A few of you may have noticed that the site has been a tad quiet lately. The last article before Saturday’s was from June, where I talked about… why the site has been quiet.
This has not been by design, though the longer it’s gone on, the more I’ve felt like I need to make some kind of splashy “Return of The Modern Father” event. However, what I’m actually going to do is try to get back into the swing of things. The issue has been time. Life has been… interesting. A running joke in the
Never mind what’s gone on in the realm of world events, my personal life has taken a number of interesting twists and turns since this spring. The first month of it is expressed in my June post about video games, Playstation Remote Play, and financial stuff. Well, the mortgage refinance took until *August* to complete. We started the process in late May, and for whatever reason, the bank of choice kept bumbling along until the end of August to finally allow us to close on the darn thing. Eventually, that was settled and we refinanced our house, paid down a bunch of stuff, and have a few new upgrades to our home that have made life easier.
Of course, that only explains the first half of the extended absence. The fall has been it’s own bit of special. Behold, a gross medical picture:
That’s a PICC line. It’s something that happens to us cystic fibrosis folks when the bacteria in our lungs gets a bit frisky. The decline that lead to this bad boy started in late August, when one of the boys brought home a bug that made it’s way to me. A month later, after a course of oral antibiotics, I was still not doing great. A visit to the doctor revealed diminished lung function, wherein a course of IV antibiotics was started.
Three weeks later, I was in the ER with a high fever and almost no immune system. Turns out, I’m one of the small number of people who experience an adverse drug reaction to Zosyn; it shut down my bone marrow. I narrowly avoided a hospital stay, but between the Zosyn trying to kill me and the lack of immune system, the progress against the initial infection hadn’t really gone anywhere. Two week later, on a new antibiotic, I’ve recovered over half of the missing lung function, but not all of it. So I’m still with the PICC line, nearly 6 weeks later. The hope is that the week of Thanksgiving my lung function has recovered enough to allow it to be removed.
In the meantime, I’ve also been trying to set up a woodshop in my garage, as I’ve become enamored with the idea of wood turning. That was one of the secret projects I mentioned in my previous post, and I’ve been collecting equipment and getting the garage put together to do it. Here’s the result so far:
The lathe on the right was bought new, but the drill press was found through Craigslist for $75. It does everything I need it to do for now, with way more capacity than a drill press I could have picked up new for $100.
And this weekend, I was finally able to take a shot at pen turning.
It started out very well:
But, I actually may of sort of messed it up…
I’m feeling good about it from here though. Turns out Bloodwood isn’t great for first attempts as it takes a bit of practice.
Finally, I do have a big announcement coming up, but I’m not ready to share yet. But trust me, it’s huge and I will have a lot to say about it in the coming weeks and months.
So that’s what I have to say today about the site. The announcement should be within the next week or so, as I get things finalized and lined up. I’m also going to get back with Rachel to do more Tangential Parenting podcasts, as it’s a fun thing to do.