Weekend. Planned to get up early, but slept on for 90 minutes. I needed it. My muscles ache from the exercise of these past two days. That’s a good sign, but makes the body want to rest and repair for longer. Pulled myself out of bed, dragged the sheets into some bleary semblance of straight, and got in the shower. Ran out of caf, went for the stash of tea instead. Doesn’t hit as hard, but it helped.
Yesterday, I made plans to approach this month sensibly. Worked out my budget, assigned credits for my needs to see what I have left over to enjoy. Not enough. Never enough.
On the budget I’m on, making rations at home is the only real choice. Costs less credits, this way. And it doesn’t take much to put something basic together. All habs at least have a couple of heating coils fitted. Add a cooler and a cryo box, and you can do quite a bit on the cheap.
Decided to go big. Work out every meal for the month. Well, 28 days worth of them, anyway. Got to get to payday, so drew up a list, then headed to the mart this afternoon to picked up the ingredients I’ll need. It’s a big store, wide aisles and stark lighting. Has almost everything. Makes it hard to find the one thing you’re looking for, though.
Cold out there, with a bite to the breeze, but nothing a jacket wont fend off. Still, my uncovered hands quickly went numb.
Stopped off at the bar, to warm myself and drain a caf. Gave me a chance to chat to the cute barmaid. Coincidence, I pretend, as I walk in there. They don’t know I walked past the mart to get to the bar. Spent a nice hour there, swapped stories with her and another guy sitting up against the bar like me. Turns out we are both on the caf, both a little wary of drink. Both learning lessons.
I still haven’t asked the barmaid out.
Took a break from browsing the data stream between chats and put in a call to my insurance company. Tried not to think too hard back to my career in that sector – my failed life – as I did so. The screen on my data slate has cracked, not sure how; guess I must have knocked it without noticing. Call didn’t go through: the robot at the other end announced that the office is only manned weekdays. Might mean I actually speak to a human. That feels like a rare event, when calling a corporation, these days.
There’s an old exercise called the farmer’s walk. You carry a heavy load by your side, and just walk as far as you can. Reflects the manual labour of days gone by. Supposed to be good for the wrists and the shoulders. My forearms are too thin, so it sounds good to me. With my load of supplies from the mart, I chose to walk the 1.5km back to my hab, rather than grab the local transit or flag down a cab. Regretted it within a couple of minutes, had to stop every hundred paces. Counted all the way back, making it into a challenge: One hundred paces, stop, flex the wrists, ease life back into the fingers. Watch a transit pass, and resist the desire to get on it. Pick up the load and walk again.
Arms, shoulders and wrists were on fire by the time I got back to the hab. Back was slicked with a sheen of rapidly-cooling sweat. That was a good, unexpected, workout.
Tomorrow, I’ll start putting all the supplies together. See if I can carry out my plan. If I pull it off, I’ll be pretty pleased with myself. If It goes wrong… then I just wasted a lot of credits.
Also picked up some new brake pads for the bike. Living this far out from central, even though I’m still in the metro area, sure does wear them out fast. Second set in 12 months.
Anyway, that’s it for the day. Now, just sitting back with an entertainment stim streaming to the terminal against the wall. Half watching, half checking the data feed on my comm, scanning the dating bulletins for a match. Only one response so far, pretty sure she’s not legit. Going to follow the conversation until the pretence drops, and the ask for credits comes. I give it ten minutes.
Give me real life meets, any day, over this waste of time. Just can’t remember how to pull them off anymore, that’s my problem. I started to rely too much on the dating bulletins.
Got to fix that.
Update on the scam: It was. Only took five minutes. Wanted credits to meet, transferred via gift card code. They are untraceable. Credit request to meet: prostitution. Credit request via gift card: cheap scam. What a waste of time.
Cyber Noir 2020 