personal – galimaufry.com

Good night sweetie

a digital photo frame showing a photo of a tiger-striped medium hair cat laying on a zippered suitcase and looking up at the camera. next to it is a earthenware urn with a blue and gold ribbon and a gold heart emblazoned with the name "Piper"

This will always be my favorite picture of my kitty. I always knew that when it was her time, she would let me know.

Last Wednesday, the hard decision was made to let Piper cross the rainbow bridge. She was a surprisingly stoic, rugged, but loving little lady who always made sure I knew how much she cared for me, even when I had not been very caring to myself.

Especially over the last (almost) two and a half years in Canada, while she and I have been sharing an in-law suite, she’d always been there to greet me when I got home after work with a loud (and sometimes pointed) meow.

As she approached the ripe old age of 19, she kept her natural decline to herself as much as she could. I could tell she was going through changes – her weight was beginning to drop and I could feel her spine poking through her back when I’d pet her. Her ability to groom herself was also starting to wane – I had to cut a few large mats out of her fur in early June. And it was getting harder for her to jump up on the bed for our nightly pets and nuzzling ritual, but she refused any kind of assistance.

During what would be her last days, she’d spent a lot of time near my window, feeling the sun. It was a perilous place to be – I had to watch out for her since I could easily roll into her with my office chair.

She didn’t hop up on the bed to be with me that last night, and in the morning it was clear she couldn’t hide whatever was going on any longer. Her breathing was extremely labored and she was restless and disoriented. She’d fully stopped eating and drinking water. I finished work early and called around to find an Urgent Care vet who could see her, knowing pretty well how things were going to play out. She got into the soft travel crate for the Vet without protest – something she’s never done.

Her meows on the half-hour drive to Urgent Care were definitely of a different tone than I’ve ever heard them. I thought back to all the trips we’d done together – the trips to the vet in Royal Oak to get her immunizations caught up and her flight health certificate to move to Austin, the flight together from Austin to Syracuse with her under the seat in front of me, and the car ride across the border to our new home in Canada. Her meows had always said “I know I have to do this, but I don’t like it.” On that final drive, it was more like “thank you for knowing what’s happening. I still don’t like all this traveling stuff, but I’ll miss it.”

The vets rushed her away from me pretty much at the door and put her on oxygen and an IV so they could stabilize her and get some idea what was going on. I sat alone in the exam room for about 10 minutes and then the vet came in with the news that her heart was giving out and her little body was beginning to shut down. It was her time.

They brought her in, wrapped in a warming blanket and I called up the kids and their mom who had been in Toronto for the long Canada Day weekend and we FaceTimed so they could all say their goodbyes. When they were ready, I hung up with them and signaled to the vet who had been waiting and then in a couple minutes, with me at her side, her struggle had ended.

I stayed with her for a while, thinking about how much I’d taken for granted her constant presence over the previous 16 years. She had always been so independent and unique. I thought of all the times I’d tried to get her to do some meme-y thing and she’d always look at me like “Do you believe everything you read on the internet about cat behavior? Really now, I thought you knew me better than that.” Of course I did – but that was part of what made it fun.

When I got back home without her, I could tell she was still there in the room with me, so I made sure to clean her litterbox and leave the food out and the water fountain running overnight. One of my kids asked me to share all the pictures I could find of her and then did an amazing digital painting of her on a bumpy train ride home.

By the next afternoon, after deciding what mementos the family needed of her, she let me put some of her things away. She now sits there on my shelving unit next to the digital frame I pulled out of storage and loaded up with all her pictures.

Her bed is still next to mine though.

Moving to Canada, Part One: Why I Moved To Canada

All stories sharing the structure of the Monomyth can tie the start of the plot’s “rising action” to a critical moment, a choice, a response to the Call to Adventure. The critical moment that started my move to Canada came in November of 2020, around the time of my pod’s First Thanksgiving during the COVID-19 pandemic. My co-parent had been looking to make her next career move and was considering two options: either taking a new position located in Ottawa, Ontario with her company that would be focused on their Public Sector business there, or another opportunity that would keep us rooted in Austin for the forseeable future.

