When my sister was in... middle school, I guess, she decided to try combining tree climbing and football catching. Soon thereafter, mom had to take her to the hospital to set her broken--not fractured, I'm talking s-shaped--arm.

My sister is a mother herself, now. The apple has not fallen far from the tree laterally, but it appears to have fallen about the same distance vertically.

Edit: that particular, um, witticism is probably best reserved for closer acquaintances.

Sooo... Sandy is still not the easiest person to deal with. I went to see her because, y'know, one year anniversary and all, and I got mobbed by helpful Rotary Club-types wanting me to take a carnation. I kept trying to explain that I wasn't there to visit my mom, but it just didn't seem to register--why else would I be at the cemetery on Mother's Day?

I almost want to believe she planned this. I can only aspire to be at least half as much of a total jerkface when I've kicked the bucket.

Yeah, spiked eggnog. Jesus. In my defense, I bought it in like March. They're still selling it at the state liquor shops I deliver to once a week--regular, pumpkin, and chocolate varieties. They started selling it before last Thanksgiving so far as I'm aware, so I managed to resist buying any for six months. And I managed to resist drinking more than a glass a week, tops, until last night, despite eggnog being fucking amazing. I suppose I should take it as a good sign that I was able to achieve that level of stupid-drunk on 30 proof novelty booze.

Frankly frankly frankly frankly frankly.

Frankly, I could use a thesaurus.

The Fluening is upon me. About once a year, I get Sick. Not sick, Sick. Chest cold, head cold, though thus far this year I thankfully haven't gotten an inner ear infection. Those are the worst.

I'm pretty lucid right now. A pretty large chunk of the time spent in my disease state is filled with dreams that border on hallucinations. It's kinda like an acid trip, but without any sense of euphoria, just tiredness. Usually I dream about impossibly complex puzzles--my brain is making shit up as it goes along, but it usually feels like some sort of cohesive cipher. Last year, it was building a vented underwater dome in Minecraft (which I have never actually installed, much less played); this year, apparently I'm dealing with some kind of The Mentalist murder-mystery with several thousand suspects that I'm trying to sort into various categories. I make it sound a lot more coherent than it actually is.

At any rate, this isn't an update so much as it is an exercise to try to remain, y'know, thinking straight. I'm a little curious about what I'll be reading in the space once I'm feeling better. Last year I did something similar in Notepad, and when I went back later I found a winding narrative about being an insurance adjuster partnered with the Sun, right in the middle of my existential ruminations. I was pretty damn Sick last year.

Shit, didn't realize I still had that month-old doom-and-gloom post up. Update: she's doing fine, she's got a new doctor who is taking a more careful approach to the diagnosis, and one thing has become clear: no popcorn for the nieces. Looking over the food diary (my sister is a goddamn genius, I'd have never thought of a food diary and her doctors apparently didn't either), it seems that all of the flareups happened right after eating popcorn or other high-fiber foods. Thanks for everyone's thoughts.

Around age 25 or 26, I stopped keeping track of how old I am. That can lead to some moderately embarrassing situations, such as going around for a week telling people that you're turning 33 when you're actually turning 32. Aside from basic math, though, it seems like I get better at everything with every year. I love getting older. When I get my yacht I'm going to christen it the Age and Treachery.

There's a pretty distinct sinking feeling associated with being told that your niece is on morphine for pain. I mean, this is a tough kid. Last year, she cracked her wrist, and my poor sister didn't notice until a few days later when Rosalyn mumbled something about having to carry her books with her other hand. She just doesn't complain (at least, not about pain), so to hear that she was literally lying in the hospital bed yelling until they doped her... jeez.

She has, like her mom and my brother (I apparently lucked out), some manner of mysterious gastrointestinal funkishness that is autoimmune related. Her stomach appears to have been holding onto food for days and days, which is Not Good. On the bright side, this incident makes it really clear that Something Is Wrong; my sister will be able to use that to force the doctors to keep looking until they figure out what it is.

Edit to add: It depends on what the condition actually is, and the individual's specific biological quirks. My brother has joint issues and a tendency for inflammation in his intestines; he has fairly loose dietary restrictions--not too much meat, stay away from chunky indigestables such as kernel corn, nothing spicy. My sister has intestinal and urinary tract issues, with similar but stricter dietary restrictions, but no joint issues that we're aware of. Rosalyn... all they know at this point is that she's not passing food through her system the way she ought to be. And I don't have any serious GI issues at all. (Knock on wood.)

Thanks for the thoughts.

Swapping out an old video card for a shiny new one, I remarked that the old one's connection ports are situated such that one must make a blood sacrifice in order to connect the damn thing to the motherboard. This stands to reason, because blood is red, and red is faster. It overclocks the GPU with the user's precious life essence.

I have been coding for over 29 hours at this point, with a single 3-hour nap. The overclocking joke seems way, way funnier than it should be.

UPDAYTT: As of around 4AM this morning, the Dark Time is over. Well, not counting the Dark Time Addendum from around 7:30-9. I was doing some math during my first shower in three days, and I figured out that from 8AM Monday up to when I went to bed this morning, I spent a total of 19 hours this week not working on this project. And only ten of those were spent sleeping.

The world we are born in is not the world we see. The world we die in is the world we deserve.

Heaven produces myriads of things to nourish man;
Man never does one good thing to recompense Heaven.
Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!

--Barry Hughart