Entertainment : Still Alive

Welcome back, ya panda-faced mofo. Hope you are well and that those personal issues you speak of aren't anything too bad! As for happening around these parts, well, I am being an optimist today and focussing on the good.

WAR is over. Bekka slayed us all. She now stands, a warqueen, atop a pile of skulls.

Matt's hair went global.

A really good run of stuff over in the Whoring Thread. Lots of good stuff to read by lots of different members.

Utah announced some mystery project that LR is running in June. He's evil and gave us nothing but cryptic clues.

Flash fiction competition on the mainpage. Eggs are the name of that game. Chester found his pipe and is now guest judging.

Cake vs pie. Nuff said.

Matt...lol.

I have sort of "three days off" from work, but am going to catch up on the things I need to catch up. I'm determined to finish them. My prize would be to return here. I think I can probably get done in a day. Wish me luck!

I wanna make $12!

Heh, well...

Backstory: I was supposed to get married last year in June. Now, normally this wouldn't be a problem. But trying to get married abroad is... interesting. Paperwork pushed the wedding out to September. All went well, with a nice honeymoon planned for October.

Instead we get a cancer scare. The next 3-4 months are dealing with that, so the honeymoon (and all other plans) gets pushed back to this year (next week). Surgery gets done, recovery, etc. We get the usual spiel: "you're very lucky we caught it early, etc. etc."

Last month: Honeymoon planning goes into implimentation stage and we gat a call from the doctor: Follow up testing results still abnormal. More testing and most likely more surgery required. So, instead of pushing back the honeymoon (again) we're waiting until we get back.

Last week: Found out I may be here (in Europe) longer than I anticipated. So now it's looking at other options. i.e. college for the wife for her masters degree (which was put on hold due to the cancer scare).

This weekend was supposed to be awesome. I was heading up to Utrecht for some shaolin seminars, tai chi and chi gong. Five minutes before I'm ready to head out the door I start to feel weird. Thirty seconds later, I'm projectile vomiting. Which is bizarre, I rarely, if ever puke. If I do, it's major illness, death's doorstep type of thing. So this, out of the blue, was startling. No warning, and no identifiable cause. Apparantly I just needed to purge at that precise moment.

Needless to say, I spent my weekend at home. Apparantly, the universe decided I was not meant to go out this weekend.

Life, as usual, is what happens when you're making other plans.

Thanks alien. I just realized I had promised to get back to you and didn't. Mea culpa. 

Heading out today. For the next ten days I will be incommunicado.

Spent all day yesterday fighting with everyone who thought it would be perfect to leave everything until the last minute. I swear someone handed each and every one of them a cue card with 'But what's going to happen while you're gone????'. As if I had not explained it ad nauseam for the last two months.

On top of this, I'm more or less 'officially' out of luck. The person who handles assignments decided to pull a fast one put me down for an assignment without telling me. I only know because I checked.  Now I'm very likely heading to New York at the end of the year unless I can get it deleted, which of course, I'm trying to do. Contemplating a flight to the US and 'reason with him'. If I can't get the assignment deleted, all the work I did last year was essentially wasted.

There won't be a replacement for me, because my job doesn't exist and I'm the only available qualified person in Europe who can do my job because every organization either doesn't have someone, or can't afford to give someone up. If/when I go, with no one to replace me, the mission ends and everyone relying on me is out of luck. Fixing the problem (without a replacement present to do a proper hand off) will take at least a year and god knows how much money. 

The only highlight to yesterday was finally being able to make it to Utrecht for the Shaolin training. It was worth the four hours drive. That little dude chucked me across the gym like I weighed nothing. 

Sorry bout what's going on man, if that means anything. You lead a very mysterious and exciting life according to some parts. Like the shaolin part.

It was the first martial art I learned way, way back in the day. When I started working for the government, I let my training slide for about 10 years or so. Back in 2008 my health started deteriorating. After the doctors finally figured out what was eating me alive last year (end of 2010), I went looking for  a dojo while I got my life back on track.

For the last year or so I've been doing Kung Fu training. There's a Shaolin Monk here who escaped from the state (chinese) sponsored programthat travels Europe and claimed some sort of asylum in the Netherlands who and teaches independently. It's unny, because I'm walking down a random street in Vienna now and just saw a poster for a demonstration that showed some of the other monks he used to travel with. 

I think the forum died.  4 hours in the middle of the day with no posts?  Are you guys avoiding me?

I want to fill you all with my love.  Let me love you.  Especially you.  Not you.  You.

No way.  In is where it's at.