The Mandelbear's Musings

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Along with a lot of procrastination (see below), 2023 was notable for

• A trip to the Netherlands with N and G, taking in Leiden, Utrecht, and Amsterdam. Its final week was marred by...
• The untimely demise of our household's pocket panther, Desti.
• Several other deaths, not in my immediate family, but not far from it either.
• My battle, officially from the end of September, with prostate cancer. As of a couple of weeks ago I appear to be winning, but October, November, and about half of December were exceedingly uncomfortable.
• The sale of Rainbow's End North, our house on Whidbey Island. The last house I'll ever share with Colleen.

On the whole, it wasn't a very good year.

And now it's time to wrap up the year's accomplishments procrastinations, and see how I did -- or more accurately didn't -- against the goals I laid out last New Year's Day.

( Dismal details )

So all-in-all, 75+40+80+40+25+10 = 270, out of a possible 800. Terrible. I'm not sure prostate cancer is much of an excuse, but I'll grasp at that straw anyway.

Thanks to Thanksgiving, I think it worked out to being a pretty good week, modulo health problems and $A's customer service. (As for the latter, apparently "invalid address" means "the manufacturer won't allow $A to sell that product in your state". That's three hours I won't get back.)

The feast on Turkey Day was excellent. The niblings' other parents M and J) were here, along with N's foster-kids K, s" and g". J brought the bird, gravy, and roasted potatoes; I made my usual cranberry relish; and G made the rest. s" and g", who have been up on Whidbey, brought down apple and cherry Whidbey Pies, plus a (non-WP) pecan pie. Good food, good conversation, and Alice's Restaurant for after-dinner entertainment.

I stayed down in Seattle this weekend, rather than going up to Whidbey the way I usually do. It felt like slacking off, except that it wasn't really because most of my time and attention went into preparing for tomorrow's initial appointments with urological, radiation, and medical oncologists. And I spent some time on Wednesday making an icon out of an old illustration of the appropriate constellation.

In the links, Looking for the last universal common ancestor of all living organisms (the original paper is also linked from Friday's notes). Also, Metal clouds and liquid gems spotted in the atmosphere of hot Jupiter WASP-121 b may be of interest to fans of Cordwainer Smith (see also, story linked from last week), and Kim Kardashian’s Ultimate Nipple Bra is likely to be of interest to trans women and breast cancer survivors.

( Notes & links, as usual )

... another trip around the sun without Colleen to share it with. But that's what happens when you get old, I guess. It still beats the alternative.

I was pleased, if rather bemused, to see a long string of birthday wishes in my FB feed; if you posted one of them, thank you. I mostly avoid the Face Place except for a small number of groups, and following up the occasional email notification.

I don't think I have a whole lot more to say, and as Tom Lehrer didn't exactly say, if you don't have anything to say, "the very least you can do is to shut up!" So I'll do that.

As I said a year ago, it's time for my annual goal-setting wishful thinking post. I'm not optimistic. (N says I should force myself to be optimistic. See below.)

1. The new top goal is getting the Whidbey Island house sold. This one has sub-goals: 1. get the Stuff cleared out -- combination of estate sale, eBay, and junk-hauling; 2. landscaping -- the yard has been basically abandoned for three years; 3. repairs -- floors, garage door, garage roof, painting, power-washing; 4. putting it on the market -- that's the easy part. I've wasted the last year and a half that I could have been using for all this.
2. Finishing the EOL paperwork: find a lawyer (who hopefully can serve as an executor as well), and get the will and advanced directives done, as well as documenting my files (which I gave myself credit for at least starting last year). A lot of my life is on the computer, and I can't expect anyone to make sense of it without a roadmap.
3. Better time management. That mostly means controlling doomscrolling, blog-scrolling, rabbit-holing, and general reading. There has to be time for self-care, writing, and music.
4. Self-care, as usual. Including but not limited to exercise, walking, journaling, and music. And, at N's strong recommendation, being deliberately optimistic.
5. Writing. This includes a new verse in QV (see below), but also more introspective journaling (see above).
6. Music. Includes guitar, singing, remote and maybe even live filking, and recording at least one album: Amethyst Rose. (Which also requires a new verse for QV, so songwriting as well.) (Also, I'm signed up for a course in recording at North Seattle College this quarter.)
7. Get back in touch with some of the many people I've lost touch with.
8. Reorganize my to-do lists. N says that I should trim my list down to something I can see all at once, and pick off 1-3 items per day to work on. (That's based on some (perhaps questionable) assumptions, including the grownth rate of the list, the size distribution of the items, and a psychological version of the Axiom of Choice. This is starting to look a lot like another rabbit hole.)