I spent most of Saturday grading student work at the dining room table, attempting to ignore my stomach. I was able to get through eight resubmissions of the first project, six of the second, and about six final projects by noon on Sunday. It’s been somewhat faster going than previous years because I’m taking advantage of the Mac’s dictation feature, which does a reasonableJob of understanding. What I am talkingAbout (real-world results). Still, it’s faster than pecking out a bunch of feedback and I can do it stream-of-consciousness style which means I’m not stopping and starting my thoughts. What the hell was I just saying?
The Elimination Diet has been going OK, if not a bit challenging. Breakfast is the worst time of day because the smoothies we’re drinking are delicious but fuel me for about seven minutes and then I’m back to BACON EGG AND CHEESE HANGRY. We’re usually having leftovers of some kind for lunch and then we make something new for dinner so there is some variety; we got beef back yesterday and I am here for it. Because I’m generally grazing lightly during the day, it’s the 10-12AM and 3-5PM hours that are the hardest. There is nothing I’m allowed to snack on other than carrots and air, and air holds me longer than carrots do.
Next up we get pork, which will be nice, but we don’t get bacon back until we can have sugar (nitrates are verboten but there are some brands that are cured with sugars) and that’s after three long weeks of various nuts. I’ll tell you this: when I get cashews and almonds back, I’m going to eat a dump truck full of those fuckers.
I dropped a pile of stuff off at the Goodwill this afternoon, some stuff that made me sad to leave behind: My old Nikon D70, battered and scratched but still able to take pictures at 2004-era quality, the old IKEA dishes I had in my house in Baltimore, and the Onkyo receiver Renie gifted me around the same era, sadly retired for want of HDMI inputs.
Speaking of that, I brought Dad’s big Denon head unit home and set that up a couple of weeks ago, then reconfigured the entire A/V setup in the den to work with it. The results are stunning. I mentioned setting up his center channel speaker earlier, but I really noticed the difference when Finn and I were watching Isle of Dogs this past week: in a section of the movie the characters walk from left to right and the sound followed them across the speakers. It almost makes me want to have rear-channel sp…never mind.
Procrastination is a perfect example of present bias, our hard-wired tendency to prioritize short-term needs ahead of long-term ones.
This. Also:
Put simply, procrastination is about being more focused on “the immediate urgency of managing negative moods” than getting on with the task, Dr. Sirois said.
As I write this, I’m procrastinating. (NYT paywall link)
Waaaay back in July of last year I wrote about abruptly losing my sunglasses. I scoured the house, the yard, the garage, our vehicles–anyplace I remembered having them. But there was no sign of them, so I sourced a pair of identical frames and had lenses cut for them. This morning I was meeting a guy to sell a radio off of Craigslist and figured he might be interested in two others I’ve had sitting in the basement for 15 years: a Philco tombstone I bought in my bakelite collecting days, and a giant hulking Emerson set that my aunt and uncle saved for me years ago. I moved them out into the open of the ice room and shot some pictures, and what was hiding behind the big Emerson? My sunglasses, a little dusty but otherwise perfectly fine! I cleaned them off and wore them to the meet. I miss the amber lenses in the old pair–my new pair are just darkened, which is fine, but the amber tends to brighten and amplify things in my vision. I’d always thought they were heavier and more solidly built than the new black pair I’d bought, but they feel exactly the same. So now I’ve got two pair of sunglasses; I truly am living my authentic lifestyle.
As for the radios, I offered them to the buyer this morning, and we settled on a price (a little low, but what the hell, it’s a buyers market). I haven’t had time to work on them, they’re really too big to display in the house, and I have too much stuff. I’m going to meet back up with him next weekend and get them out of here.
Well, I made it all the way to 47 before being called up for jury duty. Next month I’ve got to hump all the way up to Towson to (possibly) be part of a trial of some kind. The last time I was in a court was when I thought I was going to have to testify against a schizophrenic who stole an iPod out of my car; that was an enlightening but ultimately useless experience.
We are due to get our first snow of 2019 this weekend; weather forecasting is spotty due to the government shutdown (turns out lots of meteorologists are federal employees, go figure) but they think we’ll get 2-3″ of snow over Saturday into Sunday. I would have preferred it during the week, but hell, I’ll take it. And I need to be in Baltimore on Monday morning for my 1-year oncological checkup on time, so I’d rather we get the roads cleared Sunday so there’s no traffic.
Jesus, everything I’m reading in the news today is depressing. Every goddamn thing. I need a stiff drink and a good night’s sleep.
Tuesday I got up with Finn at 6:15 and took her on my morning walk through the neighborhood. I’m trying to do about a mile and a half every day to strengthen my legs and get some cardio going, and so far I’ve stuck with it for a couple of weeks. Usually Jen is with me but she had a terrible night’s sleep and elected to stay in bed. I can’t blame her. The heat has been brutal this week and we actually had a brief outage yesterday afternoon.
