So, I was home sick for two weeks with the RSV/Flu/Norovirus tripple whammy. Anything I tried to eat exited from one end or another rapidly. Plus eating or drinking more than a bite or two at a time left me nauseous. I pretty much lived on watered down fruit juice, and cheese and crackers. Very much not fun. I had an open sore on my little toe that I pretty much ignored in my misery.
So Karma infected the toe, and I noticed that my toe and half my foot was starting to turn unnatural colors. So drove to urgent care clinic. they said to to real ER post haste. Went there and when they got a look at it called in Podiatry and Infectious diseases. Not good.
Started on heavy duty IV antibiotics while the podiatrist poked and prodded at it. This was friday evening, so MRI was closed for weekend, which they wanted to see before they did surgery, basically, t0 see how many bones were infected before they started removing things.
Spent all of saturday and most of sunday in an ER room waiting for a regular room to open up getting crappy food and round the clock antibiotics. finally moved to a regular hospital room late sunday night.
Waited until early afternoon to finally get the MRI. Yup, bones are bad, time to chop chop. they snuck me onto the OR schedule last case on Monday. removed all the bones in my little toe, and then sewed it back up. So now I have nine and a half toes left.
Couple of days of continuing IV antibiotics and dressing changes, finally escaped the hospital thursday afternoon.
Side bitching: Hospital had me on a diabetic diet. To them that mean everything was sweetened with sucralose or another fake sugar. I told them that sucralose upset my digestion system and to give me regular foods unsweetened or with real sugar. So while the main meal was acceptable, the juices and desserts were poisoned with sucralose. Fortuntely I had a pocket full of powdered lime juice packets to flavor my water.
Been home a week now. Go back monday AM to get sutures removed, and see if I can resume work and other normal activites.

For her book Thorn Hedge, which is a delightful book. I just viewed her acceptance speech from the worldcon. It was about sea cucumbers and their fascinating biology.

https://con-media-dump.s3.amazonaws.....acucumbers.mp4

Well, things were going well, but I didn't see the other car in time and banged into them. Time to find out if my insurance company is good or not.

Nobody got hurt, my car is got a lot of body damage, but it was driving straight when the tow operator put it on his truck. But it is a hybrid, and 14 years old, so I expect the insurance company will probably total it.

Whoof. It's been a year and a half since I last posted here. huff.... It's been a year full of sadness and inconvienence.

I still have the charcot foot, and have been wearing a custom molded theraputic boot since march of last year. The blasted thing is the most expensive footwear I've ever owned. The copay after my medical insurance was $1037.00 But, my podiatrist has ordered diabetic shoes instead of wearing the boot, which should be a grreat improvement in quality of life. Unfortunately there is only one store in the entire state of massachusetts that will do the things, and the insurance paperwork is being very time consuming. Been almost a month and haven't even gotten in for the first actual appointment yet. Diabetic shoes are basically oversized shoes with an insert that is made from a mold of my feet to cushion and support them. From what I understand, I should plan on wearing them until my diabeties is cured.

Middle of January, my mom finally died. Funeral, house stuff, and dealing with grief pretty much consumed the next several weeks. It was no surprise, having been in hospice care at home for more than a year. But it still sucks... A lot. No way I can afford to stay living in the house, so we are slowly fixing it up and clearing it out in preparation for sale. Which means I have to find a new place to live. The foot makes me mostly useless for the moving and repair stuff. Hopefully the diabetic shoes will restore most of my mobility.

I'll be retiring in a few years, and once that happens, will be moving someplace way less expansive to live. I think I'll be doing the van life thing for a few years, while I'm still fairly able. Shopping now for a vehicle and trailer combo. Probably a small pickup or SUV that can tow a 5000 lb trailer. Thinking of buying a utility trailer and building it into a tinyhouse thing. Travel around the country, doing my bucket list. Finding an inexpensive piece of property and build a off-grid home around the core of the trailer. I'm leaning heavily towards arizona. Cheap land, lower taxes, and depending on the county, minimal hassle from government around building codes and the like.

Until retirement, just looking for someplace with a room to rent, a place to park and work on the trailer conversion. Hopefully close to work. hour plus commute each way has gotten tiresome.

