Well, the movie with Caro didn't work out, due to technical difficulties: she'd bought the tickets for the wrong day, so we ended up starting to see some kind of 3-D animated hero film for kids before going down to the ticket counter to buy new tickets. Her intense frustration at this state of affairs reminded me that she's one of the most organized and together people in my current inner circle. Maybe I can improve my conscientiousness by hanging out with her more.
Dinner with Naudy, however, was awesome; but afterwards I was sufficiently tired (and stuffed --- Los Sabios food tempts one to overindulge) that I'm not going to the hospital tonight.
I did my first experiments with frequency-domain convolution and sparse factorings of time-domain FIR kernels, but I don't know
I've stuffed the last of the moldy clothes in the wash bucket so I'll wash them tomorrow. And I've gotten some leads on roommates on the web, which I'll check out more tomorrow.
So for the morning here's my plan:
Yeah, that was the plan. Here's what I actually did:
An interesting thing to note was my anxiety level while returning from money changing to go to the laundry place: I worried they might have already closed (I hadn't noted their hours), and that I'd have to spend the night tonight again under only the sheets and bedspread, inconveniencing Violeta as well as myself. My guilt at this possibility was kind of extreme. My relief upon coming in sight of the people sitting around inside the laundry's plate-glass windows was enormous.
This anxiety and guilt is a miniature version of the debilitating version I experience during procrastination.
As it turns out, Violeta is delayed, and so I could have gone to see the movie anyway, which I probably would have found out if I had messaged her to find out her schedule when I got up instead of after the movie had already started. So in this case my lack of communication exacerbated the situation caused by my lack of planning. Rationally, I know that all of this is much more important to me than to anyone else, and that the guilt I'm feeling is out of proportion to the real negative impact it's having on other people, and that that same guilt is what makes me reluctant to initiate those communications --- a vicious cycle.
Now it's 18:00, and I have time to make a revised plan for the rest of the day.
(Planning time: 7 minutes.)
An hour later, I've bought the foods, plus an off-brand Terma, a new kind of bottlable noodles, and some fresh tomatoes. I'm soaking some sun-dried tomatoes now; maybe I can use them in the salad, or maybe Violeta would prefer a tuco sauce rather than a roux.
While I was out, I met a little girl jumping rope on the sidewalk, across the street from the MACABI building, which is surrounded by heavy brick barricades in case of another truck bomb. I hung up the blankets on the patio to air out, since I forgot to specify not to soak them in nose-anesthetizing perfumes.
I was disappointed to find that the bottle I washed yesterday still isn't completely dry. I'd left it to air-dry rather than using alcohol as usual, which seems to have been ineffective. I filled it with about a kilogram and a half of soybeans anyway; hopefully the moisture will diffuse throughout the soybeans rather than just making a few moist spots that can harbor mold.
Violeta was very pleased with the dinner, with which she helped. To the basic roux (butter, flour, and milk) I added salt, pepper, dried parsley, and freshly-grated nutmeg, with excellent results.
We ended up not studying, instead going out for ice cream (AR$25 for a quarter-kilo) before dinner. Dinner ended a bit past midnight, and then we went to bed.
We took a shower; I soaked the laundry (this load is a bucket full of clothes that had gotten moldy from a flood) with sodium percarbonate, but I haven't washed it yet.
Rather than going to the hospital to get an appointment, I decided to sleep instead. (To get an appointment, you have to be in line when they open the doors at 5:00.) This was probably a good idea, because I had another night of sleeping over 12 hours. While my health probably needs the sleep, I worry that it could promote depression.
I woke up at 6:30 with her this morning and made her pancakes with dried apricots for breakfast. As I woke up, I was dreaming that a family of six weasels had divided up my nasopharynx for living space, which was my first sign that I had a ferocious sore throat. I went back to bed when she left at 7:15, sleeping another 7 hours. I had to put on 很愛很愛 by Sammi (an album I bought in Seattle in 2000) and Queen's Greatest Hits on a couple of occasions to enable me to sleep through the child abuse next door. At one point, the man was roaring "¡Callate!" over and over at the small child, and when the child began to cry, he began to laugh. Now he's emitting periodic falsetto screams.
I spent some time reading Wikipedia about different acid-base theories and anatomy.
My lunch (I suppose it's not a breakfast since I had pancakes with Violeta before sunrise) will be breadsticks with the roux, plus some of the lentils. Then I'll wash the laundry that's been soaking overnight, wring it out to dry, go call Telefónica, and head over to Santiago's house.
To the lunch above I added sesame seeds on the lentils, English Breakfast tea with the rest of the orange syrup, celery, and two fried eggs. I guess maybe my body thinks it's time to stop losing weight. I've left the shower running on the laundry to give it a post-soak rinse; now it's time for a shower and a real wash for the laundry.
Things on my shopping list: sugar, laundry detergent, Scotch tape, milk, butter, light bulbs. I read in Wikipedia that the sale of incandescent light bulbs was banned in Argentina in 2010; if that's true, the light bulbs may be a bit of a challenge.
One of the molded garments, a light-colored pillowcase, seems to have suffered spotty staining from the mold. I'm going to try soaking it in bleach water overnight to see if that helps.
Walking to Santi's house, I stopped by a hardware store which sells replacement fan parts and fan service (of the hardware-repair type, not the anime type). They also sell new desk fans: AR$120. I bought three replacement 28W lightbulbs (to replace 40W bulbs) for the apartment, which cost AR$60 in total. It turns out that the traditional incandescent lights are no longer available, but halogen replacements are.
Since this represents an investment in repairing the furnishings (increasing the value over the original) of about 3% of the rent, I'm going to see if I can persuade José to reimburse me. I guess I should have asked for a receipt.
I bought a helium Mylar balloon from a clown on the sidewalk for AR$40. It has pictures of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and says in English, "Best wishes". On the top, it has a similar message in Chinese which presumably says the same thing.