Anxiety, aliens, sharks and sushi

Weekend report. Saturday was some chores, and then hanging out with Amythest and Nymaz. Took one of Amythest's kitties to the vet, she's going fine. Dropped her back off at home, and we went to the movies. Saw the new 'Independence Day' flick, which was fun, but not as good as the original. The magic of the original would have been hard to recreate. The effects were good, and the background of the movie was actually pretty positive. Plus aliens with tentacles are always good to me.

Post the movie, we went to a local sushi buffet. Nothing out of this world, but it was pretty tasty. We then ran a couple of errands to kill time before the second movie...'The Shallows'.

'The Shallows' was your basic woman vs nature, done rather well. The shark, while it was acting kind of outside the norm for Great Whites, wasn't completely off the wall like most shark movies. The actress, Blake Lively, was good. The shark effects were really good. It was a really good flick, and nice to show sharks as not utter demons, while still showing them as a creature you should be afraid of. 8 or 9 fins in the water.

Came home after the movie, took forever due to construction on the highway I didn't notice til it was way too late. Oh well, I had Lovecraftian podcasts to listen to so I just made the best of it. Got home, went to bed with a book. One of the 'Aliens' novels that originally came out in the 90's. Nice bit of xenomorph fluff. Went to bed, slept, dreamed some weird dreams, and woke up full on anxious. Tried to stay in bed, fail. Took my meds, and I'm camping out at the Desk of Doom (tm) til things settle down, then I'll go down and do laundry and stuff at Amythest's as usual.

So yeah, that's my weekend. The anxiety is starting to fade a little, that's good. Hope it decided to bugger off for a while. I can dream at least. At least next weekend is a 3 day weekend. Ok, enough rambling. Catch you all later.

State of the Fox: Additional

I forgot, I gave up caffeine, and I'm finally starting to not feel like utter crap. I've known for a while that my Code Red habit wasn't good for my health, but I didn't have the willpower or immediate reasons to quit. Then a number of messages from the multiverse came in, and I decided I needed to quit before I had big reasons to. Plus, caffeine + anxiety is not a good mix. Along with that, I've cut majorly down on sugar. It's been kind of rough. Last time I quit caffeine, I was in the hospital with Stan, and well, amazing what painkilers can do. It's been a week and change since I stopped all together, and about 3 since I started tapering down. I do miss it, especially getting up in the AM (and Friday night movies fests) but I think the physical foo is over. I've been drinking lots of water, which is better for me both physically and on the budget. So that's the addendum, I'm actually trying to be healthier. Go Me!

State of the Fox

Not sure how long it's been since I did one of these. Probably not long, but here it is. At the beginning of the month I posted about going to the pshrink to up my meds. I go back next week, and I'm going to say that while it's helped, it's not helped as much as I'd want. Maybe another dose up, as I am doing better. Or maybe a different med will be the answer. I don't know, but I'm willing to try. And that's a big change from last year, hell, from a couple of months ago.

Work is good. Figured out why I was anxious at the job, even though I'm working with some very cool people, and nothing has felt like the stressors of the Shoggoth Pit. But I still find meetings and dealing with the boss as a cause of anxiety, because for years I'm used to having bosses who yelled, who enjoyed winding me up, who had no clue how to handle people. I now have a boss who's helpful, and can say 'you did this incorrectly, here's what you should have done' without making it a chances to yank my chain. I just need to get used to it, and it's probably going to take a while longer. But I see that I can, and why I feel the way I do, and with that, I can change things.

Personal life is good. Been spending a lot of time buried in books. Friends are good, friends are great. Even if I haven't been quite the social butterfly. Château Innsmouth is as it usually is. Most everything is pretty ok. Well it's overly warm, and my internet has issues, but nothing I can't handle.

That's pretty much Vulpine's life here at Château Innsmouth. Hoping it stays that way. Catch you all later, hopefully with a stable internet connection. Ciao.

Saturday Supernatural

Well Saturday has been alright. Woke up after a weird dream about buying and running a school. Futzed around the Château Innsmouth, maintenance never showed. *sigh* Watched 1.5 Amityville Horror flicks, then headed up to visit some friends. Who's AC was out, ick. Got to finally watch 'The Witch' with subtitles, which cleared up some dialog bits, but it seems I grokked the general Puritan theology and 17th century English. Also watched the original 'Poltergeist', always a fun flick. But after that flick I was pretty much a puddle, so I headed home with the AC on high.

Got Taco Bell for dinner, finished watching the .5 of the 2nd Amityville movie. Got mail after the sun went down, which including my replacement NecronomiPod. It's currently running through all the updates. And boy is there a lot of them. Also watching 'Amityville 3D' which is one of my guilty pleasures.

Probably going to make it a fairly early night of bed and book, getting overheated will do that to a fox. Plus I have a ton of Mythos and Ancient History to read. Tomorrow is keeping up the ghostness, the plan is to go see 'The Conjuring 2' with Amythest. It's been a ghostly weekend I guess. Catch you all later, unless the spooks catch me first.

Random Day Off

Took today off, I had major issues getting out of bed Wednesday, and I had a ton of social activity planned for the weekend. Plus I had errands that I needed to get done during daylight hours. Boss was cool about it, so were my fellow Carcosa geeks. Came home last night, did general pick up around the apartment, watched some cheesy movies and in general relaxed. Yay for pseudo Fridays.

Slept in today, went to my old bank and closed out the accounts. Yay finally getting the great bank swap of 2016 done. Went to the store to fill in a few gaps, and came home. By the time I got home around 10:30 it was already melting fox temperatures. I put in a request for my complex to take a look at a water leak in my bathroom ceiling. Hung around Château Innsmouth all day waiting on maintenance. (I hate strange people in my apartment). Finally gave up a little while ago. Maybe they will show up early tomorrow. *eyeroll*

Watched some more bad horror movies, then switched gears and put on 'Wanted: Dead or Alive'. 80's action flick starring one of my favorite actors, Rutger Hauer. Probably going to watch another Hauer flick, 'Nighthawks' afterwards. Been doing my usual day off geekery. Just ordered Chinese food for dinner. Nom nom nom.

