Day 31

I hate it that this blog is devolving into daily how-am-I-feeling updates, but after a sleepless night Tuesday followed by a wretched, butt-dragging Wednesday, I was able to sleep again Wednesday night. Today (Thursday) was  a good day.

I packed up a few things at the condo and moved them back to the house in anticipation of the movers arriving here Saturday morning.  There's still a lot of little "loose-end" tasks yet to be completed, many of which aren't storm damage from last year but damage caused by careless contractors and some collateral damage that couldn't be avoided, but still requires repair.  For example, to lay the bedroom floors, the contractors found it necessary to remove closet and bathroom doors, and to pull bottom shelves out from the bathroom counter.  Another contractor backed his truck into a retaining wall and dislodged a couple cinder blocks.  All that needs to be fixed before the job is "through." And the back door still needs replacing.

But at least I'll be getting back home soon.  The "zen" of condo life has worn off a good while ago.

Day 30

Some days are better than others.  Some days are good, some days are bad.  Today was a bad one.

Monday was a bad day; too.  I suffered the whole day through some sort of 24-hour flu and was worried that I wouldn't be able to sleep that night, since I had done nothing but nap all day, but I wound up sleeping like a baby and I felt fine on Tuesday. Tuesday was a good day. 

But the sleep cycle caught up to me Tuesday night.  I went to bed around 11:30 pm and fell asleep within 10 minutes.  But then I woke back up at 1:30 am and couldn't get back to sleep.  I saw the alarm clock hit 2:30 and then 3:30.  I did some reading in bed hoping to tire myself out but was disappointed to find my reading mind wide awake.  I think I must have fallen back asleep sometime around 4:30 am, because I woke up again at 6:00, a full hour before my alarm was to go off, with vague recollections of some dream. I shot off a few emails in the early morning but then fell back asleep until about 12:30 pm. My day didn't really get going until almost 2:00 pm

I've done my best not to nap today so that I can sleep through the night tonight, but I have to admit I nodded off a few times there.

The movers are scheduled to come here at 10:00 am Saturday morning and take me back home to my house. I just hope that I can adjust my sleep cycle by then so that I don't sleep through their arrival, and wake up in the afternoon laying on the floor in an empty condominium . . . or in a bathtub full of ice with fresh surgical scars where my kidneys used to be.

Day 29

I'm feeling better now.  Whatever it was that I had yesterday wasn't long lasting and it certainly wasn't the covids. Some sort of 24-hour virus.

I actually felt the fever break around 11:00 pm yesterday.  Prior, I felt like one of those red, glowing figures in an infrared photograph and then suddenly it all started to fade away and I could literally feel my metabolism regain equilibrium.

I was afraid I wouldn't be able to sleep last night because I had basically napped all day, but I slept like a baby.  I woke up this morning to a pleasantly cool Unsellable Condo but no shivers or shakes.  The lethargy and tiredness I felt all day yesterday were gone.  I was still thirsty and I drank a lot of water today, although not nearly as much as yesterday.

I stopped by the house today.,  It's almost finished.  The new floor in the bedroom is completed - I just need to wait a day for the varnish on the wood floor to dry.  There's a little touch-up needed here and there, but we're basically done.  I could probably move back in tomorrow afternoon, although the first availability the movers have is Saturday morning.

At least I can move without suffering from the flu, or worrying about whether it's the covids.

Day 28

I woke up this morning shivering.  I was cold.

I got out of bed, shocked to find how chilly the morning air felt against my skin, and went to the thermostat.  It was at 71 degrees, pretty much the same temperature its been since I've moved out here to the Unsellable Condo in Vinings.  I turned it up one degree, got back in bed, and pulled a big old winter comforter up over me as extra precaution against the cold.

Still shivering.  And it was that bone-rattling, deep-body kind of shiver, as if your skeleton is trying to shake all the meat and skin off its bones. Shit, I realized, this must be a flu.

It can't be the covids - I've been fully vaccinated since February, and other than one or two little exploratory missions, I've continued to wear masks, remain socially distant, and especially here at the condo, continued to live a near monastic, cloistered life.

In fact, I shouldn't have anything at all.  Last week, I had a tooth extracted and  just finished the five-day antibacterial regiment prescribed by the dentist (Azithromycin).

