The Road Less Traveled, the infamous self-help book of my youth, begins with “Life is difficult.”, a twist on the buddhist truth that “Life is suffering.” Some days I wonder about my emotional and physical pain thresholds. I figure the latter is much higher, too much emotional carnage usually produces a sea of anxiety. I’ve learned to walk away from that more and more over the years. Leaving Strategy two and a half years ago was the the tipping point where I started to recognize my problems with drawing a line in the sand and saying something was too much to ask of me. I recently got an email from a stranger asking for my opinion of Strategy, I’m still thinking about how to write the response.

I rode with pointy3 yesterday. It’s been a while. Between vacation, shmooocon, being sick and being busy working on chef, I just haven’t had many free evenings in a while. I decided I needed to though, get out on the bike and enjoy the outdoors again. It was a pretty decent ride, although as usual I thought drinking doubles was a good idea at the time. I’m still trying to figure out what I want from a relationship and this came to sort of a head recently.

A while back I was writing about how I hadn’t stopped to think about what a relationship should be now, expecting a sort of american dream post-high school path would appear eventually. I learned that lesson already, so it was a neat little line to draw. I can make a list of personality traits that someone I would like would have, but that’s as much who I want as a friend as who I’d want to date. I suppose I had this over-simplified conception that an ideal relationship would be the combination of someone I liked to spend time with, was attracted too, and shared some similar interests with.

Older, wiser folks have told me that as you grow up relationships are more about working with someone to share your life together. With an emphasis on the work part. I guess I haven’t accepted that. I still compare perfecting relationships to the way I learn other things, and that as I understand more and more pieces, the puzzle comes together. This may or may not be a good idea. While my heart is squarely drowning in romanticism, my head usually takes the wheel and I have no expectations of movie plot love scenes. However, my problem is that I’m still expecting something that hasn’t happened yet. I don’t know what to do about that other than give it time.

Sometimes I’m not sure that I’m not crazy, or just depressed. I firmly believe smarter folks, apathetic folks suffer from this angst and it brings us down. So be it, for now I’m going to push through, enjoy some distractions, and choose a path on the other side.

Did you know you can’t donate books to the library? Doesn’t that seem backwards? I mean I get it, you can only have so many copies of the little train that could in the library, but.

Here is our materials donations policy:

The Library welcomes donations of books and other materials and accepts monetary contributions toward the purchase of materials. The Library reserves the right to decide the disposition of all gifts received. Gifts accepted for addition to the Library’s collection become the property of the Seattle Public Library and will be placed where most appropriate. Material not utilized in the Library’s collection will be transferred to the Friends of the Seattle Public Library, a non-profit organization, for use in their semi-annual book sales. The proceeds from the Friends of the Library book sales are donated to the Library in support of our mission, programs, and to enhance the Library’s collections.

So anyways, read The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. You can get the book in pdf from the website, or send me an address and I’ll send you a copy of the book you can read and pass on.

Bruce Potter was on a panel that I didn’t see about how the security industry is affected by the economy. It got me thinking. I haven’t really noticed it much myself, but perhaps it is simply overshadowed by all the noise in the media, which I try to avoid the best I can. I don’t work in the security industry though, I lump myself into the ‘IT’ umbrella. Sometimes I say I work in operations if I’m talking to someone that I think may care about the specifics, to give them the opportunity to ask more about it. Regardless, my industry is still ticking along. It’s not something that’s directly affected by recession. Eventually people won’t have money to spend on new startups, which will flood the market with jobless folks. But some of us joke that recession is good for technical industries because it lets us chip off some of the barnacles. That is, the folks who don’t really care about technology, aren’t excited enough about it that it’s not just a job to them. You have to believe in the benefits of technology to be any good at it. I suppose that may be true of most industries, but I haven’t really worked in enough of them to make that kind of a blanket statement.

Why don’t I worry about the recession? Why was I annoyed when our CEO made us have a company meeting because he was disturbed by WAMU going under? Why am I not worried about losing my nice things? Their value is likely tied to their usefulness. I’ve been thinking today about how people fill their time, and what a shame it is that it seems most people do it poorly. Entertainment is a nice escape, but it’s not very interesting. I have many trade skills, but if the world was coming to an end I’m sure there’d be plenty of competition for such work. My value really is in my mind; my thoughts and interests.

