somniloquence

Here's something I don't understand: I got an email with a cute comment on a story, and I wanted to respond to it. It does not exist on my story or in my AO3 inbox. I know people can delete their comments, but I didn't think that meant they disappeared from your inbox as well--in the past when someone deleted a comment, I could still find the original in my AO3 inbox. The only difference I can see is that I hadn't yet replied to this one, and previous deletions, I had replied. I think this is so weird that it could just disappear out of my inbox like that. Is that standard?

I haven't been keeping up with things beyond the Justified rewatch postings. I meant to post about my trip to New Orleans a couple weeks ago, but then I came home and had that first excision for one of the cancerous moles, the one on my back, and kind of fell back into non-posting mode.

So, long story short--I had planned a trip with killabeez and Mrs. Killabeez to New Orleans, and they invited some friends, so it was like we had a cool little mini-con in a couple of rented apartments. Most of them were down there for longer than me; I'd really only been able to swing four or five days, which I know is not much especially when you've wanted to go your whole life but never wanted to go there alone, which is how I usually travel. I do wish I'd gone for at least another day, but we were there for a Mardi Gras parade, one of the ones that's not part of the official Mardi Gras parades list but which was an amazing amount of fun anyways and much more perfect for a bunch of fans: it's the Chewbacchus parade, which is SF & F themed and such a hoot! My first ever Mardi Gras parade!

It was originally going to be a birthday trip since killa and I have birthdays close together, and I wanted to do something for my milestone birthday, but kind of morphed to accomodate different people's schedules, so it worked out for being on the cusp of Mardi Gras, which I'd never thought I'd be able to see and was the happiest of accidents. So everywhere we went was decked out in the purple, green, and gold of Mardi Gras colors, and beads were everywhere. We got to see the Preservation Hall Jazz Band at a cool Q&A they do at Preservation Hall, and eat FLAMAZING food, and take a New Orleans streetcar, and eat beignets. It didn't work out with my short schedule to see the World War II Museum, or go on a cemetery tour, but I still had so much fun seeing stuff, and accidentally stumbled on the store that belongs to Villalobos Rescue Center, the focus of the Animal Planet show Pitbulls and Parolees, so of course i had to get a T-shirt.

The place we rented was in the Garden District and there were lots of nice places around, and honestly, I don't think I've ever eaten so well. On Sunday, after most folks had left and it was just me and the Missuses, we stopped for a while in Pirate's Alley for a drink at a cool old bar, and they discovered that their favorite singer was playing that night when they didn't think they'd get to see her this trip--so we decided to go do our dinner reservation early to make the show in time, and I was like "Oh, I have barely started my drinkkkkk...oh hey, it's New Orleans! I can take my drink with me!" The fact that you can get to-go cups for your booze and drink and walk along is amazing to me. I mean, yeah, litter is a problem, but damn, it was fun! All in all, it was a great time, and I am so glad I went with people who know the city and how things go, and OMG I need to go back again soon. (I posted a few pictures on my instagram, but not a lot.)

When I made my plans, I didn't know that I was going to be having a couple of these surgeries for the cancer spots on my skin, and had also made plans to go to Escapade on Thursday. I'm...really feeling the shock of the finances, and it was probably a dumb decision, but nonrefundable tickets, etc. As soon as I get home from Escapade I have to go in for the much more unpleasant Moh's surgery on my cheek. I worked myself up into a tizzy for the back thing last week, because every time I have tried to talk about pain relief for these really painful things, they tell me that it doesn't hurt, and that I can only take tylenol, the most useless substance on earth. Since I bleed like a stuck pig, they are especially annoying about this, even though some studies are showing NSAIDs don't necessarily really increase bleeding risk. But there was a new nurse this time and I asked her about it, and she was really great--the first one who didn't basically say "sucks to be you" when I said tylenol was useless and I knew from experience I would be in pain.

So this time they gave me a prescription for oxycontin for a couple days, which made such a difference in being able to sleep and work. They also gave me--and this was something I didn't even know was possible--internal stitches under the skin, so they dissolve in time and the glue on the outside eventually falls off, which meant I didn't have to go back (more $$ for a visit) or change a dressing (which is really hard to do when you live alone and it's in the middle of your back). Still, I'm getting worked up again about the more painful and invasive face surgery that awaits next week when I get back from the con. I'm absolutely dreading trying to get them to give me pain meds, it's been so difficult historically, and everyone acts like you're trying to scam opioids, which is ridiculous. If I wanted to get drugs to abuse there are way, way simpler methods than having people cut parts of me off with a scalpel.

Anyway, money anxiety and terror aside, I'm looking forward to sunshine in LA, because the rain has been epic this winter here and there have been weeks where it never stopped, just rain every single fuckin' day for endless days in a row. My yard became a mud pit. And I'm doing a couple panels, I guess: one for Schitt's Creek with nestra, and another about comics to MCU Marvel fandom with przed. My Captain America fandom panel didn't make the cut, grumble grumble. There won't be a lot of time down there, we're coming home earlier than usual, but if I can get to a beach, I really want to. I'm not used to traveling so close together, it feels weird to leave when I just got home, but I neeeed sunshine. (Though, hilariously, it's sunny today but cold.) And also, more chances to see friends; New Orleans whetted my appetite.

I was reminded of this wonderful story yesterday, and it seemed like a great chance to make a rec for it in my 31 flavors meme:

All In by destina (Tombstone, 4120 words)
Summary: Wyatt had told himself more than once that what he felt for Doc was friendship, pure and simple. Looking at him there, naked as a jaybird, he stopped pretending either of those conditions was true.

This was a marvelous Doc/Wyatt story where the voices and the language sounded so much like the movie, it feels as though it's a missing scene.

___

Question: how can you get a tag made canonical on AO3? One of the things that makes me insane on that site is the way it overrides your tags, with absolutely no rhyme or reason I can discern. Like, you type in title case (every word with a capital letter), and it just overrides that and makes it all lowercase, because it's not a canonical tag and it just thinks it should do whatever it wants. This infurates me because my job is basically making things consistent and logical in text, and this is inconsistent (sometimes it doesn't override! just apparently when it feels like it!) and illogical and I resent it when I try again and again to get all my tags into the same case, but it won't let me.

I used a tag in Yuletide that has over 150 uses, yet is not, for some reason, a canonical tag, which at least would have allowed me to keep it in the same case. It seems like if something's used that many times, in exactly the same way, it should be canonical, right? So is there a way to make my borderline compulsion actually legit? It seems like support is for problems, and this isn't technically a problem, it's just an irritating issue.