Thursday 27 January 2005

Pic of the day: My initial reaction to today's news was similar to this screenshot from the anime Ah! My Goddess!.

Revolting developments

These things just happen to coincide, but they don't exactly make each other better.

First, yesterday my left big toe hurt quite a bit around the nail. It did not get better during the night. Today I soaked it in soap water for a while but noticed no improvement. It had certainly not improved during the workday, quite the opposite, as can be expected. In the evening I added some antiseptic salve around the nail and put on some gauze and medical paper tape. What it likes best, actually, is to not have socks on, much less shoes. That makes it feel better.

***

The other new thing was a visit from the landlady, informing me that a woman from the realtor would arrive on Wednesday to find out how much the house was worth. They are not selling quite yet, but clearly it is moving that way. It is not in preparation for a new loan, but for selling. I do have the right to a few month's warning (I believe this if 4 months, but they believe it is 2 or 3. We'll see how it plays out).

Obviously the landlord & lady wants the place to look as good as possible for the visit. I am a lot less motivated. Even so, it is time to clean up the place a bit. Over 15 years I have accumulated a lot of stuff, some of which I would be better off without. There is however no way I can get rid of it in less than a week. I'll fill the trash cans and carry off several bags of comics to the city where a second-hand shop can sell them, but that's pretty much it.

There are two computers and a couple printers that are in such a state of disrepair that I could as well throw them away. Oh yes, and a server and an old largish tape streamer. But they are special garbage and I don't even know where to hand them in for safe destruction (to not pollute the world with heavy metals and stuff). The shop that sold them doesn't even exist anymore, that's where we are supposed to deliver stuff like that.

Then there's 100++ computer games, originals with manuals and boxes. Most of them are for the IBM AT and compatibles, or early 386 machines. This was when I had my computer games buying fads, often buying several games a month. Later I have gradually acquired a few games that are so good that I don't need any else. I usually buy a couple games a year, but this includes sequels such as "Sims 2" and "Civilization III". Also a couple expansion packs each year. But this is all very moderate. Now, what shall I do about the 100 that are too old to play on current machines? I ought to throw them away. I ought to have done that long ago. But it just feels so wrong, not just because I paid so much for them but because of all the happy memories. (Never mind that I didn't play them through, most of them.)

And 15 years of Scientific American. It feels like burning books, throwing away those. Never mind that the last 11 years of SciAm is availabe online for a moderate fee ($40 a year) and that anything older than that is well past its half-life as scientific truth. I simply have to at least read them all first, from cover to cover. Never mind that I haven't touched them in years. Or even seen them, in some cases, as they have been covered by newer magazines for quite a while.

How about my American comics? I have no intention of getting rid of those. I would rather keep them until Alzheimers makes them good as new again, or at least until I can hand them over to a new generation. Well, that used to be how I felt at least. In truth, it's not like I ever read them. Just looking at them is enough to remember them, I have a pretty good memory for such things. There is probably twice my weight with the stuff, taking up a corner of my living room even when packed in plastic bags.

And why do I keep talking? Time would be too short for me if I should mention my bags of music CDs (some people actually don't steal their music), my stacks of burned anime CDs and DVDs (some people actually steal their anime instead, well at least when it's not available in English officially) and the almost complete works of Margit Sandemo (except one novel in the Ice Folk series, which had a too indecent cover to buy at a shop with female cash register operators, which they pretty much all are). Or the old broken stereo equipment. Or the old broken furniture, not limited to the office equipment SuperWoman's father suddenly placed here when moving out of his old offices 10+ years ago.

***

To make the day complete, I had an attack of the weird syndrome I sometimes call "darkening". It is a sequence of events usually starting with light queasiness or abdominal pain, followed by pretty strong intestinal pain and diarrhea accompanied by shivering as from intense cold. I actually use to put on a lot of clothes, it helps. Afterwards my face grows burning hot and I become acutely sleepy, to the point where I basically collapse in a chair and sleep there for anything from a few minutes to an hour. I refer to it as "darkening" because during the cold phase the room often seems to become visibly darker, although this is obviously in the eye of the beholder.

This evening's attack was not among the worst. They are always bad enough that in the end I wonder if I'll survive, but that period was quite brief this time. So it's all good. It doesn't happen every week, but probably every month at least. If I live long enough, I will surely get used to this too.

I will do what I can to live that long and a few decades more. But I'm not likely to do so at the same place much longer, more's the pity. This is the best place I've lived since I moved out from home, more than 30 years ago.