Lengthier meditation problems.

Because I stopped doing my daily and weekly workouts because of COVID and started doing meditation instead, to collect myself and strengthen my immune system, I've been doing two lengthier meditation sessions a week where I try to deep-breathe and listen to a longer piece of classical music on the radio, instead of my weekly jogging and yoga.

But, often my mind wanders, and I start thinking about other stuff rather than being with the music, and I catch myself.

But, I also figure, you're not always 100% at a workout either, and that's just like that.

Farmer's market problems.

Since I'm on a later sleep schedule because I work a lot of evenings at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I usually don't get to the local farmer's market until the last hour/hour-and-a-half of the day, by the time that I set my alarm a bit early and wake up and get something on my stomach and get properly caffeinated.

And, lately I've been missing the last of the corn, where there's no truck when I get there, and I found out that they are there, but they just don't have as much as earlier in the season and leave when they sell out.

Sometimes I hit random run-outs from other stands, like sometimes there's no kale at the stand of the one (older) (Southeast Asian) lady who I buy kale from.

The other week, though, it was crazy depleted, and even the one (thin) (solitary) (older) (white) guy who sells onions earlier in the season and then switches to apples was closing up shop by the time that I got there.

It turns out that there was a home college football game that day that started late morning, and so a lot of fans stopped through and flooded the market before the game started.

Project goals.

After I finished up and submitted to peer review a version of that major article that came from almost like 2 years of intense research (in between some other stuff), I thought that I'd be able to bang out a lot of quickie mini-articles and projects that had been accumulating, to really clear out my to-do list a shit-ton.

Only, COVID really threw a wrench in things.

The other thing that I've wanted to start doing is reading texts from a variety of eras in that one ancient language that I've been studying intensively for the past number of years, like an hour or an hour-and-a-half on days when I have the evening off from work.

That's a major, major way that you leisurely engage it and get ideas for "big picture" projects rearranging the way that people have been analyzing and presenting it, and I was doing that a bit earlier this summer, but it kind of fell apart around the time that I was intensively finishing that article, not to mention afterward when I was on a mini-trip for a concert, and then working a lot since my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was away for a K-pop concert, and then of course when I got COVID.

Sigh.

I can't imagine having a disability that interferes long-term with my ability to be productive.

I'd really have to reorient a lot of the way I behave, and the way that I think about myself and what I'm dong and where I'm going.

A COVID habit.

Although I have an app on my smartphone that blocks internet and in general I block it until like 8 or 9pm at night so that I have no temptation at all to waste time online during the day on the days when I'm home and not working at my job -- I otherwise don't have internet at home -- I haven't done that at all since I've gotten COVID.

A little small part of me thinks that something will suddenly go wrong medically like a crazy fast heartbeat or some other sudden-onset weird symptom like that, and I'll have to google the crap out of it all of a sudden.

Two COVID bits:

1) From what I'm seeing on social media, this new variant hangs around forever, like where you test positive for 2 weeks or even a month. My hunch is that they're going to confirm this with data down the line, and maybe even find out that it stays more infectious for longer and maybe fosters more long COVID with people, because of the way it stays in your system.

2) My new meditation technique is to imagine a small point in the very center of my chest, and it slowly expands in an amethyst ball, that fills my whole body and ends by pushing out and attacking the virus left in my little small veins in my extremities.

Camping arrangements.

So, my one (hippie) friend from Michigan finally finished all of her coursework for her teaching certification earlier this year, and so she just took a lot of time for herself this summer.

And, she mentioned to me that she was going camping a lot, like one trip where she was at this great lakeside campground for like a week, and there were barely any other campers around.

"But weren't you afraid of being alone like that?", I was like.

"Oh no, I had [her dog's name] with me," she was like.

So, I asked her what the toilet facilities were like out there.

And, she said there was an outhouse, but she mostly just shit in a bucket she has taken with her, since she didn't want to leave her dog alone.

Late night vomiting surprise.

Like a week or two ago in my back alley cottage on a weekend night I was reading in bed after midnight, when I heard a retching, vomiting sound from outside by the alley.

Since there was a party going on down the block, I figured it was someone from there, and I just kept lying in bed, reading.

Then, like ten minutes later, I hear it again, and so I get up and peer through my curtains and see nothing, and so I get back into bed.

Then, like another ten minutes later, I hear it yet again, and so I get up a second time and also see nothing, and just as I'm getting back into bed I decide that I should go outside and see if someone's out there who needs my help.

So, I dress up and throw pepper spray in my back pocket and turn my outdoor light on and go outside, and since it's dark in parts of the alley, I use the flashlight on my smartphone to look around some.

And, on the other side.of the alley by the quiet housing co-op, a (younger) (bespectacled) (racially ambiguous but not Asian or black) (bearded) man is lying on his back in the gravel behind some parked cars, and I go ask him what's up.

He's decently coherent and he says that he has vomited a few times and that he's from the party a few doors down, so I walk down there  and talk to some people who are out in the backyard by the bonfire.

They say they're all physics graduate students, and 2 come with me so I can show them where the man is.

And, I do that, and then I leave.