Ayarane Project

So I see a bunch of people on Facebook are, in addition to posting aggravating “simpler times were better/I am an 80s kid and it rocked back then” and “I’ma wear my Jesus on my sleeve and if you don’t like it you’re a horrible person” memes, and also the “parents should regrow their backbones and smack their children” ones (which led to me making a low-key but still kinda vocal rant on Twitter about how people who say “I was spaganked and I am okay” are not really okay at all because they were conditioned to think violence against children is acceptable, with the noticeable disclaimer that because of my background I am more likely to view such things through the lens of abuse. I blame my lack of post-surgery pain meds for that one because I am usually much better at holding my tongue).

Ugh, okay, fine. I don’t obnoxiously broadcast my atheism/asexuality… and this being the internet, my obsessing over cats seems to be well-tolerated.

Now we have the “Christmas Creep haters” and the “these awesome stores are closed on Thanksgiving” memes.

Oh dear.

The Christmas Creep haters can actually get pretty, uh, vicious in their hate. One is all “for every mention of Christmas, God kills a baby reindeer.” Overkill much? o_O I get that you kinda want to give Thanksgiving its proper time, and your aversion to the blatant commercialization of Christmas at the expense of its spiritual origins, but, damn. (Spoiler alert, Thanksgiving is heavily commercialized too.)

But I’ma be the wielder of unpopular opinions and contrarianism once more. I LOVE Christmas. Yes, I’m a filthy atheist and I freaking love Christmas. I fully embrace its blatant secular commercial aspects. For one thing… lights! Lights are shiny and happy and this is the one time of year I have no problem jacking up my electric bill to illuminate my tiny-ass synthetic tree (that I unfortunately need to replace due to aging, it’s breaking apart pretty badly). I love seeing the house lights on the rare occasions I am able to go out, and this year I intend to try walking around my block on a regular basis to look at them. While I live in SoCal, the land in which snow is something you would see more on TV/art than in real life, I like the winter-themed decorations in the stores and around the city. I will even happily stomach your blatantly-religious Christmas music since it’s quite pleasant to listen to. And, of course, Christmas is an excuse to eat eat eat and eat some more, candy and sweet breads and such.

(Loot is… a distant perk, I guess. About 10-ish years ago it might have been more important, but not so much anymore. I mean, it’s nice if I get something, but… no big, you know?)

So, yes, I am in favor of Christmas Creep. I’m not a big fan of Thanksgiving because first and foremost, I find turkey and most Thanksgiving food rather bland and unappealing. (Sadly the hospital food was NOT helpful in this regard, they kept pushing turkey and I’m all “uh no thank you, I was happier on the liquid diet since that way I got chicken soup”) This of course leads into the guilt trips over not liking turkey like “normal” people, which in turn leads to a lot of needless mashing of my depression and anxiety buttons. While in recent years that hasn’t happened so much because nobody comes over for Thanksgiving anymore, and we have opted to ditch turkey in favor of takeout like the filthy Americans we are… you never forget that stuff.

This leads to the second part, my distaste for people gloating about stores being closed on Thanksgiving. The original message, that people should be given time off to be with their families, is completely legit and I’m okay with that. But when you start gloating and shaming others because they shop at places that ARE open, that’s what I have a huge problem with, because you’re missing other sides of the story. For instance, some people don’t have families to spend the holidays with and/or WANT to work on that holiday, because they need the money (and maybe to get away from family. Yes, here I go, seeing stuff through a lens of a person with narcissistic parents.)

Also, I’ma go to bat for those of us who are chronically less-prepared, or just have shit come up and “oh, we don’t have enough food. SURPRISE MARKET TRIP!” If the haters had their way and shut down all the stores– ALL OF THEM– then we’d kinda be screwed. Surprise Thanksgiving Market Trips are, surprise, a common thing in my house because my mom is a LITTLE bit scatterbrained is known to forget to restock/get stuff even though she has apps to remind her. Yep. It would be nice if everyone were perfectly prepared and there were no sudden instances of “oh noes we are missing/don’t have enough of X” so all the markets can shut down for the day and give everyone the day off.

