Been doing a reread of DW8 the last couple of days and I suddenly had the thought:

Whenever the next DW chapter drops - whichever chapter it is - this will be the first time I won't read it first in my email when the post hit the FFML.

I'm not sure how to take that, honestly.

Starting this thread on Canada Day, July 1... but giving it a title that'll let it be used for July 4 as well.

Who else is just taking the entire weekend off?

This has just (sort of) resolved in the last twenty minutes, so I figured I'd share it with everyone as I threatened Amazon.com I would.

So... two weeks ago I made an Amazon order.  A one-pound box of freeze-dried mushrooms, four bottles of sugar-free vanilla syrup (for Peggy) and four bottles of sugar-free butterscotch syrup (for me to make ersatz butterbeer with).

What came five days later was a pound of freeze-dried mushrooms, four bottles of vanilla syrup... and four bottles of raspberry syrup.

Okay, no problem, contact Amazon customer service. "Oh, you can't return it, but that's okay, keep it and we'll order the right stuff for you. However, we can't expedite the order, it won't arrive until early July." Well... that's not acceptable because as I noted in another recent thread we're going to be elsewhere in early July, but I negotiate a delayed shipping arrangement that will drop it on our doorstep the day we get back and think, cool, all resolved.

Until suddenly I get a notice in email a couple days later that my butterscotch syrup has shipped and will be arriving on Monday the 21st. Bwah? Well, okay, that's cool even if they told me they couldn't do that. Gotta love the efficiency of the Amazon machine, right?

Come Monday, the package arrives, I open it up... and find a box two-thirds the size of a box of syrup bottles, with six-inch-wide "Oregon Chai" logos on several sides. It's holding six cartons of... you guessed it... Oregon Chai. On one of the sides without a logo is a one-and-a-quarter-inch long inventory sticker with a bar code declaring to all the world that despite its labeling and contents this is actually a box of four bottles of no-sugar butterscotch syrup.

i disbelieve, and contact Amazon customer service again.

"Oh dear," they say. It can't be returned, but I can keep it, and they'll ship the right thing out to me. Sadly, the order can't be expedited, it'll have to come at its own speed. I'm not surprised -- it's almost exactly the way the first contact went. What I am surprised about this time is that now it can't be delayed, either. They can't make any kind of special arrangements at this time, and I am told that I'll just have to wait until I get an email saying it's been shipped, call them back and then change the shipping instructions.

Well... okay. I want that damned syrup, it's been out of stock for months and dammit, I paid for it. So imagine my surprise when yesterday I get an email telling me that my butterscotch syrup has been shipped and will be arriving late today.

Not only that, imagine my surprise when it arrived about half an hour ago, and I open the box to find that inside is... Butterscotch-Caramel syrup. A very similar but not identical product to what I ordered.

Back to Amazon. Oh, they're very sorry. Do I want them to reorder? I very bluntly tell them I have no faith that they will ever get this order right. Refund my fucking money and I will never again bother them about sugar-free butterscotch syrup. And tell the boneheads in the warehouse to actually pay attention to what they're putting in the smiley-face boxes.

Oh, and I'm going to share this story on social media. (Which I will, when I get around to taking pictures of all three wrong products standing side-by-side.)

Now I'm just waiting to find out if they're refunding me the cost of just the syrup, or of the entire order it was originally part of. The way this has gone, I would not be too surprised if I see a near-$80 credit on my bank statement instead of a $25 one.

So, come the 3rd of July, Peg and I will be heading off with her family to Long Beach Island for a week once again, as we have for something close to twenty years, if not more.

As is usual in latter years, this won't disconnect me from the Net in any way, so what used to be a warning that I'd be away is barely more than a minor heads-up.

However, this year is slightly different in one way...  the 28th through 30th of June, the Monday through Wednesday immediately before we go to LBI, Peg and I are heading to Atlantic City for my birthday, where we'll be staying at the Hard Rock Hotel.  So I'm getting almost a two-week vacation here. 

Unlike with LBI, it's actually likely that during the AC days I will be somewhat less present on the forums, if only because Peg and I will be out on the beach, pool or boardwalk, or at one of the restaurants, for most of the approx. 48 hours (Monday afternoon to Wednesday morning) we'll be there.

I love it when I find a filk site that I didn't know about before. This is the guy who does Cthulhu filk set to ABBA songs... none of which are linked below.

Cutting to the power and image songs:

• This one isn't about any character in particular, but when I listen to it, I'm thinking "Anthy". Maybe it's an image song.
  
• Doug already knows how to cook. Maybe this will let him share his skill.
  
• Magical encryption-cracking, anyone? (Maybe it'll only work for Eimi.)
  
• I suppose one could create a simulacrum of the title character with this one... but why?
  
• A somewhat more useful simulacrum song.
  
• There's already a nanoStep with Doug in the world of The Prisoner. Here's the gatesong that sent him there.
  
• Another gatesong... to a series that I'm not familiar with and can't find on All The Tropes or Wikipedia, except as a mention on the author's Wikipedia page
  

One of the funny things about writing yourself is that if you pay close attention, it tends to shine a light on your flaws and why they exist.

For a long time, Father's Day has bothered me.  Nothing serious, just that I felt uncomfortable about it.  Of course, the reason is now obvious, but me being me I never realized it for a long time.

I happened to be listening to NPR the day before Father's Day, and there was a short bit on there with a woman talking about a family heirloom: her father's mint-green Ford F-100 pickup truck.  Hearing her talk about the truck got me to thinking about the truck that I no longer have.

It got towed, and I had no means at all to get it back.  It's now in the pick-and-pull.  I know because I saw it there.  And whatever is left of it now will probably soon be crushed, melted down, and then sent to China as recycled metal.

Keep in mind, not only was this my first vehicle, it's the one I learned to drive stick-shift in.  It also very likely saved my life in providing me with shelter for the time I was homeless for a few months.  This was the vehicle that I wanted to have become my own heirloom to pass through the family.

Except that's obviously not going to happen now.

And not only because that vehicle is gone and never to be brought back home again.  But also because I know that I'm never going to be a father.  I'm too screwed up emotionally, I can barely hold down a job, I can barely make ends meet, and I can't even stay in a good relationship because I can't find anyone who is mentally healthy enough to deal with me, let alone anyone at all who'd want to deal with me as their significant other.

And it was then that I realized it.  I hate Father's Day because I'm forced to honor the man that made me the person I am today - into someone who is fucked up enough that he can only barely function in society.

So, it was with the above mindset that I wrote this scene.  Where Benjamin destroys Gauron.  Not simply by beating him.  But by telling him: You're only pretending to be a monster.  I was raised by one.

So, where's she been hiding at?  Wonder no more.

Inspired by the song from Sleeping At Last, "Atlas: Four".

Legal YouTube upload available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO6AsjSloDg

And as always, the embed so you can listen along while reading.

Here's a new one.  I was in Atlas this afternoon and ran into a dark-haired muscular fellow, olive skin, little mustache, in the closest you could come to a sailor fuku with male costume parts.

He was Sailor FreddyMercury.

I grabbed a couple screen shots, and when I have a chance I'll crop a shot of him and post it in this thread.  Right now I'm waiting for an MSR to start.  <grin>

What's a word for that feeling when the thing you dropped bounces off the side of your hand and flies off under the couch, or as you realize that you tore the tab off instead of opening the can?