My doctor commented that it was quite a time since he had seen me. I assured him that I was happy at work and overall in good shape. But, I pointed out, there had to be some excuse for sneaking away during work hours to see him. And so I told him the sad story of me suddenly having to get up before the alarm to empty my bladder, starting in January / February this year.

(The truth is that I don’t need to do that most nights now in summer. I assume I am simply sweating that much more. Although I would not mind if whatever had just plain reversed itself.)

The questionnaire he gave me almost made me ashamed to complain. Evidently there is a list of rather severe symptoms, and some patients have to get up five times a night! 0_0

Anyway, I got an appointment for Thursday morning to draw a blood sample, so they can test for the prostate cancer protein. To be honest, I am not sure what I would do if they found it. I have seen several serious-looking articles that say there is no statistically significant difference in mortality with early treatment of that particular cancer, unlike most others. The biopsy and treatment between them are as dangerous as the cancer, on average.  Well, hopefully there will be no indication of cancer, there or anywhere else.  I thought it was a good idea to be ahead of the curve or some such, but who knows.  Also, tomatoes and walking are better than I imagined.

The doctor did in fact ask me whether I still took walks. He must have made notes when I spoke with him in the past. Or perhaps he says that to everyone who has functioning legs. He is notoriously eager to get people to exercise, it seems he believes this to be a panache, a universal cure for all illness. And it also seems he is pretty much right.

A further appointment is made for June 24 for a prostate enlargement check.  I would only be mildly surprised if the problem was entirely disappeared by then. Well, if I am able to keep walking an hour a day until then. I did it today too. Seriously, what is up with using less calories to move faster for the same amount of time? Am I developing yet another superpower?  In addition to my ability to… oh wait, I haven’t told.

See, here in Norway we have a chocolate snack called Nonstop. I believe it is similar to Skittles, although the core is made of milk chocolate in all cases. The hard sugar shell tastes slightly differently depending on the color. Anyway, this snack comes in small bags, and the size I have bought lies comfortably in a grown man’s hand, and has a weight that is just about right to throw at a coworker.  If the bag is not opened beforehand, there is a good chance that the content will not spill all over the room. Depending on whether she throws it back, eats it, or neither of the above, you can estimate her opinion on the relationship between you. Or so I would assume, I have not even considered trying. I just wanted to describe roughly the size and weight of the packaging, since I failed to write down the weight.

Anyway, I have one of those small bags at work. Admittedly it is behind me, so that it does not distract me unless I feel like eating something sweet, which is not uncommon. But the thing is, one of those hand-sized bags lasts me for a week or more.  That’s because, despite the name “Nonstop”, I actually do stop after a few of them instead of waking up when the bag is empty. So that is my superpower. The blood sample is not going to reveal my secret power, I suspect, because it is probably not mutation but magic. I mean, it certainly sounds like magic, right? ^_^

There’s a lot of trouble to go through to live on Earth! If it is not upgrading computer software and maintaining their hardware, it is doing the same for the body.

I gave up on the hard disk. It would be literally months to recover its magnetic patterns, even if it did not continue to fall apart each day. So I tried installing Windows XP on the SSD, at a point when the computer would not recognize the usual C: drive. This worked quite well, but since it was from the CD of an older computer, I could only have it for 30 days. So I decided to make the jump to Windows 7 anyway, while I was at it.  I bought it from the Microsoft Store and downloaded it. I tried at first to convert to 64 bits at the same time (so I could use all 4 GB of the memory rather than just 3.25 GB), but it did not accept that.

I spent a good part of yet another day, but at least now the computer is running flawlessly and has done so for several hours. The operating system and the most commonly used programs are all on the SSD, meaning that they run a bit faster than from a hard disk. The programs I have on the SSD are that game City of Heroes, the web browser Opera, and Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition.

I have also installed yWriter, the modular novel writing software that is my favorite for writing fiction. Although, truth be told, I installed it on the hard drive: It is already lightning fast and is so small that it loads before I can draw a deep breath. Impressive little  gem from Simon Haynes, himself a published author of several books. Of course, most people won’t need yWriter since they don’t write novels. Yet.

Oh, and let us not forget Irfanview, a program to view pictures and do simple changes to them. It is what I use to resize pictures for the journal, among other things. Again, there is no need to speed this up.

***

You may question the wisdom of upgrading the operating system when the hardware is well past its “best before” date, and actually falling apart. But as it happens, I think the new operating system will deal better with the ailing hardware. And of course, I am trying to do the same with my own body: Upgrade its operating system even as the hardware is gradually failing.

