Author: Teel

Author, artist, romantic, insomniac, exorcist, creative visionary, lover, and all-around-crazy-person.

weighing on me

So, today I moved several large, solid-core doors so I could move around 50 cabinet doors so I could move things into the shelves behind where the cabinet doors were, and to make space for the 60 gallons of rusty steel bits I moved today. 60 gallons is the best measurement I can give you, since the little metal bits were all in 5-gallon containers. After that there were a few heavy (and a couple of light) trips to the dumpster, and in between a trip to the library (they will simply order the two books I want instead of inter-library-loaning them, adding them to their permanent collection) and two trips to the post office (this is because the first time I went, to get the mail, I was still too tired to realise I also had something to send (I’m sending back that ‘incomplete works’ of Oscar Wilde; they gave me a return code and apologized and everything)), and for some reason I was really tired.

Of course, after being awake for a couple of hours early this morning I discovered I was so tired and sore that I laid down to take a short nap … that lasted about 3 hours. Right now I feel like I did the upper-body part of my Bowflex routine after riding my bike 20 miles. I am so glad my dad is not coming up tomorrow for more hard labor. I don’t know if I could take a full day of it. I am very much looking forward to heading out to San Diego on Sunday to take in the soot and ash-filled ocean air and relax.

Also, since pre-orders for t-shirts are still at Zero, unless Heath or I get pre-orders on or before November 5th, I can stop stressing out about not having all the equipment necessary to start screen printing. For a while. I still want to do it, but … well, you may not realize it, but to put together a complete screen printing setup, even from all used equipment and the best possible deals on consumables (ie: inks, shirts, etc…) is going to cost us over $1000, potentially much more? For good, new equipment it could cost over $15,000. Actually, because of the cost of a production run alone, equipment aside, if we get combined pre-orders for less than 5 shirts, I’m likely to just outsource the job, absorb the red ink on this go, and put off starting the business until next year.

If I seem like I’m not in the best mood right now … I don’t know. Maybe it’s because both of my grandparents are getting worse all the time in their own ways, my grandmother’s mind degrading and my grandfather’s body. Maybe it’s because I ‘watched’ Requiem For A Dream tonight (I wasn’t looking, most of the time, just listening to the director’s commentary). Maybe it’s because of the long conversation I just had with someone about me and my life and some of the reasons that I’m likely to remain single for at least until the end of the world, if not a few years after. They were nothing but supportive, of course. But the facts remain.

Have I mentioned publicly that I’ll be enjoying The Matrix Revolutions at the Harkins Cine Capri (at Scottsdale and the 101) on Wednesday morning at 10:40AM? Yes. That is what I shall be doing. I saw Reloaded on IMAX and I saw Once Upon A Time In Mexico on the Cine Capri screen, and I’m not sure I could discern a difference in size between the size of the projected movie. (For those of you who have never experienced a converted movie on IMAX, there are black bars at the top and bottom of the image, since a standard IMAX screen is not a standard theatrical ratio. The resulting image is just about the same size as the screen at the Cine Capri.) I shall be enjoying the first showing of The Matrix Revolutions on the largest screen in GMPhoenix, for half the cost of the IMAX showing later that day. My father and brother and sister and I shall all be there, and you are welcome to join us. We have, of course, already purchased our tickets, and recommend you follow suit.

My lower back hurts.

I am listening to the special ‘Sorry for myself’ mix I’ve put together in iTunes. It plays only ‘downer’ music and music that mirrors the mood I am currently enjoying.

My feet have been coming apart lately. You know those lines in the skin on your hands and feet? At the ends of your fingers, they’re “fingerprints”, but I don’t have a word for the ones on my toes or the balls of my feet. They’re there, though. Anyway, my feet have been drying out or something up here. It started with just one of those little lines. It broke somehow, and the one line peeled back, very painfully from the center of the ball of my right foot. It did not bleed, but it hurt more than most of the holes ripped into me that do bleed. I put antibiotic on it and a bandaid at the time and hoped for the best. It had gotten worse. And worse. And a few days ago the pain made me examine my feet carefully. Dozens and dozens, literally, of the lines on the ball of my foot and my big toe, and a couple on my heel, have broken away somehow, leaving notches and grooves in the whorls of my “foot print”. My left foot is less severe, with fewer notches on my ball, and only a couple on my big toe. I don’t understand, exactly, why this is happening to me now. I don’t have any moisturizer (I’ll look into getting some when I’m in town; I also need more floss and … something else … kool-aid, sure … but … I don’t know. Something. I’ll remember it.) but I do have some “thigh cream” that came with the epil-stop I ordered years ago. I looked at it then, at its ingredients and effects and determined that it was basically just moisturizer with vitamin E and lanolin. I’ve used it once and again to prevent scarring, to good effect. I have been moisturizing the bottoms of my feet with it twice a day for the last few days. It seems to be helping. The balls of both my feet are nearly healed, and the big toes are showing some progress. I worry about my socks, though. And of course, about the bottoms of my feet mysteriously transmogrifying into thighs. It IS thigh cream.

I’m tired again. I’m going to bed. This is enough for now.

Tomorrow, laundry, more garbage… more working on clearing that table off… maybe a little “dangerous item juggling” (for Iain)… I’d like to get some work done on Betty’s crust if I can… maybe even finish the crust and get working on the actual Betty… I don’t know. Maybe some Mouse.

G’night.

I stink

This has been a long, hard day, and after I post this, I’m going to bed.

Before I do though, I wanted to let you know that I stink.

No, literally. I smell bad.

