Motivation comes in all shapes and varieties. For me, motivation is something that can be hard to come by entirely, which can be frustrating when any brilliant or even mediocre idea remains unexpressed due to general apathy. Your best friend deriding you for unfulfilled pseudo promises made on Twitter? It puts pen to paper, so to speak.

It feels like much time has passed since the last time we’ve spoken – well, since I’ve typed and you’ve read (presumably). While motivation is certainly a factor, my life has gone through a bit of a metamorphosis as of late. I would say much like a caterpillar shedding its cocoon to reveal its inner soaring beauty, but that might be a little too hyperbolic for the occasion. At minimum, my life has resumed on a path resembling what it was before all the unpleasantness of the early summer changed my perspective.

It all began about two weeks ago. Starting with the culmination of many months of worrying on my part. I played my role as the Best Man in Cas’ wedding. I hope I fulfilled my duties to everyone’s expectations – assuming anyone even had any. I was probably the most nervous I have been in a long time in the moments leading up to addressing all of the honored guests. I drastically had to reduce the length of my speech at close to the last minute. I figured 13 minutes might have rendered the audience comatose. From what I can put together from the flashes of images I remember from that night, my speech went over pretty well. I had numerous compliments and adulation from several attendees. Such things as “you didn’t sound nervous at all”. “I can assure, sir or madam, I was veritably shitting my pants. But thanks.”

With the fond memories of the wedding forever sealed in my mind, the following Monday I began a new job. It was a bit of a rude awakening. Going from working five days a week almost every week for three years, to getting fired and spending all day every day with myself and my thoughts haunting me for four months, then back to the grind again. The transition hasn’t been seamless, but so far so good. I’m still getting a feel for my new place of employment. The atmosphere is the kind I tend to thrive in. Or maybe more accurately, the kind I tend not to hate. I have a tendency to meticulously compare my new job to the previous one. This is a character flaw that has its roots in other areas of my subconscious. I’m trying to go against my nature for once.

Despite some of the clear disadvantages of the new job; including distance/length of commute and salary, I am settling in at a comfortable pace. My coworkers are unusually young, which does help facilitate coalescence. I’ve gone out with them a couple times thus far and they seem like perfectly wonderful people. I’m sure the weeks and months to come will create even more opportunity to get closer to them. My current function at the company isn’t exactly what I would prefer to be doing, but I suppose that comes with the training period. Either my ability to pick up new skills and adapt to a new environment is being greatly underestimated or perhaps the complexity of their system is being overestimated. It’s hard to tell exactly. But my job is easy and they pay me to do it. That’s the important thing at this early stage.

With all that said, it does feel good to be getting back into the groove of actually living my life. When you’re unemployed and involuntarily confined to your own home due to being unemployed it can tax a person’s mental health. Also, the job couldn’t have come at a better time because if I continued on without one for much longer, financial bankruptcy would have been imminent.

I’ve found some time to check out some of the new Fall anime series. I tried to limit my exposure as best I could. I think I picked a good handful that will provide entertainment this season. At some point, I’m sure I will want to share some of them with you. For now, you could check out what I’m watching on my anime page, if you’re at all interested. Updating the Auscultator is also a task I’ve been meaning to accomplish. Such things take time. At least for me, they do.

Well, that’s about all I’ve got for now. I’m hoping trends continue in an upward slope. And hopefully I’ll talk to you all again real soon. Peace.

Kether can talk a big game about updating, but when it comes down to climax time, he is left limp and lifeless. Casimir, however, continues to add chapters to the Matrix Story. Well done, Casimir.

Two new chapters have been added to the Matrix Story.

We had a lovely time in Minnesota, but that is something for a different post. What I’d like to share in this brief piece is the rigmarole of air travel and how it dicked us in the butt oh so consistently. On with the story.

So our journey to the land of 10,000 lakes began with our luggage being overweight and us frantically pulling things out of our checked luggage and throwing it into our carry on. In this process, we removed my toiletries, which became an issue when we tried to bring the more than 3 oz of liquid through TSA. The Economatron (my new nickname for the wife) had to go back to the desk to have them recall our bag so we could finally get through security 45 minutes later.

This was a relatively minor hassle; frustrating nonetheless. Still, it was mostly our fault for not adhering to the increasingly ridiculous demands for traveling by airplane in the United States.

Our trip back to D.C., however, was a horse of a different color–the color bullshit.

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 11:30am Monday morning, but we were unable to check in online the evening before. We discovered why the next morning when we logged in only to discover that our flight had been cancelled without Orbitz ever notifying us of the change. This was not that big of a deal since it meant more time with our families, but our next flight time was now 3:45pm. This meant that we would not arrive home until after 10:00pm and would not be able to pick up our dog from the sitters until the next day.

While all of this was happening, Minnesota decided to poop white feces on us in excessive quantities for early October–over three inches easily. This caused our flight to be delayed, now scheduled to depart at 4:20pm. We arrived early, but forgot that someone had given us a gift of cheese knives, which we stupidly tried to take through TSA. Again, we had to go back to the counter, this time needing to check an additional bag just so we didn’t have to throw the gift away (they were kind enough not to make us pay for the additional baggage). As 4:20pm approached and the gate information did not reflect our flight, we became a bit worried…

We discovered that AirTran had changed the gate of departure without our knowledge, and once we made it to the correct gate, the flight was already boarded and being de-iced for takeoff. The attendant rather unsympathetically informed us that they had been paging us and notifying patrons of the change, somehow without our ever hearing either. We were told that at this point our best option was to fly to Atlanta and spend the night in a hotel at our own expense and fly out the next morning. Suffice it to say, we were pissed.