There is no denying that I am past my youth. I walked only for half an hour today, as my guts were unstable and hurt a bit. But today again my legs were stiff and tired, much like yesterday. Seriously, legs? You are not 80 years old. You should be able to fully recover over the course of a night from something as casual as walking for an hour, or five quarters. If I had been running, you might have some excuse for complaining. Now, none at all. Shape up already!

But be that as it may, I will seek to upgrade the operating system of my mind, to use the metaphor I used back in June 2005. Not just the content, but the way it works, the whole way of thinking and feeling and seeing the world. So that, when the hardware of my body spins down for the last time, the  backup copy in Heaven will be suitable to install in a new, improved model with as little modification as possible.  Well, that’s my aspiration. If it were to happen soon, I suspect there would be some serious adaptations to be made. But if I live, I hope that at least some of those changes can begin already here. It is not like eternity will start years from now. It has been going on for quite a while!

And so, I upgrade fragile things, maintain them as best I can, and hope.

Behold, from out of Heaven there shone a holy light! Or something.

I have written several entries about enlightenment, but I am not happy enough about them to upload them. Basically, my position is that people in the West tend to think the Eastern spirituality is some kind of shortcut, while the opposite is closer to the truth. Everyone here knows (or at least did until recently) that if you were to become serious about Christianity, Judaism or Islam, your life would be changed beyond recognition, and it would not all be fun and fluffy. Sacrifices, at least from the viewpoint of the worldly mind, would be sure to happen. Young people seem to think this is not the case with Eastern enlightenment. They should chat a little with the monks of that area before making their final decision.

I, however, make no claim to Great Enlightenment. I don’t even chop wood and carry water, although that would probably be good for my health. Instead I keep walking. Yesterday I walked for an hour or so, 650 calories.  That was only marginally more than the day before, and the exact same route that I usually walk each Saturday (to the shop and back). So imagine my surprise when I got up today and my legs were slightly stiff.  Not so much that it made it difficult for me to do the usual things, and not painful enough to distract me from work, but noticeable. Why now, all of a sudden?

Well, that is not going to stop me so easily. So today I walked a few minutes longer, past the shop and to the old church. I played evergreens (including Greensleeves, one of my all-time favorites) on my Android phone. I have Spotify installed there, an app that streams music, so I don’t need to store the music on the phone.

Anyway, it was a gray and overcast afternoon, quite opposite of what the newspapers had predicted. This was my first time seeing the church there, it is old and not really very impressive looking. But when I stopped outside the gate, for the only time on the whole trip a tiny hole opened in the cloud cover and for a few seconds the sunlight streamed down on me and the church. Then the clouds closed again. I am not sure whether to be amused, encouraged or creeped out. ^_^;

I am not a big fan of the Lutheran church which is completely dominant around here, but hey, it is a place where people have come together for numerous generations to worship God and praise my Lord Jesus Christ, so I reckon it can’t be all bad.  This particular location certainly felt like it had a goodness about it. For the short time I was within its yard, I could not even feel the stiffness and tiredness in my legs. It resumed when I left though.

I spent about an hour and a quarter walking, altogether, and burned about 75o calories.

Did not go out walking today since it rained all afternoon. Spent some time on the exercise bike though.

It has been overcast with frequent rain for the last half or so of May, and chillier than April. I enjoy this, of course. I am weak to heat. Also, if there is a small hole in the clouds where the sun shines through, it is a good bet that it shines on me. That is the kind of guy I am. Or perhaps I am just more likely to notice it. Probably. ^_^

Summer should arrive tomorrow afternoon or the day after.

Spinrite ran on my machine from bedtime yesterday until I came home today.  It managed to recover “most of” a couple dozen bad sectors. This may seem like an accomplishment, but this was on my OS partition. Recovering “most of” programs and system files means they contain some garbage while still looking usable, which means there is a pretty high risk they will send the computer careening into sheer madness if they ever get called upon.

This also came to pass. At the end of the day, Windows would not even boot. I tried to repair it with the original disk from one of the older XP machines. It gave up at 40%, but miraculously it has actually worked (and fast, too) after that. Well, there is the occasional sudden pause, but overall it is the best it has been in weeks, I think. Of course, you hear about terminally ill patients getting a lucid moment before the end…

***

This was where the machine crashed for the night. And a little later, so did I. ^_^