Price is Good for Now

Price and Leo on the couch.

Okay. Whew.  Here's the latest:

Price is 16 years old.  The lump in his belly is probably scar tissue from the operation (didn't find it before, because of the burn).

Only one of his legs is bad; the vet guesses an embolism, which isn't uncommon in cats his age.  This help explains a bad situation about three years ago, when a cat lost use of both hind legs.  Price is okay; he can walk.  Nothing can be done about it, but he's happy and gets around.

He's eating, drinking, doing everything he's supposed to.  The vet and we have decided no more cutting or desperate measures.  From now on, it's goodies and time in front of the fire for the old man.  

And thank those of you who had good thoughts for our old guy.

The Price is Right

Just got back from a 241-mile round trip with Price to the vet specialist in Kitsap County.  What a good kitty!  Only an occasional "Are we there yet?"

Lung x-rays clean, all bloodwork clean, no infections.

He has a 3-centimeter-long thickening of the walls of his small intestines.  The radiologist will have a report back in a couple of days.

Light some incense for it NOT being cancer.

Why I'm Not At The San Diego Comicon

1. Airline pressurization. I know why the babies scream during flight; if it hurts an adult like that, imagine what it's like for them while their little ear membranes are shredded.

2. Airline security. From what I've heard, I'd be closer to getting arrested. Or wearing a raincoat to the security line and when they ask me to take it off -- well, wearing nothing but one's social security number marker'd onto one's arm would probably be more bad taste than they could deal with. It would be fun on YouTube, though.

3. Pinched nerve; carrying stuff can lock this one down, and lose me up to 45% of function. I can't even drive like this; it's literally like being drunk. Not to mention blind with pain.

4. Stress attacks; I don't need to be in a hospital away from home going in insane circles by my emergency room bed, so I don't rip out my IV.

5. Virtual model becoming more and more successful, for example, the Desert Peach webcomic.

6. By building the virtual model, more people can take advantage of it; ultimately, this will again make available authors and artists who are distant, aging or ill.

7. Inside information says that the new virtual market is getting very close to working, and the more time I spend on it the more I will be ready when it hits.

8. I don't need anybody's autograph. We are all monkeys on this planet, with the same belly-buttons and toenails.

9. The closest connection I need to a movie star is through his or her work; the library will get just about any DVD I want, or I can get me some nice collections.

10. If the virtual panel ever gets off the ground, I can stay up all night at Comicon in my pajamas with my cats.

Another Artist Needs Your Help

Comic artist Dave Simons was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Now he has bills, and won't ask himself. But he needs chipping in. Go read, and pass on.

I'm sending this piece of art for the auction. At a pertinent moment in Washington.

If you ain't got money, send art. (Artists are like -- pardon the comparison --- black people in the depression: "What economic meltdown?")

This stuff adds up -- I've seen major medical bills paid off twice in creator and fan campaigns that took in a few bucks at time -- and one big art auction at San Diego Comicon that raked in $30,000 in three hours for an artist's wife's facial rebuild after a bad wreck.

(Click art to see full size. Those of you who KNOW that, have patience with readers who don't.)

Life of a Writer

Random thoughts:

I don't think my newspaper editors care if I'm a subversive as long as they know they can send me tearing out into the storm to get any weird crime story that happens out here. Or lose my mind writing down all the paper-of-record numbers at some awful community-development meeting; I would literally rather stand in the icy, pouring rain than listen to a bank manager drone on (I've done it; I can compare). I'm a amateur stringer --- I don't know no better.

Creative people are crazy. You have to kill us first to make us stop writing or drawing or making baskets. But sooner or later we have to admit we have to make choices, and if we want to continue to create, we have to back out of other things. The books and pictures and woven things come first.

NOTHING hurts as bad as the migraines that I had all my life and are now GONE!!!! I don't know why; they used to cripple me, but now they've just disappeared.

Techno-hicks Forever

Since I started traveling, I picked up shrimp for a hippy commune, stayed at the commune (so many good ideas!), hiked around Marrowstone Island, helped the woman who runs the downtown Ghost Tour in Seattle to string pendulum beads and got invited on the tour, got the files off the crashed computer (she'll recycle it) from a specialist who lives in Renton, and is worth the drive, and picked up planned electronics (including a solar panel to go with the big battery and inverter we already have, and small but powerful backups for the laptops -- one of which got the dump from the dead computer).

And found the most yummy soap on the planet.... the shop is in the Westlake Mall in Seattle, and while I was horsing around waiting for a meeting (for which I hope great things), I walked by the door and the delicious odors reached out and grabbed me by the nose. I bought the shampoo pucks because customers were raving, one puck for me, one for Roberta.

The stuff WORKS -- and it has no toxins and lasts forever. No more sodium laurel sulphate for US.