So In The Meantime, Part 1 . . .
Here's a semi-brief rundown of highlights and lowlights in my life since my April 2016 post here on LJ, mainly just as they occur to me. All of these were things I would've written about here on LJ if, you know, I'd still been writing on LJ.
JUNE 2016: I made a lifelong-dreamed-of trip to St. Augustine, Florida. This was my grandparents' favorite beach, and they'd told me for nearly as long as I could remember how much I'd love its combination of ocean and history. They were absolutely right. My parents rented a house on the beach on Anastasia Island, which they shared with my sister, her kids, and me for a glorious few days. This was also the last big family vacation we took before my Mom's COPD and other issues worsened - that fall - to the point where she could no longer make long trips.
I also started keeping an Amy Siskind-like daily news log I jokingly titled Chronicle of the Pre-Apocalypse Age. This became incredibly helpful in a time when the news cycle started measuring itself in hours rather than days or longer; I could look at entries from just 2 weeks before and realized I'd already forgotten everything posted then. Though admittedly the title has become less and less funny as time has worn on.
JULY 2016: My trip to FarmerCon in Columbus, Ohio to sign and promote my latest (and still most recent) novel, Dayworld: A Hole in Wednesday. The book was a Dayworld prequel started but never finished by science fiction master Philip Jose Farmer (also my great uncle), and which I finished through late 2015.
AUGUST 2016: A one-day visit from one of my oldest friends but who was living in California, and who I hadn't seen in ten years or so by that point, rekindled my long buried interest in spirituality and metaphysics. That ended a long dry spell in that deep interest of mine that had been damaging in ways I hadn't realized until said spell ended.
MARCH 2017: The passing of my much-beloved Aunt Isabel, Isabel Carmen Riley Briggs, at the age of 89. She was mischievous, forthright (to say the least), fun-loving, and a font of family history. She was the last member of my family anywhere nearby who was close to my grandparents' generation.
JULY 2017: My Maine Coon cat Nate the Fae Cat (so named because she saw many things we mere humans did not), aka Nate the Puddin Cat (because she was made of puddin), passed away at the age of 12. She and her twin sister Hayes the Baby Cat were my wife Laurie's and my first foster animals, and our first foster failures, after Laurie found them in a corn field when they were about 6 weeks old. Nate, among many other talents, had an uncanny ability to know when I was going to sit down before I did, and would be climbing into my lap before I was finished sitting. She was our first pet in 9 years to die. Her sister Hayes never got over losing Nate, and was lonely for the rest of her own life. (We have other animals, but she was never close to them - and some of them had been mean to her from early on.)
AUGUST 2017: I helped move my niece Alex to college, specifically Montreat in North Carolina. Alex was the first of the kids in the family to head off to college. I loved Montreat but alas, only made it back a handful of times.
AUGUST 2018: Through a somewhat convoluted process that I won't go into except to say it boiled down to thinking to myself, "Someone should write this book", then thinking "Why don't I write this book?", I began plotting out a new history book of the college I work for. Writing would be underway by October. The month after that I presented the idea to the college president, though with a great deal too much optimism said that I expected to finish the book in six months - because that's typically how long it takes me to write a novel. I didn't take into account how much longer I take with non-fiction (it could take me hours just to write a 200-word book review for Publishers Weekly), not to mention numerous other circumstances that would hit me starting in 2019, some of which I'll post here.
JANUARY 2019: Having realized that I wanted to do interviews for my college history book too, I did my first formal interview with Miss Faye Wood. She was an alumnus, class of '52, who came back to work for the college in 1956 and retired in the 1990s. During that time she served as both administrator and professor. I interviewed her for about 2 hours.
APRIL 2019: My father, Robert Douglas Adams, died of heart trouble at the age of 78, and just a few weeks shy of my parents' 55th wedding anniversary. Dad and I had a rocky relationship through most of my life - we hadn't even gotten along all that well until I moved out of the house - but his passing left me feeling strangely unmoored. At least I'd seen him shortly before he died - the night before he went into the hospital for the last time - and we parted on a good note. The lion's share of my vacation time for the rest of that year, including a week in June, another in July, and another around Christmas, was spent with Mom.
JULY 2019: My parents, sister, her kids, and I had taken an annual trip to Pipestem State Park every year since 2008, except for our 2016 trip to St. Augustine. This month, unbeknownst to us, would be our last trip to Pipestem thus far: Covid meant skipping it in 2020 and '21. I usually shared a room at Pipestem's lodge with my nephews; this trip I stayed with Mom.
AUGUST 2019: We lost Hayes the Baby Cat. She passed away in my car on the way to the vet to be euthanized, while I was singing the lullaby version of "You Are My Sunshine" to her.
OCTOBER 2019: After having him as my walking, hiking, reading, TV and all-around otherwise companion since October 2006, we had to euthanize our dog Tucker, who every year won prizes for Best of Dogs and Best of Hiking Buddies. On my birthday, sadly. Our walks and hikes had become almost daily routines no matter the weather, and he loved going in the woods more than anything. We always believed he lived as long as he did partly because he looked forward to going into the woods so much. I still remember the day in January 2019 when he walked to the edge of the woods, stared into them for a few moments, then looked back at me, and turned around and walked away from them, never to go into the woods again. I knew from that point on that Tucker wouldn't be with us much longer.
