Ash the Mighty

So in efforts of keeping my hands and mind a bit busy, I’ve been doing something that I had vaguely considered doing for years.

Back in the day, when I first started keeping a blog, I did so without the help of a database, hand writing each blog entry into a text file and dividing them up into month groups. They were time and date stamped, but that’s about it. I always thought it would be nice, though mind-numbingly boring, to go through and separate those entries out into individual blog entries like a nice modern blog like this one.

Well, I sure was right. It was mind-numbingly boring. Which was the whole point.

So if you feel like clicking around, you’ll notice I’ve gone from 3 recent entries (the legitimate new ones) to around 130 or so (the ones which I could auto-import from Live Journal), to now exactly 300 (301 after this). Hey, that’s not THAT bad when you consider the blog goes back to 2002 (and we’re ignoring that I’ve lost all the blog entries from when I was in Aberdeen. Oh, dueling-bunnies.net, how I miss you!).

The point is, if you really feel like reading the carnage that are my years in Glasgow or the randomness that are the years since, there they are, on display for the world to see. May whatever god you pray to have mercy on your soul.

~Ash.

21:29 EDIT: Well it took all of what, 25 minutes?  But I was able to hunt down and insert all of the like 25 blog entries from dueling-bunnies.net.  Turns out that they were archived over on the Way Back Machine. At least I’m pretty sure I got them all.  If not, they’re gone forever.  And yeah, I checked for those few from the sagittarii.com too.  Nothing.  I’d say THAT’S for the best!    Have a good night, everyone!

So before I went to bed today I needed to spend some time with the Polly-wog, and so we sat together on the couch and I watched the new episode of The Family Guy. I for once didn’t fast forward through a commercial and some random Levi’s advert came on and I remembered that a few years ago they did one which had dialog from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” my favourite Shakespearean play EVAR.

I decided to jump on to the ol’ YouTube and see if I could find it. I could. I’ve included it below for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy, I know I did!

~A.

29 September 2009, 15:47:  EDIT: Apparently I spoke about this very commercial four years ago in my blog at the time.  Don’t believe me?  Check it out.

Apparently Southwest has pulled their heads out of their collective asses.

Several years ago, when the gas crisis (read: most recent gas crisis) began, the airlines began charging extra fees in order to defray the costs of the baggage. When the cost of fuel went down however, the fees did not disappear, and what’s more, fees continued to appear for other sundry items which had never existed before.

Finally an airline has, with more than a little shameless self-aggrandizement begun to allow bags to “fly free.” So, any time when I can, even if it costs a little extra, I am going to give my money to Southwest Airlines.

Because I vote, and if necessary, I vote with my wallet.

~A.

So you may have noticed that I was gone.

Oh. No? Not at all? Not even a little bit? Well that’s somewhat disappointing.

Well I’ve been gone for a while. Trust me on this. The reason? Well, the reasons have in fact been oh so many. One of the main ones is that I had found myself a really truly wonderful girlfriend who I enjoyed spending time with so much that I didn’t really feel like blogging all that much. Plus there’s the fact that her parents seemed to be a little on the overtly curious side in the “we’re going to stalk and/or hire a PI to investigate you” kind of way, and so not only did I not feel like blogging, the more observant among you may have noticed that my old blog was taken down.

But I’m back. Alas this is not because I have reached an accord with said lovely lady’s parents, but instead because she and I have parted company. Those of you who run across this blog are probably already aware of this, but it wasn’t exactly my idea and I’m utterly heartbroken by the fact . . . but to be honest at this point I really should be getting used to it. Just time to put up some walls again, up the cynicism levels once more, and spend some time bitching online!

So LOTS has actually changed in the few months since I wrote, and I can’t really get in to all of it. At least not in the first entry. But suffice to say that I’m alive, I’m still gainfully employed, though erratically scheduled, and I greatly look forward to irritating you all with my Idle Ramblings once again, in a whole new and fresh blog environment (yes, yes, for the record I am once again moving venues. I’m shifting away from LiveJournal, which I’ve not made good use of for years, and have just installed a version of WordPress on my server. Possibly a bit dangerous, but I was getting EVER so irritated with LJ, so we just all have to deal, don’t we?).

Hope you are all well and I look forward to hearing from you soon . . .

~A.

I’ve been playing around with this new concept: Actually getting at least the amount of sleep that common wisdom says you’re supposed to. I know that it’s ground breaking, especially for me, but so far the results have been quite positive. You actually get out of bed without feeling too cranky and you don’t wanna fall immediately back into it. Plus having a beautiful brunette wake up next to you in that bed I confess doesn’t hurt that much either.

