Author: Frances K R

Well my name’s John Lee Pettimore/Same as my daddy and his daddy before

Paying proper attention to the first episode of this season of Walking Dead.  I’d forgotten how bloodily effective Daryl Dixon was.  He’s like some kind of “Copperhead Road” ninja.

It’s been a while since I saw the first season.  I can’t actually remember if there’s been an explanation provided for why some corpses turn into walkers and others don’t.  Clearly bodies staying down is common enough that people open cars with bodies inside as if it’s dangerous but not guaranteed to be deadly–

Come to think of it, I don’t recall if a passive corpse has ever gotten up and started chewing. Possibly it’s the perfectly normal human reaction of getting twitchy around anything that looks like it could get up and start chewing, even if it won’t do it.

The show has the same oddly unselfconscious mood that I remember from the first season.  Walking Dead came out in 2003; the zombies weren’t saturating the media horror tropes nearly as much as they are now.  No-one’s running around talking about how it isn’t like this in the movies, or conversely how it is like this in the movies.  I think that not needing to nod towards the movies and books that everyone’s heard of or seen gives the show a bit more room to develop people actually dealing with the situation, rather than just correlating it to something else.

This isn’t the “You mean the movie lied?” of Return of the Living Dead. This is the “I’m gonna board up that door, and I’m not going to unlock it again no matter what happens!” of Night of the Living Dead.

And having properly rewatched the first episode, am pleased to say that the characters are still being awesome, and flawed, and very reasonably human.

Balancing out.

And having written that title, I immediately want to read it as “coming to a point of balance that involves going out of my current position”. Clearly early-days job stress is still with me.

Apparently I managed to double-post yesterday, due to updating the time setting while I was the middle of writing a post. Will see about updating that when I’m not trying to write from my phone.

Finally got a chance to watch the first episode of The Walking Dead last night, although I don’t think I gave it the attention out deserved. It send to have handled the (unfair, ill-advised) budget cuts pretty well, though, and holy god was that episode grim. I don’t think that killing a kid in horror fiction inherently gets you any cred, but the first instance seemed well-handled and miserably bleak, and the second… I caught myself doing that thing where you go looking for reasons it couldn’t have happened. “But someone would have seen… Dammit, he’s wearing a camo-print t-shirt.” That kind of thing.

I realize he might not be dead – that technically neither of them might be dead – but it was still pretty affecting.

Losing ground

Yesterday morning I finished my first assignment for work; at least I thought I did.  Late this morning I actually got a chance to go over it with people who have been there a while, and it turns out that no, I didn’t.

Some of it is pure detail; I’m used to working in a small shop, so my issue notes were the kind of thing I’d write to myself.  This is fine for me, but since someone else will be taking my notes and going through them to determine what exactly to fix, it isn’t actually very useful.  I managed to rework most of those, and I think the new versions are actually pretty helpful.

Some of it is the hours- and document-tracking software, and that bit was mostly a case of straightening out what should and shouldn’t be done when and where.  Practically speaking, not too bad since I hadn’t had a chance to get formal training.

Some of it is… well.  I look at the work, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something huge.  I don’t know what it could be, and since the coworkers and supervisors who looked at it don’t seem to have found it I’m not sure it’s a warranted reaction, but it’s very hard to get rid of.

Plus?  It’s code.  So I get sucked in, and I didn’t actually make it outside today.  With the time change, it means Im getting out after dark, and it throws me for a loop.

Monday morning.

It’s probably been said before, but what gets me about buses is the way the segments of the trip are so distinct from each other. You go on the first leg of it, and it doesn’t matter how quickly the trip went our didn’t go; the next leg of it will go on its own schedule. There’s no way to save time, no way to have a quick trip in one part… carry over, I guess?

What would you call that? Granularity?

All of which is a way to say that while I ran out of the house this morning in such a hurry that I had to ask John to feed the cats for me, I am currently on the fourteenth minute of a scheduled ten-minute wait at the highway bus stop, and I would much rather have spent this time at home. Also, I do not have coffee and it’s chilly, so I am a bit grumpy.

I sit and watch the clouds go by…

Someone I know just got published.  It’s actually (I think) quite a good story, and you can read it here, at the latest issue of On the Premises.

I think this is teriffic for her, and I am happy to pass along good things I have heard people say about it.  And it’s paid-published, which I suspect adds an extra element of awesome to the whole thing.

I can’t even feel properly jealous, and someone I’m writing with said something that had me figure out why.  I’m not jealous because I’m not in the same situation.

Because Rachel Verkade?  She actually finishes her stories.  And then she sends them out.

