my journal: various subjects, opinionating, CW at times

A reason for contentment:

the price of gold, from one year ago

I had a good afternoon.

Several weeks ago I got in a conversation with the guy who picks up the trash in this apartment anthill (& a few others)...turns out he likes to work with his hands too. We talked some more; later he invited me to his house, where I met his wife & their two dogs. Today was my 2nd time there.

Finally, I have a decent place to build my canes. I can only get to his place every couple weeks but it beats being stuck with my slightly rotted, half-sheltered patio. Today I made the most of it.

Will post snapshots of the current cane in the "hobby journal" tomorrow or Monday. It's almost done now & looking pretty good overall.

Allergy season has arrived.

I knew it was coming, of course...knew it was here for certain by 0500 hrs this morning.

Here's what my weather app looked like when I checked it a bit later:

Note what the colored bar at the top says, gentle reader.

...yes indeed. I will spend the rest of this month through March mostly staying by the two little air filtration devices in my place (they're not that effective but better than nothing), cleaning whenever I have the energy & living on herbal teas, OTC allergy & cold products, & any cough syrup with dextromethorphan. Ain't life f***ing grand?... 😶‍🌫️💩

Not everything is bad, however. Right now the markets are still doing rather well, all things considered. Gold is still above $2,000/oz; I think 2K is the current support level for gold & will be for the foreseeable future. That means that the price per oz. is unlikely to drop below 2K...if it does, it will not go very far nor will it stay down for long. Previously the support level was above $1,900/oz, until September of '23.

Before I forget:

"Familiarity breeds indifference. We have seen too much pure, bright color at Woolworths to find it intrinsically transporting. And here we may note that, by its amazing capacity to give us too much of the best things, modern technology has tended to devaluate the traditional vision-inducing materials. The illumination of a city, for example, was once a rare event, reserved for victories and national holidays, for the canonization of saints and the crowning of kings. Now it occurs nightly and celebrates the virtues of gin, cigarettes and toothpaste."

- Aldous Huxley, Heaven and H.e.l.l

Sittin' here with head pain, after dinner & two trips to the porcelain throne.

We have all heard countless times about how important it is to maintain a healthy diet, eat nutritious foods & not sugar-loaded junk, etc. One part of that is plenty of fiber input. Well now I've started making stew on weekends--it's an ethnic/religious thing--& while this may be a good habit overall...it takes some getting used to.

How long will the acclimation period go, exactly? When will I get to the point where I don't get an automatic flareup while my guts turn out 20-lb. bronze ingots like some kind of foundry?

💨💨💩💩💩💩💨  🤕🤧

Isn't it surprising how things sneak up on you every so often, when you just wander into a situation & some aspect or two reminds you of something from the past, & then it all comes flooding back.

Tonight I was poking around Youtoob for songs when I found a singer I've seen before, a good while back. Had forgotten how much she resembles a woman I met during my college days...so far, the only woman I ever wanted to marry. Given my age & how my life is now, she will almost certainly remain the only one.

She was not my first love but she was my first serious love (for lack of a better phrase). Until I met her, I was a free man & liked it...after being with her for four months, I wanted to exchange vows & settle down for the first time in my life. I wanted her for my own, & would do whatever it took to make it so. I would've become her husband, been faithful, stuck by her through any catastrophe...there was one little problem: we had religious differences. More than that, she was a woman of faith while I've always had skeptical/questioning tendencies.

Very few people can maintain a relationship with such differences between them.

Eventually we broke up; I made the move, just as I'd been the one to start the relationship. She & I remained friends for a good while after that. We liked each other, but we both knew that romantically it would never work.

...I have never forgotten her.

...wherever you are out there, I still miss you, N.

Before I crash again, here's a report on other unimportant news:

1. The left side of my chest hurts whenever I inhale deeply. It's not serious; I know this condition as it's acted up before. Just one more item on the list of irritations that comprise my life.
2. The guy in the western end of the apartment anthill that I helped for a few weeks is no longer there. His unit is empty....he was receiving hospice care when I met him, had oxygen tanks in his living room & some kind of machine to give him oxygen if he needed it. I know of two ambulance trips he took (neither one when I was there--heard about it later); he was on several meds.... Can't say with 100% certainty, but I'm pretty sure he d!ed in there.

R.I.P., old redneck from LA.*

Also, @Helgafy - would you not post Bible verses in my journal, please. You obviously mean well & that's great, but I don't find much pleasure or solace in scripture generally. I do have a TNK, etc. but as I said, I am faith-challenged...that is a politically correct term for "I can't really believe in an O³** deity". After many years of research, talks with others & contemplation, I concluded that a supreme god may exist but the idea of it being the biblical god of Avraham is patently absurd.

*The swampy state, not Los Angeles.

**acronym for omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent.

Life stinks. Life really stinks right now...one more reason which I won't reveal here.

Just know that for me, today (& probably the rest of the week), life sucks on elephant testes harder than an over-the-hill p0rn actress.