Facing North Update!

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It’s our second update this month, with 11 reviews added. This brings our annual total to more than 100  . . . we’re not yet at 1000 reviews, but that number draws closer.

Our update includes reviews from Daven of Davensjournal. We’re glad to have him sharing his writings with us and look forward to continuing to do so. We have also reviewed a number of annuals — perfect gifts for the holidays. When you add in Christopher Penzak’s Living Temple of Witchcraft, Vol 1, Kenaz Filan’s Drawing Down the Spirits, and others, you have our usual eclectic mix of opinions.

We have a review of the acoustic CD, Light Returning and five books, including the Pop Culture Grimoire, White as Bone, Red as Blood, Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells, the Green Wiccan Year, and the Gong Hee Fot Choy Book of Fortune.

Finally, we’ve published a timely article about what 2010 holds for each of the zodiac signs from the authors of Astrology Guide 2010 along with Connie Domino’s article ”Working with Difficult People.”

This is not fair

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I have a cold.

A common, everyday, garden-variety cold.

Fresh hell: trying to take an aspirin, water in mouth, and you feel a sneeze coming on. What will win, the swallow reflex or the sneeze reflex?

This is so not fair.

(off to drink tea, I’m already resting gosh darn it*.)

*and no, those aren’t really the words I’d like to be saying at the moment. Feel free to insert your own favorites.

Despite everything, I am making plans

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Travel plans, to be specific.

Up in the air: Christmas 2009 in San Francisco, even though my Dad is flying out there as well. I hope to have that worked out this week.

June 10-13th, 2010: Ashland, OR. The OSF will see us there with several friends, watching Hamlet and the Merchant of Venice (among other plays) and staying in a lovely house.

and . . . here’s the big one . . .

October 2nd through 16th: London/Venice. Yes, we bit the bullet and polished off the credit card and purchased tickets. Hotel reservations are being made, and plans laid. We WILL take our annual trip out of the country in 2010. I may be bald, but we WILL go. (That’s what charming hats are for, aren’t they?)

Mr. Toad is Back

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It’s been a good and bad day.

Good, because one of the last procedures I’ll need for awhile was done and I have a lot more freedom. Yes, the drain is gone. I no longer have a tube and hard plastic stuck into my body. Just an ache where it was.

Bad because the extent of my cancer is wider than we thought, and I have been recommended to see a medical oncologist about starting chemotherapy. This was a nasty surprise given that my surgery went so well and everyone felt they’d ‘gotten’ all of the cancer cells. To be clear, I don’t necessarily still have cancer . . . I just MIGHT have cancer cells spread throughout my body.

Yeah — that makes it better, doesn’t it?

I’m learning not to take anything for granted. There is no certainty. I must simply say ‘yes’ and accept.

Thank you for your continued support. It means a great deal to me. I’ll keep you posted on what all of this means.

It’s been a good day

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Although I didn’t have a great night of sleep, I was nicely productive today. Last night (and presumably tonight) have 4 or so hours set aside for work (mundane job). Today I updated Facing North with a couple of articles and a handful of review.

This is a bit of a milestone: it’s my first (non blog) writing since a week or so pre-surgery. It felt very good to finally get my writing cap on. I’m planning on a couple of more review written each day for a few days, and another update (maybe even two) this month. I want to end this year ‘caught up’. Or at least as caught up as I can be.

An acquaintance, Evn (Lover of Strife), usually posts a Tuesday (movie) Trivia, but a bad case of food poisoning kept him from doing so. I had a flash of creativity and came up with my own trivia questions, and offered them to him. He said yes, so now I’m running a trivia game through another person’s blog. (It’s in the comments for “Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live” — feel free to join in.) I’m apparently too obscure, but then again perhaps people just haven’t noticed yet.

Yesterday I played “Return to Mysterious Island” which was fun (and is the mother of all puzzle games!) and diverting. Today I’m about 1/2 way through “Aura: Fate of Ages”. Diverting, even though the ‘character’ interaction is HORRIBLE.

A good day.

Time Machine: 11/17

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Yesterday was quiet, more sleeping and watching movies all day long. I have several discs from CSI:Miami, Season 1 (which I never watched on TV) to keep me company. It’s a bit gory, but I like the bright sunshine and the plot lines are nicely simple. One thing: my sister arrived. She promptly cooked dinner and helped J. do some housework. We needed the help and she is a blessing.

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Time Machine: 11/16

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Sleeping on my back is weird. Getting into and out of bed is hard, and painful. I’m glad I’m in fairly good shape, I can’t imagine doing this if I were frail, weak, or obese. To get in bed, I sit on the edge, as far back as I can. J. helps my turn my legs onto the bed, I  then tighten my core muscles, stiffen my torso, and let J. help me lie down. Just before the last inches there is a horrid ‘tearing’ feeling in my chest, on the left side of my breast-like object, right where it meets the sternum. It brings tears to my eyes, its worrying.

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Time Machine: 11/14

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Another dozy night . . . although I feel like I slept for longer periods, like an hour or 90 minutes. At 7am, my IV alarm went off. This happened yesterday, and its disconcerting at first. But the alarm just tells us that there is about 20 minutes left of drip. So, it was annoying, and it woke me up, but I didn’t worry. After a few minutes I called in and was told someone would be by in a few minutes to take care of it. That woke my bladder up, so  I decided to go ahead and get up and start my day. The leg-massagers (more about them in a moment) were annoying, but I managed to get them unhooked and swung around so I was sitting on the side of my bed. Minutes passed. I stood up (yay! NO dizziness!!!!) and verified that yes, the only thing preventing me from going to the bathroom was the IV monitors’ electrical plug into the wall. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bend over to pull it out. So I had to wait, listening to the alarm, which was still low on the annoying scale, but growing higher. At 7:20, I called again — apologies, we’ll be right there! And at 7:35 someone came. Just in time, I was getting desperate.

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