Catching up on a few things.

* I have been feeling more sane since last week. I looked into counseling options, but they won’t be valid until August 1, so we’ll see if I still feel the need for it when that comes around. Really, though, that’s part of the reason why I pushed forward with one of my writing projects — I’ve been able to spill a lot of my pain and confusion onto the page, and that’s really helped.

* Things are moving forward with Whitechapel. I’m looking to potentially partner with another fiction site, I have the first episode written, and I spent many hours last night looking for music. I finally settled on a theme — it wasn’t originally the kind of theme I was looking for, but it hit all the core vibes I was looking for and a few surprising ones that I didn’t know I was looking for. Plus it works well with the other pieces of incidental music I picked. Since I know nothing about music I’m sure it’ll suck, but such is the way of random obsession.

* Work has gotten crazy again, partially because of my breakdown last week (which threw a lot of things off). Of course this leads into the ramp-up for GenCon, so it’s going to get more crazy before it gets less. So, you know, the perfect time to launch a new time-intensive personal project like Whitechapel.

* We’re slowly settling into the new place. We’re essentially unpacked, but we’re now at that awkward stage of finding homes for the remaining 10% of our stuff (as well as, in my case, the hours and hours of reorganizing our library — again). I really like it, though — better gate control, nice environment, and it gets quiet after 10pm. And my commute is a little shorter.

* One thing we’ve been trying out at the new place is “living without cable.” We replaced our Internet connection with a new company called Clear, and while it’s not quite as fast or as stable as Comcast, it’s cheaper and has the huge advantage of not being Comcast.

* We’ve also replaced our cable box with a media center computer running Boxee on Ubuntu Linux. This may sound excessively nerdy, but ultimately it comes down to David buying a computer, spending a few days putting things into it and swearing occasionally, and now I can just open one application and watch… well, a LOT OF STUFF. Granted, about a quarter of the shows I used to watch I can’t anymore (mostly Monday Night Raw and Superstars), and anything I can watch I can’t watch at the same time as anyone else, but between Hulu and Joost alone I get most of what I used to watch and a lot of new things I never watched before. I’m seriously considering catching up on shows like Twin Peaks and Dexter. It’s not a perfect experience, but I think it’ll grow into something that works really well for our household’s viewing habits.

* While we were moving Greebo started peeing outside of his box, which is unusual for him (even with the stress of moving). We took him to the vet, and it turns out he’s in the very early stages of kidney failure. So he’s on some antibiotics and a new diet, but the Old Man is certainly heading for his twilight years. He seems happier now, though.

Overall, things are still pretty chaotic, but the short-term chaos looks to be leading toward long-term improvement.