What is the weather like in your area? I have suffered from it since I became a Yooper, and it's a massive problem up here because this region barely gets any Sun, which is where most people get their daily allowance of Vitamin D.

You will actually see little reminders in the paper, when the Sun is due to be out, to go outside for a few minutes, for your mental well being.

Typical Dutch weather is very changeable, though clouds is more common then sun, us having a sea climate from being close to the North Sea.

According to my friends, I come outside often enough, but in my own experience, fear of dogs and the noise of cars that upset me often keep me trapped inside when I would want to go out. I often feel anxious and over-stimulated outside.

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I never go outside which unfortunately only exacerbates the depression I've had since birth.

And we just got two puppies, bringing it to three dogs, so be wary if you ever come over. :P

That's what sailboats have been invented for. Originally. Certainly. Isn't there a sail club nearby ? Netherlands is mostly made of water, isn't it ?

I moved to a new apartment today. It's really close to my current office, I can actually walk to work now.

Wow, I love my new employer already!

Last Friday was my first workday at the office (previous days I was on courses), and he gave me some used laptop to use as my work machine. Ok, looks quite normal, has Windows 10 etc., I set it up and tell my boss I'd like to have an external monitor, mouse and keyboard and he says ok.

Now at home I've been inspecting my work laptop a bit more... and it seems to be quite a beefy gaming laptop actually! Not the very highest end anymore (it is used after all), but it does have a i7 CPU and a Geforce GTX 880M GPU which should mean it can run pretty recent games quite well:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-880M.107622.0.html

E.g. Fallout 4 at ultra settings 1920x1080 35fps, I guess I can live with that. At least it seems to be considerably faster than my aging ASUS gaming laptop at home.

Also, it has 32 GB of RAM! That just blows my mind, my home laptop has mere 8 GB.

And the best part is that it is pretty much up to me what I install on that laptop, this is a small company, not a big company where the IT department will be snooping around in real time what I've installed on my work machine and giving warnings about it etc. As long as I don't install anything that could be considered as a security threat of course (singleplayer GOG games without Galaxy sound just about right security-wise :)).

I wrote elsewhere that I have to decide soon whether I continue at this job or go to work in one bank's IT department, and I figure in the bank I definitely can't install anything extra on my work machine, they are probably very strict about it, just as they should be.

I just find it funny how come my employer ever ended up buying such a gaming laptop for work use? Or is it possibly his old gaming laptop that he decided to give to me as a work laptop? Whatever, I like it already. :)

How close is close? At one point I lived 2 km (=1.24 miles) away from the office, which I felt was quite nice. I usually walked that distance even though it took about 20 minutes to walk, but I took it as my daily exercise. That's why some birds build a nest into my car's engine compartment, as the car was standing there unused for so long.

(I have no idea why I didn't use a bicycle, probably I just didn't feel like buying one, and felt carrying a laptop bag is easier while walking. Oh and if it rains, I hate cycling as I am supposed to wear some kind of plastic coat in order not to get wet, not just keeping an umbrella in one hand while walking.)

Now my work trip is 32 km (almost 20 miles), but it is fine as long as I can use a car. It takes around 25 minutes to drive there even during rush hours, as I am driving "against" the traffic, most drivers are going to the opposite direction to me.

Which reminds me that today I am supposed to change my winter tires to summer tires, so better to go do it right now...

I live in my office.
I'm actually doing B&B work right now, in my pajamas, while watching SportsCenter, listening to some CCR, amd posting here. :D

Trump ranting against Al-Assad.

I imagine some disoriented fanboys, not sure whether to choose mommy or daddy.

Bah, who am I kidding. We've always been at war with Eastasia.

Give it a few hours. When it comes to ranting he has severe ADD. Before the end of the day he'll be back to Amazon or video games or football players. I'm still waiting for him to hit Willy Wonka; vowing swift action to keep him from bringing in little orange immigrants, making america unsafe and taking away jobs from american candy makers.

True. I had almost written "temporarily ranting", and almost added a line about it being probably just a soon-forgotten caprice, due to the guy being a huge retarded nasty baby instead of pure cold calculating evil (unlike the likes of Putin and Al-Assad). Still, to be fair, him ranting against Amazon (a dreamlike neoliberal success story) also makes me happy. So, he can jump back and forth as far as I'm concerned.

No "enemy of my enemy is my friend", here. If only they could just obliterate each others with minimal collateral damage...

Sidewalk chalk painting with kids. Now we have two unicorns, red dragon, green python, 5-colors mosaic and butterfly in front of house. Looks good for me! ;)

https://www.johnvantine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/makena-slayer-logo-sidewalk-chalk.jpg

the closest I got was my cat laying beside me for a couple minutes, other than that today's been awful :(