Category Archives: Random

Leaving the House Eventually

Leave a reply

I’m not agoraphobic, but I find that the more time I spend in the house doing things, the less interested I am in leaving it. This is a reverse cabin fever that I don’t fully understand.

This week, because of entrance exams, we’ve been on a strange schedule at the school where I work. I, of course, totally worked on several things for the company I work for, but well, yeah.

After a few days of totally working on these projects–which I have to do in the morning— today I decided I needed to get out of the house and do things like “see the sun” and “breathe fresh air” and “put on trousers” (not necessarily in that order).

The trouble is, my brain began running through excuses for why I didn’t actually want to leave the house. (It did this the last couple days as well.) The excuses included: no reason to go out; what you need to do you can put off: what you can’t put off you can order off the internet; breathing stale air makes you stronger, fresh air will make you weak; you’ll just spend money.

In that end that’s what made me leave. I need to price some computer parts and then decide if I want the adventure of replacing them myself. (I’m not afraid to do it especially as the adventure will provide lots of fodder for this daily bit of blather it’s just a pain in the behind to find all the stuff and pick a day to do it.) I also need to see if it’s cheaper to just buy a new computer.

I gathered up all my stuff, made a list of the specs for the components I needed and set out on my daily adventure. After I went to the ATM to get some cash, I realized I’d forgot the list of parts specs. I went to the shop and looked over a few things but only got a couple prices. Then I went to a couple pen shops and managed to not buy anything. (No, really.)

I then finally got to enjoy the chicken chicken I was denied a couple months ago. (I probably won’t need to eat for days now.)

However, after a couple hours, I just came home. I bought some healthy snacks and then waited to have beans thrown at. (I’ve written about that before.)

It wasn’t a productive day, but it was relaxing.

Cleaning and Eating the Old Stuff

Leave a reply

Because nothing bad has happened I have small problems in both my office and in our house. I solve some of the problems by eating them.

After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and the countless aftershocks, we became very diligent about our escape plans and assembled a couple bugout bags, including one at school. A couple years ago I updated them and we’ve now reached the time of year when I have to update them again.

At home that involves dusting things off, checking dates and deciding what to do with the stuff inside. Some of it will be replaced and the rest thrown away or, if it seems in reasonable shape, left for another year.

The problem happens when I check the food as my first instinct is just to eat it, even it’s well past its BEST BY date. This also She Who Must Be Obeyed’s natural instinct. In the past we’ve eaten five year old canned bread and biscuits (cookie-like things) and rice (and fed them to our girls as well). The only things we don’t eat are things in dented or damaged cans or things in rusting cans.

In my case, after I started cleaning out my Get Home bag at work, I decided to eat the old “cup noodle” soups. One was very tasty, the other wasn’t that good. Neither of them appeared to be bad, but I did get a headache the day I ate the second one.

Tomorrow I will attack our big bag and decide what needs to be updated and replaced. I also want to spread stuff around to a couple other bags now that the girls are old enough to carry some stuff. (In fact, I want them to help assemble the bags.)

As for the food, well, some of it might end up being my lunch tomorrow. This means I can’t promise tomorrow’s post will be especially appetizing.

 

 

Maintenance During the Hangover Day

Leave a reply

Today was a day for maintenance.

After yesterday’s headache and general malaise, I decided to make today more productive.

First, though, I had to play an online game with a friend for a couple hours. This was sort of productive, for my stats in the game, and I got lots of information from him about Canada and shared some information with him about Japan.

I was in the post headache-hangover. No pain, feeling a lot better, just not much energy. If you’ve ever been sick and then suddenly started feeling better but weak, that’s how I felt. This meant I couldn’t tackle too many projects involving heavy lifting, but I did get some house cleaning done.

I also decided to do maintenance on a couple pens before filling them with different inks. At first I got lazy and decided to refill a pen with the same ink. Then I realized it wasn’t the same ink–post-headache hangover in action–and gave it the thorough cleaning I’d originally intended to give it.

