That, and frustrated is how I feel today. It’s been a rough last 24 hours. Not due to anything bad happening, just alot of internal struggle coming to the surface.
Ironically, I think it came to a head when I was doing some research to try to help another blogger with a spiritual energy imbalance issue. I started recognizing more and more of the symptoms in myself. Too much stuff bottled up for too long. I’ve spent enough time bitching about it here in the blog over the years, so I won’t repeat it all. I’m just annoyed with myself because I thought I’d let more of it go, and was past the whole “serenity now” thing.
I suspect part of the trigger was accepting that we’re letting the whole thing go with the house in Georgia. The mortgage company sold it off to somebody else, so we’re out from under the debt. It’s just a question of the money we lost from the down payment and other costs. Small town Georgia is so corrupt it’s unlikely that we’d win first time around. Appeals would move us closer to Atlanta, which is quite liberal. Our odds are better there, but in the mean time, I’m playing lawyer for us (which is a MASSIVE time sink) and the hosebag former owner will almost certainly either bankrupt out of any possible judgment and / or hide all his assets.
Part of me is screaming for justice and FIGURATIVELY wants his head on a pike…
…but it’s questionable in regards to making it happen and better for our mental and emotional health to focus on moving forward and trying to rebuild what we can of our financial future.
Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but there’s a vague lingering sense that if we get out of the way, Karma is going to hit him hard anyway.
In the mean time, I need to spend some time doing the exercises I spent Friday and Saturday documenting and see if I can improve my state of mind.
Just a short post today so I keep in the habit of writing. Things have gotten rather chaotic back in the real world (whatever that is, lol).
Yes, I’m doing my best to stay calm and collected about it all.
Aside from the standard holiday busy-ness, there was an interesting turn of events with the lawsuit over the falling apart house that we got conned into buying. The judge, it turns out, only dismissed the suit against the home inspector and he’s called a hearing the middle of next month to hear where everyone is regarding the seller’s part in the lawsuit. If we can get the sale reversed, everything changes for us.
Do I have much faith that will happen when the same judge said that deliberately misleading photos and lies both factual and of omission were NOT fraud on the home inspector’s part? I don’t know… I’m trying to remain hopeful, but it’s not easy given how everything has gone thus far.
I have to admit, I’m still… confounded by my last couple of blog posts’ stats also. My cooking posts used to be my most popular and hardly anybody even opened the email, much less came to the site to read to read the Mongolian Beef article. After 5 days, it’s got 11 email opens and 6 visits. By comparison, after 2 days, the UFC post has 45 email opens, more than the 3 posts before it put together. Same amount of likes as the Mongolian Beef, which equals a lower percentage of views.
Lesson for the day there; never mock others’ sacred idols. :P Questioning the validity of cage fighting is blasphemy to many, lol.
I’m still solidly of the mindset that I’m blogging for myself, so I’m OK with everything. I do find it interesting that sex and violence seem to be my two highest ratings getters. Not sure what that says about society and the blogosphere, BUT it’s the holidays. I’m going to stay positive.
Lots of other minor scraps of drama that we’re dealing with, but it’s all good. I’ve even almost got the hard drive mess with my computer straightened out, so life is good. 🙂
It’s been almost a month since I posted anything here (or at the other self-hosted blog). I’ve intended to post several times, but as reported last post, work has been exhausting me. After that last post, I got curious about how much of the fatigue was real and how much was mental, so I wore a pedometer to work. What I found was that I alternated between a brisk walk and a light jog for 13,842 steps that day. Most websites say that converts to 6.5 miles or 10.46 Km. Never let anyone tell you an assembly line isn’t work.
Granted, that “light jog” of 6.5 miles isn’t much if you’re in great shape. I hadn’t been for a long time thanks to my spinal problems. The decompression therapy I did about 2 years ago really helped, but attempts at rehab after that resulted in me hurting myself a couple of times. Long story short, I started the job at far from ideal physical shape for the job.
