Wondrous Apparitions, Provided by Magicians.

Excellent news #1: I might not be completely hopeless at pool. triadruid and I have put in a few evenings of dicking around playing pool at Side Pockets, and, while I can't actually beat him, I can now lose a lot closer game. :) Last night I learned the black art of the cut shot. I figure as long as we keep playing about once a week or so, I'll be able to retain the skills I'm acquiring, and one day, one day, I might be able to beat the boy. For now, though, I am satisfied to mostly not look like a complete fuckwit.

Excellent news #2: I have found a viable option for a location for the Longest Night party. More on that as it develops. *grin*

Excellent news #3: I am off work today, and crossing my fingers that at the end of the day, I'll have the Saturn all legally registered to me, with tags and everything. We'll see.

[Poll #999635]

EDIT: And in case anybody's interested, I'm not a survivor. Skills aside, I'm sort-of value-engineered, and I require regular outside chemical input to sustain my processes. So in case of Zombie Apocalypse, you better get me to write down anything useful I happen to know.

kittenpants' laptop was temporarily unable to communicate with the network today. Luckily, I was able to fix it with my patented Computer Fixing Process:

1. Open everything that looks relevant.
2. Push shiny red candy-like buttons!
3. Close everything.
4. Reboot some things.
5. Get a screwdriver.
6. Wave it menacingly at the machine.
7. Push some more buttons.
8. Grin maniacally.
9. All fixed!

Seriously, I'm not sure if it's worse when something should work, but doesn't, or when it shouldn't work, but does.

Asmodeus (my 160,000 mile, four-wheeled companion) has developed a hitch in his transmission, which is expressed by a general unwillingness to shift into fifth gear. He will eventually shift, and does not make a horrible CLUNK when he does, but where he used to transition smoothly to fifth at about 55 mph, he now whines and revs and finally turns over at about 62.

diermuid has suggested that he might be in need of more transmission fluid. I was having that thought myself, and will be giving that solution a test this evening. I am not keen on the idea that he might have hit the distinguished age where a rebuild or replacement of the tranny will be required. For lo, I will have a difficult time finding the money for that all at the same time, and also, it will not be easy to leave him at the mechanic's for an extended period of time. It's doable, but unpleasant to contemplate.
( In which I worry a lot, and talk about self-reliance )

Friday night, oreibasia was supposed to come around so that we could talk about Dionysos, but she had some car issues and didn't show. Nobody else showed either, which doesn't bode really well for the enterprise, but whatever. It's still an interesting concept.

Saturday, triadruid and I went over to help capriciouslass sort out her new place. We painted, sealed cracks, peeled up truly foul carpet tape, wired lights and hung ceiling fans. We also got to watch liquidfun light himself up a couple of times while working on the wiring. So that's good times. I enjoy doing home repair that I know how to do, which leads me to believe that I should learn how to do more of it. Maybe in my next life.

Sunday I dropped off kittenpants at Gaia to prep for ritual, and I went down to JoAnn's Fabric, where they were having a massive sale on beads and associated paraphenalia. I spent about $45, and got about $200 worth of stuff, which was nice. I think we now have enough materiel to do this Prayer Beads workshop on the 13th. Then, off to ritual, which was about escaping perfectionism. I worry that we do too much work on letting people forgive themselves for not being perfect/good enough/whatever, and not enough on getting people to strive for improvement. But whatever. The ritual was solid, anyway, and for some people, liberation from the ideal frees them up to actually do something instead of wandering around paralyzed by their inability to be ideal. All good in the end. Came home, made some example sets for the Prayer Beads thing, drank the wine we bought for the Thiasos Lampteros meeting that didn't happen.

Tonight, we're planning a Labyrinth walk ritual for two weeks out. Tomorrow, orcjohn and I are doing finance and tax stuff for Gaia. Then, I have two nights off to finish up the Prayer Beads talk with kittenpants, and then we're going to St. Louis to do the workshop. Organized religion, like a gas, will expand to use up all available space.

It's sort of neat to not discover that your brain is broken until you've already been playing with it for many years, fully long enough to have already found the workarounds. Then, the sudden understanding that your brain is broken is more of a curiosity than a problem.

