Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?

Melancholy Memories

2025-06-16T01:57:09Z

I hadn't posted to this journal in about seven years until the other day. So I went back to the archives and started re-reading all my posts from the beginning. I've only gotten through about a year and half so far, but it's...sad.

I see posts from the days when Snippy and I were happy. I see me talking about that. I see comments she made on my posts, joking sometimes, offering sympathy or encouragement or insights sometimes. I see posts I made about dealing with raising the kids, cars or appliances breaking down, about health--the kids or Snippy or me, or some combination of us being sick. I see posts about dealing her mother's terminal illness and death. I see posts about being tired, worn down, ill, stressed and dealing with it.

Posts about life, because that's all that was. Things often didn't go smoothly. But we were happy. I loved her. She loved ME. And somewhere along the way, we lost that. And I regret that very much, and feel guilty for not being the partner she needed, for making her feel eventually that her life would be better without me in it. (And I know from things she said since our divorce, that I'm not alone in that.) It's just heartbreaking to read those posts from a guy who had no idea that in fourteen years he'd be separated and living alone again, and eventually divorced.

I'm remarried now, and I'm very happy with her. And if that first marriage had worked out, I'd never have met her. But I'm also aware that I felt that way the first time and I let complacency steal it from me. I could have been a better husband. It's a strong motivation to make sure I don't let that happen again.

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Midieval Swordsmanship by John Clement

2025-06-15T19:43:28Z

I've been looking into historical forms of swordplay partly for my own education, but also as background information for Highlander fanfic. I mostly write about Michelle Webster, who appeared in a single episode of the Highlander tv series, but who grabbed my attention. I've played her in a number of online RPGs, and written a little fic over the years. I've got quite a lot of headcanon about what she's been up to for the thirty years(!) since that Highlander episode in 1995.

( Read more )

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Sinanju breaking radio silence!

2025-06-15T05:07:21Z

Yeah. It's been...years since I last posted to this journal. And I don't know if I'll continue, but I figured I'd give it a try.

So...when last we saw our intrepid hero, he was newly divorced and living alone in the aptly-named Fortress of Solitude apartment. In the seven years or so since then, I've remarried. It took a couple of years before I felt ready to venture into the dating pool again, but I did, and I found my new wife and I'm very happy with her. We've been married three or four years now. (I forget exactly, though I know that we got married on October 31st--Halloween!--to make it memorable. So, the date? Yes! The year? Not so much....

I'm still working for OHSU, but I'm working remotely from home and have been for going on five years now (since Covid in 2020). I love it. It enabled me to move out of the cesspool that is, sadly, now Portland and move to a small town in Washington state about an hour's drive from OHSU. I only go into the office about once every six weeks to do things that have to be done on-site (we take it turns to do so weekly).

I went to the Oregon Renaissance Faire today. It was a 90 minute drive there and back, and while the Faire was...okay* I'm glad I went. It got me out of the house for the day. More specifically, it got me out of my office and off of the computer, away from Tumblr and X, upon which I spend too much time. It also got me away from the nagging feeling that I should be working on a couple of works of fiction. One is erotica on Literotica that is well over 200,000 words at this point, but every chapter takes longer than the last. So I'm trying to wind it up, but I feel bad when I don't work on it often. The other is a Highlander fanfic focusing on Michelle Webster. I've written thousands upon thousand of words about her, mostly in online panfandom RPGs, but some fic as well. But this one...it's like carving a statue out of marble. It's going...slowly. I'm not sure why. But getting away from all of that was good for me.

I walked around the faire for about three hours, which was good for me, too. Then I went and got a massage because why not? And then, while talking to the masseuse, I was reminded that I was in Tigard and not far from Buster's BBQ, which I hadn't had in...years.** So I drove over there and ate barbecue, and yea verily, it was delicious. Then home to mindlessly watch a few episodes of Mythbusters (it's one of my defaults when I'm too zoned out to choose something, or to pay a lot of attention.)

But now I've succumbed once more to the lure of the internet. But that's okay. I'm taking the day off.

And I don't remember offhand how to put a cut in the post, so here it is in all its wordy glory.

*I've been to MANY such faires over the years, as well as numerous SCA events when I was doing SCA, and a lot of the bloom is off the rose for me now. It was entertaining to see the crowds in costume, and to browse the merchant stalls but I bought nothing. Not even food or drink (the lines were ridiculous, and a lot of food vendors didn't sell drinks, so you'd have to stand in TWO long lines for both...no thanks). But I saw a couple of friends I hadn't seen in a while (we coordinated the day we went), so that was nice.

**I like my small town a lot, but it doesn't have a lot of the restaurant options the Portland metro area provides.

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Back to the Gym!

2018-11-29T06:33:11Z

After a six-month hiatus, I've starting go to the gym again. In large part, that's because I have a car again.

See, until now, going to the gym involved the following logistics:
1. Take my gym bag full of gear with me to work in the morning, so I could stay on the bus past my stop and get off near the gym.
2. This was necessary because I could *just barely* get my workout done in time to get out to the bus stop for the ride home afterward if I did that.
3. If I went home first, it meant that by the time I got to the gym and did my workout, the bus line switched from a bus every 20-30 minutes to ONCE AN HOUR.
4. If my workout ran even a little long, I ended up cooling my heels for an hour before I could get home.
5. Throw in excessive heat this summer, or rain and cold in the winter, and...

Eventually I stopped going.

But now I can go home after work, change into my workout clothes and drive to the gym, do what needs doing WITHOUT WATCHING THE CLOCK, and drive home again when I'm damn good and ready.

It's little things like this that I missed when I didn't have a car. Sure, you can *manage* using the bus (and the occasional Uber/Lyft/Whatever) to get around. But that's no way to live.

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Ah, the Open Road...

2018-11-17T04:13:37Z

The wind in your hair, the bugs in your teeth....

Well, that doesn't really happen when you're driving a car, but you know what I mean. I HAVE A CAR.

Repeat: I have a car.

I've been taking the bus everywhere for two years now, or walking, or taking the occasional Uber. Twice I rented a car for a weekend, most recently last weekend when I attended Orycon. Two long years of being chained to the bus schedule and the bus routes.

I intended eventually to buy a car, but put it off for most of the last two years because I was paying off debts from my divorce and didn't have the means for a car payment. But I finally paid it off in January of this year.

So what have I been doing for the last ten months? Procrastinating, mostly. Doing research. Perusing Craigslist. Putting off actively hunting for a vehicle. Scheduling time to look at a car someone has for sale on Craigslist when you have to take the bus is huge time commitment. I had no desire to go thru a dealer, or to get a new car. Used was fine. But that has its own issues (reliability, mostly).

