aadler | Recent Entries

( My Fanfiction )

Different stuff:

( Under the cut )

[ Written 11 April, posted today — I’ll backdate later ]

( Under the cut )

[ Written 04 April, posted today — I’ll backdate later ]

( Under the cut )

( story under the cut )

And there you are. Don’t hesitate to offer commentary.

( Info under the cut )

News. Okay, news.

Hm. Where to begin?

( Work Issues )

( Family and Personal Issues )

( Fanfic Issues )

So there we are. The state of my life, such as it now stands.

Quote from an article I read today:

Conservatives are living fossils, trapped in a time when lying was considered a bad thing, taking other people’s property was a sin, spending money that doesn’t exist was a self-destructive folly, and believing you could “build that” was a sign of adulthood.

Today’s liberals —

(Oh, excuse me, they call themselves ‘progressives’ now, since decades of bad policy turned ‘liberal’ into an insult … which is funny, since the use of ‘liberal’ came about precisely because the Progressives of the early 20th century gave the label such a bad name.)

— today’s ‘progressives’ are so far advanced now beyond such antiquated notions.

I got this from

slaymesoftly a while back, and this is my reply.

– – –

Age I was given: 20
I lived in: the hometown of one of the richest men in the United States. I never met him, but my brother once almost ran over him in a parking lot. (Accident. Honest.)
I drove: a 1965 Chevy II
I was in a relationship with: a teenaged waitress at a local root beer place. (It wasn’t actually a relationship, but it was the closest thing I had at the time.) We dated some, I wanted to get to know her better, she apparently decided she’d learned enough to know she didn’t want that.
I feared: … I can’t really say. At that point, I’m not sure I had enough self-awareness to be afraid of anything.
I worked at: my first year of college. (I’d delayed entry for a year while I paid for an auto wreck. Not my fault, but there was still a bill to be paid and it was mine to pay.)
I wanted to be: a writer. It was fairly late in my life before I ever wanted to be anything except a writer.

Now I am: 59
I live in: a place just off the highway up in some small, rustic mountains next to a town with a population of less than 400.
I am in a relationship with: the woman who married me, divorced me, and then remarried me ten years later. Someone about whom I used to say, “Imagine spending a third of your life with someone for whom the phrases ‘psychotic bitch’ and ‘the finest person I’ve ever known’ were equally applicable.”
I drive: a 2008 (or is it 2006?) Ford Escort. Two-door, dark gray-brown.
I work at: … not yet. Spent three years hunting work after I got back from my most recent Iraq deployment, and am about to start another line of work, but there are still some things to be nailed down so I’m not announcing it till I’m actually doing it. (Check back in another week.)
I fear: failure. Then anything happening to my kids, or my wife, or the other members of my family, in that order of importance.
I want to be: still a writer. But mainly, successful at something.

– – –

If anyone wants to play, I’ll give a number. (But you’ll need to tell me your actual age so I don’t assign something impossible. ☺)

So. China trip complete.

As can be seen if one is so self-punishing as to read the entire account found at the links below, we didn’t go a lot of different places: Hong Kong, Shenzhen, a couple of other locations. Mostly we just visited with our son and his girlfriend’s family.

Overall thoughts:

There was a lot of police presence wherever we went. I found it didn’t bother me. Maybe I’m too accustomed to the American standard, but I saw them as maintainers of order, and was reassured rather than disturbed. And the police we dealt with were polite and helpful.

Everything was clean, modern. Shenzhen is a relatively new city — maybe thirty years, according to our son — and specifically built to mirror and capitalize on the economic success of Hong Kong. And, no doubt, we stuck to the nicer areas. Still, I found Shenzhen to be more pleasant than many American cities I’ve visited. Particularly the larger ones.

More of the women wore boots than shoes, but of multiple designs and fashions, and always stylish. A lot of the younger men wore their hair in exaggerated styles that I found a little ridiculous … but then, everyone knows I’m die-hard conservative, and why should I like Chinese punk styles any better than American ones?

The food (as I said many times in my growing narrative) was heavenly.

If it didn’t cost so much to fly that far, I’d be happy to repeat the visit. Many times.

( Links for actual posts under the cut )