5 April 1998: Am I Insane Yet?

Sunday, 5 April 1998:

Am I Insane Yet?

What a hectic weekend!

We had our fantasy baseball draft yesterday, and I went with the "no pitching" strategy - not really by design, but by mishap when I eventually realized that there just weren't many pitchers out there that I wanted to draft. I guess I'll need to do some trading sometime during the season. Ack, I hate it when I do this.

The draft was fun, as always, and I do feel I came away with some bargains, but I don't know how competitive I'll be. It took us 7-1/2 hours to do the whole thing.

I also finished the first of the two stats programs I need to write. The other one will - I hope - be easier, now that I've refreshed my knowledge of perl and since it's not as user-interaction-intensive. I hope to get it done by Tuesday, which is the first day I actually need to do the stats.

Last night I went down to the coffee shop and sat and read. Sewer, Gas & Electric turned out better than I'd though, though my assessment of it as a cross between Snow Crash and Illuminatus! still rings about right. It's essentially about a near-future conspiracy created out of whole cloth. A pretty wonky book, with few serious points to make, but it got good enough at the end that after I came home I stayed up 'til 12:30 and finished it off. Its three chapters are entitled "Sewer", "Gas", and "Electric", with an epilogue entitled "&".

Next up is Sheri S. Tepper's new book, The Family Tree, which is next month's book discussion topic. Then I'll read Mary Doria Russell's Children of God, and then Iain Banks' Use of Weapons. Ceej has gone bonkers over Banks, although I've had this book on my to-read list for a while. I've generally heard that Banks' work tends to suck in those who try it. I could stand to find an author who can suck me in like that.

Incidentally, Ceej linked to my journal in a recent entry of her own journal, which made my hit rate spike sharply: it more than doubled - nearly tripled, though we're going from 10 to 28 hits per day here, which is not exactly going to make my ISP charge me more for a high-usage Web page.

I slept in today, through the time change, and skipped the WisCon meeting. I decided sleep was more important. I crawled out of bed around 11:00 and got dress around 12:30, and finished re-setting the clocks in my apartment. (There are... let's see... seven of them. Plus my laptop and my TV, which I haven't reset.)

I understand that the summer is when we're on Daylight Savings Time, and the winter is when we're off. Is this right? It doesn't make much sense to me. We have more daylight in the summer, so why do we need to save it?

I went for a short walk late this afternoon down to Lake Monona, and then went over to a friend's house to play games for the evening. Two of the four people there aren't among my regular gaming buddies that I've written about before. We played a couple of games of The Settlers of Catan (I won once) and several rounds of a neat little game called Liars Dice, which is apparently out-of-print. I wonder if I can find a copy on eBay?

It's another busy week for me coming up. I'm considering punting on taping Babylon 5 once season 3 ends, and picking it up again the next time around. I think I need to take a break and spend the time on other things. How can anyone watch as much TV as the average American watches? Six hours per week breaks the bank for me!

And I need to finish that fantasy baseball software, and... uh, actually there's not much else on my plate this week until I go to Minicon next Friday. I'd like to get to the public library to take out some books-on-tape for the trip, though. So maybe this week will be easier than I'd expected.

Speaking of which, did I mention my library story? Last Tuesday I went to the Madison public library to get some tax forms, and I decided to get a library card, specifically for this books-on-tape purpose. So I filled out a form, handed it to the clerk, and he went to the computer, and...

"Hmm, you already have a card with us."

"I do?"

"Yep. Same address, same phone number, same everything."

"Hmm." I looked through my wallet, and... "You're right. I do. How about that?" I guess I'd forgotten about it because I hadn't used it in a long time, and I hadn't used it because I'd forgotten about it. I suspect I got it originally to take out compact discs.

One of the gamers tonight asked what I have about books (the same woman had teased me some months back that I didn't even have a card; she was amused by this story). The answer is "nothing", it's just that my ability to buy books far outstrips my ability to read books, so I don't need to get books from the library. On the other hand, I'm not interested in owning books on tape, and I could try out some peculiar CDs for free using the card and decide if I wanted to buy them.

Oh, yeah, and I've still gotta do those darned taxes.

I'm taking Friday off to go to the con. I might take Monday off, too, depending on whether I feel like going into work. The way I feel right now... I'll probably take it off. But it's a week away.

I got a number of supportive e-mails about my entry on Friday. I am less frantic now than I was then, but still pretty wound up. I need to start taking some action about this, and not wait "until things calm down", because things never calm down. I think I can get away with taping the rest of season 3 of B5, though, because there are only 2 or 3 episodes left. So that's not a big deal.

But I do think I need to spend less time on the computer in the long run. Spend more time sitting and doing quiet things, or outside enjoying the weather, or with the cats or with my friends. And, goldarnit, I want to be less responsible for always being the one to organize gaming sessions. Okay, there have been others who have organized some lately, but I want to encourage that trend to continue.

Ugh.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)