After another dreary day of rain and clammy coolness, I started a real fire in the woodstove using two sticks of wood I'd lain up back in August. Interestingly, one of these pieces (a chunk of White Ash) was still green enough to release boiling water from its ends as it burned, indicating that wood split in August is not ready to burn in October, though part of the problem might have been the humidity over the weeks it should have been drying.
At around six PM I took a recreational dose of pseudoephedrine as part of my new regime of interleaving coffee consumption with pseudoephrine. The idea is alternate between these two stimulants (which work via different biochemical pathways) so that I never become addicted or habituated to either, thereby making them more effective when I use them. Also, since pseudoephedrine is not a drug one feels compelled to take very often, the fact that I have to alternate between them means that I won't do either very often.
The problem with taking pseudoephedrine so late is that dinner time came soon after I'd taken it, and I've noticed that generally the euphoric and/or productive phase of a pseudoephedrine experience ends soon after food is consumed. Tonight Gretchen prepared a frozen vegan pizza (doctored up with mushrooms and, for me, hot peppers), and this time it didn't seem to intrude on the pseudoephedrine experience too much, perhaps because the amount I ate was a bit less than normal.
Another rule I've come up with to regulate my stimulant consumption: I must begin working on whatever I am most egregiously procrastinating before I can take a stimulant for that day. This puts me in the right place when the stimulation kicks in, so I don't end up frittering it all away on some dumbass crackhead project.
At some point today I happened upon an absurd interview with Presidential candidate Rick Santorum on the subject of contraception. As you watch this, remember that this guy was once actually a senator from a state as blandly reasonable as Pennsylvania.
Clearly, Rick Santorum has no idea how people actually live in 2011. While 98 percent of Catholics in America are using birth control, in Santorum's universe, sex is only for procreation, and if a married couple can't afford to raise any more kids they should entirely stop having sex. By his logic, we should ban the practice of spinal surgery as a means of encouraging roofers to be more careful on their ladders. But since roofing mostly affects the bodies of men, Santorum actually has no interest in controlling the procedures roofers may have performed upon their bodies.