I had a couple other strikes working against me also. First is I had BAD shoes pushed on me by the company store. They were not only really heavy, but hurting my feet badly also (serious neuropathy). Last week I went out and bought new shoes and I’m getting feeling back in my right foot. The left wasn’t as bad to start with.
THEN CAME RED-S
My biggest issue turned out to be a more subtle one. I was coming home increasingly tired and in greater pain each morning (I’m now on graveyard shift). My sleep pattern was almost nonexistent as well. LONG story short, alot of research turned up that the problem was that I wasn’t getting enough calories and especially protein to keep up with my new activity level. This can create a condition that looks superficially similar to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that’s called Relative Energy Deficiency in Sports or RED-S.
As the name would imply, it’s a condition that’s most common in athletes, especially endurance athletes like triathlon competitors and marathon runners. It can occasionally impact people like me who are working at a physical job but not getting enough quality food to support the job’s demands also.
The frustrating part is that my body wasn’t telling me I was hungry. That MAY have been at least partially due to how much water I was drinking (80 to 100 ounces a shift) to stray hydrated though.
At any rate, I’ve modified my diet the last almost a week and have been doing alot better. Less body aches, better sleep, etc… so life is better in that regard. The biggest challenge moving forward is figuring out enough healthy food that I can bring to work to eat on breaks to keep in shape. It’s not like I need a ton of food, but junk food definitely will NOT fit the bill here.
THEN THERE WAS THE HOUSE THAT WOULDN’T DIE:
Long time readers will recall our battles here over a house that we were defrauded on. The home inspector we hired apparently conspired with one or both of the realtors involved in the sale to completely mislead us on the condition of the house. THEN we got defrauded by a lawyer who took several thousand dollars from us and after 10 months hadn’t even filed motions for initial discovery in the case. That’s the first step in a civil lawsuit here in the US for those who didn’t know. Essentially, you present the other side with legal documents requiring them to officially identify themselves for the purposes of the trial, and to give the very basics of their side of the issue.
Well, after running out of money and figuring the case was dead months ago, the home inspector’s lawyer recently filed a motion to dismiss the case against them and included a falsified home inspection as a part of the motion.
In said report the inspectors claim they documented numerous deficiencies in the home, that it was unsafe, they strongly advised us not to buy it and we did anyway. Also, that it was our fault we were stuck with a structurally unsound, asbestos and radon contaminated house with numerous building code violations.
Do I even need to say THAT got my temper up? Guess they didn’t read the warning label:
I’m doing my best as a non-lawyer to answer the summary judgment request and request that the court charge the inspectors and their attorney(s) with Perjury and Fraud on the Court. I think I’ve also got the evidence now to go after the inspectors’ and realtors’ professional licenses by using the falsified evidence as proof of fraud on their parts, MAYBE even conspiracy to commit fraud.
Am I optimistic? Not really. More like neutral. The laws in Georgia are so crooked that I have doubts that even with all this evidence that I’ll be able to get ANY level of justice from the system. I’m going to at least try though. If I don’t, these people will take it as a free pass to lie and cheat everyone they come across.
And If That Wasn’t Enough Drama…
I find out my half-sister outside of Nashvillle possibly has advanced breast cancer, AND missed her appointment to get proper screening and verify what it is (and thus enable her doctors to work up a treatment plan). In a bit of irony, I was catching up on the last couple of episodes of Superman and Lois on the CW Network the night before I got her email. Lois was similarly skipping chemo treatments for her breast cancer. Unlike Lois in TV land though, missing the appointment cost my sister another month before she got a new appointment.
She misses the next one, it’s going to be boots to asses:
I’ve got enough drama to deal with without my sister being too afraid to get her butt into the doctor before it becomes something that medicine can no longer overcome despite all the advances the last decade. Selfish? Yes, somewhat. Just once, I’d like to make a personal post here and NOT have to detail about some aspect of my life being out of control. She has young kids she needs to think about as well.