The demopublican politics are getting more and more heated and contentious. Since the choice seems to be between the asshole and alzhiemers, I'm wondering if I'll vote for Wile E. Coyote for president. I hope that there won't be another summer of riots this year, or worse. But I'm stocking up on prepper foods and the like just in case the shit really hits the fan. Biden isn't mentally there to provide leadership for the democrats, and I don't see anyone else there to be an adult in charge. so they are balkanizing. Trump has continued his hostile takeover of the republicans, and all the lawfare being waged against him has made him appear the persecuted victim. Like obi wan kenobi, the democrats are striking him down, and he is returning more powerful than ever. They forced him to stay in NYC for the blackmail trial, so he has basically been campaigning in NYC the whole time. He might pull enough votes in NYC to win the entire state from the democrats.
if they try to pin him down in Georgia or Florida for the next rounds of lawfare, he likely will swing those states to support him in the election.

So, this summer I had my 60th birthday. How the heck did that happen? I don't feel 60!

Then around the beginning of November, I noticed my foot was sore and was starting to swell up. Went to my doctor and he said wear compression stockings and see what happens. It got worse and I went to the ER the day after Thanksgiving. They said infection and gave me antibiotics. So I took a few days off from work and lazed about with foot in the air.
It got worse, back to the ER. They put me on different antibiotics and told me to come back the next day for more. Went back the next day and they admitted me to hospital. The diagnosis went from cellulitis to bone infection to Charcot foot. Four days in hospital on major antibiotics, got x-rays, vein scans, and an MRI and the settled on Charcot foot. So back to work with crutches and an orthopedic boot, and limited duty.
Heal up for six to eight weeks, then they decide if I'll need any reconstruction surgery of the affected foot. I've been out of hospital a week now, it's still red and swollen, I hope it is getting better.
Also getting a colonoscopy in January.... I'm sooo looking forward to that... Not.

This is a statement from the leaders of Hillsdale college on why they have not made a statement about the current set of protesting and rioting.


Amidst the events of recent weeks, a number of alumni and others have taken up formal and public means to insist that Hillsdale College issue statements concerning these events. The College is charged with negligence — or worse.

It is not the practice of the College to respond to petitions or other instruments meant to gain an object by pressure. The College operates by reasoned deliberation, study, and thought. The following observations, however, may be helpful and pertinent.

The College is pressed to speak. It is told that saying what it always has said is insufficient. Instead, it must decry racism and the mistreatment of Black Americans in particular. This, however, is precisely what the College has always said.

The College is told that invoking the high example of the Civil War or Frederick Douglass is not permitted. Perhaps it is thought that nothing relevant can be learned about justice and equality from the words and actions of great men and women in history. Instead, the College is guilty of the gravest moral failure for not making declarations about … justice and equality.

The College is told that it garners no honor now for its abolitionist past — or that it fails to live up to that past — but instead it must issue statements today. Statements about what? It must issue statements about the brutal and deadly evil of hating other people and/or treating them differently because of the color of their skin. That is, it must issue statements about the very things that moved the abolitionists whom the College has ever invoked.

It is told that failure to issue statements is an erasure, a complicity, an abandonment of principle. The silence of the College is deafening.

The College founding is a statement — as is each reiteration and reminder of its meaning and necessity. The curriculum is a statement, especially in its faithful presentation of the College’s founding mission. Teaching is a statement, especially as it takes up — with vigor — the evils we are alleged to ignore, evils like murder, brutality, injustice, destruction of person or property, and passionate irrationality. Teaching these same things across all the land is a statement, or a thousand statements. Organizing our practical affairs so that we can maintain principles of equity and justice — though the cost is high and sympathy is short — is a statement. Dispensing unparalleled financial help to students who cannot afford even a moderate tuition, is a statement. Helping private and public schools across the country lift their primary and secondary students out of a sea of disadvantages with excellent instruction, curricula, and the civic principles of freedom and equality — without any recompense to the College — is a statement. Postgraduate programs with the express aim of advancing the ideas of human dignity, justice, equality, and the citizen as the source of the government’s power, these are all statements. And all of these statements are acts, deeds that speak, undertaken and perpetuated now, every day, all the time. Everything the College does, though its work is not that of an activist or agitator, is for the moral and intellectual uplift of all.

There may be something deafening in the culture—certainly there are those who cannot hear — but it is not from the silence of the College.

There is a kind of virtue that is cheap. It consists of jumping on cost-free bandwagons of public feeling — perhaps even deeply justified public feeling — and winning approval by espousing the right opinion. No one who wishes the College to issue statements is assumed to be a party to such behavior. But the fact that very real racial problems are now being cynically exploited for profit, gain, and public favor by some organizations and people is impossible to overlook. It is a scandal and a shame that compounds our ills and impedes their correction. Hillsdale College, though far from perfect, will continue to do the work of education in the great principles that are, second only to divine grace, the solution to the grave ills that beset our times.



http://hillsdalecollegian.com/2020/.....sdale-college/

The USA was on the eve of prohibition. Massive drunken parties were held across the country, some of them funeral ceremonies for booze under various names.

