#ROW80 1ST QTR 2014 WED CHECK IN AND #IWSG A DAY LATE! PLUS, A RANT

2014 was supposed to be the year that I really got it together, because frankly, I had so totally "streamlined" (read "cocked-up") my life that there wasn't a whole lot left to get together. Boy, was I wrong! I've been running like a bat out of hell since January 1, and really don't have a whole hell of a lot to show for it, except that I've leveled up several times in Attack and am getting my 99 Cape of Achievement in two weeks. 

The electrician came because our lights have been flickering up and down, ever since we got new neighbors, but they're leaving because their freakin' drug dealer was pounding on the door day and night. Rather than dealing with it in my normal fashion, which would be to confront the asshole, and since I can no longer have a firearm, since I've been deemed mentally ill, and that is no longer an option, I went to my landlord who threw the bastards out. They are finally leaving after delay, after delay, after delay. I faced down the drug dealer after he showed up every 15 fucking minutes looking for his money, with the time-honored method of out-ballsing him; kinda the same way I did with the muggers.

For a long time, I could see out of only my right eye. I wish I'd had my eye doctor fuse my eyes together. This would have been neat!

I put my laptop in the front door and sat behind it, with my LifeCam facing out, after Mr. Dealer had buzzed by our place about 80 times in the course of 90 minutes. The dealer got the hint and instead of trying to look in my house and see what kinds of goodies he could steal, in lieu of payment from the welsher next door, he took a powder. Sometimes, ya just have to get slicker than the slicks running around here; I should become a crime lord. 

Anyway, the electrician should probably be on trial for murder or something; when he left the lights still flickered and now the water is the temperature of the Sun. He's been lurking around the other houses and when he sees us, he looks sheepish/happy as if he's glad/surprised we haven't burned to death. I'm calling the Electric Company and having them in to do a once-over ASAP.

 I never bought in to that happy Redy Kilowatt guy. Killerwatt is more like it. They actually have something called Killerwatz in Runescape as a slayer monster and I couldn't do them; they freaked out what little is left of my retinal and optical nerves. Electricity belongs in the ground or the sky, not in people, or at least not in great quantities.

This would just be business-as-usual, but JC is just getting over pneumonia and I have been trying to get my own doctor's appointments set up. This is a major undertaking for just him, but I've put off my own things, as I've felt well and he's been so sick over the past year. He's finally starting to come back around and get out more and I am really happy about that.

What I wasn't happy about was yesterday, when he came home, here right behind him comes the druggie-welsher neighbor, who while in the process of moving, ran into JC, as he was returning from an appointment. I had had a bad morning, complete with a dressing-down from Brighthouse who tried to tell me I owed them 68.00, when I pay them a month in advance. I called to cancel because I got a much better deal with Verizon, plus a land line, so I can go back to work part-time (VERY part-time) for an old company. I told Samantha of the Retention Department, that I would NOT be paying any 68.00 bill, as I was paid in full, and that I, in fact, was cancelling a day prior to my payment due date. 

 I'm fairly sure the people that have dealt with me sans bipolar meds would prefer I be somewhat, er, sedated. Were I able to skip the middleman, I would be first in line to do so, but it seems here lately, that customers are a plague. In the last month, I've been yelled at by my bank, Bright House and now, once again, my psychiatrist's receptionist. I worked with customers on the phones for years and never encountered the hostility I've run into here, recently and I make it a point to reward good customer service.

 
So, already pissed, I discovered that I had missed my own psychiatrist's appointment of February 4th. This is a special kind of hell; they never call and remind us of our appointments anymore and it took me 6 weeks to get a new prescription for my Cymbalta, back in October. This front office has done more to obstruct my psychiatric care than any other specialist I have and it's unconscionable. I have been Baker-Acted. I have a history of violence, when provoked. Wouldn't you want to keep that person placated, or at least go along with that person, while you're calling out the guys with the white coats and nets? I came so very, very close to saying "Y'know what? This is all a big pile of shit and fuck it!" Start taking hostages and barricading myself.