I did talk to the loan officer at my credit union a few months ago, and she recommended an agency that works with credit unions and their members to find cars for people. So after the glory of driving myself wherever I wanted whenever I wanted last weekend, I couldn't wait any longer. I contacted them, told they roughly what I was looking for, and a week later...I am the proud owner of a 2008 Nissan Altima.

It's silver. I'd have preferred red or blue or green, but didn't care enough to limit their search to those colors. It has a little over 100,000 miles on it, but it's in great shape, has a clean history and title, and it was well within my budget. I'd looked at another car (a private seller) last night, but the owner felt...sketchy, and was definitely pushy about trying to get an offer, so I bailed.

I called the agent I've been working with, who had another car to offer me (he'd offered several, but I'd turned them down for pricing or because my research suggested they weren't good bargains, mostly on the grounds of reliability). This one I liked, I liked it after test-driving it. It was in excellent shape. So I pulled the trigger.

I spent much of today on talking, texting, and emailing with the agent, with my loan officer, and with my insurance agent getting all my ducks in a row so that after work today, I walked outside and met the agent, who handed over my new car. Well, okay, we drove to the credit union and signed some papers and gave him his check, then drove to his office and signed MORE papers.

But it's mine now! It's going to take a bite out of my spending money, but I'm trading money for time and after two years on the bus, it's well worth it. I'll still take the bus to work during the week. Trying to park at OHSU is a major chore and not worth what it would cost even if I could get a parking spot.

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Rental Decisions

2018-11-12T06:36:24Z

So, my lease is up at the end of January. I've been wondering how much my rent would go up if I stayed. Now I know.

I got home from work yesterday to find an envelope attached to my front door. I suspected that that was what it was, and I was right. If I went month-to-month, it would jump up by around $200 a month. If I take a lease, it varies depending on the length of the lease, and the longer the lease the lower the increase.

If I take a 15-month lease (which is what I'm on now) my rent will go up by a whopping...$56 a month.

More than I'd hoped (I'd daydreamed about it not going up at all, given that I've read that rental rates were finally softening around here), but a lot less than I feared. And, frankly, given that I live in Portland, that's a damn low increase. Yes, average rents have gone down very slightly--but I'm still paying considerably less than most. Barring a miracle of some kind (like winning the lottery), I expect the Fortress of Solitude will remain in its current location until April of 2019.

Maybe I'll even get around to unpacking all my books. They're still in boxes from moving in. I just...never got around to it, and lately I've been thinking 'why bother if I get a huge rent increase and decide to move? I'd just have to box them up again.' Now I know I'm going to stay, so...we'll see.

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Disappointment

2018-11-12T06:35:42Z

I've been living here in the Fortress of Solitude for about eleven months now. Occasionally I wandered down to the local Fred Meyer to look over their books. They had a nice selection, including a whole section devoted to SF/fantasy, and another for westerns. I ended up buying a couple of novels and five collections of short stories by Louis L'Amour.

I went down there today to look for more. Well, I guess I was the only one buying them, or at least was among the few. They've reorganized their book sales aisle. It's smaller, with many fewer books, and no SF or westerns at all. So sad.

I didn't leave empty-handed, though. I bought a couple of DVDs. Easy A (with Emma Stone) and Deadpool. As for the Louis L'Amour books? Well, Amazon Prime handled that.

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Cataract Surgery

2018-11-12T06:34:57Z

So last week I saw my eye doctor and scheduled cataract surgery on my right eye. Earlier this week I got a bunch of appointments with my eye doctor in MyChart. I called to ask what that was about.

Turns out, they also scheduled the left eye about a month later, plus the follow-up visits for *that* procedure at the same time they scheduled the first set. Which, okay, I wanted to get both eyes done as soon as possible, and now the second eye is scheduled to be done on December 6th.

But that was news to me! I'm gonna be taking a lot of sick time off in the next two months. One day each for the surgeries (which may not be strictly necessary, but...) plus time for several follow-up appointments. Oy. I should be able to make up a lot of the time by doing longer days on those weeks, which is good. I want to keep a cushion of sick time in case I, you know, get sick this winter.

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On Becoming a Cyborg

2018-11-12T06:34:14Z

My cataract surgery is scheduled. I'll be going under the knife on Wednesday, November 8th. With a follow-up eye appointment the next day (to assess the results, I assume). I also have to squeeze in an appointment with my regular doctor--I have to get a physical to okay me for the surgery.

So they'll remove my original lens and replace it with an artificial lens. A paper thin lens, with a prescription that will give me clear distance vision, and with a slight tint to minimize glare through the new, crystal clear lens. I'll be a cyborg!

And then I'm going to try to get the other eye done in December, so all of it is covered under this year's deductible. The doctor said they usually do the second eye about a month after the first, so that should be doable.

So I'll be spending about a month with near vision in one eye and far vision in the other. That should be fun. And wearing my glasses won't help, because the correction in the right lens will be all wrong for my new improved eyesight in that eye.

Which means I'll need new glasses, too--but only after I've gotten both eyes done. Reading glasses, instead of all-the-time glasses, which will be an improvement. But also an additional expense.

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Second Opinion: the First Doctor is Right

2018-11-12T06:33:23Z

Or, in other words, I'll soon be getting eye surgery. Specifically, cataract surgery to replace the lens in my right eye, mostly but entirely due to glaucoma issues. The thickening of the lens is contributing, if I understand correctly, to my glaucoma.

The new lens will be "paper thin" and thereby reduce the pressure and alleviate most if not all of the glaucoma problems. It will also correct my near-sightedness, so I won't need glasses anymore except for reading. It will also be ever-so-slightly tinted. And assuming it goes well, the other eye will be done about a month later.

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You Must Be This Tall To Ride

2018-11-12T06:32:18Z

There's a blog. It's called You Must Be This Tall To Ride. It's a blog by a guy who got divorced, and it's mostly about how and why he got divorced--and by extension, why a *lot* of guys get divorced. And that boils down to: they were shitty husbands.

Not intentionally, mind you. Nobody (well, almost nobody) sets out to be a bad husband (or wife). Nobody intentionally hurts their spouse, the person they love, and with whom they intended to spend the rest of their lives, and possibly have children. But we do.

It's hard to read that blog sometimes. I see an uncomfortable amount of myself and my own behavior as a husband in a lot of what he writes. It saddens me that I contributed as much as I did to wearing away my wife's love and affection, that I hurt her as much as I did, and caused her to feel like she would be better off alone than married to me. I feel like I was a poor excuse for a husband much of the time, and I suspect my perception accurately reflects the reality.

It wasn't all me, I know. But it still often feels like it. So the other day, while we were gaming with friends, it was a shock to hear my ex say something about "people who suck at relationships, like me."

