Grump Central Archive: Week of 8 November 2020
Saturday, 14 November 2020
A year ago right about now we had a light dusting of snow. This year it's been rainy and 60s, although by the middle of next week the lows are supposed to hit the 20s. Time to get the wood stove ready for some fires.
Friday, 13 November 2020
What a difference three days can make: these images were taken on 9 & 12 November. I've always found it a little disconcerting how Autumn ends so abruptly. Meanwhile, thanks to the pandemic, yet another friend has elected not to visit me for fear of giving me the virus. Honestly, what's the worst that could happen? I might contract a fatal disease? Wait, I've already got one!
In other news, I've officially locked and archived all of my websites except Grump Central and one tiny portion of David's Modeling Journey. Everything will still be accessible even after I'm gone, but I saw no need to keep maintaining it all, especially when I'm doing next to nothing these days. Also, all of my sites are now on a new host that costs less than a tenth of the previous one, so it will be relatively trivial and painless to keep everything alive indefinitely.
Thursday, 12 November 2020
I'm beginning to lose my sense of self. It's an extremely difficult sensation to articulate, so please bear with me. I know who I am, of course, but one's identity isn't simply one's name. Everything around me looks familiar and strange all at once. I do my best to stay grounded, despite my dire health circumstances, but at times I don't feel like myself. I know I'm probably not making any sense at all; perhaps I'm slowly going mad?
Wednesday, 11 November 2020
Here I am in my little hidey-hole, thumbing my nose at the world. The weather lately has been quite spectacular, and it's nice to be outdoors for a change, even just a little bit. Yesterday, today and tomorrow are shaping up to be the big leaf-dropping days, which is startling because you wake up in the morning and the landscape is suddenly quite different. The best part of the season is just about over, I'm afraid.
Tuesday, 10 November 2020
Things are finally starting to calm down a little, and maybe this week I can catch up on a lot of lost sleep—the last couple of weeks have taken a real toll on my mind and body. In fact, today I'm feeling worse than I ever have, and at times it has me wondering if my time is up. Not a pleasant way to live, by any means. In other news, I'm a month away from an anniversary: I began my daily Grumplogs on 10 December 2017. Three years of my nonsense!
Monday, 9 November 2020
Today's image: just down the road from my home is my favorite watering hole. The other day I was checking their new hours, and looked them up on Google. A gallery of photos accompanied the Google listing, and just for kicks I clicked it. The very first image that popped up was interesting: there was the old familiar bar, populated at the time by only two people. But wait... is that? Yep, there at the far left sit my friend Glenn and me!
Still furious about that invasion of privacy Saturday night. Up until that point I was considering reconciliation, but the message totally backfired, and only made a bad situation worse. No chance of reconciliation now, I'm afraid.
Sunday, 8 November 2020
It's time for me to go into hiding. Recently I had to choose sides in a conflict between two friends (what I've been referring to as the "soap opera" for a while now), the consequence of which was the loss of one of them. I regret that I couldn't be there for them both. The fact of the matter is, I cannot support everyone; I have precious little remaining emotional energy, and I must reserve at least some of that for myself. But now I'm being "punished" for having to make the choice between my two friends by suffering an invasion of privacy by a third party. This cannot continue. I'm enduring stress-induced angina on an almost continuous basis right now, and all that does is chip away at the time I have left to live. As much as it hurts to cut off a friend in need, I simply must in order to survive. I'm extremely grateful for the election outcome; otherwise, my stress levels might have surpassed my ability to cope.