I was chatting with Adam about the next weather balloon project at HBL, and how I felt projects there were likely a good fit for my broad skill set, yet haven’t engaged the social structure there enough to get involved. This morning I was listening to 3ric’s talk on RFID, I was thinking about the technology being interesting but I’m caught up in configuration management and bicycles and all these other projects there’s so little time kicking around to start something else. I got to thinking about the cliche that it’s all been done before. Electricity has been invented, we got there and moved along. It’s tempting to believe that all the progress left to achieve requires too much up front, such as eight years of college. That’s definitely not the case though.

I remember around high school I was working for a computer repair shop and one of the sons of the family that owned it who was in college expressed regret that so much time had been spent in high school partying and not learning anything. Of course it’s not one or the other, but what makes so many people not eventually get up in the morning, stir crazy, and want to figure something out? Societal programmed fear of failure? I make no claims of grasping human psychology. I can’t imagine living without feeding my need to learn and solve problems. I suppose if your life is filled with entertainment as a distraction, you may not notice. It’s likely something different in each of us controlled by how our brains are wired. I’ve always been trying to figure out how different technologies work. Insert stories about taking bits apart when I was far too young to know what I was doing.

I just finished reading about the history of the shipping container. The interesting parts of that story is the container’s role in globalization. There was a hard change realized by the workers in the ports of America where men had worked as longshoreman for generations and enjoyed union control of their environment. In short form, automation replaced them. There likely wasn’t any way that the majority of these people could stay in the shipping industry, so it’s change the did their best to prevent from happening. It did all the same, and the ability to move “intermediate” goods has changed the way the world develops it’s products. It isn’t simply a matter of putting factories where the cheapest labor is. Interestingly, there’s a particular lack of manufacturing in Africa, do in the part to the lack of major container ports there.

My father’s family comes from northern Maine, known as “the county” due most of northern Maine being in Aroostock county. It’s still mostly wilderness up there. Baxter State Park, which includes Mount Katahdin which is the northern terminus of the Appalachian trail, comes rules in trust ensuring the roads are not paved or improved and the basic remoteness is preserved. But there was still change as the park changed the way the people who lived there used the land. The interstate was build, improving access to the area but simultaneously taking away the sense of community that developed from not easily being able to get anywhere else for what you needed. Walmart did not need to move into town to close many local stores, there just had to be one an hour away. NAFTA allowed not just manufacturing jobs to move south, but timber jobs to move north into Canada as well. This change upsets my romanticism of the area. I realized recently that these changes may not make me happy but they’ve happened for a reason. Being upset clouds the situation. Even if the change happened because heads of corporations simply wanted to make more money by paying people less, global wages will eventually stabilize. The concept of countries and national pride is outdated anyhow.

Change has been promised and everyone is excited about it. If it really amounts to change though, I think a lot less people are going to be happy about it than think they are. It’s not the right, or the republicans, or the conservatives that are going to be upset and others okay with it either. Some change will be, like we’ve seen with the planned closure of detention center at Guantanamo bay. Real change isn’t easy, and I’m not talking about just making it happen but also with living with how different it can make our lives.

I’m trying to delineate different jobs in my head under skilled labor and professionals. I feel like the majority of America’s work force has no skills that make them not easily replaceable. Jobs that don’t need to be here will continue to leave. Fighting the naturalization of “cheap labor” as Americans is an absurd fight against the inevitable. I wonder how much of that fight is against having to allow your self image of importance being destroyed because people you think are lesser than you can so easily do what you do.

Racism is still so prevalent. I find some irony in this. I used to know a social group that was very strongly against anything that resembled racism but held little concern for other forms of judgement like sexism. I feel like I grew up in a time and place where it was cool to not be racist, but very few actually understood why. Thus weren’t even necessarily free from being prejudicial, just particularly aware about not sounding racist.

My mother worked for Downeast Sexual Assault for a while and would occasionally help college students associated with the program by providing kids for focus groups. This usually amounted to getting me to rally some friends, and them to rally more. I had a couple friends that were accepted by ‘in’ crowds, and sometimes these ‘in’ people would find their way into our focus groups. I remember one girl when asked about how openly safe sex was discussed in our school she said it was very high and that everyone talked about it. I confronted her on this point, since I was in her class and I was absolutely sure no student had ever talked about a condom around me, outside of a faint memory of some kind of public service announcement style even in the auditorium. The point I’m making is that our judgements are so very easily shaped by what we want to believe.

