Ash the Mighty

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.

Mother FUCKER!

I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I try not to swear too much in this thing. At the very least not in the subject. But sometimes it’s just fully justified and warranted.

Flogging Molly — the same Flogging Molly that I’ve seen about a half dozen times, at least half of those on the occasion of Saint Patrick’s Day — will be playing Chicago’s Congress Theater instead of anywhere in Arizona on March 17th this year.

This fucking sucks.

Just sayin’.

~A.

Holy damn!

The Mediaeval Baebes are gonna be performing at the Arizona Renaissance Festival!!! Not only that, they’re gonna be performing the first two weeks of February, four times a day on the Falconer’s Heath.

So, uh, if you guys are looking for me in February, you’ll know where to find me…

What are the stalking laws related to entire bands?

~A.

Killing Time

Effing anything other than tidy my flat. I’ve got random remnants from unknown numbers of holidays scattered about the place, including gift bags, stocking stuffers that I don’t know what to do with, and of course the obligatory dirty clothes on the ground and clean clothes on elevated surfaces (that’s how you know they’re clean!).

Well, things are changing. We’ve had a . . . management reshuffling . . . at work. My immediate boss is no longer with the company, and they’ve promoted a guy that I’ve known for a while, though not well, to take his place. It’s certainly an unexpected, though definitely not an unwelcome change. It means that we actually work a bit harder because, well, this new boss actually knows about tech and so is a bit more on the ball with things, but that’s OK. It also means that I’ve had my schedule shifted slightly to an hour earlier each day (so now I work 6am to 2:30pm), but I’m actually rather OK with that because it means I’ll miss a LOT of traffic on my way in to work. The only problem is that this new boss was unaware of the previous conversations I had had with the old boss about Faire coming up and my absolute need for a Monday through Friday schedule for the months of February and March. He’s aware now . . . let’s see if he does anything about it (as I was promised from my very first effing interview!!).

Other than that, life pretty much continues. I welcomed New Year with a whimper rather than a bang. I was so ill I ended up begging off all three of the NYE parties that I was invited to. I was awake for the ball drop, but only by dint of my alarm clock. I had fallen asleep in my nice and comfy new Tempur-Pedic bed (ahhhhh).

Faire also is coming up, which has me all sorts of excited. My doublet is currently with a gorgeous young woman named Liz who is working away at adding sleeves to it, per our new costume requirements. Things could be worse, I could be required to get an entirely new costume as some people were. Unfortunately, the third member of our party has decided that she’s too good for Faire this year, and so has dropped out. Yes, my sister Carrie will not be participating this year, so instead it will just be Michael and me. Eh, it’s all good. She kept being that irritating voice of . . . oh, what do you call that . . . oh yes, conscience. We don’t need those. Bah.

OK, enough time killed. Must away. Be well, everyone.

~A.

P.S. Pictures from Christmas posted under the Personal Galleries section of BlackHole Photography.com. And I don’t remember if I mentioned it, but I put Vegas pictures up there too.

Blargh.

I have PlagueFlu. I am a sniffly and coughy and just generally disgusting mess. I’ve been this way all weekend, and today I tried to go to work and was sent home by my boss’s boss (who I was supposed to have a 1 on 1 with today) because I sounded like the Spectre of Death out of some sort of bad horror film. Yes, I sound that terrifically awful.

So now 1 on 1 has been rescheduled and I am waiting for sheets to be done drying (I had put them in the washer before leaving for work) so I can go back to my lovely new bed. DID I MENTION NEW BED?!? Tempur-Pedic Classic (low end but still awesomely awesome), which takes a bit of getting used to but I’m already sleeping soooo much better than I have in years!

WHY WON’T THE STUPID SHEETS FINISH DRYING!?!?! I just wanna sleeeeeeeeeep . . . . . . . .

~A.

Yule Ruminations

Yeah, I said Yule. I don’t usually bother making a distinction because, well, most people wouldn’t even notice. But I had a hell of a surprise on Christmas Eve. Let me tell you briefly about it.

First let me say that I had to work all week. ALL week. And on Christmas Eve, the BossMan sent home everyone except for yours truly, so for three hours I was handling everything on my own (when a similar department was handling about half as much traffic with 4 people, if that gives you an idea as to how bad an idea that was). SO, after that fiasco, I got back in my “Service Engine Soon” car (did I mention that it started displaying that on my way to work that day? Yeah, fun times), and drove to Uncle Brad and Aunt Janet’s house for our traditional Night Before Christmas meal and White Elephant gift exchange.

Before dinner, we went around the table and were meant to tell what we were all thankful for. Right before me, my Uncle Brad kinda cut in and started rambling on about how it wasn’t REALLY Baby Jesus’ birthday, that that was in fact in the summer, that this was just a Pagan holiday . . . “Oh, but Ash would know all about that. Tell us.” So I said something along the lines of:

“Back in the day, Pagans all over the world held festivals and ceremonies on the longest night of the year wherein they exhorted their gods and nature to bring back the Sun. So I guess I would have to say that’s what I’M most thankful for. For this turning point. Let the sun; let the happy, good, and bright times come again in this coming New Year.”

For the first time my family looked at me like they understood a little bit why I counted myself a polytheist. And while it was mostly drunken fun (did I ALSO forget to mention that part of this tradition is the consumption of at least one LARGE bottle of Sambuca? Best line of the night: “I don’t have to brush my teeth for like THREE DAYS!”), many of the attendees still called the holiday Yule for the rest of the night rather than Christmas. Because celebrating the hope of the coming of better times seems so much more important than the arbitrary (and false) celebration of the birth of a demi-god.

Just thought I’d share . . .

~A.

Do you expect any less of me, really?

Vegas pictures are up. And at just a biscuit over a hundred. Hey, you should be proud of me! I whittled that number down from WELL over two-hundred and fifty! Granted, the last twenty or so were of my parent’s and their new dog, taking Christmas card pictures after we had gotten back, but still! I cut it in half.

You’re welcome.

So they’re available for your viewing pleasure in two formats. One is a new javascript-enabled format which I’ve been playing with for about a month now which I dig. That version is available here. Unfortunately, this kind of gallery has a few bugs however and can be a bit arduous to work with so I’ve been keeping my eyes open for a replacement. I had thought I had found that replacement in a Flash gallery which you can see here. Alas I have discovered that it isn’t nearly as flexible as I thought it would be and can also be a memory hog, so make sure you close the window after you’re done with it or you might find FireFox/IE/whatever crashing.

Anyway. While we’re talking, I may as well announce that I’ve also been designing a new site to bring together all of my disparate photography projects under one roof. It’s called BlackHole Photography. I still am not done deciding how it’s really going to look and feel. Call what’s up there Alpha. Soon I hope to move on to Beta testing.

Now I should really go eat. Cheerios at 9am isn’t doing it for me when it’s almost 7pm.

Hope all is well . . .

~A.