It was repealed several years later, having spawned many evils that persist to this day. The largest one was large scale smuggling of booze and illicit manufacture of same forced crime to get organized into multistate and international crime rings. The profits were enormous, different gangs had violent wars over 'turf', and the federal government created national police forces with sweeping powers to enforce the laws. Sound familiar?

Unfortunately we are still trying to regulate human behavior via the lawbook and jails with the modern war on some drugs.

So, about ten miles from my home, the gas company has made a major whoopsie. For reasons still publically unknown, they let into the street distribution pipe network much higher gas pressure than is supposed to be there. This pressure was high enough to overwhelm the regulator valves at the house meters, letting the overpressured gas into the house piping in three different cities.

The immediate effect is anyone with an old gas appliance with a pilot light is that pilot light is now a small flame thrower. So their gas stove will emit a roaring flame sufficient to set their kitchen cabinets on fire. the gas furnace or hot water heater does the same thing in the basement.

Meanwhile, any weak spots or cracks in the gas piping fail and start releasing gas. These clouds of gas go seek out any source of ignition, and then either ignite or explode, depending on the concentration of gas. Since gas is heavier than air, these fires and explosions happen in the basements and lower areas.

Those with newer gas appliances, that don't have a pilot light. When the stove, furnace or whatever gets turned on, the ignitor lights the gas rushing out, but since overpressure, it starts blowing vast amounts of fire out of every available nook and cranny. This, as you can expect, sets the building on fire.

Amazingly, only one death has resulted so far. A young man parked in the driveway of a friends house had the chimney of the house fall on the car after the house exploded. There are several people in hospital in critical condition who might still die. 100+ structures burned down or blown up. tens of thousands of people evacuated from the affected cities displaced into shelters or friends houses.

Anyone familiar with how gas systems work know that there is only one device that can cause this. A specialized valve called a regulator lets gas from a higher pressure pipeline into a lower pressure pipeline system in just enough to keep the lower pressure system at the set pressure. These regulator valves are those flying saucer shaped things next to the gas meter. They are well understood and reliable devices, whose design hasn't really changed in a hundred years. They do wear out over time, but the large versions of these valves that let gas from the supply pipeline into the street distribution pipelines are supposed to have failsafe monitoring systems that shut them down in an event like we just had. There is a possibility that this was caused by a deliberate act of sabotage. In this time of terrorist threats, this cannot be ignored. With the continued silence from the authorities on a cause of the event, this is looking more and more possible.

I hope all the people I know in the affected area are uninjured, and their homes are undamaged, and resume their normal life soon. If you are someone I know who is displaced, we have a spare bed available.

Headed up to bangor end of next week. Taking a day or so of me time along the way. Anything interesting going on between boston and bangor the weekend of 18th-20th?
Will be in bangor through the 29th, if anyone wants to say hi.

Last night, the nursing home called me to let me know that my dad had passed. Even though we've been expecting it for weeks, it's still a kick in the gut. 2016, are you fucking done yet?

I'm gonna make one.
https://youtu.be/J9b0J29OzAU

Won't affect original costumes, but if your costume has design elements derived from someone else, this case could make you a criminal.

https://www.yahoo.com/style/hallowe.....123803357.html

Not much progress. We moved into a hotel for now, while we are working on getting my parents into assisted living. Only thing we have gotten from insurance company is various stalling tactics. Spending money fast, and it's running out fast.

I'm still looking for a place to live. Hopefully sharing with one or two others to make the costs reasonable. Massachusetts, in the canton or braintree area, nearer to my work. Single, nonsmoker, allergic to dogs and cats. Anyone with a lead, I'd appreciate it. Tune to my LiveJournal. Dalesql.livejournal.com for further updates.

So, had a fire at home this afternoon. Everyone got out safe, but the house is damaged and the whole place got heavy smoke and steam damage. Tomorrow the cleanup repair and insurance claim process starts. Ugh. Cleanup and repair will take months, plus whatever delays the insurance company adds.

Preliminary investigation looks like accidental. Dad was burning some household trash in the basement and the fire got out of the fireplace into the stuff piled in the room. Basement has heavy fire damage to one end of the house, and some structural damage to the floor joists above on that side. Smoke, steam and heat got through the entire rest of the house. Pulled the important stuff out after the fire. Some clothes to wear, insurance papers, medications and the silverware. Got a compliment for the investigating police officer on the safe storage of my firearms and ammo when we sloshed through the basement to retrieve them .


