So I was talking this week with my parents, who remember the polio epidemics of the 40s and 50s. Each summer the virus would flare up in different cities and regions. When there were outbreaks in a particular locality, movie theaters and bowling alleys would shut down, and swimming pools and beaches would be closed. It seems to me the present situation is not unlike a polio outbreak where the air is a swimming pool, the entire country is a movie theater.
When Life Hands You A Coronavirus Pandemic …
… Make a Royal Corona Bean* Tagine:
If only we could stick the coronavirus in an Instant Pot and be done with it in an hour!
* All right, fine, it’s supposed to be a Great Northern Bean Tagine. But I didn’t have those and wasn’t about to go out looking for them.
The Early Years: (Almost) Easter & A Price Drop Announcement
Looking for an inexpensive novel to read while we’re all under orders to stay home as much as possible? I’ve reduced the price to 99 cents on the ebook editions of all the novels that are currently under my control (all of them except Night Watchman*, whose publisher abruptly closed up shop last year — a fact I only learned about when I noticed it had disappeared from the Kindle store).
Continue reading “The Early Years: (Almost) Easter & A Price Drop Announcement”
Teaser Tuesday: “The Night Bird”
This week’s Teaser Tuesday comes from The Night Bird, by Brian Freeman, in which a serial killer starts targeting the patients of a psychiatrist whose therapeutic technique involves replacing her patients’ traumatic memories with new, non-traumatic ones, thus curing them of their phobias or whatever. Sort of like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, only without the attractions of any actual science fiction or Kate Winslet.
It’s the Wild Wild West … of Grammar
I’ve posted previously about how we started watching television with the subtitles on during Dennis the Vizsla’s later years, when he got in the habit of barking and carrying on in the evening because he thought we should all go to bed. Sometimes these subtitles can be amusing, making a comedic scene funnier; sometimes they can sort of puncture the drama a little.
Then there’s this:
Teaser Tuesday: “Spin”
So this week I was reading Spin, the Hugo award-winning novel by Robert Charles Wilson, in which mysterious aliens give Earth the Krikkit treatment by encasing it in a “membrane” that induces an extremely steep time differential between what’s inside and what’s outside. Hilarity ensues.
Not A Review Of “Red Eye”
So recently we finally watched Red Eye, Wes Craven’s romantic comedy in which Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams meet cute at an airport, have a nice little romance on the plane, and break up when they land, only to reconcile when Murphy realizes he can’t live without her and tracks her down at her father’s house to ask for his permission to marry her.
Teaser Tuesday: “Wonder Boys”
This week’s Teaser Tuesday comes from Wonder Boys, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon. This is a book I actually finished quite some time ago, but which I’ve been saving for after my series about The Event was finished.
Since that series is now complete, here is your long-deferred Wonder Boys teaser.
The Event, Part 6
11/26/2019 and Beyond: Aftermath
Although I had been discharged, that wasn’t the end of the recovery process. As previously noted, I had to stay on the nimodipine for another three weeks, which meant waking up every four hours to take two gigantic pills. I’ve never had so many alarms set on my phone in my life. (The tone I chose for these alarms was the “Barking Dog” sound, because that was the least jolting one I could find. After 20 years of having dogs around, you get used to all the barking.) Annoyingly, my “hip flask” refused to adhere to the same schedule as my medication, so in between the times when my phone was barking at me, I had to get up at odd hours to empty that thing out. As a result I didn’t get more than two or three consecutive hours of sleep for nearly a month, and I doubt my wife did either.
The Event, Part 5
Saturday 11/16/2019 – Monday 11/18/2019: Telemetry
Once I was well enough to leave ICU, the hospital transferred me to the “step-down unit”, also called Telemetry. (If you never heard of a unit called “Telemetry”, you’re not the only one.) I was moved by wheelchair on Saturday evening, schlepping most of my stuff—my blanket and pillow from home, the get well cards I had accumulated, the posters made by our friends’ daughter, pictures of the animals, and, of course, Substitute Charlee—on my lap. The rest of the stuff was transported in a bag by a courier, A.K.A. my wife.
Viscosity 