Category Archives: Uncategorized

A Relaxing Weekend Before a Busy Week

I must admit that this past weekend was rather pleasant. Friday evening started off with the usual board and card games that kick off the weekend in my household. One particular combination of card in Lords of Waterdeep, brought me from trailing in last to victory. After games were complete, I introduced a friend of mine to the first two episode of Amazon’s adaptation of Good Omens.

Saturday, I visited with Mysterious Galaxy for their official big opening at their new location in the Sport Arena district of San Diego. The new digs are lovely with about 30% more floorspace than the previous storefront. I chatted with staff and customer and may have gotten a couple of people interested in my upcoming release Vulcan’s Forge.

That evening was more board and card games as it was not a role play gaming weekend. I was not as lucky Saturday night as I was on Friday but did manage one fairly decisive win in Dominion.

Sunday is a day I generally spend with my sweetie-wife. We went to the zoo, I capture a few decent photos, but made a short trip of it as there was a light drizzle falling and I had managed to forget my hat. Lunch was at Kairoa a New Zealand themed bar and restaurant before we returned home for a relaxing afternoon and night.

I have a short work week ahead of me. Wednesday evening, I am driving to Anaheim and staying overnight in a budget hotel before spending the day with a dear friend I have not seen in years as we take in Disneyland. The Friday through Sunday I will be at the San Diego session of the Southern California Writers’ Conference.

All in all, it looks to be a busy week.

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Coronavirus Panic

I am not saying that you should utterly ignore the news about the emerging coronavirus and its outbreak. New viruses and new pandemics are a certainty but be aware that all too often what sells advertising and pushes ‘clicks’ on the internet is fear and outrage not reason and facts.

Last I saw the death toll from the coronavirus is  still under 200 with just north of 7000 cases. Now for each person and their family and loved ones those are terrible but from a ‘should I be scared’  perspective it’s still dwarfed by the currently raging flu season.

The CDC estimates that the USA 2019 thru late January 2020 has seen between 15 and 21 million cases of flu with deaths estimated between 8200 and 20,000 people. And still people put off or ignore the advice to get their damn flu shot.

GET YOUR DAMN FLU SHOT!

Oh, and by the way most of the time when someone think they have the flu they really have a cold. Both are virial infections, but flu is influenza and it will hit you much harder than the common cold.

So, pay attention to the news, coronavirus could be just starting, and we need to be prepared but do not panic.

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Well, That Was a Day Lost

Yesterday I awoke to a blinding migraine. I hate it when they sneak up on me while I am sleeping. If I am awake I can usually feel the pre-migraine show starting up take my meds and keep them from become more than simply troublesome, but if they strike in the night I wake to find that any amount of light and noise is intolerable and I am forced to use the heavier medication that leaves me groggy, dizzy, and useless for nearly everything for a significant number of hours.

It wasn’t until about 2 pm that I became useful in any capacity and it wasn’t until around 9:30 pm that the migraine itself lifted.

Needless to say I did not go to work and I did not get any writing completed.

It could have been worse. Today looks to be better.

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Surgical Update

Yesterday, December 18th, I went into the hospital for a scheduled bit of minor surgery. A hernia repair that would have normally been perform in an outpatient surgical facility but die to my sleep apnea that anesthesiologist insisted on a full hospital operating room.

The surgery went well, and I went home just shortly after noon.

I have to say that this was the most engaged and friendly surgical team I have ever encountered. When I was wheeled into the O.R. each person introduced themselves and their position. My comfort and safety seemed paramount at all time and I never doubted that I was in good care.

Post Op was dull but necessary with concerns well address that my lungs had recovered, and I was in no danger of not getting enough oxygen. My sweetie-wife was there, picked up my medications, and drove me home one I was released.

When they did release me, I started walking out of the recovery room and a nurse said, ‘You can’t walk.’ I looked down at my feet and snarked, ‘clearly, I can.’ But of course, they were meaning I was not *allowed* to walk.

Once home I took a course of pain killers and now I have a week off the day job to recover. Surprisingly sitting up straight and lying flat on my back at the most painful positions. Luckily, I have a recliner chair and that is very comfy. There are times when I am sitting that and feel absolutely no discomfort at all. Then I move and spoil it.

Today I had my first email interview as a tie in to the upcoming release of Vulcan’s Forge. That was a new and novel experience.

 

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This Hurts

I’ll admit that this hurts more for the employees of my favorite local business but it’s a dagger to the heart of the bibliophiles of San Diego as well; we may be losing our beloved Mysterious Galaxy.

