Mail! Bane of my life. Along with all the others :)
I'm drowning under a tsunami of the stuff.
Partly because of the mummified remains of my parents and partner tied to my own failing spirit. Still dealing with mess from their estates — though without some inheritance I might not have survived so far, even with friends' help.
[Make a Will, people! Unless you hate your family and want them to suffer for years, 'cos you think they'll wave goodbye and happily forget you otherwise. Make a bloody Will! The Perfect is the Enemy of The Good: at least the basics. Neil Gaiman even has recommended forms for artists and authors.]
More than half mail is "junk", but some need keeping nevertheless — lots of Changes in Conditions; insurance, credit cards, bank accounts, superannuation, company shares, public utilities, ISPs, etc, etc. They seem to change once or twice a year these days, including mergers. Have to go into records with the bills and statements, to check when there are disputes.
Despite hoarding inherited/learnt from both parents, I've learnt to recycle (thank goodness for recycling; the guilt of throwing out perfectly good paper and envelopes would be crushing) all the rest of the "junk".
There's a bill-holder. They (swiftly) pile up in order of due-date there, and either each week or fortnight I (or friend if I'm sick) go down to PO to pay them. Then they go into pile ready for filing (getting tricky; cabinet full now). Are keeping because some bills (and earnings) are from estates. Will need these as estates are fixed up and, gulp, (taxes) calculated. Should also prove I'm not living high on the hog with money not my own, but just staying ahead of the wolf-pack baying behind.
Then there's all the stuff dealing with the estates. Has high tides every six months, but always a trickle. Little can be binned. Desperately tried to trim this down with some legal paperwork a couple of years ago, but failed to enclose some paper (Interesting how when you particularly ask if they need X, they say "No". Then when you apply, they say "You didn't enclose X".) There's a hopefully-not-illusory hope that settled back at home I can set out my desk and get the papers together and fix up all the overhanging legalities. (Looming like The Big Wave.)
And, once in every thousand or two pieces, an actual something for me, personally. Alas, then I get panicky, trying to deal with having to reply or do something about it. So even that momentary pleasure is poisoned.
Sorry. It's a real despair and irritant here. I hear all these 'simplify', 'time-management', 'decluttering', etc, hints. So few seem workable.
Velma: Sometimes there is cake!
My most recent natal anniversary celebration was memorable. It was in the little private interview room outside ICU — we felt awkward in the general waiting room, where other family groups were, as normal, rather more sombre. Tea and orange cake. One slice each, cut up the rest, put it on plates with napkins, and, just before leaving, lined them up on the ICU nurses' desk. A very small thing to show our gratitude for their care.
So glad to hear things seem to be improving again.
Hell, Bugger, Damn & Double-Damn! ... and a sort of Cripes, maybe dodged the bullet this time, having seen update.
Back from spending ~5 hours with my friend who had a stroke in August — his partner was driving up to the Central Coast to see and help her aged father, which she used to do every fortnight, but that's been disrupted — I've been using Soren's recovery as an example of what sort of progress and recovery can happen; they'd be similar ages. He's at screamingly-restless stage on bedrest and confinement to one room ~120 hours because he recently had a blood clot in his lung — very painful. It's put back his good progress with physio- and occupational therapy.
So hearing of Soren's setback too seemed like a chilling echo of this.
I don't pray, and am out of incense, but a neighbour gave me the first 3 gardenia flowers from her garden because I was well enough to come past her place for the first time in weeks. I'll put them as an offering by my little group of great-souled ones from several religions, and send thoughts while I'm still awake here.
Hopin yous all keep well and strong.
Serge (#849), Earl, et al, in English, wouldn't the "Golden Age of the pun" be Elizabethan times? Language games were a great aristocratic pastime. Though they'd have probably used the 4-syllable version of Fantasia. It's still breathtaking that at one of the peak heart-rending moments of King Lear, involving blinded Gloucester, Shakespeare bungs in a pun.
abi (#854) thanks for checking. That's reassuring news.
abi, Fragano, Laterally. As tourists back in 1990s, we worked out that there seemed to be Tourist Shopping Malls a little outside town, with room for coach parking. They'd pull up and choof you all out for a couple (or fewer) hours to eat, shop and 'ablute'.