But then the shivering stopped and suddenly I was sweating profusely.  I kicked off the comforter, kicked off the sheets, and reset the thermostat back to 71.  

Eventually, my body temperature stabilized but all day today I've been lethargic and listless.  I must have taken a half-dozen naps today.  I don't know if I'm running a fever or not - I don't even own a thermometer, much less have one out here at the condo frontier.  I've probably drank four full bottles of Vitamin Water, and it wouldn't surprise me if I had one or two more before the night's done.

It was a beautiful day today - sunny and a high of 79 degrees.  I went out for a walk to get some fresh air and exercise, but rather than invigorate me, it left me exhausted and in need of yet another nap.

This can't be the covids - it simply can't be.  I'd like to think it's cabin fever from being out here so long at the condo.  We'll see how I feel tomorrow.

Day 27

Sorry about not posting the last couple of days, but I've had too little to do to get around to posting.

The insulation finally got installed at the house, and a cleaning crew came through and made the place look far more habitable.  To be honest, it's the cleanest the house has been in 10 years.

I stopped by today, and a handyman was there wrapping up the little remaining tasks- floorboard replacements, resetting the bedroom door, hanging a window shutter, etc.  They're doing everything except the big job - the bedroom floor.  I can't move back, or at least I can't move my bed back, until they finish the bedroom floor, and home is where the bed is.

I'm still scheduled to get back home this Saturday.

Day 24

I've hired movers today to get me back into my real home.

Moving day is Saturday, May 1.  It will have been 32 day in the Unsellable Condo.

Day 23

Today is Wednesday, the 21st day of April, 2021.  

Two things ere scheduled to be done today - insulation was to be replaced in my attic using pneumatic hoses, and a crew was to clean the house of all the drywall dust and other construction slop soiling every interior surface.  

Neither happened.   

I was at the house all day trying to put things back in their right places and clearing off counters to help the cleaning crew.  I left at 4:30, but they had never shown up.  

I got a text message from the project manger telling me they were going to work until 8:00 pm to get the job done.  When I told him I had been there until 4:30 and hadn't even seen them start, he replied that they were "stuck in traffic," and might have to finish the job tomorrow (or as we say in the hood, "start the job tomorrow").

Since I already had him caught in one lie, I asked him about the insulation and if they had gotten that done this morning as promised.  He replied that they "had to push back" until tomorrow, but it will get done then.  He hadn't volunteered that they hadn't arrived as scheduled until I asked him.

What do you think the chances are that both crews will show up and do their work tomorrow?

And who in the world thought it was acceptable to have two electric wires protrude from a wall beneath the outlet they were supposed to connect to?

I'll be glad when all this is over, if they ever do get around to finishing.

Day 22

What a day!

A Minneapolis jury found the policeman who murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for some nine and a half minutes guilty on all charges - manslaughter, 2nd degree murder, and 3rd degree murder. While this was obviously the correct verdict, it does nothing about addressing the underlying systemic problems with policing and racism in America.  I'm glad that justice was served in this one particular case, but this nation still has a long way to go before all its citizens can enjoy equal treatment and protection by and from the law. 

The day started for me with a 9:00 am meeting at the house with my construction contractors.  Nine in the morning may not sound too early to you, but I didn't retire because I wanted to have places to be at 9:00 am. These days, I consider the day off to a good start if I get my fat ass out of bed by nine.

The electrician got the exterior spotlights put up today, and a few other minor interior repairs. Insulation will get blown into the attic tomorrow morning and a cleaning crew should start tomorrow afternoon.  And there's a lot of cleaning to do - the whole inside of the house is coated in a layer of sheetrock dust.  The floor guys will start on my bedroom Friday, or Saturday at the latest.  It looks now like I'll be able to move back into the house on Wednesday, April 28, after the lacquer dries. 

But a 9 am meeting wasn't the worst part of the day.  I had dental work done this afternoon.  One molar was extracted and another one capped. If you ever get the chance to have a molar removed, pass.  It's no fun.

The dentist gave me prescriptions for antibiotics and pain, but the CVS I went to refused to fill the painkiller script (hydrocodone, an opioid). Walgreen's agreed to fill the script for me, but said they require a 24-hour waiting period. When I explained that the novocaine was already starting to wear off, they agreed to fill the script with only a 45-minute wait.  

