I have heard the sad news from several friends, who heard it from a friend of a friend, that acelightning passed away suddenly two days ago.

Sadly, I never got to meet her IRL; all I knew of her was her signature purple posts and comments that occasionally brightened my days. I was always glad to see that flash of purple on my reading page, and now it's gone, never to be seen again.

Farewell, Ace -- perhaps I'll see you again, with Colleen and Ame, somewhere over the rainbow bridge. The purple rose icon I made for Amethyst has rarely been so appropriate.

If things had gone differently in July of 2021, Colleen and I would be celebrating our 49th anniversary today, and embarking on our 50th year of marriage. Things didn't, and we're not.

I never know just how it's going to hit me. This year -- yesterday -- I hit an emotional landmine on the last page of Cordwainer Smith's story "The Game of Rat and Dragon.

... as he buried his face in the pillow, he caught an image of the Lady May.

“She is a cat,” he thought. “That’s all she is⁠—a cat!”

But that was not how his mind saw her⁠—quick beyond all dreams of speed, sharp, clever, unbelievably graceful, beautiful, [...]

Where would he ever find a woman who could compare with her?

Colleen was always some kind of cat to me. Objectively, she didn't share all that many attributes with the Lady May, but there it was, and objectivity has nothing to do with it. I buried my face in my hands and sobbed silently for a few minutes.

Well, it's a new year, so it's time for some goals. Parts of this post are recycled.

1. I'll start with a bit of unfinished business from last year: writing a "what has the bear been doing lately" infodump to be distributed mostly by email to people who aren't keeping up with Dreamwidth. Next this?? year, I guess. (Please ignore the fact that I'm picking an easy goal that I can check off early.)
2. That is of course related to another goal from last year and the one before: to get back in touch with more people -- including relatives and old friends. At least tell them where I am these days, and what I've been up to. See above.
3. Writing more in general is still on the list, including introspective and autobiographical journaling. Also see above.
4. Our taxes are going to be an effing nightmare. So the main goal is finding someone to do them for us.
5. I'm going to put setting up our DAFT business next. It has several moving parts, which will get goals of their own, so this one is just getting the legal paperwork and the bank account set up. Also see above.
6. The business will have two main divisions: Colleen's Closet -- fabric arts and related projects -- will be N's half. HyperSpace Express is my multimedia arts and record label. So I need to modernize HSX's website, and make one for C-C. A large part of that will be deciding whether to use a CMS, and which one. Or simply use Etsy and Bandcamp, tacked as subdomains onto the kind of static site I prefer. (I welcome your suggestions in the comments.)
7. I also need to go through all of my websites, and their infrastructure, and make sure they are up to date, functional, and well-documented. A lot of the bits have flaked off over the last decade or so. I noticed last night that some of the build tools are missing.
8. I need to record at least one album, so that my half of the business will have something to sell. But in general, do more music. The New Year's Eve zoom circle was, like last year, a good start.
9. Along with starting the business, N and I need to (belatedly) do our EOL planning and paperwork, including our wills. We're business partners, we co-own the house in Den Haag, and we have kids. It damned well has to get done this year. I have ordered this book on the subject, more for hack value than for reference.
10. Self care is on the list, as usual. Starting with physical -- that includes getting my health care set up, including finding an oncologist. That also includes more exercise and more walking.
11. Mental health care is "last but not least", but like last year it will be hard to quantify.

Starting our next adventure, that's what.

We left Seattle on Tuesday, 1 October (trying to get used to European-style dates, which is hard; I still prefer yyyy/mm/dd because it works better for filenames). We arrived around noon Wednesday, took an Uber to the hotel (because LUGGAGE), and fell over.

Thursday we started by registering with the municipality (which you have to do before you can do anything). On the way back, we grabbed some food at the (ubiquitous Dutch grocery store chain)Albert Heine (mostly shortened to AH in these pages) across the street from the hotel. About 14:00 we were met in the lobby by our wonderful real estate agent, Ceva, with keys and a huge bunch of flowers.

I kind of melted looking at the flowers -- Colleen would have loved them. But...

Then Ceva took us out to the house. Our house. The previous owners had taken several items that they had told us they were leaving, including some wall-mounted cabinets, which left a bit of a mess. Nothing we can't handle. They also left a couple of beds, which we don't want but can use until we can get better ones, and most of the storage we wanted (but see above).

