realthog

Here's the round-robin note I sent out to friends and family this morning:

Tuesday morning: We have power, which is unexpected (about 90% of the state is out), but no internet access (which means no phones either). We trogged out to the public library a little while ago to see if we could email from there, but it, like just about everywhere else, was closed. We can tell that the internet folk are trying to get us reconnected -- there are constant signals from my computer of a change in "connectivity status" -- so I'm typing this now ready to send as soon as we're back online.

Unless the hurricane takes a second stab at us, which is just feasible given its predicted path, we've come through unscathed, so far as we can tell. A couple of minor trees have come down at some distance from the house. The back porch, miraculously, hasn't. Much of the yard is ankle-deep in fallen leaves. But it's all small stuff. We do face the intimidating task of eating our way through all the emergency supplies we laid in . . .

Tuesday midnight: Still no internet/email. Withdrawal symptoms becoming acute.

Wednesday morning: This is getting grim. No access to the IMDB! Or the BBC! We've learned from friends that we're among a mere 90 or so to have power of all the NJ homes served by our electricity company. We are very fortunate! We're of course using as little as we can of that power.

Wednesday evening: There's a guy from the cable company due tomorrow, hopefully to get us connected.

Thursday: Cable Guy didn't turn up. Pam plans to be at the cable company's office at 9am tomorrow asking where the heck (I paraphrase) Cable Guy was. Be thankful you don't work at our cable company's office.

Friday: Still nothing.

Saturday: Oh joy! We have the internet -- at least for a while. So you're getting this.

In other news, it may be ten days or longer 'til most local residents get power back; put another way, this means the result of the upcoming election could be decided by Hurricane Sandy. The option of postponing the election for a month or so to ensure everyone can vote, and that their vote will be counted, is apparently not even being considered. Democracy, it seems, happens by magic.

All best and/or love (you know who you are).

So tomorrow it's back to hospital (a different hospital, in fact, but when you're staring at the ceiling blearily they all look much the same) to have a bit more surgery done.

This time it's nothing so baroque or flamboyant as on my last excursion: merely a matter of having arterial stents ("kissing stents" is the rather charming technical term) emplaced in both legs via a puncture in my groin area; as a special bonus, they shave my groin for free!*

As far as I can understand, the experience should be roughly the same as for the angiogram I underwent a few months ago, and I ought to be back home by evening. I get the impression that for the next few days I may be of use for not much else but looking pitiful and occasionally drooling in an earnest manner -- two activities for which I have a pronounced talent. If I'm up to it, I'll do some research reading for Bogus Science; if the residual anaesthetic is still making my mind wander, I guess my reading matter will be . . . less demanding. To be honest, I have my fingers crossed I should be able to carry on work as usual: there's a lot to be done.

Recovery should be fast thereafter. My hope is to get across to Nottingham, UK, for Fantasycon in mid-September, where there's the possibility I can do something to assist my novel The Dragons of Manhattan, currently in severe danger of being "orphaned" owing to circumstances beyond its publisher's control (major illness, something that's of course far more important than the fate of any novel . . . yet I have to think about the novel too). If I do make it across, this'll necessarily be -- for reasons of both expense and time -- a down-and-dirty trip, just there and back, with none of the bopping around to see friends/rellies that's usually a major part of such ventures.

Of course, another lure of Fantasycon is that it'd be nice to be there in person for the British Fantasy Awards ceremony, just to witness first-hand my failing to pick up a BFA for the anthology New Writings in the Fantastic. I've managed to miss the vast majority of awards ceremonies in which I've had an interest, so . . .

* As they did preparatory to angiogramming me. My innocent fantasies of this act being performed by a Barbarella-style delight were shattered cruelly when the nurse in question appeared at my bedside, complete with his nautical swagger and his bulging, tat-adorned biceps. All that was missing was the can of spinach.

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Entries tagged with not at all frightened really

Sandy: we were extraordinarily lucky

and for my next trick . . .

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