Sunday, January 8, 2012

New Year's Traditions, Growing Older, and Other Observations

I had about an hour to explore in-world tonight, but three crashes later and I decided the Linden Gods were giving me advice about how to spend my time. Some days are like that. What can you do? Work on something else… like typing this.

After Christmas, when more crap comes into the house, I invariably get into the mindset that stuff needs to exit. I don't want to become one of those people profiled on "Hoarders," with towering piles of junk blocking exits to the house, rescue personnel holding their noses at the stink as they attempt to extract my bloated body from the mess.* Consequently, I've been making piles of things to go in the trash, go to the recycling people, and to go to one of the charitable organizations that periodically comes by to pick up stuff. The problem with this type of cleaning is that it's quite tedious to go through piles of paper, piles of books, piles of clothing, piles of linens, piles of whatever and make decisions…far easier to throw it into a corner and deal with it later, which is how the piles arose in the first place.

I've been shedding New Year's traditions one by one, it seems. Once upon a time, I stayed up past midnight, a bottle of champagne in one hand (well, a glass in hand, bottle in fridge) and Dick Clark on TV. That went by the wayside some years ago when I realized (a) I couldn't really stay up that late any more and (b) there wasn't much point in it anyway. Another tradition was to get up late on New Year's Day (hoping the hangover wasn't too bad) and watch the Rose Bowl parade and college football games. Having New Year's Day fall on a Sunday this year scotched that plan, too, courtesy of the Sports Scheduling Gods. So I went shopping instead, picking up, among other things, a new coat and pair of gloves. The day wasn't a total loss.

Also on the bright side: no annoying midnight fireworks from the local children. (Plus one adult, apparently. The neighbors have complained about a guy in a different neighborhood who sets off fireworks whenever he feels like it and spooks the dogs around here. I'm hoping the police had a stern talking-to with him.) Seems like a silly habit, and in the past no two people could coordinate on the time, so "midnight" stretched over about a half hour.

I've been dealing with an annoying muscular problem of indeterminate cause and even more indeterminate cure. Periodically, the muscles in my right shoulder and neck tense up, causing really irritating spasms in my neck, just under my jaw. I've been doing stretches to strengthen the area and increase flexibility, I've been spending less time sitting - particularly at the computer - and less time typing. Of course, for someone whose job and leisure activities largely revolve around computers of one sort or another, the cure is almost (almost, I said) worse than the disease. I'm hoping rest helps.

Now that the holiday season is over, it's back to work five whole days a week. Life is tough, eh?

-------------

* I haven't actually seen "Hoarders," but this seems like the type of show that's on these days.

No comments: