Legend of the Corsair

So here we are... finally running full tilt away from LJ. After that last change in the terms of service, it was finally necessary. I think I'm still going to keep it as a place where my tweets are aggregated, so it doesn't clutter up things here. If you're looking for actual blog-like posts in my history, you're going to want to go back two years. I've got SOME posts between there and here, but they're hard to find in the twitter post noise.

***EDIT: Perhaps... Yes. I'm going to think about weeding out the posts pulled from LJ that were just tweet aggregations. You'll know it if I do. END EDIT***

It's amazing how long you'll keep something out of nostalgia.

I think one of the biggest parts was the amount of work that goes into building up my backlog of posts, the exact look and feel of the page design, and the historical interactions (comments on my blog but more importantly my interactions with people on other blogs) that have amassed over the decade(s) since I started.

At this point, since I have a backup through June 2014 on Wordpress and (once confirmed) another one here, I may delete all of my old posts on LJ. Yes, yes, I know someone probably has it saved somewhere... but it's the thought that counts.

I'm going to time delay this post by a month. This should give @femsplain enough time to sift through all the offers to do articles/stories for the Self Improvement theme. My problem is that they've already begun publishing stories and I can't tell if it's because these are meant to set the stage (they are written by their editors and other people that work for FS) or... *shrug* Hence the delay to the post.

Of course, to you it will seem like this just appeared. In fact, I wrote the following just after seeing the theme hit Twitter, before the end of June. And I'm setting up this post on 7/4/15 in the aftermath of seeing Star Trek: Genisys. Oh, wait... That was my hopeful Brightest Universe version of the title. I meant Terminator: Genisys.

Anyway. Here it is:( Here it is: )

The other day, I bared a piece of my past and perhaps a bit of my soul. You ever notice how, after a long time remembering one thing or another that you assumed to have happened for one reason may have - upon further experience and better filters being installed - have happened for a completely different reason? Or, if not a reason, maybe the outside influences you assumed to be in play weren't. Enough babbling.

Today. You will learn the true value of money. Or at least the value of money as interpreted by a middle-school aged younger me.

Picture yourself in one of those tiny desks, the little wooden ones where the top levers open to store your books and stuff, with the attached seat... the kind that DOESN'T swivel out for easy seating.

Okay. Are you there yet? Good. ( Let's get on with this story. Don't forget the popcorn. )

This was not the worst series of events I've lived through. But I did have a lot of happy times mixed in with those bad times. Plenty of days filled with laughter. Plenty of books that took me away to somewhere golden, somewhere special and magical. Crocodiles with lollipops and a talking Phoenix. Tesseracts. Life got better for me.

I had teachers who saw my potential and wrote glowing remarks in my report cards, who took me under their wings and showed me the beauty of words and creating stories from my imagination.

I had a Tom Sawyer themed adventure with a friend, where I traipsed across the city, getting fed a bucket of fried chicken from a pair of cops, a pair of cops who ended up being the ones called to interview my Mum when she reported me missing (after my friend came back without me), who looked abashed but didn't say a word when a neighbor from our last neighborhood showed up and delivered me back to her.

I had nuns who once decided they wanted to teach me how to knit, who offered us a home within their halls (which was turned down by my proud Mum, thank you very much... I wish I knew more of the details on that story because it seemed like a damned good deal to me.

If you are having a shitty time, know that it can get better. That you can push through. That $2.00 (or whatever the inflation adjusted amount that number represents today) can go a long enough way to get you through until it gets better.

Well me fine hearties... I bring to you a tale of rage, irritation, journeys, scandal, and redemption. It all begins with the anticipation of the viewing pleasure of our wee little furry footed friends.

Yeah. This is about my travail about finally scoring advanced tickets for the upcoming flick:

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Companies involved: MovieTickets.com and Rave Cinemas at Buckland Hills Manchester.

It really began about a few months or so ago, when I put an item in my calendar to remind me to look up information about advanced ticket sales at the end of October. Once Halloween rolled around, I had found out that tickets were supposed to go on sale (for the December 14th premier in the U.S. and Canada) on November 7, 2012. Reset calendar item.

Today, when I got to work and checked for tickets online, I found out that tickets weren't going on sale until NOON EST. Those bastards.

Okay. Reset calendar item and set a timer to go off five minutes before noon. While I'm waiting for noon to come, my husband calls to tell me he's heading home to work the rest of the day from there as the Nor'Easter snowfall had begun. I look up from my desk (where I had truly been hard at work finishing up on a project report) I see the practical whiteout conditions in the back parking lot of the building. Lovely.

