It's now almost 4 AM on the morning of June 5th, 2013. I lost most of
yesterday to impulsive refrigerator-cleaning, hiding in bed, writing a
5000-word list on fifty or so candidate topics to focus on, and the
like. At least I did manage to go to the hacker club to help people
and then to Carolina's singing night, where she blew the audience
away, then out to pizza with her and her friend Priscila. I should
probably get up in about 6 or 7 hours --- let's say 10 AM --- and do
some things. This will work best if I plan them out now:
* House and personal maintenance stuff:
* Have breakfast. Egg with sauteed onion, say, or soy protein.
* Wash the dishes.
* Take a shower.
* Fold and put away the dry laundry.
* Wash a bucket of laundry. (Better put the laundry in the bucket
now.)
* Clear off dining room table and bedside table.
* Put away bed.
* Reading: finish reading "How to Beat Procrastination".
* Go to Santiago's house.
* Look for roommates:
* Contact Casa Semilla people.
* Log in to CouchSurfing to see qué onda. Maybe there are people
looking for roommates on there.
* Look for the email from November where I was looking for a
place; there was one place renting temporary bedrooms that
seemed appealing, but which I turned down due to lack of a
washing machine.
* Check prices on Craigslist and Soloduenos.com.
* Restart the for-pay project:
* Check status of server and do the needful.
* Talk with client.
* Look for a phone:
* Check Mercadolibre.
* Check Craigslist.
* Check OLX.
***
Whew. It's now 14:22. I got up at 12:00; thank goodness for the list
above! I've washed another load of laundry and hung it out on the
tiny patio, which had direct sunlight for about 4 hours in the summer
but, I think, none in the winter. Certainly none today.
After the combined shower and laundry-washing, I set up the fan to dry
the clothes, which involved a bit of doing.
First problem with the fan: it's mounted on a broomstick, and I don't
have a particularly convenient pot of dirt to plant it in. But it
turns out that it fits nicely in the hole in the center of a
30-cm-diameter steel gear someone was throwing out a couple of months
ago, which is heavy enough to keep the fan upright.
Second problem: the back was open, with exposed power wiring. I
fished the electrical tape out of my backpack to tape up the power
wiring, and then put into place the bit of medium-density fiberboard
Fabian had cut and drilled to fit it. But that only had two screws
out of four; I fished an extra screw out of my jar of salvaged screws,
which are mostly from discarded electronic equipment, putting it
nicely into place.
Third problem: the pitch control on the fan --- whether it points
level, a bit up, or a bit down --- was originally a bolt and nut that
tightened a pivot joint. Those are long gone, and parts of the joint
are broken, replaced with zipties. As a consequence, the fan was sort
of pointed at the ground. First attempted solution: put a small screw
in the extra hole in the side to stop rotation. Didn't work. Second
attempted solution: put a couple of needles in the hole. Didn't work;
apparently what's inside the hole is not simply another hole in the
part that pivots. Third attempted solution: cut a chopstick to length
with a saw to prop up the front of the fan. Chopstick kept slipping
out, despite notching. Notching the front of the fan proved
impractical with available tools. Fourth attempted solution: run
scotch tape from the top of the fan down the back of the fan, forming
a sort of tensile cable holding the fan in place, a cable which is
twisted to avoid obstructing the cooling vents on the motor. The
scotch tape itself isn't sticky enough to resist the forces, so it's
held in place with more electrical tape. This seems to be working so
far.
The fourth problem is that the motor seems to be a bit wobbly. But
now it's drying my clothes. We'll see what happens next. It's totally
ghettorific!
Finally, time to clear off the cluttered tables.
***
Whew. Now it's 15:14. I guess housecleaning can get a little out of
control sometimes, and maybe that's one reason I avoid it (a vicious
cycle!) --- that, the Sisyphean nature of the task, and my own trait
impulsiveness. I did manage to achieve a couple of things that might
last more than a week:
* I got the fan working.
* I broke yet another wine glass --- a hazard of cleaning, but
especially when in a hurry. That's another AR$50 down the drain,
plus substantial time wasted on cleanup.
* I washed out another plastic bottle (from the Schweppes Violeta and
I took to dinner with Beatrice and Santiago on Saturday), which I
will devote to dried soybeans once the bottle is dry.
* I found the electrical tape, so now I know where it is. It's gotten
dirty on the outside from riding around in my backpack without a
plastic bag around it.
* I put my cellphone earphones into a baggie to keep them from
catching on things, and put the baggie back into my backpack.
Last night I was able to catch the Wi-Fi from the hacker club from my
house intermittently, but that seems not to be working very well now.
Maybe I should see if I can boost the signal by floating a Mylar
balloon over my house.
I'm having a glass of English Breakfast tea mixed with the orange
syrup from the other day and some pear-flavored vinegar. The flavor
works really well, but there's an astringent mouthfeel which I think
comes from tannins in the tea. Perhaps the cure is to brew the tea
with water cooler than the 100° I used, or maybe I could precipitate
the tannins somehow --- a little baking soda or lye?
***
Two delightful SMSes today: my friend Naudy is visiting from Venezuela
and would like to see me, and my friend Carolina wants to take me to a
movie.
Medical section; do not read if sensitive
-----------------------------------------
While the boils continue to be smaller and further from the skin
surface, they also seem to have spread horizontally. Since the
initial occurrence was right after spending a weekend in the country
near livestock, where I could have been bitten by ticks, it might be
prudent to check for Lyme disease, even though the spreading doesn't
have the classic annular shape, and _Staphylococcus aureus_ is a much
more likely cause. (The mysterious bruises on my arms that appeared
around the same time are not symptomatic of Lyme, particularly early
localized Lyme.) I'm not sure how to do that, but it certainly seems
like it would be worthwhile to try to get a lab culture before
speculatively jumping into the month-long doxycycline regimen that's
the first-line Lyme treatment, particularly since the ciprofloxacin
treatment left me with a yeast infection under my foreskin.
This experience is making me really wish I had a microscope and some
experience with cell cultures.
I think I'll see if I can go to the hospital tonight and get an
appointment for tomorrow. It's unlikely I have anything other than a
garden-variety _S. aureus_ skin infection, but better safe than sorry.
--
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