The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Ennui & Fatigue

Sounds like a French vaudeville act.

It's been a week plus of puttering about in detail work, running an insane schedule and much puttering about in trivial things in such time as remained my own. Anything of substance became an object to be eyed with suspicion. Potential Pandora's Boxes.

We have a new washing machine, the need for which warped Saturday of last week into a mess. It was delivered Tuesday, and brought with it the new complication of a pump that is apparently so powerful that it overwhelms the capacity of the standpipe. Let it run and when it starts to drain there's a quick sound like an oversized slide whistle and then a fountain of water. There's no sink basin in the laundry room. I'm mentioning that because after having had three people ask, as if I was so dim that it wouldn't have occurred to me to hook the drainage pipe there, I wanted to spare potential commentator an early death and me a prison sentence.

I've long since jerry rigged a lengthy drainage line which we uncoil and run into a bathroom adjacent to the laundry room. A large area of the carpeting in the den adjacent to the family room was soaked during the early wash trial, leaving me with a dampness and potential mildew problem to deal with.

Issues concerning a family member's health, job status, insurance coverage and all of the convoluted dealings with agencies concerning the aforementioned matters feels like a never-ending battle and is both emotionally and... chronologically draining.

Work... I don't want to talk about work.

National/international politics... the Bush administration and the GOP as a general force (some people of reasonable principles are in the mix - John McCain and his anti-torture bill-rider comes to mind - but not enough) continue to disgust me. We don't even need to shift the focus to Iraq to invoke the term quagmire. There's simultaneously too much to comment on and too little immediate good to be done commenting on it. I applaud those who continue to press the battle to spread the word -- to turn over the slimy rocks and call attention to what's revealed in the sunlight -- and I'll get back to that soon, but for the moment I don't have the energy for it. This long, national nightmare continues, and has long since become like a terrible movie one's being forced to sit and watch. I keep nodding off, and each time I wake up I'm feeling nauseous from the crap I've been fed and the film itself, and have become consumed with the need for sunlight and a good scrub-down.

Aside from a little correspondence with someone I'd fallen out of contact with for the past couple years (which appeared to be all I was up for in that vein, as other notes have sat in my Inbox this past week or so as I didn't want to say "I don't feel much like talking now" or pointlessly gushing details on matters I really am not looking for advice on) I've dealt with local, family matters and have otherwise given my remaining attention to trivial matters. The next Heroclix expansion, due (finally) this Wednesday, being in the forefront. It's nothing important, but is simply something distracting, manageable and attention-absorbing. It's safe.

With Nick having recently joined me in going to 'clix tournaments on Monday nights the hobby's gotten a renewed emphasis around here. Tomorrow night, for instance, we have a 1000 pt, 5-actions/turn battle coming up and sometime this afternoon or evening I'll be pulling my team together and helping Nick round out the base team he's already assembled. With Armor Wars debuting this week we're looking forward to digging into that... starting Thursday evening (as plans sit now) when my pre-paid clix brick (12 boosters in a shrink-wrapped unit) gets to me via my assistant at work. His local comics shop offers him a 20% discount on pre-ordered & pre-paid items, which made for the best local retail deal* that crossed my desk. He'll pick that up Wednesday after work, I'll get it Thursday morning and Nick and I aim to play some impromptu matches with them Thursday night. We'll even be able to play it on the new map created for this set because a kind stranger who had an extra one from the pre-release, saw a post by me mentioning how I'm looking forward to it and sent it to me gratis.

We may be able to playh for a long session Thursday night, as Nick may be on a vacation schedule at the time...

Our school district's teachers have been working without a new contract all semester and this past Thursday they called a strike for 7am Tuesday. They were only required to provide 48 hours notice, so they're obviously hoping that pressure from parents might come to bear on the school board in the interim. There are negotiations scheduled for today and tomorrow, but if I understand the situation correctly I don't expect the school board to make significant concessions now. Why? Well, as I understand the rules the teachers are legally obligated to return to the classroom after 17 days of strike, at which point an arbitration scenario comes into play. This is reportedly something put into place as a safeguard following a monstrous strike they went through years before we moved into this area, where the schools were closed for months.

I haven't seen a mention of binding arbitration, but no matter how one rolls the dice - with a binding deal imposed by an arbitor or a potentially open-ended stalemate where reps from each side are required to sit across the table from each other for a set number of hours each day - I'm betting the school board reasonably expects that the cost of the new contract arising from arbitration will be less onerous than what they'd likely have to offer now in order to forestall the strike. So, while I don't pretend to be anything more than an armchair strategist operating on scraps of information, I'll be surprised if Tuesday morning finds the kids heading off to school.

Along with the above, I've been reading and doing some writing, but not for here, at least not immediately.

Two weeks from now Thanksgiving will be naught but lingering bloat, indigestion and jokes about leftover turkey, and the long holiday season will be officially underway. It's all spinning away so quickly.

So... a tedious entry to remind you what you weren't really missing since November 1.

* The "retail" angle's significant, for while I can (and will) get boosters for much less by ordering online I need a retail receipt for 12 boosters if I'm to send away for a special, grey Iron Man piece.