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Last night we got back from visiting Peter’s mum in the hospital up north…and it’s an understatement to say that neither of us were happy to see a woman previously so vital looking so frail, and half the time fighting for every breath.

Now this morning came a message from Peter’s sister saying that she’d been called to the hospital because Mum had taken a turn for the worse…and the consultant who’s been handling Mum’s case has said that there’s not much they can do for her now but “keep her comfortable.”  This is unhappy news. I suspect we may have to go back upNorth again rather quickly: and if this happens, work and (obviously) blogging will have to take a back seat for a time. Please, everybody understand. I’ll do my best to keep you all posted as events transpire, but our internet access up there is spotty.

Any spare prayers would be very welcome right now.

Dear folks,

Just a quick note to let you know that things are about to move into a considerably higher gear on the “Big Meow” project.

A word first about the health situation here, since it has been interfering in a big way, and some of you will want to know how things are. My gall bladder is stable at the moment, and though surgery is going to be a necessity shortly, the doctor has let me know that I should be able to keep going as I am without too much trouble for the time being. I am therefore taking the rest of the month of July off to deal with the task of finishing the book, so that it can go off for editing. (There are other circumstances affecting this, but more about those in a moment.)  I want to also apologize for not having updated everyone on this situation sooner, but it kept looking like (each few days) it would be okay, and then (again each few days) something would go wrong again. I’m very sorry about this, all — I’ll work to be better about updates.

Chapter Seven is now nearly ready (after having been reworked a couple of times) and will be posted over the next few days, ideally on Friday. Other projects are all in a “quiet period” at the moment, so I should be able to get down to the business fo completing chapters Eight through Thirteen (and there may be a fourteenth — I have to see how the structure starts acting in the book’s final stages, as some new plot material has turned up that I wasn’t expecting).

The only factor likely to interfere with this is one which some of you will already know about from Peter’s blog at petermorwood.livejournal.com.  His mother is in the hospital with an exascerbation of her longstanding heart trouble, and at the age of ninety, you’ll understand that we both feel our place right now is up there with her rather than down here at home. We will therefore be heading up for Belfast today, and I’m not entirely clear how long we may be up there (though right now the plan is to stay, on this visit, only until Saturday). This relocation may slow down my work somewhat, but with the laptop and the speech-to-text software with me, I should be able to keep going at a good pace. However, not being home means I will not have access to the mail server software from which the chapter-is-ready announcements come — so I’d ask everybody please to check the weblogs at the-big-meow.com and felinewizards3.blogspot.com for news as to when individual chapters will be going up. As usual, subscribers will be seeing their chapters ten days before everybody else does.

Thanks again, all. Keep an eye on the blogs starting Friday.

Best — Diane

Viagra reduces hamster jetlag.

But only because all you nice people keep asking. (If you don’t want to read a few paragraphs of what my mother used to refer to, in other people, as “the organ recital”, for Ghu’s sake look away now.)

Short version: I’m ok, and improving as we get control of the situation. I am no longer incapacitated / bedridden / completely useless.

Longer version: Tom Lehrer was right to call the gall bladder “one of the more important technological advances since the invention of the joy buzzer and the dribble glass.” Especially in its predictability once it starts acting up.

It’s pretty much a given, now, that I’ve got gallstones, and that my gall bladder is having trouble with them. The ultrasound and Xray to determine how many / how big the stones are is still a week off.  Right now the situation is being managed with rigid diet control (particularly of fats) and drugs for pain relief. (Nothing fancy, fortunately.) While I sit around being alternately amused and annoyed at myself for having spent the last year or year and a half thinking that this was a recurrent back problem which would go away by itself, or (sometimes) after taking an aspirin.

If there’s an ongoing frustration, it’s that it is sometimes hard to tell what’ll set off an attack (which involves 6-10 hours of extreme internal discomfort, accompanied by bloating, cramps and other minor joys). I am, as it were, my own test tube: put something in, hold your breath and see what hapens. What can’t I put in? Oh, nothing much, just most of the foods I really like. Any significant amount of butter, full-fat cheese or sour cream. [Which I couldn’t have anyway until I get some Lactaid in here, as I am now also at least lactose-maldigestive if not entirely intolerant.] Chocolate. Eggs. Some red meats. Yes, but which ones? Argh, there goes another 6-10 hours. And so on.)

(sigh) Enough of that. I’m getting caught up on book shipping (for those of you who’re curious, I’ll be mailing you today / tomorrow with tracking numbers, etc) and other work (yes, The Big Meow) and all the things I ought to be doing rather than lying in bed groaning.

Anyway, folks, thanks for your concern, it’s been much appreciated.

(An afterthought: Peter Murray would have been amused by both of these…)

Tinky Winky speaks out on Jerry Falwell

From GoApe (T-)Shirts: ATAT Walker in Veterinary Collar

The Young Wizards discussion forums have lost a steadfast moderator and a good friend. Peter Murray died yesterday in hospital in the UK.

He is going to be so missed by the many Forum members to whom he was guide, mentor and fellow jokester in chat, an endless source of useful advice on the Forums, and an constant bringer-of-order-out-of chaos generally — especially as regards his ongoing work on the timeline of the Young Wizards universe (which at least he knew was in the early stages of being revised, with his work being significant in the upcoming revisions to the first three volumes).

Rest well, cousin: see you around.

To those folks who have outstanding requests for books that still need to be dealt with: Please bear with me for a day or so. I spent most of yesterday and some of today dealing with what I now discover was a gall bladder attack… and frankly I’m not in the best of shape right now.

(mutter) More shortly, after the ultrasound. Apologies for the interruption in service.

 Just down from space: Nasa’s paired solar imaging satellites (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory, or STEREO; what a bunch of wiseacres they are over there) have sent back the first 3-D images and movies of the Sun. Yum yum.

(Some of these might be better with the red/green glasses, but they work OK for me. Especially the videos — the depth / 3D effect is really impressive.)

I’m in the middle of crazed work on about five different things at the moment, but sometimes you come across something so cool that it has to be shared immediately.

An animation of the Bayeux Tapestry: at YouTube

(courtesy of The Classical Bookworm)