The last couple of weeks, as usual, have been relatively quiet and routine.
I'm continuing to get stuff done around the house. I've listed about 150 books on Half.com, which I've never used before, to see what kind of traffic I'll get. I've had two sales already, which is good... except for dealing with the stress of selling books. It's surprisingly upsetting even to sell a book that I'm not really attached to. One that just sold, for example, is Sylvia Plath's Ariel, which was a textbook from a college poetry course. I didn't like the course, and I didn't care much for Plath's poetry, either (I prefer poetry with rhyme and meter, for one thing, and for another, Plath was not exactly the most cheerful person in the world). Even so, knowing that it's going out the door in a couple of days is somehow very distressing. I know that it's at least partly because of my college experience, but there's more to it than that.
I'm also listing other items on eBay... a goal I've set for myself is to list at least three items per week, no matter how trivial they may be, until I finally get everything sold (or at least listed) that I want/need to get rid of. So far, it's going OK.
I'm continuing to keep the house relatively clean -- I even started the process this evening again of scrubbing the tub, and I'm hoping to do the sink and the toilet tonight as well. It's a hell of a lot easier to keep shit clean than it is to get it clean.
I'm making slow and steady progress on applying for SSD. I need to print out some more paperwork, then I'm probably going to clench my teeth and go to the SSA office on Wednesday to find out how my submission is going. I'm not enjoying the process so far -- I mean, jeez, does it really make that much difference whether I did any heavy lifting fifteen years ago? But I think I've gotten the bulk of the paperwork done. I hope. I hope. Ugh.
Now that the house is under some semblance of control and continuing to improve, I've decided to take the plunge and start trying my hand at making candles. I'm purchasing the supplies I need on eBay, and I'm looking forward to getting started. Further down the road, I'm also thinking about trying to make soaps, shampoos, and other fun "smelly stuff". Further down the road than that, I may try to start selling the items I make if I get good at it and find that I enjoy it. That's a ways off yet, though.
Another thing I want to start fooling around with is RSS, which is an early technology but looks very promising and exciting. I'm looking at a few different RSS clients for OS X right now and am hopeful that one of them will be helpful to me in keeping up with the dozen or so web sites that I visit regularly. Anyone else use RSS? If so, what's your experience with it?
And the submarine dives into the depths once more...
Hello to all, and just a short note to let everyone know that I am, indeed, still alive.
Life has been pretty quiet and routine, so I haven't had a great deal to report. The ongoing project to get the house clean continues, ever so slowly... I actually managed to get most of the bathroom clean, which is quite an accomplishment for me.
Unsponsored endorsement, here... *grin* In cleaning my bathtub, I tried four different cleaners.
1) Rite Aid's generic version of Dow "Scrubbing Bubbles". Not very effective.
2) Soft Scrub. Somewhat better.
3) Pine Sol (full strength, not diluted). Quite effective, but difficult to pour on vertical surfaces (obviously). Still, cuts thru nasty junk quite effectively.
4) Tilex Soap Scum Remover. The best by far. Spray it on, wipe it off with a sponge. It even managed to get thru the mineral buildup and other crud that had built up in my tub over the past year or however long it's been since I cleaned the effing thing. (Please, no comments on this. I hate a dirty tub, too, but between my dislike of household chores and my EF problems, it's hard to clean the bathroom.)
Also very nice for smaller jobs: Clorox disinfecting wipes. Not meant for heavy jobs, but good for running over anything that's already mostly clean and making it cleaner and fresher smelling.
There's the "Hints from Heloise" section... moving on to other things. :-)
I've submitted a number of items to the Internet Movie Database, and most of them have been included: my correction to David Hyde Pierce's filmography, a continuity error in "Star Wars", and several bits of trivia from "The Man With Two Brains". They haven't included the notes I submitted about "The Princess Bride", "The Sixth Sense", or "Troy". They also haven't included my correction to "Riverdance: Live From New York City" -- Liam Neeson was the narrator for that, but I guess they don't include that because his readings were recorded rather than live.
Getting into this discussion on AutAdvo... jeez. It seems pretty obvious to me that if you write in a nonstandard fashion, ignoring rules of grammar and spelling and the like, people are going to have trouble reading what you have to say. It's amazing how many people don't get it.
And back into quiet mode with me...
A cheery good morning to all sentient life forms in the universe, and to everyone else, the secret is to bang the rocks together, fellas.
Not a great deal to report at this juncture... I spent most of the weekend out of commission due to illness, so things have been relatively quiet.
The only big thing right now is that I'm taking yet another stab at quitting smoking -- it's been six days since I last had a cigarette (although I did have a hookah last Thursday... I'm not going to give up my hookah). For the most part, it seems to be going well, and I haven't even felt much of a need for nicotine gum. I haven't noticed any significant health changes yet, other than that my throat seems to be clearing up quite a bit (then again, it's possible that I was never a heavy enough smoker to have significant health problems, either... even at my peak, five or six cigarettes a day was about the most I ever smoked.)
I'm also experimenting with having chai in the mornings instead of coffee -- I'm told that coffee can increase one's cravings for cigarettes, and that does seem to be the case with me as well. Getting rid of both coffee and cigarettes has eliminated a lot of my anxiety, and as a result, I've also found that I need a lot less Neurontin than I used to. (I'm told that regular exercise also does a lot to reduce anxiety, too, so I'm even beginning to wonder, if/when I finally add a regular exercise regimen to my lifestyle, whether I'll still need Neurontin at all.)
I'm not sure whether I'll completely eliminate regular coffee permanently (probably not), but I did want to see how things go with that for at least several days before I tried having coffee again. It's been about a week or so, so I may try making a mug today or tomorrow just to see how it goes.
I really hope I can stay off of cigarettes this time. Those things are just plain disgusting. Not only that, but I feel guilty for smoking when I'm in a relationship with Denise... not just because smoke bothers her so much, but because it makes me feel like I'm taking my health too much for granted (which she has never been able to do).
I've managed to do a little more cleaning around the house... finished vacuuming the place the other day and even managed to get a bit done in the bathroom as well (the bathroom, along with the kitchen, is the bane of my housekeeping). There's always more to do, of course, and it's really annoying that my EF problems keep getting in the way, but at least I am moving forward, however slowly. With any luck, maybe I can get some more items listed on eBay this weekend. We'll have to see.
The Summer movie season is kicking into high gear, which means it's going to be tough to keep up with everything I want to see (I've already missed a couple of films that were on my list... have to wait for DVD, I suppose). I personally prefer to wait until a film has been open for a week or two, then go to a matinee. That keeps prices down and also helps you avoid crowds. OTOH, I'm also starting to think about writing off movie theaters altogether and starting to use Netflix again... watching films at home has a lot of advantages over going to the cinema. I would prefer to have a better home theater setup for that, but I may do it anyway and just deal with my relatively small screen.