Yesterday was a bit of another mess. I went on a necessary grocery shopping trip, cut short by being overwhelmed by bright lights, too many choices, and too many people (the local schools were invading the store in droves, but what else are kids going to do around there? (Well, there’s a library, but who needs libraries apparently.)

And there was paperwork to print and fill out. My printer was being evil. It’s over five years old, so I may need to get a new one (I’m going to try for a laser jet, I think, but I’m more familiar with dealing with ink cartridges). I’m so over color at this point, I’ll be happy with black and white.

Then I got sick from some soy pudding that I was trying out. It actually didn’t taste bad, but the resulting illness quite tired me out. I get sick from guar gum, a common thickening agent found in lots of processed foods, which is a galactomannan. And I found out (both from Wikipedia and from the experience) that locust bean gum (aka carob gum) is also a galactomannan. Xantahn gum apparently is neither, and xanthan gum doesn’t make me sick.

Hmmm.

Anyways, between being overwhelmed by 21st century grocery stores, struggling with an ancient printer, and getting sick from galactomannans in my snacks, I was rather exhausted.

The checklist isn’t looking so good:

* Cleaning something out. Nope.

* Cooking/baking/etc. something for myself. Nope.

* Reading/watching something entertaining. Other than Mark Reads and Mark Watches, and some links about Del.icio.us fail… not much.

* Reading/watching/doing something educational. Except for Reduxing The Sign of Four: Chapter 10, which was in any case a mere Victorian chase scene for the most part.

On the upside, I set up a Pinboard account. So far I like its simplicity over Diigo and I’ll probably be adding plenty of links. If you have a Pinboard account and would like to link up so we may join our powers and take over the world, Pinboard has a networking feature that’s pretty much what Del.icio.us had before… um… its unfortunate gutting. The Pinboard developer (there’s just one very busy guy) is working on tag bundles as we speak, and that will be awesome.

Today’s not going to be much better. More paperwork, and an appointment with my bartender.