I haven’t been Sick for Three Years

Blog Post No. 534

As you can read in the title, my epic run is over. Thankfully (as far as I know from home testing) I haven’t gotten the dreaded COVID, but late last week, I succumbed to the common cold. Having not been sick for so long (I have to admit) I was a bit of a baby about it. Thankfully, I had a rare weekend off, so I was able to do what had to be done to kick the butt of any cold or flu. Nothing.

Working on a Monday

Blog No. 373

I can hear some (maybe one) of you now. You look up at the title and mutter to yourself, ‘so what?’ Who doesn’t work on a Monday, right? I don’t. Not normally. I work for a rental place (a place where the public can rent a room for events) and it makes way more sense for us to work Tuesday to Saturday than the “normal” Monday to Friday. I know way more people in a variety of jobs who don’t do the “normal” week. But that’s just a little side complaint from me. The whole concept of the dreaded Monday gets under my skin way more than what’s reasonable. What about the forgetful Saturday, the timid Wednesday, or the exaggerated Sunday? Day jobs can suck any day of the week. Sure, weekends are awesome, when you get them. When your days off are Monday and Wednesday with the occasional Sundays, the system breaks down.

I took Canada Day Off

Blog No. 345

I normally get Mondays off. The hate for Mondays is one of those things that has always seemed bizarre and kind of exhausting. I get the 9 to 5 office drone hatred for having to go back to work after two short days of freedom (probably spent doing all the chores that get missed all week). My issue comes from that group being a minority. I have never worked a job that has weekends off. Most professions (and crappy jobs) that I can think of don’t fit within that bubble. People have to work evenings, weekends, or shift work. So. I normally get Mondays off, but usually on Mondays I have plenty to do. Besides the chores thing since it’s basically my Sunday (or whatever. It depends on the day). It’s a big writing day for me, and I got to boxing. Those things alone are enough to carve out most of my time. This week, though, I just stayed inside any had a day to myself.

Back to Normal?

Blog No. 291

Modern medicine is a miraculous thing. I go to a lot of public events and get a lot of unsolicited comments about how doctors are evil, medicine and pharmaceutical companies are there to get you sick, and other nonsense. I try to rally against it when I can (often times the person yelling is a brick wall). If it weren’t for my doctors and medication, I wouldn’t be here. If it weren’t for the antibiotics I’m currently taking, I’d probably still be sick in bed. I’m not. Pneumonia seems to be something that hangs on for a while, but I’m not bedridden anymore. It’s great. I did miss a lot of good writing time, but over the last week, I’ve done really well with the time I have. I pulled off nearly a chapter a day for four days. It’s a good feeling.

A Short Little Post for my Birthday

Blog No. 290

Something came up at the day job recently where a coworker had to go away for a last minute emergency. With a little scramble/planning we were able to free up the shifts (mostly by having me take them). Since I was taking this person’s shifts for two weeks, I thought it would be nice to give her some shifts of mine now. She would get some of the hours back, and I could finally get some free time to really focus on writing. Plus, the time would happen over my birthday, so bonus if I decided to do something about that (which was very doubtful). The thing with plans is that they don’t always work out how you like and I got pneumonia. So, since last Thursday I’ve been either in bed, in the bathroom, at the clinic, or half conscious in a chair with an old movie playing in the background. So, no writing getting done. Doing this post has been tough enough. I am, I think, finally on the mend. I’ve managed to sleep thought a full night and I actually ate something. Hopefully I can be better in time to go back to work. Yay.

Driving Wile You Read This

Blog No. 286

I think this was from last year’s ChiSeries Toronto. Or it was SPCS?

I’ll have a more in depth post about last night’s ChiSeries Toronto reading next week, but as this is being posted, I’ll be on the road, guzzling coffee. That’s the weird thing that happens when you have an event the day before a blog post day. I could possibly stay up late and write the post for the morning, or I could push the post back. I could even just guess at how everything will go and write the thing as if that’s what went down, but I won’t. I’ll do this instead. I’m going to vaguely write some stuff about it and save the real post for when I can sit down and appropriately convey the essence of the event. I can tell you that I am super excited for another Toronto reading, especially with the ChiZine folks. As it stands, though, I am unsure of how the reading went.

