kitsunecaligari |at| gmail |dot| com

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I welcome any and all miscreants and sycophants that wish to have meaningful internet conversations with me.  Also beer.  Mostly Newcastle….

It has been a long while, hasn’t it?  Here’s the story so far….

The position of Resident Manager is still intact, still have the nice space in a Nob Hill apartment, but the position and the responsibilities continued to evolve, until I reached this current state, which is being a Figurehead of Security for the residents, looking out for fire and flood and the occasional locked-myself-out issues.  Beyond this is the weird Furnished Suites Maintenance work that I am not technically contracted for, but nonetheless is paying the bills.  I’m partnered with a fella that knows his stuff and is nice to be around, and aside from the madness of running maintenance for five buildings, it’s a fairly decent gig.  Been learning quite a bit about how things work and how to make them work again, and there’s a certain element of freedom and self-management that I like.  But there is still this element of being under the axe all the time, wherein Management can simply drop me from their worklist and possibly cancel my Resident Manager contract, which means I have to move out in a week, or, if they are accommodating, come up with the full rent, which is something upwards of $1500 a month.  So I basically have a tenuous grasp on my comfort level at the moment, but I’m getting used to it.  Kinda like trench warfare, I suppose.  I could go at any time, but I’m not letting the sound of artillary work on my nerves anymore….

I did manage to finish one stage of a home project – I finished cataloging my books last night.  Next up, alphabetization!  The final total (at least for the moment) stands at one thousand nine hundred thirty-nine books, which is a little disappointing, ’cause I thought I had more.  Of course, I am a Collector, so many of these volumes are multiples of a single title, especially in the Harlan Ellison/William Kotzwinkle/Jonathan Carroll listings.  I also have nigh-complete collections of Robert Parker’s Spenser novels, and he cranks those things out at an alarming rate.  And, of course, my numbers are inflated by my Graphic Novel Collection, which I’m gonna have to segregate out of the regular shelves, just because I haven’t the room at the moment to put everything out properly.  Maybe I’ll take pictures and post ‘em….

Speaking of pictures, I am, after all, in the center of San Francisco, and have been attempting to get out and shoot the city a bit.  I’ve started a running stream here on Flickr, and should eventually post them, like this:

I am, of course, not completely off the internet grid.  Been posting a bit on Twitter, and I poke my head in at the various feeds on my Bloglines list.  I’ll be posting my Where To Find Me list next month….

Beyond this, now that my life has found a level of stability, I have Plans.  Well, I’ve always had Plans, but Things kept getting in the way of Plans.  But now, with a little sober effort, Plans can be pushed forward.  Such as the editing and writing phase of the Photography Project (remember that?), and there’s also the two Book Projects, which, because of the recent POD efforts of Warren Ellis, have sparked anew in me head.  I think that’s kinda the thing, sober effort, not being distracted by much of anything anymore.  A few months ago, I was able to whine and complain about being on the houseboat and being unemployed and not having space for working.  Can’t do that anymore.  Got my whole library unpacked and I have a desk and a comfy chair and a certain measure of isolation, so my excuses are diminishing dramatically.  So yeah, now it’s getting to the point where I am no longer an Artist Under Distress and Therefore Can Not Create, but a Whiny Knucklehead That Makes Excuses For Not Doing The Work.  Otherwise known as a poser.  And since I don’t wanna have to spend my time hanging out in the Mission, wearing secondhand hipster clothes and drinking PBR, I suppose I have to start being creative and constructive….

But I do have cable teevee for the first time in about six years.  Been catching up on my Mythbusters and my Good Eats and my No Reservations, saw a few movies that I missed NetFlixing, there’s football right now (yay!), and various and sundry docs and pseudo-docs on History Channel and Discovery and such, but beyond that, the novelty wore off after a few weeks.  Much of what I want to watch, such as Burn Notice, I can just wait for the DVD to be released, and I can watch it all without commercials or them damn maddening popup overlays that all the channels seem to be doing nowadays.  But ya know, I can’t remember what life was like before DVR, lemmie tell ya….

I think I’ve said enough.  I’ll say more at a later time….

So I gotta lot of books, yeah?  And a lot of knickknacks of a Halloween-y flavor.  And VHS tapes that I forgot I had, as well as the DVD collection that I knew I did have.  What I ain’t got at the moment is shelf space, nor really floor space upon which I can place shelf space, aside from the fact that I can’t at the moment afford to buy any shelf space.  It’s a quandary, I tell’s ya….

