I’ll get to the chili thing in a moment, but first, an update :

I got all the lich stuff working eventually. It took a lot of fiddling and trying things and trsting things and dealing with every new way the universe concocted to fuck meover just when I thought I had it fixed^[1] and driving myself into a near fanatical frame of mind, but I made the god damned thing do what it was supposed to do.

I would like to say that I was overjoyed at my definitive triumph, but I wasn’t. At best, I felt a grim satisfaction and relief that I could finally relax.

But joy? Victory? Jubilation? Nope.

Part of my diseased mental state, I guess. This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened. Past a certain point, the stress and strain the stalwart striving poisons the pond of my emotional state and makes it so that joy and triumph are simply not possibilities any more.

GRim determination has seen me through to triumph but at a loiss.

I don’t know what the dividing line might be between happy victory and grim satisfaction. I suspect it is neurochemical in nature. At some point, my brain runs out of serotonin or dopamine and has to switch to a different mode in order to keep going.

And I always keep going.

And it does make me wonder what the hell is wrong with me, and wish there was some way to reset my entire body and mind so I can restore it back to its factory defaults and do my best to do better this time.

Had chili for breakfast this morning. Breakfast, in my case, being the meal I eat right before I go to sleep for the night, or rather, the morning.

I’ve managed to make it to bed earlier a few times lately. Like, at 3 am instead of 9 am. And the first time I did it, I woke up feeling great. Waaaay better than usual. And I thought, so that’s the secret.

But no, of course not. It didn’t really make much of a difference the other times. Maybe it is better in some way, maybe not.

I will try to go back to it soon and continue the experiment.

Last night and the night before I ended up doing something kind of random and nuts. I went to my room at the usual time, but instead of sitting down at the computer, I took a nap. Slept for a couple of hours, then got up and had my pitched battle with Skyrim and liches and everything that is wrong with the world today.

My world, anyway.

Then I had my main sleep – defined as the one that follows taking my sleeping pill – at around 9 am, woke up at 11:45 am, played Skyrim for a while, then pulled my lunch together and sat down to type for all you nice people.

Dunno if the nap improved my sleep or made it worse or what. I know that I am not done sleeping today. I need more. I can feel it. Even though I am not particularly sleepy right now,. I know that I will be when I stop typing and eating, and I am probably going to sleep throughout a large portion of this afternoon.

Not sure if eating while blogging is a good thing or not. On the one hand, it means I am eating during a state of higher activation and agitation than usual,and that can be quite bad for my delicate digestion.

On the other hand, it slows me down and keeps me from wolfing (or rather, foxing) down my food, and that’s definitely a good thing.

The two probably cancel each other out.

Anyhow, that pre-sleep meal of chili was mighty tasty. But also depressing because it reminded me how my tastes are getting blander by the minute.

I mean, this is just your perfectly normal can of Stagg chili we are talking about here. And yet, to eat it, I have to prepare like I am eating fuckin’ ghost peppers or something.

I have to have ice water, celery, garlic toast, and an apple handy so that I have plenty of things to counter the hotness of the chili in between bites.

And that’s just too much. I used to be able to eat that stuff and the worst that happened was that I would sweat a little. Now, it’s a whole operation.

I hate it. Like I have said before, the single most depressing thing to me about getting older is the blandening of my palate. I just can’t accept it. I just know I am going to be one of those lunatic old guys who keep on eating things they know damned well they are too old to eat because they are far too stubborn to admit to themselves that they can’t handle it any more.

I mean, it’s not like I was ever into super spicy food. But I could handle the usual consumer level of spiciness in foods like chili and tacos and curries without a problem.

And I just can’t accept that things have changed. There is something so fundamentally offensive to me about the idea that I have to eat blander food now that my mind rebels against the thought.

I guess we all have limits as to how sensible we can be.

Eating spicy foods right before you eat is probably a bad idea too. If I was a character in an old timy cartoon, it would have led to me going on some kind of psychedlic nightmare journey, probably involving the devil, long legged busty women, and movie stars that nobody remembers any more.

No such luck. That might have been a lot of fun. I’d enjoy my nightmares a lot more if they were animated.

No pac-man eyes, tho. Those creep me out.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.