Angst

My mother says that I'm a damn hoarder.

Well, I don't tend to throw things away. Not that I'd live three metres deep in used tissues but I have files of old bills, boxes of various paperwork, train tickets accumulated since around 2001 and similar stuff. For some reason, I like to have my life archived somehow. Let's admit, I'm not the most orderly person so a good part of those receipts, cinema tickets and opera programmes are just stacked around. But, they're there.

While browsing the internets sort of randomly, I came across an article in The Atlantic which describes the ephemeral nature of the internet. I didn't need to go and lie down for a while out of the horror that I may not be able to access this or that. I'm apparently anxious or paranoiac enough to download stuff I like and save it to DVDs which are another stack of some-or-another. (When I go to Ikea, I need to get more storage boxes.) I abhor the clouds, no damn way I'm storing my data somewhere out there. I had a computer to die a sudden death back in around 2008 or 2009 and I lost quite a bit of my files, and before, I had a computer stolen, along with the data that included my almost finished thesis; what saved me was my habit of printing out and photocopying everything. (I also need more bookshelves. My model, Norrboten, Norrland or some other Norr thingy ceased production. Judging from watching the channels, I guess that most of the production ended in soap opera sets. Now what.)

The other day, I got a bout of what-will-I-do-if and as I tend to hoard stuff, I started printing out all my paypal receipts. I got only to 2013, 6 years to go yet. It rocks in a way, I'm bookmarking all the book bills and I'll finally assemble the thing called The Book List I've been keeping since I was 16 or so. On paper torn out from a school notepad. I will be able to add a lot of info to my Ravelry files, too. And I may end up with a neat row of files full of neat stuff; I can live with the lacunae caused by thrown-out receipts from brick and mortar stores but I must say that the idea of one database (the bills) supported by other database (old diaries, with the exception of the badly missed one from 2008 that was left on a train to Rome) and a few more partial databases (those train tickets, for example) will be nice when I'll be getting demented. Or some future wacko may use it to build a museum collection of some-or-another.

Motivation

As I mentioned, my psychiatrist keeps giving me small homeworks. Task of the month is to find two pleasurable activities and do them daily. Not both, at least one.
Accidentally, when talking about something entirely different, a friend pointed out that there are companies that produce all sorts of herbal infusions and soaps and stuff who buy out herbs.

I love picking herbs, drying them and then... Well, frankly, herbs are generally overrated. They're natural, yeah, sure, but those which are not poisonous or dangerous have only a mild effect, part of which is the feel-good thing. Nothing bad with the feel-good thing. If someone feels better because he's drinking something that smells nice, I very much agree. Actually, I'm a pretty decent herbalist and if I were more of a cynical liar, I guess I could turn it into a business but I can't bring myself to lying to people that this or that could cure their cancer or broken ribs, nor could I explain how this feel-good potion enhances body's natural defenses by purifying it from toxins, I'd say it's mild diuretic, should help with the swollen ankles, use twice a day and if it doesn't help in five days, see your doctor.

But I'm digressing. There are people who pay money for herbs! Send a bag of dried St. John's Wort, we'll pay you three and half handfuls of cowrie shells per kilo! Someone wants to pay me for having walks and plucking flowers! So... I'm plucking flowers, drying them and having a goddamn good time. In fact, it's not that easy job, the other day, I brought a huge bag of plant matter and it was one whopping kilo of fresh stuff.

That was written at the end of June. Since then, a heatwave struck so stuff didn't grow much and now we're nearing winter. I probably wanted to make an excellent point or some such but I got distracted or forgot or some such. In the name of housekeeping, there'll be a few more stubs. Serves you right, dear readers.

