Dec 26 – Carrie Fisher
She's gone. I can't believe it... so suddenly, and her mother a day later, too.
The world reacted today with shock, followed by
an outpouring of grief and love for the loss of the outspoken actress, writer
and mental health advocate.
Princess Leia's dead, and the world is the less
for her passing.
For playing the original Kickass Princess, Carrie
Fisher will always have my gatitude, as she showed us all that women are more
than capable of doing the rescuing and being leaders in the world.
For becoming a no-holds-barred writer, Carrie
Fisher showed us that we can use our torments to help others, and not wallow in
them: the honest truth can hurt, but does far less harm out in the open if we
have the courage to drag it there to see.
For being someone who has struggled with
additction and mental health issues and beaten them, Carrie Fisher showed us
that our demons can be beaten... and that even the best of us should not be
afraid to ask for help if needed.
Fare well, Carrie: millions mourn the loss of
your unique voice this year.
For me personally today, I feel like crap,
and have no energy.
So, instead of getting a whole lotta Things Done
today on my second day off, I instead tried to focus on just relaxing, which is
about all I can manage right now. Whatever this cold bug is, it's got me good:
starting with my migraine yesterday, a stuffy nose and a racing heart as my
body tries to fight it off, despite my having had the flu shot in early
November.
Not
the ‘relaxing’ week I’d hoped to have…
Dec 27 – 3am Surprises
I woke after 3am this morning with my heart racing.
Really racing: pounding
in my chest and myself all in a sweat - what the heck???
After 15 minutes, my heartrate hadn't dropped; it
was a far-too-fast 165bpm, as though
I was running a sprint simply sitting there on my bed. So I dialed BC
Health, and the nurse there said to call 911 - which I did.
The ambulance crew who showed up 10 min. later
and ran an EKG were also worried enough to take me to the hospital, where the
Emerg folk put me into a separate room with a hydrating IV. They checked my
heart again, and noted that while things had calmed down to around 120bpm, it
should be half that at rest, if I wasn't sick. Unfortunately, there was
only a single doctor on duty and he was swamped, so I spent the next 5 hours
awake on the bed, moderating my breathing and listening to Marconi Union to
help keep calm in a strange place with a needle in my arm.
 |
| I had a nice corner to myself at first, but it didn't last. |
What didn't help at all was a guy who
arrived around 5am and appeared to be a dug user off his stuff: he continuously
complained, at full volume, that he was in pain and needed ‘something’
for it. I felt rather sorry for him, at first, but after 3 straight hours of
listening to him say the same 5-6 things over and over, without care for
how he was affecting all the other people present, I got over it. He was
belligerent enough that security had to cuff him to a bed in a separate room around
6am and from there he continued to rant until the doctor saw him after 9am. Even then, he told the doc off, too: talk
about being stuck in your own reality... but then I don't know his story, just
the effect he had on everyone around him.
Speaking of which, the doctor had little new to
tell me at 9am, apart from that I'd done the right thing to come in and get checked out: my heart had been
working far too hard the last few days, at 120bpm continuously since
Christmas Eve. Thankfully, simply being in the hospital and knowing help was at
hand was somewhat calming, and the IV helped rehydrate my body on top of all
the water I'd been drinking. He said that it was normal for the heart to work
harder during illness to move antibodies around, but that I'd been on the edge
due to the severity of whatever I'd picked up and could have worsened in the
morning if I hadn't come in to be treated. No antibiotics are necessary, just
rest, hydration and regular meals of nutritious food.
So, good on me. I was home by 10am, with a total
of 2 hours sleep.
Oddly, I didn't feel tired at all, perhaps due to
my heart working as it has been: the last 2 days has been the equivalent of me
jogging in place for 48 hours straight. I spent the rest of the day simply
resting, managing to fit in some short naps on and off for a few hours... but I
didn't feel rested when I woke, unsurprisingly.
However, by the evening, the bug's grip on me
appeared to have lessened somewhat: my heartrate had dropped to under 100,
which was pretty good in my eyes. My normal for bedtime is about 60bpm, and
though tonight it was 75bpm, that was a far cry from more than double
that at 3am today.
I'll take it, I thought,
and slept.
Dec 28 – Fbook Chance Creations
I stayed home from work today: no sense in
spreading around what I still have, which is lingering: a runny nose every 5
minutes is no fun for anyone.
While I was looking around the SciFi Blueprints
group I'm in on FBook, I noticed someone had uploaded a picture of the poster
that hangs above my bed:
A few comments later and I realized that the
uploader was none other than the designer of the poster himself, Chris
Cushman, who went on to say that he's kept an infrequent blog about his
experiences as a Star Trek poster designer. You can find him at this link, and
it's a fascinating read about how how someone got involved in the Star Trek
universe. His poster still hangs above my bed, and has for two decades now:
 |
| That's a treehouse on the left, yes. |
What I took away from this, apart from
slightly-giddy childlike glee, was that FBook is a wonderful place where people
of like interests and get together to discover that perhaps they're closer to
the things they love than they realize.