One benefit of growing up as an outsider with no self esteem is that I’m less vulnerable to these cases but I’m very reluctant to think that I have it all figured out. My parents and how I was raised help that too, as well as believing in dinosaurs and all that science crap. It’s neat though that being a vulnerable person also helps protect your humanity.

The conclusion is that America needs more education. We need more innovation and creativity, these jobs are hard to move elsewhere because this work force does not come easily and without investment. It’s just America though, you can sell it that way to make people happy, but the reality is that the entire world needs more education. Stubborn people will always be stubborn people, but ideally we can help shave off the percentage of them that do stupid things. Progress will come in all the ways that we can’t see coming. Our country, our industries, they need not to prepare for this change, but we do. People are the common denominator.

I’ve been reading James Boyle’s ‘The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind” recently. I feel strongly about copyright, it’s definitely on my top five issues I care about. I’m reading the digital copy that was released by the author to the public online. My strong feelings make me want to buy a couple cases of the book in paperback and send them to every free thinking person I can think of. It’s interesting that I could send them a link, or a copy of the pdf, but I’m tempted to send them a physical book. Initally when I downloaded the book I figured if I ever got to reading I would buy a copy, even if I finished it, assuming I enjoyed it. I still prefer reading a book and not worrying about batteries, or damage to my laptop, theft, weight, etc.

It is interesting to compare the loss of the longshoreman unions to the successes of groups like the RIAA. It’s death seems inevitable for the same reasons, we really don’t need that middleman as much anymore. Yet money and lawyers seem to succeed where stubborn men with a rough image had failed. Nevertheless, Boyle’s book is obviously the forerunner of a book of the future covering the history of our futile attempts to prevent change from happening and disturbing the status quo that we’re comfortable with and understand.

I recall Saturday night being alright, yet spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday confined to bed or the couch. Tuesday morning I was up early still feeling pretty terrible, went back to bed, and felt like I mostly just had a cold when I woke up about 2pm. Monica came over and took care of me a bit Tuesday night, bless her heart. Wednesday morning I awoke with the same terrible feelings, which didn’t bode well for my second attempt at getting back to Maine to see the family, the first delayed by Seattle Snowpacalpyse I. I had promised a friend I’d get into the office and sign a document though, so I set the alarm for 1pm before going back to bed. When I woke, I was back feeling like I just had a cold. So I packed, stopped in the office, ran a couple errands and came home for a nap. Anthony and David were coming down to play a tabletop with Tori, so I was able to get a ride from Anthony to the airport and made it there okay. I forgot to take a bottle of Pepsi out of my messenger bag, but fortunately that’s all security theater and they let me though alright. I wasn’t able to sleep on the overnight though, so by the time I met my grandparents at the airport I just wanted to get back to their camp and sleep. And so I did, waking up for some dinner with them, more liquids and drugs, then some more sleep until the wee hours of the morning. Since then I’ve been up. I bought Ender in Exile Wednesday and finished it. A must read for anyone who enjoyed Ender’s Game. Then some fussing with the computer here which appears to be perfectly preserved for the last five years.

In the afterword Orson Scott Card makes a reference to hoping that our veterans can find some connection to Ender’s character and his burdens that those around him generally cannot fathom. I hadn’t considered this, and found it interesting. I was brought to tears reading Peter express to Valentine his feelings about Ender writing The Hegemon and being understood. The book, and perhaps the series, tends to revolve and those who think themselves smarter than everyone else out stepping each other. Card also noted that rather than re-read all of his books to ensure he didn’t break any continuity, he consulted the community and pointed towards a new Ender’s Encyclopedia coming out that appears written by a fan. That a series of books has so many fans that it builds such a community isn’t surprising per se, but it sparks other thoughts. These notes all tie together around me in an interesting way.

I’m somewhat tired of the whining about finding out what you want to do with your life. Sure, I have a career that I’ve generally been in since the seventh grade, but whatever. Live your life. That goal is relatively simple. Do the things you want to do. I’ve never found those things hard. My trouble has always been figuring out how to live, who I am as a person, and as they say: what it all means.