Picture of Witchfire created by me using Baldur’s Gate 3 character creator
I’ve gotten some mild interest here and elsewhere about the planned reboot of my Witchfire series. With that in mind, I thought I’d fill newer readers in on what the series is about.
In The Beginning…
I started the original Witchfire series (NSFW link to my new self-hosted blog’s adult section) about three and a half years ago. The idea came about as I was looking for some writing inspiration and made one of my occasional visits to Danger Babe Central. DBC is a superheroine peril website. Much milder than some other sites out there, but the heroines are rarely portrayed as competent, and always end up defeated and in “adult” situations. The site’s owner, “Mr. X”, also hosts a fan fiction page where readers can submit written stories and get them posted.
To be blunt, the fan page content runs the gamut of boys living out some pretty dark and twisted fantasies to a few authors trying to portray the heroines in a more positive light while keeping things sexy. LONG story short, there were just enough stories where the heroines were portrayed as capable and having some depth (both on the main site and fan page) that I thought “I could put a more positive spin of my own on this also”.
And So It Began:
So I set to work on my idea. I wanted a unique premise for my storyline, and I came up with the idea of a redhead Wiccan named Krystal who was a fan of the site, but had an objectified view of the heroines. She had also been otherwise drifting off the path with her Wicca, and as a result, her goddess (Freya from Norse legend)banished her to Danger Babe Central’s story world to teach her humility and compassion for her fellow women.
Krystal finds her magic works in this new comic book reality, and makes quick work of her first villain based on her knowledge of the tropes used at the website. Just as quickly, she found out life is pretty complicated in such a world though, and had trouble from heroines and villains alike as she attempted to uncover whatever big conspiracy was going on, and hopefully earn her way back home.
Crash and Burn:
Lack of planning, along with trying to keep up with another writer whom I was collaborating with, and mostly an epic amount of drama in my personal life led to my being increasingly unhappy with what I’d written, and less able to come up with new content. I finally shelved the whole storyline after 11 chapters. That was roughly two and a half years ago.
Regrouping
The desire to finish what I started was always there. I’ve kicked around various ideas to do just that for a while. It wasn’t until things really started to clear up a over the last 4 or 5 months that I really felt my focus had returned enough to start anew.
Looking over the original story, I took notes of the things that I hated, such as how Krystal was too much of a bitch, and that the grand conspiracy didn’t seem to have the right kind of foreshadowing and clue reveals. That last part made the story line feel inconsistent and awkward. I’d also partially fallen into the trap of making the original heroines less competent than originally intended.
Witchfire Redux:
Reviewing everything, I decided that a fresh start was the best option. Calling the new series “Witchfire Redux” came to me surprisingly fast. Here’s what’s changed:
First, I decided that Krystal needed to be a little wiser and more mature. Instead of an oversexed 21 year old college junior at UC San Diego, she’s now 23 and pursuing the beginnings of her post graduate work at the college. Her field of study is Criminal Profiling and Forensic Psychology, primarily because human behavior in general is fascinating to me. It also allows a bit more of a suspense and detective angle to come into play in the new story.
Krystal is still a redhead, with all the stereotypes that come with that, including a highly passionate nature. She’s no longer a spoiled brat though. She’s still a Wiccan also, which will again be the source of her powers.
The BIG shift ended up being more to do with the original characters from Danger Babe Central. I re-read every story I could find and took note of everything that could help me uniquely define each character; interests, appearance notes, how they fight… you name it. Everything from social life to their kinks ended up on the spreadsheet I mentioned in a previous post here.
I also made note of past locations used in stories, so that I could keep canon somewhat consistent, then I filled in the details for Delta City (where the vast majority of stories are set). Six city zones(NSFW blog link) with key landmarks and points of interest both from the canon stories and others added by me to flesh the city out. A massive project, BUT I’ll have everything available at a glance so I know what could or would happen where.