Another serving of depression

I'm halfway through second box of new psych meds; it seemed that it may have started working one way or another as in the first month using it, I consumed quite less clonazepam.
When I went to get my refill and for a monthly chitchat with my shrink, I found out that I had been scheduled to someone else. No chitchat (or, to be exact, whines), but I could read over the doc's shoulder to find out that, as per the docs' notes, I'm oriented, no hallucinations, not suicidal, show autistic traits and don't seem visibly depressed. Heh, I'm good in not looking very depressed. I'm chatty, especially when in stressful social situations, and I have brain enough to be entertaining and funny and coherent. As for autistic traits, well, could well be. I'll ask details. I know that I can't read social situations too well, for example, but I prefer to blame poor socialization in tender age and being called weird. I'll ask the doc.

I felt okay. Not excellent but when I take into account all the work crap, passably well. Regulars already know that work crap has passed various turning points, sank under the lowest low several times and now it's just an unending agony of routine, boredom and those sickening moments of surprise when someone, instead of doing their job, starts thinking without knowing how to and I need to fix the ensuing problems.
But, back to the next point: what stupid silly things can be triggering. I found a studio that had some dance classes, started doing contemporary, sort of hated every minute of it because I'm fat, ugly, out of shape and haven't danced in years so I had hard time taking it easy that I'm the clumsiest person around. And, then, trying to avoid doing something hurtful to my knee, I fell on my thumb and twisted it. Right thumb, obviously, and this way, I learned that one uses thumb of their dominant hand for more things than one notices. I've spent the week since blaming myself for being fat, ugly, clumsy and generally useless and the sassy blue bandage didn't really lift my mood. After all, it's a proof that I'm fat and clumsy.

And now comes the excellentest bit of logic. I'm fat, ugly and clumsy so I'd better hide under a stone instead of going and getting some exercise so I'll remain fat, clumsy and ugly, my life is a waste etc.

No way out.

Desert

I want to knit.

Sometimes, I'm almost desperate because I just want to knit something. It sounds somewhat bizarre, those who have been following this blog know that I own a Stash of Doom, that I tend to knit at all times when my hands are not occupied otherwise and I'm conscious... so what's the problem?
Well, in my head, the usual location of problems. There is this urge to use up leftovers to make cowls, scarves and other small things to give away so that there's space for something else. I also seem to have lost imagination, I have yarns but I can't decide what to do with them and any idea is shooed away as something not worthy of the yarn. And when I decide that this may work, I cannot bring myself to finishing one project at time, I skip between this and that and nothing gets done.

It's generally known that I like what I call idiotic knitting. Lots of stockinette in the round, for example. And then I love stranded knitting. I was browsing Cherry Tree Hill's online auction where I ran across Alice Starmore's Tudor Roses of 2013 and... that woman had style and mad skillz. Written on 13th September

I didn't get any Starmore books or yarns but I pulled my own stranded project out of oblivion.

It got somehow more advanced meantime and I do have a pic somewhere but I couldn't find it.
The chart is some 180 stitches wide and I haven't finished the top bit of the floral flourish. I hear there's software for knitting patterns but I'm just colouring rectangles black and white in Corel.

To be continued, I mean the knitting, when my thumb stops hurting.

On being fat, part II.

Part II.: The background.

Gentle reader, let me reassure you that I didn't wake up one day, thinking that it would rock to gain some 10 kilos, or even better, 30. I was living my happy, borderline anorexic and severely depressed live (sarcasm), matters were slowly improving until my GP decided that my sick stomach is "just nerves", sent a note to my shrink who started me on some stuff that should work on the psychosomatic symptoms. Well, the antipsychotics didn't do anything about sick stomach as it was some intolerance thingy which resolved after I stopped eating processed meat and dairy. What the meds did was a nice case of false pregnancy. I gained maybe 15 kilos in some three months while having a busy life, walking across Florence and back, taking 8 hours of ballet classes per week and eating mostly fruits and vegetables in less than reasonable amounts.
After some poking and prodding and hearing Well, it may be some hormonal imbalance or brain cancer, young lady, rest assured that we'll find out, it was discovered that it was the meds I didn't need. I tossed them along with the shrink, the weight gain happily remained. I was still in the sorta okay territory, though. However, depression is a bitch and with every epizode that included lying flat and doing nothing, I gained some more. Two and half years ago, I landed in a job which was okay at the beginning, very stressful very soon but at least it was sort of exciting and new and now I'm mostly burnt out, left with severe depression, pretty crushing anxiety, a hefty dose of social phobia and a shitload of guilt for all this, my very mediocre work performance and a few more. I spent the last summer, me, once a passionate hiker and amateur botanist, either working or lying flat and doing nothing much - knitting, sleeping or watching crime shows is not enough to keep one in any sort of shape.