Case in point, apparently other people can visualize things easily in their minds. Me, I have a hard time "seeing" anything in my brain unless I really work at it, and even then, it's pretty iffy. The pictures, they just don't happen. But words and numbers, I can do. So any time something requires "visualization", what I am actually doing is seeing or hearing the words that describe the thing in my head -- I "read" or "listen to" the thing I'm supposed to "see". I think that's sort of neat!

In other news, ( I am short and useful to have around. )

Presented for your edification, today's Google How-To was "How To Appreciate Death Metal". I love these. The last few have covered a range of topics from "How to Make Bottle Cap Earrings" to "How to Stop a Car With No Brakes" to "How to Calculate Center of Gravity". I've been taking them as an omen about skills I might need in the day ahead (which did make the one about how to stop a car with no brakes a little alarming, but hey).

Also, Earth Calendar, a compilation of holidays sorted by date, country, religion, and so on. Brilliantly helpful. In 2007, I know when Easter will be. This marks the first year every in my life that I have known ahead of time when Easter was. Ever.

This week has been a bang-up week for my practice of Competence. I expanded my skill set with the whole brakes thing, I learned a couple of new tricks for upkeep (and eventual modification) of our awful website, and I've gotten enough work done to be able to see the woodgrain of my desk and generally be able to clean up my office. Also, I'm moving the Winter Bazaar stuff along, and I think it will not eat my soul after all.

Sadly, this week is not the week where I was supposed to focus on Competence. It is the week where I am supposed to focus on Creativity. But I will take Competence anywhere I can get it. Not that I haven't been creative, too -- I've been doing graphic design in addition to my usual work here, and making little Christmas ornaments for this tree competition thing we're doing, and I've been working on the jewelry thing quite a bit ("I'm just going to give you all my beads," said opaljax.) So that's all good too.

Also, vaguely related to virtue, we had a goofy meeting with our goofy consultant yesterday. In the middle of some unrelated thing, he said something like "Your character is more important than your actions", or something. And I'm thinking to myself, "That's bullshit! Your character is only available for review via your actions -- everything else is just empty wind. If you don't act on a thing, how is it part of your character?" I worry that I may be becoming a behaviorist in my old age.

Also, completely unrelated to anything, it is generally held to be true in my household that anything that is a)dipped in garlic butter or b)deep-fried is tasty and good. I'm sad to report that this is not true. Long John Silver's down by the office has langostino tails dipped in garlic butter and then batter-fried, and they're .... not good. Not inedible, but not good. I don't know what the world is coming to.

Glory effing hallelujah, I have brakes that work again. opaljax came over with tools, and we did stand out in the bitter cold for far longer than one would think, and now I have nice new ceramic pads, and opaljax has a nice bottle of polish vodka, and all is right with the world.

There's behind-the-scenes drama, though, there always is. Mom called yesterday while I was on the way to the auto parts store, and I foolishly divulged that the car was in need of repair, and that I and a friend were going to do said repairs. Mom was wary of this, but willing to allow it to pass. However, Grandma was not. Some time while Jax and I were actually working on the problem last night, Grandma called and left a plaintive message expressing that she would send me money to get my brakes fixed, and that under no circumstances should I, or any other person with a vagina, ever work on a car.

I didn't get the voicemail until this morning, so, dutifully, and also stupidly, I called her to say that the job was already done and she didn't need to worry about it. She informed me that even though it might seem like a simple job, there was no way that it actually could be simple, that I probably only thought it was simple because I couldn't understand it, and in any case I would ruin my health doing these things. She then launched into a twenty minute exhortation to the Lord God of the Israelites to make it so I would have to move back to the Family Homestead where I could be properly taken care of. Creeped me right out.

And she'll probably send me the money anyway. I have made a habit of sending donations in the amount of her gifts to organizations like Planned Parenthood, or HRC, or PFLAG, and that sort of thing. That's probably a violation of some sort of hospitality rule, but it makes me feel a lot better.

I spent some quality time on the ADF website last night, doing some work on tonight's Wild Hare Samhain ritual (I am not a member, but triadruid is, and was kind enough to let me use his login to poke about), and discovered that they've got audio files of a very musical-sounding fellow speaking useful ritual words in Welsh. So I learned some of them, what fun! (No, really. Seriously. Welsh = fun sounds in my mouth.)

So I was thinking to myself that I should learn to speak Welsh. I mean, it's exactly the sort of skill that I can get excited about having: It'd be fun to practice, I could pretend that it's religiously motivated, and it would be almost completely useless in day to day existence. What could be better than that?