02:43 - 01.10.07
Revisiting
The flu is all gone but the cold remains - a "productive cough", as the doctor would say, and a fever. Given that job interview tomorrow I opted to sleep although I should have gone out to do that one piece work assignment. I can't make enough monthly to pay my bills doing the pick up assignments so being in good enough shape to attend to interview took priority. I hate being practical.
I did go grocery shopping mostly because our cat supplies wouldn't have lasted until next weekend. Alongside the Hallowe'en items that have been available for the past couple of weeks were Thanksgiving and Christmas products - like eggnog. Yes Idid buy one container and yes I do know it's bad for me. However, psychologically it is comfort food and I needed some of that today. It was apparent that a lot of other shoppers were feeling the same way given the snippets of conversation I heard as I moved up and down the aisles. There just seems to be a higher level of stress and anxiety shown than normal fo rthis time of year - can't say why.
Could be the news I guess. The one downside of instant information is that the bad stuff gets more attention as it travels faster. Often the context is lost and that is what moderates the concern. As i was reading the latest news for example, it appears that the treaty between Turkey and iran with respect to dealing with the Kurds is specific to their rebel forces. That wasn't mentioned in the first article I read so memories of the photos in Amnesty International's newsletters of the victims of Saddam Hussein's bio and gas attacks on Kurdish villages back in the 1980's filled my mind. Since it didn't have all the information the brain filled in the blanks with what was known from the past. Hard to sort that out sometimes.
As it was I spent a lot of time emailing back aand forth with the one person who had sent me that eyewitness report from Burma. I was trying to verify the source and the factual basis so that I wasn't spreading false rumours either. I wantd to post it on Facebook you see, if it was true. I trust the person that sent it to me but I have had information sent from trusted sources before where they were misled by sources they trusted. I've done the same my self as noted in the previous paragraph. As I was waiting for responses from my source I decided to post it on Facebook, but used the privacy settings to limit it to just my friends. I felt that apologizing to a few people instead of the thousands on some of the networks was much more palatable. Found out in doing so that some of the privacy and personal settings conflict with each other, making a very big mess to figure out before proceeding with the posting. Added a story in one of the posts that was from a credible newspaper that seemed to carry the same information and also a link to Amnesty International's Canadian website so that if anyone was really concerned - as they should be - they could take some sort of constructive action rather than just being tied up in knots about the situation. Emailed the text of that initial email to a couple of friends who are actively involved in various aspects of human rights protection so that they could have access to more information as well.
While I was working on that project I realized that several moving vans were converging in front of and behind my home again. I'm not certain why so much space was needed to move the neighbours over the past month - the duplex they occupied had no more room than mine - but there you are. It was the nasty neighbours from the west side who were moving their belongings into those vans. Meant I didn't mind at all that the access to homes on all four sides were blocked for a good part of the day. Can't say the same for some of the other neighbours, but better now than when the snow flies. Moves are very messy when that happens. My sister and her hubby had wanted to come by and help me clear out and cart a bunch of the material I have been removing from inside my home to the dump today. When I realized that I was going to need the weekend to recuperate from the double whammy viruses, I called them and cancelled out on those plans. Yes I know some people would say I'm a wuss, but look at where ignoring the body's need to rest and recuperate has got me healthwise from the last decade of having to ignore the physical so that I could feed my sons. The body strikes back and it isn't pulling it's punches anymore. Can't risk anymore down time, thank you very much. Anyway in some corner of my mind I was wondering if the two really nasty neighbours who lived each side of me the past two and a half years, had to be gone before any real progress could be made on fixing my home. Maybe all that negative energy they were focussing on my dwelling had to be removed. There is still the landlord who rented to them in the picture though so maybe it is magical thinking in a negative sense. Don't know. Hopefully whatever the reason change to my home base will now become much easier.
As it is I guess I had better get some sleep before the sun rises. Good night dear diary.
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