Slice of Chaotic Life

The daily life of a celibate middle-aged man.

Archive for October, 2011

Vacation started

Posted by Itlandm on October 28, 2011

I guess my vacation technically started at 4 PM today, although I was actually sick and wasn’t at work today either. The left half of my head now has the head cold that the right half had first, and I am once more eagerly spraying viruses or at least leaking them in large quantities. My arm still hurts, although not as much. Especially after I went back to bed in the morning for some more hours. Sleep is good for healing. And of course the other way around – health is good for sleep. It is hard to get the same sleep quality when your favorite sleep position hurts like murder.

With my arm hurting too much to do a reasonable job, I could not justify spreading viruses to all my fellow commuters and coworkers. OF COURSE it’s them I was thinking of – you couldn’t possibly think this had anything to do with how I felt, could you? ^_^

Hopefully my arm will have improved further by November 1, because that is when NaNoWriMo starts, and I will probably once again need a couple attempts (at best) before I find the novel that will reach 50 000 words this year. But of course this is all in the future, if any, and as the Chinese say, when mortals talk about the future, Heaven laughs. (Actually one of the Psalms has a rather unpleasant rendition of this as well. I guess uppity mortals are universally looked down on from above, I guess that makes a certain sense.)

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Arm whine

Posted by Itlandm on October 26, 2011

New whine from the old skin! Starting this afternoon (around the time I left the commute bus, I think?) my right arm has been hurting. More as the hours went by. It hurts all the way from the neck now, the neck chiming in quite a bit later than the arm itself. There are only a few poses that hurt much less. Actually I can still type, but I probably shouldn’t.

I also have a head cold. And a sore throat. I am not sure that is related to the arm thing though. Perhaps. But it’s not flu season here yet. Still, if I can’t shave tomorrow morning, I’m not going in to work.

Usually my arm doesn’t start hurting until midway through NaNoWriMo. And it doesn’t feel quite the same as those.

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Paying bills

Posted by Itlandm on October 23, 2011

Usually I pay the bills on the 15th or so, but this month there were no bills at the time, so I waited a little longer. Also, some bills arrive after the 15th but fall due before the next 15th, so I have to log on twice a month anyway.

Anyway,  it is not exactly a problem to pay my bills, neither technically nor financially. Even though I am barely middle class by Norwegian standards, and pay a rent suitable for a whole house or nearly so, I generally have more than I need from month to month.

I have a credit card account that I pay into each month, and that I use if I buy something more than living expenses. I used it when I moved two years ago. Back then I paid double rent for four months, in addition to paying four months in advance for the new place, so I guess in a manner of speaking I paid triple rent for four months. That is a bit when you are renting a whole house alone (even a small house), so I ended up borrowing a bit back then. Also the moving cost a little – that was when I moved to Riverview, the move from there to Mandal cost me almost nothing. But anyway, I’ve paid it off. Or rather, I still have a small amount of credit card debt, technically, but also have more than that in the debit account most of the time. If I pay it off completely – and unless something very unpleasant happens, that won’t be far off – I think I will have a separate savings account instead. Less impulse for impulse shopping that way.

But I’ll probably be back in debt again next time I move. In the future I will probably need to hire movers, and those are hideously expensive here in Norway. So I won’t have a problem with getting rid of my money. And I do intend to move eventually. I am not in a hurry right now, but I may be if a larger family moves in upstairs. I was up there once and it seems there is no hot water tank there. Meaning that the whole house uses mine. Luckily the family with the toddler moved out and the place is empty now, but if a large family with small children moves in, that could get hideously expensive. And while the price of renting a whole house has risen a bit over the last year (Norway is still in its property boom with fantasy price growth), it may well end up cheaper to rent a whole house elsewhere. But not right now. Right now I rent half a house and the other half is empty, which is for me just as good as renting a whole house and only use half of it. ^_^

Anyway, banking here in Norway is done on the Internet. It is many years since last I saw a check, something like 20 years or so.  Most of my bills come in electronic form also, but a few come in the mail, so I have to fill in a few numbers on the screen rather than just press a key to pay. Still, it is pretty easy. I can see how this large gap of abstraction can make it hard to think clearly about money for those who have a lower level of cognitive development. But mostly I think people’s money problems are a matter of being unable to control their impulses. In Norway, I mean. In your flearidden and inferior nation, all bets are off. But here in the zeroth world, it is mainly a matter of not wanting everything you see.

I still want yogurt, though. Lots and lots of yogurt.