Parents are gonna have to move into some kind of elder care facility right away. Staying in the nieces bedroom at my brothers house while she is away at college is a very short term solution. Parents have been wanting to stay at home as long as possible, but that is now no longer available. Time to choose one and move in.

Typing this from the couch at my brothers house. But I need a place to live starting soon. Insurance company will pay for hotel for short time, but I expect that will cut into the total payout, so it's time for me to find a place to live. Anyone in the boston area have a room to rent? Preference is for the canton mass area, closer to work. Not that I'll be doing much more than washing up and sleeping there. Non smoker and allergic to cats and dogs, so needs to not have them inside. No matter how much I like the purrs. A fannish or furry place would be nice to share with a few.others. I have a good job and can pay a reasonable rent, but I'm not rich.

Not a happy camper, but it could have been far far worse.

When will I be there
Maybe Thursday evening, friday evening, saturday and sunday. Depending on weather, major snow event being forcast for saturday the whole day.

Where will I be sleeping.
At home, commuting in each day. Unless someone invites me to spend the nights in their hotel room instead.

What will I be doing. No particular plans, probably end up hanging out in the con suite a lot. Looking for vore folks to have meals with though. *grins*

Fursuit? Don't own one anymore. Can't stand the heat very well.

Food and beverages. I don't drink alcohol. I do like to eat and drink though.

Conversations, Hugs and snuggles? I'll talk to nearly anyone who is willing to hold a conversation. Hugs and snuggles are something reserved for friends, but I've been known to make friends quickly, and snuggles and gulps then are following. People I find unpleasant, will not get much from me, as I will depart. So please follow the 6:2:1 rule of convention conduct, and suspend any monologs in favor of an actual two way conversation.

Parties? No big gulp party from me this year. I asked on the board a couple months ago if there was interest. Deafening silence. I'll goto parties, my preference is for quieter parties without any drunks. The whole point of parties is to meet new folks and renew friendships. Booze, loud music, and video games generally obstruct this.

I'll be going to arisia this weekend, and ANE next weekend. Anyone else going to either who wants to play or hang out in the con suite or whatever? Drop me a txt at the con. 978-857-4847

Www.arisia.org
AnthroNewEngland.com I think.

Another year has rolled around. Here are my plans for 2016.
January: Arisia and AnthroNewEngland conventions. Commuting to both of these.
February: Boskone. I'll be running the con suite again.
March: not much on the fannish front.
April: maybe Anime Boston?
July: Maybe Anthrocon, depends on how my parents are doing healthwise.
August: folk festival bangor maine.
October: Furpocolypse

Still living with and taking care of elderly parents. Hopefully they will be better this year than the crap my dad dealt with last year. Going over ten years at my job, so more vacation time coming in. Hope to get a little more socializing in, still searching for the one for me.

I hope everyone has a great new year.

Kalahari Fox is driving through the area, and I have admired his arts for years, so we setup a meet and greet for him on Monday, Dec 28th, starting at 7pm. The www.nesfa.org clubhouse at 504 Medford Street, Somerville, Mass.

There are a number of decent eating places a few minutes walk away. The clubhouse has couches, fridge with soft drinks, and I have a key and permission to host the meet. Hope to see the Bostonfurs there.

This week I ordered bifocals.


I also have been diagnosed with diabetes. So goodbye donuts, goodbye french fries. Farewell macaroni and cheese. Farewell tasty sugary drinks. I'll miss you a lot candy.

But on the good side, bacon and eggs are now my healthy breakfast.

Naturalists in Borneo have gotten some pictures of the elusive carnivore squirrels found there. These squirrels apparently hunt the local deer species called the Muntjac. But in their pictures, they show that the floofy tail is 130% of it's body size, the largest in proportion in all of the animal kingdom.

So now we know where Chester got some of his genes.

One of my favorite furry artist and writer wins the Nebula award for best short story. Hurray for Ursula!

Made my hotel reservation. Unfortunately I misplaced the date and the main hotel was sold out when I called, except for the 450 per night Governors suite. So I have a reservation in the courtyard marriott down the street.

Unfortunately, I can't really do the big gulp party over in the other hotel. So I am hoping to find someone with a room in the main hotel who is looking for a roommate and is willing to let me run the Big Gulp party from the room saturday evening.

This Friday, like every fourth friday of April is Arbor day.


Practice safe rigging at all times, and plant a tree.

I just read on the BBC Web site that Terry Pratchett has died.

Sad is such an inadequate word to describe how I feel now.

Goodbye Sir Terry. I'll miss your good cheer and all the stories you hadn't gotten around to writing down yet. Thanks for everything.