It is now just over five weeks since I had my heart bypass operation. I haven't been ignoring you folks because there was nothing to say; rather the opposite, there is (very slow) progress but I just haven't had the time or energy to document it.
As I may have mentioned, a lot of blood results came back yesterday and I have questions.
A further blood test appeared today - it seems I have MRSA :( No wonder I was feeling cold!
I do get Staph infections from time to time and they suck the heat out of me, which is one way I recognise them. Oh, well, off to the doctor tomorrow. They won't operate on me unless I can nuke this from orbit.
Of a sort. I haven't been in much evidence for a while and there may be a good reason for it. A chance remark to my Renal consultant meant a trip to X-ray and the discovery that I have heart problems. I'm on the waiting list for a triple bypass.
I have noticed the site has been slow for a few days, but then I do know there's a nasty DDOS going around, it must be the change in weather.
Having just logged on, I got this:
Notice: MemcachePool::getstats(): Server 169.197.80.86 (tcp 11211, udp 0) failed with: Connection timed out (110) in require_once() (line 19 of /var/www/html/bcmain/armoire/sites/all/modules/memcache/memcache-lock.inc).
Just a note to say I changed a name in the latest Voyage of the Visund: Count Corbrian to Count Korboro.
This is my own fault for losing a piece of paper with certain names on and then forgetting what I wrote. Julia would have jumped on that immediately.
There are rough rules governing name formats along the Great Valley... rules which change as one moves along. I forgot those rules. Also, technically, to be consistent a 'C' should never be used in a name of anything - but 'ch' is fine as it represents a different sound.
I have not heard from Julia since 30th October. In her last email she said she was feeling fine and ready to get back to writing.
I only have email addresses (and BC) and have had no other contact from her. I am beginning to become concerned.
Does anyone else have any later information? We work closely together and, although I have continued posting chapters, her absence makes writing more difficult. She has edited and critiqued almost everything I have written since we first came into contact.
You may consider my link frivolous but its only one of many that DDG threw up.
I'm not sure that I like this trend. OK it may be comfortable for men to wear but it blurs the lines over something most of us didn't want blurred: we'd rather just be on the other side!
Just a little something I remembered languishing on my disks, as you can see by the copyright notice. It wraps up the Palace Steam Engine subplot. I thought that some of you might enjoy it for Christmas, while you wait for everything else.
This little amusement created itself while we were away for a few
days in East Anglia. The hotel had been booked before Her Majesty
died, which meant that we ended up with two days (Sunday and the
Monday of the funeral) when almost nothing was open. Stuck in a hotel
room with only sandwiches bought the previous day and kept chilled in
the room mini-bar, the idea slowly matured...
I noticed this in the "Did you know" section of the Wikipedia home page this morning. (It has now disappeared. Typical. I had to look in the archives.)
...that during a renovation of 4 Park Avenue workers found a sealed room with women's clothes and shoes that was not in the building's blueprints?
This is asking for a story to be written but I have no time to do it. Any takers out there?
I absolutely hate writing in fitful starts and stops. At worst it means that my reader has to keep going back to re-read previous chapters to remember what was going on. Unfortunately, as we all know, many if not most of us do not have the leisure of being able to write all day every day - or even every week.
I apologise for the delay. In Real Life, stuff happens.
Having recently posted this comment to VotV #40, stating that I would not be posting chapters at the rate I could do in the past, I then did the next one in seven days.
How? Simple. This one was a Set Piece. Set Pieces are different from the normal run of story building.
So my muse hit me with a little bit of whimsy and out came Personal
Protective Equipment. It was just a tiny bit of amusement in these
strange times, or so I thought. But my muse didn't let up, and began
expanding the idea in all directions. If I had tried to make a
coherent story I could probably have stretched that 150 words to maybe 10 or
twelve chapters. Unfortunately, I have too many balls already in the
air to even consider that.
Some of you will notice that an update has appeared to my latest short story, "Meetings in Moxgo".
This is because the original contained a number of minor errors which, although they did not detract from the tale, were a cause for annoyance. Thus, I have changed a few minor matters which required changes and tweeked a few others.
I finally managed to post another chapter of VotV. Looking at "My Stories", I see that it has been two months since the previous chapter, and that is really too long.
What happened? Mostly the mundane things that happen to everybody: Life.
As is often the case, things didn't go to plan after my previous blog. I am embarrassed that you haven't seen the level of output from me you might have been accustomed to.
Then, Monday 14th January at 00:45 in the morning, my father died. I can't blame him for much, but his death just makes one more distraction for me.
It is tough going at the moment. I am still writing, though I seem to keep finding other things that need doing.
Since the original episode, I have been on steroids now for nearly five years. This is making my consultant nervous, so he has decided to do something drastic. Since that time, medical techniques have moved on and there are apparently new ways of dealing with my condition.
I've had a cold for about two weeks, one that seems to be a bit like that mythical snowball. It was so bad this morning that I have canceled the appointment I had with my consultant tomorrow. I won't drive there and I don't want to expose everybody else to my viruses.
Then, at about 5pm on Saturday last, the hard disk on my main server died. Joy! Try fixing that when you barely know which way is up!
So, there I was, on a roll after getting the last two chapters of What Milsy Did out in a reasonable time. I'm heading off into the next, crucial chapter, and with about 5,500 words written, a never-ending and seemingly random series of unexpected happenings has derailed me almost completely.
I finally managed to put up What Milsy Did #26 and that means it is time for yet another apology.
It's all Real Life, of course. I won't bore you with everything that has hit me but let me just say that some of it is coming from the generation before and some from the generation after.
In addition the meds I have been on since 2013 are tapering off and it is exposing underlying problems. These are making me real tired and there are lots of things that could occupy what available time I have. Writing, regrettably, is only one of those things.
Checks can be made out & sent to:
Joyce Melton
1001 Third St.
Space 80
Calimesa, CA 92320
USA
Note: $6000 is the operating, maintenance and upgrade budget. Amounts received in excess of the $6000 will be applied to long term debt accrued over the last 19 years.
