Category: status

Lab mode. Everything for at least the next ten days is development and invention.

I’ve spent most of the last two days in couch potato mode, with very little useful mental activity, punctuated by bursts of physical activity curtailed by weather. In theory, I watched most of three BOTTOM shows and rewatched the BOTTOM docu, but honestly I retain very little about them and suspect I was just staring into space most of the time.

I have a stack of magazines to go through tonight. Unsubscribed from a couple more newsletters. Thinned the RSS subs a little more. Putting myself on a new music purchase ban for a little while, aside from specific collections I’m trying to make. Same with books, I think – my Kindle unread/part-read pile is too big.

Switching to internal resources, is how I think of it. I have to pull a lot of stuff out of my head over the next ten days, and I don’t need to get distracted by shiny new things.

Listened to this before sleep last night via the Bandcamp app – I’d forgotten I owned it.

I have now purchased 1413 records through Bandcamp, apparently.

Well, the wind is still booming – thirty mph gusts and wind chill is taking the temperature down under seven degrees. But I had to heel in twelve raspberry canes on Friday, and they need to be properly potted up. So I’m downing one more coffee and then heading out.

Newsletter went out. I’ve got the place to myself today, so it’s urban-farming and then thinking time. I’m starting to want to tinker, which is usually a sign that I’m getting usefully bored.

The weather is against me. Finally got to take the pitchfork to the giant mound I need to dig out and flatten, and my hands were useless after twenty minutes. The wind chill is crazy, even through gloves. I’m going to give it an hour, try again, and then maybe just dress some plants instead.

(Icy rain just blew in. Maybe not.)

So I’m killing time by zeroing out my RSS reader and thinking about how I still wake up terminally frazzled.

Cold and rainy. The weekend is forecast to be just cold, with the wind and rain dropping off, so I can pull on my winter gear and spend it working in the garden. I have a couple of big jobs left to do, and several small ones.

OPERATIONS: wrestling this tv thing document to the end of what I’m calling Bad Draft 2. Finishing newsletter.
COMMS: Inbox 79. Everything is switched on today, because it’s all going to be switched off over the weekend.
LAST WATCHED: BOTTOM EXPOSED, a documentary about the making and afterlife of the tv show BOTTOM, which nearly had me in tears at the end.
THINKING ABOUT: what’s next.

SHIPPING FORECAST: I have some discoveries that I logged in the scheduler for today so they didn’t all pile up at once, but nothing useful will be posted over the weekend unless you like pictures of dirt, weeds and woodchips.

Cold cold cold. The apples are blooming, and the lilac I pruned has come back better than before and is starting to produce big blowsy white blossoms. Keeping an eye on the weather to see if I can spend a productive weekend out there.

OPERATIONS: Need to go deep into the details on the tv document I’m working on today, which, given the number of deliveries arriving and the other things going on, is going to be a trick.
COMMS: inbox 80, shutting some channels down so I can focus as well as possible.
LISTENING:

THINKING ABOUT: finding the time to finish the newsletter this week! It’s going to be tight!

Terrible night’s sleep, it’s cold and the wind has been booming for twenty-four hours now. Amazingly, the rebuilt mini-greenhouse has stayed intact and upright even as pots and shredded branches were flying across the garden. It’s grim down south.

OPERATIONS: Same as yesterday, only with less sleep. Conferring with publishers on press releases. Need to make a start on the newsletter.
COMMS: Inbox 91, a lot to process later.
LISTENING:

READING: OCEAN OF SOUND, David Toop (UK) (US)
LAST WATCHED: THE DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER (UK) (US), which I will note later
THINKING ABOUT: exploring obscure musics on YouTube.
ORBITAL:

• The Hollywood contraction (is real)
• junk equipment jettisoned off ISS goes through roof of Florida home
• Ganzeer interview, Daily Heller

Breakfast, fresh from the chickens’ bums. Temperature has dropped hard, but it’s still bright.

Newsletter is out, and much longer than I intended it to be.

OPERATIONS: Not much, today. Tiredness came down like a hammer yesterday. So today I am marking up the boards, roughing out a schedule for the next six weeks and clearing the decks for a fresh start tomorrow.

COMMS: Inbox 79 – a lot of work-related stuff sitting in there for easy access right now. Give me an hour before I start looking at messaging apps.
LISTENING: right now, The New Music Show
READING: VITA CONTEMPLATIVA, which is annoying me in its middle sections. “Waiting without intention” is against the definition of the word “wait,” and the heart is not the organ of remembrance. I suspect a slightly troubled translation.
LAST WATCHED: OPPENHEIMER, finally.
OUTSIDE:

• Like everyone else, keeping an eye on the Iran-Israel thing
• Roman wine tasted better than we thought. I don’t like to think about this, because my partner has been off alcohol all year due to medical treatments, and therefore so am I, and I am dying for a glass of red.
• hundreds of new marine species discovered between Chile and Rapa Nui.

The apple blossom in the garden continues to be a morning joy.

God, I am glad to see the back of that week. Today I need to finish prepping the newsletter for release tomorrow, and start pulling together the pages of scribbled notes I made during my phone conference yesterday, which may involve having to translate my own handwriting. But I need to get that done so I can start drafting a document next week. Next week is going to be nothing but outlining and document-structuring, I think. This means there will probably be more notes here, as I will seek to distract myself from the mind-destroying nature of that work.

All that said: we’re coming up on the middle of April, so I may just spend today sowing some seeds. The phone says it’s 17 C out there…