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.