Lev Lafayette's journal

Friends will know quite well that I enjoy a drink. Over the years, I've hosted and attended numerous parties and dinners, following the lifestyle of "le bon vivant", and generally, I make for very good company in these situations. A bottle of wine and a meal between friends is almost guaranteed on entry to my home. However, it must be said that alcohol is a toxin, a depressant, and a carcinogen; it impairs the senses, and it clouds judgement, and that invariably doesn't end well. Such a situation occurred a few weeks ago when a friend, who I care very deeply about, said something that triggered me terribly. I critically failed my Stoicism check and told them to leave - at 3.30 am in the morning. The story is somewhat more complex and messier than that, but now is not the time or place to discuss the details. Whilst numerous dear friends whom I've discussed the matter with are very understanding of my reaction and the context (and I thank you all for your support), I certainly could have handled it better, and I've said as much in correspondence to my still estranged friend.

The practical upshot of this experience is, however, a reconsideration of my relationship with alcohol, the default social drug, even if my own preferences are more psychedelic. The recent incident, the fact that I need to keep my health in check, and I have a doctorate to work on, have all meant that I have (a) given up the drink, at least for a month, and (b) I've added a daily exercise and dietary regimen to my life, which in the past I've become somewhat lackadaisical. Just two weeks into this change of lifestyle, the effects are increasingly prominent. I have greater clarity of mind and better sleep, my driven dysthymia has been reduced, my energy levels are increasing, and I'm shedding kilogrammes quickly. All of this I have done in the past; in 2020, for example, I lost an impressive 25 kilograms over a few months (mainly through diet, cycling and weights), only to have it creep back up as Epicurean lifestyle choices re-asserted themselves. But this time, it feels quite different. I'm even investigating a longer-term plan that includes my age category for the triathlon and pentathlon.

This said, I wish to emphasise that I'm not entirely given up the drink just yet. After all, Luna and I have arranged for a cocktail party at my place on November 1st ("All Saint's Day") for housemates and friends who used to live in either Stawell Street in Burnley or Rushall Crescent in North Fitzroy in the 1990s and early 2000s, which will be a wonderful opportunity for old friends to catch up. I think she's the only one who lived at both abodes. Plus, with a liquor cabinet that contains some thirty bottles of spirits and at least twice that in wines (the oldest being fifty-six years in the bottle), I can hardly let that all go to waste. What I do feel comfortable with is reducing my alcohol consumption to once a month, at those certain events that really matter, and really keeping track of my consumption at such times. A small amount makes for good social lubrication; nothing good comes from a large amount.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of spending some time in the home of Carla with her child and friends; we played the boardgame "Root" with its various anthropomorphic animals seeking to control a woodland. It's quite a clever design, with each faction having its own style and victory conditions (I played the cantankerous Eyrie). The youngsters are very keen on the game and explained their own modifications and alternative factions; I couldn't quite shake the feeling that it was rather like being part of the "Stranger Things" D&D group - and Root does have its own RPG, which I am keen to try. Appropriately, the following Monday, spent time at the Red Triangle for the regular fortnightly game with far more aged players (we haven't changed over the decades) of Burning Wheel where - as an extreme mashup - our setting is the Thirty Years' War, the story is following the classic "The Enemy Within" campaign from Warhammer FRPG, and with scenarios from Lamentations from the Flame Princess.

Betwixt these events I had a linner event with Rob and Angela, with Erica turning up to graze for dinner. Mention must be made of Rob's Rookwood Distellery whose Yuzu gin was awarded a Silver in the Australian Gin Awards last week. Of course, we sampled said gin, which comes up with quite a subtle and beautiful blue sheen when mixed with tonic. Later we moved on to drinking tequila out of skull glasses, which Rob (he has taste this man) cleverly paired with gouda and cummin. In the course of the discussion Angela and I decided we are going to write a psychology paper together, with her professional doctorate clearly taking the position of lead author, and my mere GradDip and wordsmithing helping the process (working title: "Catatonia: a misunderstood and missed diagnosis"). We both have a few publications under our name and we're making some initial progress on that project as well.

The fun and frivolity of the weekend had to come to a close of course and now the nose is to the grindstone of the ongoing preparations for the operating system and software upgrade on the Spartan supercomputer. Whilst applications are constantly being updated, we've managed to avoid doing a major version upgrade to the OS since the system was first initiated way back in 2015 (our system version of gcc is 4.8.5, the environment module version is 11.3.0, for example). The change is necessary (RHEL 7.x will be unsupported soon), but it is going to come with some pain as users will have to reinstall and recompile many of their own applications, and some will just not work. But with the exception of building containers for old software to live in, there's not much that we can do - and the timeline is going to be incredibly difficult with the amount of work we have to do.