Category Archives: Uncategorized

Facebook Memories

 

The thing that Facebook does where is previews for you posts you did one to several years prior on that date is really an odd trip for me.

There are quite a few posts about making progress on a writing project, nearly always unnamed, and as such I have no idea what stories or books these refer to. I am nearly always working at some level, on a project, usually oscillating between short stories and novels and they progress so quickly that without cues I simply can’t identify them.

This morning Facebook presented a memory from eight years ago that I had received a job offer following an interview and it took me a moment to work out which job offer that had been. Very close together I got two offers, both were temp jobs, both were with companies new to me, but I ended up working only at one.

Looking at the exact date I think I worked it out and it’s the anniversary of the offer to work at Kaiser as a temp. That turned out to be the very best job offer I ever received. Eight months later I transitioned from contract to regular full-time employee of KP and I have been there ever since.

I have never experienced a level of financial and job security like I have working for KP. In addition, I work with good people and generally can be proud that I am doing my best to working at a non-profit helping people access vital healthcare.

The financial security has led to emotional stability which enhances my creative work. All in all, this memory from eight years ago is a truly happy one.

 

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Disorganized Thoughts

The Collapsed Condos: I think we’ll find that in addition of a cocktail of events and conditions that some form of corruption was involved. Cursed with a vivid imagination it’s all too easy for me to visualize being jolted awake as my room fell and then being crushed to death. Horrifying

Cosby: The turn on details and it certainly looks like the DA missed/ignored a detail that unraveled the entire prosecution. I have no doubts about his guilt.

The Former Guy: The Manhattan DA has arrested the CFO of the Former Guy’s organization and the financial crimes appears to go back decades and decades. Here’s where the Former Guy is not a cause but a symptom. The lax enforcement of laws against the wealthy has thoroughly corrupted our system. A robust and fair enforcement regime would have not only prosecuted the crimes much earlier for the former guy and others it would have prevented the travesty that was his election.

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I Am Back

 

Well, this has been an interesting week. Tuesday, I went for an out-patient procedure to have cataracts removed from both eyes.

I admit that I was quite apprehensive about the operation. Yes, these are routine, and surgeons perform them daily, all that is very good in the abstract but when it is your eyes getting sliced, well abstract becomes concrete quite quickly.

Overall, things went well. The most irritating aspect of the surgery itself was that it took three nurses 5 attempts to get the IV needle into my vein. One the table and thanks to the drugs pumped into my system I was awake for the entire procedure but relaxed and calm. The visuals were off, bright indistinct shapes as the doctor removed my lenses and replaced them with artificial ones.

That afternoon and evening I was unable to see anything clearly and light sources presented rainbows induced by chromatic aberrations and I passed the time listening to podcasts. Sleeping was far more difficult.

I had been given the two plastic shields to cover my eyes, they were transparent with holes to allow gas exchange and served as a barrier to prevent me from accidentally rubbing my healing eyes. Meaning I had to wear them to bed and these shields were too close to my lips with my lashes sweeping across them every time I blinked. Worse still was they tended to direct sweat into my eyes, frequently waking me with burning sensations. Luckily, I saw my Doctor the next morning and when I told her the issues, she gave me a new set of metal ones that were adjustable, and these work a hell of a lot better.

Wednesday I could see much better and by the evening I could watch TV, yay LOKI!, and playing video games. Thursday I was very nearly back to normal and today I have returned to my day-job.

Now I can get back to work on my novel, edit the first few chapter and write a new one for the tail end of the story based on the feedback my beta readers kindly gave me.

 

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Various Thoughts

 

I have been suffering eye strain headaches so the posting here might be a little sporadic this week. So here are just some random thoughts.

  • The Netflix movie Stowaway is not good science and not engaging fiction. Just streaming something else.
  • Game of Death, a horror movie about seven young adults playing a boardgame that compels them to kill people or die themselves, is even worse and I did not finish it. More than 10 percent of the movie’s running time is wasted up front and watching the characters party but without performing any establishment of character development.
  • The GOP doesn’t care if you die. Remember that in the voting booth.
  • 20 years on The Wire is still spectacularly good television.
  • WorldCon this year has been moved to December and I have no intent of experiencing Washington DC in winter. This makes me sad.

 

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An Intersection of Technology and Grief

 

June 2020 Craig my friend of nearly 40 years died from COVID-19. This was a hard blow and personally the worst effect from the pandemic. We had not seen each other since early March for what we did not know would be our last session of the Space Opera game I ran for my friends and on my smartphone was the last text I had sent him in early February.

In the months after his death, I never found the will, the heart, the closure to delete that text conversation. It sat there with other texts always on that tiny screen.

Yesterday his name vanished from the text conversation replaced by the cell’s number. I am assuming that Craig’s cell phone number has been reclaimed by the network and is ready to be recycled to a new user. It is logical, it is practical, it is required that these things happen, and it is an instigator of fresh grief.

Technology changes culture sometime is massive disruptive ways, the automobile did more than scatter communities it shattered the standard human family, and sometimes in small way we don’t notice fully as they happen. Several times now I have become aware of friends’ and acquaintances’ deaths by a post on their Facebook wall by their families a method both immediate and impersonal. This tiny thing, my friend’s name vanishing from my device, it a passage to another period in my life without his presence, without his bad puns, and without his unlimited generosity. An unalterable fact of life is that it goes on. It does not pause, it does not stop for our loss, our pain, our grief, and it sweeps us along.

