My last entry was ten months ago? Talk about doin' the time warp...

The cataract operation on my left eye took place on May 5th and wasn't a lot of fun TBH, but wasn't horrifying either. That was the part dealing with the multitude of bills that came pouring down afterwards, even with my alleged medical insurance covering some of it. Well, that's all settled, and now it's time to schedule my right eye for the same ... and finally, to get some new glasses, as the current ones (dating from 2017) don't work very well with my eyes now. In fact I see better without, mostly. A visit with the eye doctor last Thursday showed that Lefty is doing pretty well.

Continuing on a medical line, a while back one of my sisters sent me an email inquiring about some old medical records from our childhood, concerning the various shots and boosters we had to take back then. Unfortunately, our old doctor died years ago, and the doctor who took over his practice managed to lose our records, a fact I did not discover until I was about to enter college and needed proof of immunization. Not surprisingly he wound up in prison on a tax dodge scam.

Anyhow, while searching in the attic I found various other things, including a box of "old records" that turned out to be mostly bank statements from the late 90s-early 00s for accounts that had long since been closed and forgotten. In opening the box, the first thing I saw was the name "Colin Upton" peeking through the celophane window in the topmost envelope. Yes, back then the banks returned your checks, and I thus had a quantity of checks signed by various persons from whom I was then still purchasing self-pubs and artwork. Going through the mass, I wound up with a mixed lot of these things, not all signed but handstamped (mostly publishers like Antarctic Press, though Elin Winkler signed some as well), and many signed with a scribble, Some of the most readable ones were Richard Chandler, Michael Curtis, Joshua Kennedy, Chuck Melville and Diana Sprinkle.

Curiously enough, I found an earlier collection of this sort dating 1991-94, which marked the early part of my connection with the fandom, just as the current group of checks marked the beginning of my gradual withdrawal.

I imagined at one time that that one could create a secondary collection consisting of checks made out to, and signed by, various favored artists, but around 2003 the banks stopped returning cancelled checks, so that was that. Which is not to say one shouldn't do it anyway, as a form of feudal tribute if nothing else.