In theory, and as my mother would say, it's all about a lack of good will. If I exercised more and ate less, things would rock in no time. But. I'm a stranger in a small village, I'm a manager of that big building over there, everyone seems to know who I am. I can only run away to the woods, and alas, I don't have time for that. Or maybe I did if I could do my work more efficiently but I just have my limits because I'm pretty much burnt out.
In other words, before one starts randomly accusing all fat people of being gluttons with self-control, well, there may be another thing to it.

The previous bit was written at the beginning of June and remained laid aside to be finished tomorrow or day after tomorrow as on the 6th, two receptionists decided to give their notice and I needed to do the bills and stuff. Did I mention a lot of stress in my job? No? Well, there's a lot of stress that happens without warning so I forgot about half of a blogpost and life limped on.
I had a discussion about my horrendous eating habits with the shrink and he gave me a homework - he likes giving me homeworks, apparently - to stop eating things past their best before just because they're not bad yet but they need to be eaten up or week-old leftovers but, instead, something I actually like. And to try keeping it within the realm of reasonable because, let's be frank, everyone who lived through an eating disorder is a pretty decent nutritionist. I found some food intake tracking thingy that has a bajillion of useless functions and a few annoying bugs but within a few days, I found out that most likely, I don't get enough protein while having too much fat and sugar. And for sedentary people, it's better to gorge on protein instead of the two others. I bought a bucket of quark and well, I eat a lot of quark. Low energy density so I can eat a lot which is important. Give me a head of iceberg lettuce and I'm all happy and full. Give me a dessert of the same energy value and I'll be hungry and frustrated. So, a lot of quark.
At which point I could probably start touting it as a cure-all because without moving much, I lost some three kilos and my GERD almost stopped acting up.

And all fat acceptance aside, if I could choose, I'd prefer to be stick thin, thankyouvery much, and I need to lose some ten kilos so that I'd be able to get a dress made from one length of fabric, not a dress and a lot of leftovers from two lengths. At the end, it may be all about money after all. And now I'm getting ranty so I'll grab those 12 bottles of wine, take them to my den for tasting and to write the goddamn wine list. By the way, do you know how much sugar does wine contain? A lot. And on the top of that, I have some grapes that need to be eaten up...

Sometimes I feel like I'm 80

Today's breakfast:

Magnesium citrate and some other magnesium preparation, for a total of around 1 g of Mg, as per prescription.
Lansoprazol to inhibit the production of gastric juices and itopride to make the stuff pass further down faster. Yay GERD.
Fluoxetine, a generic brother of the well-known Prozac for depression.
Clonazepam for anxiety.

Don't worry, there won't be any rant about how mainstream medicine stuffs me with pills and I don't feel great anyway. I actually find this somewhat funny for no reasonable reason.

The neurologist said that when one is stressed, the body needs much more magnesium and that I'm pretty deficient. The question was What to do with the goddamn tinnitus, for that matter. Tinnitus is thriving but my wonky arm is less wonky, and it is a nerve thing, not actually pain but an annoying feeling, somewhere between itch and pain, not very pronounced but almost constant, from the shoulder to the outer of my hand. Apparently, depression makes one fall apart physically as well.

On being fat, part I.

Part I.: purely physical. Let's be frank. I reached some 113 kilos, of which 50 is pure unadulterated lard - and yes, I have heavy bones. I have the body composition analysis to prove it. It's sorta one and half kilos above average for my sex, age and inactivity group so it's negligible.
How does it feel? Well, crappy. I'm all for HAES, fat acceptance, non-discrimination, empowerment and all this stuff but being some 35 kilos overweight, I feel crappy. For now, I'll skip musings on beauty ideal, prejudices and this sort of stuff but I'll go straight to the matter of matter.

