A trip to the ER, and was sent home with some heavy-duty pain meds.

I HATE narcotics!  I get it that sometimes you have to have them.  But some people do it by choice! Why on earth would  people take this stuff voluntarily?

1.  It makes me stupid.  I hate being stupid.

2.  It makes me dizzy.  How is that fun?

3.  It makes me nauseated.   (See 2.)

4. It makes me unable to do anything that I actually like doing.  I can only do stupid stuff.  (see 1.)

5.  It makes time vanish.  Ack!   I don’t have enough time in my life — who would want to lose actual entire days at a time?

Alas, all they can do for kidney stones is give you pain drugs so you don’t notice how awful you feel, and anti-nausea drugs, and anti-infection drugs.

It’s all over now, except for the after-affects of the actual drugs.   Said after-affects closely resembling a hangover on steroids.

Damn.   If I have to miss three days of DayJob, I’d really prefer to miss it in order to do something interesting and cool.

And to add insult to injury, I now have TWO weeks of DayJob to catch up on, instead of just one.   Which means that next week it’s overtime, overtime, overtime.

Plus: I haven’t even completely unpacked from my trip.  Which was a nice trip, by the way.  Glad to have done it.  Met many lizards.

They’re outside of the frame.

See? There are some, right there.

Helpful instructions.

Not the same kind.

Tiny red ants bite very, very hard.

Usually they run away, but…

BAM!

Close-up.

PS:

Don’t mind me, just passing through…

What?

Not where I’m staying, but nearby.

I looked for fallen coconuts, but there weren’t any.

Conveniently located right across the street.

All packed. Plus: sweater, because planes get cold..

Not Tucson… But far away, unfamiliar, and alone, which is always refreshing and uplifting. And an aid to concentration.

Very boring highway. Very long, very boring highway.

I have a free place to stay (and thank you thank you, undisclosed persons — who may out themselves in the comments if they so choose, but whose anonymity I shall respect otherwise), so plane fare, rental car, and food are all I have to worry about.

I am viewed with great suspicion by the natives.

I’ll be busily working on stuff, and so won’t blog very many words.    I’ll put some photos up, though, as is my habit in these cases.

Nicely symbolic of the workings of the artistic subconscious

Saving my actual words for actual writing!

Footpath.

More later.

A: Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what it means.

Q: !

A: I know!

Q: When?

A: Give it a couple of months, at least… because:

1. we’re doing it ourselves (“we” being me and Sabine, with help from our pal Brian and possibly others yet to be recruited), and
2. we have day-jobs (except Brian who is luxuriously retired),  and so, alas, available time is limited, and
3. other associated plans are afoot, which have their own timelines and everything has to synchronize properly.

Q: Wouldn’t it be faster if you had a professional service do all the work?

A:  Yes, but:

1. We are techno-nerds.   We know how to do it!
2. We are techno-nerds.   For us, this is fun and interesting!
3. See #3, above.
4. I wouldn’t mind saving the money, since my new 4-day DayJob week (which I am still loving!)  comes with appropriately reduced weekly income.

Q: Does this mean that book 5 is nearly done?

A: Um, sorry, no.   Much work remains to be done in the actual writing of the actual 5th book.   Although I am in fact working on it actively, I hesitate to provide any timeline for it at this point.

Q.  Damn.

A: Not actually a question.

Any other Q’s?

Probably because of all of this:

and this:

And some serious this:

Stop smelling so good! Stop it I say!

I also like this version of the song, because: Watch what happens when he breaks a string!

Seriously, how can I be anything but glad?

In yer face!