Emotions make that tough. I’ve had a couple experiences lately that made me look back at girls that I used to like and somewhat suddenly look at them like just one more in the rat race, flailing widely. It’s absurd to think one is alone in having a goal, whatever magical goal it is that I do have. But it does feel lonely at times.

I can’t say I just want to enjoy myself, because I put a lot of effort into activities that aren’t always fun, like work, mowing the lawn, etc. I’d like to lay claim to a level of simplicity that’s more complicated than the word simple. Which just makes the little headache on the top left side of my head explode in a mushroom cloud in my head.

I suppose the big problem is that for all intensive purposes I am happy. I’m not fond of dating, yet like being liked, so there’s a goal there. I think part of my mind still thinks it’s 10 years ago and too easily forgets who I’ve become and the ways in which I’ve grown. That part of my mind also leans towards some fictional idea of perhaps where I’m supposed to end up, which has no correlation to where I am now.

Maybe it’s being home for the holidays and around family. There’s nothing to do really, which is great. I’ve read a book cover to cover since I left Wednesday night. I read some of a newspaper today, and remarked to myself on what comics have been replaced since I read the newspaper last year. So while there’s plenty of time for thinking, and who I am ensures plenty of thoughts… those choices that seem complicated don’t feel like they really are today.

My father used to, and probably still does, have this list in his bathroom in Surry:

The Three Grand Essentials of Happiness

1. Something to do
2. Someone (or something) to love
3. Something to look forward to

I just noticed this next to my grandfather’s computer:

Stroke!

1. Smile
2. Raise both arms
3. Speak a simple sentence

I find humor in that searching for “lists of threes” on google, the first link is a discussion of how in presentations you should do things in three’s because people tend to remember that number better. Yet the page lists four points.

Since I decided I need to chill with the dating a month ago, I’ve still poked around okcupid. That’s made a couple things clear. While there’s still a feeling inside me desiring to meet someone special and live happily ever after and all that, I actually use okcupid as a venue to seek out conversation more than anything else.

Why? I have enough friends I figure, why not converse with them? I poke for okcupid profiles that have a sentance that sparks some though in my head, then send that message. It’s not pure I suppose, I still only message cute girls.  It seems to be something like:

1. search for profiles of single girls in a general age range with photos
2. scan photos for subtleties that I’m attracted to
3. read profile for something interesting
4. think about it and  write a response.

It’s not making small talk in an aim to date someone, especially since I feel like I need to talk and think more than date right now, it’s just interesting conversation.

Where am I taking this? What am I looking for? Why do I have to search out conversation from strangers?

Tanya’s in town from Alaska for Christmas. She leaves early Monday, so I packed in some time hanging out with her tonight. We got our usual banter in, and I tried to squeeze all of my relationship news from the last few months into the car ride from the SSAS to Squid and Ink. She asked me how much what I think about relationships has changed since then.

I recently removed a few paragraphs from my okcupid profile. That’s indicative of something. It’s been growing for over a year as a self-summary piece. But much of it was written a paragraph at a time and lacking cohesion. Maybe I’m lacking cohesion.

The yellow card magnets have been well recieved. I’ve given out about 400 of 1000, so I expect another order in a month or so as they get the attention of people I don’t already know. I’m keeping a pile at Squid and Ink and will probably slowly approach some bike places as well.

I’m getting up in five hours or so to go snowboarding, so it’s lame I’m still awake. I slept for a half hour or so but was woken up by one of the dogs flipping out. I slept in late this morning but also didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night because I stayed up watching the Matrix trilogy. Perhaps having coffee at Squid and Ink before bed wasn’t the best idea. Sarah made an awesome cake though, it’s name was full of words, I can’t remember any of them.

The goodish news, Dad’s home from the hospital and back to being himself pretty much. Which means he’s stubbornly refusing to deal with doctors and do much of anything about his health. His assertion that all they want him to do is stop drinking and smoking is a veil. While I’m sure they strongly recommend those things because he’s tearing himself apart with those habits, there’s more that could be done. Not surprising at all, but unsettling. It’s annoying that our family has both a worry gene and a stubborn gene. The two amount to having a devil on each shoulder throwing shit back and forth. It’s pretty shitty that he got himself in this situation and it took me calling my all of my grandparents and getting the closest to drive down the hill to check on him to find that he had hurt himself days ago and did nothing about it. Despite all of us having talked to him in the interim, he said nothing. It’s confirmation that he really shouldn’t be living out the woods alone. If he’s not getting help when he has the ability to pick up the phone, what happens when he can’t? Do I have to arrange some kind of neighborhood ‘check on Barry’ schedule with my aunt, neighbors and grandmother? None of them are savvy enough for a google calendar. Meh. This wasn’t the best move to get us to leave him alone.

