Filed for disability today, because of my double vision. Should get an answer in about 30 days. Not sure if the Neurosurgeon would let me go back to work if I wore the eyepatch I bought.
I have realized that I have way too much stuff in the house, so I will be clearing some of it out. I plan on cutting out over 80% of my gaming material because I don't have the space and I don't game anymore. I will put the list of each as I go through them here first. They will be free to anyone that wants them, you just pay Shipping and handling.
EDIT: Dead is under conditions. This is not a drill. The memes have been addressed, this is truly the future!
Holy carp! It's like they read the forums! We're ALL DOOMED~!
My one regret is that I'm nowhere near the page break, so I can't even make a good joke about clothes not mattering in the apocalypse, but covering up anyway. Ah, well. Life.
According to this website, the Total Lunar Eclipse on January 31, 2018 should be visible in Alaska, Western Canada, Washington State, Oregon, and Northern California. And all of North America on January 20/21 of 2019.
According to this website, the Total Lunar Eclipse on January 31, 2018 should be visible in Alaska, Western Canada, Washington State, Oregon, and Northern California. And all of North America on January 20/21 of 2019.
On the one hand, total lunar eclipses aren't nearly as exciting as total solar eclipses. On the other hand, I can see THIS one from my back yard.
So count me in!
And in January? Chances of rain or clouds are slim to none!
My new phone is growing on me slightly, though it's going to take a while to break it's f@%*ing spell check.
You know you can turn spell check off right?
That sounds like a thing, I'm not up to it.
Nah... Its pretty easy. Just go into the settings, under general, probably and find the keyboard and language settings. It'll be in there to turn on and off as you please.
Oddly enough, while gibberish, if one were to diagram that sentence with proper methods it would, in fact, not make sense, but it does grammatically work.
The people of rural Eastern Oregon. In spite of all the news you heard about them complaining about the influx of people, every single person with whom we interacted was friendly, helpful, and went out of their way to make our experience better. I know lisamarlene will say, "Yeah, but you are Santa Claus and Shiro is the Easter Bunny. Of course EVERYBODY loved YOU!"
But they were really nice even on the phone, sight unseen. Oregon, you impressed me.
The Crane Store and Cafe. After roughly 550 miles of driving, finding such an incredible gem quite literally in the middle of nowhere (no other gas in either direction for 30-40 miles) was delightful. Fantastic food, wonderfully friendly staff, and a wealth of childhood memories of Kay's Silver Lake Resort (a very similar family-owned store, restaurant, and cabins in California) just made it my favorite part of the trip. We went there again on our way down.
The adorable small towns of eastern Oregon. I'm sure they'd object to being called "adorable", but face it, John Day, you're an adorable town. And there are several others along that route.
The landscape. Wow, Eastern Oregon! Way to be impressive! The landscape made it easy to drive, because I was constantly admiring the scenery.
A well-organized festival. Nothing like seeing someone decide to do something ("I'm going to throw a festival!") and then dedicate her time to getting it all right. It was the kind of festival I would organize. There was a professionally-designed web site. A greeter at the entrance who had a list of all the attendees, and men on ATVs, toddlers in their laps, to lead you to your designated spot. And the field had been marked off with designated spots. There were signs, porta potties, guides, helpful staff, etc., etc., etc.
She had some serious hiccups: Not enough garbage nor porta potties, for example, so if her place had really filled up she would have been in trouble, but she planned for maybe 2000, got maybe 300-400, and we all had a blast.
The eclipse. I'll never forget it. It's nothing like watching it on TV. It's an experience you should ALL have once in your lifetime.
Being the go-to geeks at a geek-fest. We had extra viewers. Shiro had a sun viewing telescope. We had a giant RV. We had FOUR semi-professional cameras sitting around a table for getting shots. We were... popular! (Both Shiro and Hi are amateur astronomers who have built their own telescopes, so they were in their milieu and having a blast.) I... reassured confused or worried kids. Damn it, lisamarlene!
NobodysWife's shirt brilliance: She bought 10 "I survived the eclipse" T-shirts, and we got to give them to our shocked-and-delighted guests. Unfortunately, there were 6 of them and we had only 4 shirts. Fortunately, one little girl was too small to fit any of them and not particularly concerned, and I donated mine to make up the difference. Yes, TL, I know. This means I gave the shirt off my back to someone I'd just met. Now shut up already!
And of COURSE Shiro had to put his on BEFORE the eclipse, because, "Then if I don't, it'll be ironic!"
Playing Eldritch Horror in a moving RV driving through the Nevada desert at night. OK, I was driving, but listening to my family and friends getting in a full game of Eldritch Horror while I was driving was... amazing.
The Lowlights:
The California drivers. As we drove through Oregon we counted 7 cars pulled over, 5-6 of them from California. As I came home, after 1400+ miles of driving I got back to Sacramento and suddenly everyone was passing on the right, cutting me off, etc., etc., etc. There's nothing like driving through all of Oregon and Nevada and dealing with polite, reasonable drivers ("I'm doing 105, but I'm going to be in the left lane and pass you on the left"), then hitting California and realizing that yeah, we really are crappy drivers.
The 'black water' incident. At the RV place, the guy was wondering why my 'black water' pipe (the black pipe that drains the sewage from the RV) wasn't in its proper place. Well, when I finally had to drain the tank I found 3 of them. I used one and... it was full of holes and a full-blown crack. Fortunately, I was on the opposite side of the tube from the spray when I drained the tank, but nothing like feeling like an a$$hat for leaving a stinky RV site for the owner to clean up. I did the best I could, but you really can't clean that kind of a spill; you just need to let time do its thing.
Driving 1500+ miles in 4 days. I'm tired. As NobodysWife put it, we should have driven half as much per day, doubled the length of the trip, and gotten me time to socialize with my friends and all of us time to poke around the little towns we found. (Hi did spend most of his time up front with me, marveling at the Oregonian geography, but he just wasn't comfortable in a moving vehicle without a seatbelt. So good company, but forced by force of habit.)
I'll write up more later when I'm not so dead tired.