It goes that quickly and when I've had little to no sleep and am on edge and am trying to help JC and do 90 million other things and I get abuse on the phone, I just go starkers. It's really enough to push one over the edge. The so very, very frightening thing about this, is that I can gauge it. I know when I've reached my limit and there's always a point, where I can say "Stop". I haven't reached critical mass. But I am so afraid that one day, the set of circumstances will be enough for me to just let it reach critical mass. That's when I understand what people do when they take hostages or kill wantonly and it's not us, it's the society. God willing, the governor is in good shape. I have a good support system and I can laugh at the truly idiotic idea of my own psychiatrist's receptionist's being the trigger for my last two near-melt-downs. But really? Shouldn't she be in another line of work? I'm going to suggest that to my doctor at my next appointment, come February 13, 2014 at 2:45 pm.


 

#ROW80 1ST QTR 2014 – #IWSG 1ST WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 2014 - POST 2 & 3 FLASHBACK TO THE EIGHTIES, NINETIES, AUGHTS AND BEYOND

Tonight, while running around on Runescape, which has been a tremendous amount of fun, since the release of Runescape 3 and the EOC, or Evolution of Combat, I’ve re-discovered that part of the contemporary music landscape that was so spectacular in the early Eighties. From about 1982 to about 1988 or 1989, there was a rich variety of popular styles that were cutting edge and fun. It was an eye-opener for me, because once I began college and started playing the viola in earnest, I pretty much had turned off every other form of music, except what would be termed Classical, i.e., music written from the late 1600s to the 20^th century, but for symphonies, or chamber music, or smaller groups, and also, solo work for the viola.

 

So, it was fun to discover and hear music from such talent as Talking Heads, U2, and The Police. Over the course of my working life, I’ve played just about every genre there is, including hip-hop, so I am fully aware and appreciative of the talent and the art form as it has developed, apart from the mainstream, and it is formidable in the way musical groups have developed tonal, harmonic, and rhythmic works that are organic and sonically pure; thus, they have pushed the envelope forward and the melding with more conventional instruments gives them the ability to express themselves with more depth.

I think I began to realize this when I first played with the Moody Blues and of course, this was a dream come true, as I had listened to “Days of Future Passed,” as a kid growing up in Los Angeles, California. When I toured with them in the summer of 1993, in between semesters of school when I discovered that my second husband really didn’t want to be married to another violist and that I needed another career, I also discovered that I was exploring for the first time a whole new realm of musical expression. “Knights in White Satin” aside, it was a bigger sonic high to rock ‘n’ roll my way through “Ride My See Saw,” orchestrated by the awesome conductor/orchestrator Larry Greene then I could ever imagine. That was a hell of a summer and I found I enjoyed road work. I would play for Larry Greene off and on for over 3 decades.

I would have more opportunities for this when I made the move from Detroit to Florida; and another dream was realized as well. I worked for IBM, puzzling through problems and mazes in what eventually became a 3^rd level IT position. I was bestowed the calls with cooties; the calls Tiers 1 and 2 could not fix, either OS/2 calls, or WORDPRO or Ami Pro calls. From the earliest of times, we had odd programs like, XYWrite and the ever-present Word Perfect 5.1, a hit with legal offices everywhere, and the most complicated text-oriented word-processing program I’ve ever run across. Corel finally bought the rights to that and it disappeared into obscurity, as did WORDPRO, a Lotus product that was built off of Ami Pro, which was purchased by IBM and added to its LOTUS Suite package as an answer to Microsoft Office.  Although still around, and still superior in my humble opinion, WORDPRO jumped the shark with its contextual-driven menus and features that would be much more at home in an old-style front-end type-setting business than part of a small home-office suite. Most of the Lotus products, such as Notes bear the same foibles.

 This is better and more reliable than anything Microsoft, JAVA or GOOGLE does. I'm going back to UBUNTU and Chromium. This post is being written in Fire Fox, because dumbass Chrome wants me to login to insert a picture from my "online storage". This is not the first time this idiot program has mistaken me for someone who cared enough about my pictures to save them in "online storage" or for anyone else. The last time we went round and round, none of their stupid fixes worked and I ended up with the Kluge From Hell. It worked and I will share it for millions of dollars, because Google sure as hell doesn't know how to fix "Your Profile Could Not Be Opened. . ." but I do, and YOU, Google, YOU don't! Get your shit together and fix your crap. So there!