Five minutes before noon arrives. I get myself logged into my usual ticket purchasing website, making sure I have my credit card ready. I get onto the day in question and, every so often, hit refresh in the address bar. Noon arrives. No tickets. Refresh, refresh, refresh... Five minutes pass - no tickets.

I call the theater and press zero to be connected to a live person. They very nicely tell me that due to a new computer system that they'd installed a few weeks back they were having technical difficulties. Perhaps sometime between while I am talking to them and 6pm, or as late as 6pm the next day the glitch would be worked out. *beginnings of irritation/annoyance*

More snow falls. More work gets done. I doggedly keep hitting the refresh button, hoping.

I had come in that day at 7am so that I could leave by 3pm, since I had thought that the snow was going to hold off until mid-afternoon. I realize I forgot my snow brush and scraper at home; I hadn't yet pulled it out of its storage space in the garage and put it into the trunk. I come up with the brilliant idea of using a gallon ziplock baggie to seal around my gloved hand to keep myself both warm and dry when I finally get out to clean off my car before leaving for home.

More snow falls.

At 2:50pm, after hitting refresh yet again, I am rewarded with three theaters of showtimes. IMAX, and two others. I notice that (unlike what I'd gotten my posse to agree to) there were NO MIDNIGHT SHOWINGS. *sigh* I go for the 7pm showing instead as I must have my assigned seats when I go through the trouble of getting advanced tickets and purchase them online (where you get a $1 surcharge on each ticket).

Wait! What's this?! No offer to choose my seats? ARGH! I buy the tickets anyway, thinking that if I didn't there was a possibility of them being sold out before I could later get the chance to purchase them. Besides, the snowfall had turned into more of a snow-drizzle and I figured I could stop at the theater on the way home and make sure my seats were assigned where I wanted them to be.

So. 3pm arrives and I am (surprisingly) all ready to go with laptop bag in tow just in case. Snow cleared off the car handily. Although there was some slowdown as (most) people drove more cautiously, the drive to the theater was done on relatively snow free roads - though there were plenty of slick spots.

Walking in the theater, I find myself glad that it seems to be a slow time. I'd been able to park very close to the front doors and the snow was starting to pick up a little. Shouldn't take too long, right?

Over a half hour later... They had to refund my purchased tickets one at a time. They hadn't realized they hadn't set it up to allow/assign seating (IMAX is ALWAYS assigned seating). They had to call the back room techie and have them set up the system to get the seating problem cleared up. One good thing - they weren't allowing any other sales until my refund was processed and I had purchased my tickets with the seats of my choice.

Did I mention they'd recently gotten a new computer system set up? They all hate it (the people working with it at the front desk area - including management). It is clunky, counter intuitive, and one big hassle. There really didn't seem to have been any intensive training to instruct the employees in its use either. One of the many annoying things to result in the new system (besides those annoying things I've already discussed) is that if you have purchased tickets for multiple movies (say one on Saturday, another on Sunday, and advanced tickets for something in a couple of weeks) the kiosk will no longer just print all of your purchased tickets out for you - it gives you an error message and you have to go to the counter just like all the shlubs that didn't think to buy their tickets ahead of time. Utterly stupid. Especially because once you get up to the front of the line it takes forever for the person to look up those tickets and has to access each show/set separately for printing.

When I finally got outside again? Snow was falling more heavily than when I'd gone in, and it was finally starting to stick and build up on the roads. It was pretty hairy driving home from there. And it didn't help that I needed to bypass home to pass to the other side of town and pick up something for dinner too.

Now I am home, driveway heater on, warm and toasty on the couch because I am cuddled under a blanket with my living hot water bottle (half Chihuahua half Daschund). My Unexpected Journey is over. Wish I had a ring and a bunch of gold... guess I'm not as lucky as some hobbits I know.

And today I had a lot of "I hate people, they make my ass twitch" moments. The worst times were while at a very popular mini-golf establishment. People... read the rules. Maximum party of five, preferred is foursomes. This should be especially enforced when you are herding groups of children. Whilst herding your brood, please pay attention to them and ensure that they don't violate the personal space of the people in the group in front of you. I don't like having your 3/5/7/whatever year-old standing right behind me while I tee off or within six inches of me when I am patiently waiting for the large group in front of me to finish their round. If at any time during the course you have to leave for a "bathroom break" have the rest of your party continue on and catch up - DO NOT expect me to have the patience for you to CUT IN FRONT OF ME just because I happen to be the one coming up to the hole you left off at before you left. the POLITE thing to do is to request to resume your game from the people who are there and not assume you can just cut in between groups that are in play. I was having a very nice conversation with the retired gentleman (named Elmo) in the party that was playing in front of us for half the course. If one of your kids has a temper tantrum, let the next group play through, don't make us ALL wait for your kid to calm down enough to resume playing. If your child/brood cannot even hold a club, this difficult sixteen hole course is NOT the place to teach them how.

