destiny trip
i am: present and accounted for
listening to: gel-sol, raneboze
drinking: british blend tea
well, i haven't rambled here in awhile. i've been sort of detached since the beginning of the year, haven't had any thoughts interesting enough to string into intelligible sentences, so i've been using facebook a little bit more for my inane little updates. facebook makes it so easy for updates to be little. i'm skellorg there if you're there and we haven't found each other.
and yet here i am, getting ready to bemoan succumbing to, suffering with and fighting off a persistent case of viral bronchitis. i'm so tired of coughing and blowing my nose. i've gone through a box of tissues a day for the past week and a half. for a couple of days i was wheezing so loud that i was keeping myself awake. thankfully that stage has passed, and i'm even more thankful that my labyrinthitis has calmed down because i can't imagine dealing with the misery of that on top of this.
i'm still plodding through manuscripts. i finally finished what i thought was the last one (this story is getting old) only to discover a couple that are specific to the plague at the harvard university library, so i grabbed those and am working through them. they're relatively brief considering some of the others i've worked through though, so by the end of february i'll be ready to start dissecting and organizing the material. i'm both looking forward to and dreading that task.
ironically, my progress was waylaid by the purchase of a new/better/faster system. i took advantage of the after christmas sales and a generous check from my parents and finally broke down and bought myself a new computer. it was sorely needed and i'm very pleased. specs for those of you who may be interested: intel quad-core processor, 6GB RAM, 650GB HD, vista home premium (64-bit) OS, and a 19" wide flat/LCD monitor. i can now render fractals at twice the size at 1/4 the time it was taking me on my old system, which is amazing. after three weeks of playing with it, i've come to the (personal) determination that vista has gotten a bad rap. or maybe i was just lucky in that everything i have works okay with it, or had a simple solution. it may help that every piece of hardware i own is HP (well, other than my external HD, and router.) oh, right. how soon i put that angst behind me. getting the network up and running was as joyful as it was the first time. at first i blamed the problem on getting vista-64 to communicate with XP-home, but it turned out that my linksys range expander had died an untimely death.
i've been listening to a lot of different music lately. i found a radio station called "mixing of particulate solids" out of bratislava/slovakia that i've been listening to for most of my waking hours. i've never listened to much experimental ambient electronica or techno-whatever ... i have no idea what to call this stuff, honestly. i've found it to be a good alternate to classical, which i usually have streaming in the background when i'm transcribing. so, i've been listening to a lot of falling you and gel-sol, and many more whose names i haven't taken down. it's good to expand my musical horizons, especially at my advanced age. ;)
and that's me updated.
today's reading: since last updating i finished my re-read of ed mcbain's fat ollie's book and am well on my way to finishing up company of liars by karen maitland, which isn't as good as the reviews lead me to believe it would be.
listening to: gel-sol, raneboze
drinking: british blend tea
well, i haven't rambled here in awhile. i've been sort of detached since the beginning of the year, haven't had any thoughts interesting enough to string into intelligible sentences, so i've been using facebook a little bit more for my inane little updates. facebook makes it so easy for updates to be little. i'm skellorg there if you're there and we haven't found each other.
and yet here i am, getting ready to bemoan succumbing to, suffering with and fighting off a persistent case of viral bronchitis. i'm so tired of coughing and blowing my nose. i've gone through a box of tissues a day for the past week and a half. for a couple of days i was wheezing so loud that i was keeping myself awake. thankfully that stage has passed, and i'm even more thankful that my labyrinthitis has calmed down because i can't imagine dealing with the misery of that on top of this.
i'm still plodding through manuscripts. i finally finished what i thought was the last one (this story is getting old) only to discover a couple that are specific to the plague at the harvard university library, so i grabbed those and am working through them. they're relatively brief considering some of the others i've worked through though, so by the end of february i'll be ready to start dissecting and organizing the material. i'm both looking forward to and dreading that task.
ironically, my progress was waylaid by the purchase of a new/better/faster system. i took advantage of the after christmas sales and a generous check from my parents and finally broke down and bought myself a new computer. it was sorely needed and i'm very pleased. specs for those of you who may be interested: intel quad-core processor, 6GB RAM, 650GB HD, vista home premium (64-bit) OS, and a 19" wide flat/LCD monitor. i can now render fractals at twice the size at 1/4 the time it was taking me on my old system, which is amazing. after three weeks of playing with it, i've come to the (personal) determination that vista has gotten a bad rap. or maybe i was just lucky in that everything i have works okay with it, or had a simple solution. it may help that every piece of hardware i own is HP (well, other than my external HD, and router.) oh, right. how soon i put that angst behind me. getting the network up and running was as joyful as it was the first time. at first i blamed the problem on getting vista-64 to communicate with XP-home, but it turned out that my linksys range expander had died an untimely death.
i've been listening to a lot of different music lately. i found a radio station called "mixing of particulate solids" out of bratislava/slovakia that i've been listening to for most of my waking hours. i've never listened to much experimental ambient electronica or techno-whatever ... i have no idea what to call this stuff, honestly. i've found it to be a good alternate to classical, which i usually have streaming in the background when i'm transcribing. so, i've been listening to a lot of falling you and gel-sol, and many more whose names i haven't taken down. it's good to expand my musical horizons, especially at my advanced age. ;)
and that's me updated.
today's reading: since last updating i finished my re-read of ed mcbain's fat ollie's book and am well on my way to finishing up company of liars by karen maitland, which isn't as good as the reviews lead me to believe it would be.