Weeknotes 23

Update on my electric toothbrush / the existence of the supernatural! Following last week’s incident I decided to use a process of elimination to diagnose the problem. It was much easier to replace the toothbrush than the bathroom so I got a new toothbrush and now everything is fine again. I slightly begrudge the loss of thirty pounds but it’s better than having to upend my worldview.

After nearly three weeks my back pain alert level has at last been downgraded from “impediment” to “annoyance”. It’s frustrating how long it’s taken to get to this point, especially since I didn’t do anything fun to provoke an injury in the first place. Then again, maybe three weeks isn’t long at all, and it’s just that any wait feels long when you’re experiencing pain and can’t properly pay attention to anything else.

I’m hopeful it’ll get fully better this week so I can enjoy a brief moment of not experiencing any musculoskeletal distress before I hunch over and play a video game for several days.

I’ve been putting some effort into trying to properly organise my home office now that it’s where I go to do my job. It’s much too cluttered with books and paperwork and USB cables and defunct Raspberry Pis to be an enjoyable place to spend time. So far I’ve thrown out a lot of junk, which has definitely helped, but I still have a long way to go before it’s actually nice.

IKEA delivered some furniture to help with this project. Instead of their pre-coronavirus delivery regime — two people in a van who can dump stuff in your hallway and don’t need to get close to anyone else — they sent one person who couldn’t carry anything up to my flat so had to meet me at the front door of the building and hand me every box individually. There was probably a meeting where someone decided this was safer for any of the parties involved but it isn’t.

We watched the first two episodes of I May Destroy You and they are incredibly good. It’s obviously a less fun and more grown-up show than Chewing Gum but that makes it much more interesting to me. Michaela Coel’s writing is brilliant and funny and she has a completely captivating presence as a performer, plus a lot of it is shot in the part of Hackney where I live so the location spotting is enjoyable too. I’m really looking forward to the rest of it.

The design of the PS5 is underwhelming but I assume it’s constrained by the need for cooling so I graciously tolerate the compromise. I’m not excited about any of the games that were announced; I find it almost impossible to imagine a person who cares about, say, Gran Turismo, even though they definitely exist. I’ll probably get Horizon Forbidden West because I enjoyed the first one and Stray because it’s got a cat and robots in it.

For a long time “croak-kay” was the most commonly uttered Animal Crossing-ism in this household, but this week “my feathers” has overtaken it by a wide margin. I don’t even know what it means, it’s just fun to say in response to being told any information at all. The coffee is ready? My feathers!

Less than a week to go. I’ve taken Friday off.