preraphaelitepunk.com

. . . Just lazy and kind of boring. The most exciting thing that’s happened lately has been finally managing to unclog the slow drain in the bathtub. (Hey, I found that exciting. Being able to shower without sloshing around in ankle-deep water is a good thing, really. I should probably find some sort of strainer to keep hairs out of the drain. [Yes, this is how exciting my life has been lately. Aren't you glad I broke the silence to share that with you?])

There’s been an endless string of seitan stir-fries, Tofurky-slice sandwiches with sprouts, and hummus, none of which has been particularly Flickr-worthy. I have gotten to the point where I feel guilty inflicting yet another seitan-related photograph on hapless Flickrites, and because I have cooked nothing original or unusual in weeks, haven’t even put in much of an appearance there, either.

My theory is that my malaise comes from RSS overload. I’ve currently got something like 68 feeds going into my Bloglines page, some of which I read every day, some of which I tend to let accumulate until they reach overwhelming proportions and then either slog through dutifully or mark them all as read without really reading them. I really must cull some of them and move them to bookmark-only status or something, just to alleviate some of the weight pressing down on me. The veg*n blogs I read, and the few podcasts I have gotten around to downloading, are pretty much non-negotiable (though I may swap out my 30+ individual vegan food photo feeds for a single tag-word feed from Flickr, which would be simpler); Lifehacker[1] is similarly indispensible; Slashdot articles accumulate faster than lint in my drier (or hair in my shower drain), but I can usually skim through the headlines and easily pick out the ones I want to read, so I think I want to keep that. I think, though, that dear Gizmodo may be on its way out. Too many photos, too slow to load, overwhelming. Also, it makes me feel poor because I can’t afford the gadgets they highlight, which is just counterproductive. My PDA may be, what, three years old? It still works fine, thankyouverymuch, except for a slight tendency for the battery to drain at an alarming rate, so there’s no need for me to upgrade to the latest. There are probably a few other blogs that have too much psychic weight for me to carry around any more, too. If I can get the total number to less than 50, I think that would be a good start.

*** ***

[1] If I could give up Lifehacker, it would probably free me much more than getting rid of 10 other feeds, but it’s not going to happen. I lurrrrve LH, despite the fact that I tend to mark articles I don’t have time to deal with as “keep new,” and they accumulate at tachyon-like speeds. Just a couple of weeks ago, I got the number of kept-new down to under 100, but as of this moment I’m back up at around 125. Still, I cannot give it up. So many good things, not only for real life but also for work — I mean, what editor should be without a plugin like Bullfighter? (As long as no actual bulls were harmed in the programming, of course. :))