(no subject)

I'm fiddling with KoL, and generally just sitting here and staring out into the darkness. There's a lot to mull over tonight... my private therapy session had me going over the feelings of futility and being lost... and being too tired to really even care anymore. It's something that the ones that spend regular time chatting with me are aware of; the peaks and valleys of the EllieCoaster are impressively diverse. Or so I've been told.

I left that session to go retrieve Megan from work, run her home, and dash back... I've got roughly an hour to accomplish that so that I can be back for the 4pm GID group. Normally it's the therapist that runs it and four of us in various states of (dis)repair... but today two of the members had to cancel due to vehicular type malfunctions. The fourth member... when she hit the door the odd semi-tug that I associate with a crisis occured. It took a whopping three minutes to suddenly be confronted with the very same wall of despair I'd hit my therapist with less than two hours earlier. And rather than buckle under it... I couldn't. I just couldn't. The entire session was spent simply between her and I; the therapist said all of about five words over the course of the session... two of them being 'Take care' to the two of us as we left.

Where I'd buckled under the load in myself, hearing that kind of desolation from another person put me completely on point, working through it one step at a time until I was sure she wasn't going to go do something stupid. Until I wasn't going to go do something stupid. The therapist stared at me the entire session, and I have no clue what to do with the look that was on her face. At the time, it was simply something that got filed; I was busy and trivial bullshit can wait until later. What is normally a 60minute group stretched to 100, with the clinic literally closing down around us. Every point I'd raised in private got hauled back up into the light as the other client and I wrestled through it. When the therapist finally quietly pointed out the time, the two of us went out front to the bench there and continued, letting the rest of the clinic staff go home. We were there almost another hour... but by the time we parted, she was smiling again. I managed to keep myself together until I was home and Megan was gone, and then quietly cried myself out.

And where the evening normally drops me into a deep blue funk... tonight I'm relatively even. I've worries and fears and issues and problems... but I've got at least a tenuous control over my own emotions again. A control thats been lacking for almost six months, replaced by the quiet despair that I'd be trapped here forever. *shakes her head* I... no. This isn't all there is. I may be stuck here now, but it's not permanent. There's a way out of this box; just because I've not found it yet doesn't disprove its existence. I look at the list of restraints and confining circumstances... and while it's a dense weave, it's far from all encompassing. I've a couple of things that I need to research... and I think I'm going to have a little sit down with a 'free consultation' lawyer on some financial matters. What I see as a non-option may not be the deathblow I'm perceiving - I got very pointedly (but gently) reminded by a much beloved dolly that I AM paranoid... and that while some of it is appropriate, I may well be seeing demons where only speedbumps exist. Yes, I'm mixing my metaphors, but I don't expect anyone but me has gotten this far so NYAH!. :p

This is mostly an entry for me to use as a baseline mnemonic... since I suffer from a severe case of CRS disease (that's Can't Remember Shit, for those curious), I need to poke myself about it. Fitting a visit to legal counsel into the schedule is going to be the tricky part - I've got to do at least the initial consultation completely under the radar. If Megan gets wind I'm seeking a lawyer's advice, she'll utterly freak out. Knowing that I don't have the patience to deal with that, it puts a wrinkle in things. That one's going to take finesse... but I've got a half remembered conversation fragment floating in my mind about bankruptcy and the availability of credit afterwards. We'll see.

And in the wake of all of this... I actually tasted the pizza I had for dinner. It's the first food that's had real taste (other than simple textures and the taste of sawdust) in almost two weeks. That in and of itself is a plus. Tomorrow... is another day. But this day hasn't been a waste...

(no subject)

elix, I feel your pain...

So I finally rouse this morning, and stagger out to the common area of the house.... to be greeted by a frantic IM from an old friend out in Minnesota...

MinnesotaDude: Well maybe you can help me, someone has taken over my home page and i want it back, can you help me?
Me: Dunno. How badly has it been hacked, and does your password still work?
MinnesotaDude: all that is fine I just want for my home page to pop up when I log in

*blinks* oooookay. At this point I realize I've made a critical error... I had assumed that after all these years he might know his arse from a hole in the ground. Moving right along...

Me: *raises an eyebrow* When you manually enter the address in the bar... does your page come up?
MinnesotaDude: yes...its some sort of regestry thing
Me: Which browser are you using? IE, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, or some other?
MinnesotaDude: my isp is att world net and they use i e


Another layer of assumptions peeled away... I realize I'm dealing with someone who's almost utterly without a clue. This saddens me, but I really should have expected it...

Me: Yah, but is IE the browser you use for websurfing?

If so, click 'Tools', then 'Internet Options'. Under the 'General' tab, there's a box called 'Home Page'. Type the address you want it to go to as your homepage there, and then click 'Apply'
MinnesotaDude: "This operation has been cancelled due to restritions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system admin. This is what it said to do, thats why I am talking to you

I'll note that the last machine I built for this guy was almost six years ago. And a horrified thought entered my brain at that point... that machine was a Pentium 200MMX, dog slow, and installed with the much vulnerable first release of Windows 98. A couple of questions verifies that this is indeed that machine, and that nothing's been updated, upgraded, or patched since I built it for him. It took almost forty five minutes of additional questions to isolate the cause: somewhere in his web wanderings in search of free pr0n, he'd managed to pick up the CoolWeb parasite. *sigh* From there, it took another ten minutes for me to track down direct links to the cleaners and removers... because he couldn't seem to follow simple directions to the download areas.

And then he told me that he was on a 28k dialup....

It's now 4:04pm... first message came through at 12:24pm... and he's finally fixed and running again. But what really terrifies me is that he's moving back here in the next month... and I'm going to get stuck trying to 'fix' a machine that was a hunk of junk when I BUILT it.

Ah well. I'm off to see if my replacement Disk 1 works. See ya.

(no subject)

*sighs, getting off the phone*
No rest for the wicked, or for the family of the wicked. I'll likely be out of touch for nearly all of tomorrow; my grandfather's been admitted to the hospital. What started as a simple bash abrasion on his left leg has worsened to the point where the doctors are now worrying that they'll have to take the leg to save him.

I've already informed Megan that any plans she may've had for tomorrow after work have now been cancelled unless someone comes to get her; relationships with my grandfather (my dad's dad, and only surviving grandparent on that side, as my mother's mother is on her side) have been strained to the point of snapping since before the wedding... aggravated by the fact that he refused to make the three hour trip for the wedding itself, even after folks offered to pick him up ... and I paid for the room he never used.

Family is family. Family takes care of their own. There'll be time for grievances later, if at all.

To my friends on Gaia: I'll have to try and catch up once this is over. Try not to burn down the churches while I'm away.

*hugs and pads off*