I went back to the house and started to put things back in order, and when I returned to Walgreens after 45 minutes, I still had to wait another 15 minutes before they rang me up.   I'm back at the condo now, with a mouth full of bloody gauze and an opioid in my bloodstream. I don't plan on driving anywhere tonight.

The fact that George Floyd had an addiction to opioids is beside the point.  He was murdered by the police for passing a counterfeit $20 bill, possibly without his knowledge.  And for once, finally, a White policeman was held accountable for his actions.

Day 21

Day 21 . . . three full weeks in the UCV.  Damn!

I've been fully vaccinated since late February but it wasn't until today that I enjoyed my first meal inside of a restaurant.  I met with a friend today, a former work colleague, to catch up on things and exchange some gossip over lunch.  Indoors.  Without masks (at least while eating). First time in over a year.

It felt overwhelmingly normal.  

My friend, the former colleague, hadn't been vaccinated but felt that he had the antibodies by virtue of the fact that he had come down with the covids last year.  After a few flu-like symptoms in the household, he got his family tested and his wife and one son (of two) tested positive.  A week later, he came down with the flu himself, and his symptoms were more severe than either the wife's or the son's. He didn't require hospitalization and recovered at home with only minor medical attention. But even though his test had came back negative, he's confident enough that it was the covids he caught from either his wife or his son, and he believes that the bout has given him sufficient antibodies to have lunch in a public restaurant with his vaccinated friend.

To end the suspense, my iPhone wifi hotspot was strong enough to stream all my HBO shows last night. It buffered, but only for a few seconds, between shows but otherwise allowed me some 2½ hours of uninterrupted viewing.  This did not displease me.

I stopped by the house after lunch today.  The ceiling replacements are complete, and walls, ceilings, and trim are all painted.  The only remaining activity is the big one - installing the bedroom floor.  The rafters beneath the floor have been reframed and replaced, and covered by sheets of plywood.  New wood floorboards will be installed, sanded, stained, and lacquered.  An electrician will be by tomorrow to replace exterior floodlights.  The insulation in the attic will be replaced on Wednesday.  A cleaning crew will be by sometime this week to complete a much-needed clean-up 

We're getting there.

Day 20

 

The condo-life phase of my great social deprivation experiment continues.  Each phase of the experiment consists of even more austere deprivations that the phase before.

The first phase of the experiment started in June 2019 with my retirement, as I adapted to life without going to the office, working, or interacting with colleagues and clients. I live alone, so my work life was a large part of my social life.  But at least I still had live-music shows to which I could go post-retirement, and sports bars, and restaurants.

The second phase of the experiment was adjusting, on top of retirement, to life with all of the bars and music venues and restaurants all closing down in March 2020 for the covids pandemic.  Face masks were required in public, and social distancing was the rule.  That phase lasted another year and in fact is still on-going, but at least I had Netflix, video games, and the internet to get me through the day.

During that second-phase year, a tree fell on my house and required substantial repairs.  For the interior work, I had to relocate here to the Unsellable Condo in Vinings with only a modicum of furniture - a bed, one sofa, and a dining room table and chairs.  That was the start of the third phase.  I couldn't get anyone to provide cable service and wifi for what I originally thought was going to be only a week or two, so there's no television and only the spottiest of  internet connections.  No work, no social outlets, and now not even a tv to watch or reliable internet to browse.  

I'd like to say "at least I still have video games," but every time I make a statement like that, I lose that resource, so I don't want to jinx myself.  But beside, you can't play games all day.  Man cannot get by on Cyberpunk 2077 alone - believe me, I tried.

I can create a wifi hot spot using my iPhone (that's how I'm posting this), but it's a slow connection and doesn't support streaming content very well.  My first Saturday night here, I watched the remake of King Kong vs. Godzilla (titled Godzilla vs. Kong) on HBO Max, and it played flawlessly, without interruption or buffering.  Sure, the movie sucked, but I wasn't expecting much of a direct-to-cable reboot of a campy classic to start with.  You get what you expect - two hours or so of fairly mindless diversion.  Just what the doctor ordered for Saturday night at the UCV.

HBO on Sunday night was also fairly accessible.  I've been in the habit of watching HBO on Sunday nights ever since The Sopranos in the early 2000s, and now it's the steam-punk, sci-fi series The Nevers and John Oliver's satirical news show.