Mysterious Galaxy a bookstore that specializes in Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Mystery, though they will order any in print book for you, is losing their lease and is in a desperate search for not only a new location but a new owner as well. If the search is not successful our cherished institution will close.

I have been a regular customer of the place for many years ordering nearly every book, including my e-books, from them. In addition, for about ten years I have been a member of the writers’ group that meets there twice a month and that experience has not only given me friendships but critical skills that made my upcoming first novel publication possible. The staff has always been friendly, helpful and knowledgeable introducing me to several authors I might not have tried without their introduction.

Fiction is full of last-minute miracles and we hope for at least one in the dark times.

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Time Off

My day job involves helping complete enrollments for Medicare Advantage member for a large non-profit HMO and that means our busy period is just about to being as the Annual open enrollment period starts today. In anticipation of the hours to come I took Friday and Monday off from last week and this week giving myself a 4-day weekend. I didn’t go out and do anything special. No trips out of town, no shows, just a longer than usual weekend with one role-playing game sandwiched in the middle on Saturday.

That game is a Space Opera  game with the original rules published by FGU back in the distant past of 1980. One of the players and a dear friend for decades hosting the group of us at his office allowing the players and myself as game master, to be as loud as we wish since at that time of the day and week there is no one to disturb. It’s been a real blast revisiting this game system I haven’t run in ages and everyone appears to be having a great time. Even if every mission the players are dispatched on doesn’t quite turn out the way that they hoped.

I had also planned this weekend to finally see It: Chapter Two  at nearly three hours its running time makes it a very difficult film to schedule during my usual week. Sadly Sunday afternoon I started with a minor migraine and canceled my seat reservation. By the evening I was not disabled from the pain but distracted enough that I would have not enjoyed the film.

At least I was feeling fine Sunday morning so my sweetie-wife and I could enjoy our customary Sunday trip to the Zoo and lunch out together. Pictures to follow soon.

All in all it was a pleasant long weekend and now I am reading and refreshed to get back to work at my day job and complete reviewing the galley’s for Vulcan’s Forge  coming out in March of 2020.

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And Now My Birthday Has Ended

Yesterday was the anniversary of my birth. I started the day by driving to court and reporting for jury duty. I have often been summoned to jury duty but I have never served. As a writer I think it would be good and as a citizen I think it is my duty to do such service but alas it seems for the most part lawyers do not like the look of me. Yesterday it was not the lawyers but rather the lack of courtrooms. There was but one available for trail and so after they called a single jury pool away the rest of us were dismissed. Because so much of the day remained the rule for my day-job compelled me to report to work. So my birthday was split between a jury lounge and my cubical, surprisingly this was not the dullest birthday I have experienced.

In 1981 I was enlisted in the United States Navy and served my one and only Western Pacific Deployment, or WestPac. On my birthday we were no floating about the middle of the ocean, no for that special day we had found a spot even more boring than endless sea, Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia is a tiny atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Its strategic location makes it perfect as a base for long rang aircraft and there is a tiny tiny US Naval station there. Personnel who volunteer for duty at Diego Garcia, at least when I was in the service, have that duty count as sea duty, and one year is credited as two. You see, unlike other Naval Stations around the world, there is nothing at Diego Garcia. No native population, no city or town, just the military men and women on a sliver of land with a lagoon that often hosts sharks. Going ashore there, and even with nothing you still go ashore when you can, I watched a shark come out of the water to get a flying fish. The big entertainment on my birthday there was sitting on a beach watching my friend Dean Amick, and it was his birthday as well, struggle trying to work out how to split a coconut open. Ahh, good times.

So you see yesterday, in comparison, wasn’t bad at all. Not to mention I now have a nifty blu-ray stuffed with bonus material for the British horror film, Night of the Demon, one of the many films referenced in the opening song to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

 

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Three Weeks

For three weeks now I have been following the weight watchers diet. The change was prompted because I had reached a new record weight and that was not a good thing. With the years passing under me plus the pressure on my joints already suffering from arthritis returning to a more modest weight seemed imperative and yet previous diets had proved to be too difficult to maintain. A writer friend of mine after facing a life threatening health crisis had used Weight Watcher to great effect and it seemed reasonable to give it a go.

It is by far the easiest weight management diet I have attempted. All of my empty calorie junk food snacks have been replaced with fruit and my regular meals are for the most part untouched. (Can you tell my problem was really junk food?) I can still have a burrito once a week and a nice lunch out with my sweetie-wife on our Sundays out.

At the two-week mark I had lost, at least according to our home scale, 13 pounds and I am not suffering from hunger and dreadful late night temptations.

I am not selling this. You do what is right for you, for me but this looks like it may actually work.

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