Unfortunately, this can be slow process and my desk now looks a bit like an unkempt mad scientist’s laboratory with pen parts and pen innards lying about here and there. I’ve even got random tubes and a specimen in a glass jar with its old blood slowly draining out.

"Mad Science" means never stopping to ask "what's the worst thing that could happen?"

Mad Science means never stopping to ask “what’s the worst thing that could happen?” Maxim 14—Schlock Mercenary

The next big project is the annual purging of the file cabinet. I already did a purge of papers and projects and random stuff. Now I have to sort the stuff that was deliberately saved in a special file and not just set aside for another day.

I also have a couple more pens to clean out and a plan to take pictures of them all.

But, I also have an exam to make. And there’s still that online game.

Every Thing Old is Once Again

Leave a reply

I woke up with a headache this morning and alcohol was not the cause, although it was to blame.

This was like a visit from an old friend who used to visit more often but who I haven’t seen in a long time. Perhaps because I’ve added a few more carbs back into my diet, or perhaps because the weather is changing or perhaps because I ate a packaged soup that expired 2.5 years ago for lunch yesterday (note: it said BEST BY not TOXIC AFTER) this old friend stopped by for a visit.

Even worse, I went to bed knowing I was going to wake up with a headache.

I knew this because I started to get a tight spot in the left side of my neck. Imagine waking up with a stiff neck and that’s how I felt before I went to bed. Usually I would pop a couple migraine pills and go to bed. However, because I’d had a couple ounces of vodka (from an ancient bottle of Absolut; are you noticing a trend here?) I couldn’t safely take any medicine.

As a result, when I woke up, my head looked and felt a lot like this:

How my head felt this morning. The screws and the pain are to scale.

How my head felt this morning. The screws and the pain are to scale.

I drank some coffee and hoped it would go away. When it didn’t, I took the medicine I would have taken the night before (note: it is not past the BEST BY date. Probably.) and went back to bed for a couple hours.

After I woke up I braved breakfast and although I didn’t have a lot of energy to make and eat very much, what I ate settled well, and I settled down at the desk to waste time.

Since then I’ve been woozy but not sick. I’ve had no trouble eating except I didn’t have a lot of interest in eating. I also managed to accomplish several small tasks but nothing big.

Tomorrow I suspect I’ll feel better. Then I’ll be able to waste time more efficiently.

 

For Want of a Door the Schedule

Leave a reply

It wasn’t an “Oh sh#t” moment, it was more of an “Oh crap” moment.

When I arrived at the train station on my way to work today the first thing I noticed was the time schedule had destinations listed but no times. My first reaction was “Oh crap” because it meant that something had gone wrong and there were train delays. It also meant that the trains were going to be crowded.

Note: The “Oh sh#t” moment, when it happens, takes place on the way to the station. It occurs at the precise moment I can see the circle in front of the the station. If it’s full of people and one or two police officers, my reaction is “Oh sh#t” because it means the trains have stopped and no one is being allowed into the station. This can be good (if I’m on the way to work) or bad (if I’m going shopping).

Today, though, the first train arrived on time and although there were a few more people than usual, it wasn’t that crowded.

This, of course, was a trap.

The train that arrived on time wasn’t the train that was supposed to be arriving and the people who were late for work kept pressing in until even the air itself said “to hell with this, I’m leaving” and we were left with no air. Luckily, I had a wide place for my feet and a bar I could hand on to with my left hand whilst my right hand wielded my book bag at knee level to keep people from pressing farther in.

The trip was slower than usual, but not that bad. After I arrived I work I discovered that 1) classes were delayed a half hour and 2) the reason the trains were slow was because of a “door problem” that had occurred at at nearby station a few hours before.

A website that monitors trains was full of tweets from Japanese mocking the idea that a door could cause that much delay. A few hours later, the trains were still messed up. It must have been a hell of a door.

Any Thing That Can Go Wrong at the End Will

Leave a reply

Suicide was not the answer but I was definitely thinking about murdering someone.

