(I have this in my user info, but I wanted to also make it a bit more visible.)

If you add me and do not introduce yourself with a comment on a public post, even if you're positive I know who you are, I will probably not add you back. Introducing yourself is no guarantee, I will admit, but it has been known to help. This includes if we've met at a party recently, as I have been known to space on names, especially those only given once. If you drop me and I reciprocated the add, there's a better than 95% chance I'll drop you back, just to keep the list down to a duller roar. Telling me you wish to keep up with my locked material at a more leisurely pace can affect my decision. Also, I see the 300+ souls listed below as a reading list. And I don't read all of the books I buy all at once, so I can't read all journals at all times, either. I like to try, though. I used to keep up, but my job situation changed to something that keeps me busy.

An old friend of mine recently asked me about my dark secrets. I told him I tend not to have any. This is true enough, but that's because I come out about them eventually. There's stuff here I haven't been open about until now, but it finally feels like I can do so.
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The welcome back is duly appreciated, believe me.

The single biggest reason I'm a homebody these days is the money. Specifically, the fact that two students can't afford a car. We borrow the in-laws' van on weekends and occasionally put gas in it or wash it as our contribution to its upkeep. Asking for the van during the week is plausible, but there are tensions associated with that. If the reason touches on the hot spots in our relationship that we otherwise Do Not Discuss, it gets hairy. By this, I mean either my religion, my sexual orientation, or my relationship orientation. Let alone if we ever wanted to, say, explore the local kink community. This effectively cuts us off from what would be our usual sources of friendships down here.

There are some weekend options, though. I tried out the local pagan circle and discovered I'm too used to the Bay Area's pagans. This crew was perfectly nice but not overtly friendly and nearly universally eclectic Wiccans. Their regular gatherings are what I'd call Paganism 101. Yes, I'd say I was spoiled rotten all those years (and I miss you all, yes, even you). I've toyed with the idea of attending the local Unitarian Universalist church and may act on that after I transfer to National. I'll need the people time. blackfyr is an introvert, so he's doing fine as we are. He does support my needs, though, so if I say we're going, we go. The UU pagans are likely to be similarly eclectic, but a church congregation's going to be larger than the pagan circle and so we may have better luck.

Fortunately for my sanity, I'm still on Second Life. Seven years of that and going quite strongly. I even did an essay for English 1a that defended the concept of an online social life as useful for those who are stuck at home and got a near-perfect score (195 out of 200, and yes, I remember that a year later, why? ;>). It mostly pays for itself with the DJing I do inworld since in-game currency converts to US dollars and what I earn covers the membership costs. I even have a few loving relationships that I keep up via SL, not to mention a newly acquired friend with benefits who must be awesome to his wife considering how good to me he has been so far.

We're also relatively close to an old friend of blackfyr's. He lives an hour and a half away, but that's close enough for the occasional road trip to kick back and socialize on a Saturday.

On a different note, I need to fix my mood icons. Unfortunately, I'd have to rebuild the ones I based on Two Lumps since the files are on a dead hard drive and we couldn't afford the hosting costs for the server. We found cheaper hosting but only after the files were lost. Back to a system set for now.

I could go on a riff about losing things and the move, but I don't think I want to on this post. At some point when I feel strong enough to discuss it, sure. Amazing how coming back here makes me want to pour out a few things. It's like I never left in that regard.

Um, hi. Long time no post.

So, I'm still in Bakersfield. Both blackfyr and I are now in college again. We're both studying psychology at Bakersfield College. I'm going to transfer to National University come summer of next year and finish my AA in the fall. My GPA is a rather respectable 3.88 as of the end of summer classes. Can't say there's much more to report than that. We're homebodies these days for several reasons, some of which I may go into later.

Am I truly back here? I honestly don't know. I'll be checking in more, I think. People I care about are still here, though I've been out of touch so long it'll be a challenge to catch up. So I may as well just start again at this point and see what happens.

I keep being a space cadet about this place. Only visible to my memory when things are getting closer to dire. And moreover, it'd been so long since I logged in to the email account attached to this LJ that the server wiped out what had built up from before due to neglect.

Not sure I mentioned going back to college last time. Which I have done. This has somewhat helped keep heads above water, but the summer's its own challenge. Turns out the awarded Pell Grants that would've kept us going until fall's monies come in were slashed due to only being part-time in summer. Mind, the *school* only allows part-time summer sessions.

I'll own some of this is due to poor planning, mind you. I know I suck at managing myself half the time. Part of why my SSI is in process. I have no doubt that'll fail on round one, but I know my odds. The number of disability law firms in Bakersfield is impressive, so I have an idea which way to turn if the odds play out as normal on such matters.

And no, part-time jobs are not an option. School schedule plus hernia surgery recovery means working is a bad idea.

Anyway, we're actually trying to *gasp* sell something in order to make the July rent that's hovering over our heads like a swinging axe blade. We had no idea our SKS rifles were valuable. Here's one of them up for sale. The other will be posted after the first sells. It will be re-listed if it fails. We also have smaller stuff up for bid on eBay. Username is bifurcate.

The usual PayPal blah goes here. I also have a GoFundMe page. Gods, I get sick of mentioning those, though.

I said back in September that I'd developed asthma. Seems I was mistaken.