It is amazing how long something like that sticks with you. The aggravation. If I'd had the opportunity to kick back and mellow down from that I think the rest of the day wouldn't have felt like I was still coated in the aggravation from those short hours of mini-golf. It spilled over into the family dinner I had at a nearby restaurant, and was still stuck on in a couple of places when I finally parked the car just before starting this post. And the DH had to deal with me stressing out and ended up getting a headache from my troubles.

The silence of the room that I am currently sitting in is a balm on my skin. After this, I'm going to sit out on the deck and listen to the wind blow in the greenery and smell the clean, pleasantly scented air. I'll drink my Aranciata Rossa Sanpellegrino and continue reading from where I left off of Starswarm by Jerry Pournelle. The desire to become a hermit far away in a shack by the sea will slowly fade and I will be ready to face another day (just as long as it isn't the SAME day).

Good morning LJ. I woke up out of the most disturbing, yet enlightening dream just a little while ago.

I don't remember exactly how it started but I believe I was running some kind of errand - or just traveling. It had morphed from something to do with school to this; during which I was in the middle of a classroom surrounded by my peers while going through either a locker or a magical (bottomless) bag of holding that was doubling as a mailbox... People kept on asking me what I was doing, or just looking at what was coming out of the bag/box and then either commenting or just "ooooh-ing" - like when I found this huge wad of large denomination American dollars. *I always have and will want one of those bag/boxes, ever since I saw one in an old Spiderman one-off graphic novel back in the late eighties / early nineties.

Anyway, back to the traveling portion. The great thing, which I didn't recognize immediately as a great thing, was that I was flying. No obvious machinery but it was definitely mechanical in nature and not magical. I was only about 10 yards or so off the ground... but I was flying. So along I go - and all of a sudden, something was acting up in the machine. As I start bringing myself down for a controlled landing I notice that I'm coming down adjacent to what (now that I think back on it, it could've been minimum security since there was only one fence...) appeared to be a prison. Inmates, wearing reddish jumpsuits, were lining the fence looking out and the fence had razor wire atop it. The buildings were back a ways from the fence and there was green grass between them and it but the building itself was an indistinct brick edifice. It reminded me a little of the minimum security prison over by the Uconn campus in Storrs/Mansfield, CT.

Anyways, as I came in for that landing I also noticed that one of the jumpsuit-wearing prisoners was outside of the fence looking in. He had this wicked awful mullet and reminds me now just a little bit of how I vaguely remember some X-Man character looked (in the early days of Rogue and Gambit being on the team (googles "x-men character mullet") LONGSHOT.



So. Back to the landing (man this is taking forever!). As I land, mullet-prisoner notices me and gets a nasty little smile on his face and starts to approach me. This is when the fear part of the dream starts - and I hadn't had the exhilaration that I usually have during flying dreams up to that point either. As he approaches I hop into the air a few times trying to reactivate my flying and as he gets to within a couple of yards I take off; he smirks an takes off after me. (In retrospect: AHA! That's how he must've gotten over the fence.)

Instead of facing the direction of flight, at first, I am facing him and he is facing me and we are flying that 30 yards or so off the ground parallel to each other as he tries to close in. I keep the distance between us and hit a button at the lower, right edge of my jacket in an attempt to speed up - knowing that I should be able to speed up - without being able to speed up. I start throwing things from my pockets in an attempt to distract/injure mullet-prisoner. The second thing I throw is a red pushpin. The metal on it flashes in the sun while the translucent top seems to glow. Oh crap! I just gave his a weapon of some sort!! He follows it down to the ground while I fly away home, knowing that as soon as he gets the pin he might be after me again and I want to get to somewhere I feel safer and can better defend myself.