First you have to understand that, thanks to a technical problem, I’ve just spent part of a final class reentering marks into a spreadsheet and trying to remember, in a couple cases, what scores I had entered earlier. This all has me thinking about my master’s thesis.

Several hundred years ago, when I was working on my Master of Arts degree, and Microsoft Word had only just been invented, I had a technical problem. I was using WordStar which, at the time, was still kind of trendy but which, today, is roughly the equivalent of writing with a hammer and chisel.

I was confident in my abilities to use it, which means, of course, I was doomed. If I hadn’t been as stressed as I was, I probably would have been more cautious. However, somehow, and I’m still not sure how, in linking four files together so they could print without me having to retype the entire mess into one file, I somehow managed to destroy most of my master’s thesis.

I discovered this when I tried to print it out a day or so before I had to turn it in to my review committee.

Me being confident–and it being the early days of computers–I hadn’t bothered to back anything up. (Yes, I realize there’s no logic in that sentence whatsoever.) The only back up I had was notes, a partial printout and vague memories of what I had written. At this point fear led to panic; panic led to projected anger; projected anger led to rage; and I knew, at that point, someone needed to die.

The trouble was, I couldn’t think of anyone to kill whose death would have made the situation better.

Instead I assembled the scraps and in an epic all-night writing session managed to hammer something out that resembled what had been there before. Oddly, rather than this being a fish story about the great Shakespearean work that had been lost, I still feel the rewrite was better. (If you’ve ever read my master’s thesis that tells you how bad the originals were.)

Then again, maybe that’s just denial and I should have gone ahead and killed someone.

In the end I passed, although there were apparently some issues with one of my committee members. It’s probably best I didn’t know that earlier.

Sitting Around Just In Case

Leave a reply

I was trapped at home today by someone who wasn’t at home. It was all done just in case.

Today was a school day, although I didn’t have a full day, but because our youngest has been feeling under the weather, I was told by She Who Must Be Obeyed to remain near the phone lest we get a call from the school telling us that our youngest was sick.

In that case, I’d have to drag my lazy self down to the elementary school and escort her back home and then stand “bowl and tissue” duty, in case she got really sick.

As a result, I found myself stuck at home with very little to do. After I did some obligatory work because the company I work for requires I develop stuff to use at the school where I work (yeah, it confuses and annoys me, too) I found myself with little to do.

Oddly, rather than my usual time wasting and game playing (too many links to link to, but here’s an example) I set about finishing winter cleaning on the variety room. This involved clearing a shelf of defunct textbooks and tossing my moldy copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses which I’d kept as a trophy after I finally finished reading it many years ago. (Long story.)

It also meant filing away some “just in case” denial with my old karate bag and karate DVDs. The DVDs are filed away and the bag is slowly being converted to an emergency kit bag.

The result is a clean shelf for She Who Must Be Obeyed to fill and better organized shelves in my Black Shelf Tower of Doom (more on that in another post). There’s still more to do, but that’s tomorrow’s task. There’s a lot more “just in case” denial stuff that needs to go.

But first there are some games to play. (I did that today, too…)

A Peaceful Lazy Feeling

Leave a reply

If I hadn’t done dishes yesterday and today, things might have been different.

Today, in a very rare occurrence, I wasn’t the only one who was lazy. However, perhaps for the first time ever, every member of the family was lazy. In fact, I’m surprised anyone left the house, although not surprised I didn’t.

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that I did dishes more than once. Usually I spread those chores around, however, because on normal Sundays I am, by any practical definition of the phrase, one step away from being bedridden, I thought it best that I do dishes to prove that 1) I am actually awake and 2) my legs work. As a result, I did dishes last night and then after breakfast and lunch today.

Rather than earning me hosannas and thank yous, these acts infected the other members of the family with my usual Sunday affliction.