Because, while I can say that I believe it wasn't all my fault that the relationship didn't work, I feel like a *lot* of the blame lies with me. But that statement tells me I'm not alone in that feeling, that she feels responsible for it too. Which make it all even sadder, really. We're two well-intentioned people who couldn't figure out how to be the partners to one another that we wanted to be.

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First Lines Meme

2018-09-24T04:59:34Z

RULES: List the first lines of the last ten stories you published.* Look to see if there are any patterns that you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices any! Then tag some friends. I saw it on raine_wynd's dreamwidth account. Only the first is fanfic. The others were published as ebooks.

1. Even Villains Need Friends - A despairing cry jolted Thomas Magnum from his sleep.

2. Rematch - Leah dropped out of an overcast sky to land on the roof of the US Bank Tower overlooking downtown Portland.

3. Domestic Tranquility - My day started with a bang.

4. Reader - The first time it happened I got beaten up.

5. Party Girls - Rico's party was well under way when Angela emerged from the bathroom, freshly showered, wrapped in a silk robe and feeling fit for human company again.

6. Angela Rides Again - The first time it happened, Angela thought nothing of it.

7. The Restless Dead - The ranch wasn't even smoldering any longer when we topped the last hill on the road home.

8. Gratuitous Sex and Violence - Evan paused in his circuit of the club to observe the dance floor.

9. Back for More - Angela's phone trilled as she was parking her car.

10. Ink - Camille stopped at the corner so abruptly that her girlfriends bumped into her.

What does this say about my writing? You tell me.

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Three Fandoms

2017-08-13T01:54:16Z

A Three Fandom MEME from rhi over on DW.

Rules: Choose any 3 fandoms (in random order) and answer the questions. Then tag some friends.

I choose:
Dead Like Me
Person of Interest
Stargate: SG-1

The first character you loved:
George Lass
Harold Finch
Jack O'Neil

The character you never expected to love so much:
Daisy Adair
Detective Fusco (just a corrupt cop in the beginning)
General Hammond

The character you relate to the most:
George Lass
Harold Finch (the least physically badass of the bunch)
Jack O'Neil

The character you’d slap:
Mason
John (stop moping and seize the opportunities in front of you)
Senator Kinsey

Three favorite characters (in order of preference):
George, Daisy, Roxy
Harold Finch, Root, and Fusco
Jack O'Neil, Sam Carter, General Hammond

A character you liked at first but not anymore:
Mason (he seemed together in the pilot, but turned into a neurotic mess with no redeeming features)
N/A some I didn't care for, but never liked much in the first place
N/A some I didn't care for, but never liked much in the first place

A character you did not like at first but now do:
Joy Lass (George's mom; shes tries SO hard but fails so often)
Control (she really thought she was doing the right thing)
N/A

3 OTP’s:
None
Root/Shaw
Jack/Sam

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Update From the Fortress of Solitude

2016-12-10T05:52:39Z

Which for the last couple of days has been surrounded by ice and snow, just like the more famous Fortress owned by that guy from Krypton. Fortunately, the temperature has risen above freezing and is expected to stay that way for the next week. As a result of the inclement weather, and working in a facility at the top of a big hill, I worked from home today.

Which was...marginally successful. I was able to log in to my desk remotely, but certain pieces of software were out of reach. I spent (along with my boss) a good part of the day trying to fix that situation, to no avail. I also decided that I need to buy a new hard drive for my home PC. It's a repurposed computer from my previous job (hey, they were giving them away and I got one), which was convenient when my home PC died of heat exhaustion a good while back.

It's got a plenty fast CPU and adequate memory and good (if not great) graphics. But it's only got a 75 GB hard drive.* Which was plenty for what they used it for in the workplace, handling a lot of data, but not storing it. Not nearly enough for my needs, though, even with most of my files on two external hard drives. Just the operating system and the software that HAS to live on the C: drive to function have filled it up. So...hard drive shopping tomorrow, probably. Then days of fun installing the OS on the new drive (not the current OS that came with the PC, the Windows 7 install disk from my previous computer) and tweaking everything the way I want it.

So, I hear you ask, how do I like living alone? Well, I am still grieving the end of my marriage at times. That was a long relationship, and I'd hoped it would be for life. But it wasn't, and I'm building a new life one day at a time. Working out my routines. Trying out new ones. And I'm enjoying it. In some ways I miss having other people around to talk to, and in other ways not at all. I can do what I want when I want how I want. I'm learning what works and what doesn't.

For instance, I have a dishwasher in my kitchen. In over three weeks, I haven't used it yet. I just wash up as I go, or at most, leave the dishes until I'm done with a meal, then clean up. And if I want to pause a television show for half an hour while I do, nobody else is inconvenienced.

I still haven't reassembled my computer desk yet. The computer is sprawled across a long trestle table I've owned for a long, long time in the dining/living room. But spending eight hours at it today for telecommuting has put a kink in my shoulders and neck, which means I need to get to that. The current arrangement is okay for brief 20-30 minutes bouts of netsurfing, but not for lengthy use.

The apartment is still quite spartan, and while I do plan to get a little more furniture eventually, I find that I like it that way. I like having lots of empty space. It's tidy, easy to clean; not a lot of furniture to dust or to vacuum around. It just feels spacious...because it is.

My upstairs neighbors are a little noisy. Not unreasonably so, but definitely audible. Especially the rhythmic squeaking of springs I hear periodically from the living/dining room area. At first it sounded like bedsprings--but it was in the living room, which seemed unlikely. Now I've noticed that moves around, and I'm thinking maybe it's...a child's hobby horse (one suspended from springs so the kid can rock on it)? Something that can be--and is--moved around quite a bit. Well, it's a mystery.

All in all, things are going well.

*I remember the day I got access to a computer with TWENTY MEGABYTES of storage on the hard drive, and wondered how on earth I would EVER use that much capacity. It was inconceivable that I could fill a cavernous space like that. Then I shook my head, glanced out the window, and yelled at the dinosaurs to get off my lawn.

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LIve! from the Fortress of Solitude!

2016-11-21T01:34:42Z

Literally. My new router is named Fortress of Solitude.

Welcome to Day 001 of My New Life As A Single Guy Again.

Yesterday was Moving Day. With the help of friends (hi, guys!) and multiple trips ferrying my things in a minivan and two cars, I got myself mostly moved out of the apartment I've been sharing with my eventual ex and her youngest son for the last two and half years. We decided to divorce in February. It's taken this long to make the break for various, mostly financial, reasons. But I have a new job (newly employed as an FTE employee, I'd been working under contract to hire since February). So, with a new job finally--it took a couple months longer than I'd expected/hoped--more money, and having finally found a place to live that is affordable and within relatively easy commuting distance of my job (and within walking distance of a number of stores), I moved out yesterday.