But the connection has only gotten worse as time here progressed.  I don't know why - no clue at all.  I wish I knew because then I could fix it.  Xfinity won't let me stream local network content (e.g., ABC, NBC, CBS) away from my home modem because of some licensing arrangement, but I can access basic and premium cable content.  At least I can in theory.  But basic cable (e.g., Comedy Central, MSNBC, ESPN) keeps breaking up and buffering, especially as approaching or coming away from commercial breaks (which are not infrequent on those channels).  Premium cable and Netflix streams fairly consistently, but only if I can even get on in the first place, a 50-50 proposition as of late.

Today, the good folks at the Bang on a Can contemporary chamber-music collective put on another one of their free on-line music marathons.  They've been streaming the marathons about once every three months or so, and in the absence of live music, those marathons have been the highlights of my musical experience.  But even without going through the Xfinity interface, I couldn't stream today's marathon on my laptop without buffering every ten seconds or so - always annoying, but doubly so when trying to enjoy music. I wound up watching the entire four-hour marathon on the relatively tiny iPhone screen.  The music quality was tinny, but not as bad as one might think.  It was better than nothing, and nothing was Plan B if I couldn't watch the marathon.

It's anyone's guess if I'll be able to stream HBO tonight to my laptop, or if I'll have to watch on my iPhone screen. 

Current, reasonable-worst-case estimates have me here until the end of the month, with the possibility of some rooms in the house being habitable even sooner.  Alas, the bedroom is the critical-path item that will finish last, so I can't move the bed back until near the very end.  And with contractors constantly coming and going and leaving doors and windows open, I can't move my two indoor cats back in until the work is done, and it seems cruel to leave them here alone.

This too shall pass.  This too shall be but a memory someday.  Impermanence is swift, and always gets the last laugh.

Day 19

I met with the contractors at the house this morning.  Work continues, although at a pace far slower that I'd ever have expected.

Best-case reasonable date to move back in is probably about April 28.  Unless I can't take this semi-off-the-grid condo life any longer and decide to move back in even while construction and repairs are on-going.

This, too, shall pass.  The anxiety, the dissatisfaction, the restlessness of condo life will be but a memory some day.

In Zen practice, after you've been sitting for a long time, you get cramps in your legs.  Your ankles feel like stones pressing down on the floor, despite the mat you're on.  Your back aches.  It feels like you've been sitting there forever and eternity is passing you by, and is the attendant ever going to ring that bell and indicate the session time is over? Has he fallen asleep, or what?

And then the bell does ring and you get up, and after only a minute or two, the pain in your legs is gone, your back is fine, and all your pain and discomfort are but a memory.  Everything is impermanent and nothing lasts forever. Why worry about the inconvenience and pains of the present moment, when there's just going to be another present moment following it?

Soon, this odd chapter in my life, this semi-monastic isolation at the tail end of a year-long pandemic lockdown after nine months of trying to figure out retirement, will be but a memory.  I will be back in my house with its now roof, new floor in the bedroom, new back door, new ceilings, and new coat of interior paint.  I will look back and laugh, and wonder why I didn't have more patience to bear a month without tv and barely any internet.

It will all seem soooo funny.

Day 18

So now I'm a Viking.

Virtually.

So now I'm virtually a Viking.

Life here in the Unsellable Condo in Vining passes a lot quicker if I spend some time each day playing video games.  Not too many hours - that becomes a grind - but three or four hours a day breaks the day up nicely.

I finished my third playthrough of  Cyberpunk 2077 last month.  Don't ask me how many hours I played in total - it was a lot but I don't have the bandwidth now to open Steam and check my game statistics.  Before moving off line here to the UCV, I downloaded the new Assassin's Creed game, Valhalla, set in England in the year 873 AD.  You play as a Viking settler, establishing a settlement, creating alliances with other Nordic, Danish, and Anglo-Saxon settlements, and exploring the English countryside.

The game is the third in the new reboot series of Assassin's Creed games, following Origins set in Roman Empire-era Egypt, and Odyssey set in ancient Greece during the Peloponnesian Wars.  Valhalla is a new story with new characters, but follows most of the same game mechanics as the prior two games.  There are some improvements and innovations, as well as some "junk DNA" in the gameplay left over from the previous games, but overall it feels familiar if you've played the previous two.

It's big asset for me is it's a big game that takes a long time to play through - there's a lot to do - which is exactly what I need staying here just barely on line in Vinings.

