Old, old, old

I'm not the sort of guy who gets upset about birthdays: "No! I have to change the numerals and this indicates I am older than yesterday!"
That isn't my bag, baby. But I have been remarking today and yesterday on how long ago things were. I was fishing around the attic for things to turn into terrain earlier, and I found an old notebook of mine from university, which contained notes about which texts I was doing next year and other odds and ends. I forget precisely which year this covers, but either way, we're talking about a decade ago. I remember the good old days when it was school that was a decade ago. But now it's university! Mark my words, it won't be long before it's a decade since my MA! Too shocking to contemplate.

I felt ridiculously down earlier. I have a bushelful of things to do, mainly involving writing. I have offered to review a friend's story, which was probably a mistake. I am not a literary critic. I tend to read his work and say "Yay!" Well, words to that effect. I need to get back to another friend on the historicity of some things that never happened in Siberia. If you aren't familiar with alternative (or for the Americans alternate) history, I'll briefly say it's to do with exploring why history turned out as it did and how it might have turned out differently. What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo or Lee at Gettysburg are two popular themes, but as with real history, one can't just have battles all the time. I also need to reply to another friend's letter. That I have been delaying because of technical difficulties. Well, I've been delaying reading the first friend's work because of technical problems, too.

You see, I can't access files from this machine. Hotmail's functionality has outpaced my EeePC's technological capabilities. I can see I have email, and I can read it, if it's just in the email. If it's in an attachment - well, the last few times I tried to open them the wee computery beastie froze like a bunny in the headlights. I could write the reply to the third friend's letter on here, but then I'd have to manually transfer it to an external HDD (unless I have one of those pen drive doodahs hiding and about to reveal itself), and walk downstairs and copy it over. Unless . . . Windows doesn't like Linux. This is surmountable, but there's sufficient "grit" to make me delay setting the engine running. There's another friend I need to reply to, too. All this writing and delaying writing has really been sapping my ability to write owt lately.

I spent a few hours earlier angrily measuring boxes, cutting wallpaper and using the hot glue gun to affix matchsticks to some bases. Then I sawed a load of wood into smaller bits to make more bases. The sawing was anger-free. I felt very peaceful yesterday, but today, with all this work undone, a downbeat frame of mind, as I said, had come over me. Handily, as I was finding a decade-old notebook I was reminded that about a decade ago I regularly used to make myself angry so that I didn't get upset. It might be worth going back to that for a while, although in the long term being consumed with wrath is surely only for madmen and high-powered business leaders.

So in a minute I shall head down to t'other PC, and thus deal with one or two of these outstanding items. I watched some of the Edward Petherbridge/Harriet Walter Wimsey adaptations the other night, which were rather lovely, although I must admit that Gaudy Night struck me as a bit slow. Perhaps that's just the absence of Wimsey. I shall probably watch the third tonight, in which Harriet finds a chap on a beach covered in blood. I shan't spoil it for you. They're on Youtube if you care to have a shufti. They're about 2.5 hours long each, I think. Mum tells me that these ones were adapted for the screen by a relative of mine, and it's rather nice to think of that. He passed on some years ago, I'm afraid. With that admonition not to waste time ringing in my ears, I shall go check on the freedom or otherwise of the useful PC. Auf wiedersehen!