photo saturday: animal boys

reynard - fox, fighter, flirtvelasquez - crowtouched, phantom, aasimar

Some animal themed boys for the first DnD Character Colouring Book of the year. And I probably could have just gone with one of them, but they seemed to work nicely together honestly.

Firstly, the Battlemaster Fighter... the very on-the-nose named Reynard, the redhead, who kind of got his fox based name after his look was done. Because I still haven't really done a redheaded character, even though I've wanted to on a number of occasions. Also, he's only a Battlemaster because that made sense for him... it's not really my favourite subclass.

Valazquez is when happens when you're watching people play video games for a number of hours and something comes up in the game that makes you want to make a DnD character with the same theme.

The video game: Wildermyth. The something: the Crowtouched theme that slowly turns one of your characters into... a crow.

While musing on it, the character became an Acolyte and Aasimar tied to the Raven Queen... because goth and edgy shit. And then a rogue, because the aforementioned goth and edgy shit. See also the Phantom Rogue subclass.

Moving on.

This week was... a lot.

So, although I haven't mentioned it since the first... mention... urgh... I still have to move house at the start of February. Which is all kinds of problems and issues and whatnots.

But between Christmas and New Year I found a moving company, but they seemed... less good than the other company I used during my last two moves... but they decided that they didn't want to operate in Adelaide any more sometime after my last move. So, urgh, again.

So, this week I tried to find a different company. Wow. Moving companies are... the word that comes springing to mind is... bullshit. Or often just a random dude and a truck. Is it out of line to expect, I don't know. An office. And when I look up your company address on Google Maps, that I don't find... somebody's house. Or a place where you theoretically park your truck.

And when you go through Google looking at different removal companies... you start to notice that a lof of the websites look like ass. And... you start to realise that, hey, I've seen that phone number before... so you Google the phone number and find, like five different "companies" with similar looking websites, but with completely different names.

So... Best Movers Adelaide, Same Day Movers, Total Removals, Proven Removalists and Carlo Removalists... I fucking see you all. With your mostly matching websites and your identical phone numbers but different addresses. I see you.

I'll tell you, that for me, I started to a) loose all faith in humanity in general and b) started to kind of loose my tenuous grip on reality.

Also not helped when the company that I had seen that seemed better than the one I'd already spoken to told me when I called them that they're not doing any removals in Adelaide until April. At least I think it was them, I ended up speaking to a number of companies and had a number of stupid conversations.

So what do we do when we start to loose our tenuous grip on reality? We call Ma. And she comes down so that you can have a brief freak out, and then outline the whole problem you're having and then end up calling a couple of other companies who are also... functionally useless.

I mean, they had reasons, and I understand their reasons. But for the most part, none of those reasons didn't help me.

And even trying to find a company that rented/sold moving boxes was doing my head in.

Basically the TLDR is that I had gotten myself into a headspace, and couldn't see my way past any of it.

Basically after I called one of the major moving companies and while I spoke to someone in Melbourne, they tried to put me through someone in Adelaide, but nobody was picking up the phone. Now, I get it... this was the first day back at work for a lot of them after the Christmas/New Years break, but fuck.

So I just went... fuck it. Let's go with the company that I'm already booked with, and even though they don't fucking mention it, they do rent boxes, albeit at a more expensive rate than I would have initially liked (which was one of the things that I was unhappy about when I first spoke to them). And because I know they charged an additional fee to bring the boxes out, so, since Ma was here, I suggested driving out there to pick some up.

I mean, I called them first... but, like every other phonecall I made that day, it was unproductive because it ended up going to voicemail... and they never called me back (I mean, before we got there).

Actually seeing that they had a building, with a sign, and a dinky little office (which was essentially a cube inside the bigger warehouse), and people... made me feel better. I mean, I then had to spend entirely too much fucking money on fucking cardboard. But they're good boxes. And I learned my lesson from the last move by getting the new ones and not the used ones. Because my experience with the used boxes last time was less than ideal.

And of course, because of the way my life works, while I am physically holding onto one of the sets of boxes, with woman from the office getting the other boxes for me... my phone rings. Of course it's the other moving company. I just thought "fuck this" and told the woman who called that I'd made "other arrangements, but thank you".

Then we stopped off at Officeworks on the way back to my place for some more tape and some bubble wrap and some butchers paper. Not the BEST butchers paper mind you, it's a bit... thin. But there's also 250 sheets of it, so... swings and roundabouts.

And that was just my Tuesday.

So, right now, I have... 10 boxes packed, two large ones, 8 small ones, all my DVDs are packed, the papers and shite from my chest of drawers are packed, all of the boxes that I had for my tchotchkes, with the aforementioned tchotchkes repacking inside them are in boxes, and I'm slowly building the Great Wall Of China in my living room.