So far, I've conquered most of , East Anglia, Mercia, "Lunden" (Londen), and I've been to Vinland and even Asgard.  And I've still got a long ways to go.

So basically, I'm passing my time by looting and pillaging the English countryside.

Day 17

Condo life.

At first it was good, and I'll state right up front it's not bad now, per se, but not as good as it was the first two weeks.

The biggest advantage when I first moved back here is that I was finally able once again to get a normal night's sleep for the first time in literally years.  No television and no high speed internet, but a good eight hours of sleep more than compensated.

Then, the night before last, I once again awoke at around 4:00 am and couldn't get back to sleep.  And last night, I couldn't sleep at all - if anything, I got about an hour's worth of sleep between midnight and 7 am. How tonight goes is anybody's guess.

So back to this internet thing.  I can create an internet hotspot with my iPhone and link the connection to my laptop, but it's a slow connection.  Tonight, UCLA webcast a performance by the Ukrainian ensemble DakhaBrakha, and I missed the first 25 minutes just trying to log in. If you like watching little wheels circle around themselves, you'd like my upload link here, but if you actually wanted to hear the performance, you were out of luck.

I finally did log on, and once there, I was able to enjoy about 50 minutes of more-or-less uninterrupted music.  The redemptive powers of live music still amazes me, like when you've been standing at a venue for an hour ten minutes between sets waiting for the headliners to finally take the stage, but once they do, all is forgiven and the discomfort and annoyance of the wait is suddenly both forgiven and forgotten.

I first heard DakhaBrakha in Seattle during the 2014 Bumbershoot Festival and had no idea what I was in for, but to this day, they are perhaps my favorite band.  That was the one and only time I've ever heard them live, but the webcast tonight, once I finally did get there, was my second best DakhaBrahka experience.

UCLA is going to keep the performance up online for free the next couple of days, and I strongly encourage you to go to online.cap.ucla.edu and watch the recast of tonight's show for yourself.

You can thank me later.

Day 16

 The blogger’s dilemma. . . 

Day 15

The view from the UCV bedroom sometimes makes it feel like one is living in a tree fort.

Injections of the Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose covid vaccine came to a sudden halt in much of the United States on Tuesday following the emergence of a rare blood clotting in six recipients. One of those six recipients has died.

Nearly seven million Americans have received the J&J vaccine so far and only six have displayed the blood clotting. That’s less than one in every million recipients.  But since the health risk is approaching the one in a million threshold, officials correctly have decided to halt new injections while the health risks are being re-evaluated.

Conservatives and Fox News viewers, who already had reservations and concerns about the vaccine, will use this development to prove their point that the vaccines aren’t safe. Yet these are the same people who claim that the health risk from the covids is overstated, and that 99.9% of the people who contract the covids survive.

The 99.9% statistic is misleading. Not only does it ignore the suffering of those who became gravely ill from the disease but survived and the long-term health effects on many survivors, but the number is not even correct.  To date, some 31,200,000 Americans have contracted the covids, and about 562,000 have died. That’s 1.8% of the total, so in actuality, only 98.2% have survived.

To look at it in terms of health risk, roughly 2 out of every 100 persons who are infected by the covids dies. That’s an “acceptable” risk to the conservatives. On the other hand, less than one out of every million dies from the J&J vaccine (if the vaccine proves to even be the cause of the blood clotting). That’s an “unacceptable” risk to the conservatives. 

It is literally 10,000 times safer to get the vaccine than it is to get the covids.

As the data emerges, we’ll know more about whether or not the vaccines actually caused the blot clots, and what the actual health risk is. But all the available data so far shows you’re far, far better off with the J&J vaccine than without it.

Day 14

It's minimalist living here at the UCV - no television, a modicum of furniture, spotty internet access.  The cats still can't quite figure out what happened to change their environment.

I start each day with almost comically low goals, and then often don't even complete that much.  One day - a successful one, a banner day by recent standards - my goal was to change a lightbulb.  Another day, to buy Chinese takeout.  On another, go for a walk (that day was not as successful).  And so it goes.

The days and nights pass like in a dream.  I'm scarcely aware of the passage of time.

Day 13

People experience genuine pleasure—a rush of dopamine—when processing information that supports their beliefs. “It feels good to ‘stick to our guns’ even if we are wrong,” researchers say. 