If I did that, I could feel jealous.  As it stands, I read her stuff.  And the things some of my friends write.  And I follow the people I know about who are getting their stories out, or getting a collection out, and I just look at the progress they are making, and I think…

I don’t know what I think, actually.  It’s not very detailed or coherent, it’s sort of a slow sad wishing that I was there.

That I was focussed enough to try to get there.

What the hell am I doing with my life and my time, anyway?

A weekend, now that that means something.

The first day at work went fairly well.  I believe I can do the job they want me to do, everyone seems pleasant, the number  of transfers on the commute is annoying but manageable.  I may see about angling for earlier hours after a week or so; we’ll see.

That said, I am stress-tired in a way I haven’t been since the last fiscal year end I was working in government.  Got home and ordered pizza on the cheap deal in the mailbox and then curled up and unwound.  There was a fire.  I am very glad we have a fireplace.

(…for reasons besides the fact that if we didn’t, it would be very very hard to be glad about there being a fire in the house.)

Thought the cats were going to be quiet, but turns out there was evening squabbling.  Managed to get half a glove right after reknitting it four times.  Trying to get through the last of the House of Fear anthology and sort of quietly gleeful about how AHS handled Tate and Hayden.  Can’t wait for the next episode; in the meantime, may catch up on Misfits or try Bedlam tomorrow, when I have the TV to myself.

Sudden employment.

Five o’clock came and went today, and no word from the temp agency.  I figured I could look forward to maybe a Monday start date; looking over the SOW, the start date was October 17, and this kind of delay is not atypical.

Five thirty-four rolled around, and I got a phone call.  The temp agency said the client wanted me to start tomorrow, if I could.  I said that’d be fine, got the address, agreed I’d get them a void cheque tomorrow, all the little perfectly normal paperwork fusses that come along with this.

I’m ambivalent about it, and a bit unhappy to find myself so.  I mean… employment!  Employment is a good thing.  I’m just worrying about whether it’ll be a good job, if I should have kept looking, whether or not they’ll realize I’m a horrible fraud and should never have set foot inside the building as soon as I actually need to start working…

All the little perfectly normal fusses that come along with this.

They’ve seen my resumé.  It is a decent resumé; more, it is an honest resumé, and I suspect that matters more.  I’m hoping thatit’ll all be fine and by this time Monday[1] my biggest problem with the job will be that it’s 20 minutes from downtown so I can’t meet people for lunch.

Just wish I’d had a little more notice, you know?

—
[1] Not Friday.  I probably won’t stop worrying that fast.

Oddly awake.

Yesterday I was up until four in the morning. And then I was up and functional by eight. Somehow I’m still not tired. Admittedly there was a nap in there, but…

One of the people I write with a fair bit of the time is doing NaNoWriMo. It’s rough going so far (mind, that doesn’t mean much yet), but she’s doing it. I, meanwhile, have written the hundred words of fiction in trip fragments this week.

I mean, it’s just been Hallowe’en; I practically feel guilty about not trying. It’s the time of year for (proper Lovecraft) ghouls and curiously meaningful scratches and shapes standing in the dark in the still of your room and just watching you.

You think.

You can’t see their eyes, after all.

(Oh yes, this is absolutely going to help me get to sleep. Because I needed a chaser after reading a third of the way through the House of Fear anthology. It’s a nice mix; part actual ghosts and part haunted houses (which are subtly different, but I fear I repeat myself), with a side order of the weird.)

Beginning to get sleepy, at least.  The nice thing about the phone is that I can post in my room and don’t get distracted by the joys of the internet or the horror of the Sierra Madre. Much easier to lie down and go to sleep if you don’t need to tear yourself away from a computer motor.

(That’s the Sierra Madre from Fallout: New Vegas – Dead Money. Which is a quite well-done little horror story set in a haunted house… one which both corrupts its victims and is inhabited by ghosts, now that I think of it.)

Tomorrow I’ll try and get my books sorted, I suppose. And maybe I’ll hear back about work. The estimated start date just keeps creeping forward; at this point I’d be surprised if anything happened before Monday.

(stasis)

We have been sitting in the doctor’s office for an hour and five minutes now. It is boring. For the record.

Apparently we’re next in line, but I don’t know when that line is next moving forward. For the moment, this is largely a chance to practice typing on Swype.

There is one bonus; there is some kind of pseudo-Scrooge romcom movie playing on the waiting room, and John has said that he takes back everything bad he has ever said about my taste in the movies he watches with me.

And as soon as he starts editorializing on the movie, a get called in. Onwards!