Mostly unpacked, mostly settled, still have niggling questions that need answers, but all in all still walkin’ and talkin’.  So this was what happened so far: got the gig to be Resident Manager at a Nob Hill apartment building, signed the contract with the owner/management company on the first of September, paid rent for the month, and not even six hours later got notification that the building went into receivership, it was now owned by Teh Bank, and my contract was null and void.  Neat!  I paid to squat in a Nob Hill apartment.  So the bank dumped my building plus several dozen others on a new management company, and after ten nerve-wracking days, I signed a contract with them, only the terms are slightly different and fundamentally in my favor, as in I do odd jobs and such for the company for about forty hours a month and I get to stay in the place rent-free.  But I’m more of a “representative” for this new company that I’d like, what with me interacting with the unwashed masses on a much-too-regular basis, and no one’s ready to provide me with company-approved information, such as vendors or budget or procedure.  So I’m still kinda sitting on my hands over the whole thing, but I’ve been assured it’ll work out by next week.  M’kay….

The apartment itself is rather nifty in an ohmygadsthisplaceisold kinda way.  The elevator went out three times in the past month, the lobby door lock suddenly became unscrewed and fell apart, and the flooring is something this side of what the Imperial Japanese used to call a “nightingale floor”.  And the trash truck comes by the bedroom window at five innagaddamn morning every Mon/Wed/Fri, with the street sweeper on Thursdays.  The heating for the place is steam heat, and two of the three radiators have been removed from the place, but not the piping in the walls, so something mysteriously thermal occurs nearly every morning roundabout five innagaddamn morning right in the corner of the bedroom, a very distinctive rap rap rap, as if some morning visitor gently tap tap tapping on the wall, or perhaps a game of handball by a pair of enterprising rodents, I dunno.  There are also distinctly warm spots on the walls and floor of the place, where the steam heat piping continues to radiate without aid of a radiator.  If I wasn’t a science-y minded fella, I would have some strong thoughts pertaining to hauntings….

Aside from that, been taking a few walks around the neighborhood.  I’m close enough to the Ritz-Carlton that I can throw beer bottles at the lobby doors, and the Official Top of Nob Hill is only a couple of blocks away.  Just down the hill another two blocks is Chinatown, a bit more is the Tenderloin.  It’s a picture-taker paradise, I tell’s ya, and I mean to do just that tomorrow.  The basic plan is to wander around and take pics of the kind of stuff that one doesn’t see in the tour books, but still adhering to my age-old guideline of mostly shooting stuff that isn’t people.  So gird your loins for a mess of pics involving architectural brick-a-brack….

I do have cable, and have been watching a mess of Iron Chef and Tony Bourdain, and not much else.  When did Cartoon Network suddenly start sucking so badly?  Sci-Fi Channel I knew was gonna be a sad thing, what with the name change, but cripes, it’s like they just got really lazy at Cartoon Network.  I guess that’s the state of things, I get to get 300+ channels of programming, and it’s all pretty worthless.  S’okay, I got other things to do.  Like write, ho ho.  No, really, I got stuff that I have in the back of my head, I just gotta get my writing muscles back in shape.  Which is why I’m poking at this now.  And, of course, I still have the Photography Project to complete….

kitsunecaligari |at| gmail |dot| com

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Sooo, busy month last couple of months.  Turned 40 in July.  Went to a party in mid-July and somehow got offered a gig as a Resident Manager for a Nob Hill apartment building.  Spent the better part of five weeks moving stuff from boat and storage and various other locations up the hill on Pine St.  This here’s what it looks like mostly before it got filled with boxes:

The lobby from the front door

My front porch, after a fashion

Part of the kitchen – yay for the dishwasher!

The hallway from the living room.  Those books represent about .5 of one percent of my library

Hallway from the kitchen/dining area

And now, this here’s what the living room looks like at this very moment:

Those books?  Less than half of my library.  Yeah, I have a collection addiction….

So I’ve wandered around the neighborhood a bit, and I’ve already found several dozen things that I’m gonna shoot, once I unearth my cameras and tripods.  So yeah, I’ll soon have more to post here….

Welp, time to unpack….

kitsunecaligari |at| gmail |dot| com

My Bloglines
Flickr
Twitter
YouTube
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Netflix
Whitechapel
Last.fm
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I am also selling Photos at Imagekind.  Neat!

Four days of actual real-live Taking of Pictures at the set, and then two days of Remorse and Depression and Low-Level Anxiety.  Yay Art!