Once we twigged, we'd use 'facilities' then set off for high street to find food, shopping and general wandering-through experience. Luckily, most were close enough and had maps or signposts. We were never sure if the local inhabitants were happy to keep most of the teeming hordes at a distance, or would have liked better passing trade to support their own shops.
For people shopping in their own area, I remember a very big supermarket at a large French town or city, part of a chain. There's been publicity about Mall-style developments in the UK, but beyond that, I've no experience.
Xopher: may Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi, look kindly your way, and spread her beneficence to the other fluorosphericals in need of it.
Terry (#635, 651), others, etc. It could be an interesting writing challenge to write within the rules. "No eye contact" sounds like a kink, tho'. Tom Lehrer, as so often, speaks pertinently in TW3's Smut.
nerdycellist (#631), others ff. There are various exciting liqueur flavours around. I can't search out the ML discussion of what alcohols go best with what chocolate. But there's always FRANGELICO … mmm …
The Prisoner remake: They must have seen DVD sales. It was one of my top Most Wanted as soon as I heard they'd started rereleasing old series. At least P McG is dead now, so he can't be hurt.
albatross (#72), the brand-name dropping in several of Stephen King's books was immensely irritating. It kept pulling me up and out of the story, trying to work out from contexts what the heck these ones were now!? And this from the person who was always being translator between Australian and American groups when travelling together.
In-culture, it was probably quite effective & evocative. Elsewhere, it was like using in-jokes, slang, jargon, or code-words to subtly(?) exclude Not Us, or at least demonstrate no interest in communicating to anyone else. Perhaps only English versions went untouched and foreign-language ones had "translations", at least at first use.
Jon (#140): Don't cross the beams!
Epacris (#133), Sounds dire. Hope rest of your day wasn't too bad. I've no spare energy to send, but there's always that clinging ineradicable greasy film of hope you can smell on your fingers when you've been scraping around the bottom [_] of That Box.
Mary Dell (#16) "it looks like Hill House is no more."No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.
…
Within, its walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
First and last paragraphs of The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson
Going back to the ongoing consequences of earlier diseases, usually seen now in poor and undeveloped areas, or war zones, due to vaccination elsewhere …
Guinness World Record holder for the person who had spent the longest time in an iron lung has just died, aged 83, in a Melbourne (Vic) nursing home. Both her looks and attitude remind me of mother.
Proper pastel green has returned to the market!
I've been looking for at least 5 years — I think it was not long before seeing this thread that I'd realized I couldn't find it anywhere: newsagents, sewing shops, supermarkets, anywhere there was either material or gift-wrapping ribbons or wrapping paper. Hot greens, lime greens, darker shades; never pastel.
Admittedly, my sample is one local $2 shop, but it gives me hope.
Renatus (#225, various) — {*} <– small parcel of hope and cheer, to be opened at need. This does not sound like an easy time at all.
D. Potter (#252) Two thoughts on health insurance reform promotion:
Looks like a good idea to publicize as many cases as possible of high-earning people who've been brought down, or their survivors near-pauperized, by illness (preferably not seen as self-inflicted, eg, drug-related). I keep hearing that lower-income USians often support policies that favour much higher-income ones, optimistically feeling they'll get up there (somehow not seeing that what they're supporting will probably make that less likely, apart from any other bad effects).
That might strike home more than the suffering of "not-us" people (battlers here, losers there).
… Umm … Darn, should have written that down straight away. (Did I mention apart from dry mouth, pins and needles, vomiting, diarrhoea, drowsiness, and unsteady gait, the unpleasant effects of that drug include confusion?) If it comes back, I'll link to here.
Bill Stewart (#255) A Treasure Island you can walk to across a bridge? Disappointing.
abi (#155) *sadly puts away Oz immigration brochures and links featuring mucho sunshine* OTOH, NL sounds like an excellent place to study a very different social mindset
Renatus (#38, earlier) Hope & my best wishes for your sister. On your last point, I think there is a play about a recruiting sergeant. (not to mention Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment). Reminds me of an old saying "Old soldiers never die. Just young ones."
