I did not blog this morning but at least I’m blogging tonight. This is only 12 hours late. You know that functional depression I was talking about? That’s past, now it’s just depression. I talked to my psychiatrist today, he was the first to hear it, don’t be jealous. He called me. If My Gentle Readers could call and ask for a Wise Madness post, I would have told you first. See it’s your fault I didn’t blog this morning. I went out for my walk in an attempt to “fake it till I make it” and spent most of the time in my classic cascade. I think about not having A, which reminds me of B which reminds me I don’t have B, and so on through the Latin alphabet and then the Greek until I hit the most recent COVID-19 variant. That means not stopping until omicron. No matter how depressed I am will consciously think the first syllable of omicron rhymes with “Tom.” I didn’t know that until the variant hit. Both are acceptable and I will never correct anyone for say it with a long O but part I prefer to say it the way a Greek would. As for the walk I didn’t quite make it to four miles, just 3.92.
The baseball lockout is over! That deserves a huzzah. HUZZAH! My heart wasn’t in that. Depression is having the joy sucked out of things you love. One of the things I love most is my Fantasy Baseball League. I suspect we aren’t going to have it this year. The commissioner has gone incommunicado. I did that when I was a commissioner. I also thought about all the people in my baseball groups that hate the players. It’s really easy to call someone else greedy when it’s not your money at stake. Do you know is greedy? Most people, that’s why economics is called the dismal science. Desire is infinite but resources finite. Most people only use greedy in the second and third person, you are greedy, or they are greedy, never the first person, I am greedy, or we are greedy. OK that’s enough on depression, it’s a depressing subject. I must have other things to write about.
I never remember to write about the war I’m having with unknown person or persons unknown in my building. Like most buildings visitors must be buzzed in. There’s an intercom and buzzers in the entry foyer. There is also a back door that leads to an alley you can leave the building from. The door to at the alley is locked, not even the residents have the key. Only the building staff can unlock it from the outside. So, what does my mortal enemy(ies) do? They prob open the door so that anybody that wants has access to the building. One day my roommate went to the laundry room and found a homeless person there smoking. I had a package stolen from in front of my apartment. I carry out my part of the war by taking whatever is propping over the door and moving it off the property. That way if they want to prop the door open, they have to first hunt for a stone or stick to use as a prop. I finally cleared out so much of the area that apparently, they decided that it’s not worth hunting for props. I am not declaring victory yet. They might realize that they can gather stones and stash them someplace convenient. As Ecclesiastes said, “A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together.”
For months I’ve been getting emails from Boost Mobile saying that I need to get a 5G phone as they are getting rid of the 3G network. I have a 4G phone and figured I was fine. Then I got a robocall telling me that my phone will stop working on March 31. I decided to call and find out if my 4G phone was fine. Turns out that it’s not. They were shutting down both the 3G and 4G networks. Somebody did a poor job communicating with the customers. My current phone is running into limited memory issues. I have to clear the heaviest used app caches weekly to stop the warning that my phone would not work properly. When they started sending the letters, I looked at the ads. The phones were all too much for me to afford. Now I was stuck I had to buy a phone. But now that the end is near, they have offered another option, deeply discounted refurbished phone. I’m getting a Samsung Galaxy S10 for $50. I’ve gone from worrying about my phone to being happy that I’m getting a new one with more memory and a better camera. I’ll be able to reinstall all the apps I had to delete to save storage. This ended up being a good thing. See some things can make me happy. I even went out and bought a cover for the new phone before it arrives. I always drop my phone and want it protected.
Know what? I feel better. I’ve been listening to Gord’s Gold while I write. Sure, I’ve listened to everything on it many times the last week but damn that host has a mesmerizing voice. If you go to Folk Music Notebook you can listen to the rebroadcast at 2AM ET. If you miss that listen to it on demand on Mixcloud if you click on Gord’s Gold, it will take you there. Do it now and listen to last week’s show. Listen to all the shows. Ani DiFranco is singing a song from Hadestown now.
I did something stupid and made a peanut butter sandwich at 5 PM before my walk and spoiled my appetite for dinner. Maybe I’ll throw something together. It’s too late to cook a full dinner.
Wise Madness 