My bachelor holiday was rudely interrupted by surgery this morning, the excision of the sneaky little melanoma that decided to set up shop on my left cheek.
Quite a bit more cutting and sewing than normal. 81 stitches by the time my dermo was finished. The chicks are gonna dig this scar, let me tell you.
I had all these big plans to come home and crank out some words, because I’m a hard nut. Or maybe just a nut.
But I took a few pain killers and fell asleep instead.
I find myself temporarily lonesome in the house for the next two weeks. Jane's down in Sydney for work, and both kids are travelling overseas together. So it’s just me, the dogs, the cats, and all the manfood I can eat.
I wrote the forward to a time travel anthology a while ago. And for my sins, they sent me a bunch of bookplates to sign.
These things sat in my PO box for a while because the email from the editors telling me about them got swallowed up by Apple’s latest iOS update—which has turned the Mail app into a bit of a bin fire. Eventually, though, the team tracked me down and said, “Hey, you’ve really got to sign those bookplates.”
I've had my noise-cancelling headphones on all day because there’s major demolition happening—both across the street and on the property behind us. It’s been a huge and constant racket.
But what really had me worried wasn’t the noise. It was Willow, one of our cats. She’s usually banging her head against my office door by lunchtime, demanding to be let in so she can sleep wherever the hell she wants—usually right on top of my keyboard. But today? Nothing.
I wrote to the US law firm running a class action against Meta for IP theft and got a good result:
With everything going on in the world, it says something about me that this was the story (free link) that most engorged my rage gland today.
I sent a manuscript off yesterday, which was good, and I would’ve liked to have swung into another one today. Probably the edits on the last of the Cruel Stars novels. But I have an army of tradesmen heading my way. Some of it is cyclone-related. Guys coming out to do insurance work. And some of it is just kitchen maintenance. We’re replacing the oven after 20 years and the dishwasher after 5 or 6, which seems to be about as long as a dishwasher lasts these days.