Fox is doing ok. Still getting used to not having caffeine daily. *looks back* Oh, I never noted that here. I'm cutting out caffeine (aka Code Red) and cutting way back on soda and sugar. Which will be good for my health, but ye gods and little fishies it's been hard. Especially in the AM. But, it will get better. That whole getting healthy thing, and living til Cthulhu rises and stuff. And a lack of caffeine should lead to less anxiety, or so I'm told.

Well that's about it for my day off. Tomorrow is fun with friends, and Sunday is hanging out with Amythest and stuff. Good way to spend a weekend. Will catch you all later. *waves a tentacle*

Change for the better

I was feeling quite blue today, no real big reason, just feeling a little useless, and out of sorts. Then I was reminded that I work in a (fun kind of) looney bin. One of the developers decided on a whim to dye his goatee blue. And on our internal chat channel, me and another developer shared a brain and both commented about using the blood of smurfs to dye it with. It's nice to work with people who are as nuts as me. Also, boss is in town, and took us out for tacos. Yay free lunch.

The other big mood reset was I went back and read my offline journal for last year, for the 3 months around when I quit the Shoggoth Pit. July through September. And it sunk in how utterly miserable I was there, the stress, the ex-boss from hell, along with trying to rebuild my life after Mom's passing. I'm kind of surprised that I didn't end up in a psych ward by late August. There was a lot of ick in those entries. But I do remember one thing, towards the end, when I'd already written out my plan to deass the job (aka Operation: Leng), I wrote something in the vein of 'My dream is to be in a better place by next year, financially, professionally, etc'. And here it is, 9 months later and I've got a good job where I feel appreciated (and get paid pretty well), I don't dread every morning, nor do I have horrible dreams every night. It's not all rainbows and unicorns, but so what ? I'm actually comfortable enough to say to my pshrink 'Ok, things aren't as good as they could be...what can help?' vs my traditional 'it's working well enough, don't change'. And that means a lot.

So yeah, I'm doing better. It's good when I can catch myself, and reset before I spiral way down. I'm also glad I took that leap 9 months ago, even if it scared the fhtagn out of me, and there were a bunch of times that I thought I'd screwed up royally by leaving the 'Pit. But I didn't, and things got better, and life got better, and huzzah for me and stuff.

The Devil Made Me Film It

Well, after a crazy week of working at Carcosa, I've gladly lazed most of last night and today. The Thursday night maintenance went much better than Tuesday. Less servers, more help, more planning. Still didn't get enough sleep, so come Friday night after work I pretty much ate dinner, and went to bed with a book. Was asleep before 10am, and I pretty much slept til 10am. Had some unpleasant dreams about a former friend, and some weird ones about blood relatives and submarine bases (reading wiki articles on subs probably contributed to the later. Also, somewhere there was sabre fencing. *shakes head* My subconsciousness needs a deep cleaning.

Got up today, got moving. Cleaned out the car finally, went and did critter care, got meds, got packages, and ended up coming home due to a lack of tentacles. Been watching a collection of 'Devil Worship Horror Movies' mostly from the 70's. Epicly cheesy and fun, definitely got my money's worth. Done some chores, done some VM updates, mostly just have been vegging.

My Nexus 5 decided to flake out, so I migrated back to my old 4, and put in a RMA request from the company I bought the 5 from. Very annoying. Glad I hung on the 4 for experimental purposes. Did manage to pull a backup, and reset it to factory default before sending it off. Still a pain in the tentacle.

Ok, going to call this a post, and keep on watching the wild fun of bad movies. Catch you all later.

How am I doing (long post)

I'm not doing so hot. Last night's maintenance was stressful and ended up having a bunch of issues in the AM, things I was told would just work after reboots. But before that, I went to the pshrink and admitted that my depression cycles are getting worse, my temper is short, and I spend a lot of time thinking about regrets and sad memories. It started during the build up to the anniversary of Mom's passing, but it didn't really go away. What really sucks, I looked at my journal entries from a year ago, and it's like nothing has changed. Same moody, same easily frustrated, same pondering of new monitors. *shakes head* So we're upping my original med to see if that helps, and I go back in a month (actually 28 days) to see how it's going. I hate changing meds, as side effect hell is well, hell. But this is a med I've been on for years, so upping it shouldn't cause too many. At least that's the hope.

Work was insane. Trying to make Sybase databases work, when I have almost no experience with them. I made some progress, but I had to wait on the senior admin to get in to show me how to fix the weird development setup. WHich I ended up arguing with all day on and off. Add to that lack of sleep, and a phone that was in a reboot loop and I was pretty close to having a fit. On the plus side, other than one testy email, no one gave me grief, even got thanks from one of the devs for leaping on to things and fixing them quickly. Was going to leave exactly at 5, but there was one last dev database missing, and since I had it down to a science, I stayed a little late to bring it up. Which verified my notes are good, so I'll try to write it up in detail tomorrow for the company wiki.

So yeah, I'm very tired, I'm stressed, I'm anxious about tomorrow's foo, because there's a ton of servers, and they're production machines, so not much wiggle room. With the experience last night it should be better, but I'm still worried about a career limiting move. So we'll see what I can do for better prep tomorrow. Also see if I can beat my phone into submission so it stops rebooting on me. Or contact the seller and get a replacement, since I'm still in the 90 day refurb warranty. But for now I'm going to chill out, got to bed early and hopefully feel better tomorrow.