Square One; Videogaming

I made it rowing this morning. The air quality improved over the weekend, and the water was mirror-flat. What a relief, even if it was after a night of poor sleep.

Then, to the lab, to get things ready for the first round of circadian experiments out of two for today. It wound up being more of a scramble than I'd like. I tried to re-autoclave some saline solution last Friday, but then didn't remember I'd left the bottle in the autoclave until sometime on Sunday afternoon (one of those ....*! moments). So I had to quickly mix up a fresh batch of saline and autoclave it. Then, at the end, I ran out of my lipid standards, and on top of that, ran out of the chloroform-methanol solution I use to prepare the lipid standards. So, two more rounds of mixing things up. And when I at last went to turn on the tank of nitrogen to dry out the lipid samples, the tank was empty. So *foreheadslap*, change out nitrogen tanks, and then I finally got to eat lunch at 2 pm.

And I didn't manage to start cricket care until 2:30 pm. Mostly finished, now. So I have about an hour before I need to start things for the next set of circadian crickets for today. I just want to be d.o.n.e.

Meanwhile, I have another job application due by Wednesday at the latest. I am also flying to Boston on Wednesday, early in the morning. So I should use my one free hour to make sure I have my logistics all lined up. Exhausting just thinking about it.

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I don't think I've mentioned here that I started playing the most recent Zelda game, Breath of the Wild. scrottie has commented on aspects of the gameplay that are tiresome tropes, and I'm inclined to agree. I don't like how many buttons one must remember and navigate with, but I suspect that's because I'm a curmudgeon who can't handle controllers with deely-bobber dual thumb joysticks.

Otherwise, there's some mild satisfaction to be gained from solving puzzles, I suppose, and it's fun to climb up things and then jump off and hang glide all over.

I figure it's good that I won't get to play it again until sometime next week.

Here, have a bit of music and a strange story [Akira Ifukube]

A friend of mine gave me this album a number of years ago: https://youtu.be/Cn7NCrMIbTA

Yesterday, while I sewed, I also tried to work my way through my collection of CDs, to figure out which things I haven't digitized that I might want during the upcoming unknown period when most of my stuff will be in storage, somewhere, again.

This album is very different from the rest of the music I own. But I like it, a lot. It's so rich.

The friend who gave it to me, GP, was a sad and complicated person who was brilliant and schizophrenic and couldn't handle dealing with women. Somehow I was able to be an exception for a long time*, until he reached a stage where he couldn't handle dealing with my Ph.D. advisor or academic institutions anymore and decided to make his own way in the world (with well-deserved financial freedom and security from an independent unknown sponsor). I bumped into him once sometime after all that, at the Phoenicia Cafe in Tempe, which had become his hangout for writing, and we basically parted ways amicably.

I couldn't keep up with reading his polygraphia, which he wanted+didn't want others to read (obsessive pageview checking of his website, extremely rare hints that it existed - ah! It still exists!). He was very much into various forms of Eastern philosophy (I don't personally know much about the subject). I believe he's basically reinterpreting and commenting on Supreme Court decisions, but with an alternate, fictional court composition. He compulsively collected many kinds of beautiful things, like fancy fountain pens and glass paperweights and scrolls.

I think he was one of those people who can hold up a mirror and show us ourselves (humanity, society) in new ways because he had stepped outside in various ways.

I like a quotation he taught me: "Above confluent hatred, birds call identically."


*Somehow he did not perceive me as a woman, I guess? I would say the age difference was too great, except that he really couldn't handle being around another grad student from my cohort, so I have to suppose I wasn't too overtly feminine. I was interested in friendship, anyway.