From my diary

Some days, nothing works.  Anything we attempt only gets us bogged down.

What we do then, however, depends on us.  I usually keep hammering away, getting more and more frazzled in the process.  By the time I’ve got past the obstacles — and, being a determined soul, I usually do — I’m too frazzled to care about whatever I was trying to do in the first place.

Interestingly a nice experience towards the end can change the whole mood.  I’ve just had this happen, and I mention it because it’s perhaps something that we need to look for.

Today my plan was to do some work on the Origen book.  In preparation for this, yesterday I printed off all the Greek fragments of Origen on Ezekiel, plus the translation.   I don’t want to spend my holiday doing this, but I have to, if the book is to move forward.  OK, I’ll grin and bear it. The print is about an inch of paper.  I then received an updated version of these files, which is good but means I have to print them again.

After lunch today, I went up to print out the new versions.  I got 10 pages and  then my laser printer informed me that it wanted a new toner cartridge.  Bother!  I don’t need to be distracted bby this, but I’ve no choice.  Hastily I look online for the Brother HL-2030, and find that the cartridge is a TN2000.  I gasp at the vast sum demanded.  But I don’t want to delay.  I need to do this now.  I’ll have to accept the rip-off.  So off I go to PC World.  They have one, and I buy it.  For some reason the sales assistant decides to play me up, but I get past that, although not without my stress level getting increased.

Back I come, open it, try to fit it, and … it doesn’t fit.  It nearly does — it’s exactly the same shape and size — but some plastic lug prevents it quite seating.  I look at the old cartridge and it says “TN-2005”!  I look at the printer, and it’s actually an HL-2035.  One character difference; and I’m 62 GBP out of pocket.  My haste has lost me time and money.  I recheck, more carefully.  Off I go, back to PC World.  And … they don’t have a TN2005.  Down to Staples instead, and they do, and I go to the ’till.

But then a miracle happens.  The card payment is slow, and so I joke with the assistant about this.  She — a sad-looking girl who plainly wishes she was elsewhere — comments how supermarket card readers are much faster, and, a joke or two later, both of us are smiling.  And I come out of there feeling happy again. 

I’m printing off the stuff as I speak.  And, funnily enough, I’m back in the mood to work on it.

I need to compile a table of all the Greek fragments, I think.  Then I can see what we have and where these are. 

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