The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Ho ho! Holidays?
(Mike pisses and moans. It's a tradition!)

Aside from having put in just over half a day at work on Wednesday – knocking out some reports that were requested for this week, and getting a better grip on where matters will stand when I go back next Monday – I’ve theoretically been on vacation since Thursday night, December 23rd.

I tell you, it certainly doesn’t feel like it.

Finding myself singularly unprepared for Christmas this year, there was much running around at and just after the last minute. A raging headcold moved into my chest, and an eczema flare-up left me best suited to medicating myself and trying to get comfortable enough to be unconscious. Battling the eczema involves taking regular doses of antihisthamines, which tend to make one drowsy. I finally saw a doctor (which is generally a waste of time with colds, since they’re viral and antibiotics are useless against anything but bacteria) on Monday in order to get a better decongestant and because Ari was concerned that the lung congestion might have left me open to something bacterial, a bronchitis or somesuch, and we didn’t need something like that spreading around here. The doctor agreed with me but wrote me a ‘script’ for an antibiotic along with a decongestant. By Tuesday night I’d decided that while the decongestant (psuedovent) was effective I was having some adverse reaction to the antibiotic – red blotches popping up all over, and my eczema beginning to worsen. Stopping the antibiotic and kicking up the anthisthamines, by Wednesday it was improving.

Still, here it is, Thursday night again - a week since my "holidays" began - and I still feel as if I’m just a few doses and one really good night’s sleep away from health. The problems are that that’s how I felt yesterday, too, and tomorrow’s the last day of the year. Moreover, despite it being a holiday for me it’s a Friday, so by late afternoon my Christmas/New Year’s vacation will have shriveled to just another weekend. (No, I have no special New Year’s Eve plans – I never do. I’m one of those people who’d much rather be alone and reading or working on something than going anywhere near a party.)

With little more that three days of vacation remaining I’m still looking at a cleaning job in one section of this room, followed by the breaking down of this computer (so it can become the kids’ new one) and the assembly of our new computer, which has been sitting, waiting in boxes in the living room since early last week.

Part of the delay’s been a lack of energy on my part. Much of it’s been a lack of cooperation from anyone else here, though some of that changed today largely due to me feeling enough fire within me to be able to light ones under the indolent others here.

Mixed in there is the apprehension that something won’t go right. After all, somewhere in the past week the CD-ROM drive on this (the older) computer stopped acknowledging that any disc was in it. Data or music, it'll spin and flash, but any attempt to access the contents finds me looking at a prompt to insert a disc. Checking the system tells me that as far as the computer’s concerned it’s working perfectly - how wonderful! - and the “troubleshooting” pathways offered would be laughable if they didn’t also leave me wanting to commit murder. I picked up a CD lens cleaner, and while that did take away a great deal of collected muck, so it was a good buy, the hardware's still behaving the same way. Attempting to use system resources to re-install it at the hardware level -- without actually opening the case and detatching it, etc. -- have gotten me nowhere. Attempts to locate a driver for the device (an LTR-24102M) so I can re-install it ave yielded little more than threads from various messageboards by other damned souls kvetching about similar problems, and no one offering a truly simple solution aside from declaring it a “piece of shit” and suggesting buying something else. Beyond that the vague meanderings concerning corrupted drivers and possible viruses that amount to nothing more useful than a shaman rattling a deerskin bag filled with bones, stones and teeth at me.

As I often say concerning computer systems: I want a tool, not another hobby.

So, there’s some trepidation on my part as I consider transplanting this computer to a new setting (knowing I’ll likely have to pull the main case out soon thereafter to do something about the CD drive), setting up a new one and not only making sure it has the software needed to make use of our broadband connection, but also hooking in my new broadband router into the system (thanks to I’m a Crypt Leak & Abby-gal for that and various other yuletide goodies, btw.) and so allowing both computers and one of the game systems (the X-Box is the one we’re set to do at first, though the PS2 will likely join the fray somewhere in the next few weeks) access to the Internet at the same time… at this stage I’m just wondering how many things will go awry.

Anyway, that’s the central objective for Friday. Getting it set up, that is, not creating new problems.

If I can get that taken care of by nightfall and have access, then I’ll declare that a victory and turn my attention to trying to clear my mind for the new year by losing myself for a solid day or more in something fun that I don’t have to justify to anyone. That’ll be a start.

2004, in general, stank on ice for me, and much of what reeked stands ready to pass with me into 2005. Indeed, 2004 was so bad that it felt as if it started at least two months early, if not an entire year so. There was next to no real Christmas/New Year's holiday in 2003, and no actual vacation of any sort in 2003 or 2004, and the overall feeling was one of playing an unceasing game of Russian roulette solitaire where I knew there was at least one live round in the mix but the dead clicks meant nothing good because there was nothing to stop the trigger from being pulled again and again aside from a round going off. I went through some sort of emotional burn-out by February (which was part of the reason I tried to distract myself by starting this blog) and I’ve not recovered from it. While nearly nothing sufficiently wonderful could have happened during these holidays to fully restore me, I haven’t even really rested, much less done anything to make me feel renewed.

Being able to tick off a list of the nigh infinite ways in which things could be so much worse fails to do much for my perspective. When I tell myself it could be worse there’s a little voice that says “It will be, Oscar. It will.”