Phenomena: winter stigmata

Yesterday (Tuesday, October 11th), I scraped a knuckle and noticed hours later that both hands felt sore along all the knuckles. This is the start of my Winter Scales. (The winters down here in River City seem to dry out my skin, giving me scaly hands that sometimes crack open or even bleed. Each year, the problem starts earlier, stays longer, and gets worse. Last year, I spent a month or two with specks of blood on my hands where the fingers attach. I felt very beset by irony...me, a man of peace, with bloody knuckles. Coworker R asked if I'd had a fight with my roommate. (I can never tell if he's kidding with questions like that.) I squeezed some small satisfaction from the condition by privately calling them "stigmata". I doubt the Pope would agree with my diagnosis.) Before the end of the month, I should make sure to have cotton gloves and vaseline so I can moisturize as I sleep.
(Update: The soreness hasn't proved constant, but my hands are definitely getting sandpapery.)

News: It's always Geekest before the Con

The air is crisp. The wind is full of dead leaves. Halloween is coming, and Convention comes with it. I haven't gotten a flyer yet, which is slightly unusual, but not so much now that I move around so much more often. This will be the first Convention I can drive to on my own. Hopefully, that will streamline certain matters, such as eating while I'm there. I'll probably follow Sherri on the pink dawn of Convention Saturday morning rather than head out on Friday evening to catch the beginning-of-con festivities. Ahh, convention dreams....the games I will run, the characters I will play, the people I will see, the things I will do exactly the same as I do every six months... if I had the flyer, I could plot it all out weeks in advance. (Update: Wetdryvac was nice enough to read me the schedule of events over the phone. A conditional flowchart of "IF x THEN play y, eat z" is slowly coalescing within me.)

Time: Goodbye, Blue Tuesday

Effective the second Tuesday of November, (remember the first Tuesday is the first day) my work schedule will be changing. Instead of having Mondays off, I will have Tuesdays off. Again, my days off will be Fridays and Tuesdays. This will simplify certain weekly and biweekly matters (like getting to the bank without it being a holiday) but may complicate seasonal challenges like getting an actual weekend off for spring convention or special visits. In theory I could attempt to trade days with coworkers to get needed hours for a certain week, but since this involves social skills I do not possess, it amounts, on a practical level, to begging and quietly radiating pity. Case in point: the day after Christmas is a Monday. The day before Christmas is a Saturday. No one who doesn't have to work those days is very likely to come in and weather the final peaks of holiday shopping madness so I can suck down eggnog with _my_ family that much longer. F** it. I'll be home for Christmas even if I have to leave work at 8pm on Christmas Eve, drive straight from the Wal-Mart to the interstate, drive 3-6 hours in freezing rain (it's 3 hours at 60mph, so twice that with severe road conditions), sleep in my car until sunrise because they lock the doors while they sleep, open presents, eat Christmas dinner, turn around and drive back 3-6 hours in heavy snow, and spit-polish a Wal-Mart chock-full of muddy slush and ungrateful gift recipients on half a night's sleep with stiff joints and frostbite. If I have to, I will. Family is more important than the irate customer who will get bitten in half for trying to get into the Ladies' Room I haven't finished cleaning on the evening of the day after Christmas in the River City branch of the global megaconglomerate that's in the House that Sam built.
Sorry, where was I? Right. Anyway, Tuesdays off, Mondays on. Starting in November. Tell everybody. Tell the world. Tell people who don't even know me. Tell women with bad attitudes and poor bladder control to shop on Mondays until the second week of January. (They won't listen, but you did try to warn them.)