There are little annoying problems, bodily problems that may appear somewhat disgusting to the gentle soul. Take the Decorative fat rings (DFR). The skin folds trap sweat and one gets rashes and itchy stuff. I hear that antiperspirant may work but I sweat so much that it's only a bit of help. The same can be said about inner thighs. Ouch. And yes, the eternal question of How do you manage to wipe your arse, usually formulated by two people watching a third, fat person, as Hey, look at that whale, do you think she's able to wipe her arse. Well, depends on one's flexibility and length of arms, in which department I don't have that much problem and my DFR, while considerable, still don't prevent me from bending over, if clumsily.
Speaking of clumsiness: Yes, that. One needs to handle the various protruding masses when doing things. I don't look exactly elegant when I'm picking something from the floor.
And the pains. My joints complain somewhat. Then there's pain. I walk a kilometre and my legs hurt in the overexerted way, it's the bitter-sour pain of doing too much of a too heavy work, not that pleasant minty-sweet pain of getting the blood flow faster and having achieved something.
And, it takes some energy to feed the mass. Yes, I noticed that I'm more hungry than the rest of the family at a last week's outing.

And... lather, rinse, repeat. I walk around the town - my calves and back hurt. Around a corner, my calves and back still hurt. I do some shopping and the stuff is annoyingly heavy to carry. Also, my calves and back keep hurting. I walk the stairs up and down a few times, as our house is somewhat vertical and I'm short of breath. Also, my calves still hurt, my feet are crampy (no idea why) and it feels bad. Next time: the background.

Uh-oh

I thought I'd post some cool pics of spring flora but I still don't have a working laptop. Been urging it, said that I can buy one on my own, after all, BossMom said Nope, wait a while, why would you waste your savings, I caved and I still have the old sucky piece of crap.

And frankly, hardly any pics of interesting plants because I haven't done much photography or botanizing for that matter. Yes, those who expect another round of depressed rants are sort of right. Just now I feel like... you know, when you drink a bottle of wine and after a while the alcohol is partially metabolized and all the assorted toxins in your bloodstream make you somewhat sleepy, able to concentrate on not falling down but not much more. Well, to an extent, I have this all the time. The anxiety meds help me to concentrate and since the something-zepams are somewhat addictive, I'm not happy. Gotta talk to my shrink. I mentioned it to a friend and she said that it might be some attention disorder thingy masked as something else but I guess it's plain disgust.
And so it rolls. Summer is raging outside and I just want to hide under my table until all this goes away. 'All this' being work, mental state and all the related crap mixed together and used in buckets. Hey, I don't find any joy even in knitting, playing with the kitty or gardening.

On an unrelated note: been to Spain with family and brought back some interesting seeds and cuttings that should be taken care of. I should procure sandy calcareous soil somewhere for some of them, and a heated glasshouse for some other ones, apparently. My Gibraltarian Ornithogalum seems to finally have adapted to the long day - time to grow cycle, by the way. While the maintenance idiots watered the ugly awful stinky geraniums at the hotel, they ignored the pot with my freshly sown tulips and killed the seedlings, I still have some narcissi and Siberian irises, one of my plans being to spread Siberian irises all over the place. Or some other place. Or some other irises, I love irises. I missed their season entirely this year because I failed to notice them or some such. Someone seems to be stealing away my time.

The sage sweater

I'm known as somewhat fanatical knitter - and a slow one.
To be exact, I do not knit slowly, on the contrary. It just takes me time to finish a given piece, the main reason being that I have several on the needles.
.
.
.
I tried to count but the result was inconclusive. Around six unfinished sweaters/tops and similar amount of shawls, scarves, cowls and the like. One is missing a bit of sleeve, I run short of yarn and now I'm undecided whether to order the one or two balls I may be needing or a whole bag because the yarn is nice (and discontinued). The other needs some measuring done and possibly ripping. Another one was a bad yarn choice and now I wonder what to do next. I did finish one in 2015 though. I got the yarn, it's from the family of Katia's merinos (Merino Sport or Merino Soft), I got ten balls plus some nicely matching angora blend from Anny Blatt, knitted the body and thought about making something creative with the sleeves. At the end, after at least two years elapsed, I tossed said angora aside and substituted it by a Bluefaced Leicester yarn from somewhere-on-fleabay dyed using alum mordant and St. John's Wort.

