Spending the weekend with my daughter proved to be exactly what I needed to turn the corner and start feeling more together. Of course, our time together was hampered slightly by the fact that she had a nasty cold, which I caught. Oh well, sharing is caring.

Anyway, when I run up against weeks like the last two, work becomes pretty much impossible. Hell, most things become impossible, so I do my best to distract myself and try to ride things out. Contrary to what some sane people believe, there are days when you really are better off just not trying.

In the interest of Science, here’s a list of the things I did to kill the last couple of weeks.

Bought and played Europa Universalis III – This is the mother of all grand strategy games and it took me no less that twenty hours to learn the damn basics. It’s fun, ponderously slow, and if you’re not really, creepily into history you’ll probably hate it.

Watched season three of Warehouse 13 – I watched a lot of Netflix, but this deserves special mention. I’m pretty sure Warehouse 13 is the best brainless show on television. And I mean that in a good way. If you’re ever stuck with a barely-functional chuck on grey matter between your ears, and want to kill some time watching silly characters in silly situations, you could do a lot worse than this show.

Cancelled a dentist appointment – Okay, so this isn’t an activity per se, but again it deserves mention. I’m still going to the dentist around once a month in an effort to undo the decade of neglect my teeth have suffered. These appointments are terrifying to the point where I’m completely unable to function after coming home. With the week I was having, there was no way anyone was shoving their hands in my mouth. I’ll call to reschedule. Probably.

Listened to a lot of music – I’m a huge fan of music, which you’d think would be a universal attraction but I’ve known several people who just aren’t into it. Anyway, I tend to spend a fair amount of my time searching for new bands and the last two weeks were no exception. Alas, I found almost nothing new that appealed to me. A friend turned me on to Schaffer the Darklord, but that’s about it.

Bought and read Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened – Reading is crazy difficult for me on Bad Days. I need to read and re-read every paragraph multiple times before the words start making sense. Toward the end of last week I was beginning to feel better, so I finally grabbed The Bloggess’s memoir and prayed for the funny to lift my spirits. What I got was a book that’s hilarious, sad,  and touching all at once. It’s amazing and you should go read it now.

Spent some time thinking about a fiction project – If you’ve been following along at home, you’ll know I’m concentrating on non-fiction now, but there are several pieces of fiction I’ve had simmering on the back burner for a while. One of them keeps boiling over and calling for my attention, so I spent most of yesterday working through the idea in my head. I think it’s solid enough to throw some words at it and see if they stick.

So that’s my last couple of weeks. To be honest, Europa Universalis easily beat out all challengers for the title of Biggest Time Waster. It’s a great game and will probably be my go-to distraction for a while. Well, certainly for today anyway.

Today I have an appointment with my case manager at nine, then I need to go food shopping. Since that will kill most of the morning–and thus most of my creative time–I’ll probably spend the rest of the day trying to unify Japan.