I don't remember landing but find myself in a kitchen near the sink with earbuds in and am probably puttering. My DH is somewhere in the house (which I discover is a two story with a great room attached to the kitchen, with the great room having a cathedral ceiling and a series of rooms on the second floor all fronting an open corridor with a balcony to the great room below. All of a sudden, I notice mullet-prisoner had somehow found me and he was just about to enter a room (DH's office) that was diagonally across and upstairs from the open double door sized entrance to the kitchen. I start to try and yell for DH to alert him but sound seems to be constricted in my throat; I try again and again, and I realize that there are swords in his office which would be ever so much more dangerous than the pushpin and the panic roars up even stronger, and then realize I CAN scream but the earbuds are somehow dulling my hearing and I start to feel the screaming in my throat, it going raw screaming my DH's name and just flat out screaming like a horror flick. Mullet-prisoner decides to make a run for it now that my voice is so strong and as the front for is closing on his heels my DH and Aunt come running into the great room from the left to ask me why I'm so upset. At this point, as I think I start to tell them what happened, I wake.

----------------

I lay there, eyes wide and staring at the ceiling, slowly calming down, and start to analyze the dream. I come to the following conclusions:

1. The prison was representing my workplace, at which I had just put in a twelve hour day to get quarter-end reports done so I could relax and enjoy the 4th.

2. The mullet-prisoner represented my never-ending stream of work projects (NESWP, pronounced ness-whip, which I coined on Twitter for a friend) that have chased me through life for a while now; how lately (the past year and a half really) I've felt like I was always scrambling to get things done with occasionally satisfying moments where I seem to catch up to everything only to be buried under another pile of NESWP. My coworker and I work for a commercial farm loan division for our regional farm bank and the third slot of our analyst unit keeps getting filled with people they want to eventually (pardon the pun) farm out to the branch side of the lending division so the last few years that third position has been almost like a revolving door and the work load on the commercial side for my friend and I has been getting heavier and heavier. The position just went empty again about a month ago and the person who had agreed to come in from NYS decided at the last minute that he wouldn't be joining the team after all and my friend and I finally (after talking about it between ourselves for a few months and having mentioned the workload issue in our annual reviews) set up a tentatively timed meeting with our division manager (who is in charge of the interview and hiring for the position) to talk about the need for another person on the team that will FOCUS on the commercial side in addition to or instead of another revolving door person that focuses on helping out on the branch side. I've got around 15-20 more loans in my portfolio than I did at the beginning of 2011 and between the normal upkeep on those loans and all the new and/or action requests for those loans that are streaming in... In the volatile economic environment agricultural businesses find themselves in (which isn't bad per se if it is managed correctly, a lot of my portfolio is thriving in it - however, it just seems to be exponentially increasing the workload for ME and my friend)... We need a third. Cue the entrance of Ender to come in and help out, eh?

3. While working those last seven hours I pounded down three cans of Mountain Dew and ate two Snicker's candy bars b/c I had no food and couldn't take the time to make the foray out to Chipolte's for food b/c I knew that soon I would be the only one left in the office and... in retrospect it doesn't make sense, I could've gotten food. But I still would've drank at least one of the MTDs to caffeinated myself to stay awake/alert/energized enough to plow through the TWENTY reports I had to write. I went in at 10:20am specifically b/c I knew that the end-of-quarter hold position (basically a list of all the commitments and balances on the loans, which I need to have before I can even start the reports) was going to be delivered much later than usual - we had it the Monday after quarter end last time and had a whole week and a half to get the reports done; which was good b/c I had to write-up a bunch of action requests and such that week so I ended up doing the board reports during an eight hour stretch at home that following weekend). The beginning of those seven hours was when I finally received the needed report; a report which is an essential component of my reports. My twenty reports. And the reports are on loans that are in my (I think I may be up to 76 loans total now) portfolio with a net hold/commitment of greater than or equal to $14.0 million.

When I got home (was it only last night?!) I was still so pumped up on caffeine that it had given me a headache and a feeling like I was engorged with too much energy which was exerting pressure on my head in the manner of a pending explosion. I made the drive home just peachy-keen, thanks. And getting home at 11pm in order to make a double strong sleepy tea, down a couple of valerian pills an benadryl, followed by a hot lavender scented shower and then drinking of the steeped tea while starting to read a steampunk novel in order to give the pills/tea time to kick in... When I finally laid back and shut off the light to sleep, and just as I started to MAYBE drift off - the DH starts lightly snoring. And, although the meds were working for the most part, I was enough still on the edge to be waaay oversensitive to any disturbance in the force. I am the Princess that cannot sleep because of the Pea that is irritating me through fifty mattresses, etc. And in the state I was in at the time there was no way in hell I was going to be able to get to sleep at that point. So I got up and went to the guest room. And after the dream woke me up, I climbed back into bed with the DH to think about the dream, and try to go back to sleep by letting my mind wander.