 

 

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Fighting the chimney sweep

Posted by Itlandm on October 20, 2011

There is a Christian saying that if you fight the chimney sweep, you get smudged even if you win. I am not even sure whether I am winning or losing. But we’ll get back to that. First other news:

Today was the first time in about two weeks that I took an hour’s walk in the evening. It felt good. Around the time my foot started to hurt, my heart was beating irregularly after less than a quarter’s walk from work to the bus. Now, there was no disturbance at all for an hour, including walking over two pretty steep hills. So I strongly suspect there is a connection between my exercise levels and this irregularity of the pulse. See also my less slice-of-life journal today.

In other utterly slice-of-life news, I found a sheet of paper in my mailbox again informing me that the chimney sweep is coming tomorrow between 9 and 12. One will remember that I got the same very short warning last winter in the old farm house, and in all haste arranged to take the day off from work, then waited ALL WORKDAY and neither saw nor heard anything, nor have I heard from him since, until now he pulls the same short warning stunt again. Like I am going to let him fool me twice in a row. Unless I’m sick or something, I intend to go to work as usual. (Besides, I don’t have any fireproof ash containers. Not that I would need them, I haven’t used the wood stove in this house ever, but they are supposedly required. Yeah, because I would totally go hunting for those in the evening if I even knew what he meant.)

Sorry pal, but not all of us have homemakers around to wait for chimney sweeps with a (so far) 100% track record of absenteeism. Hopefully next year the house will have a more cooperative inhabitant.

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Feet and sleep

Posted by Itlandm on October 19, 2011

It’s been more than a week, perhaps two, that I have not done my daily long walks. I still walk half an hour a day simply by going to work, as there is a quarter of an hour’s walk to and from the bus both ways, but that is not exactly impressive. I did that already back when I developed pre-diabetes.

The reason for my non-walking is that the skin under my left foot has cracked – first in the front, now at the heel – making it quite painful to walk on. I’ve treated this with foot baths and now salve and compress on the heel, and things are getting better. I took a walk this evening, but much shorter than before.

One suspicious coincidence is that I seem to go to bed later when I don’t walk, whereas the opposite should been true, since I have time to do the same other things earlier. I can only assume it is because I don’t feel as sleepy in the night when I haven’t taken a long walk during the day. But I do feel sleepy in the morning.

If all goes well, my vacation begins in a week and a half, on October 31. Basically it is set to cover all of NaNoWriMo (the month formerly known as November) and weeks that include any part of NaNoWriMo. I have taken this month off for several years, and one interesting side effect is that I tend to synchronize completely to American time when it comes to waking and sleeping hours. I wonder if that will still happen if I take long walks each day? But the future is anyway not something we can take for granted, although I admit I tend to do it without thinking, even at an age of over 50. An age which at the moment seems to manifest mostly in the skin on my feet.

I assume unsolicited advice will be forthcoming as usual when a human mentions any kind of health challenge. ^_^

I should probably mention that although my feet are not happy, I am. But reading about happy people is not very emotionally engaging, is it?

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First cheesy whine!

Posted by Itlandm on October 12, 2011

I took a sick day today. This isn’t something I do often, thank the Light. But I was so weak, queasy, stiff and hazy, it seemed certain that I was brewing some infection. Even my heartbeat felt irregular by the end of the workday, although not enough to make me faint or collapse. Basically I felt exhausted even though I only have an office job. When I woke up twice during the night feeling icy cold, despite my duvet and almost living room temperature in the room, I decided on a time-out.

(Of course, it probably did not help my chill that I dreamed about watching a house-size satellite fall down on the city where I work. Actually there was a story in the news this fall that such a huge satellite was about to fall down, but it has probably done so already.)

Apart from sleeping in, napping, dozing and reading a little, I also finally set up this sub-blog, so people who come for the science don’t need to read about my sick day.

My computer backed up my original blog during the night, so I could finally take the chance and create the sub-blog here. It turned out I did not need the backup, but I guess it doesn’t hurt.

So am I feeling better now? Somewhat, and I did not fall dramatically ill in the meantime. So if nothing new happens, I may try to return to work tomorrow. One of the toes on my left foot still hurts like a splinter (which isn’t there) if I put on socks and walk normally, not to mention if I wear shoes. So it is likely to be a somewhat uncomfortable workday in that regard, if I go in. But it is hardly a reason to take the whole day off. Possibly work from home. We’ll see what the night brings.

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Slice of Chaotic Life is go!

Posted by Itlandm on October 12, 2011

This is the first (and possibly only) step in the Order In Chaos (Node) project. The purpose of this project is to remove distracting elements from one blog and put them in another where you can find them if you want them.

In this case, Slice will be everything categorized as “Slice of life” and “My health”. It will probably be full of whining and as such best read upon my death, in which case you may mentally add in my voice: “Told you so!” ^_^

The main blog remains at http:chaosnode.net/blog/.

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