adrian_turtle

After pathetic amounts of fretting and difficulty, I finally have something to help the problem of turning pages in my big notebook of reference material. I transferred the pages from the big book to 4 smaller books, and added a bunch of dividers, which helped some. The act of turning pages was still a strain, but I didn't have to do it so often. Adding tabs helped too. I was in Staples this afternoon, buying more of the ready-made big plastic side tabs (as opposed to the little top ones I've been making dozens of), when I saw an ad, or a marketing display--a Thing they have to advise people about buying loose-leaf binders. It said their smooth durable round rings opened and closed easily, and allowed easy turning of pages, and the extra-durable binders with D-shaped rings were recommended for archival use, as the rings held more paper for the same width spine. The binders I was using all had D-rings. I hadn't even thought about the difference.

I tried it as soon as I got home. It doesn't solve the whole problem, but it does make it noticably easier. Pages go right over, instead of having to be supported through "turning the corner" of the D-ring. I hadn't bought any new binders. I have almost 2 shelves full of various stuff in 3-ring binders. Surely some of it must be appropriately sized with round rings! I could just transfer the paper for a few days, then put it back. The big stack of reference material can go back in the big binder for the long term, when I'm only looking things up in it occasionally, rather than many times in 5 hours.


If I'm bringing 4 notebooks to the exam, I want them to be different colors, not 4 similar-looking things with different labels on the front. I also want each one to be no bigger than it needs to be. So I took the first subset of notes out of the D-ring binder and put it in a blue binder with 2" O-rings. Then I measured the other stacks of paper on the kitchen table, and went back to the shelf, saying to myself, "Round rings, 1 or 1.5", any color but blue." It's really embarrassing how many times I pulled a blue binder off the shelf, check its rings, and think, "this looks good." Sometimes I went so far as to pull a blue 2" binder down, check its rings, and take it into the kitchen. I had to carry the ruler with me and keep repeating, "Not blue. Not blue. Not blue." Until it became, "Not purple or blue. Not purple or blue." It's hard to believe I am seriously planning anything more intellectually challenging than tying my own shoes.

The purple binder had the background information for the game jss1113, therck's sister-in-bill, and I wrote in 1993 for therck's wedding in 1993. In case anyone hadn't noticed, JSS, TheRCK, and her sister-in-law are very silly people, and I'm very glad to know them. Remembering that game, and the whole weekend of celebrating TheRCK's wedding, is very uncomfortable for me, despite being crowded with people I care about, laughing and singing and playing games. That was really the first time I brought my ex to Michigan to socialize with a group of my old friends. My discomfort isn't just that I wanted him to like them, and he didn't at all; nor that I wanted them to like him, and they were hardly seeing him. The problem was that he resented *my* spending time and emotional energy on them. Parties without drinking, and games that diverged so far from RPGA competition standards made him angry and contemptuous. I suspected this was a problem at the time, as that contempt (and the distance, and school) pushed me to disconnect from everyone I'd cared about before 1990. But I thought I was being silly. Isn't it silly to have a game as part of a wedding celebration? Aren't the people I'm missing awfully silly, anyhow? And how can I defend them when I have to acknowledge they don't do things properly. (Not very well, clearly. But that doesn't have anything to do with missing.)

I think I'm tired enough to sleep now. Maybe past that tired. We'll see. It's not a good night.