It's the Dither pattern, a bit tweaked on the go and I'm sure to use it again someday soon.

And obviously, an unfinished picture. I fail to get finished ones, even less so pics of someone wearing the stuff. May work on it in future.

A new hobby

Around a year ago, I got a loom. I started without ambitions so the option was Ashford's Knitter's Loom - small, portable, easy to deal with even if one is a clumsy semi-moron.
It's magic because it works. I made fabric.

A still life with folded loom, storage box and The Thing I Wove

I meant it for a skirt but it ran some 10 cm short for my girth and I'm very positive that my dressmaker would tell me to go to hell with this because the selfedge is too tight and the fabric is not dense enough for any serious sewing. I'm untouched by education, practice and skills so I'm not hindered by any of those pesky right ways to do things. The plan is to do the darts on the outside, hand-quilt it to some visually inert interlining to hold the shape and hope that it works. Or maybe I'll lose patience before I lose those 10 cm of girth and I'll leave it as a fringed scarf.
Which is not that important because I made fabric!

Hoarding cats would be worse, right?

And faithful readers know that I'd love to have at least half a dozen of them.

When it comes to perfume collecting, I have a few preferred brands for reasons that are not always rational. Lancôme because it brought me to vintages, albeit randomly (I think I liked the Kypre box back then, Gueldy, just because, and Shiseido for similar reasons.

I did a bit of shopping and here's the loot.

One Lorenzy-Palanca because it was for a pittance along with Conquête and the rest is Shiseido: Rose Royale in the blue bottle, Camellia Superieur in the box, some other Camellia in the green bottle and a 2012 anniversary thing in the orange-ish flacon.

Very illustrative

It wasn't in the user's manual for life that one starts falling apart before hitting 40.
I kept throwing prescription meds' packages in one box for the whole 2014 and...

My one year consumption of meds. Most of them are antidepressants and anxiolytics. The smaller part is meant to treat my damn GERD... and I'm not a particularly compliant patient because I forget everything. If I took the stuff as I should, there would be more. Feel free to be sorry for me.


And a gratuitous cat picture...

Photoshop vs. Photopaint or a short history of frustration

I've been working with images since time immemorial. Or actually since 1992-ish. Not sure when I started using PhotoShop but it was some time about then.
I got the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, I think, which I cherish on my hard drive because now everything is on the clouds and one doesn't get their Adobe crap anymore, one can only rent it and I'm paranoiac, old-fashioned and a luddite. Now, my good laptop died (1) and the borrowed one has some weird screen resolution that doesn't cooperate well with a secondary screen and it's too small for any serious work. (2) The hard drive doesn't rock either.

Digression
I started messing with graphic design in around 1991. I remember CorelDraw v. 2.0 that worked in the wireframe only. We had the first computers with Pentium processors in this country in 1998, ordered directly from IBM and the folks in the computer shop came to look and be amazed. The glories of living in a company that started in one's kitchen. The first software I learned to use was said CorelDraw. Later on, Adobe stuff found its way into our kitchen and adjoining spaces. I never really learned to use MS Office and similar stuff because who needs Word when there's PageMaker or shitloads of cool typesetting software - and there's no way I'm producing documents that lack graphic design. Similarly, I don't throw lousy snapshots around. Every image that leaves my dirty paws is 'shopped. Because I have some standards which are so deeply ingrained that they'd need to be surgically removed.
end of digression

I'm photoshopless and because I just don't do lousy pics, and I have an urge to post stuff all over the place, I had to resort to installing PhotoPaint from the Corel suite. I'm constantly struggling to find tools that are there under unfamiliar names or maybe they're not there at all, who knows.
I finally got used to my new camera to an extent, spring light is inviting and I've had an urge to plague the world with pics. I'm warning ahead that they may or may not be up to my standard because the combo of unfamiliar camera, unfamiliar software and odd screens may produce suspicious results.

