Category: Everyday

After working on the paper in fits and starts all day – the starts are quite productive but short, the fits just useless time-wasting – and going through lists and lists of Simpsons and Buffy shows… I think about LA and wonder, if things had gone differently, if I might have fallen into another life…

Pleasant birthday lunch with friends – a bit quiet for some reason (which is odd for our bunch, we usually all chatter like magpies), but everyone seemed in a good mood, just less talkative than usual. Much loot. Felt pretty much like a twelve-year-old on Christmas morning – ooh look chocolates from A., Lush bath…

On the other hand… The past few posts have been very much about reflecting broadly on my life – as I frequently do anyway (sorry if that gets boring, but there you are). It all makes sense in a context of turning fifty – yet another real turn in my life, from the chaotic turn…

Today I chaired a meeting; it went well enough, as several of the meetings I’ve chaired over the past year. The interesting bits, though – and it’s not the first time I’ve noticed them, but they seemed exceptionally present today – were the moments when I had a relatively smooth, helpful, mature relationship with everyone…

Sleepy today. Since in addition to problems with HIV and its medication and HCV, I also have an auto-immune thyroid problem, I’ve been taking medicines for a while now – one year, two years? – that keep my weakened thyroid from allowing me to sleep all the time. Unfortunately, I’ve been a bit careless about…

Wind down the chimney, pushing against the house, rain on the windows. Next to the two-dimensional, virtual, commercialized world of the computer screen, downloading South Park episodes; and the more three-dimensional, slightly more real, but still rather predictable world of my apartment, with its IKEA furniture, books, foodstuffs; is this passionate, truly real world of…

Remarkable how often I’ve seen complaints about ‘November’ bandied about lately – a sort of automatic disparagement, comments made that assume we all hate this month. Although I don’t enjoy winter weather, I always thought of November as a somehow noble (ennobled, ennobling?), rather dignified, austere kind of month; there is a seriousness about it,…

Does anyone else find the current trend in spam e-mails rather, well, peculiar? The title of this entry was the subject heading for an e-mail I got today…. When did surrealism come back into our culture – and from such an unexpected angle? And what do spammers hope to achieve from such messages – this…

Still rather fuzzy/weak/tingly/headachey today. Since I always want an explanation for how I feel, I’m a bit annoyed and stymied – my lab results two weeks ago were just about the best ever, I don’t think I’ve caught anything in the way of current viruses from the students, and so on. Of course, it is…