I woke at three in the morning to answer a call of nature. I'm one of those people who has to have moving air on me at all times when I sleep. So, in a pitch black room I open my eyes and I see a halo of light in front of me. I quickly blink to see if I'm hallucinating, but nope, it's still there.

Because I'm me, I alternately close one eye and then the next. The halo disappears when my right eye is closed. Hmm, says I. What fresh Hell is this? I lay there while my sleep-addled brain turns this problem over.

Finally, I realize that my right eye has the perfect paralax to see past the spinner of the fan and be able to observe the faint spark from the brushes in the fan motor glowing in the dark room.

Cool.

It's October, and Halloween is right around the corner. I haven't painted myself into the corner, but I've had some pretty good Halloween costumes in years past. No easy task for my panoramic physique. I've been assembling elements for this year's costume, but y'all are just gonna have to wait for the big reveal.

My dog, Gna had a tumor removed in March of '18. The biopsy results were that it was an aggressive cancer. And while my vet got narrow margins, with this type of cancer they'd like wide margins. It was located close to her genitals, so there was just no room to get wider margins. This morning I noticed she has another mass in almost the same spot. I'm bringing her in next week for my vet to have a look-see. She's 8-9 as near as we can determine, so it's going to be a judgement call. And there's always a chance that things have gone seriously sideways internally. Today has been really hard, I've been sitting at work torturing myself with what-ifs.

I turned in my submission for my monthly writer's group and I'm really happy with it. I suck at short stories, but this one came in around thirteen pages and just under 4,000 words. The 30,000 foot view is it's a sci-fi/milfic/vampire story that takes a hard left turn into Lovecraftian horror. The writer's group meets on Friday. I'm looking forward at least that far.

That is all, and I think that's enough on my plate for right now.

People ruin everything.

I totally  would have worn, ironically, a shirt that said, "Save the Planet Eat the Children". But some political fringe case / mental illness sufferer made it go mainstream before I could wear it with a proud smirk.

I guess I'm going to have to go with "Remember, Napalm Sticks To Kids".

2019 is the year that the movie Blade Runner was set in. That is all.

Dana Falkenberg, 3, American Flight 77, The Pentagon. Her remains were never found.

After my sister Hope had a harrowing and nearly life-ending medical episode lasting from Christmas to March, she resolved that the whole family should get together.  She elected to hold this at York Beach, Maine.

Now, York Beach is your typical beach town. Lots of overpriced goods, expensive restaurants, family amusements and speed traps. (15 MPH over the limit, $230. I'm not bitter, really.) Other than being located in Maine and the water being hypothermia-inducingly cold, you could plop it down in any state from New Hampshire to Florida and the only way you would be able to tell would be the accent.

This is the coast north of Short Sands. The Union Bluff Hotel has been in business since 1868. Real estate along the Maine coast is just as crazy as anywhere else along the coast.  Every building there probably goes for over a million.

We look back at the Apollo 11 mission and see a triumph of human will, technology and daring. But at the time there was a chance that it would all end in disaster. Setting aside the prior Apollo 1 deaths of three astronauts, Gus Grissom, Roger White and Ed Chaffee, in a "plugs out test" of the Saturn V rocket and the Apollo Command and Service Modules. There was a single, critical piece of equipment that could not be tested until it was time to use it. Specifically, the Lunar Excursion Module's ascent engine. The LEM descended with a more powerful engine on it's descent stage. But rather that tow all the weight of the descent stage, NASA engineers decided to leave it behind and only ascend to rendezvous with the Command and Service modules with a much lighter ascent stage carrying the astronauts and the moon rock samples.

Of course, Murphy also had to intervene. In the tight confines of the LEM, either Aldrin or Armstrong's life support pack broke off the push button that would activate the ascent engine. Aldrin used a pen nib to push the button and the engine activated, but I can't help but imagine that the atmosphere in the LEM was pretty tense as they approached lunar liftoff.

Tension in the White House was also pretty high. As William Safire wrote this speech for President Nixon to read;

IN THE EVENT OF MOON DISASTER:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dare to send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at the stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern time, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

Just wanted to take a second to report how happy I am that I left Farcebook. Yes, I miss social anouncements. But word of events generally reaches me, given time. And I don't have to waste processing cycles and emotional energy on the latest trauma du jour, real or imagined.

In general, I've been happier not knowing about the minutiae of my peer group's lives.

That is all.

Spare a thought or raise a glass to absent companions for all of the men who waded ashore or jumped into Normandy 75 years ago. A mere tithe of them are left to tell the stories of that day.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: 

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. 

At the going down of the sun and in the morning 

We will remember them.

Lawrence Binyon, ​​​​​​​For the Fallen

So, I had carpal tunnel surgery on my left hand 3/8. Two weeks later, I got the stitches out and my hand looked like a gutted fish. Recuperated for two weeks and then got the same surgery on my right hand on 4/10. Two weeks later, I got the stitches out and my right hand looked like a gutted fish.

In between, my old roommate, Rick Desautels died of a respiratory infection.

We had been pals and roommates for ten years, during our desperate twenties and into our thirties. He had survived two bouts of chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. A third roommate, Bernie Lisewski, committed suicide in 2003. We reunited at his memorial service to scatter his ashes. The last time I saw him was in 2004, when I was returning from vacation in Charleston, SC. I stopped in Raleigh and hung out with him for a day. We lost touch after that. In those missing years, he went through another round of chemotherapy. Each successive round took a toll on his heart and lungs. His doctor had recently told him that he had the lungs of an eighty-year old man.

Rick never had a big footprint on the internet. I searched for him from time to time over the years. The only thing I ever found was an arrest record for possession of a weapon of mass destruction. I was only a little surprised and surprisingly proud. (It wasn’t a weapon of mass destruction. It was a training model of an AT-4 rocket propelled grenade.)

In between the time I knew him and his passing he became a staple at a burlesque theater in Raleigh. He would hold down the stage or work the door. He armed the dancers with pepper spray, walked them to their cars, controlled the odd drunk or handsy audience member and generally made himself an invaluable member of the community.

Rick, or as he was known and loved by the burlesque and nerd community in Raleigh, Lord War Bunny, had a massively irreverent sense of humor. He enjoyed tilting at windmills and his lance was humor. Sarcasm was his super power.

His brother Chris described him as a man of intense passion and little ambition. But what Rick cared about most was people. He wanted people to be safe. He might grumble about it, but he’d walk the girls to their cars and make sure they weren’t hassled by the patrons. Even if they’d have to stop for him to catch his breath on the way there. At his memorial the celebrants described how when they entered a new venue for a game, a convention or a performance if they looked around and spotted Lord War Bunny, they knew that was their safe place.

The celebrants at the mundane memorial and the memorial held by the burlesque community for him described how they’d hear that Bunny was in the hospital. And at the next show he’d be standing there next to the stage. His quiet presence reassuring them that everything was okay and nothing was going to go wrong. And it didn’t.

Good job, buddy. You’ve earned your rest. I’ll be along someday. Make sure you save me a seat.