I mean, what the fuck did I do with all the boxes when I loved in here? There the actual fuck did I put them all? I mean, I know that I didn't have the dining table, or the chest of drawers, or the kitchen workbench when I got here... and everything was all piled up against the bookcases the day after I moved in... 

But I'll be honest, even looking at that photo right now gives me... well, not clinical anxiety... but it makes me all manner of anxious. Also, the photo from like a week previous that showed where I was up to with packing... also makes me all kinds of anxious.

Partially because the rental market is very, very different now than it was five years ago, my overall situation is... worse than it was five years ago, and, you know, looking for places in the Current World Situation is... kinda fucked, honestly.

In a word. Fuck. Just... plain, old, ordinary... fuck.

Anyway... I went and looked at a place on Thursday evening. Two doors down from the Wellington Square apartment. Which made me suddenly remember a) planes flying overhead and b) it's been five years since I've really been to North Adelaide and c) there were entirely too many people/couples looking through the place, which was cute, but, you know... me against couples for an apartment. Urgh.

But it's also the first one I've physically set foot in, so there's that.

On Friday, Fluffy came down in the afternoon and we did a little packing, did a little organising and culling of shite. I mean, I knew that I liked to keep a useful jar. Just in case it was, at a later point, useful. But I didn't actually realise how many fucking jars I had accumulated inside my house.

Well, jars and empty honey containers, because I also hoard those for soup and whatnot. And also other plastic containers that I put up on high shelves in the kitchen and... never thought of ever again.

So now my recycle bin outside is full. Not just, like, a little bit full... "the lid won't close" kind of full. Mostly with jars. I mean, if they were all smashed into glass, then maybe they'd take up less room. but that's going to make all the pretty, breaking noises when they dump it all into the recycle truck next week.

"Hi, my name's Yani, and I have a problem with collecting containers."

But at least most of that is in the trash now and I don't need to worry about it.

And, while I know that I could actually pack more or less fully for a move within, like a week, taking my time is preferable, but the issue, as I mentioned to... well, anybody who stood still long enough for me to tell this week... right now I have to weigh up between how much room the thing is currently taking up in my house and how much room it will take up once it's in a box... and sometimes it can just stay where it is for now.

Which is also why Ma and I didn't do any packing today... next week is definitely going to be a thing... but for this week... nah, I honestly didn't have the mental bandwidth necessary.

Also, to quote an oft used quote from Press Gang, one of my favourite shows from the 90's... my apartment looks like I've "been playing with something thermonuclear". Big wall of boxes, empty spaces in the bookcases, every surface strewn with the detritus of my life. It's a mess.

Much like my life right now... <insert self deprecating grin gif here>

Urgh... speaking of not having the mental bandwidth... let's move on shall we.

Really the only other thing of note this week... or possibly the only other thing that I really remember because past a certain point my brain is just full... is Friday's DnD game.

After several sessions of... not avoiding the main plot... but, doing our own thing... we proceeded full force with the plot. You know, right into the belly of the beast and all that.

And now we get to answer the age old question... what happens when you put the ghost of a sassy bitch into the body of an already sassy bitch. Yes, my girl got a sassy ghost in her head... because initially she went into the head of our monk... and that wasn't going to be a thing we allowed to stand.

So now I have a sassy bitch in my head and a new weasel familiar friend. I mean, it's the familiar of the sassy bitch... but he's a sweet white weasel/ferret... which might actually be a stoat or an ermine based of the art I saw.

Anyway... next up, we're into the fortress of plot and bad stuff... so that'll be... stressful. But a different kind of stress.

Today was... I dunno... Mental Fallout Day, I guess.

We did the supermarket thing... but didn't end up buying very much... partially because, honestly, I didn't know what the fuck I wanted this week and because the weather can't make up it's damn mind about the weather right now.

Oh, yeah, I should also mention... you know how they "came and fixed to roof"... because of leaks. Yeah, it rained really fucking heavily on Friday afternoon... and, you guessed it, the ceiling/roof leaked again. So they didn't fix shit. But I also don't actually need to care about it for all that much longer. After that it becomes my favourite kind of problem... Somebody Else's Problem.

Anyway, we came back here, I gave Ma a bunch of stuff that I didn't want to just throw away... we watched a weird movie on TV, and then she headed home.

So, there's that about that.

Anyway... think nice thoughts in my general direction please. Think apartment thoughts, think successful thoughts, just think me being able to talk my way into what I want kinda thoughts. Or, you know, not... I'm not the boss of you.

Current mood:

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