Ben VS the Uncommon Cold

Blog No. 206

I work up on Sunday morning and knew something wasn’t right. My weekend had been the culmination of two solid weeks of work (no time off for good behaviour, or writing). Lots of terrible thing happened that had no choice but to be dealt with. Friday night was seven hours of crap that stuck to me through Saturday morning for my back-to-back shifts. While I managed to get a solid chunk of text written Friday morning, nothing was getting done on Saturday. As soon as I got home from my thankfully easier shift (minus having to mop the floors as the cleaners failed to do for the umpteenth time) I took a much needed nap and prepped all my stuff for Sundays RetroRama. No time for love Doctor Jones. I did my best to get to bed early Saturday night, knowing what was in store for me.

The Sickness

Blog No. 171

Over the last week or so, I have spent a bunch of days sick in bed (or on the couch). As is common knowledge, being sick sucks. It’s a big pain in the back side. The biggest issue I’ve had is the lack of productivity (other than the pain, maybe). Just last week, I had that boastful post about writing a novella, and I am no further along that I was. That also sucks. I’ve also not done any edits, or, oddly, much reading. To top it all off, spending so much time lying around has put my back out of sorts. Big, big pile of suck.

I Hate Hospitals

Blog No. 145

In the last few years (probably going on five or six now, though I always overestimate time) I’ve spent far too much time in the hospital. Granted, any time could be considered too much for the hospital, but it’s even worse when you are the one on the receiving end of the treatment. To be very clear, I want to point out that, other than a little unnecessary waiting and that one time no one in my family could convince the nurses that my well documented disease could be the culprit when they couldn’t figure out what was wrong (it totally was said disease too) my experiences have been as wonderful as could be when ill. Still, that could be rainbows and unicorns and I would still hate going to the hospital (and not just because neither of those things really does it for me). The only type of person I know who actually likes hospitals are sad sacks who crave the attention and sick-os who find it all fascinating or get off on healing people (you know, doctors and nurses).

I hope that dig on doctors and nurses was as sarcastic as I intended it to be. Meh, so. Last week, while minding my own business at work, I got poo-brain. The start of a headache was loitering in the back of my head (not totally unusual) and my eyes were acting funny. You know when you look at a computer screen too long? You writers will understand that. I decided to get some fresh air, and on my way out, I told a co-worker what I was up to, but it all came out wrong. Alphabet Soup (so I’ve heard it called). My words were all jumbled. I knew what I wanted to say and I knew that wasn’t what I was saying, but I couldn’t say the right thing. By my third attempt, I sat in a chair and my quick thinking co-worker sprung into action. He blurted out Hospital (not my favourite place as I’ve mentioned) and I dully nodded and was whisked to emergency for aforementioned poo-brainedness.

The Third Zine and Feeling under the Weather

Blog No. 122

Issue number three of the Zine is done, printed, and will be distributed into the wild over the next few days. In that time, it’ll be up on Adventure Worlds too. For this, the first quarter of the year, we have a cover by local artist Alex Morneau, and Finders was drawn by Nikita Why (the man who drew the cover last time. I have to apologize again, last time I misspelled his last lame. How could someone possibly do that? In my infinite ability to mess up, I managed it somehow. So Nikita, I’m very sorry, thanks for sticking around and doing a bang-up job on Finders. He did that son-of-a-gun by hand. When you take a look you’ll see why that’s amazing. I don’t think I misspelled anything this time, but e had a little trouble with the printing. When we first started to look into making the first Zine, we looked around for a local printer in our price range without much luck. Unfortunately we went with one of the big box stores (we do pay for it out of pocket) and the first couple of times that was fine. This time around we started to see the determent of cheeping out (or at least not going to people who are passionate about the stuff.