Day 12

 

Twelve days now in the Unsellable Condo in Vinings.  The Contractors are telling me to expect another dozen or so days before the house will be ready for me to move back in.

Today, I went back and visited the house to see how things are going. They've boarded over the floor in the bedroom, and they've sanded and prepped the living room ceiling in preparation of painting.  Slow progress, but it's less horrific than it was last week.

This Week Summarized In One Screen Shot

 

Music Is Coming Back

This post might fit in better over on the music blog, but this post really isn't about the song per se but about the fact that the Nashville band Bully will be playing The Earl on this coming August 21   It's the first live-music announcement I've seen post-pandemic.

I bought tickets to the show today, the first tickets I've purchased in over a year.  Tickets don't officially go on sale until tomorrow, but the band sent me a pass code for the presale (I'm a fan and am on their mailing list).  Goddamn, it feels good to be buying tickets again.

A big part of my retirement plan was catching live music as often as I could, but then fate pulled the rug out from under me with the coronavirus pandemic and the shutdowns and quarantines and social distancing. If the Bully show turns out to be the first show I've seen post-pandemic (or even possibly still during the pandemic), it will be my first live show in 18 months.

At this point, I'd probably go to the show even if I wasn't vaccinated.  I'd go to the show if there were a 25% chance I'd catch the covids.  I'd go to the show if there was a 50% chance I'd catch AIDS.  Hell, at this point, I'd go to the show if there was a 75% chance of catching Ebola.  It's not like I'm gonna live forever.

Springtime

I drove over and visited the house today to see how the repairs are going.  

This is the time of year my azaleas are in bloom, if only briefly.  The blossoms last only about a week or two, but this is the week.  I'm not there to enjoy the display, holed up as I am to the Unsellable Condo in Vinings while they repair the interior of my house. But a pile of scrap wood that is being replaced has a grandstand view of the pink and white flowers.

This is my bedroom, or what's left of it.  This is why I have to be out of the house while they do the interior repairs.  Those new planks were installed to support my formerly sagging floor.

I'll be glad when all of this is over.

Zen and the Art of the UCV

Even the cats are starting to get used to living here.

Zen and the Art of the UCV

Recent reporting in the NY Times describes a state of "behavioral anhedonia," a reduced ability to take pleasure in activities.  The opposite of "hedonism," you might say. After all the time and anxiety of the long pandemic, the loss of income and loved ones, and all the uncertainty, many people feel they've become dimwitted approximations of their former selves and got lethargic, show a lack of interest in new activities, and experience a reduced ability to take pleasure in life. 

That's a pretty apt description of my state of mind for most of 2021.  Recall that in July 2019 I had retired from a long career and by the time the pandemic quarantine got really started in March 2020, I had already been practicing a sort of austere solitude for some nine months.  And then in late October 2020, the tree fell on my house, increasing my anxiety and feeling of helplessness as I struggled to get contractors and insurance payments arranged.

By January 2021, it all started getting to me - the social isolation of the pandemic, the anxiety over finances on a fixed income as I faced six-digit repair costs, the increased awareness of my own mortality reflected by dangling gutters and plywood patches on my ceilings. The physical state of the house was a pretty good metaphor for my psycho-physical self.

I fell onto an anhedonic fog of insomnia, joyless television watching, and mindless distractions.  I ate poorly, exercised infrequently, and found it difficult to get along with the contractors trying to repair my home.  For a while there, I even stopped posting to this blog.  You can consider the majority of what I  did post here between January and March 2021 as expressions of an anhedonic mind.

But I absolutely did not want to move out of the house and back to the Unsellable Condo in Vinings while they completed the remaining repairs. Not only was it all the myriad little tasks associated with packing and hauling one's belongings, but it also felt like acquiescing to the demands of an uncaring, unfeeling universe.  I looked forward to it less than you might look forward to root-canal dentistry.  .  

But it turns out it might have been the single best thing for me.  The change of scenery broke the soulless rhythm of anhedonic life.  Counterintuitively, having less to do and fewer distractions here at the UCV has made me more mindful and more involved in my own life.  For example, if all I have to do for the next five minutes is peel and eat an orange, say, then my mind is fully engaged in the peeling and the eating of that orange.  It's not something I'm doing as the television's airing the Chauvin trial, a video game is loading on the computer, and I'm simultaneously perusing Facebook on my iPhone.

