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Was Rushing This Due to (Also) Starting Disciples, But It Stopped Working
Had recently finally purchased Disciples I, Disciples II and Patrician III, now saw Disciples I even cheaper today, $0.89 instead of the $1.19 I bought it for, so took it as my cue to install it and give it a go, since I was actually considering it anyway, in particular due to the fact that it isn’t listed as being compatible with Windows 7 but people do say it does work, with occasional freezes or crashes, especially if you’re idle. And other than rundll32.exe being called, wanting to connect somewhere and me blocking the attempts, which resulted in a brief delay, it seemed to start just fine and as I completed the first scenario, which meant quitting and getting back a number of times, since I kept meaning to try to start writing this instead, there was no freeze or crash.
That didn’t last though, because after playing a little of the second scenario as well and quitting one more time, when I tried to get back it didn’t work anymore, and it caused my desktop and taskbar to freeze even though everything else worked, so explorer.exe was no longer responding. The matter was sorted out with no reboot, just logging off and back on after forcing both GOGLauncher.exe and rundll32.exe to close, though I did see a number of odd notifications and 20 errors about “Circular Kernel Context Logger” in system logs, but trying again resulted in the same scenario, and trying to log off directly, without forcing those processes to close first, resulted in me eventually needing to force logging off. The errors didn’t reappear though, but a warning about an unidentified USER32 event did. And I left it alone after that, having risked enough as it was.
So I guess I’m not rushing that much anymore, though I did also get back to Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic lately and played a few turns more after giving up on Disciples today. Plus, I will be going out tomorrow and want to shave this evening. Would have also wanted to nap a little, since I only slept some four or perhaps four and a half hours this morning, but the issues sure woke me up right now, considering how much anything wrong or apparently wrong regarding my computer scares me, so I guess that’s also out of the picture and I’ll see how I’ll manage tomorrow. Also running then is no longer an option, I’d say, but it wasn’t really one anyway, since the forecast says there should be significantly less wind on Wednesday without the temperature being significantly higher.
Speaking of running, I have two runs to put in this post, those being the one for last week and a second one for the week before, after being disappointed with the first one. Both were on Friday and, oddly enough, the time was 49:25 each time. Sector times were 4:39, 5:15, 6:07, 4:34, 5:06, 6:04, 4:39, 5:09, 6:08 and 1:44, making for lap times of 16:01, 15:44 and 15:56, two weeks ago, and 4:35, 5:15, 6:04, 4:30, 5:07, 6:07, 4:41, 5:20, 6:04 and 1:42, making for lap times of 15:54, 15:44 and 16:05, last week. Note that I covered the second lap in the same amount of time both times, and also the very good final sector times, last week’s actually matching the sector record. And I actually didn’t feel too well last week, my stomach having been bothered by something since Thursday evening and having to deal with gas and cramps, and I also didn’t eat what I usually do before running, so was thinking it’ll be quite an achievement to stay under 50 minutes, but I managed it quite well.
With that out of the way, I’ll get right back to July 5, when I was expecting to be alone in the evening, having been told the day before that it was probable, so I didn’t even make myself something to eat or even more tea after that run, waiting for my parents to leave first. But they didn’t, so I kept waiting for no reason, and then was up relatively early the next day for no reason as well, because a note on the kitchen table mentioned both being away between morning and evening for the next few days, dad coming back at night, which made me assume they will leave Thursday morning at least, but instead they only left in the afternoon. On top of that, my mother was apparently expecting an order to arrive, so when she asked whether I’ll be here to receive it and said it should arrive before 5 PM I said all right, my plans were already messed up anyway and I thought I’ll just manage to at least go where I meant to go if it will be some time before 5 PM at least.
Well, it was very little time before 5 PM, about 15 minutes to be exact, and my mother had also asked me to take some item of clothing out of the packaging and put it on a hanger, so I quickly did that, threw the plastic bag it had been in into the basket where I put plastic to be recycled, and ran out, since I wanted to go to a farmers’ market again, this time not the same one I had been getting a few things from recently, and as far as I knew this also closed at 6 PM. Didn’t even check the listed schedule when I got there, nor the next time I went for that matter, so I’m still not sure whether that’s actually the case, but I’d rather not leave it quite so late anymore anyway.
The main reason why I went there was that I wanted corn, so I got just two ears from someone who seemed to have really nice ones, plus a small quantity of apricots and a few cucumbers. And then I got back, boiled the corn and had corn on the cob for the first time in who knows how many years, eating one myself and leaving the other for dad in case he’ll also want some when he’ll get back. Since it was getting late by then and I didn’t know exactly when he was going to return, I left it at that for that day, delaying making myself something else for Friday.