So I’ll probably go down to the Phoebe House tomorrow with mom for christmas. Otherwise I’m home in Seattle until January 7th when I’ll go back to Maine for a week. The thought’s crossed my mind if I should try to arrange being able to work remotely for a few weeks and go back to stay at my dad’s. We’ll wait and see how the next few weeks go, and then what things look like when I go back to visit.

My yellow card stickers came in, which unveils bikealive. A number of people on .83 want a handful of them. I should email safety-third too. I want to distribute them all and get a vibe for the reaction. It seems more positive than I expected at this point.

Otherwise, I’m pushing hard to get some packages into Debian. It’s such an odd structure. I may be able to use some social connections to find a package sponsor. As soon as things quiet down I’m going to work more on that.

Finally found a useful job for transparent windows: writing while watching the daily show in the background on a small laptop screen.

A less than ideal day. My phone spent the night running out of battery power and rebooting. Over and over because it was plugged into a charger. The battery is finally dying. The AT&T store in Seattle apparently doesn’t stock batteries for my AT&T Tilt. Which is kind of funny, and totally lame. I’m feeling more and more like buying a G1.

Getting home and back on the internet I was greeted by an email from Jetblue announcing that my flight tonight was cancelled. Last night’s was as well, and the news is that thousands have been stranded at Seatac during our fun little storm here. Flights were filled up until the end of the week, and those were filling up by the hour. I gave up and rescheduled for a week in January.

This sparked a couple hours on the phone with my family talking about my dad and his state. It’s summed up by telling mom I was sad thinking about dad slowly dying. Between his emotional problems and his health problems, which feed off each other, it’s a solid downward slope. With the last couple of months feeling like I had a number of human problems to spend time thinking about, it was disheartening to add this to the pile of issues I’m not spending enough time considering.

I feel like I’ve caught the short end of the stick when it comes to what I’m made up with in regards to relationships. I’m thinking that compromise is too deeply ingrained in my personality. My first two relationships weren’t until I was in my late teens and were both long ones. Although different, both had issues where I felt hurt but wasn’t able to resolve that. Some part due to inexperience, but certainly some part due to feeling that I could fix everything by sucking it up and moving along. Which only resulted in a rotting feeling inside me until the end.

I don’t seem to know what I want from a relationship. I have pretty good ideas about what I like about people though. At times I feel like I’m feeding some sort of chemical, primarily trying to counteract feeling lonely or horny. Which would be unfortunate, but on some level, I suppose that’s all we’re ever doing. Even if we’re doing something noble or selfless, it’s really because we feel it’s the right thing to do, right? This makes me not want to be in a relationship, so I’ve sort of put a moratorium on them. I’m still open to dating, but have drawn a line in front of having a girlfriend again for bit.

It’s interesting that I’ve always been of the mentality that when I was dating someone, it was generally exclusive, and I jumped quickly from that into a relationship. Many people have looked at me funny about that, but I’ve done it because it felt right. And honestly, I did think about it but didn’t see any reason to go any other route. Now I feel like there’s a reason, but I’m not sure exactly what it looks like. Or, what it will look like at the time, but I feel like it’s more a fear of where I will end up if I don’t account for it.

I’m not the one you want, babe,
I’m not the one you need.
You say you’re lookin’ for someone
Never weak but always strong,
To protect you an’ defend you
Whether you are right or wrong,

It ain’t me, babe. I was once accused of having a type. To some degree, sure. I only like girls I think are nice, I have an idea of what I think is cute, and a distaste for high maintenance. But who they were? They were all very different people. It seems like I need to find some way to learn to harness my feelings better, both to not fall in love with girls I like, and not want to sleep with those I find attractive. Both laudable, yet nigh impossible goals. I suppose the trick is all in the actions because we’re bound to feel the ways we do, and entitled to, but what matters is what we do about it.