I'd been putting off surgery to remove some benign growths on my uterus and ovaries due to lack of cash and being paranoid about what it'd mean to my job if I took the time off. I'll spare y'all the TMI, but what I thought was asthma went away when I got the surgery. Yes, I had something in me that was THAT big. I also no longer have edema in my legs, my blood pressure dropped to levels I haven't seen in years, and I can go longer than an hour between bathroom visits.

blackfyr has landed a very part-time gig helping a local live DJ out with the occasional double-booking. He starts that in February. Ironically, we forecast the money (if all else goes well) paying for our Pantheacon trip the following week. It's ironic because the gig's a Christian church dance. And yes, this is his first out-of-the-house employment since he was laid off over a decade ago. Sure, it's nowhere near full-time, but it's there.

I'm also creeping out of my writing hole, at least a little, and submitting to Gather again. They were pleased to have me back, which was nice to know.

Someone said on Twitter today that this place is "officially dead." I don't know. But they seem to have borked commenting from reports. Perhaps I should turn to my same-name account on Dreamwidth after this?

Ye gods and little fishes, some of y'all must think I up and faded away down here.

Currently trying to get to a psychiatrist in time to get my disability extended. Just got emergency food stamps to hold over for the duration, not to mention the benefit of the in-laws' church's soup kitchen. Even if half the stuff is starch, some of it's useful to us. (Psst, please, as one who knows, when donating to soup kitchens, try to make more of it protein... SO many people donate pasta and rice!) I have an appointment Wednesday with someone, thankfully.

And frankly, Bakersfield is hot, conservative, and downright bizarre for me. Still acclimating to details like the random oil well pump in a business park. And intriguingly, while I know how Republican this area is, I have seen more Obama 2012 support than I have Romney 2012. It's like the few and proud Democrats show it off while the bulk of the Republicans either don't bother or, rarely, stand up for Ron Paul.

Medically, I've developed asthma, likely due to the huge amounts of dust the bug-out we performed kicked up. This area is no help for that, either. Other stuff is pending further exploration, but at least the bulk of it's free thanks to a local medical plan. The psychiatrist is a sliding-scale situation because the medical plan won't give me access to the hospital's mental health department. No, not happy with that, but not like I can change it, either.

Anyway. Hello. Not dead yet. Mostly Twitter and Facebook nowadays, but I had to at least pop up here after seven months or so. *laughs*

What we had hoped to be a better move turned into a bug-out. There are odd things hiding in the boxes and bags we and the dayworkers were putting into that U-Haul the last night we spent in San Carlos. We'll see what we kept as things progress.

We submitted an application for an apartment today that will hopefully go through. If so, we take the place over in about a week. The manager's sure it'll be OK; our one hang-up is whether our ex-landlord will be polite.

And we're now rebuilding our household's goods. Computers survived the bug-out, but other appliances like a television did not. We're also figuring out how best to re-stock our kitchen wares.

Prior post's references to fundraising methods remain apt and needed. Anticipated monies to cover the U-Haul truck didn't come through due to unexpected drops in income. And blackfyr's parents are helpful but not made of money.

We brokered a pre-hearing settlement with our landlord. No eviction on record. Case dismissed. We do partial payoff over the course of this year if we don't just file bankruptcy on it (which we're going to do to some people, but not him).

We're trying to get as many locals who can show up in San Carlos tomorrow to help with moving garbage and loading the U-Haul, as the day-worker option is viable but $12/hr/person. Not our idea of a good idea. Email me at lysana at twoburrens dot com if you can show up, please. Would rather blow the money on pizza and drinks.

We're also diving into a hotel for the next two nights so we don't have to clear off the bed tonight.

Oh, and for those of you who aren't on FB or Twitter, I sprained my ankle Wednesday afternoon. You want to talk about slowing down the process? Oh, yeah. Especially since I had to sit at the one hospital I can afford to go to for five hours because their ambulance ER section was doing turn-away business and I was a limp-in.

We still leave Sunday. I don't care anymore what has to stay so long as we try. He'll get a filthy apartment with stuff on the floor. He already had to redo the place after 19 years of constant occupancy. It's just insult to injury now.

PS - We are still offering set lists for sale as well as a non-PayPal donation option. We recognize the piracy aspect of the set lists. That's all I'm gonna say about that.

We barely have enough time to file a response note (five calendar days from a Thursday service is somewhat predatory on his part, frankly, as it ensures we have two days in which we can do nothing), but we will be once we consult Legal Aid on Monday. We also are forming plans of departure from the San Francisco Bay Area. But staying in California.

blackfyr's self-adopted little brother discodj has a building set of computer repair and sales businesses in the Central Valley. He's doing well enough that he's open to granting us a franchise in Bakersfield in exchange for a cut of the monthly profits. That plus my disability payments would keep us pretty well set in an area where the rent is 1/3 of what we're paying now for a larger apartment. The disability may be temporary, but it'll buy us time to make the business viable enough to allow that to lapse. It's plausible we can parlay local connections to get a place to land without having to use the current landlord as a reference.

Should this go well, we will be taking Amtrak up from Bakersfield to make it to Pantheacon. On the utter outside depending on legal requirements, we may leave the SFBA just after PCon. But it's apparently time to do so. We've stagnated. Doors here are closed.

And no, it's not what you'd call an area I love. But I love the idea of a place where it's easier to keep my head above water and where I will still know people more. And the Bay Area's a few hours away. I won't have to be a complete stranger.