We spent all of Friday in the hotel, with N coddling her injured foot and catching up on sleep, me enjoying cheese and fresh-baked bread from across the street, and both of us researching the stuff we'll have to buy to make the place habitable. For both humans (including G and m, arriving in about four weeks), and cats (arriving in about three weeks).

It's Saturday: to be continued.

The obvious next question is "What am I doing in this handbasket?" I think I'll leave that for the next post.

Right now, the answer to "where am I going?" is Den Haag (The Hague) in The Netherlands. The First of October. This may not come as a total surprise to the very few people I hold regular conversations with, nor to anyone who's been following this blog for the last few years, though in the latter case I wouldn't blame you for missing it.

I'm going with my family of choice -- N, G, and N's oldest kid, m. N told me that, shortly before she died, Colleen had asked her to take care of me. She had a point -- statistically one's chances of dying go way up after the death of a spouse. Followed closely by, among other things, death of a parent (Mom died in 2019) and retirement (2017). (My kids think we're crazy, BTW. In my darker moments I tend to agree with them.)

The last time N and I were in the Netherlands was back in July, getting j set up in his apartment -- he just started his first year at University of Leiden. Toward the end of that trip we connected with a real estate agent N had recently started working with, and visited a few houses for sale in the Hague. One had a perfect location, but it was a wreck. The one we put an offer on was this one. We, or rather our Dutch real estate agent, got the keys yesterday (as I write this). (That link will also give you our new address.)

We started planning this crazyness eight years ago, when the Orange Menace won the presidential election. We were within an inch of moving to Vermont and planning an escape to Canada, but were foiled by N's ex, who wanted to stay close to their kids and didn't want to move at that time (for good reasons, it must be said). Said kids are now both over 18, j (the younger) is out of high school (and see above), and in the mean time a close friend of N's who had moved to Amsterdam a few years ago told us about a bit of diplomatic hackery called (appropriately) the DAFT.

The Dutch-American Friendship Treaty

... makes it easier for US Entrepreneurs to open businesses in The Netherlands. It lowers the amount of needed investment capital from €27,000 to €4,500, frees US Entrepreneurs from the points-based test, and removes the benefit to Dutch national interests requirement. The residency permit is good for two years, after which it can be renewed for five years. The treaty is valid for all US citizens who are opening a business in the Netherlands or its territories. (Wikipedia)

Add to that the facts that the Dutch speak more English than anyone else on the continent, are incredibly queer-friendly, and know better than anyone else how to deal with floods and rising seas. After all, as they say, “God created the world but the Dutch made the Netherlands”"

I have already spent over two weeks writing this; I'm going to post it now. The movers are almost done packing up the house, and we'll meet them at the storage unit after lunch. Until later...

Edited to fix metadata screwed up by a superfluous blank line

Part 1.

Well, we're on our way to the Netherlands. We're somewhere southeast of Greenland as I write this. After a somewhat disorganized day of packing, during which I decided -- correctly, as it turned out -- that my nice new Travelpro backpack wouldn't fit under a seat, so I re-packed my drugs, headphones, charging gear, laptop, and shoulder bag(!) into my old red REI backpack (nicknamed Red, of course). Where they fit perfectly. And realized that the stuffable Eddie Bauer dufflebag I was using for my CPAP, jacket, etc. was going to be too awkward, so I re-packed that into my old MEI convertible backpack/suitacase, where it also fit perfectly.

That backpack is old. Older than my kids, I think. It holds about as much as my Travelpro 21" (or is it 22) carry-on. Which I checked. But it's a lot less densely packed, so it's manageable without wheels.

For some reason my laptop won't connect to the onboard WiFi. And N is borrowing my phone because she left hers charging in the car. So I'm getting by perfectly well on some preloaded DW posts, onboard entertainment, and emacs. I watched Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, which was just the right sort of madcap action and heartwarming ending that I think I needed just now. I decided on music rather than trying to break the mood by watching Dune. Maybe on the way back, two weeks from now.

