Week Notes 45/2024

· Michael Dingler

First week of my November vacation, and one where I didn’t have any “travel duties”. This has been immensely relaxing.

Well, at least until Wednesday. I stayed up late the night before and while I could fall asleep well enough, I dreaded checking the news when I woke up (late-ish). Last time this very thing happened, I got the final news when I entered my office, and at least had the distraction of work, this time I had sufficient time to browse through all the news, listen to the hours-long podcasts and live streams. 

And later that day, the government in Germany broke apart. 

I am quite good at pushing that away. Call it suppressed empathy, call it mindfulness, call it what you will, it works for me, but it does feel a bit like a disconnect with the world. We’ll see how that turns out…

Already I feel that I’m meandering a bit more between various interweb topics, between ideas for side-projects. It’s a coping strategy, but I generally do feel happier when I’m focused.

Health #

One of the reasons why I’m including this topic is to shame myself into working out more. Doesn’t seem to work, so I’ll probably ditch this topic soon enough. I’m getting into the age bracket, where one does complain about various minor issues too much anyways.

I do have to report that the week of vacation did well for my mental health, Wednesday notwithstanding.

Gaming #

I got my late ‘00s-era PC built. I don’t have a huge stack of spare parts and tools, as I haven’t been doing that for quite a while, so I was stuck at getting a screw or missing bracket a few times, but in the end it’s finished. I’ll write a bit about the final results, but I already got a few games on there that I finally want to finish – I could play them on more modern machines, but due to Steam and GOG and the ‘net, there’s plenty of opportunity for distraction there. And I don’t have that on an old XP system that’s not connected to the Wifi.

Media #

My partner and I watched the latest season of the Lincoln Lawyer as a communal activity. It was just the right amount of low stakes and “we’re famigly” soap opera theatrics.

I binged through all three seasons of The Fast Show again. This is the stuff that almost makes me want to move to the UK. I could do quite well strolling through Dartmoor and watching British panel and sketch shows… And it’s rarely very scorchio there.

I started reading the German translation of Elizabeth Duvals Después de lo trans where she discusses all kinds of topic related to trans-ness, her lived experience, philosophy and political implications. It’s a tough beginning, as it seems drenched in European Humanities lingo. We already went through appropriate feminist means of expressions and now linger a bit on Lacan and why psychoanalysis is appropriate (in general, and for this topic).  

Consumerism #

Some parts for my retro PC, a used monitor stand, low-wattage light bulbs for the bedroom, two used RPG books (“Guns, Guns, Guns”, a very 90s book about guess what, and the “Tri-Stat dX” core book that was the basis for the anime RPG “Big Eyes, Small Mouth” and the very first “Game of Thrones” RPG adaption).

It was okay, no big expenses in a vacation week. There should be some donations in this list, but I’m still figuring out where to put this.

Side Projects #

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