It was a long, exhausting day. As I write this, there's still plenty to do. Lots of boxes to unpack. More boxes to rescue from a storage unit eventually. Lots of stuff to buy over the next weeks and months to bring my half of the household split up to full power. But I'm out, and on my own. It's sad. But also a great relief for us all.

And I slept in a real bed for the first time in more than two years (I'd been camping out in the dining room all this time). It was glorious, especially given how tired all my muscles were. My new place is pretty spacious, and I intend to enjoy it very much after the clutter and cramped living of squeezing three people into a 2-bedroom apartment (while still in possession of too much of the stuff that formerly resided in a three-bedroom apartment, and before that a three-bedroom house).

There's probably a lot more to say, but it'll have to wait. I have things to do.

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It's been a month

2016-04-09T21:22:56Z

I've been at OHSU for a month as of yesterday. Four weeks. Five weeks since I quit my previous job and took a week off before starting the new one.

I'm working in the Liver Pre-Transplant office. My job involves doing benefit checks--finding out what benefits, exactly, the potential patient's insurance covers so our financial coordinator can assess their situation. It involves sending out prior authorization requests (i.e., getting permission from the insurance company/HMO/whoever) for the diagnostics and office visits needed to evaluate someone to determine if they're a good candidate. It involves tracking the authorizations, and the scheduling of office visits and diagnostic tests and getting authorizations for ongoing, specific visits/diagnostics after the evaluation, and helping to manage patients' required medical appointments and labs (i.e., making sure they know when something is coming due, making sure orders for the medical care are in place so they can be seen, making sure the appointments are scheduled (or in some cases, scheduling them myself). I also enter lab results into the system, and upload diagnostic results from outside offices, and lots of other things.

I spent two weeks being trained and getting a little hands-on experience--and feeling completely lost. There's a ton of stuff you need to know to do this job. I often felt like I was floundering, or stumbling around in the dark unable to piece it all together. So did Carrie, the woman who was being trained with me to take my equivalent role in the Kidney pre-transplant office. But everyone around us--our boss, our trainer, our co-workers and random people who encountered there at OHSU--told us the same thing again and again and again.

It IS a big job. It DOES take a long time to learn. We were doing great, and we shouldn't be hard on ourselves. We'll get it. I was willing to take their word for it, that they knew what they were talking about...but it didn't feel like it.

I've spent the last two weeks, since my initial training, working alongside my counterpart. We split the pre-transplant liver patients between us; I handle A-K, she handles L-Z. Or we will once I'm up to speed, right now we're working closely on all of them while I continue getting up to speed. And...and I feel like I'm getting there. I still have lots to learn, and the job is like a jigsaw puzzle but I've assembled the border now and big pieces of it are coming together, and I'm confident that I'll be able to fill in the rest with time and practice. In some ways, the job is fairly repetitive: benefits checks, evaluation authorization requests, listing authorizations, transplant authorizations, managing patient schedules, and so forth. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In other ways, it's a constant challenge and nobody EVER knows it all because things are constantly in flux. Patients change insurance providers. Plans change. Rules change. Laws change. And when all that remains constant, patients change--they get better, they get worse, and their needs change accordingly. So I'm never going to be in a place where I don't have to ask questions and puzzle out the whys and wherefores of things. But I'm getting a handle on the basics.

And I love it. Time flies. By the time I left my previous job, I hated it. I watched the clock, eager for my next break, or lunch, or the end of the day. The soulless micromanagement of a call center was soul-grinding. But this job, I love. I'm working hard, and learning, and time flies. It's useful, valuable work and it makes a difference to the patients we're working with, which is both exciting and sometimes a little scary. My bosses and my co-workers assume I'm capable and willing to do the job, and continue to be endlessly encouraging, and I'm not being micromanaged, and it's glorious.

So, yeah, I really like this job, and I'm very pleased to have it. It's been a long-overdue and positive change.

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Adventures In Medicine

2016-03-10T06:51:29Z

So, as part of the onboarding process to work at OHSU, I have to get some immunizations (or sign a waiver disclaiming any responsibility on OHSU's part if I don't and get sick). I also have to have a 2-step Tuberculosis test. They don't want me spreading it all over. Makes sense.

Monday I went to my doctor and got one of the required vaccinations. I've had the others. I also got the TB test, and was scheduled to go in this morning for the second part, where they check to see if I have TB. I expected it to go quickly. After all, I don't have TB. Right? Right?

Well, the nurse looks at my arm, at the slight redness at the injection site (which, ideally, would be neither red nor inflamed). And then she goes and gets another nurse, who examines me, and asks me a bunch of questions about possible exposure to TB, any symptoms (none), or exposure to people who've been innoculated against it (co-workers who are from out of the country, for instance). That latter thing is possible, I suppose. But I don't know.

Then they call my doctor out of another patient room to examine me. The reaction is extremely mild, the redness is not very red, it's not very large, and it's only barely raised. But "barely" is not "none at all." So, since I need to be cleared by Monday in order to start my job, they send me across the street to the hospital, where I get a couple of chest x-rays. If the x-rays are clear, I'm golden. If not, well, they may have to repeat the skin test in a couple of weeks.

I am rather alarmed at this point. I called my wife to tell her the exciting news and get some support and sympathy, which she delivered. I'm not so much alarmed about having TB--I figure it can be treated. No, I'm worried that I won't get a clean bill of health, so will lose out on the new job--and I've already quit my previous job. That would suck mightily. So I left, stopped on the way home to get an early lunch at the local bakery (bacon/fried egg croissant). It was very tasty. I ate and read for a bit, then went home.

Where I realized was feeling increasingly anxious. Not long after I get home I got a call from my doctor's office telling me the x-rays were clear and I'm officially okay. Wow. that was an incredible load off my mind.

Fast foward to right now. I'm back from a four hour visit to the Emergency Room. I drove into town to pick up Snippy from work. She was having some trouble breathing (talking much or doing most anything strenuous was making it hard to breathe without coughing, and her chest felt tight). She'd begun feeling puny about mid-afternoon and it wasn't getting any better. If anything, it was getting worse. She has a Xopenex inhaler for asthma, which she used four times that day, to no avail.

Finally, she called her allergy doc, who--based on how she sounded over the phone--advised her that, yes, she should go to the emergency room. So I drove her there. She had an EKG, which showed no heart issues. Then was seen by a doctor (with lots of waiting between every step, it goes without saying), and given some IV steroids, and some inhaled drugs through a nebulizer. This got her breathing better. The doctor came back to say that her labs (drawn on arrival) also showed no heart issues, so based on her response to the drugs, he was confident that it was just exacerbated asthma. Maybe the cold, wet weather--I dont' know.

