Blips – Philoquialisms

That tired Douglas Adams reference

I’m rolling up my regular blog posts here.

Readership has never been high, and engagement at this point went from “low” to “nearly nonexistent” over the last six months or so. I started writing this blog mostly as a personal exercise, to make sure that the weeks didn’t go totally unmarked, and I’m still going to do that… just in a more private format.

As a strong advocate of not letting things slip down into the Memory Hole, I plan on keeping the blog software itself up-to-date and the site available. I’ll probably look into a dynamic-to-static conversion tool to make it all more lightweight, but that can come later.

I almost wrote It’s been real here, but: has it? It’s certainly been something. And maybe it will be again, some day.

On “On Writing”

I don’t have anything I particularly want to talk about at length this week, so I’ll say this: I took a break from the fantasy doorstops to read Stephen King’s On Writing after being indirectly pointed in its direction for roughly the thousandth time. It’s good! It’s about 40% memoir and 60% writing advice, but both sections are excellent, written in a fun and engaging manner that makes the book zip past. I read the whole thing in one sitting. If you do any sort of writing–at all, really, not just prose–it’s worth the time.

(Those of you who read it will appreciate the irony of not writing even when I’m not in the mood, but given that his section on adverbs in On Writing is chock-full of them, that just means both King and I are proud members of the Hypocrite Club.)

What else should I be

Sorry, folks, but I’m just not feeling up to writing something up this week. Some combination of my allergies and my recovery means I’ve been very low energy for days now, and I have my follow-up appointment tomorrow morning so I have to go to bed at a reasonable hour. (Honestly, the real challenge will be to go to bed late enough to make sure I don’t wake up at 5am.)

I am just an update on an update on an update…

…but so far so good. Still groggy, about to go back to sleep, can barely type coherently; all expected results from heavy sedation. Also expected: no more damn gall bladder.

Entering a holding pattern

I have to be at the hospital at 06:45am tomorrow for my gall bladder surgery. My hope is that some point tomorrow afternoon I’ll be awake enough to post an update here. If not, well, we shall see…

An update on my gall bladder

A short one today: it’s definitely gallstones. I’m going to have surgery on the 18th, or 22nd, or 8th–it’s unclear at the moment, thanks to shifting it around in an attempt to ensure someone’s actually available to drive me there and back on the day–but surgery it is. I’m hoping that the 8th works out, since that means I might still be able to fit in a trip back home before the full suck of summer arrives… but getting this done is more important than leisure visits back to Louisiana.

An update on my update: Nope, the 18th it is.

Home again, home again

Just a very quick note that I made it back to Lenoir safe and sound. It was a very long day, and I already miss hanging out and watching television with my Mom like I did basically every evening for the last three weeks. Sigh. But I am very, very looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight. Which I will be doing in about ten minutes, give or take. Woo!

All quiet on the snowy front

I’ve got nothing particularly exciting to talk about right now–or, at least, nothing I have the energy to write–but I figured it’s worth nothing that I came through the nasty weather this weekend just fine. I didn’t even lose power, knock on MDF.

Here, have some snow of your own.

Gotta love when a video is exactly what it says on the tin.

Ripples and effects

This is just a quick note: the puzzles that I’ve been working on with Krazydad–Ripple Effects, as made not-very-famous by Nikoli–went live this evening! You can even solve them online, no need for a printer. The online version can be found here, and if you’re the sort that would rather print them out and solve them the old fashioned way, the PDFs are here. I will definitely be doing a Phil’s Puzzle Primer on them soon, so stay tuned, but there are instructions in both places that will help you get started. Enjoy! And you may even see more collaboration the two of us in the future. We’re currently discussing a new puzzle type of my own devising. We’ll see what happens.

*This is the first of the super-tough puzzles. I… strongly recommend you don’t start there.*

Cold (typing) shoulder

Apologies for the radio silence this week, but I’ve been having issues with my right shoulder that typing and mousing exacerbate. I’ve chosen to be a (relatively) good boy and keep them to a minimum… which means the continuation of the Cardpocalypse will have to wait another week.