Cav's Place

What do these things have in common? They’re methods I’m using in order to crawl out of bed each day, somewhat interesting things to do so I’ll have a reason to actually get up and do something. Since she blocked me I have to plan each day in advance, otherwise I know all too well what will happen. But I won’t be able to keep this up much longer, because I’m cracking even so… Either way, I might as well give some details about that title…

Last week I went to a book fair here thinking it’s just a reason to get out, of course I won’t get anything, after all I have to be absolutely terrified of what would happen if I don’t in order to overcome my fear of approaching the salesperson in order to buy something and that has only happened three times so far. So I went and did just that, just browsed and then left. But there was also a bookstore in the same building, so I went in to take a look there as well and got stuck at the surprisingly well-stocked section with books in English. I read all the titles and a few summaries and was left looking at the full Temeraire series (all four books published so far, US version, paperback), especially after seeing the price. I’m used to books in English being more expensive to buy from here, in the rare event that you find them, than if you’d have ordered them from Amazon, including shipping, and these weren’t.
Eventually I sighed and moved on, but on my way out of the bookstore I went back to that shelf, picked up the first one in the series, since I couldn’t afford more with what I had on me, and bought it before I had time to actually realize what I was doing. Of course it’d have been impossible if I actually had to ask for it, but just walking up to the register and paying for it was something I could do without really thinking. Then I got angry because I only needed 22 bani (about $0.09 or €0.06) more to afford the second one as well, so I went back to the fair and grabbed something rather randomly from there as well so what I had left in my pocket would be useful for something. It’s a book about Reiki if you’re wondering… That caused my anger to subside and I realized what I’d just done, which resulted in about 30 minutes of struggling not to throw up, going in all three wrong directions (yes, including back) at the first major intersection before finding the right way, then going the wong way again at the next one and walking like that for quite some time, until I found myself in a place I obviously wasn’t supposed to be in and managed to snap out of it.
But that’s not all of it! That evening I asked my dad for some money and I actually went back there the next day and got the other three as well, so now I have the full series here. Don’t ask me how I managed that, I didn’t even look up, just went in, grabbed the books, paid and left. (Which meant I spent only a few minutes there and two hours on the way, since it’s an one-hour walk to that bookstore even at my pace and I sit in this chair too much every day not to walk when I want to get somewhere.) Then I sat curled up in a ball in bed for a few hours after I got back here…

Now about the parks… I saw an article in a newspaper from here that ranked Bucharest’s parks, and there were two that sounded somewhat interesting in that list that I’d never been in, so I said I have to go and see. I checked a map, noticed one of them can be on the way to the other, planned routes, estimated it’d take me about one hour and a half to walk all that way, planned my way back using public transportation since it seemed quite tedious to walk all that way back as well, especially since after the first ten minutes or so it’d all be new to me, areas I haven’t been in on foot, at least not since I got back here two years ago, and then yesterday I did it.
Of course it didn’t quite go as planned, I lost my way somewhere, took some wrong turns, but I managed to get there in the end. My estimate also was very accurate, took me one hour to the first park and another 30 minutes to the second. Of course, that included the time lost after the wrong turns, but I can say I took those into account initially as well, since I got confused exactly where I thought I might.
I also took the first book with me to read and I did just that once I got to the second park, then tried to read some more on the subway while coming back from there but the ride was too short. That meant I had just started a new chapter and I meant to finish it, so I stopped in another park around here to do that.
Three parks in a day, two of them new… Not bad! I still hate being out, but it’s looking less and less bad the more I stay here with them around me… And the moments when I see lovers hugging tightly and kissing make my day, and there was one of those in the first park. It was very crowded, there were people on all the benches around them, children running around, the works, but they were locked in an embrace and kissing like their life depended on it, oblivious to anything and everything around. I don’t know how can people oppose public displays of affection. For me they’re probably the most beautiful things to see when going out, at least as far as things involving people are concerned.

Also on my “things to do so I’ll manage to crawl out of bed” list is catching up to a few TV series. Watching TV series is not something I usually do, in fact the only one I watched in the past several years aside from those I’ll list here was Oz, but now I’m using everything I can to buy myself some more time…
Last week I saw season three of Prison Break and all I can say is that it shows they needed to cut it nearly in half due to the strike, too many shortcuts that didn’t make enough sense. This week I’m watching the episodes that have been aired so far from season four of Lost and after the first two I have this nagging feeling that I should have pieced some things together already but I can’t quite manage to yet. And next week I plan to watch season five of Babylon 5, finally finish watching it properly since way back when it was on TV here I only caught pieces of many episodes and missed others entirely. I still consider Babylon 5 to be the best TV series ever, very deep and meaningful if you’re willing to see through to the concepts behind the action but with great action as well.

As for Linux… Right now I’m on SUSE (or openSUSE as it’s now called). It feels like I need to learn how to use a computer all over again, but it’s somewhat interesting. This is going to sound stupid but I haven’t figured out how to run a program once I install it. I mean, where does it put it? Or I’m not even installing them right? That’d be quite embarrassing, since SUSE is supposed to make installing programs very easy.
But no, I’m certainly not going to switch, I’m not even going to use it for too long now… It’s just that I had that old 20 Gb HDD basically not doing anything after I used it to recover things from the one that failed and I was looking for interesting things to do, so I downloaded SUSE, burned a DVD with it and installed it there just to see what Linux is all about. It’s the first time I have any contact with Linux, I haven’t even seen anybody using it before now, but that doesn’t make me feel much better about not being able to figure it out immediately…

On another note, I said I’ll order the parts for my new computer before the end of the month and I plan to, with or without Vista SP1 DVDs making their way to shops. It’ll be a long wait for an E8400 anyway, though some shops seem to have recently started working on backlogged orders. I wonder if getting that will make me feel better for at least a couple of months… And somehow I doubt it… Not without her…