After eating dinner, we trudged to the same gate we had been waiting at for our other flight and finally boarded for Atlanta. The attendant said that there was a slim chance we could fly standby on a flight that departed two minutes after we arrived. We did not get our hopes up. Interestingly, Atlanta had significant delays due to flooding, which is the only reason we had any hope of making it back to D.C. that night to begin with.

Upon arrival, I sprinted to the aforementioned gate to see if there were any seats left, which turned out to not be the case. They did tell me that a gate near where we landed still had room, so away we sprinted again. This time we were told that they were waiting for passengers from one flight, whereas the first gate we had tried was waiting on passengers from a number of flights, so they put us on a standby list for that flight. We dragged ourselves back again, and plopped down, now entirely exhausted, smelly and defeated. It was 11:30pm and it looked like we were going to be stuck in Atlanta.

Then, out of nowhere, they began calling names for standby. We were the second and third names respectively to be called, and the euphoria struck us like a champagne rain of ambrosia. We floated onto the flight and collapsed in a state of pure joy. We were on our way home.

At 1:00am we went to the baggage claim to retrieve our suitcases that had left us nearly nine hours before, but the bags were not there. The woman asked us what flight they were on, and when we told her she said that flight was just landing. Apparently, the flight that we did not get on in Atlanta was our original rescheduled flight, and had been delayed seven hours itself. We had beaten our luggage to D.C., and arrived sooner than if we had gotten on the 4:20 flight. After gathering our things and waiting in a half an hour cab line, we made it home by 2:00am, leaving us three hours of sleep before we needed to get our dog.

We are hoping to avoid air travel for a long, long time.

–Casimir

In your face, anime reviews: I’m about to talk about something entirely personal and unrelated to any media or my thoughts thereof.

The personal item in question is the fact that I am about to get married in seven days and I feel wholly ready to have this experience done and behind me. It’s not the fact that I don’t want to get married; I most certainly am looking forward to being married. It’s more everything that goes along with the build up to the day itself and the reactions of those around me. Let me extrapolate.

First of all, I’m sure you think I’m lying about being engaged. “No author of a webcomic would ever find someone who could tolerate their ego and immature lack of decorum, let alone want to spend their entire life with such a person.” Believe you me, I’m right there with you. How the Mistress manages to put up with me is well beyond my scope of comprehension, and I fancy myself a rather intelligent person (again, ego). To wit, I have been largely unresponsive or unable to take seriously the rigors of wedding planning and dealing with family and friends in such a manner pursuant of etiquette and niceties. I am a jackass by trade, and I do not appear to like people very much.

Planning for a wedding is not only incredibly stressful–especially when done from halfway across the country–but it requires the people getting married to appease large groups of people who all feel entitled to satisfaction in all regards, ignoring the fact that the day has nothing to do with them or their needs. Our own experience has been largely dominated by absurd demands on us by members of my own family, exacerbating my dislike for the experience.  I am already riddled with anxieties about dealing with large groups of people and having to perform like some circus monkey in a tux; to add to that is to me a cruel punishment for my choosing to partake in a social rite of passage that is practically obligatory for acceptance.

Let me clear the air before I continue. I am not a person who feels obliged to do what social mores tell me I should. I purchased an engagement ring because it is what the Mistress desired. I’m getting married for the same reason. I have told her that whatever commitment I could make during a superficial ceremony has already been made, and one day of vows and metal exchanging will alter nothing. I realize that to her, and most of society, this opinion sounds cold and unfeeling. My apathy towards weddings and titles is more often that not seen as callous. I am not what you would call a conventional romantic, unless you find logic romantic…which I do.

With all of that said, I am doing my best to care about this incredibly expensive one day affair wherein I have to recite and dance in front of my closest friends and family and be basically the most perfect person I can be so that all of the expenses paid for enhancing and capturing our celebration do not go to waste. I am not convinced I am up to the task. I am a person who generally celebrates his foibles and is impatient with the demands and expectations of others. Don’t get me wrong, when I proposed I was ecstatic about the thought of having a lavish wedding and celebrating with our loved ones–when I proposed over a year ago, that is. Now, I’ve had time to digest just what that means, and I’m about ready to bash my skull in with a blunt object.

There are some aspects of getting married that I have really enjoyed and am looking forward to. Obviously, I want to spend my life with the Mistress and I am not opposed to letting the world know about it (although the five years of everyone asking when we were going to get married got old really quickly). Proposing was one of the most exhilarating and happy moments of my life. Doing the design for our invitations and other paraphernalia has been satisfying for me, as it is one of the few areas that I felt like my contributions were adequate. Creativity and brainstorming have always been my strong suits, and I got to bring them to bear with a high frequency for this event. Also, I got a sweet ring from Jason Moss design that I will be happy to sport for the rest of my corporeal existence. Shout out to Australian metallurgists.

Was there a point to this rambling diatribe on marriage? Probably not. If anything, it was a cathartic way for me to deal with the stresses and stressors that have been the proverbial gorilla on our backs for the last year. In seven days, we will tranquilize, tag, and bag that gorilla, and release it back into the wild to its natural habitat so that we might walk upright ourselves. I am looking forward to having this experience behind us so we can finally just be a married couple and I can start the slow Bataan death march that is my old age.

–Casimir

*Edit* I forgot to mention that I am also very excited that this occasion will be shared by my best friend and best man: Kether. A guy couldn’t ask for a better friend.