A Month of Hardship Traversed
Firstly, an update on the health issues of last blog; two and a half weeks out from her aortic valve replacement surgery Mom is going great! No lasting effects, though she has yet to visit her heart specialist for the after-surgery check-up, but al this point there does not seem to be much worry involving it. My Dad seems to be more or less over the UTI at this point, but even after having the catheter removed Thursday morning, it was reinserted Friday morning as he did not seem to be emptying the bladder fully. We go back to the urologist on Friday again.
Unfortunately, it seems his health is in a slow decline. This may be perhaps expected at almost 85 for some, but it is still tough to watch it happen. I’ve seen it enough times in others to understand the cycle, but I remain hopeful and grateful for the time I yet have with him.
As stress will do, I am losing weight again which is great toward my own health goals and to achieve the weight to get my knee replacement surgery. I have my usual check-up appointment with my physician later this week so any abnormalities should be caught, if any. Other than the usual, of course! 🤪
Writing
After a more or less two month break, I am back to the last stretch of writing my novel. Still not sure how many pages it will add up to, but I never suspected it would reach 300, let alone substantially more towards 400 as it now seems. The most enjoyment I get from the writing is where the outline and understanding of the characters will take me, sometimes surprising me with their actions or thoughts. I still have a bit of revising to do after going back and reading over the last few scenes I wrote before I took my “Read All Sherlock Holmes Books’ break, but the rest of the coming story still percolates in my gray matter…
An Old Project ‘Reborn’ & Advanced
In 1992 my brother Doug was in his final year of his grad year of his theater program at an East Coast university. His final project for that year was in the form of a ‘old time’ radio serial in the vein of Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon, but with a more humorous and tongue-in-cheek bent. Since his passing, I have come into possession of the full run of the 13 episodes. I had it in mind at the time to to get them recorded to CDs and spend a bit of money on packaging with an insert with the show logo and some form of liner notes of memories of those who participated in the process of bringing the show to the university radio station. As will happen, Life got in the way of these plans and other than basic in-roads to some of his friends on a popular social media site and a few calls to local audio producing businesses, nothing came of the plan.
After my mother’s surgery and dealing with Dad’s infirmities, I turned back to listening to this fun and humorous serial for relief and levity. I then thought it might be a good thing to re-serialize the show on that popular social media site, choosing Fridays, as I seemed to recall the original broadcast was, tagging those friends and others I could find to encourage them to pota=st any memories they might have as each episode progressed.
Set to do this, I remembered that with the recordings I had, there was also a few promo ads that were broadcast before the premier and figured this would be the perfect way to announce the re-serialization. Imagine my surprise when listening to these promos that the air date of the first episode was February 10th, 1992. A clear sign it was time if ever there was one! This year February 10th was a Friday! As it happened, the original broadcast day was a Monday, but it did replay on Fridays, but the coincidence was too great to ignore! On the 3rd, the promos were posted advertising the ‘return’ and last Friday the first episode was posted. Every Friday for the next 12 weeks the rest will post.
My only problem is that the mp3 and .wav files I have will not upload directly, so I have to record them on my phone while I play the episode on my iPad, and the sound comes across as too tinny, though understandable. Working on that, though.
Who Do You Love?
I tend to show my love and appreciation for those in my life as many days as I can, and so kinda shy away from the Day meant specifically for it.Especially as I have been shown many times in my live to not take it for granted, not those people I express that love for and to.
This year I am so grateful to still have both my parents with me and that I will be able to continue to be on hand to help them. Obviously I love them, and that is a good enough way to celebrate the 14th of this month.
Be well and ego dico vobis pacem.
