Category: Uncategorized

Hooray, the internet! I received an email this morning advising me my W2 was ready, went to a secure website and printed the form out (they’ll mail me the federally mandated paper copy in a couple of weeks, of course), and brought it home from work tonight. Then I searched through the various “free” and not-so-free and this-part-free-that-part-fee and so on tax sites until I found one linked to by both IRS and AZDOR (and thus trusted) with free e-filing for both federal and state (alright, they lied, too, and I paid the $10 ‘preparation’ fee for my state form when they revealed it at the end), went through the convenient automated process, and electronically filed my tax returns in about 45 minutes from start to finish. I’ve e-filed for as long as they’ve had the option available, and expect a “tax forms accepted” email within the next 24 hours (they always say “at least 24 hours” but I’ve only had it take more than a day once so far), and my combined $1375 in refunds directly deposited (hooray, electrons!) into my checking account a few days after that. (And yes, I have my withholding set at maximum – I’d rather get money back than have to try to come up with it out of nonexistent savings at the end of each year.)

That’s $1375 towards making Modern Evil Press a legitimate publishing company this year. With ISBNs and Library of Congress code blocks and at least one title available on Amazon. Not to mention every independent book store I can talk into carrying it. Yay!

So, I’ve been visiting Second Life again lately. It’s been a while. But it’s one of those ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’ situations, where there’s been a lot of changes in the last couple of years, but I’m still basically an SL native and expert.

I even got Mandy to sign up. She was reluctant at first, thinking it was too geek-y or whatever, but now she’s getting into it a bit. We’ll see if that lasts, but it’s encouraging.

I’m working on getting my art online in SL for sale – as digital items. As art you can hang on your virtual walls. There’s actually a market for such a thing. And the L$ (Linden Dollars, the virtual currency) I earn there can actually be translated into US$… the market is at about L$266/US$1 right now, actually. Okay, there goes another one. Looks like it takes me about … 15 minutes or so … to put another one online. I may have to play around with image sizes though, I’m not sure if I’m happy with the texture quality on a couple of these.

Erg. 20 minutes in game just now means I’ve got to go hurry and get ready for work instead of posting longer. Maybe I’ll post more later. Sigh.

I’m not used to sleeping next to someone. So when you’re here, or I’m there, or we’re both wherever, but we’re next to each other in bed (and trying to sleep) I don’t know how to be. I know how to sleep alone, but when you’re next to me I want to be in contact with you, I want to feel some part of you touching some part of me. We spend so much time apart, I’ve spent so much of my life alone, that having someone so close and not to feel them physically seems like … a waste, or … like I’m not appreciating the opportunities I’m given, somehow. Yet moving an arm or a leg out to feel your skin against my own seems oftten to twist my body into a position that is, or becomes painful. And pressing our entire bodies together, spooning one way or two others as it were, might be fine if my nose didn’t mind your hair and my arms never lost circulation… And here, this, this thinking, this dissection, this is one of the things my mind does at night, when you’re here, when you’ve just been here, trying to figure it out, how to be comfortable (physically – emotionally is a different sort of a conundrum, I think) with someone in bed. Admittedly, I spend a fair amount of thought on the subject of my own, lone, bed-occupying comfort. It isn’t just to do with having another person there, my mind runs all the time. The question simply becomes more complicated. Instead of simply rolling over to satisfy my body’s ever-shifting requests and complaints, instead of simply contorting a bit to work out some tension or strain, I think also about how to do so without disturbing you, how to do so and be able to touch you, how to do so that you don’t worry I’m in pain, and on and on… And whether my bed should be harder or softer, whether I need another blanket, a warmer pajama, to turn up the thermostat, and how any of these things may effect you… None of these questions is particularly difficult, on its own, and I apparently sleep much more soundly than you do, despite them. But I thought I’d share, since it was on my mind, keeping me up again tonight, while you sleep in another bed in another town.

That’s the question, isn’t it? How can we be comfortable, how can we do our own thing, while wanting to be close, to touch, to take another’s comfort and their independence into account, to do everything we can to make it work without sacrificing our own needs?

Are we fixed? Did it only take a month?

Yay!

(This is half of what I was working on last night.)

Thank you, Marie, for letting me come over and hang out tonight. Thank you for suggesting that we put on a movie (and a good one, at that) which kept me distracted straight through midnight. I know I didn’t mention what was up, but I posted it before I came over. Whether you knew or not, you were there when I needed you.

((I guess the ten-plus years we’ve known each other actually sortof managed to work its way into a friendship after all. I’m glad.))