My memory card is full, that's why I'm bothering with sorting out pics, not leaving it for later, whatever a later may be.
(Let's not start on the heaps of films from predigital era which someone should scan.)

______________________________________
(1) No, it's not only resting.
(2) Been slowly going blind since 1988. I only get frustrated when the coupons are for frames and lenses although they say "all merchandise". I don't need new $1000 titanium frames. I don't need a replacement for the $50 ones I got on sale, for that matter, all I need is lenses. Fuck you, opticians.

At random

On Thursday, I got tickets to Paris. Mom is preparing in her usual way, reading travel blogs and noting down tips where to get something for free or cheap. I looked at a map of Paris and noticed that I lack a general idea what is where. Been there twice for a week or so but I failed to remember what's on which side of the river etc.

Work is busy and somewhat annoying. The house is full of kids and I hate kids even more than other people (for those who are new here or didn't notice yet: I'm a certified sociophobe).
It looks like spring but my office is colder than ever. I'll probably go and find a space heater before my toes fall off.
My camera refused to cooperate under the pretense of being full so I was forced to start sorting out pictures. I discovered things I already forgot about. Someone remind me that I remind my shrink to do something about my withered memory.

A story of one dyeing fail

I'm into mushrooming, I have pics to prove it but then I should bother to find them and I can't properly photoshop them and although Corel PhotoPaint works just fine, not my current screen. And back then, I wasn't in the mood.

I however kept various stuff. Because, the internets say that one can extract dye from mushrooms. I read a bit here and a bit there but they were not particularly useful because good part of the descriptions started with something like Navajos used the Dyer's Mushroom... and since there's no proper name given, I have no clue if this species grows around here. (1) One of the more interesting reports said that fermentation helps release the pigments. The others said that about salt, ammonia and a few other substances. One of the recipes called for wool and mushrooms immersed in a jar and left to ferment for a few months in full sun, that it's fine, the stench will go away after a few months.
This has somehow caught my attention although my fermentation experiments went only as far as getting some kefir grains and feasting on sour milk until the culture turned bad. I hear, however, that the wild bacteria that are just around here could work pretty well, too. I got a mixture of bolete leftovers (good stuff gets eaten or conserved by drying), some dried Laccaria amethystina - they say that it turns your food purple but when dried, it lost a bit of colour so I wasn't very sure - and orange mix of Hydnum repandum and chanterelles.
I needed to go away for a while so I left the mushrooms sit in their respective vessels for two days.

Bowl: chanterelle and hydnum mix; jar: Laccaria; beer glass: bolete mix.

The soaked mushrooms did develop some character that included bubbles and a bit of suspicious smell. The Laccaria jar was a fail, no apparent dye - or at least I didn't trust the greenish colour enough so to compost it went.
The usual method of boil stuff - soak yarn - keep warm for a few hours should do the trick in theory. There should be some Finis coronat opus bit - beautifully dyed samples or some such. However, it didn't work at all. Alum mordant or not, the dye just didn't set. Not at all.
There is a contest in photography of all things fermented. Should you want, gimme a thumbs up - I want to outrun at least one of the wonderful pickles, alcoholic beverages and whatnot.

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(1) which is the scientific name in Latin. The only thing that works all over the place. Well, mostly, and still better than common names, much better.

Mice et al.