So today is the 17th of June and I find myself typing away on my computer because I needed to plug my phone in “really quickly” to let it update itself with the newest iPhone OS upgrade. I won’t lie, this is incredibly exciting to me because it is finally getting all sorts of support that it should have had in the first place. Stuff like copy/paste and MMS support (though of course AT&T is apparently behind the game and is waiting until end of summer to roll out network support for the latter). Eh, I’m not going to complain too much because I”m ENTIRELY too happy about it all! As long as the installation works OK, of course! If, like 2.0, it messes everything up and I have to do it like 4 times, then I won’t be quite so happy.

I also obviously made it OK to Colorado and then back again. I had a grand ol’ time with Mr. M Turney. We spent a prodigious amount of time drinking and carousing. We met lots of interesting people as Archie and Reggie, and no doubt they currently think that we are gay. Which is just fine, they can continue to do that . . . the silly buggers. Unlike Arizona however, I didn’t have a place where I could keep Roxie safe and so I didn’t take her out that much, therefore there aren’t a whole lot of pictures, alas. What pictures I do have will show up eventually and I’ll provide a link when they do!

Take care everyone,
~A.

So I finished that training that I was working on. Mostly. I actually ended up having to go home early on Friday ill (thanks a lot, sweetie. The girlie passed on a little post-nasal thing she had. What a giver!). I then turned around and went back in at 8:30 on Saturday night and have worked through the weekend doing 11 hours shifts with one hour lunches. Let me tell you, it is rough. Not like work in the hot sun doing labour kind of rough, but still. And of course the fact that the closest thing I’ve had to a break has been going home early with a head cold doesn’t really help.

That said however, it’s all over now! I’m off of work until technically the 26th of June 19th of June (not so much with the math), though I may come in and do a day of work on the 15th. As I mentioned, I’ll be making my bi-annual pilgrimage to our neighbours to the north(east) for to deliver one Jaguar, visit with the Meggan, and pay truly ridiculous amounts of money to huff and puff around the Colorado Renaissance Festival. This year, a variation on the theme is that my good friend Michael Turney will be coming along and we will be dressing up as Archie and Reggie. Colorado will truly never know what hit them. Especially since we won’t be participants and so we will no longer have to PRETEND to be rich and drunk. We’ll just have to pretend to be rich!

That’s just about me for this one. I’m going to post this before I fall over asleep on my keyboard and I just end up posting a long line of bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb’s

Take care of yourselves (and each other),
~Ash.

I have been schooled to the fact that it has been a revolting amount of time since I’ve updated this thing, and seeing as it is the only forum which even resembles a semi-permanent record of my thoughts and what’s going on in my life (twitter isn’t exactly permanent, and I’ve not even been updating that recently), I really should be a good boy and stop letting, oh, two and a half freaking months pass between posts!

So, Things That Have Happened . . .

. . . Well, during the intervening months and a bit I have continued to work in the same position at GD and only just recently got a promotion BACK to where I was originally hired on (though this time I should be getting a pay hike as the position is now technically higher). I’m in fact currently working the day shift in order to get trained in a refresher course for the gig before heading back to third shift power (which is just lovely).

I have also during the intervening time begun dating a truly amazing young woman who I cherish. You know how gun shy I can be about jinxing things so I’m not gonna name names, and as usual there is drama involved (honestly who would I be if there wasn’t at least some drama involved in my life, both love and otherwise), but for this girl, I would happily put up with any amount of troubles! ***and it should be pointed out that this post was full of typos until she came back and nagged me to fix them. Is it bad that I’m totally turned on by dating an ultra-literate?!?***

Other than that, the Ash really does just abide. I’m leaving next week for a couple of days in Colorado as per usual around this time of year. After that, it’s right back to work where I’m gonna try to not get fired or do something REALLY crazy like, you know, work.

Take care everyone,
~Ash.

P.S. She keeps threatening to bite me. Should I be worried? Ow. See?

Random Stuff in Passing . . .

Well, I’m still alive. Those that follow me in Twitter are probably more aware of this than they are comfortable with as I update that on a frighteningly regular basis. What can I say? It’s a lot easier to “blog” when you’re limited to 140 characters. My life has been rather insane recently, and while there’s been very little that has been truly momentous that has occurred, there’s certainly been enough to keep me busy . . .

