Went to see Tim Minchin in concert last night (in Brighton, London was sold out but there are some late tickets now for Fri/Sat/Sun). I am clearly a much bigger fan than I thought because I knew ALL the songs he was talking about.
One moment which stood out was when he was explaining all the definitions of the word “mole” (for song reasons) which includes a measurement in science linked to Avogadro’s constant, “which is 6.022x10 to the…” at which point myself and a surprising number of the crowd yelled “23”! (It is 23. My chemistry degree has never been so useful).
So my parents were planning on leaving today to make the trip to come up and visit us and other family for a bit. Those plans have been sidelined as my mom is in the hospital. A CT scan found a splitting artery in her head, which puts her at risk for stroke.
They will be doing an MRI tomorrow and make a plan of action. I have no idea how invasive a procedure it is to fix this, or the recovery time, so I have no idea if they will get to come up for any of the time they had planned or not. I don’t even know how much risk she is currently in.
This morning, I was sitting at my dining room table, drinking coffee. When I stood up, I tripped over my left foot. (I wish I had a video of this, because not falling on my face required some super fast left leg movement, and I’d like to see what the hell I actually did.) I tripped because none of the muscles[1] on the lower front of my leg were working, and one of the functions of them is to bring your toes up as you walk. It’s very disturbing to try to contract a muscle and have absolutely nothing happen.[2] I was pretty sure they were asleep because I’d somehow compressed the nerve while sitting, but I couldn’t help but wonder “Am I having a stroke?” Fortunately, I started gettig a little movement back pretty quickly, but it was an hour or so before it was nearly normal.
[1] for anatomy nerds: the stuff innervated by the deep fibular nerve, the tibialis anterior, fibularis tertius, and the intrinsic toe extensors (which I can never remember hte names of)
[2] I have had bad back pain problems caused by poor hip mobility. The poor hip mobility was itself caused by poor ankle mobility, which was no doubt caused by breaking my right ankle. Twice. So I do some goofy exercises that specifically target them (and the rest of the ankle and foot muscles), and have good volitional control of them.
This was a regular experience when I used to rock climb. With a blasted brachialis, you might go to wash your hair or some such and the hands just fold back like there is nothing to hold them in place. So you kind of angle your arm to create pressure directly through the forearm and work up a lather with your wrist.
Not to good. We put my dog down yesterday and I feel terrible about it. I wish I’d done more, I wish I’d been a better dog guy. I wish there was a better thing to do. I wish I didn’t have to leave her there. I feel bad taking her leash and her harness home without her. She was so sad last time I took her harness off to wash it. It was so stinky. I feel like I should’ve left them on her.
So sorry. We’ve put two down in our time - one to cancer and one to pneumonia. It’s one of the hardest goodbyes as you can impress on them your love but not the separation that is about to happen.
Thank you all for the sympathies. Yesterday was a tough one. I am starting to feel more like myself. Thank God it’s Friday. I’m looking forward to starting the weekend.
After our car got totaled in April… we made do with sharing with my dad for 3 months. But for his 80 years he is going out surprisingly often and we didn’t want to impose on him too much.
As of today, we have our own car again. I can now appreciate the luxury even more. We live just far enough outside the local centre away from trams with weirdly scheduled busses, no car sharing options and on a hill that makes an e bicycle a necessity… that I felt somewhat cut off from things and options.
Down in the centre the 15 minute city is a reality. Up here not so much.
At least it is an EV. We still need solar. Before that a new roof… the car should have come after but that choice was taken from us by an inattentive driver.
The list of things we put off doing… has grown somewhat. I am looking forward very much to doing all those things.
I am trying to finish editing my 8th novel. I received two rounds of edits by a professional, and the last edits suggested that I read the entire thing out loud and backwards (starting from the end of the book and working forwards) to catch typos. I’ve caught about… 10 in the last 100 pages.
It’s slow work, and I’m not a big fan. I love writing, not editing. But it’s an important part of the process. But I have another 110 pages to go and it’s hard. Ugh. And after all this I’m sure I’ll still miss a few.
Always. Even after my own scrubbing and two volunteer copy editors, there were about 9 typos that my old English professor caught for me. It’s got to be clean now, right? Right?
Interesting. I know it’s different work from creative writing, but I seem to manage, and am expected to produce, about 4000 typo-free words a day. I do sometimes find typos when reviewing my older work (the platform keeps a database to compare new paragraphs to old ones, and anything that’s 80% or more similar gets shown), but that’s unusual.
I might try proofing paragraphs backwards to see if that picks up anything.
It’s definitely harder to proof your own work, but I think it’s a skill that can be trained up.