So we're home again, and she's in bed, and will be staying home from work tomorrow. I'll be going out early in the morning to the pharmacy to get a few days worth of additional steroids to help with the problem. So we're glad it was nothing more serious, but all the same--do we HAVE to have ALL THE THINGS happen to us?

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Ch-ch-changes!

2016-02-28T04:19:43Z

So, in 2009 I was laid off from a job I'd had for fifteen years. It was a shock, but not entirely surprising. I'd survived several previous rounds of layoffs and with the economy in the toilet, fundraising (it was a non-profit) was down, so budget cuts were the order of the day. And as the highest-paid admin assistant in my department, well, you take your savings where you can.

In 2011 I found a part-time job doing data entry for a company that runs a loadboard (an online marketplace where brokers needing loads moved can find truckers, who need to find work moving loads). I did that for about two years, then got promoted to full-time. I made outbound calls to get insurance information on carriers (truckers), took inbound calls for billing, freightmatching, customer service, and activation and training on the various software packages we sell for accessing the loadboard.

Did I mention it was a call center. It was. I'd never worked in a call center before, and I never will again, God willing. You're chained to your telephone for eight hours a day. Every moment of your time is monitored and judged, and your calls are recorded. And judged. And you're expected to achieve a variety of conflicting goals all the time. (It got to be a joke amongst my team. Whichever "metric" was trailing would become the focus of frequent emails from the managers about improving it. We'd change focus accordingly, only to have another metric fall--and become the focus of frantic exhortations to get that one back up. It was a never-ending treadmill of incompatible goals. You CANNOT physically do everything they want you to do at the level they want it done. You CAN'T.)

So you learn to focus on what really matters--which means, whatever measures YOU are getting assessed on. In my case, it was outbound percentage. I was supposed spend 30% of my on-the-clock time doing outbound calls. So I set my phone in "after call" so that incoming calls (another "top" priority among many) wouldn't reach me and stayed in that state all day every day so I could make outbound calls. I wasn't supposed to do that, but what the hell. Occasionally I'd get an IM (yes, not just emails, we got IMs too) to take a call if the queues were backed up, but mostly I avoided incoming calls for months.

Then we got new phones, and they took "after call" away from us. And expected us to do outbound calls AND take inbound calls AND document everything AND do all the other back-end stuff without any time to focus on it. And bumped our outbound quota to 35%. And while our department was responsible for taking inbound calls (to help another department) when that department made their monthly goals (with our help), did we get any rewards? No. Just them. And that's when I decided my job had gone from tolerable (didn't love it, didn't hate it, it was just a job) to intolerable.

The company provides (an actually pretty nice) anniversary luncheon each month for people hired in that month. At the last one, I was pretty much the only person from my department in a room of a dozen people or more. They all talked about how much they liked working there, and how they were left alone to do their job and didn't have people looking over their shoulders all the time and micromanaging them, and how the company felt like a family. I listened to these people and thought (but didn't say), "I work at [COMPANY], where the hell do YOU work?" But apparently the call center is very different from the rest of the company there.

Maybe all call centers are like that. I don't know. But I do know that there'd always been fairly high turnover in the call center, but nothing like the turnover in my department in the last few months. One guy decamped to the Billing department downstairs "where the managers have souls." Others have found new jobs and left. I've been looking for work for a while--

--and now I have a new job. I'm going to working at OHSU (Oregon Health Sciences University if you're not from around here) in the organ transplant area. I'll be temping at first, but have every hope of getting hired on as a regular employee. I gave notice at work on Friday. I'm really, really looking forward to this change.

It's exciting. And a little anxious-making. I'm going to have to master new skills, learn a new schedule. Especially my commuting schedule. OHSU is hard to reach, parking is extremely limited (and expensive, if you drive at all) and I will probably end up taking public transit. Bus? Tram? A combination of the two? That remains to be determined. Learning the job will probably take longer, but I'm looking forward to that. It will be important, useful work with people who will treat me like an intelligent, capable adult and not a cog in a machine.

ANYHOW...in other news. Today is my 17th wedding anniversary. Snippy and I tied the knot on a very rainy February evening seventeen years ago today. To celebrate we went to The Melting Pot, where we enjoyed choose fondue, salads, meat entrees (French Quarter--spiced shrimp, pork, chicken, steak and sausages--for me, and half teriyaki marinaded sirloin and half filet mignon for Snippy), and dark chocolate fondue on bananas, strawberries, marshmallows and fudge bites for dessert. We talked a lot, decided to plan a getaway to Disneyland for our 20th anniversary, and generally had a great time. We also had a photo taken of us, which we plan to send to my mother back east. She'll enjoy that.

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New Year Resolutions

2016-02-04T04:35:00Z

What? The new year can start in February. Who says it can't!?

Yeah, not really. But nonetheless, I am intending to put more time and attention into my writing. I currently have two shorts stories ready to reissue under a new pen name. I once had three pen names, but I've ditched one and am reissuing the stories under the second, which is the name I use for sci fi, fantasy, mysteries and pretty much everything but erotica. The first pen name will remain my designated erotica name.

I have two more new stories in the pipeline, one completely written but still in need of proofing, the other 99% complete. Then I'll need to find art for the covers, create the covers in GIMP, and turn them into ebooks in Jutoh.*

I have a couple of other completed stories that need to go out to markets again. I sent them out one or twice, then stopped. But persistence is the name of the game, and I am now, again, in a headspace where I can manage that. I wasn't for a long while.

Then there are the stories--from short stories to a couple of novels--in various stages of completion. I'm tempted, badly tempted, to start over. But as my writing gurus Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Rusch will tell anyone who listens, NEVER EVER DO THAT. That is your critical voice talking. Every writer feels like that, generally about two-thirds of the way through the project.** Throttle that voice and finish the story. Get it out the door. Write the next one, and use what you learned on THAT one. (In fact, they being married, often have to remind one another of this. One or the other will stomp out of their office to announce that the current project is unsalvageable shit. The other will ask, "How far along are you?" The frustrated writer will pause, realize what's happening, mutter "dammit" and return to the office to keep writing.)

In other news, I'm about to start playing in an online superhero game on InsaneJournal. I played in several years ago and loved them to death. But they eventually petered out, as such things always do. I've tried many time over the years to find new games, but never with any real success. But this time for sure!

*Unsolicited endorsement. Jutoh is by far the best software I've yet found for turning documents into ebooks. It's not terribly expensive, it works great, and while the manual is...less than helpful, the author can be reached with questions and always responds promptly.

**I'm right at 35,000 words on The Lifeboat (working title). I'm right on schedule. The urge to start over is powerful, but I'm not gonna. I'm gonna finish that damn thing.

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Let Me Explain...

2015-10-18T05:54:44Z

No, there is too much. Let me sum up...

So I had laser eye surgery this week.