FAIRE is “in season” which means that I’ve given over my weekends, such as they are (more on that in a moment) to dressing up in a variety of ever-escalatingly environmentally inappropriate clothing to entertain visitors to the Arizona Renaissance Festival. When I returned from grad school all that I really had from my old costumes was my much-worn kilt, which while warm, could be worn in such a way as to minimize the heat. Then came the velvet doublet. Then our new Entertainment Director decided my doublet needed sleeves. THEN I decided I wanted to try being a Musketeer. Do you KNOW what a Musketeer wears?!? THREE LAYERS OF BLACK VELVET!!! (Photos) In short, the heat has made me functionally retarded. But at least I’ve had company as my brain has been fried in the person of Michael, the giant ape standing there with me in those photos. He’s a very old friend, since pretty much my first year at Faire 15 or so years ago, and we happily split our time between wandering around complaining about these young whipper snappers who don’t do anything right and hitting on the female whipper snappers who don’t do anything right.

Hey, they’ve gotta learn the hard lessons somewhere. May as well be from us.

PHOTOGRAPHY has continued to be a passion and is becoming a possible revenue stream/future profession. I try not to think along those lines too much however. Doing what you love as a job always seems to translate into learning to hate what you love, so I’m kinda holding back. That said, I’ve continued to develop BlackHole Photography.com and have added gigs and gigs of photos to it, including some of a celebrity who I’d say at least classifies as B List ranking (Chris Noth of Sex in the City/Law and Order [IMDB]). This weekend I’ll be helping to photograph my cousin Adam’s wedding, which will be all new and exciting.

WORK has been, well, work. In a moment of likely ill-conceived impetuousness, I agreed to go back to 3rd shift. The department needed it for all sorts of reasons, and I rather wanted some peace and quiet and to be on a shift that wouldn’t have me jerked around all the freaking time. This was about a month ago and it is indeed what I got. I still have not entirely adjusted to the schedule, but that is at least partially because of Faire. Hopefully once the season is over and things settle down a bit I’ll be able to really get used to things and get my life back into something resembling order, even if it is at the opposite end of everyone else’s order.

And finally, my LOVE LIFE has pretty much been chaos. I’m not going to say anything more than that because, well, my grans read this stuff. Hi Bama, hi Gigi! The rest of you pervs can use your imagination.

And that’s just about me. At least all I can think of. Hope you’re all well and I’ll try to talk to you soon . . .

Lovies,
~Ash.

Long(ish) Time

At least since I’ve made a proper blog post. I’ve been Twittering like a madman. It’s just entirely too easy to jot off a quick note about something I find amooozing and then boom, yer done. Alas, the lasting record of it is not there however. Which makes for a sad Ash. I do so like the last record. History geek coming out.

And SPEAKING of history geek, yes, the Arizona Renaissance Festival has once again taken over Arizona/my brain/my life. We just finished the second weekend and despite low turnout (this will be the year to go, folks!), it’s been a lot of fun. My costume has continued to grow and mutate. The blue doublet now has sleeves and I wear a very froufy white shirt along with my normal tights and my new Windwalker boots. In short, Lord Archibald “Archie” Agincourt, the Earl of Bath is even more of a fop than ever before. That said, I’ve only been Archie for two of the four days I’ve been out. The second day of the Faire, Michael and I went as the Musketeers Aramis and Porthos, respectively. While we didn’t have women exactly falling all over themselves to get to us, this may have been at least partly because there was no one there . . . the rain fell hard and fast that day and the air was cold. We were just fine however. Those black tabards with captain’s coats underneath — all in velvet — really do the job in keeping the heat in!

Then yesterday (was it two days ago now?) I was asked by our Entertainment Director to come out in my civvies (plain clothes) with Roxy to take photos of all the participants at the Faire (up to and including the Medieaval Baebes). I did so, and while it wasn’t nearly as much fun and easily just as exhausting, I still got quite a few decent pictures which I’ve already posted at BlackHole Photography in the AZ Rennies section. Enjoy, just don’t steal without giving credit. And REALLY don’t go making a profit on other people’s work/image. Not cool to me or them. There, that’s done. Moving on.

Last bit of news, really. I was in one of my boss’ office last week just talking and somehow the topic of my shift came up. Again. Then the topic of another rep’s shift came up. Turns out this rep, who I’ve known for a long while, has been really unhappy stuck on third shift and wants off. They asked me to take his spot as I get along with most people and I put up decent numbers. I thought about it for a while, but when it really comes down to it, while I’m not happy on third, this guy is actively unhappy there and if I can help him out, the least I could do is give the guy a reprieve . . .

So if you’re wondering why the weirdly rambling and very chatting posting, that’s why. It was my first day on third last night and I am . . . punchy, to say the least.

We do what we can.

~Ash.