The maintenance guy is so simple that it hurts but sometimes, he is one of the rare people who actually act reasonably.
Since the hotel cat was ran over by car (well, she might have suffered a heart attack in the curb, I didn't get the autopsy done and it was an old cat), there's nobody to deal with the rodents so we got a bit of mice infestation in the dry storage. The kitchen staff didn't say anything because they are too lazy to open their mouths and weren't it for the maintenance who told me about traps, baits and that mice prefer cheescake to bacon, I wouldn't have found out for a while because I don't check every nook and cranny that often.
I went to check because mice in food are no fun and the food safety inspectors would go ballistic if they happened to find the rodent turd which I found among packages leaking flour, oat flakes and what else so I went to do some yelling, to which the chef on duty said Oh, wee little mousies, isn't that cute and gave me hurt looks when I yelled more and ordered her to check everything NOW and whatever package is opened/broken but mouse-free will be put into a sturdy container. Which sorta happened but the mice still came and went. Maintenance guy said that one disappeared with the spring trap. (Rocky mouse, aparently.)
Two days later, I went to check the state of matters, found even more mouse dung, went to the kitchen and yelled more. The other shift gave me another series of hurt looks and chef said But I cleaned the place a while ago.
Yesterday, there was more of mouse dung and I just went ballistic and ordered the kitchen staff to remove everything from storage, check every package, yes, package, not crate, chase all mice, spiders and dirt away...

Maintenance found out that the anti-everything netting in the vent was not tightly set so he fixed it, did most of the shuffling and cleaning. However, the cooks' basic human rights were severely violated by all this totally unnecessary work because they needed to bend their precious backs, and who cares about excrements in their lunch. If I could press and preserve the moment when they gave me the look of kicked puppies, I would. Because, my cynical heart rejoices every time I remember it.

As the old story answers the question of how the mice eradication went: Two injured, three bruised and five seriously ridiculed

The maintenance artists are redoing my office. Moving the old furniture out was a bit of a task as it tended to disintegrate - which was the primary reason why I started this refurbishing adventure, I certainly do mind if the shelves threaten to collapse on me. I said that it's up to them to sort ouf which bits of the plywood and that sort of chipboard that's called compressed darkness around here could be useful for some shelving and to toss the rest. At which they pondered that the furniture looks quite good. After a few kilos of sawdust falling out of the solid-ish looking pieces, they caved. The IT guy came to check the wiring. After removing around five kilometres of cables that were not connecting anything, the place almost looked neat. But for the dirtiest carpet ever, which was ugly and dirt-coloured to start with.
It cost me around 130 euros to get a hardwearing carpet made most likely from recycled polyethylene bottles which is blue, pretty and will probably outlast the end of the world, cockroaches, Keith Richards and a very special cat that was recently rehomed from a shelter I know and whose name was Satan for several good reasons. Ikea post-giftmas sale provided the rest. The provisional workspace is truly Procrustean and I can't wait to get to an actual table. Coffee table with an orange crate (as used to hold oranges, it's actually mostly black, not that it mattered much) to lift my laptop to a reasonable working height is not the last cry in ergonomy and my back hints the same.

On malice of things

My computer bricked. As in changed into an object as useful as a brick. The motherboard died.
I hinted the computer guy that there's the same laptop with a broken screen, maybe he could make one functional and one doubly useless laptop but there were some other issues so I ended up basically laptopless.
Some shuffling later, I got my dad's laptop, IT guy reloaded my mess including history, cookies and similar crap from Firefox and saved my various antiquated software (Adobe runs PhotoShop and InDesign from a cloud and I don't do clouds) for later use. The screen has worse definition makes some of the work applications pretty much useless but it's a working computer and everything went okay, even if PhotoShopless for a few days.
Then the computer bricked again. Dad said that I'm a dumbass, did some poking, prodding and revert-to-three-months-ago thing so bye bye stuff, had to reinstall the things like Adobe Reader or Libre Office, fished out the passwords and references from various places and I'm not allowed to touch any electronics until it's found out whether I bring bad luck or some such.

Since the Nasty Tendinitis of 2012, I use the mouse with my left. With the borrowed computer, I didn't bother to switch and it took less than a week for my recently treated left shoulder and mouseitis prone right wrist to start hurting. First thing today, I changed the rodent to its usual placement and I don't care if people call it weird.
Pics will come. I installed Corel Photopaint which sorta works but I don't know how but I'll find out. Kitty is growing, you know, and being as cute as kittens get.