Always.

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Migraines Suck

 

For whatever reasons the last few days, since Sunday, I have been enduring a spat of smallish migraines. This forced me to bail on my twice monthly writers’ groups meeting and has hampered but not stopped the revisions and edits to my next novel.

I have been making it out the door each day to my day-job but in the evening it’s difficult to get more than the bare minimum work done on my writing.

My meds work and will usually dispatch the headache but sadly they leave me feeling ‘off,’ and with my scalp tight as though it is two sizes too small for my head.

All that said I am still pleased with the new novel and have high hopes of getting it out the door soon to editors and agents.

The pandemic smashed my debut last year, turns out have your novel published the week the world shuts down is not so good for sales, but in the scheme of things I have done so much better than so many that it would be quite petty to complain.

Here’s hoping everyone’s days get better.

 

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Second Pfizer Dose

 

Yesterday, now about 23 hours ago, I received the second dose of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine for COVID-19. I count myself extremely lucky that workers in the health care industry, though I do not directly interact with patients or people receiving care, I am eligible to get the vaccine. I have to say that my employers and my union have done an excellent job providing care to our members and patients while protecting the staff and workers throughout our facilities.

As far as adverse events I seem have suffered quite few. I took the day off from work and that was the right call. By late afternoon I experienced muscles aches and possibly a fever but nothing more than that at the time. I was still able to get just over 1000 words down on my novel and attend the virtual meeting of my writers’ group.

This morning I awoke to a minor headache, enough to be annoying but not enough to compel the heavy-duty migraine medication or that I remain home. In about fifteen minutes or so I will leave for work, I am among the few that are working in the office versus working from home, and I expect today to be fairly routine. In one week, I should be at full immunity and be able to relax a little while mourning my dear friend who passed from this pandemic last year far too soon gone from our lives.

 

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Three Days Post Vaccination

 

Friday, because I work in the healthcare industry as my day job, I received my first does of the Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine.

First let me complement the nurse, Amanda, for her excellent skills handling the syringe. Despite this being an intermuscular injection vs a subcutaneous one I really did not feel the piercing at all. Well Done!

Onto side effects, or as they are known in the industry, Adverse Events.

On Saturday I had muscular soreness and fatigue in the arm that received the injection but no where else. This was not an effect from the needle, I inject medication every week for other conditions and I am quite familiar with injection site pain. This was sort of like a flu muscular ache but restricted to the upper arm that received the vaccine.

Also by late Saturday, despite having gotten a good night sleep with my replacement CPAP machine, my energy levels plummeted and a strong lethargy permeated me.

Bu Sunday both of these effects dissipated away and I felt fine.

I urge everyone to get the vaccine. It is the primary way we are going to end the pandemic that has claimed nearly half a million American lives. You may hear in various news sources about the vaccine not being one hundred percent effective possibly and even less so against new variants of the disease. This true in that it doesn’t stop 100 percent of all infections, but it does stop death. No one in the 75,000-person trial of the Pfizer vaccine died from COVID-19 and very few had any serious illness. Those 5% form whom the vaccine was ‘not effective’ suffered a mild form of the disease much like a weak flu. Getting vaccinated is literally the difference between living and dying, get it.

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Good Riddance to a Rubbish year

It is the last day of the year for 2020 and in just a few hours we will begin the first year of a new decade. I need not remind anyone that the year 2020 has been an unholy trash fire with few redeeming elements.

Personally, my year started off fairly well. I was optimistically looking forward to the publication of my debut novel Vulcan’s Forge from Flametree press and in February I spent the day with a dear friend at Disneyland pre-celebrating that novel’s release.

Early March saw me nervously preparing for my book launch event at the unparallel book seller Mysterious Galaxy, and signed copies of my novel are still available there. Then the world shut down.

Lockdowns, first here in California but very quickly across the country and around the world as people scrambled to deal with the emerging global pandemic.

At my day-job the staff were quickly given computer systems and monitors and sent to work from home while I volunteered to be one of the few office-working staff. We weathered the transition well and while there were bumps and issues, we continued to meet the needs of our member/patients and unluck so many people in worse situations fully employed. The wall calendar at my work where people record their upcoming time off still displays March 2020.

Vulcan’s Forge launched in the first week of lockdowns and naturally the sales were hammered like Thor beating on Thanos.

In June the pandemic took my dear friend of 40 years. We shall never see his like again.

Ealy fall I submitted a proposal for a second novel to my editors who professed great excitement at the story but the publisher, working from the pitiful pandemic slammed sales numbers of my first book declined any more novels from me.

That book that is already 60,000 words written and I’m quite happy with it so either through traditional publication or self-publication it will very likely see the light of day.

November brought the election of a sane non-corrupt man to the office of President of the United States and we can begin the very long process of rebuilding our nation’s reputation.

The final month of the year gave us not one but two vaccines utilizing new technologies to fight this scourge that had killed more than 300,000 thousand in America, 1 in every 1000, and so we have reason to see light in 2021 but that new dawn is still faint the there is much darkness to endure before we are warmed that that new day.

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