Full circle

I have finally arrived: After three years or so of constantly worrying that the ship will sink under my feet, I am at the point where I have worried myself to the point where I no longer give a fuck. This could either be incredibly healthy or incredibly unhealthy, depending on your views of possible homelessness. As it stands, I'm doing well at work. Bills suck but welcome to life. Ready for summer to be fucking over so I don't have to pay Entergy a king's ransom just to stay alive in my little sweatbox. I turn on the AC only when Jack and I start panting or if I have company. Otherwise, fans, fans fans, baby.

On Saturday I went and got my last Covid vaccine dose in St. Rose. Stick was easy but it didn't take long for me to start feeling it, Mr. Crabs. I had to run to Nanny's to bring her the gift from Tampa, then I went back home. I meant to clean since Lacey and Scott were coming to sleep over, but I felt pretty bad. Achy, exhausted, slightly headachy. I had to go lie down, despite my hatred of naps. When I woke up, I was cranky as fuck. Lacey decided she would come here on Sunday instead, so I waited to Scott to get off and then we went to Walmart & Winn Dixie to get stuff for our mini BBQ. I still didn't feel 100%, but we watched Big Bang until I could not keep my eyes open anymore. I slept like a damn champ. Woke up earlyish, Scott prepared the burgers while I gathered provisions. I was supposed to go get Lacey & Sid at Autum's so Lacey wouldn't get towed, but I figured it was Sunday and she could park by the pool so we could keep an eye on her car. Scott and I brought the shit down, drove to the pool, unloaded, and waited for Brad. He came, but he didn't want to swim on account he didn't feel great. Lacey and Sid showed up, but Sid was sleepy so he went back to my apartment and took a nap while we hung out by the pool and cooked and talked. It was a very laid back, sort of subdued gathering. Sid came back down and we all got in the pool (which felt great) and just shot the shit for awhile. Finally around 4:00ish or so, we packed up the cars and went back to my place. Watched two episodes of Love, Death & Robots with them and then they left.

Scott and I are sunburned like a mother. Sore as fuck, too.

I had to work today since Ochsner gives us Labor Day off. Not a big deal. If I had to work at an office I'd be more pissed about it, but I'm okay. Still kinda off, physically. I have a lot coming up. Tubing on the 12th. Oddities on the 26th. Riley's Birthday. Lindsey Stirling. The idea of all that is exciting but I'm tired just thinking of it. Tubing should be interesting. It is funny, how things come full circle, at the strangest times.

My blog project was going well and I got distracted. Turns out, while searching for old pics, I was looking at my old discs and discovered that I have tons, and I mean, TONS of photos that I never transferred to my library. A lot of them are from the time when Tee screwed over Brad and started dating Angie and I purged them both from my photos. Luckily, I somehow knew my anger wouldn't last and I burned them on a disc that still works. I have over 31,000 pictures in my library, and I'm pretty good at eyeing them and knowing what I have and what I do not, but when I'm not sure, I have two duplicate programs that I run and it catches any copies. I copy all the ones off discs that I'm not sure I have, put them in a folder, and eliminate the ones I do have by process of elimination using those dupe programs. Then I have to look in the metadata and see when the file was created, use another program to manipulate the metadata so that it populates in the correct chronological order in my library (it bugs me when it doesn't) I tagged all of my photos by location a long time ago, so I have to go in those tagged folders, find the corresponding pictures that relate to the picture I found on the disc, rename them all, then link them all together. It's an incredibly daunting process, as I have about 45 picture discs and a good bit of them don't work, even after restoring them the best I can. It is imperative that I get as much as I can before I can no longer access the discs. Like I said, incredibly time consuming and tedious, but I love it. Finding a picture I thought I lost or that I forgot I took at all is like finding a keg of water in the desert.

If I had three wishes, one of them would definitely be for a genie to find all of my lost discs, hard drives, pin drives, and most importantly, my old VHS tapes, and give them back to me. I hate that I was so careless with all of it. Maybe it doesn't matter to anyone else but me, but after all these years, if I'm going to amass this collection, it is my duty to keep it organized. I think about this wish constantly, enough to where I sometimes think I can will it into reality just because I want it so. Word to the wise: No matter how angry you are at people, keep the things they give you. Pictures, videos, flowers, notes. You don't have to live by them, and you don't have to obsess over them, but remember them. Put them in a box if you have to and get on with it. You never know when you might need them.

I can't keep my eyes open.

-Rae