The Event, Part 2

~ James Viscosi ~ 16 Comments

Friday 11/8/2019: ICU & Interventional Radiology

I remember a little more from Friday, the day after my aneurysm ruptured. Not a lot more, but a little. I woke up in the hospital with no real idea exactly where I was, how I had gotten there, or how long I would be staying. One of my cousins was in the room with me, and I remember being a little surprised by that. All my previous experiences of going to the emergency room (for stitches and kidney stones) had been that I was there for a number of hours and then got patched up and sent home. So why would I have a visitor? It was because this time I had been admitted with a ruptured brain aneurysm and was in ICU. I figured, okay, I’ll be here for a day or two and, and then get sent home, which turned out to be some seriously wishful thinking on my part.

Continue reading “The Event, Part 2” →

The Event, Part 1

~ James Viscosi ~ 62 Comments

Thursday 11/7/2019: Emergency Room & ICU

So November 7th, 2019, was the day I could have died three different ways before breakfast.

Continue reading “The Event, Part 1” →

That Was The Year That Was (In Music): 2019 Edition

~ James Viscosi ~ 5 Comments

Last week I posted my 2019 reading report from Goodreads; this week, it’s time for my 2019 listening report from Last.fm. Last year, Last.fm generated a nice 2018 listening recap report and dashboard; this year they did the same:

Continue reading “That Was The Year That Was (In Music): 2019 Edition” →

That Was The Year That Was (In Books): 2019 Edition

~ James Viscosi ~ 6 Comments

Goodreads has prepared their annual review of books read and rated by their users in 2019, and my reading list apparently went downhill in 2019, with an average book rating of 2.7. (Last year’s average book rating was 3.5.) I attribute this decline to a couple of factors:

  • I only read a couple of Nero Wolfe books this year.
  • I decided to eschew the “pick a random book” reading model I’ve been using for the past few years, and go with “read books in the order I acquired them” instead. This put me back at books I picked up starting in 2015, many of which were, I think, free books from the early days of my participation in the BookBub mailing list, and a lot of these were subpar YA offerings. (Interestingly, back in 2015 or 2016, I tried to get one of my books — Dragon Stones, of course — into a BookBub promotion, and they rejected it because it only had 20 or so reviews/ratings so they couldn’t be sure it was up to their standards. Hmm.)

Aside from the quality of my reading material, there were a few other, uh, issues that cropped up towards the end of 2019 which affected how much reading I got done. I’ll be getting into that soon. But for now, let’s just look at the books:

Continue reading “That Was The Year That Was (In Books): 2019 Edition” →

Teaser Tuesday 11/26/2019: “Night After Night”

~ James Viscosi ~ Leave a comment

Recently I was reading Night After Night, by one of my favorite authors, Phil Rickman, who wrote a couple of amazing horror novels back in the day, but who’s now probably best known for the Merrily Watkins series of (somewhat) paranormal mystery novels. This one is not a Merrily Watkins novel, but it is a—wait for it!—paranormal mystery. Of sorts.

NightAfterNight
Knock knock

Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 11/26/2019: “Night After Night”” →

Temporary Hiatus

~ James Viscosi ~ 6 Comments

Hi everyone, Jim here. The astute reader may have realized that I haven’t been around to visit or leave comments over the last couple of weeks; this is because I was hospitalized for a while as a result of a sudden, unexpected medical condition. I am home recuperating now but will mostly be out of commission, computer-wise, for some time as I recover. (There’s one more scheduled Teaser Tuesday post queued up and after that the blog will go dark for a few weeks or months.)

I will be back eventually, but for now, I’ll let my furry friends at The Oceanside Animals explain things from their perspective:

Continue reading “Temporary Hiatus” →

Not A Review of “Maiden”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

Recently we watched Maiden, a documentary about the first all-female crew to participate in the Whitbread around-the-world sailboat race.

Continue reading “Not A Review of “Maiden”” →

The Early Years: Jim Is Small But Very Precise With Measurements

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

IAm5_20191019193941_1920

Sadly, my drawing skills never really improved all since then. Also, is it just me, or did I draw myself looking a tiny bit like the Joker in that picture?

IAm5_Joker

Hmm, okay, maybe not.

Not A Review Of Some Other Stuff I Watched While Waiting For “Avengers: Endgame”

~ James Viscosi ~ 4 Comments

So Netflix finally sent me Avengers: Endgame, a little over a month after it was released on disc. As previously noted, we—mostly meaning me—had to watch a number of other movies while waiting for that one (#firstworldproblems). My wife paid little to no attention to those movies, but she did make a few observations here and there. First up: The Lego Movie.

Continue reading “Not A Review Of Some Other Stuff I Watched While Waiting For “Avengers: Endgame”” →

It’s “Important” To Put Your Quotation Marks In The “Right” Place

~ James Viscosi ~ Leave a comment
Screen Shot 2019-09-29 at 7.09.46 AM
How “accomplished” are you?