I’m pretty sure I need a walkabout, and it’s upsetting that I’ve got this pile of medical bills and miscellaneous debt about to deal with first.

I’ve related figuring out that there’s no such thing as “the right girl” to losing your religion. It’s a strenously large pile of responsibility to shoulder all at once, and brings a frustrating little sidekick who is intent on killing and romantic notions by convincing you that it’s not about who you want to spend the rest of your life with but who you think you could spend the rest of your life with.

Which maybe is why when people get older they seem to have less relationships? Maybe there’s just that much more disenfranchisement with age.

One of the things that I talk[ed last night] about is taking a shine to OKCupid profiles that show some level of unique personality. That’s there is someone in there that likes what they like because they enjoy it, not because liking it gets them friends. That is, liking indie rock makes them fit in with people and gives them something to talk about that makes them feel special, and if not for that, they’d be lost. I think one of the things that people like about me is that I have strong personality. I’m often saddened by how rarely someone calls me up and says, let’s go do this. Especially girls. I’ve felt this way nearly as long as I can remember, so I suppose I’m accustomed to it somewhat. Or rather, I think I expect it. I seem to have a habit of dating quiet girls, because I dislike loud and obnoxious people usually. I wonder if I feel like I’m missing strong but not arrogant girls, on a level that I can feel but not pinpoint? Like I was saying before, where I’m naturally compromising, yet knowing something isn’t right, but I’m not confident enough to say it.

And is that something that I’d feel better about if I just said it, even if it wasn’t true?

OkCupid Recommends: btmspox. He is also interested in apatheism!

Thanks. Does he? Maybe I should talk to this character, perhaps he’ll have some insight for me. Part of me wishes I could find some direction in other peoples writings, but I know that my problems are my own. Although finding a good bit to read my help get me thinking in the right directions.

Existentialism is a term that has been applied to the work of a group of 19th and 20th century philosophers who, despite doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject – not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual.

I seem to know what’s reasonable from a relationship, but not what I want to get out of one. I’m caught in some kind of survival mode too often by default. These are human problems, and require human interaction to move forward. It’s not an academic problem, so it’s not one that I should try to resolve by removing myself from people. But there’s a matter of attacking it in small enough doses that I’m not overwhelmed with feeling responsible for hurting other people.

While I acknowledge that these are my problems, I’m not confident that they aren’t also situational. That is that my type isn’t luring me into this place in a playing the victim sort of manner.

At the moment, I’m feeling tired with being unchallenged by people. I don’t yearn for the memories of being told there was something wrong with me that I had to fix, but I feel like a certain amount of understanding that’s leveled against me is too accommodating.

Very few people seem to ask me how I feel, none of them ask why.

Winter Storm 2008 here in Seattle. It started in the early morn with something called Thundersnow. Very little happened yesterday as the roads were snowy and icy. Seattle doesn’t get much snow, so it’s pretty slow to react to these situations. Later many of us braved out on bikes to Greenlake for the .83 December Race and the Race of Champions.

I’m a little dissapointed in myself for not having written in a couple weeks, moreso about anything that means anything. As it is, I’ve been pretty busy. My cast is off and I’m down to using a brace sometimes. Most things wrist related are back to normal so I’ve been resolving being stir crazy and been out again more.

I got myself into a bit of relationship mess about a month ago and I suppose I’m still settling from that. Sitting here thinking, I probably haven’t backpeddled as much as I should and I definitely haven’t thought (written) enough in the aftermath. But the anxiety is mostly gone, I bought myself a used Bianchi Volpe, did some “charity” work and some “work work“. I need to do more of the latter I think in my off time. I’m not entirely sure when that is. I leave Sunday for the better part of a week in Maine to see the family.

I had a bit of a conversation with Eric this morning upon getting into the office about people getting uptight and stressed out about the weather. I’m fortunate that nobody gives me a hard time if I come into the office late. Although part of that is from the type of work I do, and part is from having a boss that understands that, a lot of it is because I do work hard and do get work done.

It’s a reminder to not let life get too complicated. I last thought about this while reading The Last Viridian Note. Which is… important…. Which is why I feel at the moment I need to find some more time to not do anything. But when? Not now. Got to get some work done before vacation.