My mood has shifted, lifted, and this afternoon as I was closing up the store I found myself singing “Singing in the Rain” (well, a variation slash medely by Mandy Patinkin I haven’t heard in ages) to myself, and found the words “happy once again” echoed in me, resonated within me. There are some reasons for this and some non-reasons as well. Some of them have to do with an escalating level of self-abuse culminating in enough pain and suffering and potential damage beyond my self and my possessions and into the lives of those around me and those I care about … that being what seems to get me to turn around. I can stand all manner of torture and damage being done to myself by myself, but when my pain, my “bad” moods, my destructive and confronting natures get out of hand and begin to be directed at others, it’s too much, and I can’t but stop myself. My self-loathing (as far as my life’s experience has shown me) is my business and my business alone, but when it extends to actions and words that affect other people, it becomes other peoples’ business, too.
And perhaps I want too much to maintain a barrier between myself and others or perhaps because I actually care about other people, I don’t want to allow my own internal troubles to find their way into other people’s lives.
Regardless, despite what disbelievers would say, the trick to being happy is to decide to be, and somewhere in the last day or two I must have made that decision, because I could literally feel the “bad” feelings and low mood flowing out of me… I slept a long night, did not think about how I felt all day, and by the end of it couldn’t keep myself from noticing how well I felt.
And then there was 30 or 50 minutes where I was working on an email to Laura and I didn’t feel so hot … likely because although I have decided to be happy and am happy, there are still unhappy and confused and confusing things in my life, complicated and perhaps painful things on the horizon… and deciding to be happy does not wash them away… well, not while one is dealing directly with them. Then I sent the email off, and before long, I felt right as rain again.
It’s getting cold … well, cold to me… Of course, it’ll only get colder … but last night it was mid to low 50’s in my bedroom for the bulk of the night and I had a heck of a time staying warm. I don’t know about you folks, but that’s too cold for me right now.
I suppose that in a month or two when the HIGHS are in the 50’s, my body will HAVE to adjust more to it, but … thinking about it, I think it’s just unnatural … I know my body runs within a couple of degrees of 100… 50 is HALF THAT… and I don’t like the idea of losing half my body’s heat, when I know that a difference of only a few degrees one way or the other of my internal temperature can boil my brain or permanently destroy my cells and organs. It just seems like a bad idea. Just because people are dumb enough to live in North Dakota where the average winter temperatures range down to 80 below zero doesn’t mean it isn’t a really bad idea.
Layering, layering, I know. Trap the heat in with insulation. Keep active. Stay inside. Except that … FUCK… until December I won’t have a place to sleep that has heat, so … staying inside means only a few degrees difference. Sigh. it feels like not very long ago I removed the wood stove and all its hardware from this room. I don’t particularly want to re-install it all for a month or two of heat. I suppose I’ll just stay layered 24/5.
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Tonight I took photos that my grandparents took on their recent trip to Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone, as well as some 2-yr-old photos from their Alaskan vacation that have gone unseen the entire time, from their digital source and put them into an (I think) easy-to use (though fully featured) DVD that they can play on the new DVD player they got for that very purpose. And made a copy for their friends who were with them on the recent trip. I set it up so they could hit one button and have it go through all the pictures for a particular trip automatically while playing (reasonably) appropriate instrumental music, or they could go through all the photos manually and silently, at their own pace. The slowest part of the whole process was encoding and burning the DVD, because even with iDVD 2 (the current version, iDVD 3, is $50, and frankly… I don’t burn that many DVDs) the process of putting together easy-to-use-and-understand DVD menus and photo slideshows, even with musical accompaniment, is easy. Nested menus are easy. And with the included themes (many, many more are included in iDVD 3) everything looks cohesive and appealing with very little thought required or work in other applications to generate backgrounds and choose fonts and create buttons and … it’s just easy. And the second copy burned in 5 minutes, since it was already encoded.
So, that was easy.
I did make one coaster, but am using the cheapest DVD-R discs I’ve ever even heard of… the computer spit it out as soon as it tried to initialize it, realising right away that it was no good.
And now I go to bed. Hopefully that woman will come back to the store tomorrow (okay, okay, I know I’m posting late… today) and buy that $1010 rug. Heck, I’ll give her up to 10% off if she wants to haggle. The money doesn’t go in my pocket, but it will help keep food in my belly and a roof over my head. I hope you all have a wonderful night and that those of you who aren’t … well, that you decide to be happy.
Teel, can you e-mail me (or post here) with a basic idea of how you put that DVD together? I’m curious to learn what the different options are for the process you are using. I have a friend that wants to do something similar to what you speak of as a side business, but she doesn’t really know what the best software would be. She is on a PC, but she seems to like to fling money around willy-nilly, so she may be willing to buy a Mac if it was the best option.
Tanks.
Teel, can you e-mail me (or post here) with a basic idea of how you put that DVD together? I’m curious to learn what the different options are for the process you are using. I have a friend that wants to do something similar to what you speak of as a side business, but she doesn’t really know what the best software would be. She is on a PC, but she seems to like to fling money around willy-nilly, so she may be willing to buy a Mac if it was the best option.
Tanks.
What I think is great is that Dad has tried to do this numerous times on his pc over at least the past year. And Teel (once he decides to do it) just sits down and gets it down in an evening using his Mac. If that isn’t a great advertisment I don’t know what is.
What I think is great is that Dad has tried to do this numerous times on his pc over at least the past year. And Teel (once he decides to do it) just sits down and gets it down in an evening using his Mac. If that isn’t a great advertisment I don’t know what is.