sethb

WEEK OF June 16-23, 2025

It’s been since mid-April, just before Minicon, since I’ve done a general update. Originally, I was writing weekly reports for a couple friends who were into doing ‘Goals updates’ with me. A way of keeping on track with our long-term goals – we’ve been doing it for many years now. The process helped me go from aspiring writer to published writer and saw me through the many distractions of moving from home to home and day job to day job. Recently one of those friends has been suffering from dementia and the other is struggling with cancer and I don’t want the goals updates to become any kind of demand on their energies through such difficult times.

Still, I think it does me some good to take an overview perspective on my life from time to time, and may be of some interest to other friends who happen across the reports. I’m not focused on any long-term goals currently – aside from basic survival.

I’ve been keeping up with making weekly visits to TerryG, and have been assembling items for a bug-out bag, given how the present political situation has made the world seem more insecure than it has seemed since the days of the cold war when I was a youth. The power grid could be a target for bad guys and I rely on it for Everything. I’m shopping for a sleeping bag now. I gave my old one away to an organization that helps the homeless. I ordered a few MRE meals and a solar-powered battery for re-charging my devices. I got a test kit for water and purification tablets I’ve ordered rehydrated food for Rajesh also, though I’m also insecure about the prospects for his survival. I’m giving him a cancer med prescribed by our vet but he’s still obviously ailing: skinny and wheezing constantly. I don’t mind staying home with him most of the time.

I’m doing a lot of reading, currently Alan Dean Foster’s Flynx and Pip books that I first discovered in the eighties, but hadn’t realized there were so many more in the series. I’ve also reconnected with my old friend, Jill who lives in Grand Marais and have recommended a series of mysteries by Steve Higgs to her. Jill is an anglophile and the books are written and set in Great Britain. She also had a German shepherd when we first met and the books feature a retired police-dog (Rex Harrison, a German shepherd who had too much attitude for the force). I hope Jill enjoys the books; they seem made for her.

Meanwhile, and perhaps a factor in my lack of energy these days, I’ve been in a lot of pain with my teeth; I’ve been planning a major lot of extractions and getting a set of dentures made, but the U’s Oral Surgery folk are scheduled out the wazoo and I may not be able to get my surgery scheduled before October. I’m so glad that CBD oil is legal here in Minnesota these days. It is helping me deal with the head and jaw aches. Still expensive and I doubt my Medicare will help with that.

I’m also watching a lot of TV: old episodes of Star Trek, TOS, and the new Librarians and the old Gilmore Girls series… I wonder what the ancients who invented Theater would think of what modern media has made possible…