Granted, there were a number of reasons for this. Our oldest was still recovering from her entrance exam and slowly getting back into study mode for both school and her next exam. Also, she did lunch dishes yesterday so I thought I’d go easy on her. Our youngest doesn’t do much on Sundays but is usually more active than she was today. It turns out she might be catching what She Who Must Be Obeyed had last week.

She Who Must Be Obeyed is recovering from a 24 hour bug that took 72 hours to get over. She ended up doing laundry, but it all had a casual “well, I’ll get it done eventually” feel rather than her usual “If I don’t get this done now it will burst into flames” attitude.

Tomorrow things should be back to normal. I’ll still, more than likely, be lazy, but at least everyone else will be active.

 

Seven Hundred and Some Dishes

Leave a reply

Today marks the 700th post in a row since I started this bit of blather and it will be a fairly short one as I’m about to argue with one of my daughters and won’t have time to do a retrospective.

She Who Must Be Obeyed is sick which leaves me in charge of cooking and cleaning in addition to my usual duties of issuing instructions, being ignored, enforcing instructions, becoming bad guy, etc.

I managed to get our youngest sent to bed although there is no actual evidence she brushed her teeth.

Our oldest is studying for a high school entrance exam this coming Friday and believes that exempts her from doing the handful of dishes from tonight’s supper. I will soon prove how mistaken she is, especially when she takes a break to check texts and Twitter on her tablet.

A few steps will then ensue:
–I will attempt Daddy Logic first by saying “Since you’re not doing anything, go wash dishes”.
–She will ignore me.
–I will raise my voice slightly.
–She will ignore me.
–I will raise my voice slightly more.
–She will, at this point, remove one earphone–the one farthest away from me–and say “What?” in a way that indicates how annoying I’m being.
–I will repeat my request.
–She will snap that it’s impossible because she’s busy.
–I will tell her not to talk to me like that.
–She will snap that she doesn’t understand what “that” means.
–I will promise to turn off the Wi-Fi hub and cut her off from the net if she doesn’t go do the dishes “right now”.
–She will react with a huff.
–I will tell her not to huff at me.
–She will deny that she huffed at me.
–I will repeat my promise to unplug the W–Fi hub if she doesn’t go do the dishes.
–She will pretend she doesn’t care about using the net and return to checking texts because “teen logic”.
–I will unplug the Wi-Fi hub.
–She will panic and go do dishes.

She will, however, neither dry anything nor put anything away.

 

Sky Fall Brings the Ice and the Boots

Leave a reply

Okay, I admit it, the boots look silly, but so does sprawling on the pavement.

The worst part about getting to school after a big snow storm is the ice leftover because the city didn’t clear the sidewalk and because large sections of road don’t have sidewalks, just piles of icy slush.

I dug out my ancient hiking boots which, oddly, have actually been hiking a few times, but which I mostly use for snow. They are leather with random bits of Gore-Tex and I think I got them from REI when I was still in Niigata, making them over 16 years old.

Note: That tells you how infrequently they get used. They are the first shoes I ever bought over the internet and I was very happy they fit, which is why I’ve kept them so long.

The worst part of the walk is usually from our apartment to the main road, but today, the sidewalk was the easiest part of the walk. The worst part was the random glaze-ice traps along the street to our closest station and on the sidewalk from the station near the school to the school. I did a few fancy side steps, one forward moonwalk and one less than graceful Telemark-style slide.

I thought about taking the bus, but the lines were too long.

The worst trip to the school ever, though, involved frozen ice. We’d had snow, the snow had melted, then the snow had frozen and been topped, right before the start of the morning commute, with freezing rain. The streets and sidewalks both were a frozen mess. I trekked, in small steps, across seemingly endless fields of frozen slush before arriving at school.

About five minutes after I arrived at school I was told that school was delayed. A few minutes after that I was told school was cancelled because a lot of teachers couldn’t make it back in. Luckily, my English colleague arrived, and after a few minutes of him venting about Japanese drivers and ice, he gave me a ride to the station,

I managed to get home in one piece, but I was too exhausted after that trip to actually enjoy being home. I think ended up taking a nap.