My original plan had been to go get some errands done, then clean out the garage a little more--beyond what we did to get the boat motor out--and free up some more room.
I actually ended up running the errands, coming home, and going to bed.
Wendesday night I woke up in pain and unable to move, so I called off work, took ibuprofen, and went back to bed. I then woke up again around 4 AM feeling better, so I made the above plans.
Every once in a while I get these stabbing stomach pains, and when I say "stabbing" I am not far from being literal--they hurt like someone's sticking something right into my stomach (and out my left side, when it's really bad). And nothing seems to modulate it; it comes and goes as it pleases, and neither bland diet nor antacid nor Nexium nor anti-anxiety medication seem to affect it.
These pains first struck me when I was 12. An upper GI revealed they were coming from my duodenum. Then they went away for a long time, finally coming back in 2001. When I went to see the doctor about them, she ran an EKG to make sure it wasn't my heart--well, it wasn't; it was my stomach.
The pain varies from mild to "just shoot me", and today it was somewhere in the middle, just above "I can't do any work". So I didn't go to work and I didn't get the garage cleaned out.
What I did get was 13 hours of sleep, though. Got home from the errands at 11, went to bed, and zonk. Suddenly it's almost midnight....
But in this state I have no appetite--not surprising, that--and no energy. Normally my stomach clock wakes me up, but today it let me sleep.
* * *
Having made a dent in about 10% of the garage, I really want to do more, though.
There's a lot of junk out there. I'm not talking about antique stuff; I'm talking about junk, stuff Dad didn't want thrown away because...because, uh, someone might want it.
*sigh* Depression mentality....
So we have a lot of junk in the garage which has zero utility or value, which we couldn't throw out because Dad wanted it saved. Well, Dad's in the Happy Hunting Grounds now, so he no longer has a veto, so I can finally throw some of the trash the hell out and reclaim some more garage for useful things. Or, at least, things which have the potential to be useful.
We have, for example, a folding bed frame out there. No folding mattress for it, though we do have the mattress for my bed there. (And I'd bet it's full of mice by now.)
This house has two sofas--one of which converts into a bed--and Dad's now-vacant bedroom with a nice new bed in it. If we really needed another mattress, we could get a self-inflating jobbie from K-mart or Target for not a lot of money that would have the added benefits of storing in a small space and not containing mice and/or hantavirus.
It's like the box springs I threw out a couple months ago. It was a twin-size box spring vintage 1955 which hadn't been used since the 1960s at least; and if anyone was going to use the bed that they were for, he would buy a new box spring for it which wasn't rusty and squeaky and didn't look like the junk it was. No one was ever going to use that junk. Out it went. It should have gone out
There's a bunch of stuff I won't toss. Okay, I realize that, for example, that ancient TV set--vintage, oh, 1952 to hazard a guess--is not junk, whether it works or not. The big table, that's not junk. I'm on the fence with regards to my paternal grandfather's fake fireplace, but there's plenty of stuff next to it that I know I can't get rid of.
But the cots that my Dad put in his 1988 Chevy pickup, which he traded in on the van he bought in 1995--the cots which bent the first time he tried to use them and never used again--why do we still have those? Dad didn't want them diposed of, so we had to keep them, despite the fact that they had never worked. Those cots--the cloth got removed and the aluminum will be recycled.
There's an assload of other stuff in there that I'm itching to get rid of. Some of it will require a "command decision" from Mom but if she says it can go, it will go. And I'm not talking about useful stuff; otherwise I would contemplate a garage sale. No, I am talking about JUNK.
* * *
In this vein, then, I've been thinking about getting a trailer hitch put on the Jeep, and then going to Harbor Freight and buying one of their 4x4 trailers--they're running about $150 right now. It'd be great for hauling away the junk in the garage; and when it came time to, for example, take the '86 Fiero's engine to the machine shop, I wouldn't have to dirty up the interior of the truck to do it. I could use it to haul my dirt bike to places where I could actually ride it, too, which would be fun.
Naturally it'd end up costing me a bit more than $150. I'd be buying a spare tire, of course, and I'd have to put some money into building a bed and sides for the thing. But $150's not a bad price to start from, and it would be really useful, and it would be light enough that I could park it on the back patio, out of the way.
