Following the link to Baltimore Unwired from Mike Rose's archives reveals that Daily Grind in Fells Point has wireless net access available to customers. I have a need to be social with coffee, and Sara Sathya has already agreed to meet me there so I head over.

After a nice discussion of our holiday and future plans over coffee and a bagel, her cell phone rang so I took a minute to check to see if it would make a good workplace. The WAP came up quickly enough, but the Charm Net site refused my connections from any browser and wouldn't let me register for an account. I realized that I wasn't going to get any work done, and as soon as Sara and I finished our food we left.

I still wanted to be around people, so on my way up I-83 near Falls Road I called up Justin and then Amy to find out if AngelFall Studios would be open. In my way of phrasing my question, Amy figured I was trolling for an invite and said, "Sure, come on over!" Since hanging out at their house was more appealing than spending my last $20 among strangers, I accepted. Got a lot of coding done and got to "poison test" a few batches of cookies that Amy was working on.

Around 18:00 my attention started to wane a little and I said my goodbyes and headed back home to clean.

The combination of illness and all these strange drugs I'm putting into my body all at once has left me in a strange sort of mood around these holidays. I think I'm getting a better feel for old age than usual, with my hearing almost completely disappearing at the whimsy of my rapidly filling and emptying sinus cavities, and a bit more labor required to make my way up a single flight of stairs. It's not really a winded feeling. I can't seem to muster up enough solid energy to feel winded, just a slow plodding effort to get anything done.

The pleasant side effect of all this is that the mental and physical energy required to switch tasks has proportionally skyrocketed. Tasks like cleaning the kitchen which require a consistent low-flow of energy hold lots more appeal than facing the flight of stairs to flitter over to my e-mail, and a sort of focused, reasoned precision to working out my programming riddles that I haven't had in a few weeks.

Overall the house is improving in the absence of any regular messmaking. The kitchen is in shambles, but its a more focused shamble than it was two days ago. Every night I seem to get a load of dishes done, and without Suz around to distract me or get upset by the (admittedly diminished) intensity of my cleaning or criticize me for putting a dish in the wrong place, the room is coming along well.

I've moved my office lamp into the basement and I'm slowly but surely disposing of miscellaneous items which have been down in storage since my move. If I recognize anything that I actively missed (as in, oh, that's the X to Y adapter I needed six months ago) I'm moving it to its appropriate clear-sided box in my office upstairs. Anything else of mine is getting unceremoniously junked unless it appears to be of some easily recognizable monetary value.

So far I've got two bags of disgusting food garbage, 2 bags of disgusting basement trash, piles of cardboard for recycling and another two archive boxes of paper to shred. And I've only really just started, but at least there's a big open space in the middle of the basement again. Once Suz gets home she can start going through her stuff as well.

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