The question she asked me that night was: “Is Canada completely off the table?” It was a decision I had to make as the other half of our shared custody agreement. I knew if I didn’t take Canada off the table it was highly likely she’d take that option and we’d have to figure out what that meant. I also knew that if I did take Canada off the table, she’d either take the local opportunity and we’d all end up regretting it, or there was a (greater than zero) chance she’d decide to go to Canada anyway and I’d be back to single parenting. And the thought of single parenting with even less support than I’d had in Michigan was a sobering one indeed.

So I didn’t take Canada off the table, committing us to figuring it out, whatever that meant. The company I was working for had an office in Toronto, so getting myself up there through that path would be a big ask but not out of the question. I could probably start looking into that after the New Year, once my co-parent had decided to take the Canada job.

Maybe a week or two later, a meeting with my boss and HR popped onto my work calendar. Out of nowhere, not even a week after my boss had said I was not included in the impending round of reductions, I learned I actually was.

Now I would be on my own, if when my co-parent chose Canada, to figure out a way to get there myself, if that’s something I wanted.

What could go wrong?

(a twitter thread – originally posted Feb 7 2020)

Alright, gather round. I’ll tell you my ‘Alpaca Farm’ story. This came up this morning since my friend had been trying to tell her husband about it and texted me trying to remember what had been so traumatic so she could explain it better.

In 2006, I was working as a telephone technician and got sent out on a service call to the middle of nowhere, I think somewhere around Pinckney, MI. Paperwork said customer had no dial tone on a couple extensions, something like that.

I don’t remember if the customer was under a name or a company name, not really important. Suffice it to say, I found myself at an Alpaca Farm. Owner was a nice (lonely?) middle-aged lady, greeted me, probably introduced me to an Alpaca or two that were out and about.

I remember she had a decent operation at the farm – she’d clearly done well in the past and now mostly was handling the care of the animals and business side of things while she had subcontracted out the logistics of processing the fur.

I don’t remember if she had a spouse/partner, either way they weren’t there, so it was just me, her, some alpacas and a one-floor ranch house that she lived in and worked out of. People who have business phone systems in their houses are a unique bunch anyway…

At the Mercy of The Invisible Hand

What a strange time and place I live in, where I can choose who to pay for my electricity.

Before 2017, I paid for household electricity according to the traditional model (where you just pay The Electric Company for where you live.) These were the Halcyon Days when Certain Things About Adult Life Could Be Relied Upon, and the cost of fungible commodities was kept in check by the definition of ‘fungible’. But then I moved into a house that was located in one of Texas’ Electric Choice areas, so I had to quickly try and piece together what in the hell this meant and how to deal with it.

So I dove into “Power to Choose” and immediately found it was more like “Paralysis of Choice” since entering my new Zip Code resulted in over 100 offers. Immediately I started looking around for The Default (like I was used to) only to find there…wasn’t one.

So, putting that aside for the moment, I tried to get some background on Electric Choice and Why It Was A Thing. It seems that in 2002, much of Texas switched over to an un-bundled retail electrical service model where consumers could pick what company they paid for their power while still living in the same place, expecting that the competition this introduced would naturally drive down costs (like it always does, right? [/sarcasm])

It reminded me of the competitive natural gas companies that had started to creep into the market in Metro Detroit around the time I graduated college…

The importance of community

I first stumbled onto SimplySeze‘s twitch stream a year ago today as I was trawling around Jackbox Party Pack streams. As I had been doing for a few days prior to that, I was looking for a friendly, respectful stream run by someone who cultivated a healthy, inclusive community.

I lurked for a bit before jumping in as a rando, probably on a round of Trivia Murder Party, as that was my early favorite. And as had been the case on other TMP rounds on other streams, I did really well, and soon chat was playfully accusing me of cheating.