( Click here for the not-really-gruesome-at-all details, plus other things. )

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Don't Shade Your Eyes, LAZE Your Eyes!

2015-09-19T05:10:36Z

So some time ago (two years ago? three?) was diagnosed with Glaucoma. Fortunately, it was detected very early. In fact, I'd gone to see my eye doctor because of a new and rather prominent floater in my left eye--which turned out to be a speck of blood from a torn retina. The eye doctor lasered it back into place at that same visit. The floater is still there, but as he told me I would, I've learned not to notice it. But in the course of testing, he discovered my Glaucoma.

He started me on eyedrops to control the pressure in my eyes and prevent the Glaucoma from advancing. The drops worked pretty well, but not quite as well as he'd have liked. So we added a second set of drops. If we couldn't control the pressure with drugs, the next option would laser surgery--or actual surgery. So I really wanted the drops to work.

And they worked for a while--until I developed an allergic reaction. So we switched out the drops. And thus began the long, laborious process of determining (through trial and error) that I am unable to tolerate any of the eyedrops for Glaucoma, with one exception: a preservative-free version of Zioptan. (Each day's dose comes in a disposable, one-use dropper.) But that one drug alone isn't doing enough. So my eye doctor referred me to a glaucoma specialist.

Who happens to be his wife. (And technically, he only referred me to clinic upstairs, where his wife is one of several glaucoma specialists. I chose her.) So on Wednesday I spent about two and a half hours in the clinic getting extensively tested. I was rather anxious about this; giving up on finding a combination of drugs to do the job meant surgery of some kind.

They tested my vision. They tested my color vision. They numbed my eyes and did a pressure check. They dilated my pupils and had me wait until everything was bright and blurry, then examined the interiors of my eyes with the aid of very VERY bright lights, and with lenses they actually placed ON my eye. (All of this was wonderful fun for a guy who has always been extremely sensitive to glare and to having anything near my eyes.)

They did a visual field test. You stare with one eye (the other is covered) at a tiny light in the center of a hemispherical machine and click a button every time you see a flash of light anywhere). Then you do the other eye. And you fear all the while that you're missing way too many of the flashes (some are bright, some are barely perceptible). They examined my eyes again with the aid of bright lights and lenses, and took pictures while they were at it. I saw three different technicians/doctors in addition to my primary. (The technician who administered the visual field test bears more than a passing resemblance in appearance, manner and voice to the actor John Malkovitch. It was a bit odd.)

The end result of all this testing was to determine that I still have undiminished field of vision in my right eye (no loss of peripheral vision at all), and very minimal loss in my left eye (but there is some). Also, that I was a good candidate for laser surgery. So sometime in the next month or two I'll get scheduled for an in-clinic procedure. I asked the doctor how it works. Apparently, on the interior of your eye, right where the iris (the colored part) meets the white, there's a lip or groove or something. This is where, assuming it works correctly, the fluid inside your eye can drain away so that the pressure doesn't get so high that it starts damaging the optic nerve. The procedure will use a laser and some mirrors to zap fifty spots around the perimeter there, causing some inflammation. Then, when the body sends it's healing agents to deal with that, it will usually (in about 80% of patients) also cause it to start draining more effectively.

Why? I don't know. And neither does my doctor. She said they don't know why it works, they just know that it does. And it works better in patients who start with a higher pressure inside the eye (like me, so I'm almost certain to get a beneficial effect). In conjunction with eyedrops (which I'd still be using), it should lower the pressure enough to prevent any further damage.

It's not a permanent fix, though. The effect generally lasts from two to five years, and can be repeated once. So it could good for anywhere from four to ten years. And then? Well, there will probably be some new glaucoma drops on the market I can try. And if not, there's still actual surgery.

So...laser eye surgery sometime in the next couple of months, a follow-up visit at two and then eight weeks post-surgery (to compare pressure to see if worked) and then we'll see. I'm relieved that I can try laser surgery and not have to jump (immediately) to going under the knife, but it's still daunting. It doesn't help that I was definitely the youngest person in the waiting room by a good margin--at least amongst actual patients and not loved ones waiting with patients. I'm not pleased by that at all.

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Unclean! Unclean!

2015-09-15T03:52:12Z

My lovely and talented wife came home from San Francisco last Tuesday with a lovely parting gift--a cold. By Friday of last week I could feel myself coming down with it. Not a terrible surprise, really. You share an apartment and these things happen. So I spent the weekend getting worse, and doing as little as possible in the way of chores and resting up for a week of work.

And work today went better than expected. I thought it would be awful, and I'd be completely worn out. But not really. I'm sick, yes, but not as miserable as I feared. But given that Snippy is still sick more than a week since she came down with it, I've got a ways to go yet.

Today Twoson started feeling it coming on. Again, not a surprise. In fact, I pretty much expected he would come down with it--when you're sharing an apartment with two people who are both sick, and you're taking care of them...well.

As colds go, it's not horrible. It's a cold, which means you feel exhausted and congested and occasionally sneezy. But the worst part for me so far is that my whole torso from my waist to my chest is one big sore mass of muscles from all the coughing. And every time I cough I'm reminded of just how many muscles surround my rib cage and are involved in coughing.

On the other hand, I'm enjoying reading the Ex series by Peter Clines. He first came to my attention when Snippy told me about a couple of audio books she was really enjoyed. FOURTEEN and THE FOLD. "Horror procedurals" she called them, in that they don't seem like horror at first, just mysteries. And not particularly threatening mysteries, but the more the characters investigate, the weirder things get until the awful truth is finally revealed and you realize that, yes, it's horror. She told me something about them, and urged me to give them a try. And so I did. And they were great. I really liked them. I can't say a lot about them without spoiling them, so I won't.

Now I'm reading some of his other works. EX-HEROES, EX-PATRIOTS, EX-COMMUNICATION (which I'm currently reading), and at least two others I haven't gotten to yet. It's a series about the zombie apocalypse--with superheroes. And they've been really interesting. And like those other two books, things aren't as simple as they seem. A zombie apocalypse AND superheroes in the same story? Isn't that overkill? Or a violation of the "one fantastic element" rule or something?

I thought so. But there's more going on than you think at first, and pretty soon it's clear that this is not your garden-variety zombie apocalypse (which we've all seen so often before). With every book in the series (I'm on the third currently), it gets weirder and weirder. The zombies are the least of the protagonists' problems.

They're a threat, yes. Five million zombies (or "exes" as in ex-human, as they call them in the novels) in Los Angeles is a problem. But anyone who's seen a few zombie movies knows how to handle that. If you're smart and careful (and little bit lucky), you can survive and establish a safe place in the ruins of Los Angeles. But the zombies are only the beginning. There are worse things than zombies. Much worse--and you have to deal with those while ALSO not letting them distract you from the ever-present threat of zombies.