I did the same with organizations and factions for my story. I even put in some thought as to how the laws in that world(again NSFW blog section link) might vary from ours.
OK, but What About the Actual Plot?
Alright fine… Here’s some plot info. 😀
The story will start out similar to the original. This time though, Krystal will be haunted by very erotic but equally dark dreams. She will get called before Freya again. Freya will explain that there’s something sinister going on in the multiverse and it’s centered in Delta City. Krystal needs to go there and oppose it. Still a fan of Danger Babe Central, Krystal will initially balk, not wanting to end up like the heroines always do. Freya will tell her that she’s pulled the same move that Doctor Strange did before turning over his Infinity Stone to Thanos; after scanning all the possibilities, Krystal is the best option for preventing this darkness from spreading. If she doesn’t, the darkness will continue to haunt her in “The Real World” and eventually find it’s way fully there.
So Krystal reluctantly agrees to play the heroine. When she gets there, things are problematic right from the get go. As the story progresses, she and the other heroines slowly uncover a wide ranging conspiracy between governments and a shady collection of high tech businesses to decipher and control the unique genetic mutation that gives the Danger Babe Central heroines their powers and abilities. The conspiracy’s goal will be to create an army of metahumans that are completely under their control.
There will be a good deal more to it than that, BUT I can’t give away too much. Others might steal it, and there’s less cause to read if you know it all. I promise lots of subplots as well however.
All this coming soon to the other blog.
As a Side Note: The links to the Delta City notes, and the blog page on laws both link to pages that are themselves work safe, BUT they are in the NSFW partition of the “self hosted” blog. Don’t wander off of those two pages and you’re fine. Beyond that, you were warned. 😉
I’m tempted to cite this as proof that SOMETHING about WordPress or (more likely) it’s community is VERY broken…
SO, what am I talking about? The fact that when I logged back into my “adult” blog, which I hadn’t done in over a year and a half, I consistently had HIGHER totals for views and likes than this blog, FOR THE PAST 15 MONTHS STRAIGHT.
THAT despite the fact my erotica blog has 54 followers and this one has 779 followers.
Anybody see some inconsistencies here?
Now it COULD be that I’m just that good a story teller, BUT somebody here recently told me I wasn’t a good enough writer to migrate to Medium.com. Regardless of that, I’d say it does prove what I’ve been saying for a long time now: The vast majority of WordPress members don’t give a damned about any content beyond their own. Similarly, Likes and Follows aren’t genuine, just something to trade to give the illusion of popularity. Complete social media mentality.
I can’t remember the last time I asked a question or provided a writing prompt here and got a single reply without bitching later.
The time has come for the reveal of my crown jewel in my lightsaber collection.
Yesterday, I went back to the Vault and picked up the first lightsaber I ever ordered from them. Confused? 😀 Good.
It’s pretty simple actually. The first two I got from Vader’s Vault(external store link) were “Ready to Ship” sabers offered on May the 4th and Black Friday. They were already finished, what you see is what you get, models. The “Battle Wrap Havoc” was (is) customized with an engraved shroud on the emitter, and my “Protector Elite” (from Christmas 2021) is all standard options, but fully maxed out in that regard.
The Reveal and Some Background!
My beautiful Sovereign Elite was custom ordered 2 years ago and finally finished at the beginning of this week.
She sports a black chrome finish, custom lit power switch, and “Order of the Grey” in Aurebesh acid-etched on the emitter bell. Beyond that, it’s every bit as decked out as my Protector saber.
For those who forgot, “The Order of the Grey” was a creation of mine within the Star Wars: The Old Republic video game. Follow the link for the full story. The short version is that my character Adoxia and I both got tired of the overly evil-spirited Sith players in the game AND the emotionally dead Jedi reinterpretation that Lucas tried to foist on the fans as part of the prequels. I made the game’s first “Grey” force users guild, and at least one of the first instances the concept in the franchise. Unlike the weird interpretations running through fandom nowadays, my concept was based on the Eastern ideas that shaped the early Jedi concept. Emotions are accepted as a part of life, but are meant to be controlled and learned from instead of letting them dominate you.