Also ALSO: we statistically have some Canadian-born people that may have already done their Thanksgiving and wouldn’t mind being at work to pick up an extra shift? Just a thought.

Again, this feeds into my true complaint about it, that people either forget or are plain unwilling to consider alternate scenarios. Le facepalm!

—

I had my post-surgery follow-up appointment thingy yesterday, and the doctors (the surgeon who actually did the surgery, and a cute lady doctor who… well, I don’t think she was in the OR, but she was definitely someone who was involved in evaluation and analysis) removed my JP drain flask. I MAY have inadvertently called it a “jejunum-placed” drain rather than its proper name (“Jackson-Pratt”), oops. I was sent home with antibiotics because the little hole where the JP drain tubing was inserted was starting to get red, and the doctors were all “ruh roh, let’s stop that before a bad infection crops up.” Long pink pills (Clindamycin) are loooooong.

Gotta come back in a week to get the staples taken off, and then it’s just a matter of waiting for everything inside to fully heal.

Arrowhead is a pretty hospital. ALMOST as nice as Kaiser. (Kaiser does have mini-waterfalls in its enclosed garden, so it scores slightly higher there.) You can go to JLSinc.net to achieve high class design.

On the way back, I was hungry, had some extra coin + coupons, and dammit, I was curious about the new All Day Breakfast menu at McDonalds, so I got two Sausage+Egg McMuffins (buy one/get one coupons FTW). And I got fries because fries are better than those tiny hash brown patties. When I got home I poured out some syrup into a condiment bowl so I could dip my McMuffins, kinda like a breakfast version of au jus. It was gloriously tasty, would very much recommend. :)

UNFORTUNATELY things took a tragic turn a couple hours later, as when I was moving my table that had my water cup and my ninja macbook Dinah, I kinda sloshed the water and some big drops got on Dinah’s keyboard, and I guess enough got in where the damage was critical. Stupid me! I should have closed her lid, but I was so used to doing this that… ugh. I dried her off and powered down and turned her upside down to let anything in there drain out, and tried to reboot her later that evening, but it was too late. Her “body” is in situ near my bed. :\

She’s 2 years out of warranty, and the current Mac Book models are way too expensive to even consider… so I’ma have to go without for the foreseeable future. Sort of. Rather than get a replacement laptop, I guess I’ll just fling my spending coin (the portion of my SSI money that I do my best to keep away from my mother when she drains me every month for bills) on the iPad Pro+Pen that’s supposed to come out later this month. I thought I was going to not bother looking into that even though it has tasty pressure levels and I can use it as a proper drawing tablet, but with Dinah broken, this suddenly became a more appealing option. I’ma have to piggyback on my mother’s Best Buy credit though, something I am not exactly jumping for joy over… but yeah. Definitely getting it in gold, because if I’ma get Apple, I may as well go Full Bling. :P

BECAUSE OF THIS (needing more coins, and having something to facilitate art), I will most likely be opening up Gourmet Ramen commissions soon. I was hesitant to do any commission work after being approved for SSI because of concerns about interference with benefits, but, screw it, it probably gets read as “beer/fluff money” and won’t count (and I don’t think the government cares enough to track recipients’ bank accounts in real time, that shit is probably expensive to do for not much reward).

Finally, today is Tuesday, which is yay because that means raiding with bro and Lazy Peons. Robert sent me a cute tell when he was logging out, “yell at me if I oversleep!” (Usually it’s ME who oversleeps…) I was all “I will (politely) yell at your phone. And then give it cookies. Because mage tables.”

Absolutely no regrets in dragging him into Lazy Peons. Probably one of the best things I’ve done in WoW, and we’re all better for it. He seems happier having more people to talk to, he gets to be an Orc, I have more reason to play my Horde people, and the guild overall likes him. We just gotta get him to talk on Vent, so people will believe me when I describe him as being a blend of David Hayter and Will Smith (complete with “oh HELL no”).