Beatus natalis huic blog

Give or take a day, I started this blog fourteen years ago. Seems like it deserves a post. I still continue to think about writing and don’t write. I continue to have thoughts about Richard Armitage and his career and continue not to write them down. This state of affairs continues not to affect Armitage himself in the least, lol. I continue to read a ridiculous amount of Bagginshield (that others continue to write). I continue to be busy with work and the synagogue. My house continues to need cleaning and organization. Politics continues to be depressing … you get the picture. There is a horrible child disappearance case (given what the press is saying about the adults involved, I think we all hope that the child is in heaven now) that is occupying everyone’s last second of attention here.

This is a nice picture (the last one I downloaded, anyway). I did listen to the trailer and Armitage can’t do a consistent Polish accent. Too bad. (Also, frankly, he doesn’t have the thick hands of a farmer. But anyway.)

At the last synagogue event, we featured mocktails, and I would like to recommend this one to you: pomegranate mule. Mix one part pomegranate juice to one part ginger beer of your choice (we used Reed’s strongest), muddle four lime leaves in a glass with some ice, then pour the juice/beer mixture over the ice. Squeeze an eighth of a lime over the whole thing. Delicious and not too sweet.

Actually I had a topic for today planned, but I’ve had health problems the last two weeks that finally landed me in the emergency room yesterday (=acute pulmonary embolism). I might not even have gone, but Obscura gave me the final push. I’ve got three free days of prescribed rest now (along with blood thinners).

In any case, happy anniversary to this blog and happy day to anyone who is still reading it. I appreciate you. It’s hard for me to say more than that.

Happy New Year 2024

This was a very good sweater, I thought! Seems like Armitage has been quite wardrobe-challenged in 2023, but maybe he’s finally turning a corner.

 

It didn’t make sense to do a recap of the last year here, since I have blogged so few times. Plans I’ve made to blog have continued to be thwarted and I continue to be optimistic about the plans anyway. I even went so far as to make a list of things regarding Armitage that I’d like to blog about — and invited others to participate — and then didn’t start my list myself. I’m hoping for … well, if not January, which is already looking packed with activity, then February. I need to do so many things today, even, before returning to work tomorrow.

Totally random: Here’s some fun stuff about Annabel Capper: one and two.

So, although I seem to have two signed copies of Geneva, I haven’t read it. And I’m not watching the latest Harlan Coben nightmare today, either, although I wouldn’t exclude the possibility I might do it some time. The trailer for this was more interesting than the ones for the last two have been.

Other than that, things are fine (and it’s nice to be able to say that, as so many years I could not). Work continues to go well — I have six weeks left until I can use some very overdue vacation, and then another six months’ probationary period after that, but feedback is positive and so I am not anticipating problems at present. The synagogue is doing well and showing some new post-pandemic signs of energy. My house is still a mess. Ah, well. Not everything can improve every year. And world events are practically unmentionable.

Oh, and don’t wish me a guten Rutsch this year, as I already had one — yesterday morning. Slipped on the glare ice in my driveway and fell right now on my back. Blerg. No harm done, but it was a sobering moment.

My resolutions for 2024 are to get more sleep and and do less clenching.

I wish you all the best for 2024.

Fan report: check this out [comments there]

RA in LA

On this day the world came into being

Happy New Year to those who are celebrating. Shana tova tikateyvu!

Part of me wants to stop there, but I’ve wanted to revive my writing here for a long time, too. The last few weekends I’ve sat in front of a white screen and thought about just about anything else. So if not now, when? Although I’m done making promises.

Big change in my life as of a month ago: those who read between the lines could tell that the previous job (looking for work for people struggling to find it) was taking a big toll on me. I’d been thinking of it as “social work without a license,” but perhaps more importantly, without the tools to deal with the emotional level of it. Besides the worry about my clients, there was the low pay, and the driving (450 miles a week, regularly) and the overall negative outcomes. There were some big victories. At the same time, so many of my clients left the jobs we found together after a very short time, or re-offended and went back into custody, or simply refused to do the hard work they needed to do to be hired. The last straw was the phase of contract re-negotiation and the way the state and my employing agency dealt with it, which was what made me look to jump ship. It was good to have the push — the reminder that my work was drastically undervalued — because I had been having the feeling that the job was going to grind me so far down that I wouldn’t have the energy to leave.

Which I did about a month ago, when I began a position teaching GED / HSED in a medium-security state prison not far from here. I’m teaching “low” reading (essentially: 3rd grade), GED Social Studies and “employability,” which comprises tips for getting and keeping a job. I got a 40 percent raise and I do a fifth of the driving. My hours are entirely predictable. It’s another task that I won’t be able to write much about for reasons of confidentiality. However, a month in now, I can feel a lot of the stress of the previous position evaporating. I’ve stopped dreaming about work. I’ve gotten some compliments, and there are also some difficulties I am having / areas for personal improvement.

Of course, the atmosphere “inside” is no joke. The difficulties are not just about interacting with inmates (or persons in our care, as we now say) or making sure not to break a rule, ever (which is hard, because there are a lot of them). I think the kicker is that “inside,” everybody including employees watches everybody all the time and reports on each other’s actions, and the beginning of the training I am taking explicitly concedes that a prison is a totalitarian society–for the watchers as well as the watched.

At the same time, it’s work I can leave at work. The work hours are rigidly defined; what doesn’t get done today doesn’t come home as homework either. I no longer have a state phone or laptop and I can’t check my work email from outside the prison. And the level of instruction I have to prepare for — well — the challenge is more figuring out how to communicate something than understanding the material that I am communicating.

