If, Else, Then, Endif
Do you know anything about programming? I remember in grade 9 (actually an optional extra course we could take the summer before going into grade 9), where we could do Basic programming. I have no idea how much use it actually was, as I never pursued a career in programming or anything really computery (notwithstanding a brief period where someone paid me to write databases in FileMaker, but I had to quit as I was working closely with the husband of a woman I slept with in University and that was a bit weird.) But one thing that stuck with me over the years was a particular bit of programming language called 'conditional statements'. It was a way to tell the computer to do something based on whether a particular condition was true. So in simple terms it might be:
if x>0
then "Positive"
else if x=0
then "zero"
endif
that means if the value of a number (x) is greater than zero, it returns a statement of "Positive". or if it's equal to zero, the it states "zero".
The reason I bring up this arcane (and probably mis-remebered) bit of arcana, is that I feel my life these last few weeks has become one long, complex bit of conditional programming focused of course on the move to Hong Kong (or not). It looks like this:
if MOVE="Yes"
if CONDO="rent"
then ;buy new carpet;
and ;install kitchen back-splash;
else CONDO="sell"
Then ;clean dog pee stain;
...
and so on.
It's a bit tiring, but the good news is that we've gotten around to doing some of hte things we put off. Now that the dog is trained, we can trash and replace the ratty old carpet in the bedroom (lovely Martha Steward broadloom is being installed on Friday), and we're putting in the glass tile back-splash later this week.
And we're really no closer to deciding to go.