The Lyorn's Den

I haven't made an End of the Year post because I won't dignify 2024 with it and don't have any hope for 2025.
Still alive. So there's that.

After cancelling five planned roleplaying game days for my current bimonthly retro science fiction campaign, because of illness, exhaustion, stress at work, and another gaming group getting precedence, I finally said to my players, "if not now, then when?" and we agreed to play today. ( Read more... )

I said that I would post more and complain less. Or try, at least.
So, this is me trying. Again.

There was fun stuff, which was a lot of work and planning and preparation and very stressful, especially since I'm running on about 40% of the energy I had 6 years ago. But with reduced work hours it was manageable.

( Choir performances )
( Role playing )
( Comic convention )

OK, that's it for now. I'll make another post (probably. maybe.) about the way in which 2024 was a mess (for me, personally).

I know I meant to complain less. And things are not shitty all over. Basically there is exactly one personal (as opposed to state-of-the-world) thing with is extremely shitty and so annoying and omnipresent that I cannot write about the state of the Lyorn without complaining.

I had time off work the past week, and did, dunno, things. Went bouldering with R---, booked ferry, hotel, and night train for August, decluttered the wardrobe, got a new chest of drawers set up in the bedroom (much prettier), and applied for a choir workshop.

Yesterday I decided to drive over to the city to buy a Sudoku puzzle book. The things you do on a Deutschlandticket, when for less than 50 Euros a month you can use all public transport except for fast trains and long distance busses. But as the same day the train drivers were on strike again (feels like third time this winter, and I have Opinions about that), I bicycled 10 kilometres to the start of the tram line, and took the tram the rest of the way.

I got my Sudoku books, and bought some more books, and a shirt, and sweets, had lunch, and walked about 5K steps which made me worry about the next day, because my joints are mess and that much walking (Much. Hah. Six years ago this would have been barely worth putting on shoes for) usually means lots of pain for the next one or two days. But what the hell should I do? If I sit all day on the f***ing sofa, I will still be in pain. So I just do it and hope for the best while expecting the worst.

Bicycling back was nearly too much for my arm strength. This does not bode well for my plan to bicycle to work at least once a week when the weather is OK. I am extremely annoyed with myself and with every self-help book and article about joint pain, which advises, a) go to a doc early (they will tell you that they cannot do anything), b) move more (how the fuck should I if I cannot move because I am in pain and working through the pain makes it worse?) c) lose weight (yeah, sure. I'm underweight for my age), d) take NSAIDs (I'd love to, but I should not because other health issues - I limit myself to one every three days). "Nothing to be done" is bad enough. Every publication and know-it-all shouting idiotic useless advice really gets my goat.

Today, however, was not as bad as feared once I made it out of bed. I took the car into town, got plants for the balcony, and even managed to plant them. Two of the pots have been taken over by plants that really want to be there: In one case, young poplars! Now I have added one pot with horned violets and daisies, one with blue and white bellflowers and an errant horned violet, and one with Asian ranunculus, which are poisonous, but they are out of reach for Tully the Tabby, and he prefers grass anyway.

Tully is still alive and active and a very sweet cat. He wants his food, and his playtime, and his cuddles. He has also lost a bit of weight, but nothing alarming yet.

( Thoughts on work and money )

We had a very good party that ended some time around 4 a.m.

Even the fireworks were nice: Mild temperature, hardly any wind, dry air, mostly things that went bang in clouds of multicolourd sparks, which I love, and everyone was well-behaved and reasonably sober and took care where they aimed.

Despite all the utterly stupid miscommunication drama in preperation for the party, everyone was in a great mood. We ate a lot (meat fondue, mostly, and ice cream for dessert, and Berlin pancakes after we came in from watching the fireworks.) We skipped the traditional burning punch, as people had to drive.

So, if the year is as good as the party, I won't complain. (Well, I will. But only about luxury problems. Like too many mushrooms.)

Tully the Tabby seems well, if a bit deaf and forgetful.

He eats, he weighs 5.1 kilogram (stable), he plays (for short amounts of time), he grooms himself, he likes to be petted, he purrs. He still occupies the sink after I brush my teeth, and I have to be really fast to dry the sink before the cat jumps in.

When I come home it usually takes him a while to notice, but then he comes to greet me, most by saying "meh!" in what sounds like a complaining tone of voice, but I just assume that it means something nice.

No return of the thing yet.

--

In other news, I had some success shopping for presents yesterday , but my knee complained in a way I cannot fix by assuming, and even my peaceful and cooperative left shoulder whinged. I found a bandage for the knee, which helped.