Like Fourteen and The Fold, these books are full of pop culture references--one character in particular is prone to quoting genre movies and tv shows, or referencing them as a way of explaining things.

I recommend them.

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My Labor Day Holiday

2015-09-08T05:09:49Z

My lovely and talented wife took off for San Francisco on Thursday to visit friends. She returns tomorrow. She also texted less than an hour ago to report that she has a cold and ask me to make sure we have Sudafed on hand. It sucks for her that she's come down with a cold, but Twoson and I will take good care of her when she gets home.

This means, among other things, a trip across the river to Vancouver, WA tomorrow because the State of Oregon has made Sudafed a prescription-only purchase. You can own it, but can only buy it in-state with a prescription from your doctor. Those of us who live close enough to the border can drive into Washington and get it there. We'll also have to stock up on other things for colds, I expect.

Anyhow, with Snippy out of town, Twoson and I were on our own for the long weekend. On the drive home after work Thursday, I started feeling very lonely. Snippy was out of town and I wouldn't seen any of our friends (all of whom have their own busy lives, so our get-togethers are scheduled). I even teared up, though it part that was probably due to listening to the country music station on the radio while driving. But I thought about my plans for the weekend and started feeling better.

Those plans started when I stopped on the way home to buy Twoson and myself dinner at Son of A Biscuit (a local fried chicken restaurant who make some very spicy chicken). We watched tv or played on the computer and stayed up to the ungodly-late hour of 1:30 in the morning and slept til 10 a.m.. Once upon a time I routinely stayed up that late, or later, especially on weekends. But not anymore. I work an early job and I get up not so early (but still earlier than I prefer) to make breakfast for Snippy on the weekends. So I intended to enjoy sleeping in on my four-day weekend (I took Tuesday off, in addition to the holiday today).

I spent Saturday, Sunday and today alternately netsurfing, writing, watching tv, reading, or doing various chores. Chores still need doing, even on holidays. I did the grocery shopping, lots of laundry (sheets, towels, anti-allergen mattress covers and pillowcases, clothes). I dusted and vacuumed, and de-cluttered and straightened up the living room area, ran the dishwasher occasionally, and so forth. I didn't push to get the chores done. This was supposed to be a vacation. None of it required concentrated attention, so I'd throw a load in the wash/load the dishwasher and do something fun for a while.

Saturday Twoson was at work most of the day, so I puttered around the apartment on my own until mid-afternoon, then went out shopping. I bought three pairs of jeans I needed. I look for new sneakers, but after trying three different sports shoes stores, I walked away empty-handed. I had a surfeit of choices, a bit of sticker shock, and no real idea what sort of shoes I really wanted. A little research is called for, I think.

I've been writing for an online RPG I joined a couple-three weeks ago. It's been very slow. I've had almost no responses, but it's not me--there's been relatively little activity at all. Perhaps it's the start of school (some of the players are students or teachers, I know), and the holiday weekend. But in any case, I've been having fun making posts of my own. It isn't writing that will make me any money, but it's writing and I'm enjoying it, and that's a start. I keep feeling like I ought to be writing something I could sell, but at least I'm writing now, and that hasn't been the case for a long while.

I tried going for a bicycle ride today. We got a bicycle from a friend last summer. Originally it was intended for Twoson, but he never used it. So I claimed it. Took it out today--and discovered that the tires have gone soft in that time. I need to pump them up again but we don't own a bicycle tire pump. So I'll do that another day.

Three of the four days of my vacation are over now. There's only tomorrow to go, and then it's back to work for three days. I've enjoyed it. I've stayed up late, slept in, and generally enjoyed not having a fixed schedule of any sort for a few days. It's been really nice. I tried a couple of episodes of Archer on netflix; it's amusing, and I'll probably watch more, but I'm in no hurry. I also watched a couple of episodes of Continuum, which I enjoyed and may try to share with Twoson and Snippy. If they like it too, we'll have something else to watch together at least until all our regular fall shows come back on. As I said, it's been nice.

But I'll be very glad when Snippy comes home again. I've missed her, and look forward to spending some time with her. We're planning a celebratory dinner tomorrow evening. The original plan was to go out somewhere if she felt up to it (after a day of travel), or to pick something up from a new Chinese restaurant we've found (or maybe somewhere else) if she weren't. Since she has a cold, I suspect it will be the latter--if she feels up to eating much at all.

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About the recent Fantastic Four debacle

2015-08-12T04:04:17Z

First, I really like CHRONICLE. As "real world teens get superpowers" movies go, it is in my opinion, one of the best. Plus the climactic battle is just phenomenal. THIS is what superheroes and supervillains fighting would be like, and the collateral damage is amazing (and terrifying). it's a great film.

I didn't know until just a few days ago that the guy who did that film directed (or started directing, apparently) Fantastic Four. I don't know if he's in the right, or he was the problem, or (more likely) it was a colossal cluster____ to which he and the studio contributed in equal measures.

What I do know, is that the primary reason (in my opinion) why the earlier FF movies did only okay (though they did do okay) and this one tanked is that the folks in charge were unwilling to commit to making a COMIC BOOK movie. That is, in my opinion, why Marvel has succeeded so well. Yes, they make changes to the costumes, to the backstory, and so forth to make them look better and to appeal to a wider audience*, but they're making movies about COMIC BOOK SUPERHEROES and they don't pretend otherwise.

Guy builds a suit of powered armor in a cave out of scraps? Yes.

Superscience turns a 1940s weakling into a superman? Yes.

And he is frozen in ice for decades then brought back? Yes!

Norse God shows up with huge pecs and huger hammer. Yes!

They have a flying helicarrier? YES!

Look, the very idea of a heli-carrier is preposterous. It would be easy laugh at it. It's easy for movie execs to FEAR that people will laugh at it, and thus veto it or water it down into something "believable" (for Hollywood versions of same). But Marvel COMMITS. They showed us the full-fledged, exactly-as-imagined helicarrier taking flight and they do it without backpedalings or embarrassment. This is what comic fans came to see and they are by god going to show it to us. And even the non-comic fans are mostly going to think, "wow, that's so cool--impossible, of course, but really ,really cool."

Which is exactly the reaction they have to the zillions of impossible (but cool) fights/stunts/car chase scenes in standard action movies. But only Marvel seems to understand that you can elicit the same buy-in from moviegoing audiences if you commit to the superhero story the same way. (And even Marvel had to learn. There are a fair number of low-budget, truly execrable Marvel superhero movies--even tv-movies--over the last few decades. Partly that was due to shoestring budgets and laughable costumes and sfx...but that was also due in part to a lack of commitment. It was a vicious circle that took some serious cojones--and money--to break. But Marvel did.)