Some thirteen setups and some seventeen total hours of shooting, and then it was all over:

Walls pulled down, window uncovered and opened, and RAW pics stored on two separate hard drives, and then feelings of Not Doing Enough swept in.  I’m better now, and oddly enough, it’s still not over.  I still have to run the RAW through Photoshop a couple of times, and then, according to the plan I have in the back of my head, I have short stories to write to go with the pics.  But first, some time away from the Project, I think.  Right now I keep looking at the pics and seeing all the flaws and the missed opportunities.  So for now, it’s focusing on things Not of the Project.  Like, oh, I dunno, catching up on Japanese film, or learning the LAMP stack for potential Employment, or going off to see RoboGames this weekend.  Anything that doesn’t involve kneeling in dimly lit rooms and taking pictures of miniature furniture….

Oh, and I suppose I should clean up the workspace….

The things that get underfoot are Many and Varied and not particularly worth a blog post.  After all, I am way beyond being a whiny thirteen year-old girl, what with the “my life sucks!” and the “no one understands me!” and the “I could just die and nobody will care!” mode of mindset.  Guess what kids, I’ll be turning 40 in just over a month, and those feelings, they just don’t go away….

So, The Where I Am Posting:

kitsunecaligari |at| gmail |dot| com

My Bloglines
Flickr
Twitter
YouTube
MySpace
Netflix
Whitechapel
Last.fm
Goodreads

I am also selling Photos at Imagekind
And I am also selling my childhood in exchange for Artistic Funding on eBay.

More to come, once the Photography Project comes together….

So, where was I?

Job search is grinding on, been poking at Perl and SQL and LAMP stack via bookslearnin’ to bolster the skillset.  Set up a laptop as a Graphic Arty Visual Manipulation Thingy, what with the Photoshop and the Flash and the Fireworks and the Illustrator installed.  And only just yesterday, I ran a few of my older pics through Photoshop and posted them for sale here:

http://KitsuneCaligari.imagekind.com/

Read Soon I Will Be Invincible in one sitting, that was fun.  Also read A Winter Haunting by Dan Simmons, good stuff.  Haven’t been reading as much as I’d like, that’ll have to change soon.  Same goes for music-listening, haven’t been doing as much of that as I’d like.  Spent much of the weekend re-watching Torchwood, didn’t have the impact that it did on the first viewing.  Less teevee and internet, more reading and music, I guess I’m saying….

Dabbling in eBay selling stuff, focusing on genre books, maybe comics, slow going at the moment:

http://myworld.ebay.com/shearhartbooks!/

The Photography Project sits idle for the moment, still got that whole stitching up the Figure coat and all.  It’ll get done real soon, one way or the other.  I have to finish this, so I can move on to other ideas I got, like a couple of comic book ideas, to go with the pile of script and novel ideas….

Beyond this, I for one am pleased as Punch that the weather is changing, but ya know, 90F in a houseboat isn’t as much fun as it should be….

kitsunecaligari |at| gmail |dot| com

My Bloglines
Flickr
Twitter
YouTube
MySpace
Netflix
Whitechapel
Last.fm
Goodreads

Not much else.  Job Seeking not going well, Photography Project hung up by Job Seeking, started auctioning off some books on eBay.  Also, I’ve been cleaning out my Bookmarks and found a few that I forgot about:

A listing of the 1902 Encyclopedia Britannica
Victorian Lowbrow (whatever that means)
J Clayton Spears (also known as Neat Stuff You Can’t Afford)
Girl Genius Comics (but you already know about this, right?)
The Tom Waits Library
And speaking of Tom Waits, here’s an imbedded concert from NPR
A nice long Alan Moore interview
And speaking of Alan Moore, here’s a collection of Alan Moore Visual Items

It amused me when I saw it, think I’ll post it in its nigh-entirety:

So here’s the deal. I’m calling on everybody in sight to help me bring back a word. It’s a conspiracy, see, and you’re all part of it
if you choose to be.

I want to bring back the word “anon.” As in, “I’ll call you anon,” or “See you anon.”

It isn’t as specific as “see you tomorrow,” when you may not, or “I’ll call you later” which is even more ill defined and inelegant…”anon”
means simply again…”I’ll see you again” or “I’ll call you in the fullness of time.”

I’ve started using it, and slowly, over the last year, I’ve noticed the people around me starting to pick up on it: friends, agents,
business folks.

I think it’s time for anon to make a comeback.

If you want to be in on the conspiracy, just start using it in your day to day speech and, when it can be done quietly, because this is a
conspiracy after all, enlisting others to do the same. But it’s best if it’s just used regularly, without making a deal out of it.

So who’s idea was this?  J. Michael Straczynski, he of Babylon 5 and Changeling and The Real Ghostbusters and Captain Power.  Neat, huh?  Take it from one who has been using “god’s blood” as a curse since high school, antiquated verbage is fun to pull on the unwashed masses.

That is all.