Monday, August 22, 2005

dain bramaged

It's Monday, and I am seriously thinking about taking the entire week off. N is leaving tomorrow for Denver, to return Thursday night, and that bums me out; our son is taking two night classes, so he won't be home in the evenings either, and our daughter works until 8 pm every night. The end result is I will be alone from 5-9 pm for three nights. I know that doesn't sound like a big deal, but I don't totally trust myself alone if the gloomies show up. If I am off work, I can plan activities that take me through the early evening at least, but if I'm at work all day I won't have the energy to do much else.

Did you know that children who suffer from parental neglect have more problems as adults than children who were actually physically abused? My therapist told me that, I haven't searched for an actual reference, but it does bear thinking about. I've always felt that I didn't "deserve" being depressed because I am educated, have a loving family (now), enough $, and no overt problems. So I should be happy, right? And stop whining about poor me? My therapist says I am NOT a whiner, but sometimes it feels that way to me. Still, things are better now than they were, say, two years ago. I have hope about the future.

And then there is eBay. I think eBay is almost as good as therapy in making me feel better. It's like the pleasure of shopping, without the trudging from store to store and shlepping packages all over the world. It has LOTS more things for sale, from the weird to the common, and most of it is dirt cheap. I bid on more things than I win, and look at many more items than I bid on, and nothing relaxes me better. And if I do win an auction, I have the pleasure of getting packages in the mail later. I've been on eBay since way back--1997? 1996? --back when I had to describe how it worked. I've even sold stuff, but that isn't quite so much fun. I've gotten stuff that wasn't up to the mark, but then I've gotten junk at the store too, and there isn't much $ involved anyway, I keep it all. Maybe if I lived in a big city with lots of shopping opportunities I wouldn't get my fix from eBay, but in a little town, with the nearest big city 2 hours away (on a good day), it suits me to a T.

Digital cameras. Am I the only one who thinks they're a piece of crap? Maybe if I would part with $500 for one, I'd feel differently, but the quality of the image from most of them is so LOW. And as for printing them out, do you realize that photo quality ink in those cartridges runs $3000 per gallon? That doesn't include the price of the paper. If I were posting photos to the web, then it might be more useful, but basically I want "real" photos I can pin to the bulletin board, put in an album, mail to a friend, keep forever without worrying about outdated formats, hard drive crashes, and whether my friend has broadband or not. And as for quality, film has gotten so very good, and is so cheap, and with one hour processing so fast, that I can't justify the pixelated fuzzy stuff the digital gives me.

And sudafed -- do we really know that making it so difficult for sneezy wheezy me to get it for my cold really makes it harder for crystal meth labs to get? Or is this just another example of Big Brother government making our lives miserable just for the hell of it? Why don't we get any say in regulations like this? It's like the idea of a national ID card, are we really ready to give up that much of our privacy, so that Uncle Sam can keep track of "illegal" aliens? I'm not. I don't want some government worker that I've pissed off having the power to "erase" me, or ruin me, or persecute me, with the click of a few keys. Power corrupts.

And for my final 2 cents worth, what ever happened to the cent symbol? You know, the 'c' with the little line through it. When did it disappear, where did it go? Sure, we got a cute little ~tilde, but besides math/science geeks, and weird URLs, what do we need it for? I wonder about these things, late at night.

Just so you know.

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