a post-it day

I have the day off today. I have most days off; I'm not working enough right now. Which is worrisome, very much so, but for now there's very little I can do about it so I'm just trying to take advantage of the time that I have. But the downside of time off is that my lack of coherent schedule is also making it a little hard for me to be consistent, to focus, to the point where I'm making myself detailed lists on post-it notes nearly every day just to try and make sure I get something done, even if that thing has sort of negligible measurable worth. Today, for example, here is one of the things on my list: bake a cake. Do I need a cake? No. Do I have anybody to give cake to? Not really. But damn it, I have this whole day and part of that day is going to be spent baking a cake. Maybe.

This fractiousness in my schedule also makes it hard for me to focus on what I might write about next. I've been reading a lot (I mean, who wouldn't be, when there's literally hundreds of new books to choose from just sitting around their apartment?), and have plotted posts on several recent topics, including bees and honey, the sense of smell and linguistic sensory word flow, and India's Ramayana epic. I've also been thinking about Elvis (really), gluten-free cookies, my favorite soup, and about counting all of the books currently in my possession and calculating just what gigantic percentage of them are so far unread. For today, though, I just wanted to put together a few vignettes, little things that have been niggling at my brain for no good reason. So here we go.

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I'm apparently doing my hibernation eating right now. I'm craving protein and fatty comfort foods like crazy, things that I normally don't eat often or ever, and following up on my cravings by actually preparing and consuming them. I have had, for instance, eggs every day this week; normally I vaguely dislike eggs, and I hadn't eaten them outside of a baked good for many months before this. I'm also eating boca spicy chicken patties like it's going out of style, and instant mashed potatoes, and macaroni and cheese from a box, and I've been daydreaming about making myself some nice teriyaki tilapia soon. I don't know why. But I'm going with it.

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I'm not super into horoscopes, but I do like Rob Brezney's Free Will Astrology because it's sort of amusing and I think the advice (regardless of astrological sign) is sometimes helpful. Unabashed cheesiness and earnest advice-giving is an underrated method of information spreading, I think. Last week my horoscope was about buried treasure, how we have preconceptions about the treasures we may or may not be looking for and may or may not find anyway; I wondered, after I read it, what buried things I may be discounting. I think it's a valid thing to wonder about. Anyway, here's my horoscope for this week:

"It's not a good time to treat yourself like a beast of burden or to swamp yourself with dark, heavy thoughts. You're extra sensitive, Sagittarius -- as delicate and impressionable as a young poet in love with a dream of paradise. You need heaping doses of sweetness and unreasonable amounts of fluidic peace, smart listening, and radical empathy. If you can't get people to buoy your spirits and slip you delightful presents, do those things for yourself. "

I assume this means that actually, yes, I should bake myself a cake. And maybe write in my journal a little more often. And spend evenings with good books. I can live with those choices.

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Facebook has some sort of application where people answer questions about you; if you save up enough points (I have no idea how to do this) you can see who asked the question, but I find I don't really care. I can already see what was asked and answered, and that's fascinating enough. Somebody out there thinks I can throw a football in a spiral (FALSE), and various other people think that I'm not greedy (hopefully true), that I've never prank called anybody or been in a fistfight (also true), and that I voted for Obama (also true, even though I felt like it was a rather symbolic gesture and I felt sort of ambivalent about it). My favorite, though, is that somebody thinks I scored over 1500 on the SATs, which is actually not true but is sort of flattering. I'm not that good at math. I scored a 1450 when I took it as a sophomore, 1400 (or maybe 1420, I can't remember) as a junior, and got a perfect english score the first time around. That's my bragging for the day. Sometimes I masochistically miss taking standardized tests.

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I think that's enough narcissism for the day, at least in public. I'm going to go work on my latest book (it's about Daylight Saving Time! Woot!) and think about what to read next. Also cake. And Sibelius. That sounds like a decent day to me.