After analyzing the dream, I tried to drift off by letting my thoughts wander... I start wondering if I am where I want to be in life. And I started going into the whole "what-if I could go back in time and start over at some point in my life with a perfect memory of all I know now so I can end up in a much better position/place/etc." creating a waking-dream imagination scenario-building exercise. I may have fallen asleep as the scenes of the moments in time that I would step in to change were very vivid. I also thought about whether my DH would be better off without me, not in a if I never existed type of manner (like in It's A Wonderful Life) but more in the manner of if our paths had never crossed.

I discovered that, although I might - if it were possible - go back to different points in my life and make changes for the better to eliminate some of the rougher horrors and my student debt (meaning I would've gone to college earlier than I did in such a way that I would've taken longer but while working nights at a certain well paying blue collar job I had in the past, etcetera and so forth to reduce if not eliminate the student loan debt burden I hold today)... and a number of other small things here and there. The essential "where" that I am now existing in would've been the goal to which I would've guided myself to - even if the road to getting here would've been different (and maybe I'd have more years on the job or in the profession and getting a bigger paycheck) but I would still want to be working at the same company, and I would still have sought out my DH to get married to... Like a whole lifetime of scenes from my own personal version of the movie Sliding Doors.

I also decided, perhaps selfishly but mostly out of a loving and prideful opinion, that I didn't know if I would trust that there was anyone in the world (aside from Kate Bush if circumstances had been just right) would care for and take care of my DH in the manner in which he deserves. Rather, I came to the conclusion that I wouldn't give up my relationship with him b/c I love him so much - even if I drive him up the wall with some of my habits occasionally, and vice versa. Those annoyances aren't big enough to drive out the need for the wholeness I feel being a part of our relationship.

At that moment of clarity I realized I definitely wouldn't be getting back to sleep. After maybe +/- four hours of REM and dreams and another hour of pondering... I had to write it all down and share.

Watched three things tonight. The first two were especially tasty.

The first was Evelyn with Pierce Brosnan. A bit of Irish goodness with a crescendo building from the beginning and a bell shattering fabulous ending. It made me even more intent to go to Ireland and find out where my roots are. Of course, when I get there I won't make a big deal about it, because I'm sure that half the tourists that go over there claim to be doing that. With all of the expatriots emigrating back to the home country now that it is better off there I don't want to be unseemly. Again it is like all the wonderful movies that I've seen, where the community pulls together to fight against a great wrong. Each person able to bring in one more to work on the problem, seven degrees of seperation to all of the people you want for a time of need. The welcome view of the (mostly) good and kind nuns. I remember them from my own childhood. My bunch were a French-Catholic sect though... Lovely and good women.


The second was L'Auberge Espanol (sorry, cannot figure out how to put the tilda over the o). It was also fantastic. Much better than the watered down fake "The Real World" on MTV. I think that the Erasmus idea is a very good one, to expose those of neighboring countries to each other in order to make them more able to work with one another and understand one another. All of the characters were well played and very believable. I really enjoyed all of the interplay and the feeling of gritty reality. Not dark, but realistic interconnectedness of strangers who turn into friends. Good story arch.

There is an option for those of us from the United States to participate in something similar, the cost is of course, exorbitant. Something I am considering, however. *sigh* More than just finding summer internships, which, once you graduate, you no longer qualify for. *sigh* I really enjoyed the experience that I got with The Conservation Society... When I went up to Alaska. Yes, there were moments where I thought I would be driven insane by those up at Camp Dooby but it was worth it.

I keep contemplating the Peace Corps but... *sigh* there are complications and barriers, and simple matters of convenience and getting paid too. Gotta get paid. Want to be happy and fulfulled... Seek my bliss. I know of some things that make me happy. Helping people find the things that they want is one. Which is why I had a love/hate relationship with my "career" in retail. There was a hope to help people figure out how to get out of poverty, what things to do in a financial sense to build something out of nothing. Important stuff like what is a credit report, how you are seen and measured by society, how to succeed before you make a mistake that ruins your credit. So many things that if people only knew them, life would be simpler or easier, or... I like to make arrangements - what kind of positions involve making arrangements? (And no snarky comments about funeral directors or anything, or a ticket teller... that's not what I mean.) Between CoB and I, we would make great Travel Agency team. I dunno. Since we like to travel, we would go around and find all the best places on OUR vacations and be able to direct others to the best "authentic" places - you know, the best places are the ones frequented by the locals. Sound silly?

Anyways, on to number three. It is on right now. New show called In Justice. About finding innocent people who have been wrongly imprisoned and making the case for them to be reprived and freed. It has an interesing mix for a cast. Not bad acting and dramatic stretching of interplay. If any of you are also watching, let me know what you think.

Happy New Year!