I keep thinking about building a small trailer and have to realize that I'd probably spend $150 before I even got one piece of steel attached to another, just in parts--axle, hitch, etc--so the only thing that would get me would be a bit more flexibility in the design.
So, right now, the only real issue is finding a hitch for the truck and finding time to build a trailer and install a hitch. Well, maybe if I wasn't sleeping 13 hours at a stretch....
* * *
We had some rain and I finally established that the Jeep's rear axle is not limited slip. Oh well. Guess you don't really need it when you've got four-wheel-drive....
* * *
Crete has become noisier. I used to be able to sit on the back patio and enjoy quiet nature; now it's only quiet when:
- no trains
- no cars
- no morons with stupid-loud bass anywhere in a half-mile radius
- no airplanes
- no unmuffled motorcycles
Well, winter's a-comin', and with the vinyl siding covering a half-inch of high-density insulating foam, it's a lot quieter inside the house, anyway.
* * *
I found all the folding chairs that I've bought over the years during my little excavation, the other day. All of them, which I wasn't able to find when I wanted them earlier.
They should have been put in the basement, not in the garage; but I fixed that error.
* * *
Border's is trying to avoid getting my money.
When I go to that place to buy manga I have specific titles and volume numbers in mind. They've not bothered to re-stock what I'm looking for; I was last there three weeks ago and the selection of titles has not changed.
I want Someday's Dreamers 4; they only have 1. I want Strawberry Marshmallow 5; they're totally out. I want Here is Greenwood 3; they only have 1.
I did buy Suzuka 5, but I think that's as far as that series goes right now, so I have no reason to go back there for at least a couple months, now.
I looked in vain for Pretty Cure, but I don't think that's even being marketed here. (Yet, anyway.) I thought it was--maybe it was, by TokyoPop (neé Mixx)--but if it ever was, it's not now. *sigh*
And there's nothing else I want to buy. The SF market is pretty crappy right now--there is nothing new I want to read out there.
The current stable of SF writers just leaves me cold. Greg Benford (I think it was Benford) believes "global warming=man-made=apocalypse"; I can't take him seriously. Kim Robinson writes books about manned space exploration but personally believes that manned space exploration is a waste of money that would be better spent "on Earth". Bear--I haven't read anything of his since he blew up the Earth, and his books were always kind of iffy in my estimation anyway. Gibson's a hack. I haven't read a single work of his that I enjoyed.
The same goes for "straight" fiction and "spy thrillers". Clancy lost whatever edge he had. Clive Cussler's books about Dirk Pitt's son leave me just as cold as his "also wik" books written about So-and-so Austin; it took me weeks to get through Polar Shift--me, the guy who can read a Clancy novel cold in one weekend.
Jim Butcher's Dresden Files books are excellent, but his fantasy epic--the name of which I haven't bothered to store in permanent memory--does not interest me. I read the samples included with the Dresden books and said "no".
Fantasy, pretty much as a rule, does not appeal to me. There are very few exceptions to that rule and they are all considered major works to one extent or another. Certainly Little Miss Tuffet's "ZOMGDragonWizardElf!" book will only annoy me rather than entertain me. (Robert Jordan? Pfft, whatev.)
Nonfiction? What am I going to do, start reading political books again? I discovered something about them: they're either so viscous they keep you from getting any entertainment from them (Bork and Nixon) or so thin you burn through them in a couple of hours (Goldberg, O'Reilly). That's on the conservative side, anyway; I won't read the liberal side because they way they play fast and loose with facts is invariably too infuriating.
It's why I spend so much time on the internet, both reading and writing. First, it doesn't cost me anything; second, I can find what I want pretty easily.
* * *
Last year at this time I really wanted to get an N-scale train set. Having bought one in January--and having bought extra track and a good transformer--it's gathered dust. *sigh* I was going to build a small model railroad but apparently that only lasted until I'd "played trains" a bit.
I still get Model Railroader and Trains every month, and still read them, and still think, "Man, that's cool" but I just haven't had any desire to go any further. Argh etc.
* * *
Well, there are fresh anime torrents up for series I'm following. That stuff's not going to download itself! Later.
