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Fri. 30 September

Another morning in Italy, it's 8:15 and maybe what woke me up thru the open window was the loud argument between a man and a woman, withal actually sounding rather pleasant, the woman going uninterruptedly and the man almost so, pausing only to catch his breath and bellow out "No! you've got it all wrong! You said that. . ." etc. The argument is several houses away and they've now closed the window and somewhat calmed down, but if I spoke Italian well, I would understand every word. Lovely lilting sound of the language.

Simultaneously, loud intermittent sobbing from the street: a girl of 16 sitting on a step (no shortage of them) with a boy. At one point, he sobbed too and hugged her — Nothing like living one's life out in the open —

I have a bad sore throat, last night not making things at all better. It woke me up and I took a throat lozenge and went back to sleep, it dissolved slowly behind a tooth for hours while I slept, now the sore throat is masked, but still there. I weigh 81. I ate too much yesterday I guess — although a catalog isn't that much? but I weighed 81 15 days ago when I bought the scale, I need to break the plateau or I'm in trouble.

5 P.M. It's possible I was slightly sick today. If I was, it's more or less over. My throat, hurting, had also been hot to the touch —

I also felt dirty and depressed. In fact, I may have been dirty, since I spent much of the day alternating between some fairly unfruitful programming (usually a mask for depression, altho' if I'm going to be depressed I suppose, it's good I should do something fairly useful) and snatches of exercise: a recipe for getting sweaty and feeling unclean.

Depressed, too [. . .] (c) off my schedule as always after a skating day; (d) didn't eat breakfast really or lunch — partly I don't feel hungry, partly I want to get back down to 79; (e) inability to repeat yesterday's skips — twenty tries, maybe, only 3 I think past 30: best was 63 — usually I've been tripping at around 10: the 63 on the other hand I was just too winded to continue; [. . .] the cat and bird situation is unsolved (why do I always have to solve these things?) [. . .]

So maybe at least I should learn not to be depressed — I've taken a bath, rather than a shower, reading Tra i Ghiacci in the tub for an hour — I'll probably take myself out to dinner somewhere tonight —

I did one try at situps. By sheer determination I made it to 72. Pushups, 14, twice. No sense of victory. Sense of caution about the lower back. Sense of muscle ache in the arms.

9:30 past. I would have better not taken myself out to dinner, or at least not at the Jacopone. I'm back depressed and angry. There's nothing quite as dismal as waiting for the check a long time when you're by yourself. By the time I got it, I was furious, very very angry, altho' I don't think it showed.

Tomorrow, unless it really does look like rain, I'm walking somewhere a good 40 km, and getting up early to catch the weather report and do it. [. . .]

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Page updated: 7 Dec 20