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I Survived Another Trip to the Dentist.   The big news of the week is that I seemed to have survived yet another trip to the dentist. This one was to no ordinary dentist, it was to an oral surgeon in Melbourne . I visited him on Friday to have some teeth out. I was particularly concerned bout one wisdom tooth that he had to remove. It had a vicious hook that went very close to a nerve in the bottom jaw. So far so good, I don’t seem to have lost any feeling in my lips or mouth. I got the teeth out in the chair, while awake, saving $2600. The oral surgeon was adamant that I should be accompanied by someone when I left the surgery. I had originally arranged for my sister to accompany me. But she is currently in hospital dealing with bacterial meningitis. The first operation to stop brain fluid leaking out her nose didn’t work, so she underwent a second operation on Tuesday of last week. We are hopeful that this altered surgery worked. So I arranged for an Aunty wh...

Hi all, I eventually had a better week last week after a woeful start. I even did some writing towards the end of the week too, starting a new short-story. I am determined that it will be a short story and not turn into a novella or novel. I got the idea for the story when I saw a rainbow (awww shucks). I am over my cold, yaaaa, so last Wednesday I went for my first swim in 27 days. My pent up annoyance with life must have had something to do with me swimming my best time this year. I find swimming a great stress reliever. I saw the rainbow on the way back from the pool on Friday. I seemed to have fixed my internet link by replacing the aging cable from computer to phone socket and the filter/splitter. My link to the ISP has not dropped out since. And Divine magazine has accepted two more article ideas I have, more about them in future posts. But my sister’s graft to fix brain fluid leaking down her nose seems to have failed over the weekend. Her surgeon has no...

Hi all, Yesterday, a deluge of health issues and other problems felt like it was going to sweep me down a river of despair, into a sea void of hope, filled with sharks that ripped apart... You get the idea. But today, a few dykes have been built to hold back the storm waters. More about that next week, as this post is about last week. Particularly it is supposed to be about my writing efforts last week. Well, surprise surprise, I actually did some writing on four days last week, which is pretty good when compared to previous weeks. Of the days I didn't write, one day was spent on a train and bus, escorting my mother down to visit my sister at St Vincents in Melbourne. My sister was getting anti-biotics dripped into her as she waited for an infection to clear so they could operate. They wanted to put a bit of skin grafted from her stomach up her nose to patch a leak. Brain fluid, for lack of a better term, was leaking out her nose. She had the operation on Sunday and it seems to ha...

Year's Best Australian Science Fiction And Fantasy 4 by Bill Congreve My rating: 3 of 5 stars I had read all three of the previous volumes of The Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy. Like the previous volumes, volume 4 is an uneven collection with some good stories and some just so so. Unlike the previous volumes this volume did not have one particular story that stood out and shouted, aren't I great. The best story for me was Richard Harland's horror tale Special Perceptions. It is about a delusional man's decent into madness. It really gave me the creeps and had me checking my own delusions. As in volume two, Greg Egan had a story, Glory, set in the universe he created in the novel Incandescence. Glory asked the question, will knowledge eventually destroy the universe? I also enjoyed Rjurik Davidson's science fiction story Domine, more for its style than its substance. The story made me work as I tried to figure out the relationship...

Hi all, I still have a cold. The pharmacist's prediction that the latest batch of antibiotics would fix it in 48 hours has proven wrong. I was talking to an ex-neighbour the other day and he told me his wife had had this seasons "cold" for four weeks. Is it just me, or are colds hanging around a lot longer these days? I do have an autoimmune disease, so perhaps it is just me, and my ex-neighbour's wife. It's been two and a half weeks of lethargy so far. It's becoming depressing. My sister may be in hospital for three weeks, as she waits for the infection to clear up before they operate on her. She has bacterial meningitis. I am hoping to escort my mother down to Melbourne to see my sister sometime this week. My mum does not feel secure in going by herself. More on Ebooks I have fallen behind in my newspaper reading (like everything else) so some of this might be old news. But I read that Charlaine Harris has joined Stephenie Meyer, Stig Larson and James Patt...

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow My rating: 3 of 5 stars Cory Doctorow was a very enthusiastic panelist at Aussiecon4 last year. He tended to appear on panels about the future of writing and publishing, a subject that interested me, so I found myself attending many of the panel discussions he appeared on. As a small tribute to his energy during Aussiecon, I purchased a signed copy of the novel. The story is set in a near present San Francisco. The novel centers around a 17 year-old geek called Marcus. Marcus enjoys role playing games and computers, but unlike your typical stereotyped geek, he has a social conscience and is prepared to stand up for himself. The story begins with Marcus and his friends playing a game where clues are left around the city. The group find themselves near the bay bridge when terrorists blow it up. In the aftermath Marcus and his friends are all arrested by the Department of Homeland Security. Marcus is eventually released into a changed world, wh...

Hi all, I still have a cold. Doctor has prescribed different antibiotics with a repeat. He gave me a medical certificate until next thursday. But the pharmacist reckons the antibiotics will do the job in 48 hours. I hope so, as I may need to go to Melbourne again on the weekend. My sister has bacterial meningitis and may need to undergo surgery in the next few days. She admitted herself to Albury hospital on Wednesday and was flown to St Vincents in Melbourne last night. She has had the condition before, about a decade ago - brain fluid leaks from the nose - and they fixed her up. Her health concerns make my my cold and dental issues pretty petty. I will have to get used to going to Melbourne as I have two root canals and two crowns to be done at the dental hospital as well as a couple of other procedures. If I had to pay for it all it would cost about $9000. Of course I could wait the three years for the local dental clinic to do the job, but then I think I would just be getting two t...