Maybe you could cite, or point her to, some of Terry Karney's posts about his problems with the GI Bill, frex, if he's OK with that. (Curses, though, I canNOT find his recent, fairly long explanation of how GI bill works and doesn't work).
Could anyone else here find that?
Open thread 130
Open thread 123
Edinburgh — definitely one of the places I want to revisit. We were there less than 24 hours (late 1990s), just skimmed the highlights; there was so much more, and what we saw was good stuff. And I long to taste haggis again. That was in June, so very long daylight.
Glasgow we didn't stop in, but did spot 'I can't believe it's not Sydney Opera House'.
Sydney, BTW is roughly 30° South. At ~30° North, there seems to be N California, just above N Florida, N Africa/Israel, Northern tip of India/Central Asia, Shanghai.
some jobs (like mine) are expected to have most of the qualified personnel doing cadre work to train the bodies in a full-scale war. — Terry (#677)That's my father's story in WWII. He'd been in the civilian militia (like the reserve) for some years before September 1939, and was called in straight away. But he was training new recruits to send to help the Allies in the Middle East and Europe (2nd AIF), so didn't see combat until after the Japanese opened up the Pacific theatre.
After the Imperial Army's sweep south through Asia, with most of our troops thousands of miles away, and Churchill reluctant to let them go, it was all hands on deck, especially after the disastrous Fall of Singapore lost a whole Division (plus other Allied troops), and tens of thousands were captured in Malaya. Curtin's defiance of Churchill began our still-current US alliance (see www.flickr.com/photos/sketchesbymez/454840199).
I've put in a longer comment — in moderation now — with material relating to joe wood's query at #328.
Disclaimer: I'm neither a writer nor author. I have self-published a version of my blog, simply to have a reasonable-quality printed record for 'posterity', which I left up on the print-on-demand site hoping someone else might stumble across it and think it worthwhile getting a copy.
joe woods (#328): As I've confirmed, Booksurge is the self-publishing branch of Amazon. I can see both advantages and problems with that.
Paula Lieberman, in Open thread 130 (#823) on this site, has written some of what she's heard.I heard some stories about it printing and distributing unauthorized editions of books [W]hen requested to cease and desist by the authors, who found out Booksurge was publishing their work without permission and without contract to the author, Booksurge failed to be responsive in such things as immediately ceasing and desisting, and in paying anything to the authors.Some places you could look about in for more peoples' experience with Booksurge (all already mentioned here):
Preditors and Editors http://anotherealm.com/prededitors/
Writer Beware http://www.sfwa.org/beware/
AbsoluteWrite http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/index.php
What Cally said at (#330) just above is also a good potted guide of things to do &/or consider. Also, though not up to date, and more on the agents' side of the issues, Miss Snark (http://misssnark.blogspot.com/) is good background reading.
Paula (@823), Thanks. I'll check that out.
grep: I was our grep guru for lo, many years. Then they switched from SCO Unix to Windows 2000 and it "all fell down". *sigh* I hear they've improved the search since. One day I should sit down & give it a thorough try out.
Lee (#635) said "Do we have any options here beyond "wait for them all to die off"?"
It looks like that might be a poor hope. Also from that article (#507) (aka
Why Republican Leaders will have Trouble Speaking to the Rest of America):
"I don’t watch anymore because we are unemployed and I had to cancel cable but I listen to him on the radio… I record it… My 16-year-old watches [sic] Beck. She says, 'Is it recorded? I hope you didn’t delete it yet'.â€
So it seems the family may be a victim of the GFC1, and is passing down its belief structures to younger generations.
heresiarch (#541), David Harmon (@647), once a religious tradition reaches a certain level in a society, it becomes a way to power, influence, and often wealth. Thus it attracts to itself the people who are strongly attracted to getting those (eg The Bad Popes), as well as others who may have 'better' motives. It seems JAR leans towards the wealth part, but I suspect he enjoys having power and influence over a group too.
1. Which could be unpacked at greater length, if people wanted.
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