The aftermath

Things—by which I mean my head, stomach, throat and general sense of well-being—are slowly returning to normal after the appalling excesses of New Year's Eve. Bruises have appeared on my left elbow and hip, presumably the points at which I hit the ground; lucky me, it could as easily have been my nose = broken glasses. (I just spoke with G, by the way: neither he nor U got out of bed at all yesterday, apart from food & drink and being sick. "How did it happen?" A good question.)

I've been for a short and gentle walk downtown this morning, which included a cappuccino in the Espresso-Laden and brief "HNY!" visits in Einklang and the local Apple store. The weather is again unseasonably warm, about 12°; there is obviously not even a nuance of snow anywhere in Germany this winter (so far). The temporary forests that I wrote about last week are making a reappearance, this time around the trees are slightly bedraggled and lying on their sides. (A certain proportion gets ground up for mulching the city parks and gardens, the rest is burned in the garbage-powered electricity generators.)

And now, back to that which passes for reality in this part of the world. I shall finish the user's guide for the database this week, so that we can burn the CDs for Hobbyist.

The chain of disasters after re-installing Windows XP continues unbroken: I (the new "Udge") cannot use any programs that were installed for the user named "Udge", because that's not me. Udge is not Udge in Windows. Bah. Public Service Announcement number Godknowswhat: Always and only install software FOR ALL USERS! Never install software for "yourself" even if "you" are the only person who will ever user that computer. I am seriously considering just reformatting the disk and starting again from scratch.