next year. There is no "physical office" for me to relocate to--presently--that is "better for my career" with my current employer. It's unclear what the office and remote work landscape are going to look like when The Virus Timeline resolves itself.

My tertiary reason was stupid and should never have been a reason in the first place. As tough a pill to swallow as it is, simply moving somewhere else won't make me a happier person. My happiness grind is that I'm lonely. Moving won't make me not lonely, I'll just be lonely somewhere else. It was always in the back of my mind that relocating for the other two reasons would also mean a change of social scenery that could be good but in and of itself isn't a strong reason to move.

Until significantly compelling reasons again emerge, I'm going to be sticking around the Bay Area.

Everything went bear-shaped.

Yesterday afternoon a friend stuffed me into a large inflatable/wearable pool toy thing.  I have some thoughts.

 

The TLDR regarding to the pool toy aesthetic, it is not my jam. I get it. I understand it. It's not a thing that personally attracts me. It wasn't a thing I had to worry or think about too much and didn't detract from the fun, tho.

The overall experience is a bit more nuanced. This particular experience was about trying a new thing, not about finding a headspace in it.  I did, kinda, briefly. That was kinda cool.  I can see a path toward a head space that could work for me if I want to follow it there in the future.

Stuff that I dug:

• Sensory Deprivation - I had practically zero spacial awareness.  Couldn't see. Couldn't smell anything other pool-toy vinyl. My hearing was muffled. My movement was--at best--difficult. The awkwardness of it was blissfully disorienting.
• Comfort - Being zipped up a bear-shaped plastic bladder was surprisingly comfortable. When I wasn't worrying about falling over--only a small worry--the feeling of PVC compressing in from all sides was blissful. The more it was pumped up the more comfortable it became.  The warmth/heat inside of it was also very comforting. A relaxed state came quite easily.
• Restriction - More than the feel of clouds gently compressing in from all around, you also become pretty useless. You're pretty much stuck in there, wherever you're standing, until somebody takes you out. That was interesting.

Stuff I didn't dig:

• Concerted effort to keep the breathing tube in my mouth - There's some risk with this experience, fortunately I throughly trust the person I was playing with so I never felt that I was in any danger. That said, you've got keep conscious about biting down on the breathing tube to make sure it stays in your mouth.  It's not so bad when the thing is really well pumped up but a lower pressures, it could be a problem. I think that this would better with either a modified CPAP mask and anesthesia mask strapped around the victim's head, especially for longer-term sensory deprivation experiences.

There's bliss to be found in being bubbled up inside rolled into the corner for a few hours to just chill out and ponder the nature of existence. I've always been curious about inflatable sleep-sacks. now I know that's probably very much up my alley in terms of sense dep. The outward aesthetic, well...I don't know that it matters all that to me as the person inside of it so on that front, whatever works for somebody else is fine by me.

It's been a minute.

It's been a minute since I've used this blog. Coming back to it as a place to ramble about things I need to ramble about that don't fit well in Twitter's short 240 characters.

Weekend thing.

The weekend was fairly down-beat, relaxed.  Somewhat frustrating in that way but not without some fun.

Friday night was pretty quiet.  Spent it at home dorking around with the BMW and a few cans of Plasti-Dip.  The hood of my car is now bears a rubber coating.  Woot.  Or something.

Saturday I woke up early enough to drive the BMW up to Alice's for breakfast with a friend, then scooted over to the Canepa Design open house in Scott's Valley.  That was a fun walking tour of automotive history and greatness.  Very much a good thing!  After that just hung out with friends, dorked around cars and then headed home around 10pm in the evening.

A few photos from Canepa - First, some Porsche 959s.  Is you know what these are then you know why it's significant that there are four of them in this shop being worked on.  It's also significant to note that apart from these four currently being worked on there were at least four other 959s at Canepa, a not insignificant number of the 337 of these that Porsche built.

Next, a panno of one of the other large portions of the Canepa garages.  There's a lot of very expensive inventory in this room.  Race cars, cobaras, two BMW M1s, some customs, a couple of Lambos, a Bugatti Veyron...And they just let you wander around all of it, as close as you like.  Such a good day.

Sunday was spent at home cleaning.  Sweeping floors (my roommate sheds like a dog, it's a bit crazy), picking up and mopping the kitchen, laundry and picking up around my room.  I also finished off the box of shiraz that had been lurking on my kitchen counter as it was nearing the end of it's useful life.

So yeah, generally speaking, it was a pretty down beat and casual weekend.  Not great, not bad. It just was.