The fireworks and gunshots are over

So we decided it was safe to stick our heads above ground and take a look around. People in TX really like shooting guns and fireworks to celebrate things, and there were many bullets flying last night. It was like a war zone between the fireworks and the gunshots.

It’s supposed to get around 20°F tomorrow morning after getting to 70° this afternoon, which does bad things to people’s health. This is partially the result of our location near the boundary of continental and coastal weather areas, which gets us some rather violent weather, and partially because of climate change which makes these boundary areas more severe. But anyway the temperature has been dropping like a rock off a cliff outside, and went from toasty warm to “I had to put a shirt on” in my office in just a few hours. Seriously I was watching the news with just sweatpants and slippers and the thermostat was reading over 70°, and now the thermometer on my clock is showing 65° and my fingers are freezing and working intermittently. And the emergency resistance heater just kicked in, I can tell because it smells like burned hair in here.

I’m still thinking about the Sprint-T, but as raw material prices are way up and my available budget is way down my completion date is now even more indefinite than before, which makes me even more depressed than before. And like I wrote before I’m not sure I’ll be able to get in and out of the car with my limited range of motion in my hips and shoulders, something else to make me depressed. Like I really needed more things to be depressed about. Between my love life and the Sprint-T, well there just hasn’t been much to get happy over. But then again aside from that things are pretty good. I have a safe place to sleep, more than enough food, and the heat and AC both work, as was proved with both today. Things could be much worse.

And things have been much worse, not that long ago. Being hit by the truck and being dead is like a blink of the eye for me, but then again impossibly long ago. It has been nearly a third of my life since the wreck, but some days it feels like yesterday. That’s just how it is.

And now I’m getting maudlin on you guys, so this feels like a good time to put this one to bed.

Advertisement

Happy New Year!

I wish everyone who reads my blog a happy and safe New Year. I hope everyone else is safe as well, but that they don’t get happy until they start reading my blog. OK moderate levels of happy, but no overjoyed moments until after they read all the cat posts, and subscribe to the comments. That way I don’t have to post about people getting killed or injured on bikes again, because I don’t think I could stand doing that again. >shudder<

We survived 2018!

Well in about nine hours as I write this, but barring sudden catastrophe it looks like 2018 will be in the rear view mirror.

Progress was made on many fronts, mostly RPG and Sprint-T related, but Other Things Happened also. On the downside was the DVT scare, but on the upside was Mrs. the Poet getting SS and Medicare. Now at least one of us has access to medical care without needing to raid the fund for keeping the house. If we lived in a state that did not consider being poor a crime we would already have access to medical care, but you have to play the cards you get at the table you got them.

So, anyway, short post. I hope you survive the rest of 2018 and all of 2019 and come out none the worse for wear.

Now that 2017 is finally in the rear view mirror…

Let’s get down to 2018.

First, if any of you are making guillotines, or thinking of making guillotines for the upcoming year, I make bicycle-drawn tumbrels, because making someone walk from jail to their public execution is just uncivilized. I’m making two models, one with a smooth ride, and the other that deliberately lurches from side to side and tosses the rider around violently. That one is reserved for criminals who got rich off of making poor people’s lives even worse, like loan sharks or politicians. Politicians who worked to make loan sharking legal get dragged naked by their heels behind a Prius on their way to getting a really close haircut.

Second, I’m still looking for a donor vehicle for the TGS2 or Sprint-T. The TGS2 needs a FWD vehicle with a powerful engine driving a robust manual or automatic transmission. The Sprint-T needs a V6 or V8 engine from a front-engine RWD vehicle driving an automatic transmission, because there ain’t gonna be room for 3 pedals in the footbox beside the transmission without major surgery to the driver’s side front corner of the body and driving around with my feet pointed hard left to clear the transmission tunnel. As it is I’m going to have either my left foot scrunched up against the steering column, or my right foot on top of the transmission tunnel, maybe both.

Third, I’m going to beat this depression, probably by deleting Twitter and only reading the funny pages in the newspaper. This might read as a bit of a hard turn after reading the first paragraph and the tumbrels and everything, but I can’t stay sane while reading about the current political situation with the inmates running the asylum and nobody picking up after them. I accept that it will get worse before it gets better, and the starting point for “worse” is about as bad as it has been since The Depression. But just because I know sorta how bad it’s going to get, that doesn’t mean I can’t close my eyes while I’m taking the ride. I think of it as self-care to avoid dealing with idiots. It lowers my blood pressure and keeps me from being as depressed. I know I’m bio-chemically depressed from years of untreated PTSD, but there’s no sense in making it worse by paying too close attention to the crazy in the environment.

Fourth, I need to get out and get more exercise. I don’t know how, because my previous method of getting exercise was to do things that require exertion in my daily life and recent events have made that extremely difficult for me to manage. And by that I’m referring to my hips losing range of motion and also losing strength in my arms, not to mention I did something to my right shoulder and now it doesn’t move right to match the condition of my left shoulder that took so long to recover from. But recovery will come and I will figure out how to get strong again even if it means wasting time doing exercises like calisthenics.

Finally, I’m going to keep writing. I’m going to keep posting about how I feel, if I managed to get some exercise, any trips outside the house I managed to make. I will make posts about The Human Condition, Mrs. the Poet’s non-swear swearing (she uses the phrase “Bubba-head” frequently, and also Fake Yiddishe), That Cute Thing My Cats Did, and anything else that strikes me as Worthy of Recording.