There’s just a lot more emotional space now, and slightly more time.

So in other news, I am now on the synagogue board and the ritual committee and I maintain the calendar and I am much more involved a year in than I had initially planned to be. I hit a deer with my car back in June and replaced it with a different one (a ten-year-old Chevy Cruze). I finally got the gutters on the house replaced; next week, a contractor is pouring the remainder of my driveway that was unpaved when I got the house; and I am paying a young lady to sort through stuff, unpack it, and organize it.

Prognosis: optimistic.

What is everyone up to these days?

The annual Richard Armitage birthday event

This is my thirteenth post of this kind. In honor of the occasion, I will make a donation of £3 (GBP) for each person who comments on this post from now until I close comments (whenever I get up on Wednesday morning, 8/23, my time, at the exchange rate at the time I donate). A person is someone with a unique handle, email and IP address who leaves a comment HERE at my wordpress blog. Limit one comment per person. Lurkers and first-time commentators are welcome. There is no limit on the donation. I will not be sending separate notice to Richard Armitage about this activity, nor do I expect any acknowledgement from him. This is just for fans, really. Because I’ve been doing it forever. My little Richard Armitage birthday hobby.

This year, the money will again be donated to LOROS in honor of Margaret and John Armitage.

Those in a giving mood may also want to give separately to a charity that Richard Armitage has supported.

Your comment does not have to have any particular content. If you would like to say something: what is your favorite memory of Richard Armitage?

More Richard Armitage birthday ramp up

The auctions are underway already and the fixed-price sale starts tomorrow.

And I’ll do my usual comment for cash thing.

Richard Armitage birthday fundraiser

Guylty’s usual event is discussed here. It’s happening quite a bit earlier this year for reasons she explains.

I will also do my usual thing on the day of August 22.

Sorry to post and run. I’ve got some news, too, about something that’s keeping me dashing on at the moment. More soon.

Hosting fees: RichardArmitageNet.com

If you would like to help contribute to the upkeep of the site (which is maintained and sustained by Guylty), you can do so by “buying a coffee,” here. Thanks in advance.

Thirty-nine minutes

I am determined to blog something today and I figure with thirty-nine minutes available, I can just push out the necessary, right?

I so often think of things that would be worth developing. A year ago I was still writing those on my personal FB, but now I often just let them stew.

But for example:

• Before taking my current job, in my whole 53 years I had met two people with schizophrenia. In the last year, I have met at least ten, and I know two of them reasonably well. Lesson: don’t assume something isn’t there if you are not looking for it.
• Example of that: people telling me that the drastic reduction in SNAP (“food stamps”) is not having much of an impact. I’m sure it seems that way if you’ve never gotten the benefit. I am still trying to figure out how reducing the benefit by 90 percent is supposed to make mentally ill people sane and capable of working.
• In the county I work in, unemployment is 1.7%.
• It’s June again and I feel after five years of questionable strawberry production, it may be time to admit that this is no longer a climate in which we can count on them as reliable manifestations of early summer.
• The whole tech basis of how “me + richard” operated is kind of crumbling. Automatic posting to Twitter is no longer supported. I am no longer certain I want to be on Twitter. I probably should close Michaela Servetus’ FB page because I don’t have time to answer comments there. AI is complicating all of this. I see more and more of the blogs I read making all their posts protected to prevent them being incorporated into OpenAI. I don’t want to be on TikTok or Instagram. Bright side: tumblr still seems pretty stable.
• The thing I really want to sustain is still this WP blog. (Indeed, I own a few domain names that redirect here, and I renewed them recently, so we’re good for at least another two years.) At the same time … how can I make myself write again?
• Honestly, I can’t really remember most of the last six weeks except in very general terms. My job makes most of my life a blur right now. I write down casenotes for my clients but who is writing casenotes for me?
• In two weeks, my father’s estate should finally be settled / concluded. So many feelings.
• I keep saying “when this is past, I will” but realistically speaking: I never get to the point of these things being past. So thinking that things will change when we sign all the papers is probably silly.
• Well, except that I will then pour some kind of entrance to my driveway, which will make snow removal so much easier this winter.
• I paid a tween to mow my lawn. I just couldn’t figure out when I was going to find time to do it. Although it didn’t rain for three weeks so neither of us mowed in that time.
• And I still need the final repairs from the hailstorm finished. This is what happens when you have a friend as your contractor. Blerg. It would help if I cared more.
• So, also, I got way more involved in the synagogue much quicker than I had initially thought I would. I’m leading services regularly now and was just asked to join the board.
• Someone just popped up at the synagogue whom I haven’t seen in almost thirty years. Small world. I hope we can kind of pick up where we left off.
• And then there’s Richard Armitage. I have a bunch of posts half-drafted. There are things I’m thinking about. I have just read two books about fandom that would be worth commenting on. That Sally Hawkins films about Richard III. Walter Benjamin. Etc.

Anyway. Got that all out in twenty minutes. See, I’m still alive. The brain is still there.

RAC Website closing June 20th, downloads available until then, May 26, 2023 Gratiana Lovelace (Post #1522)

Something About Love (A)

Another “end of an era” with the news that the wonderful RAC Richard Armitage Central database website will close June 20^th, 2023.  The RAC resources will be much missed!

Yet it is wonderful of the RAC Admins to let Richard Armitage fans know well in advance so we can visit RAC and download any resources they have—until June 20th.

Thanks to Teresa Armitage for sharing this news!

Wishing everyone a safe, healthy, & peaceful day! Love, Hugs, & Cheers!  Grati ;->

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