Except for a very few comments recently, I haven't raised my head above the parapet for a long while. I am still here, in fact I log in several times most days, but just so I can mainline some of the amazing stories everybody else is still managing to post.
Mostly, I blame the weather, but having my chest cut open didn't help either.
I had heart surgery two years ago, May '24, a triple bypass which went according to plan. In the time since I discovered that I could feel things inside that appeared to be 'leftovers' of some kind. This was probably because of my Fibromyalgia - or whatever else it really is - which means my sense of touch is really, really acute and everything is sensitive enough my skin can feel stuff that's inside me.
Although nothing obvious was found on the CT scans there were wires there which held the sternum (breastbone) together while it healed, and it seemed I could feel those. It was decided that I should have those out and that is what happened in March. I had a short op which was essentially the book-ends to a proper heart procedure: I had to go through all the preliminaries, get put under, they opened me up, took out the wires and then glued me back together as if I had done the whole thing.
(Note: I was told what was there but not shown on the scans. If someone had left something else inside, they have removed it and nobody is admitting anything. Fair enough.)
That took just 3 days and I was home again, but the after effects from the abbreviated op were much worse than the first time. I have struggled with health and fitness ever since. I couldn't even raise my left arm above horizontal for a week and simple tasks like getting dressed/undressed and using the bathroom were awkward and painful.
Then the funny weather happened. Our computers and the place where I write are, by chance, upstairs in the hottest room in the house and I usually start shutting things down above about 33C to avoid damage to the hardware. Mostly we hide downstairs - a good 5C-10C cooler than upstairs - once the temperature gets too high.
This means I can't write most days when we're having a heatwave. I have found other things to do and the time hasn't been wasted, but progress on all literary works has ground to a halt until the weather relents. For that I can only apologise.
I haven't lost anything, forgotten anything or been abandoned by my muse. It is just been too hot to write in the way that I have done so far. It might mean that I need to consider some changes but that will cause yet more delays, not to mention cash, and I'm reluctant to even think of doing that while its still too hot.
Bear with me, please. I have no plans to go anywhere and cooler weather must return soon.
Mustn't it?
Penny
PS - Returning from one of our visits to the US in 2014 we did encounter a classic holding pattern. We had a night flight back from JFK to LHR and got caught in a really powerful jet stream. Result was that we arrived back over southern England more than an hour before Heathrow opened at 6am! We had to circle around over Sevenoaks for an hour burning off excess fuel. Apart from the deliberate time wasting, apparently it isn't a good idea to land a plane with too much excess fuel on it, the undercarriage doesn't like the extra weight.
Comments
The last time I wrote
The last time I wrote anything of length I did write most of it on computer but paper and pen/cil were fine for first drafts and useful for edits. When it cools down a little, paper and pen is more comfortable when writing outside in the sun.
Yes; anything you do on paper will need to be transferred to the computer, so it will be slower, but it does make extra time available for writing.
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Holding patterns. I guess dumping the fuel would be a pollution incident, but I wonder whether that would be better or worse than burning it ?
Regrettably, longhand is no longer possible
I first begin writing when I was about 12 and over the next few years wrote three novels and some shorter stories, all bad. All were written in longhand and they were readable, but only just. At least they were more readable than my science notes!
When I left home and got a proper job, the second thing I bought once I had been paid enough was a typewriter (the first was a camera). I then used that for many years and became accustomed to that rather than longhand.
Then I had to change careers - the gov't didn't pay enough to support two people - and moved to IT. That was coding sheets and card punches for two years and then glass teletypes arrived. I moved on and moved up and eventually had to give the typewriter away since I couldn't cope with the different depth of travel of the keys, I had become so used to computer keyboards.
My writing has deteriorated over the years so I now mostly jot notes and make cards for the card index which drives everything, but I can no longer write longhand at all. Everything is done on the various computers and gadgets instead. This is exacerbated by something called "essential tremor", which I can assure you is not essential at all. That varies through the day but I can never predict when it becomes good enough to write something down. Even now I have a new debit card and unable to sign the damn thing.
This means that to write downstairs I'd have to take a system down which can run independantly. That can be done, of course, but its yet something else to deal with and there's enough in the "todo" list as it is. I have enough other things which need doing. I have a tablet which is kept downstairs and used mainly for reference but I do use it to read stuff on BC once in a while. It probably causes Cloudflare to scratch its virtual head when it sees it!
Penny
Dogs have owners; cats have staff. Grand-daughters have minions.
It’s not so much the additional weight……..
As it is the increased danger of burning fuel in the event of an accident. Hence why they either burn off the excess fuel, or dump it. That is also why the pilot calculates the estimated mount of fuel needed for the flight based on the weight of the plane, passengers, crew, and cargo, adding in a reserve amount of course, and the plane is only fueled to that level.
D. Eden
“Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.”
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus