Sunday 8 August 1999
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Pic of the day: My "workplace" at home, as seen from my side.
I guess this should give one meaning of the title "Chaos Node".
Inspiration for this picture (which is not arranged)
comes from a question on the journal-l mailing list about how our
workplace looked. I wasn't entirely sure people would believe it
without seeing it.
The yellowish paper hanging on the wall is cut out from the newspaper
"Firda" in May 1988. The headline is "kjenner meg utbrend" (I feel
burned out) and presumably described pretty accurately how I felt
at that time. It is far less descriptive of my life now. Since
then I have slowly regained my vitality. An important reason is,
I accepted that I have limits. I am not some incarnation with a
heavenly mandate to do the impossible. (Though it still feels good
occasionaly to perform some minor miracle, typically involving a
computer...)
It rained! It actually rained! I was just sitting here wading through a swollen mailing list when I heard a strange sound from outside. I stretched and peeked out a window that was not hidden by two layers of curtains. Water was falling down! Have you ever seen the rain? I slid into a pair of old shoes and ran out into the rain. The air was full of summer smells trapped in the rain like a perfume, evaporating as it struck the warm ground, wafting up all around me. Raindrops kept falling on my head ... in my hair, I mean ... cooling me down. Others were decorating my T shirt with a curious pattern, expanding randomly. I walked slowly, holding my palms up for the rain to kiss with its gleaming wet lips.
And then the rain grew softer, until it was all gone. On the road,
raging rivers blocked the way for ants for a while yet as I wound my way
home. The first gleam of the sun caught me as I walked to the front
door.
While eating away on the queue of inbound mailing lists, I happened on a highly off-topic message in the diary-l list. It announced the advent of the Caveman scenario for Civilization II. I rushed to download it, of course. You know me and Civilization. I guess those pop shrinks were right after all about my psychological profile being that of an architect. Oh well. It turned out that the scenario was for the MultiPlayer Gold version of Civ2, whereas I have the previous one, Fantastic Worlds. The scenario would not run. I solved this by copying most of the files to another folder and run a normal game there. So I missed out on the scenario spesific goodies, but I still have a caveman civilization, with tech advances like "no poop in cave" leading to the more advanced "nice cave". It rocks! Despite trying out the game, I have also managed to get fairly current on the inbound messages. Few of them are for me personally, so I can just skim. My throat is sore and I'm still very sleepy, so common sense dictates that I crawl to bed now. If I'm still around tomorrow, I should return to work and find how things have been going without me, and whether Ageless Girl caught her plane, and whether the rain I hear outside again has come to stay. Peace be with you and with all the people! |