The plan is to deliver j to his apartment in Leiden, where he will be attending University in the fall, spend the night with N in the Golden Tulip (where we stayed last trip), then spend the rest of the time in the Cove Centrum/Passage in Den Haag. (That's Dutch for The Hague; despite speaking less Dutch than a toddler at this point it's still easier to use Dutch for place names. Saves time in train stations.) We will be going back to Leiden occasionally -- j needs a new computer for school, among other things -- doing paperwork, and looking at houses. It's rather unlikely that we'll find anything this trip; we're booked into short-term housing in Den Haag starting in October.

Part 2

It's weird. As I mentioned last week, my brain seems to have turned a corner somehow, a couple of weeks ago, and a great deal of my depression seems to have lifted. I don't know how long this will last, but I'm not complaining. I don't think I know how to even talk about it. (See also, alexithymia.)

My cancer diagnosis and ongoing treatment may have something to do with it. I don't know long I can expect to live -- it could be anything between five and twenty-five years. Or I could get hit by a bus a week from now. But I've gotten used to the fact that I'm mortal. And, perhaps not entirely unrelated, non-binary.

We'll be flying over Ireland in a little while.

Part 3

... and now we're in Leiden, after a very long day. It's 10:30 am here. I'm going to post this and try to take a nap.

This morning I had my final radiation treatment. There's a gong in the waiting room, and I hit it on the way out. Very satisfying. 70 grays spread over 28 zaps, weekdays for five weeks and 3 days.

( Arithmetical and physical details, for the overly curious. )

I'm still trying to figure out what would make an appropriate way to mark the transition. By the terminology of these days I've been a survivor since my diagnosis. And I'm still being treated with a testosterone blocker -- I have another year and a half or so of that to go. And it'll be maybe another year after that until I know whether the combination actually got all the cancer. So who, or what, am I now?

An impatient, maybe?

A lot of once-in-a-lifetime events have aged off of my bucket list, most recently yesterday's total eclipse. I was in the middle of a radiation treatment for prostate cancer -- which I certainly hope will be a once-in-a-lifetime event. But it wasn't on the list.

I could have seen the total eclipse in 2017 except that I procrastinated travel planning until it was too late. 99% was pretty exciting, and I got to share it with N -- it was her first. But it could have been... My next opportunities will be in 2026 and 2027 -- both of those will be visible in Europe, and I plan to be there if I don't kick the bucket myself first.

I procrastinated travel planning for my 50th high school reunion in 2015, too -- I think that was because of anxiety, burnout, and depression -- that's when things were going badly downhill for me at Amazon.

I did get to my 50th college reunion in 2019, largely because I swore not to make the same mistake I did in 2015. I may very well skip my 55th this June, mainly because of COVID, but I'll probably regret that too.

But last year I blew off the 50th reunion of Columbae, the co-op where I lived my last years at Stanford. I don't know what I was thinking. I opted to go to OVFF, which was good, but I still regret that choice.

I went to Mom's 95th and 99th birthday parties, which were a blast. She cancelled the 100th herself, by dying two months early.

I'm not sure what the point of this exercise was.

So this morning as part of transitioning to non-binary, I got my first-ever body piercings. Three pretty little platinum helices. I am amused.

Of course, nobody but my radiology team will ever see them -- they're in my prostate. But that counts, right?

It was a lot less painful than the biopsy, which was kind of surprising. Well, except for the part where I was supposed to have a full bladder going in -- they use it as a landmark. Ouch!

I had a nice conversation with Dr. H, starting with the observation that my birthday is Wednesday. I will quote directly from her visit notes:

[mdlbear] is a very pleasant 76 year old male who presents for fiducial marker placement.

[...]

He plans to celebrate his upcoming birthday with family over Chinese food and chocolate cake.

I mentioned that I was probably going to have ma po tofu.

"Just an empty glass, Mike," the Mandelbear says as he puts a dollar bill on the bar. "I brought my own bottle. This is the last of the case of The Glenlivet that Colleen's uncle and oldest cousin gave us for our twenty-fifth anniversary. This is our 48th."

He peers at the bottle, then pours what little is left in it into the glass. "Damned if I know what I'll use next year," he says, as he puts the bottle down on the bar and walks up to the chalk line.

"To Colleen!" he says, maybe a little too loudly, then drains the glass and flings it into the fireplace, where it shatters with a satisfying *CRASH*.