Fox seemed to understand it when they did the first two X-Men movies. Yes, they swapped out the yellow spandex for black leather, but otherwise? Scott Summers had actual eyebeams. Wolverine's ginormous adamantium claws were just as cool in live-action as they were in the comics. Rogue's ability to steal powers (not the most photogenic power out there) worked well in the story. Rebecca Romjin's Mystique was incredibly fun too. Plus, of course, they had Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellan to give the move some much needed gravitas.

And they didn't shy away from the whole comic-book notion of evolution. "Mutant" means "person with naturally-occurring superpowers" and that's just how it is. Like the heli-carrier, it makes no sense in the real world. That's not how the world really works. But that's how it works in THEIR world, and they weren't embarrassed to tell a story in that world. If that doesn't make all the difference, it makes the lion's share.

But when it comes to the Fantastic Four (especially this reboot), they seemed to shy away from giving us the Fantastic Four we've known in the comics for decades. They shuffle their feet, hem and haw, and are clearly embarrassed by the story they want to tell--and it shows. No matter how much extra action and how many SFX shots they add.

*They have to. The audience for a "hit" comic book" is a miniscule fraction of the audience you need to make a successful motion picture.

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Death & Taxes (in honor of Tax Day)

2015-04-15T18:01:48Z

DEATH AND TAXES
by Sinanju
A crossover fanfic (Dead Like Me/Highlander)

George stepped into Joe's and looked around. She hadn't had much experience of bars before she'd died. Truthfully, she'd never been in a bar at all before she died. She had her fellow reapers Mason and Daisy to thank for her familiarity with them in her afterlife. They might have come with her but they both had appointments at the post office.

So did Roxy and Rube, for that matter. George suspected that someone would be going postal today. Multiple reaps at the post office on April 15th? Overworked postal employees and cranky last-minute taxpayers snarling at one another all day? What else could it be?

The bar seemed okay. There was a stage in the back for live performances, empty now. Music poured out of a jukebox instead. George was morbidly amused to recognize Dead Can Dance. The bar wasn't terribly busy. The bartender, a bearded man with graying hair was conversing quietly but intently with a customer, tall, dark and handsome.

George admired him for a moment. He made quite a picture. Jeans that showed off his ass very well, broad shoulders in a cable-knit sweater, short dark hair and a beautiful but masculine profile. He was way too old for her, of course. He had to be in his thirties.

She pulled a crumpled Post-It from her pocket and studied it.

W. Campbell
Joe's Place
E.T.D. 10:47 p.m.

She put it away again and scanned the room, wondering which of the patrons was W. Campbell. Walter? William? She studied a woman idly toying with a glass of beer. Wanda?

George glanced over at the handsome man at the bar again. He looked vaguely familiar. She shrugged and moved closer, curious about the nagging sense of recognition. The bartender broke off whatever he was saying as she approached.

"Help you, miss?" he asked.

George studied the dark haired man openly. "No," she said eventually, diffidently, never looking at the bartender.

"Do I know you?" the stranger asked. His voice, his accent, combined with his appearance to make the connection George was seeking.

"The University," George said, surprised into speaking the thought aloud. She'd seen him once at the University, where her father was a professor. "I mean, you work at the University, don't you?"

"I teach a couple of classes there. Are you a student?"

"No," George said. "I...know Professor Lass. I've seen you there."

He extended a hand and George stared at it for a moment, uncertain of what to do. "My name is Duncan MacLeod. And you are?" Duncan MacLeod. Not W. Campbell.

"I'm Geo--Millie," George said. "I'm Millie." She took his hand briefly, harmlessly. It occurred to her that she very seldom touched the living anymore except to take their souls.

"Pleased to meet you," he said.

There was an awkward silence. The ball was back in George's court, but she had no idea what to say. She opened her mouth to speak with no idea what she was going to say when she saw MacLeod's attention shift. He stood a little straighter, reminding her of how tall he was and how broad his shoulders were, and fixed his gaze on the door behind her. His left hand came to rest on the long coat draped over the bar at his side.

George saw that the bartender noticed MacLeod's behavior as well. He turned to watch the door, and then George did the same. A moment later the door opened and a man in a duster stepped inside, spotted MacLeod and walked up to plant himself squarely in MacLeod's space.

"Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod?"

MacLeod frowned, but replied, "Yes."

"William Campbell," the stranger said. "We have unfinished business."

George relaxed now that she knew who she was here for. She glanced at her wristwatch. William Campbell had about eight minutes to live. She paid little attention as MacLeod tried unsuccessfully to talk Campbell out of whatever misguided challenge he'd come to present. If she had his name on her Post-It, he was toast. A goner.

At last MacLeod agreed to follow Campbell outside. As Campbell turned to leave, George contrived to brush against him, popping his soul with practiced ease. He paid her no mind and stalked out the door with MacLeod following.

George followed them both a moment later, unseen and unremarked, one of the perks of being undead. The two men walked swiftly to an alley not far from the Joe's Place. Turning to face one another, they shocked George out of her blase attitude by each drawing a big ass sword from inside his coat!

"Holy shit!" George cried as the swords clashed. "What the fuck!?" She watched with her mouth agape as they fought the sort of duel she'd only ever seen in pirate movies.

It was a remarkably brief contest. MacLeod clearly outclassed his opponent. Campbell's smug expression soon turned to alarm and then despair. Moments later George gasped as MacLeod's sword took Campbell's head off. His head and body fell to the ground at MacLeod's feet.

George thought she was done being surprised until the light show started. She looked over at Campbell's soul, standing by her side. "What the hell is that?"

"My Quickening," Campbell said in a dazed voice. "I never thought I'd see that," he added. He looked at George with shock dulled eyes. "Am I dead?"

George nodded. "Yep."

Campbell nodded as if this merely confirmed a suspicion. "I really thought I could take him, you know?"

George shrugged. "Guess you were wrong."

MacLeod was doing an electric boogaloo in the middle of a lightning storm now. They watched it in silence for a few moments.

"What happens now?" Campbell asked her.

"You live the cliche," George answered. "Walk toward the light."

The lightning storm surrounding MacLeod seemed to be reaching a climax.

"Oh. Of course," Campbell said, and he walked toward MacLeod and into the heart of the lightning storm--the "Quickening," as he'd called it.

"I didn't mean--" George started to shout after him, but Campbell vanished into the brilliance of the Quickening, which guttered out a moment later, leaving MacLeod to sag to his knees exhausted and gasping in the sudden darkness.

George stared for a minute. After two years as a Grim Reaper, she thought she'd seen everything. Apparently not. As MacLeod climbed slowly to his feet, George turned and walked away. Rube would be at Der Waffle Haus by the time she got back, and he had questions to answer.

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