It is 10:19 AM on Tuesday November 26th, 2019. This is the Thanksgiving holiday week and in my line of work a slow time. Nobody wants to work this week and I certainly don’t want to cause any work for my customers. I only receive about two or three e-mails I need to take action on so again, it is quite slow.
This morning started off productively: I got out of bed at 4:30 and finally got a workout in. The day always starts off better when I get that morning exercise in. It is hard to get out of bed though and with karate my body is already often pretty tired. I wrote an e-mail or two and then thought it would be a good idea to go get the Thanksgiving food before the supermarket became extremely crowded and hectic. I got some gas, went to the car wash, went to Safeway and then to Sun Valley market for the turkey. We always get our turkey from there as they are fresh, never frozen and from California.
I thought yesterday would be slow and I’d have time to get a post up but it actually became pretty busy. I did have a number of items to get done for work and after that there were a bunch of things that needed completing. As usual the tasks piled up with one of them being an update for WordPress. I have four separate blogs and so have to do the updates on each of them. Updating is always a bit stressful because you hope things don’t break. This time there was only one error which turned out to be an old plugin that just needed deleting. With WordPress 90% of the errors are a problem with a plugin. I learned a long time ago to keep my website rather spartan without any modifications because updates will always break them. Plus I would have forgotten exactly what modifications I had made and it would just make the updating a nightmare. So, a nice simple site is what works for me: I’m in this for decades, not to have a pretty site for short periods of time.
I like the new WordPress 2020 theme. I’ll usually go with the newer WordPress theme as they work the best and have been thoroughly tested which again, means fewer headaches for me.
Another task that spontaneously appeared yesterday was that I need to fix two Nintendo Switch controllers. There is an issue where the side buttons can stop working and it affected two of them! At $60 those things are expensive yet so fragile when compared to the Nintendo controllers of old. I looked online and ordering $16 of materials from Amazon I think I can fix them. However, they shouldn’t break so easily in the first place.
Another electronic issue I had recently was that my old computer was freezing again. I tightened the connections, blew out the dust and all appears to be well again. With all these electronic problems it makes me think that I should do as Walden says, “Simplify, simplify.” Having too much stuff makes one busy, especially when things go wrong with them.
So here I sit, in my shed, at 42 years old and another holiday season is upon us. It begins with Halloween and ends with Christmas. I didn’t really have a lot of time to put into Halloween this year but am excited for Thanksgiving. We will have a pretty big group of people this year. We always invite Japanese families who, like us, don’t have family in California and might appreciate a place to go. It is always a good party. Thanksgiving is also a time marker for me and makes me think of holidays past. I find it hard to believe it has already been 2 or 3 Thanksgivings ago that my friend Kazuko and her family were here in the USA. The one unfortunate thing about having a lot of Japanese friends is that many of them go back to Japan. One of our close family friends went back to Japan this year after living in Pacifica for over 20 years and we miss them a lot. It is still hard to believe they don’t live here anymore. I hung the real estate mailer announcing the sale in my office/shed. It is another reminder of the passage of time and that nothing is permanent.
Random thoughts
I rarely listen to new music. I don’t like the new music they play on the radio and it takes a lot of effort to find something appealing on YouTube. There is simply too much out there and although the music algorithm works decently it just finds music I already like but doesn’t do a great job of introducing me to music or genres I do not know about. I mostly like peaceful music that I can have playing all day in the background. It is both pleasing to listen to and can easily be ignored. Here is one I found recently that I really like.
The time is now 10:47. What else do I want to write?
My mindset hasn’t changed in a long time. I’m permanently in low level anxiety: Trump is still in office, global warming is an existential threat that isn’t being addressed, my money is invested and so world affairs have more personal significance, kids by their nature make parents worry, I have to hit my goals at work and the schedule is packed with the only respite being early morning before everyone awakes.
It makes me miss when I was young and relatively worry free. All of the things I mentioned above create a weight, one I can easily bear but one I wish wasn’t there at all.
Books:
I’m still trying to get through Genji Monogatari. I’m on the second book but it takes effort to read.
Einstein’s Dreams – I’m also reading this book at the same time as Genji Monogatari. It is smaller and about my favorite subject which is the passage of time. It is a collection of short stories, each about the same village but where time works differently in each chapter. I had to purchase this book twice because I left my first copy on the airplane. I never take physical books with me but it is small and light so I took it on my trip to Seattle. I got through two chapters, started to fall asleep and put it in the seat back pocket. Well, I forgot to take it out of the seat back pocket when I left. Too bad I can’t go back in time to retrieve it or not take it at all.
It is now almost 11:00 and so I’ll end here.