Like the other sabers, the Sovereign is capable of changing blade colors, even to the point of oscillating colors. It comes with 16 pre-installed sound configurations and blade colors, and software to custom configure the blade to a vast array of colors.
I talked to the owner at Vader’s Vault about getting a truer “Mace Windu” style purple out of the blade via that software. Long technical answer summed up, it’s really a question of blade brightness. If you want a deep purple that’s not all the bright in normal daylight, you can do like Hasbro did with their ‘Black Series’ Mace Windu saber:
It looks great in the dark. Not so much in the daylight. If you want a bright blade in the daylight though, you’re going to get the purple white washed out a bit till it looks a little magenta or blue-ish.
For what it’s worth, a stock “Sovereign Elite” saber looks like this:
So, mine isn’t as fancy as some of the truly expensive custom sabers that Vader’s Vault has made.
Maybe when I hit the lottery, I can afford something like those. For now, I’m happy with the detailing and finish on mine
A Little Trivia:
The Vader’s Vault ‘Sovereign and Sovereign Elite’ models are NOT, as you might think, inspired by Luke’s “Return of the Jedi” saber:
It’s actually taken from the “Star Wars: The Old Republic” video game, and is one of the lightsaber models available for use by player characters:
In the game, it’s called the “Tempted Apprentice” model. Ironically, my character even uses the same color blade as the new saber comes with as it’s default selection. Given the financial developments over the last year or so, it’s likely this will be my last lightsaber for some time to come. I finished with a bang though, and I’m all set for the lightsaber dueling competitions.
Let Mortal Kombat begin!
OR I could just get into garage studio special effects and become one of the people that has Hollywood scared to death:
A Special Note:
Keep an eye on Vader’s Vault towards the end of next month or a bit beyond. Remember I mentioned way back in my post about taking a tour of the Vault that they had something special in the works? Well, much like completion of my saber, that project was delayed majorly by COVID. I was able to see the status of it however, and it’s close to completion. I’ve been sworn to secrecy in exchange for that peek however, so that’s all I can say.
I mentioned in my “Month from Hell” post that on top of everything else, we had a really sick cat on our hands.
If you look closely, you can see she was bloated around her mid section, but insanely thin around her hips and “waist”
After Banfield passed us off immediately to a pet emergency center (after telling us for ages she was just overweight), and we got jerked around by that pet hospital for a week and $1500, we took her to another pet ER. They did surgery and cleaned out what turned out to be some sort of a massive infection in her mid section. The Internal Medicine vet and the Surgeon had never seen anything quite like it.
After a day recovering in the pet hospital, she came home with us. She seemed to be slowly getting better despite not eating or drinking much at first. We took her with us to the new house today so we could get some work done while still keeping an eye on her.
New space, so (particularly being an indoor only cat) she was a bit nervous, but seemed to be adjusting, and enjoying the attention. We packed her up in her carrier to take her back to the current (rental) house, and when we opened the carrier, she was dead. 😥😭😟
We had her ten years… adopted her probably a little earlier than she should have been put up for adoption, given how small she was. She was almost all of what got me through many of the bad days I’ve had over the years. $7000 total spent (which REALLY hurt our house repair budget) and all we got with her was two days.
I miss my baby kitty. I’ve cried off and on all night. I want to scream but nothing will come out. The worst part is I can’t stop wondering if she’d still be alive if we mistrusted Banfield sooner or at least hadn’t taken her on the trip today. 😫 I don’t know if what happened was that bounce back phenomenon where a dying person or pet seems to recover temporarily, long enough to sort of say good bye, or we did something that killed her.
I’ve been miserable to the point of not being able to post (and I’ve had numerous topics lined up ready to go) or reply much for almost two months. Now this…
Life has been nothing but one giant shit sandwich since we began the move out here.