Well, once again my plans got messed up and I didn’t make anything Friday either, because dad left me some money on the table when he left and I decided to go and grab a few things after my run, so I won’t need to go back out right at the start of the next week anymore, when it was also going to be hotter. And since I went to the hypermarket I usually go to and there is a specific place to drop off plastic bags to be recycled there, I also took the bags that were in the basket, including the one from that item of clothing. Normally I tend to throw away bags, wrappings or other similar things, since I know they’re not exactly recycled as plastic and can even cause problems if thrown with it, but now that I went there anyway, I took them and dropped them off.
Speaking of that, also took the dozen or so plastic bottles and several aluminum cans which had gathered, obviously not because of me in any way, pressing them carefully in order to have them fit in a bag in a way that didn’t reveal what was in it, as I took the small bus they provide. Did that because I meant to try to put them in the bottle and can recycling machine that’s also there, as a significant number had gathered and I should have gotten a voucher worth about 1 RON for them, so meant to see how that worked… And found that it didn’t work, the machine not recognizing them when they were pressed like that, leaving me with nothing to do but to simply drop them off next to the recycling area, as there is no place for plastic or metal there, the machine being meant for that.
Since it was again getting rather late when I got back and I again didn’t know when dad was going to return, I delayed making anything else for Saturday, when something was supposed to happen at my grandmother’s, so I definitely expected both of them to stay there late… And they didn’t. Or dad didn’t, as he only brought my mother back Sunday. I hadn’t even made myself tea the night before, then had cleaned my room a little after waking up and hadn’t even started to do anything about food, or that tea, when I got a message that he was coming back, and I think he walked though the door at around 4:30 PM or so, when I was just taking to my room the tea and what I could quickly grab to eat.
My only chance left was Sunday, but it hardly seemed likely that they’ll be back late then, and they weren’t, so I didn’t make anything out of what I wanted to make during those days, being unable to plan anything. And then I ended up needing to boil myself a potato or two for two nights, which I believe were Monday and Tuesday, since I had made myself a salad and grabbed something after they got back on Sunday, as they had brought a pretty large quantity of tomatoes from somebody’s garden, all split and some of them partially rotten, and my mother was busy making some bottled tomato sauce and some tomato soup out of what could be saved out of the partially rotten and badly split ones before they got even worse, not getting around to anything I could also eat until later.
But to return to Sunday, after trying on the clothes she had ordered my mother seemed to be considering sending the one she had told me to put on a hanger back, because it didn’t fit her too well. However, in order to do that she needed the bag it had arrived in, since it had a code on it, and due to me rushing Thursday and then finding that I could make that unplanned trip to that hypermarket Friday, that bag wasn’t around anymore. Felt quite stupid about that, because I did notice the code and in that case it’s obvious that the bag should have been kept just for such a situation, but I was just acting, being in a hurry and having each day’s plans go right out the window, and for some reason it didn’t cross my mind until it was too late. Not sure what she ended up doing about it in the end…
To get to this week now, stayed in when it was hotter, but eventually did go back out Wednesday, back to that market for more corn, and a few more cucumbers, plus a pack of yogurt from the nearby hypermarket. It should have also been the last day when I should have gotten a scratch ticket and an entry into their draw, but the cashier only gave me a ticket, after asking whether she had given me one after giving me the receipt, and saying she keeps forgetting about them that day. Normally the ticket for the draw should have been printed along with the receipt, so no idea what happened, and of course I couldn’t get myself to ask. Not that it matters, but I was a bit surprised.
Either way, got five ears of corn Wednesday, from two different people and for less, and they were still all right, though not as nice or as big as the two I had bought the first time. And I boiled three of them that day, so it’ll be one for me and one for each of my parents, and left the other two for Friday, after running and then going back to the hypermarket I usually go to, because I was out of bread, and also wanted to try that machine again with the only two bottles which had gathered and weren’t pressed, so it worked, but I left the 0.10 RON for the old woman who was also there and wondering how to use it. Back to the corn, wasn’t sure how to split it then, but dad said he didn’t want any, so the matter sorted itself out. In between, Thursday, I went out again in the evening to take out the recyclables, minus bags, and check a few prices again, without getting anything.
This was supposed to be a quick post, wasn’t it? But isn’t that always the case? If I could only write other things at least the way I write about personal matters… But instead, the deadline for ending my struggle with my story is tomorrow, and I intend to stick to that plan. Meant to write during the day, to actually finish before midnight instead of writing right before going to bed, when it’s actually the next day already, as I do otherwise, but not sure how that will work out if I’ll also be going out and I do have a chapter to finish. Allowed it to drag on even more pointlessly than the whole thing does for so long lately, but now I have to actually find a way to throw together a few paragraphs that say something, and that will sure take a while, if I’ll even manage it at all. Not in the least bit certain that I will.