Dec 29 – Animaniacs
They're catchy... be warned.
Those crazy Warner Brothers( and sister, Dot! )were
darn entertaining back in the 90's, and still are today. Specifically, their
songs are ones that stick in our heads and refuse to give way... but until now,
it wasn't clear as to why. Take this particular gem, "Yakko's World,"
which lists every country on earth in 2 minutes flat so perfectly:
Did I say until now? Yup. There's an incredible
in-depth article all about how the songs for the show were created, along with
a wealth of other inside information about Animaniacs
that any fan of the show won't want to miss here.
You may now continue singing the songs in your
head all day.
Dec 30 – Financial Bump
Today was a pretty good day, despite being sick.
Some funds that I've been out for a good part of
the year finally came back to me in full today, which means that I'll be
handing the year 'in the black' in part, for once. It's a great feeling, in
that I won't be penny-counting for the next few months as tightly as I have
been; rounding up to dollars, but still... it's a start back on the road to
getting my feet under me to walk a better financial path.
I still need to get my business running, but with
the GlowForge now delayed until a
May or June 2017 delivery date, it's not going to be the financial helper I
thought it would for 2017 - at least not the first half, that is.
Speaking of weighting: on a whim, I weighed
myself tonight, and was rather surprised: in the last week, I've lost over 7
pounds... and there's not much of me to begin with. Being sick and in
not-so-great shape has really taken it out of me, so I need to take care of
myself in the coming year - this latest illness has again shown me that with
stark clarity.
Note to self: no trips to the hospital in 2017.
Dec 31 – Venturing to Stay In
Last New Year's Eve was far more exciting than
the previous 5 before it, but tonight was definitely low-key, due to the
week-long illness I've had to deal with. My pounding headache-cum-migraine I've
suffered all week finally left me today too, none too soon: if I'd popped any
more Tylenol, I think my liver might have complained.
Neither my lady nor I wanted to join the over
20,000 people who packed the Inner Harbour here in Victoria to celebrate New
Year's Eve in the biting cold, which honestly I just didn't have the energy to
commit to - I can barely keep warm at home as it is even with the heat on.
So instead, we stayed in and watched The
Venture Brothers.
For those of you who don't know, The Venture
Brothers is animated series that came out in 2004 and is a sendup of the
old Johnny Quest cartoon series, among many other things. It's smartly written,
well-plotted and just plain fun to watch - not to mention downright funny on
multiple levels all at once. We both really enjoyed the four episodes, a far
better way to spend the evening in both our eyes.
As it happens, I did manage to make it to
midnight unintentionally, as I wasn't able to fall asleep; my mind is like that
sometimes, refusing to wind down despite how tired the body is feeling.
I think I just wanted to see 2016 out the door,
because as soon as the clock hit 12:01am, I wished everyone I knew a Happy New
Year, and immediately fell asleep thereafter.
Jan 1st 2017 – Welcome!
Welcome to a new year.
Of all the things I hope for this year, I want to
see my writing take precedence and prominence to bring it to completion in
several ways: finish my first two novels and the revisions, then get them out
there to agents were they belong.
Along those lines, the words of Neil Gaiman seem
most appropriate to keep in mind this year for me:
Evening 'fun' -
I'm feeling better( about 80% of normal, with some sniffling and coughing still
)so I spent part of the afternoon with my lady relaxing at a coffee shop or
two, then watched the sun set in a glorious blaze of orange under the clouds.
I got home
and turned on the electric heater... which blew a fuse in our panel. For the
circuit powering the hall lights... and the living room TV.
( insert swearing here )
It's the first fuse that I've blown in this
apartment since moving in 4 years ago, and because of that I discovered that I
don't have any spares: it's not something that I think about. My lady very
kindly drove me a few places to try and find the particular fuse type needed,
but after an hour search of the places that were still open, only Walmart
carried spares... and even they didn't have the old-school type that I needed.
The stores that might have had it( Canadian
Tire )were all closed today, and the real irony? My landlord was in this
week measuring the fuse box for a replacement in a week or two with an updated
breaker box: argh.
( insert disappointed / annoyed verbiage here )
But, in the end, it's only one fuse, and I
swapped out one from my bedroom to enable me to complete the blog this evening.
More irony: there's a windstorm blasting the island tonight, and a good number
of homes are without power, line is not one of those... and my place has 2 UPS
systems running things, one of which needs replacement batteries as they're
past their 4-year service life. Naturally, it's the one that runs the TV...
but, so it goes: timing is everything.
I think I'll go to bed early tonight; it's been a
long week.
A week spent being sick was a rotten way to end
the year, but in hindsight, it was a heck of a lot better than trying to work
while I was laid low by whatever monster bug got me, despite my flu shot. I was
happy that I could just stay home and rest, though the lack of energy( and
killing kleenexes continuously )meant I accomplished previous little else - so
much for spending the week writing and catching up various tasks I wanted to
complete. But I'm better: my heartrate's back to normal, I feel tied
but otherwise fairly ready to resume work on Tuesday, so that's an
accomplishment, I think.
