Balinares

The funny thing about long online silences is, you don't intend your last post in ages to be your last post in ages. It just happens to be a snapshot of what's going on just before you're about to enter a time of not enough time/energy/brainwidth to keep updating.

And on that count, hoo boy, my last posts about how my commute is fucking me up were spot. on. perfect.

The last year, summarized: commute, work, raise kids. (For values of 'raise' comprised mostly of flailing ineffectually while they turn out fine on their own, because you know, kids do that.)

I don't draw or paint anymore, I don't write anymore, I stopped horse-riding and martial arts, programming projects have gone to fallow. This is not a super exciting life.

At some point you just find yourself padding the gaps by blinking blearily at the Internet again and again, which the brain parses as "Oh hey, this is almost like I'm doing something!", except of course it isn't. At least I made a whole bunch of friends loosely playing asynchronous forum games on pony-themed subreddits.

With my commute and C.'s crazy doctor hours, we've been relying a lot on our nanny, the dear woman. Her availability and proximity are what helps us hold everything together. But she's not having a good year, at all. Within months, she got a divorce and then lost her dad. So... she's selling her house, and moving away.

And that's where everything kind of breaks down for us.

Basically... We're calling it quits. We've sold the house. And we're moving back down south.

After a lot of false starts because the housing market is fucked up beyond belief, we found a nice rental house 5 mins away from C.'s parents. We'll be relying on them a lot. Kind of have to.

Selling the house went mercifully quickly. The local market is dreadfully anemic, but our house is... well, was really pretty, and to be honest, we also took a heavy loss on the sale. That's life. Hopefully the buyers' mortgage will go through; we'll sign the final papers in October.

C. herself found a nice position at a smaller hospital down south, in the town where my own parents live. She'll have more night duties, but they'll be markedly quieter.

And as for me, my boss agreed to let me telecommute. The sales manager, who supervises those things, agreed as well. Aaaaand then the CEO stepped in and demanded I come in at least two days a week.

So for the time being, I will in fact be spending even more time on the train than before.

This is going to be a brand new life, though, and that matters.

Right now we're packing, packing and packing. You acquire so much stuff without realizing it. We've been throwing away a lot of old things, actually, which is strangely therapeutic.

The moving truck comes on Thursday. So, right during Eurofurence. Because of course the details of C.'s work schedule between here and down south, and the rental house's availability, had to conspire so the move could only happen this week. Seriously, at some point it just stops being funny.

I'll still be going to EF, primarily because C. said I should. (If it had been my own decision, I wouldn't have gone. But she's wise like that; I think we'll both have need of the tremendous mental energy I get from my yearly pilgrimage to EF.)

So right now I'm trying to wrap up everything before tomorrow, my last day here. Packing, relocating telephone/Internet subscriptions, more packing, everything must be done and done well so C. can just sit back and relax until the truck comes. I hope.

And here I am, wrapping up everything, and finally closing this update window so I can move on to the next task.

Given the trials ahead, I feel oddly optimistic and cheerful.

2011 was a good year for me as far as writing is concerned, in the sense that some got done, and some even got shared.

The entirety of it was done on the train. Which is not exactly a great writing environment, as you may guess, but beggars can't be choosers. Writing at home has... just not worked at all, not since the kids were born. So, on the train it is, as poor an environment as it may be. First, you gotta find a seat, one with a tray, which has unfortunately not always been a given. And then, there's the fauna.

You get the chewer, who plops down next to you and then masticates loudly in your ear for the whole goddamn trip. And the deaf phone user, you know that one. No amount of music through the earbuds plugged right into your freaking SKULL seems to suffice. And then there's the territorial elbower, who will wage a merciless war with you over the armrest for no reason other than they hate you for being there. You can either spend your time fighting back, or give in and try to write with your elbow and shoulder held awkwardly up in the air until the point where the cramps begin. Not a lot of actual writing gets done on those days.

