Weeknotes 63

It is finally, properly, officially spring. 🌸

I don’t yet have an appointment for my first dose of coronavirus vaccine, but a few friends have already been given theirs so it’s starting to feel within reach. This page says “people aged 50 and over” at the moment and I’m reloading it every day.

I desperately want to go back to the gym and start losing the weight I’ve gained over the last year of sedentary cowering, but I won’t feel safe doing that when they reopen on (ostensibly) 12th April since I won’t be fully vaccinated, so the sooner I can start the process the better.

Speaking of “people aged 50”, I was very impressed with the perspective and, well, writing on display in Phil’s half-century notes (“the first in a series of one, or maybe two”). Happy birthday Phil!

We celebrated the official start of spring by doing a bit of spring cleaning to shovel some of the snowdrifts of junk out of my home office. Most significantly I bade a semi-emotional farewell to my Nintendo Wii and its diverse stack of games (Super Mario Sunshine! Super Mario Galaxy! Super Mario Galaxy 2!) which brought back many happy memories.

I held onto the Wii for a decade beyond its prime because of my investment in the optimistic narrative that I’d someday hook it back up and play the shit out of it while sobbing tears of nostalgic joy, but thinking about that for a second makes it obvious that it’s not going to happen — I’ve never cried and I never will. Plus it only has component video output so I couldn’t plug it into my telly even if I wanted to. Thanks for all the good times, Wii, and goodbye.

I also got rid of my PSVR because, while I got tons of fun out of it in 2016, I can no longer imagine using it instead of the Oculus Quest and it’s absurdly large and inconvenient by comparison.

Hanging the picture was a spring clean stretch goal but it might need to wait til next spring because I’m not made of energy (n.b. this may not be scientifically accurate).

Novel progress: since last week I have read zero (0) pages. That worked well then.

It’s a good book and I do want to read it in the abstract, but every time I see it sitting there I instinctively think “oh god, not now, book” and do something else instead. So I suppose the sensible conclusion is that, concretely, I don’t actually want to read it at all right now.

I’ll never understand those people who read, like, fifty novels a year. Even five is unimaginable given this pace.

I completed the UK census today and didn’t amusingly report my religion as Jedi, Pastafarian, European, “climate concerned” or whatever. There’s a glimmer of hope that society might be clawing itself out of this particular hole, but I suppose we’ll find out for sure once the results are published in [checks notes] March 2023 wtf?

Another question on the census is “how is your health in general?” with a choice of “very good”, “good”, “fair”, “bad” and “very bad”, which is a bit subjective. There’s nothing wrong with my health, but “very good” somehow feels like it should be reserved for people whose jeans fit properly. I went with “good”.

Less than two weeks until Easter, when I’ve taken a whole week off. 🐣