Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

What even is time?

2020-04-30T12:50:04Z

I just looked at my open tabs, and then moused over the time shown at the bottom of my screen to check whether today was Friday or Saturday.

No, it's Thursday. That's not a problem, exactly--there's nothing I'm forgetting to do--but indicative of how weird things have gotten.

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Decluttering

2012-07-02T02:45:13Z

I have slowly been getting rid of papers I don't need anymore, where "slowly" includes going through some stuff and then stopping for long periods. Last weekend I was talking about this, and some of what I had done recently, and that I had hit an entire box full of old letters, and hadn't even taken a deep breath and checked whether it was that or another ten years of extremely out of date bank statements.

papersky started to offer me advice/support about not needing to keep so many old things, and I explained that I knew this already and being told again didn't help. But it turns out not to have hurt, either. With a few days more time between me and opening that box; the desire to stay in the air conditioning today; and an attitude-shifting post from green_knight, I took another stab at it. Green_knight's suggestion (which wasn't intended as such, she was posting about her own current decluttering) is not to set any goal of how much to get rid of or how much will be left, but to think in terms of looking at things, with "decide later" as explicitly allowed, and counting any amount > 0 of things gotten rid of as an achievement, rather than having to get rid of at least a certain amount to count the project as successful.

I didn't open most of the envelopes, just looked at who they were from. I kept a bunch of letters from my best friend from high school, who I hadn't even thought of in years, and threw away everything from other people I knew in high school. I saved a few letters from my grandparents, a couple from someone I dated in college, and a few others. A lot of other people's letters, I didn't feel the need to keep: I hadn't so much made a deliberate decision back in the 1980s, as thrown a lot of things into a box. (Mostly it's letters from specific people, but I also found a grade report for a college course I took my senior year of high school; I thought briefly about hanging onto that and then remembered that I have my B.A., so transfer credits don't matter.) The startling thing wasn't the random "why do I have a postcard from this person?" but "who is this person who I keep finding letters from?" Names that ring no bell at all, but apparently 25 years ago we corresponded regularly enough that I've got a dozen envelopes with their return address.

At some point I may look at the letters I kept; for now, it's enough to know that I have these. But right now, a third of a shoebox full seems to be enough, at least from that epoch. (Maybe I'll flip through the stack of fanzine letters of comment on the bookshelf and try consolidating.)

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Better late than never

2011-03-30T23:57:39Z

We just hung a full-sized 2011 wall calendar in the kitchen, replacing the 2010 calendar that had been lurking there, showing its December page, for the last four months.

The calendar only went up today because it only got here today. This is not the vendor's fault. I ordered this calendar online last week, from calendars.com, which was having a sale on the remaining 2011 calendars. The stock is somewhat thin by now, but we only needed one calendar. So I got a calendar with pictures of U.S. national park scenery. (I have had a miniature wall calendar hanging on my desk since the first week in January.) And if we haven't gotten a 2012 calendar in a store by mid-December, I will go online and get both a wall calendar and a mini for my desk so they'll be here by early January and I don't spend four months looking at the same picture of red leaves.

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Standard time

2010-11-07T23:37:08Z

We are now back on standard time. I slept very well last night, though I'm not sure how much that had to do with the time-change: the clock said 9:15 when I woke, meaning I'd slept about ten hours, and it was a good, smooth ten (the night before I was restless, and hence did not sleep enough). Right now I'm at the point of feeling that things are vaguely off, because what the clock says doesn't match what my body is feeling.

I did a bit of balance and other exercise earlier. When did I turn into someone who feels odd if she doesn't exercise at least a little every day unless she's traveling? (My usual walking doesn't count, apparently.) Not that I never exercise on the road, but I don't feel the same need. (Though it may depend on the shape of travel; I'll tend to do a little when I'm visiting adrian_turtle, but not at Wiscon.)

I just tried out Twinings' lemon-and-ginger herb tea, which sounded very promising. It smelled promising. It tasted quite bland; with some honey it tasted mostly of honey. I am going to try brewing it a little longer, and with less water to the teabag, next time: the flavor wasn't bad, just weak.

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