I have no tv here and internet access is tricky at best (mobile hotspot created with my phone) and there's definitely less to do any given day here compared to back home.  I only moved three major pieces of furniture (my bed, a sofa, and a kitchen table), so there's also less places to do things.  But the move has snapped me out of anhedonia and I'm sleeping better, which means I can meditate better, and I'm also eating better, walking further and along new routes, and generally feeling better than I have in months.

What a surprise.

I've Got A Ceiling

I stopped by the house today to pick up my mail and a few items, and to check on the progress of the repairs.

I've got ceilings!  Sure, there's still a lot of work left to be done, obviously, but it's better than the bare rafters that were exposed late last week.

I'm encouraged by the progress I'm seeing.

We Go For A Walk

Still readjusting to life back at the UCV.  

Today, with literally nothing else to do, I went out for a walk in my new, old neighborhood.

There is no Beltline Trail within walking distance of the condo, but the roads do have sidewalks.  Nearby Woodland Brook Drive has a sidewalk on one side of the street that extends for about two miles from Log Cabin Road to West Paces Ferry and features a steep hill to provide some level of challenge to the casual walker..  Back when I lived here in the early '00s, I used to jog the length of the road, but this 20 years later, I'm more than content with walking the route.

Woodland Brook and the little communities off the side roads are fairly upscale neighborhoods, with house on 1 to 2-acre lots selling for $1 to $3 million.   Price is more related to the size of the house and the number of beds and baths than the size of the lot.

But given the price of real estate, it has to be quite the status symbol that one resident can afford enough "spare" property to pasture a couple of horses.  Rather than sell that property for a million-dollar home, they can afford to let their horses graze on the grass there.  

Sure, the property is adjacent to a stream and the pasture appears to be floodplain, limiting its potential for new construction, but I'm sure a reasonably creative engineer can come up with a solution to capitalize on the value of the real estate.

But I like it that instead, they just allow their horses to roam free around multi-million-dollar McMansions and exploitative land speculators.  If you can afford it, why not go for it, and if friends and neighbors look on with envy, all the better.

Zen and the Art of the UCV

I have to admit, I didn't expect my residency here in the Unsellable Condo in Vinings to be such a Zen experience.

To save costs, I moved only the minimum of furnishings here - a bed, a sofa, a dining table, some kitchenware, and a microwave.   A pair of computers - my laptop and my gaming computer.  No television, no stereo equipment.  It's pretty Spartan.

There's no cable or wifi here, but I can create a wifi hotspot with my iPhone.  It's pretty slow speed and it takes a lot of patience to watch streaming content on line, so I only do it sparingly.

There's not a lot to do here so I've been spending a lot of time doing nothing.  Sitting on the sofa.  Petting the cats (yeah, I moved them, too).  Preparing a meal, eating a meal, then washing the dishes after a meal.  After a while, doing nothing becomes doing something - the "nothing" becomes the "something" that I'm doing.

What I've found is that without all of the usual distractions, I've been more mindful and attentive to the little tasks.  Since all that I have to do is fold some laundry I've just washed, I find I'm doing it with complete concentration.  It's not just some pesky little chore I have to quickly complete before I get to the main thing I want to do - say, watch tv or play a video game or distract myself with my phone (or all of the above at the same time).  For the next 10 minutes, all I have to do is fold some underwear and t-shirts and put them on a shelf.  After that, it's just more staring into space or petting the cats.  There's no other task or distraction for my mind to wander to, so I do it with more concentration and attentiveness than I'm accustomed to.

Also, I bought this condo 21 years ago, and it's where I lived when I first started meditation and practice of Zen, so there's probably some resonant memories and remnant energy from that here.

I've been here for only three full days now, but it's already slowed me down, and I like that.

What They've Done To My Home!

The house repairs have moved into the interior of the house, and I am writing this now from the relative safety of the Unsellable Condo in Vinings.

I met with the contractors today and saw that they've already demoed the ceilings in the kitchen (above) and the living room (below).  The plastic sheeting is for dust control but it makes the house look like a Breaking Bad meth lab.

Cool.

Work will continue for the next several weeks, and I actually added to the scope of work during the meeting today.

I (and the cats) will be happy when this whole ordeal is over and we can move back into the snug familiarity of my own home.