R.I.P. Chloe. There are NO words for how much you’ll be missed…
I was in the middle of an email with my uber small writing circle, and misspelled “Epilogue”. The spellchecker in Outlook automatically throws up suggestions before you can even do a correct yourself, and “Apologue” came up as a suggestion.
I’d never heard of the word, so I had to search it out of morbid curiosity:
So yes, an allegory or parable. The word is obscure enough nowadays that I’m not certain if I’d use it in writing… Perhaps if a character was fairly erudite and known for their vocabulary.
There’s precious little to report over the past couple of days, BUT I wanted to let readers know that my back is “back” to normal, heh. After a trip to the chiropractor yesterday, I slept for about 12 hours and feel fine now.
The Chiropractor didn’t feel confident making a diagnosis on the situation. He’d only say that with the nerves running through the spine controlling so much, and multiple areas of my back being a problem, it could be a combination of factors (ie multiple parts of my back out of alignment.).
It makes sense. We all want easy answers; X is caused by Y. Life is rarely that simple though. Take cancer for example: My own suspicion based on reading is that it has multiple contributors. Excessive sugar consumption, pollution / toxins, stress’s effects on the immune system, etc… No reason the back problem couldn’t be a “Twist A this way, pinch B that way and knock C out of whack” kind of situation. I will admit it’s annoying though, because without being able to identify the cause, there’s no easy way to prevent or fix it.
All I can do is double down on the known good practices (stretching, diet, etc…) and hope that keeps things good. Thankfully this situation has been really rare to start with.
In other news, there’s our 1994 Ford F150 pick-up truck.
It developed a fuel leak in the engine compartment. Turns out that the fuel rail (metal fuel line that brings the gas to the injectors) has sprung a leak. $800 to cut out the bad section of rail and clamp in a high pressure hose as a bridge. Why THAT route? Because apparently there’s no way to get an actual replacement part anymore.
THAT blew me away and I did my own checking online. Sure, it’s a 27 year old vehicle (doesn’t look it, does it? 🙂 ), BUT it’s also the best selling vehicle in the US for decades running, and it’s 5.0L engine is the most common variant.
I think the problem here is that the fuel rail is one of those parts that should theoretically last forever, so there’s been little call to manufacture replacement parts. It’s stainless steel after and more than thick enough to handle the 30 to 40 PSI of pressure a fuel injection system delivers.
This one especially for any Chiropractors or similar medical professionals.
I’ve been trying to get back into the groove of things here, but I’ve hit a physical problem that’s all but stopped me in my tracks. This is NOT the first time it’s happened either although it’s thankfully rare. The situation is this:
I have this Ultra-weird thing that goes on occasionally with my back. It’ll go out of alignment in a sort of subtle way (in that it doesn’t cause pain), but my energy is literally all but non-existent. I can’t stay awake more than 4 hours when it happens. The really odd part is that I can only sleep for 4 or so hours at a time also.
None of my past chiropractors have ever heard of anything like it either. If I could figure out exactly what’s happening, I might be able to come up with some sort of stretch or something that undoes it. The closest I’ve got to a clue is that I *think* it’s somewhere in my mid back, like at the bottom of my shoulder blades. I google it though and all I get is crap for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
This ain’t it, and the way my body reacts and only will let me sleep 4 hours at a time also, it’s almost as if some nerve is getting pinched in a way that’s over taxing my adrenal gland. That’s just speculation though, based on being fine for the first hour or so after I wake up from those 4 hours of sleep.
Funny thing too… Before this and few other things appeared, I used to really wonder about those spinal charts in the chiropractor offices that map out how the nerves at each vertebrae control various bodily functions.
Looking at that chart, I’d say it’s *possibly* something in the C4-C5 area (sore throat also lately) or the T9. It bothers me that even the chiropractors I’ve talked to seem lost about this. I know it’s spinal though. I feel an almost immediate change in energy level when things fall back into place.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
Silk Chatters 