We all played a few games, I got timed out once or twice by the mighty Moobot for posting links in chat (to jackbox.tv, LUL) and all-in-all had a great time with Seze’s community. I finally dropped a follow at the end of the stream.

Over the next couple months, I would drop in from time to time when Jackbox was being played, or lurk while I played GW2, occasionally reacting to things, suggesting quotes, or cracking jokes. And during that time, I began appearing in chat more and more, and keeping up with her schedule as much as I could.

Then, on her January 5th stream, she decided to pre-empt her scheduled Sims stream for a run of Doki Doki Literature Club. Her normal 3-4 hour stream quickly became a 12-hour epic, and I stayed around almost to the bitter end.

The next day, after watching the last hour of the VOD, I dropped a sub while she was offline.

Meme: “The Gamer Tag”

Today, I was “tagged” on the tweeter by a fellow SimplySeze mod to do a gaming-themed list meme.

What is your all-time favorite video game?

Probably Windwaker. It may have something to do with the fact that it was the first game I really “beat” all by myself. It has always hit a sweet-spot with me, gameplay-wise. At least until the final battle with Ganondorf which has quite a big jump in difficulty compared to everything leading up to it.

What is your current favorite video game?

At the moment I don’t have a single favorite, but I like playing games with people now rather than alone. So collaborative games like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes or MMOs like Guild Wars 2 or the Jackbox packs.

What is your favorite video game genre?

Probably would be Puzzle-Adventure. MYST was there at a key part of my early video gaming life, so anything like that which deals with exploration, puzzling, and a compelling story.

Feeling a bit twitchy

For most of this year I’ve been thinking about trying my hand at game streaming on twitch. But the big thing I’m still struggling with (other than the underwhelming nature of my hardware) is that I don’t consider myself that much of a ‘real’ gamer, let alone one that other people would actually want to watch.

Of course, I’ve had some success in the past doing in-person walk-throughs of strategy/exploration games, and I’ve done a few Let’s Plays of times I could con a friend or two into expert-ing for me on KTaNE. But I play mostly a couple of solo and mobile games, and I can’t do FPS (or have good fps) for sh*t, really.

I don’t remember exactly where I first saw someone running a stream of a Jackbox Party Pack on my twitch travels, but dropping in and playing on random people’s Jackbox streams has been a recent pastime/distraction from work. I’ve picked them up now for in-person party gaming and have been s-l-o-w-l-y getting my stuff together to do a stream myself.

But the problem of audience (and a good, decent one) remains. So far, my attempts to drum up interest among people I know IRL has been… underwhelming. Current plan is to just get it going sometime and post in all my socials something along the lines of “HAY GUYZ COME PLAY WIT ME.” We’ll see who shows up.

In the meantime, trying to be a little less of a rando in the streams I visit. Cultivating new social circles among those that already do this sort of thing is probably a good idea too…

New tricks

I never expected when I got into work this morning that I’d find myself explaining the principles and upshots of web-based content management to my 65 year-old father by the afternoon, but life sometimes throws strange curveballs.

This all arose because Dad and my aunt have a little papercraft and greeting card side hustle and he also has been spending some time with establishing an website for the business. Over the holiday, one of my aunt’s friends set up a shared hosting plan and WordPress install for her (which I’ll admit I’d been meaning to do for a year) and of course I was all over that – if there’s one thing I can do for them it’s help them move into a WordPress install. So I took a little time Christmas morning showing my dad around one of my sandbox sites, just so he had a preview of what he and my aunt would be working with.

Then this afternoon, I got an urgent “text for help” from Dad:

“I have downloaded WordPress and am trying to install it on my MacBook…”

I really didn’t have to read any further. I did a facepalm and then gave him a call.

But this is not an “old people can’t internet” story. His misunderstanding of what a CMS was, how it worked, and why they have made the 21st-century internet what it is is entirely understandable. It had just been a while since I’d really thought about it enough to explain it…