Well, here I am again, making a late-night post. Later than I should really be up, I suppose, but … here I am. I just turned my electric blanket on, so I’m waiting for it to warm up before I climb under the covers. I figure I’ll type for about twenty minutes and then … try to sleep.
Friday we’re supposed to be up and around and on the road before 9:30AM. Now, today I got up at around 8AM, so I know that’s possible. I also know that I feel pretty awful, like the whole day was spent recovering from not sleeping enough. I don’t know if other people get it, but in addition to burning eyes and some loss of accuracy, I get an awful metallic taste in my mouth when I don’t get enough sleep. And then there was the intense, acute upper back pain. That sucked. Around 1:30 the back pain got to be too much, so I took a second handful or pills and after a few minutes resolved to lay down flat on my bed until they kicked in. And them proceeded to sleep until supper time, around 3 hours later. But when I woke up, my back was in reasonably good condition.
Anyway, let’s see how I did on my list of things to do today, from yesterday:
Wake up,
do exercize,
eat breakfast,
start my laundry,
trim trees,
check the mail,
take Don Quixote back to the library, unread,
re-drill my holes,
eat lunch,
dry first laundry,
start more laundry,
trim trees more,
maybe work on the mobile some,
(if available) play video game/watch movies,
dry second laundry,
eat supper,
program exercize webpage,
make another long post,
fold & put away all laundry,
research bible study topics,
…
Though not in that order, so much. Oh, and other things happened. Like, the washing machine broke down in the middle of my second load, so late in the day I took it down to the local laundromat to run it through a wash cycle to get it rinsed out well, then brought it home to dry it. And I didn’t get to the second round of tree-trimming, because of the sleeping. And I re-drilled my holes after supper, while my laundry was drying. And while I received all three Netflix DVDs and have watched them entirely, I’m going to spend some more time with one of them before I send it back. I tried getting a good copy of it made while watching the others, but … ran into problems. Anyway, I’m testing something with Zoe’s copy of Alien4, and if that works, I should be able to get the Netflix DVD copied before the last mail truck tomorrow, and we can keep up a rapid pace on the turnaround. For the record:
Netflix progress:
1. Jim Henson’s The Storyteller, Sent 124.1, In 131.1
2. Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, Sent 124.1, In 131.1, Out 132.1
3. Lost In La Mancha, Sent 124.1, In 131.1, Out 132.1
In the future, I will abbreviate Sent, In, Out, and Received to S, I, O, & R, and after the first time each title appears, will abbreviate to the numbers, ie, if The Meaning of Life shows up as received by Netflix on 134.1, you would see this:
2. S124.1, I131.1, O132.1, R134.1
Which may not mean much to you at first glance, but which is pretty easily used to track times spent at each step of each disc. So that when I get to 500 discs, like I said before, I can put together spreadsheets pretty quickly. Hey. I may change it. You’ll know.
What else? For those of you who don’t know, the movie Lost In La Mancha is a documentary about the failure of Terry Gilliam and crew to produce a movie based on the book I couldn’t get through and returned to the library today, Don Quixote. I’ll try to read that book again in a few years. I’m too all over the place to get through it right now, but I do want to get through it.
But I did get to read the first 30 pages of The Hours while waiting for my laundry at the laundromat. So that’s good. And I’ll be reading Life of Pi after that. And … I don’t know what else. I’ve bought a lot of used books recently, at great rates, and I need to figure out how to prioritize them. I’m thinking of reading Farenheit 451 and 1984 soon; I’ve never read them before, and realize that this is me missing out on an important and shared chunk of popular culture. Oh, and then some Grisham and Ludlum.
What else? It looks like it’s over with for now, but the other night I was watching Comedy Central and at precisely 1AM, it (and all other Viacom channels, ie: about 40% of the channels I care about) went off the air, replaced by a message from Dish Network that they weren’t willing to pay Viacom’s increased rates. They recommended that I call Viacom and plead that they “be reasonable” and not ask for so much money. Except, well… let me put this another way. A week ago, before we got local (network) channels added to my lineup, Viacom channels represented 60% of all the channels I cared about on the lineup. 60 Channels, they could drop 50 of them and not reduce my experience, they drop 5 or 6 of the right ones and cripple my interest in their service. I’ve longed for a long time to be able to select, on a channel by channel basis, what I’m paying for in a cable lineup. Comedy Central, MTV (and friends), SciFi, Cartoon Network, and network TV are just about all I care to watch. Ever. Sometimes, rarely, a little CNN Headline News, but those other 10 “news” channels I have are just … a waste. I get more news in half an hour of The Daily Show than if I watched raw CNN all day long. I can tolerate CNN Headline News a bit because I can watch 12 minutes of it once a week and not miss a single important story. The rest of the time, they’re just repeating and filling.
Anyway, due to a price dispute between Dish Network and Viacom, my favorite channels disappeared and Dish Network wanted me to harass Viacom. Except I wanted to call and harass Dish Network, and to call Viacom and recommend that they ask for more money, in response to Dish Network’s bad behaviour. It’s like they don’t get it. In fact, considering how quickly the channels are back on the air, I suspect (or is that hope?) that Dish Network had such a negative response to pulling the channels that they bowed to Viacom’s demands. If all the sports channels move into a ‘pay’ tier and a few value-less channels disappear entirely, no problem. Eventually, hopefully, the networks will get upgraded to the point where I can choose channel by channel. Here I go, looking forward to further segmentation of the markets…
And I’ve also decided that I’ve typed too long here. I’m getting thick in the head and I’ve got to lie down again. I’ll be back tomorrow night to post, and then Friday… Friday I shall be dragged up and down and all around the countryside, doing the things that other people want to do. But I’ll be able to wish Angela a happy birthday in person, I may be able to buy a nice map or two, and perhaps yet another motorized abrasive tool. We’ll see how things go, and how I feel on Saturday.
Perhaps I’ll get to programming that exercizes page next week. I certainly didn’t exercize today. Well, unless you consider climbing around in and pruning trees exercize or carrying things from the mobile to the warehouse exercize. Perhaps I’ll exercize tomorrow. Between the tree trimming and everything else, I may be able to squeeze it in. Of course, I’ll have to do the full set instead of the split set, to make up for missing today. But that’s okay, because I was scheduled not to exercize on Friday anyway.
Did I say I was going to sleep?
I’m going to sleep.
Good night.
