01:05 am - Earworms a Few Decades Apart, and My Weekend
My oh my,
"Skullcrusher Mountain" is a persistent earworm, isn't
it? What finally chased it out after forty hours was, of all things,
an ice-cream truck that went by playing
"Music Box
Dancer" (which was high on the Top-40 list during a period when
I actually listened to a olt of Top-40 radio, and was one of the
few tunes I tried to learn to play on my family's electric chord
organ before I ever got my hands on a guitar).
Why can I get a much stronger signal from my next-door
neighbour's WiFi -- one floor down and a room over in addition
to being in the next house -- than from the WiFi router in
the very next room to where I'm sitting? (Okay, they're
different models -- different brands -- and probably
not the same protocol (next door is 802.11g; I'll go look
at what I've got when the cat moves off my foot mine is
802.11b, I think) so there are probably good reasons for this ...
it just seems Wrong Somehow to be that big a difference when mine
is physically that close by. Though maybe I should try putting
mine on the ground floor as well, just in case it's all about
direction.
I wonder whether it'd be feasible/easy/legit to set up a
low-power analog television transmitter to send whatever I've
got tuned in on DTV-converter in the bedroom or whatever videotape
or DVD I've got playing there, to the currently-just-furniture
large analog television in the kitchen. Usefulness would be
somewhat compromised without a series of mirrors to beam
remote-control signals back to the bedroom, but it'd be nice
for the times when I'm in the mood to watch what happens to
be being broadcast, but also want to go cook something.
(That is, I set up to record most of what I want to watch,
and watch it time-shifted instead of being locked to the
broadcasters' schedules, but sometimes I do wind up watching
a show as it's being broadcast and rewind the tape immediately,
saving space on the tape, when my television-watching mood
fortuitously coincides with the broadcast schedule.) I could
easily live not being able to conveniently change the channel
when I've already settled in for the whole hour anyhow.
Huh. I think I have some television-grade coax lying
around, so if it's long enough maybe I can just run that
through the house insted of going antenna-to-antenna.
Now if I can remember where I left it ... (I think I know
where my stash of Thinnet Ethernet cable is; I don't know
how similar that is impedance-wise, or how wrong that can
be and still basically work).
In any case, it looks like I can't watch Fox or WB when
it's raining heavily. Hope for good weather on House,
Bones, and Dollhouse nights when the fall
season comes around.
Friday, I called a plumber after I'd contacted Mom to
make sure she was ready (i.e. willing and
unsurprised) to pay for it. The magically re-reappearing
two-meter puddle that kept showing up again every time I
thought I'd sorted out the source, is no more. *whew*
And I no longer need to prop a bucket at a precarious
angle under the hot-water fitting for the tub when I want to
take a shower.
Friday was stressful and I hadn't really slept the
night before; I finally crashed a bit before sunset.
Since I then did sleep, I hoped that meant
I'd actually make it to the housewarming/birthday party
I wanted to go to Saturday ... Alas, it was one of those
days when the act of getting myself ready to go out
used up most of my spoons. I hoped that I'd recover
enough spoons to go anyhow if i just skipped the first
half, but I didn't get back to feeling good about
standing up and moving around again until too much
later. The effort of getting ready to go out wasn't
entirely wasted, as later still I got a phone call
inviting me to meet a friend at a mall and then go
for dinner, and by then I was starting to feel like
standing up and moving around might not be so bad
again. I wasn't really moving all that well, but I
wanted to take advantage of the chance to do something
social after all, after having gotten my hopes up
earlier, and while it wasn't the party I'd been
planning to attend, I did get out of the house, get
fed, and get to spend time in fun conversation with
a friend.
Despite not sleeping more than a couple hours again
last night, I had a productive day today, in that I did
accomplish something that had been on my to-do list for
too long. Then I kinda fell over, not quite managing to
nap but not really getting any more done, but
hey, I'd gotten something done before that, so I'm
counting this day as not being a loss. Alert again for
the moment, but hoping that after eating and taking my
bedtime meds I'll manage to get proper sleep tonight
(which would make decent sleep an every-other-night
thing).
Finally: while tossing and turning earlier this
evening in that "not quite able to nap but way too
sleepy for anything else" period this afternoon/evening,
I grabbed my classical guitar to noodle on. I'd
forgotten how sensuously that guitar throws the vibrations
of the low strings back into my chest. Mmmmmmm.
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dmk!]