From there I hustled to the train and joined the morning mob into D.C. Work is good busy and there’s a lot of projects to keep me focused, as well as an intern I’m sharing with another director, so my days are stacked with meetings.
On the way to the train I stopped and grabbed a bite to eat so that I’d be ready to change as soon as I got home and take Finn out to the soccer field across the street for an hour of fundamentals. We sweated out in the sun and worked on ball control, dribbling, and some basic shooting. I wrapped it up with about 10 minutes of fast passing back and forth to try and work some of her shooting hesitation out. She’s doing better with it and I saw that she’s beginning to understand and follow the advice I’m giving her. At the end of an hour we walked back home and I shared half a chocolate cookie with her before she jumped in the shower.
While she was doing that I ran out back to check on my plants and gave them a good watering. It’s been unbearably hot the last couple of days and they were looking wilty so I doused them good and brought in a lovely ripe orange Oaxaca for tasting. Then I dragged our handcart inside to assist in swapping out a balky air conditioner from Jen’s room for the spare on the front porch. As it happened, we just carried it up the stairs together, and between the two of us it wasn’t bad at all.
By the time 9:00 rolled around, Finn was in bed and we were exhausted. I sat on the couch for about 45 minutes with Trixie nestled beside me and read quietly before heading up to pass out in bed.
- I’m home safe from Colombia.
- Finn and I went yard-saling on our bikes this morning. I paid too much for her first fishing rod.
- Jen made us gigantic french toast for breakfast when we got back.
- I tore down the doors on the Scout and replaced the passenger’s latch, which was broken. Then I took it out for a test ride and saw the red Traveler, which is now olive green.
- I tilled up the mound where the maple tree stood in the back yard and got it ready for planting.
It’s a grim subject, but one that’s been on my mind since the baby arrived: Dealing with your digital legacy. Lifehacker has a great writeup on how to organize your life so that heirs and executors can access your digital life, like bank accounts, social media, and digital assets. The first step is a will (check) and the second is a password manager (check).
The latest word is that the baby hasn’t gotten any larger. Monday’s CT scan shows nothing new, which means I’m cleared for chemotherapy as well as radiology starting next Monday. Beyond a little that I’ve read I have no idea what to expect in the coming month, but I’m going to do my best to stay strong and motivated.
That’s a lot easier said than done. I think I’m suffering from a low-grade depression right now. I’m afraid to start any projects because who knows if I’m going to be able to finish anything while I’m dealing with this. I don’t want to read too much about the coming treatment because the internet excels at scaring the shit out of anyone researching anything; I think it’s already taken about 10 years off of Jen’s life. I’m not that interested in mass media as a diversionary tool; I find myself flipping through my internet bookmarks in search of little hits of dopamine, wasting time. Work is OK and everyone is understanding and supportive and awesome but I have moments where I’m listening to people talk and wondering why the fuck any of this matters. I’m struggling to keep from withdrawing into myself, which is an easy but selfish way to deal with this situation; I look at Jen and Finn and know that I have to be present and focused for them.
I got some news out of the blue on Tuesday that sent my mood further south. It doesn’t have anything to do with my medical condition; it’s a voice from the past that started shouting again, and for reasons I won’t get into here, I’m keeping it on the down-low. It’s been a shit couple of weeks, really.
My list of daily links has gotten pretty stale over the last couple of years. I’m outgrowing some of the standard destinations that used to get me through the day; some aggregators have dried up, been bought, or gone out of business. The original inspiration for this website were the other weblogs I saw written by live humans who found things interesting and wrote about them; most of those people have jumped to Twitter and let their weblogs go dark.
I used a site called moreofit to search for websites similar to those I still frequent, and I’d say that about 10% of the suggestions are still updated regularly. Many of the suggestions are ones I followed back in the day, and a fair number of them trailed off between 2010-2012 as their authors moved on to different things (went corporate, left web design, bought a farm, or just disappeared). I did find, in that 10%, a couple of old favorites and some new suggestions. But it isn’t the same, and that’s sad. The commoditization of the internet is pretty much complete, and the do-it-yourself ideology, the idealistic, electric feeling of having one’s own place to post pictures or write about feels or show off code is gone. There’s Twitter, Facebook, or an app for that.
I think it would be interesting to try and organize a meetup of people who still have weblogs and talk to them about why they still write on their own site, if they write as much on social media, how they view their weblog now vs. when they first started it, and if they ever see themselves giving it up.
(1. Because social media is depressing. 2. Instagram only. 3. I view it almost the same now as I did then; I will admit that it’s harder to post every day but it’s still something I look forward to. 4. Doubtful; it’s served as my mobile memory since 2001 and I can’t imagine giving up the habit now.)
I did find, through clicking, a new theme for WordPress which could be the base for a modernization of idiotking here, too.