Well, this started out as a blast from the past about music and ended up with a comparison of old software packages, maybe appropriately enough. At least it is timely; today is the day I want to post my goals, whatever they may be for this minute only, for #ROW80 and #IWSG. I’m actually writing this in Word 2010, and am not wild about the program. I like Open Office 4.0 and think I will continue to write in that. . . Today, was “errand” day, never a joy. Public transportation is a chore and even though we have Express buses, you have to wait and there are the usual, ahem, interesting denizens of Nebraska Avenue. They were fairly chill today, as it has been ass-numbingly cold here in Tampa.

People loom in the murk of the bus like so many badly-dressed yetis; wool scarves with “Go Beavers!” tied on heads, or some other equally inane phrase. “Be An Asset, Not An Ass!” is screaming on a lime-green scarf sported by one of the meth-heads, skinny as a rail, with ill-fitting, ratty jacket, scorching-yellow hospital footie-socks and purple clogs. The guy is 6’8” and looks to weigh 125 lbs. I can’t see any eyes, because the “Be An Asset. . .” scarf is met around eye-level by a hat with a pom-pom and earflaps in some kind of dung-brown color.

We all recognize this, because we’ve all gotten this crap from the same outfitters: Metropolitan Ministries, The Hillsborough County Jail, or Homeless Recovery and it’s all been swapped back and forth a billion times. Some of it is so threadbare, as to be nearly transparent. Or, if we’re getting checks, we sport Dollar Store apparel. A step up, but it’s all the same thing. This year, it’s leopard or cheetah print. Last year it was zebra. By 2016, we should have the whole Zoo collection of Dollar Store wear and accessories to match. Since I’m approaching crazy-old-bat-shit insane cat-collector age, it’s appropriate. I can pull off the Edith Prickley collection pretty well. All I lack is the leopard/cheetah turban, matching cat-eyed glasses, and bright-red lipstick.

I could totally pull this off; with my dark glasses, which are rather retro anyway. It'll give the 'bangers another reason to cross the street when they see me coming. They already know I'm shit-house insane!

No one would bat an eye anyway, out here on Nebraska Avenue. Here is a guy with spit-curls, only he has what looks to be aluminum foil wrapped tightly to his scalp. It’s stunning, all right. “A lightning waitin’ to happen,” as Alex says. There’s my friend from FSJ, going to Gasparilla in her. . . pajamas. Why the hell not? Pink flannel with footies and teddy bears on them. That’s okay, because the same friend gave me a glamorous black wrap-around thing with a belt. I proudly wore it all over town, until someone said, “Mary, why in the hell are you wearing your bathrobe?” I looked at the someone blankly and said, “I’m. . . cold?” At least it was a step up from the hospital blanket I had been wearing about town as a “cape” which I never thought to call it such, until a bus driver helpfully pointed out that it was laying in the bus aisle, as I was getting off the bus to go to the Mental Health Clinic, seeing as how I needed some. “Hey, lady! You dropped your. . . (slight hesitation) cape.” I grabbed my blanket and flung it Zorro-style around my neck and proclaimed, “I’ll. . . Be Back!” in my best Ahnold Schwarzenegger imitation, which is pretty lousey, especially for a musician.

So, my goals are the same; keep editing “Music of the Spheres” and adding to the “B” story, which is thin. Polish all the essays from my original posts in “Homeless Chronicles in Tampa” to set for an e-book publishing and write here for #ROW80 every day (as much as possible) and for #IWSG. As lots of questions when I really start to tear into the novel, because I have not clue one as to how I’m doing. Having no inclination to subject myself to anyone I do not know in person, without a prior introduction, I will be trying to participate in writing workshops and the like. My health has been good. I feel better than I have felt in decades and I’m ready to move on. So, I’m getting’ my show on the road.