I just realized I haven’t yet devoted a single thought to this week’s Newswithviews column. What can I say but “Fap!”? I am confounded.
Suggestions, anyone? Or should I just take a peek into the crystal ball and see what’s available?
Aaaaaand I’ve got to go to the laundry!
Viewership is down today, but nothing much I could do about it. I had a special assignment for Chalcedon: write a 2,000-word article on the Bell Mountain books, how I came to write them, what I’ve learned in doing it, and so on. That’s a lot of words to write about yourself! Anyway, it’s done, and will appear in The Chalcedon Report by and by.
The iguana in this picture looks astoundingly like mine, except more of his spines are worn away. He insisted on sleeping on a perch he had when he was a fifth of his current size, and threw a sulk when I replaced it with a bigger one. I had to put the old perch back. Then he’d sleep on the new one, with his tail draped over the old.
A number of you wished to comment on my post, “Looking for Reasons to Kill You,” only to find “Comments Disabled.” I have re-enabled them just now.
This happens a lot, and it’s maddening. So many steps have been added to the posting procedure, it’s really easy to miss one. I could ask WordPress to make “Leave a Reply” my default setting, but I don’t trust them not to replace this problem with something worse that I can’t fix. Like making the posts tiny light-blue print on a grey background. Fap! (They did that once before, and it took hours to put it right.)
I appreciate your letting me know when the comments are disabled. Which makes it devilish hard to have a comment contest, or any kind of reader participation. For the time being, I think we’ll have to live with this.
The management regrets any inconvenience.
It looks like I’m going to fall short of 100,000 views for the year by a little less than 2,000. So close!
I believe it was Violet Crepuscular–or was it Voltaire?–who said life is like a Mille Bornes game. You’re rolling along, slapping down those 100-mile cards, sometimes a 200, and suddenly you’ve got a flat tire (“Creve!”), or a red light, or a speed limit (“Limite de Vitesse”) and you’re either stopped or slowed. You need a spare tire (“Roue de Secours”) or a green light, whatever, to get going again. Unless you were holding on to a Puncture-Proof (“Increvable!”) or a Right of Way card: then you can execute a Coup Fourre. But it’s hard to come up with a Coup Fourre in real life. Although not as hard as pulling one off in a game of Monopoly.
I’ve just written my Newswithviews column for the week. I only have to write one of those per week, but it feels like a lot more.
But tomorrow’s New Year’s Day, and we are hoping for a rest. We like to watch The Time Machine on New Year’s Day–that wonderful George Pal production from 1960, starring Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux. And we’ll have Patty’s pork casserole for supper–heavenly! And since we set up our air purifier and started her on her medicine, Robbie hasn’t coughed much. If she’s coughed today, I missed it. She’s been a very good girl about her medicine.
So again, thanks to all of you who visited this blog throughout the year, and shared your comments–and your prayers–and gave us your fellowship.
Tomorrow we’ll crank it up again.
Yes–this is indeed your last chance to buy my books in the year 2018! If you wait till tomorrow, it’ll be 2019.
So get onto amazon.com and order a couple of ’em, or click “Books” and then the little shopping cart icon and order direct from the publisher. It’s easy! Even I could do it, and I stink at computers.
The saga begins with Bell Mountain and now consists of ten books, with No. 11, The Temptation, just about ready to come off the press. Thrill to wars, miracles, treachery, conversions, really strange and menacing beasts, weird barbaric customs, love, friendship, faithfulness, barbarian invasions, an avalanche–everything that makes life worth living! It’s all in here.
Buy ’em for your kids, and by the time they reach No. 10, The Silver Trumpet, they’ll be old enough to read ’em all over again.
And I have heard, but cannot confirm, that every time anybody buys one of my books, somewhere in the world, a leftid cries “Ouch!”
Well, here it is, December 29. And if I can get 1,000 views a day, today and tomorrow and the next day, I will have hit 100,000 for the year.
Just missed! But it does give this blog something to shoot for next year. I didn’t say “me” because this blog is a lot more than just me. It’s all of you, too. We’re all in this together. That’s one of the things that makes it so worthwhile.
Anyway, I’ll do the best I can, these last three days.
Thanks to all of you for helping push this merry-go-round.
We were going to watch BBC Narnia today, but you know there’s never any rest. Our air purifier arrived ten days early, in a gigantic box, and we’ve just finished setting it up, after 2:30 p.m. It’s getting kind of crowded here, what with the Christmas tree and now this device.
Okay, it’s plugged in and humming away, supposedly removing allergens from our air. I have high hopes for this. Robbie’s cough, Patty’s trouble breathing, and my allergy attacks which bring on sinus infections–if we can clean the air, all three of us might be doing better. But it is technology, which means I don’t understand it, and won’t be able to fix it if anything goes wrong. So all I can do is give it a few days and see if it makes a difference. I will have to spend more time dusting than I used to: the replacement filters are expensive.
Please pray that this winds up working for us!
All right: X-rays, blood work, antibiotic injection, thorough examination–the works. You should see the bill. They had to give me smelling salts. And of course Robbie didn’t cough the whole time she was at the doctor’s. In fact, she hasn’t yet coughed today.
For the time being, the antibiotics might help, our new air purifier (due in January) might help, and they’re going to do further study of the blood work and the X-rays just to make sure they know what’s what. Please, Lord, let the air purifier be the solution to the problem. That’ll be me you see turning cartwheels on the lawn.
So that’s that for now. I came home and ate soup and brownies. It’s my freak-out and I’ll handle it my way.
Everybody, your prayers are greatly appreciated.
Our cat, Robbie, has had a bit more than her share of tribulating. I’ve got to take her to the vet first thing tomorrow because lately, for no reason we can think of, she’s coughing. We had at least two years of having to medicate her for that, and at last the cough went away… but now it’s back.
In the meantime, the cost of the asthma medicine has doubled and you just can’t find a rubber mask that fits over a cat’s face to deliver the medicine. We used to have one, but they don’t last forever and now we can’t find a new one. And we’re still medicating her for a hyper thyroid. I don’t know: maybe that medicine needs to be a little weaker. She’s put on more weight than we’d like to see. Maybe that’s making her cough. We just don’t know. Hopefully the doctor does.
It seems all of us around here are taking turns being sick. Gets to be a bit wearing, after a while. We would be thankful for your prayers.
If you don’t see any posts here tomorrow morning, it’s because I’m not here, either.
This was supposed to be our week off.
Today is the 42nd anniversary of our first date.
We were working at the old Bayshore Independent newspaper. Patty was the bookkeeper, I was managing editor. We went to dinner at The Islanders in Matawan, a super-nice Chinese restaurant; and they treated us like royalty, the proprietor being very happy with the restaurant review I wrote a few weeks before (thank you, Steve Wong, wherever you are). No, we didn’t have a spread quite like in the photo: there were only two of us. But we had the best.
Then we went to a movie, The Voyage of the Damned, and afterward to my softball team’s hangout, Sam’s Bar & Grill. Somewhere along the way, Patty mentioned the ancient Medes’ capital city, Ecbatana. That’s when I knew I was in love. You can’t easily find a woman who knows about Ecbatana.
All of these places that I’ve mentioned are now one with Ecbatana, but we’re still together. And tonight we hope to take a leisurely spin around town to admire everybody’s Christmas lights.
