I am writing this post on my smartphone today, as opposed to my computer.  Though, of course, a smartphone is a computer, and indeed, is far more advanced a computer than any I’d used prior to the turn of the millennium.  It’s a lot more advanced than the computers that ran the Space Shuttle™ and vastly more advanced than the ones used in the Apollo moon landings.  Thankfully, Newtonian mechanics is straightforward enough to be computable using quite simple systems and some smart humans, of which there were many involved in that program, and Newtonian mechanics is all one really needs to get to the Moon and back.

Anyway, I walked to the train station this morning, as was my plan, which was why I did not bring my…my folding computer back to the house with me yesterday afternoon.  I plan to bring it with me this evening, and to take tomorrow morning off from walking, just to avoid overdoing things in the short term. There will be plenty of time for overdoing things; I need to pace myself at least a little bit.

I feel that my sleep has been getting even worse recently than it usually is, and it’s really quite frustrating.  Yet, even though I’m deeply tired, I can’t seem to get sleepy.  I’m not sure what I can do about this, but it’s quite frustrating.

I do have one rather fun thing to report:  this morning on the walk to the train, I listened to a new audio-book I’d ordered with this month’s Audible credit (which hit my account yesterday).  That book was the first Harry Potter book…but in Spanish!  If there’s one set of books I know well enough to be able to fill in the gaps in Spanish, it’s that set.  The only potentially better one would be The Lord of the Rings; all in good time for that!  So, my tentative thought is that I can listen to the whole Harry Potter series in Spanish and this should help me improve my spoken (and heard) Spanish skills.

Audible also has the Harry Potter books in Japanese, and I almost started with that, but I figured Spanish would probably be the one in which it would be more useful to improve my skills.  I am in south Florida, after all.  The other people who share the house in which I live are primarily Spanish speaking, for goodness sake.

There’s nothing that says I can’t do both, of course, and that is my tentative plan.  I mean to do a lot of walking, so there will be plenty of time to listen.  Even in my hour and a half walk so far this morning, I only got to chapter 4 of the first book, and it’s the shortest of the Harry Potter books.  Just wait till I get to book 6!  I read that one seven times between when it came out and when book 7 was released, because I was impatient.  By the time I finish that, maybe, the audio will feel completely natural.

Once again today, I let the 610 train go while waiting for the 630.  I’m glad I did.  Today’s weather was warmer and muggier than Monday, and there is essentially no wind to cool one down, so that time is well used.  The wait is only somewhat effective, of course.  I brought along a second shirt to put over my “athletic” one, just so that I’m not sweating all over the back of the seat on the train.  My shorts are designed to be very good at letting go of sweat, but even so, given the pattern of accumulation, I look almost as though I had wet myself‒though only if I had done so while lying on my belly.

It’s not that bad, I guess, and I have my little “scent bomb” spray to hide any bad odor…and I’ve been told that my initial sweaty smell isn’t too bad.  Far worse (to me) is the odor of mildew.  If it gets going, I feel nauseated.  I hate that smell.

This is probably why I can’t stand to eat pretty much any kind of mushroom; they all smell vaguely like mildew.  Also, their texture is gross.  I suppose if I were to eat a magic mushroom in order to try to treat my depression, I could probably just force a bit down.  But it would have to be in specific, deliberate, and controlled circumstances.  At least I’m highly unlikely to eat poisonous mushrooms accidentally, which is good, because by all accounts of which I’m aware, they bring about a slow, painful, and horrifying death when they kill, and there are generally no known antidotes.

I don’t have much more to report.  It’s been a weird few days at the office, because my colleague is out of town, on his delayed vacation.  It’s a bit hectic and I am slightly behind schedule on payroll, but that is largely due to a region-wide Internet outage we had yesterday afternoon.  The phones in our office are VOIP, and of course, the reports we get, from which I render the payroll, come through email.  We left the office not long after lunch, after waiting a bit to see if the Internet would return.

The irony is that, after everyone had left and I was just getting ready to lock up, the internet connection came back (earlier than predicted by Comcast, who I suspect use a sort of Mister Scot technique when estimating repair times).  It was too late to do anything about it, and I was practically heading out the door already, but it’s both mildly frustrating and rather amusing.

That’s about enough for today.  Tomorrow, I plan to write using my laptop computer, so the flow might be better.  It seems appropriate for what may be one of my final traditional Thursday blog posts.  In the meantime, please have a good day, today.