For those of you who know me, or have known me for long and in person, you may be aware that I’m not particularly diligent about showering. In previous years, I typically showered about once a week. Luckily, most of the time, I don’t smell bad. People who find out about my infrequent showering after knowing me for months or years are often in disbelief, and I believe it is because if they do not shower daily or more, they stink. I have never had that problem.

It normally takes weeks and weeks of wearing the same unwashed garments while doing things that induce sweat that I eventually build up an odor. I have been using unscented baking soda deodorants for years. They don’t add that awful perfume scent, they absorb any natural odors, and (since they are also an antiperspirant) they reduce underarm sweat overall. Arm and Hammer has been the only company producing such a product. Recently, I went to buy more Arm and Hammer Baking Soda Deodorant, and I found when I got it home that it no longer contains baking soda. They call it “Arm and Hammer Baking Soda Deodorant” and every one I’ve ever bought has contained baking soda before (yes, I checked every one, every time)… and to top it off, the store I went to did not carry unscented… I bought the least powerful scent, “Cool Blast”.

So, it’s been working okay, but I’m prone to blame my current situation on the inadequate properties of my current deodorant. What’s the point of buying “Arm and Hammer Baking Soda Deodorant” over other brands if it doesn’t have any fucking baking soda in it? Fuck.

Anyway, regardless, I woke up this morning at 6, as I have been becoming used to lately, and got myself dressed and checked my emails and read my online comics and had breakfast and watched last night’s Daily Show…. and then I began “rearranging” my room. If you have never seen my furniture, you do not understand the weight of this endeavor. I do a lot of heavy lifting around here. For the last couple of months it has not been uncommon for me to lift over a ton of things in a day and carry them someplace else and set them down again. (Sometimes things I’d just moved days or hours before.) Today, I moved more.

When I started out, I popped in the first Harry Potter movie, and had I not been interrupted until I was ready for the stove (more on that in a moment), I would have worked through that and fully through the second Harry Potter movie. I went fully through Boogie Nights this evening, getting things into place after the stove was in place. And I’m still not done. What do you think I should run while I finish?

The reason I’ve had to move all my things around (I’ll give you a list of things later) is because it suddenly got cold on Saturday. Highs and lows dropped around 20 degrees, literally overnight. And the stove I had been using last winter, which was removed this summer, simply was not up to the job. We bought a new (used) wood stove at the local thrift shop cheaply and today we installed it. On the other side of the room from where the old one was.

When I figured out how to arrange my furniture when I moved here in February, it was all built around this immovable stove, from which minimum distances must be kept. The new stove is now sitting where the front of my TV had been, just a few hours ago. I have spent the last couple of days (since I learned we would be venting the stove through a different wall) trying to figure out a workable configuration, and I spent all day today implementing it. By myself.

The first, and most major task, was to move the bed. It is a big, hardwood frame, California King sized, with a tall, heavy head and a tall, heavy foot. In fact, when dissembled it takes two grown men to move the foot alone, and two very strong (or three normal) grown men to move the head by itself. Instead of a traditional matress, I invested in a Sleep Comfort adjustable matress… which means that when I want to move my bed I can’t just slide the matress off and heave the foundation off; it’s 40 minutes deflation and breakdown, 40 minutes assembly and inflation. Oh, and in between, moving the frame in one piece. Without straining the connections holding it together. Yep. That was fun.

In addition to that I also have (and moved) three large bookcases (one I moved while still full; that was pretty hard) my large chair (chair and a half, they call it, but what the hey, it’s just a big chair if you ask me), my dining room table (covered with everything in the room that had been on something else I moved PLUS what had been building up on the table these last nine months), a dresser, and oh, did I mention my entertainment center? Yeah, that was fun, too. I went ahead and left all my media and the 36″ tube TV in it for the move. You know, for kicks.

The entertainment center was one of the last things I moved before we brought the stove in, and it was while moving that that I first noticed that there was a mild odor that seemed to be coming from me. That scent was the first clue to me that perhaps I had worked quite hard today. Normally, no smell; today, so much sweat and effort that my whole body was exuding it. Shortly thereafter I noticed a mosquito happily sucking out my blood. I’ve got half a dozen more bites since then. But normally I don’t get ANY bites… unless I upset a spider by lifting the heavy thing it’s been living on and setting it down someplace else. To the consternation of my sister, bugs just don’t seem attracted to me. I think it’s the not smelling bad I usually do so well.

I try to pay close attention to this, because now I only shower when I get to Phoenix (there are issues; don’t ask), so it seems fairly important to me to know that I’m starting to smell bad, especially if I can’t do anything about it for a few days. Which is the case now. I will be heading to Phoenix on Friday evening, and will shower as soon as I get there, but as you have probably already figured out, today is Monday.

So… yeah. I’ve just written for ten more minutes than I wanted to be up, so now I’m REALLY going to stop writing about my day and my BO. One more thing:

I have a theory about my sweat. I believe that since I normall sweat a fair amount when working WITHOUT stinking, that perhaps there is something different about my diet in recent days or weeks that my body is now flushing out as a toxin. I can’t exactly think of what would be different, except that I’ve taken sleeping pills a few nights in the last week. Maybe sleeping pills are it. I’ll stop taking them soon enough (if I haven’t already stopped), and I’ll see if it’s that or the deodorant, or … both? or something else?

And for now, I’ll sleep. Really, this time.

I done figuredized it out!

I done figuredized it out! Now the list of the ‘last 5 of the last 10 recently updated’ thing properly displays categories that contain fewer than 5 entries. That is, instead of “Concept Reviews” listing two concept reviews and 3 other things, it just stops at 2. Moo!