And let's not mention the many, many days when the service was so awful that even getting home at all was an ordeal. Trains this year have been record-breaking terrible. (Coincidentally, the train company has posted record-breaking profits. It turns out they don't have to reimburse you when they cancel your train and leave you stranded.) After consecutive occurrences of a 4 to 5 hour delay on what is sold as a 25 minutes ride, people started to get organized to stage protests. This is unprecedented, and made some noise in the media.

So when, at the end of last summer, they announced that they were going to give the timetables a major overhaul, we were all cautiously hopeful.

The new schedule began about a month ago.

It's not only worse; it's far worse.

My morning train got canceled. In fact, a lot of direct trains got canceled. People are now expected to wait for tiny shuttles to bring them to one of a set of preselected stations... or to outright drive there on their own. Coincidentally, it turns out this set of anointed stations overlaps somewhat with the set of stations where the train company happens to own expensive parking lots.

Since the tiny shuttles are few and far between, I've got to allow for a longer drive to the station, because if I don't and something on the road delays me, I have no fallback. Of course, if nothing delays me then I'll spend that much more time waiting for the shuttle in the cold.

And then there's the joy of waiting some more at the next station down, too, which happens to be, shall we say, somewhat crowded and somewhat unsavory. So you just... stand there, head low in the crowd, practicing being dead. And when the train arrives, on a bad day you have to shoulder other human beings aside if you wish to hope for a seat.

And because the traffic got concentrated on fewer lines that were already overloaded, the frequency of service incidents has gone up.

My evening train, miraculously, is a direct one like before, though it now stops at a number more stations on the way. All told, my daily commute has shot up to somewhere north of 3 hours. A 50% increase from when I started working at my current company.

And the kicker is, the prices have gone up as well at the beginning of the year. People are so pissed over the whole thing that I've overheard some -- we're talking perfectly respectable middle class white women here -- explain how they just fucking stopped buying tickets altogether.

The one reason I've not quit is that I'm basically allowed to telecommute whenever I want, and unsurprisingly, I've been wanting rather a lot more lately.

Oh, and the 'new' trains are ancient models from the 90's -- and in one case, possibly even the 80's. The evening one shambles along and creaks like an old wheelbarrow all the way.

The seats have no trays.

So this is the end of my writing endeavors for the time being.

I'd be lying if I said I'm not taking it hard.

Maybe eventually I'll somehow muster the energy and concentration to resume writing in short bursts despite the worsened conditions. The immediate odds aren't terrific, though.

Sometimes it just amazes me that some easily theorized celestial bodies haven't had time to appear yet because our 15 billion year old universe is just way too young.

As to why the weekend that came before the Week of Suck was awesome:



It was even larger and creamier than it looks. And the venue was a giant ball pit. With a giant screen so we could play some pony and throw balls at the bad guys. I'm not even kidding.

I guess the following week was sort of allowed to suck a little, to even things out, even though it clearly pushed the boundaries.

My son just waddled up the stairs, turned the light on for me in the darkening room, and then trotted over to give me a little kiss on the arm.

It's the small things.

Ok, so barring any disaster, car-related or otherwise, I'm off to Brussels and then EF.

I'll see y'all there.

There are worse comparisons, I guess.

(Meme pilfered from thewerewolf.)

From zero to major brony in somewhat under 72h.

Anybody didn't see this coming, raise a hoof. :P

Ok, in the face of a massive uptick in comment spam, I've turned off anonymous commenting. I didn't want to do that, because sometimes you get something like this, but this was no longer tenable. At first screening all anonymous comments by default seemed to work; now they no longer care. Screw them, dammit.

It's my grandma's birthday today.

Not any birthday. She just turned three digits, and entered the highly selective club of centenarians. I've now got a full century worth of grandma.

I was about to say, and what a darned fucked up century to have lived through, but the one before was only marginally better in some respects and worst still in others. She doesn't talk much about all she's seen, for a variety of reasons, but sometimes I wish she did. The Internet must be unthinkable magic to her, and the world must seem crazy. She's mostly withdrawn from it anyway.

Good going, grandma. Here's to another century.