(Poorly Named) NAO Update 5 - No Sex This Time

Saturday morning, and 11 days in I’m still keeping NAO going! The wife is working this morning, so I finally have plenty of time to write an update. The problem with having plenty of time is that I wind up procrastinating, or getting too much into my own head and second thinking myself, and I often wind up writing nothing at all. So if you’re reading this, no matter how bad it is, I at least got over that hump.

I went to lunch yesterday with a few coworkers, to a place near work that has the best wings around! (I’m actually planning to take the wife there tomorrow, Sunday, so she can try it out for herself.) Patti (“not with a ‘y’, dammit!”) went with us for the first time, as did the new guy who just started this week.

I only mention Patti because the conversation turned to weekend plans and coworker R asked if I was going to have a cigar and scotch that night. I said no, and explained about “no alcohol October”, and Patti said “Oh, Sober October!” God dammit, where was she when I was first writing about this and needed a title?!

I got my vehicle back yesterday; it cost me $2200 to get the transmission rebuilt. I had to really consider whether a 15-year-old vehicle was worth the expense, but other than the busted transmission it’s been fine (for a GM vehicle.) Would I be able to get a better one for the same $2200? Probably not, or at least not with any guarantees. If I start having to spend more money on it, I may have to rethink it, but for now I’ll hope it limps along for three more years.

My first real test of Sober October NAO (dammit!) came Wednesday night. I’d been frustrated at work, then got home to the wife passively aggressively complaining about not having “her” car while mine’s in the shop. We went out to dinner because I’d worked late and didn’t feel like cooking anything, and I was just on edge the whole evening. When we got home, while she took a shower, it was about all I had to not take a sneaky shot or two of tequila just to take the edge off.

I didn’t, of course, and when the wife was done with her shower I told her I was going to ride the motorcycle to work until my car was ready. She didn’t want me to do that, stating that Thursdays and Fridays are always the worst for accidents on I81 and it wouldn’t be safe. She finally understood that I was pissed about her complaints earlier and apologized, which made me feel small. (And there were accidents on I81 North Thursday evening that made me almost an hour late getting home.)

Anyway, we talked it out and I calmed down, and after a good, sober night’s sleep I felt less edgy on Thursday. I wound up leaving work early Friday (right after lunch, in fact) to pick up my vehicle (the shop closes at 3 pm on Fridays), so all is well again.

I just finished a book trilogy, The 5^th Wave by Rick Yancey. Despite a few glaring inconsistencies and plot holes, I really enjoyed the series. The ending was a bit formulaic, but was wrapped up nicely. I’d like Yancey to write a follow-up novel, or maybe even a series, to follow some of the survivors after the main events, but maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea.

A couple years ago I read The Silent Corner by Dean Koontz. It’s the first in a five-book Jane Hawk series, and it was a good read. I’ve been reading Koontz for decades, and though I’ve always been a bit put off by his preachiness, he does write well.

I think the first Koontz I read was Watchers, and I don’t remember his preachiness being quite as bad back then as it’s steadily become. My eyes generally wind up aching because of how often I’m rolling them as Koontz goes on and on about the “moral decay of society” and how the “elites” are the biggest danger to civilization (as if being educated is a bad thing.) His straw-man arguments against liberal and progressive ideals start to grate on me after a while, and I wind up having to take a long break from reading him. It took me longer than it should have to finish the Odd Thomas series (to be fair, they did tend to drag a bit even without the right-wing ideology, but were still compelling reads.)

Anyway, I recently got about half-way through the second book in Koontz’s Jane Hawk series and I think I’m finally done with any of his new stuff. The bad finally outweighs the good when it comes to reading him; his characters, both the “good guys” and the “bad guys” have become one-dimensional (they always were, I suppose) and the overall pessimism about society in general is just too dark. It’s at its worst when I’m nodding and agreeing with him, and I don’t need outside pessimism reinforcing my own!

I know nobody is interested in my thoughts, politically or literately, but I don’t have a lot of a sexual nature to write about, so this is what you get. At least until the Cowboys start playing better!