Earlier this morning, after I was done reading email - there was nothing for the inbox, just scads filtered into mailboxes for newsgroups - and reading journals, I felt like I wanted a nap. It was only 9am. Instead, because I couldn’t stand the idea of crawling back into bed and getting that malaise associated with too much lying around - cabin fever, I decided to just do some work. Well, I didn’t actually decide, I just did, which is better anyway because it’s usually somewhere in the cognitive process that I get hung up and the lethargic forces win out.

There was a lot to do. Things have been piling up due to neglect and use. I’m still sewing that dress whose fraying threads are deposited all over the place. I’ve been dragging it around between the machine (which is now permanently set up on the kitchen table, with all its accessories strewn about) and the couch where I sit and watch TV while hand-stitching. There’s bread crumbs on the couch too, along with that big fat dictionary I use to decipher the code in that never-ending book about social revolutions, itself and its entourage occupying the table in front of the couch. I have a book in progress, one that I’m making but which I haven’t touched in two weeks. It’s components are sitting out too. The laundry bulging in the corner, the recyclables encroaching on walking space, and weeks of newspapers begging for removal: What a mess.

I have less than two weeks to complete projects before I leave. It’s just like me to wait until the end so that I’m forced to be busy and stressed. I’d be stressed anyway and maybe the stress would make me seek busyness. What would I do if I was proactive and found myself facing two weeks of anxiety prior to a big trip with no due dates to distract me? Probably I’d sit around and just check email all day, like I have been doing before now - before the time when I realize I really just have to start doing or I won’t finish. I can’t decide if this personality trait is capable of reformation or not. For a fleeting second, I thought it might actually be good and I should just accept it, but I hate the stress and the fact that things rushed are never as good as their potential.

But for two hours this morning, instead of crawling back into bed, I cleaned up (including the dreaded bathroom) and it felt good. I realize that I really do like a clean house, even if in the past my time constraints whittled away any energy that could be directed toward maintaining one. I’ve learned from the amount of free time I have here that given a base of time, I keep a clean house. It was a surprising discovery.

I’ve been getting excited about the idea to create a web site for my high school 10-year reunion. I think I’m going to suggest collaboration with Tom and see if we can’t get started when I’m home. I have questions about things like how are reunions funded? I’ll figure that out later. Still got a year so this is a good time to just start thinking.

I watched Chinese Box yesterday afternoon while I was hand-stitching on the dress. I liked it. I wondered: Did Chunking Express hope to copy it, or was it the other way around? The two stories are different, but the film-making seemed remarkably similar. Chinese Box had more pain though, and I liked that better. In some weird way it reminded me of Until The End of the World too. I don’t know if it was the use of the video camera or the music or both. Dying for a synopsis? Well, I couldn’t find one and I’m lazy. Wayne Wang says it’s about love and death and not terribly into symbolism despite all the speculation about it.

I have reading left to do today and maybe some other stuff. Oh, I forgot to mention that I went through my top file drawer where I put all the crap that either needs attention or that belongs in a top file drawer, like a checkbook for example. There was a lot of crap, but I was swift and now the drawer is neatly organized and I have accomplished some tasks I’ve literally stuffed in a drawer for months. I discovered that I have way too many business cards implying contact with people whom I will probably never see again. I couldn’t bring myself to toss them because… because you just never know. Anyway, so I have some reading to do and it’s getting late in the afternoon which means that I might get a little of it done but not all. I suppose I could do some tonight but we will workout until 8 or 9, eat dinner, and after that I won’t feel like doing anything but watching TV.

I feel like I’ve just written a huge long thing like Milton writes to me on occasion. I’ve only met him once, but he is a good friend of Tom’s and for some reason Milton and I shoot mail at each other. In his messages to me he often will just sort of ramble on about things in his life as if he’s using his internal thought processes to kill two birds with one stone: He works out the problems plaguing him while completing his email obligation.

OK, here’s the part of the day when I shut down this geriatric system and hope that upon waking it snaps out of its senility and gets with the program. All day I’ve had this nagging suspicion that all is not right with this machine: pages wouldn’t load from the internet, fragments of graphics from programs would remain on top even when I had pushed them to the background. Like right now I’ve got Word open and in the background the Navigator toolbar is hanging alone over the wallpaper when it’s supposed to be minimized. If I click on the button below, nothing happens: it won’t activate. Overall, this machine is acting like it’s on its last leg. I’ve been wondering if some of its circuitry is just plain worn out and not connecting any more. Sometimes I click on a thing and it can’t decide if it should do what I ask or continue doing what it wants so that it toggles for a few seconds between two programs. Maybe there’s just a big globular dust bunny weighing heavily on the motherboard, interrupting the flow. Can that happen? Ugh. I don’t know. Just a few more weeks, baby, just a few more weeks. I’ll have my new computer soon and then I can totally just wipe the slate clean.