So what did I do today? Helped a friend move. Carried boxes down four flights of stairs. I chose the light boxes, at least. I feel like I've run out of patience with being reasonable.

Goodness. Why do we have so much stuff? I want to throw things away now. It's maybe fortunate that I am too lazy.

Regarding this, the week is over before it started. There is construction work on the rail line, and no commuter trains are running. Going by the replacement busses will take 90 minutes. Going by bicycle takes 65, motor scooter 35, car 25. I wish the weather was more suited to bicycling...

At least, construction is a good thing.

The days after re-setting to normal MET are some of my favourites in the year, awakening to glorious bright autumn instead of freezing dark again. These mornings have become so rare since daylight saving time steals them from April and October, making spring and autumn miserable.

I woke up this morning very happy about sunshine, mild weather, and being able to ride my motor scooter to work... and then it dawned on me that I had accidentally stuffed the day with three appointments (in addition to work) in the most impossible order, meaning I had to drive about 80 kilometres today and the first thing I had scheduled was an appointment at the dentist. After which I would not be able to drive at all. Oh, right. That's why I planned on home office for today. I didn't remember on Friday, so I had not brought my work laptop home.

Instead, I moved the dentist appointment, was in office on time and with a clear head to do the fiddly stuff with the database that needed to be done by noon, left in time for the appointment with the tax advisor, found that I was half an hour too early (my handwriting is a disaster), had coffee and cake, did the tax stuff, had another (very good) coffee, rode another 20 km to my piano lesson through a grey mild evening, and was finally home at half past seven. Everything worked out perfectly, I had lots of coffee (and fun, and wind in my face, and light rain that I was perfectly dressed for), and now Tullamore the Tabby-cat is snoring/purring beside me, and I'm reading fix-it/comfort fanfic.

I feel chaos and I got along just fine today.

With the choir performance in November and the requirement that we wear "black, festive, not shoulder-free, short or glittering" (the men are to wear black trousers, black jacket, white dress shirt, and a black bow tie, and Gwydion is complaining that blue does not count as white and purple does not count as black), it has become high time to find something to wear. Ceridwen, singing tenor, has to dress like the men. She managed to borrow a shirt, but does not have a bow tie nor a suit nor a black jacket or even a blazer. So today we set out to find one. Which was complicated by the fact that Ceridwen is curvy (fortunately, she's tall), and cannot wear standard sizes, be they male or female. ( Cut for me being annoyed with the universe again. )

I'm luckier with my size and with some old pieces in my wardrobe and a shirt from the second hand store I could assemble something very black and quite impressive. Which is good because I'm not the one with an amazing voice, and need to compensate. :-S

1. Closed a bank account that made me jump through an absurd amount of hoops each time I tried to access it.
2. Cancelled the organic veggie subscription, because getting two weeks worth of perishable food in one delivery creates more stress than I currenly want to deal with.
3. Found that my espresso machine is working just fine if the beans are ground to the correct degree. (That means that for more than a year none of the places where I buy coffee had ground it the way I told them to. I blame the pandemic.)
4. Decided that instad of angsting on whether this or that piece of clothing is still good enough for the Red Cross's clothing recycling bin, I'll just put everything in and let them sort it.
5. Bought new batteries for the flashlight I had lying around and found that actually, it was the flashlight that was broken. So I threw it away.

So, that's five items off the list of things that stressed me for no good reason.

(ETA: The more I think about it the more comes to mind. And all done today!)

Tomorrow morning I have nothing to do and nowhere to be.

I can actually sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast, maybe go swimming, and still have time to tidy up the place a bit (chaos has sneaked in while I was not watching) before leaving for another summer party in the evening.

The work outing that I missed must have been fun, for a given value of. As, I would probably have enjoyed it. Up a steep hill in the rain, through a muddy cave (I know that place quite well), then down again. No cell phone reception, so when the bus drove to the wrong place to pick everyone up, no one could do anything about it but wait for the bus driver to notice (he did). Just as everyone was getting in the canoes it started to rain in earnest -- I had the same rain in the city, it was a very fine rain, no big drops, but a very great lot of it. One of the canoes capsized. In the beergarden, it was cold and damp.

No, really, this would have made me feel just like old times when I went hiking and camping and canoeing and bicycling with my friends, and we had about 40 words for rain.

But because it was my day off and I had somewhere else to be (a list of "somewhere elses"), I got rained on in town.