Sorry, I got nothing tonight

On August 23, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Music1 Comment

I absolutely had to listen to this tonight on the way home, but it really isn’t indicative of my day. Nonetheless:

Do not do any Google searches based on this post

On August 22, 2016August 22, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

In fact, have a fluffy kitten from my Instagram account:

Screen Shot 2016-08-22 at 9.05.42 PM.png This adorable kitteh has adopted my parents and we’re trying to decide who’s taking him for real. I really really want to except for the part where I already have an elderly cat and an elderly dog and I’m really not sure how kindly either of them will take to a new younger cat. So maybe we won’t make him ours. Or maybe we will. I dunno.

So my middle toe on my right foot is rotting off. I clipped my toenails last Sunday and managed to fuck it up on my middle toe and it bled a little bit. Monday night the sky exploded and my basement filled with water or at least part of it did and I spent who knows how long wading in Ebola water barefoot. Then my toe started changing colors and shit and the doctor I went to see yesterday got to say things to me like “Oh, yeah, you’re gonna lose all the skin there” and “it’s probably not MRSA,” only she spelled MRSA out, like emm-arr-ess-ay, and who the hell does that?

And then she gave me a broad-spectrum antibiotic to take, and explained carefully that there was only a little chance that my penicillin allergy meant that I was also allergic to this drug also, and even if I was well I just had a rash the last time I had penicillin, when I was five, so I probably won’t die if I have something like penicillin today.

On the plus side, I know how to field dress a middle toe now, but I’d rather not know that and still have ten toes and none of them rotting. Instead I have nine good toes and one rotting one and it’s not fun. I walked fifteen thousand steps today, by the way.

Yeah.

OH SHIT

On August 8, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking8 Comments

I almost forgot to blog today. That would have been a disaster of insignificant proportions. I’m literally in bed right now writing this on my phone. 🙂

So, uh, hi?

Feel free to psychoanalyze me

On August 5, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized3 Comments

The Olympics start tonight, if you’re into that. I personally am not. For my part, I’ll count them a success if none of the athletes die and the Games themselves don’t lead to a global pandemic. My years as an educator have predisposed me to high standards, you see.

I’ve been having weird dreams lately, guys. I generally don’t remember my dreams at all– more than one in a month that I remember past my morning shower is unusual. So the fact that I can still remember dreams from three of the past five days and am pretty certain I can reconstruct the other two given some time is Goddamned weird, and possibly a sign that I’ve been a bit too sleep-deprived lately. And, again, in addition to the fact that I’ve remembered them, they’ve been weird dreams, mostly dreams about people I have little contact with outside of occasional Facebook likes and haven’t seen in years. One of them was about trying to get a woman to take me back after a mutual breakup; in the real world we not only never dated but I was never even into her like that. She’s married with a couple of kids now and we haven’t spoken face-to-face in damn near a decade and a half. Another was about going to New Orleans with three of my oldest friends– or, to be a bit more precise, two of my oldest friends and one of their husbands– only to realize partway through that the husband was with the wrong woman and that everyone had been really uncomfortable the entire time and I just hadn’t noticed.

Also, I swear to you that I’ve had dreams set in this weird proto-New-Orleans before. I’ve never been to Louisiana, much less New Orleans specifically, so it’s really odd that my brain has this chunk of NO mapped out well enough to revisit it in more than one dream.

Oh, and I woke up seriously mad at the husband, and had to fight off the urge to text one of them to tell them about it.

Three hours until my eye doctor appointment. I have high hopes that fiction might actually be accomplished. Or at least lunch. Cleaning. Something. I also got Searching for Malumba available at Smashwords. It is, naturally, griping at me about Various Issues, so it’ll pop up at the other non-Amazon services as soon as I get around to fixing whatever it’s mad about. But it’s up at Smashwords!

More later, if anything interesting strikes me.

In which there is nothing going on

On August 4, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking2 Comments

It’s been several days since I wrote a blog post with more than a few sentences of original content in it, so it would probably be good to do that today, I suppose. The problem is that immediately after writing a post about how much I liked my job I immediately went straight into a couple of nightmare days, including one where there was only two of us (one of the “us” being me, of course) available to unload two trucks full of furniture, a job that normally involves no less than five people.

