Ree’s musings

Hi! I'm not dead! Sometimes I go through a cycle of being quiet and largely offline, that's all.

I got badly wound up last night. My dad called while I was out for the evening. I was occupied for the evening and couldn't check my voicemail or call him back just then, although I did sneak a peek at my missed calls list.

It's not like my dad to call at night (usually it's early afternoon). I have an elderly relative and a family friend both going through some medical stuff, one whose condition seems rather bad. So my immediate thought was "oh shit, somebody's in the hospital right?"

I spent an hour getting increasingly agitated before I could get out and check my voicemail. An hour before I could hear my dad's familiar tenor saying he hadn't called in awhile and just wanted to catch up.

It took another ten minutes before I calmed down enough to call him back. That's not an exaggeration. That is ten minutes of me trying to take a deep, even breath but instead sounding like I just got off a treadmill.

Later, after dad and I talked, I burst into tears for no reason at all. Everything was fine, but I was too keyed up to not cry, so cue the waterworks.

If I had simply assumed the missed call was my brother, I could have had a peaceful evening. I would have seen my dad as the missed call only when I could immediately call him back. There would have been no time for my panic to escalate.

I think maybe the moral of the story is that I should slack more. That would have spared me grief. Clearly this putting-forth-effort business can only end in tears. But hey, I got to catch up with my dad, so yay on that!

In other news, I suck at Crazy Taxi. I'm having fun playing anyway.

A new year is safely underway and the holiday season is (barring a few laggardly get-togethers) over. And there was much rejoicing.

I've made excellent progress on the project I mentioned. I wanted a way to associate a character name with a forum post, without the writer/roleplayer needing a new forum account for each character. I wanted it and I made it happen.

I made it happen.

Sorry for the repetition, but I'm having trouble processing that I actually got this done. I have wanted my little forum to have this feature since 2005 and finally, before 2010 came to close, I got it done. (There are some niceties I want to add, but core functionality is in place with no noted problems.)

This is awesome.

I think I've found a cure, or at least a salve, for my burgeoning dissatisfaction.

It's simple. I'm a sort of creative person, but sometimes the creative part of me gets a little burnt out. Trying to force it only makes me miserable. What I need—what I've lacked for too long—is a project where ideas and cooperation take a back seat to getting shit done.

Another aspect of my frustration has to do with roleplay by forum post. Every site has a different CMS. The main site where I play will be moving to a different CMS, but right now we don't even know which CMS that will be. It's all up in the air and making me crazy. Until that gets settled, my own little modded forum will be on hiatus, because I don't want to divide anyone's attention (especially mine) between the sites and CMSes.

But my grumpy mood finally came to a head.

Screw it, I thought. I'm working on my site anyway. I won't try to get any members there until everything else evens out a little, but I need something to do. There is a specific feature lacking from every forum and CMS I try (excepting a phpBB mod that is highly insecure, so DO NOT WANT). I don't want to open my site without that in place and it's the perfect little project.

I estimate there are four main aspects of adding my desired feature. There must be a way to add my special data to the site, to edit it, to delete it, and to use it on forum posts. There are many other niceties that could be added, but these are required before the feature is ready for use.

Today I've been snowed in. I built a control panel for this data. By noon I was able to add rows. By five P.M. I was able to delete data. Editing will probably take as long as those two combined, since I must both access data from the database and write it back, instead of just one or the other. As for using it in posts, I don't know. It might be straightforward to do or it might be unremitting hell.

But I had four goalposts on the project, and I've already met two. I'm a lot more content now than I've been in a long time. In fact, after I get the Christmas tree done, I think I'll have enough pent-up creativity to work on a story post I owe.

I love this.

It's finally winter here in South Dakota, complete with below-freezing temperatures and icy roads. (Icy pavement, too; I slipped and hit the same knee that's still purple from last month. It's fine, though; the old purple was almost faded and the new impact didn't even swell up!)

Hang on. I'm attempting to ascertain the exact time in my life where I started being happy simply to have a knee that wasn't shaped like a basketball. On second thought, I don't want to know.

Life is good, though. Nothing hurts. My brother from out of state is visiting for the week. I got a baby to smile a face-splitting grin for me, burp for me, and fall asleep on my shoulder. I have a (mostly) warm enough house, warm clothes, hot meals, and even some intensely satisfying video games. Weighing my life against the entire spectrum of human existence, I'm really quite fortunate. I am also really quite unsorry for this post's title.