Welcome to my world

This evening I finished The Expanse, all nine volumes of it. Is it lit'racha? Well, maybe. Is it solid, fairly hard sci-fi? Definitely. Is it readable? Oh em gee! It basically ate my brain for nearly three months. Action! Adventure! Aliens! Intrigue! Lingo! Dangerous women, some with serious mental health issues!

It feels weird to be back, sa sa?

I haven't been silent the last four days because I was in a funk or anything, even if that would be a reasonable supposition. No, I've been out & about.

Thursday: latex dinner. A one-liter beer & schnitzel on Capitol Hill. The organizers were worried that we wouldn't be able to get enough space without a rezzo, but if you get enough rubber-clad freaks together, anything is possible. Yes, eye candy, but also listening to a fellow techie talk about the stress of dealing with a layoff from a certain local tech giant. Oy. I feel you, bro. And if I had any sense I'd get ready.

Speaking of work, I've been caught between the Scylla of security and the Charybdis of customer satisfaction. But I'm not facing it alone, and because I'm a social butterfly I've been made aware of options that I didn't know I had. Excelsior?

My son passed along an invitation to Ex's birthday dinner just hours before I was going to buy groceries to cook dinner for him. Good timing, kiddo. So yesterday he drove me all the way to Chuck's Hop Shop in Seward Park, where apparently they do real food more or less, and talked to Ex & her Mr. Right Now*.

Ex asked me if I was making plans to bug out of the US. Not seriously, I told her. A couple of other things she said prompted me to ask about her anxiety meds. There are things I miss about my ex, but her anxiety disorder is not among them. I'm not proud to say that when I first noticed her being worried & afraid about things that didn't really make sense not long after we met, I snickered at it. I didn't know what it was until years later. Moral: if you're in a new relationship and something seems off, don't ignore it.



*She's been dating him for what, ten years now? Fifteen? I can't even remember. But she really did call him that once.

I finally made it to the Modular monthly at Substation. Usually it's on a Sunday at 1700, but this time it was on a Saturday at 1900. It's exactly what the name suggests: a bunch of people pushing buttons and tweaking knobs on modular synthesizers. Yeah, you know that crowd was nerdy. And I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only trans lady there.

But did I like the choonz? Quite often, yeah! Honorable mention: local boy EZBOT, who reminded me by turns of Aphex Twin, drum & bass, and several others. I was a little ambivalent about club hopping to the Mercury after two of the eight (!) artists that they had lined up.

So why club hop to the Merc? Caturday, Pride edition, which I used as an excuse to wear my "I [Pride heart] [beaver graphic]" tank top. I was hoping to run into some of the trans girls from the other day. Instead, I saw a lady in a butterfly costume like the ones I saw in Sydney. In a fit of nostalgia, I went over to talk to her. Imagine my surprise when I realized it was Temptress.

Fun fact about me: like my mother, I have the world's worst poker face. I may have looked absolutely horrified at her, but only for a second. Had her vile boyfriend been with her, I wouldn't have even gone over there. I chatted about Sydney, maybe a bit nervously.

Despite being seriously caffeinated, I didn't make it to midnight. I did to a ton of bike riding and chores around the house on Saturday, so I don't feel like too much of a geezer. I have to get the Devil Girl House ready for Tacoma Girl on Saturday. (The joke here is that TG is probably the least judgy person I know.)

At the risk of jinxing things, I'm here to say that I've been sleeping unusually well lately. This is despite the days being nearly as long as they get around here above 47°N, and The Situation.

So why now? Well, it seems to be an annual cycle for me. My sleep sucks in February and March, but then gets better from there. The sunlight may indeed be part of it. I did recently turn off the HVAC for the whole house because it's the time of year when open windows do the job. Maybe less noise helps.