It took four fucking hours. Normally, we’re done in less than one. I hurt myself halfway through, but by then a third person had shown up, so he took over for me. Don’t be alarmed, it was just a muscle pull, but shit. My least favorite thing about working at this job is being sweaty all the time. I’m basically at the point where I’m coming to work on Tuesdays prepared to give myself a sponge bath in the men’s room after the truck gets unloaded. On the plus side, I did well in sales this week with the weekend still to come, but holy shit did I have to wade through some nonsense in order to get that accomplished.

But anyway.

I’m going to get some fiction written tomorrow if it kills me. I want a book out by Halloween, goddammit, and since it’s August and all I probably ought to get moving on getting the effing manuscript finished. There really isn’t much more to go; it’s mapped out in my head, I just need to get everything left onto the damn page. Screen.

Whatever.

I keep almost writing posts about the election, and I’m pretty sure that I’ve written less about this election than any other one since, probably, 2000, when I only barely had a blog. Donald Trump has lost the power to meaningfully piss me off, it seems, and I just don’t believe that he actually has any chance to win the election, so it’s just a matter of enduring the whole mess until it’s over. It’s not like there’s not been plenty to write about, I just haven’t been able to muster the will to bother.

Tomorrow I have an actual day off. I have an eye appointment at 2:30. Hopefully I’ll use the time before that productively, somehow, and not just crawl the hell into bed and die again. We’ll see.

Upon the One-Month Anniversary of My Tenure as a Salesman of Fine Furniture: A Reflection

On August 1, 2016July 31, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Work3 Comments

Short version: I ain’t dead yet.

As of today, I’ve served four weeks on the sales floor, plus two weeks of pure training, and am personally responsible for the sale of nearly fifty thousand dollars of furniture and furniture-related goods and services to the discerning and tasteful residents of northern Indiana and southern Michigan.

I was hoping it would be over fifty thousand, and missed that mark by a few hundred bucks, mostly because this week was sllllooooow. I’m aiming for sixty next month; we’ll see what happens. During that time, I have walked (conservatively, and not joking) a hundred and sixty miles. It’s probably higher than that. I’m still getting used to the schedule; three eleven-hour days a week where I’m there from open to close, a half day on Wednesdays, and a short day on Sunday. I deliberately did not report to OtherJob this week, pleading the need for two consecutive days off, and spent my Friday thusly:

7:45 AM: Arise from slumber. Rouse boy.
8:30 AM: Deliver boy to day care.
9:15 AM: Return home. Go back to bed.
3:45 PM: Get out of bed, grab Sonic for lunch, collect boy from day care.
5:00 PM: Get home. Spend rest of day lazing about.

I regret nothing, people.

I enjoy the work. I’m even getting to not completely hate Tuesdays, which involve unloading enormous trucks full of heavy furniture and then hours of time on the phone with people who don’t understand that no, we don’t send a truck to your little piss-ant town five days a week, and yes, that means that if Friday’s truck is full you’re going to have to wait until next Friday. Yes, I know you spent a thousand dollars. So did everyone else. We’re doing our damn best over here.

But anyway. Yeah: I like the work, I like the people I’m working with, I like the idea that this is a skill I need to sharpen and get better at. I’m not hugely fond of the schedule, mostly because I’m missing out on daddy time, and my body is weary, but that’s getting better. The gripes are minor, especially compared to anything I went through teaching. I have to find a way to carve out more writing time, too, but as the exhaustion lessens that’ll get better. And I beat my training pay this week, by a decent margin. That’s all sorts of good.

So, yeah. As mid-life career changes go? Right now, this could be a hell of a lot worse.

In which it’s my Friday and I need advice

On July 27, 2016July 27, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking, PoliticsLeave a comment

When I left work today everyone said “Have a good weekend” to me, because at my new job no one knows how days of the week work. But one way or another I have the next two days off. I intend to spend most of tonight watching speeches at the DNC. The question: Liveblog? Or just stay on Twitter the whole time?

I don’t know if I’ve subjected anyone over here to one of my political liveblogs yet. They were mostly a feature of my previous blog.

Hmmm.

EDIT: I’m on Twitter. Come say hi.