DECEMBER 2019: I went to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker with friends and family at the Salem Valley 8 in Salem, Virginia, the theater where I saw the original Star Wars back in 1977. This would be the last time I'd be with anyone else in a theater for a long time, and at this writing I still haven't been back to a theater with a large group like this one was.
JANUARY 2020: I first heard of a mysterious disease burning its way through China that some people were speculating might have already found its way to the United States.
(To Be Continued)
JUNE 2016: I made a lifelong-dreamed-of trip to St. Augustine, Florida. This was my grandparents' favorite beach, and they'd told me for nearly as long as I could remember how much I'd love its combination of ocean and history. They were absolutely right. My parents rented a house on the beach on Anastasia Island, which they shared with my sister, her kids, and me for a glorious few days. This was also the last big family vacation we took before my Mom's COPD and other issues worsened - that fall - to the point where she could no longer make long trips.
I also started keeping an Amy Siskind-like daily news log I jokingly titled Chronicle of the Pre-Apocalypse Age. This became incredibly helpful in a time when the news cycle started measuring itself in hours rather than days or longer; I could look at entries from just 2 weeks before and realized I'd already forgotten everything posted then. Though admittedly the title has become less and less funny as time has worn on.
JULY 2016: My trip to FarmerCon in Columbus, Ohio to sign and promote my latest (and still most recent) novel, Dayworld: A Hole in Wednesday. The book was a Dayworld prequel started but never finished by science fiction master Philip Jose Farmer (also my great uncle), and which I finished through late 2015.
AUGUST 2016: A one-day visit from one of my oldest friends but who was living in California, and who I hadn't seen in ten years or so by that point, rekindled my long buried interest in spirituality and metaphysics. That ended a long dry spell in that deep interest of mine that had been damaging in ways I hadn't realized until said spell ended.
MARCH 2017: The passing of my much-beloved Aunt Isabel, Isabel Carmen Riley Briggs, at the age of 89. She was mischievous, forthright (to say the least), fun-loving, and a font of family history. She was the last member of my family anywhere nearby who was close to my grandparents' generation.
JULY 2017: My Maine Coon cat Nate the Fae Cat (so named because she saw many things we mere humans did not), aka Nate the Puddin Cat (because she was made of puddin), passed away at the age of 12. She and her twin sister Hayes the Baby Cat were my wife Laurie's and my first foster animals, and our first foster failures, after Laurie found them in a corn field when they were about 6 weeks old. Nate, among many other talents, had an uncanny ability to know when I was going to sit down before I did, and would be climbing into my lap before I was finished sitting. She was our first pet in 9 years to die. Her sister Hayes never got over losing Nate, and was lonely for the rest of her own life. (We have other animals, but she was never close to them - and some of them had been mean to her from early on.)
AUGUST 2017: I helped move my niece Alex to college, specifically Montreat in North Carolina. Alex was the first of the kids in the family to head off to college. I loved Montreat but alas, only made it back a handful of times.
AUGUST 2018: Through a somewhat convoluted process that I won't go into except to say it boiled down to thinking to myself, "Someone should write this book", then thinking "Why don't I write this book?", I began plotting out a new history book of the college I work for. Writing would be underway by October. The month after that I presented the idea to the college president, though with a great deal too much optimism said that I expected to finish the book in six months - because that's typically how long it takes me to write a novel. I didn't take into account how much longer I take with non-fiction (it could take me hours just to write a 200-word book review for Publishers Weekly), not to mention numerous other circumstances that would hit me starting in 2019, some of which I'll post here.
JANUARY 2019: Having realized that I wanted to do interviews for my college history book too, I did my first formal interview with Miss Faye Wood. She was an alumnus, class of '52, who came back to work for the college in 1956 and retired in the 1990s. During that time she served as both administrator and professor. I interviewed her for about 2 hours.
APRIL 2019: My father, Robert Douglas Adams, died of heart trouble at the age of 78, and just a few weeks shy of my parents' 55th wedding anniversary. Dad and I had a rocky relationship through most of my life - we hadn't even gotten along all that well until I moved out of the house - but his passing left me feeling strangely unmoored. At least I'd seen him shortly before he died - the night before he went into the hospital for the last time - and we parted on a good note. The lion's share of my vacation time for the rest of that year, including a week in June, another in July, and another around Christmas, was spent with Mom.
JULY 2019: My parents, sister, her kids, and I had taken an annual trip to Pipestem State Park every year since 2008, except for our 2016 trip to St. Augustine. This month, unbeknownst to us, would be our last trip to Pipestem thus far: Covid meant skipping it in 2020 and '21. I usually shared a room at Pipestem's lodge with my nephews; this trip I stayed with Mom.
AUGUST 2019: We lost Hayes the Baby Cat. She passed away in my car on the way to the vet to be euthanized, while I was singing the lullaby version of "You Are My Sunshine" to her.
OCTOBER 2019: After having him as my walking, hiking, reading, TV and all-around otherwise companion since October 2006, we had to euthanize our dog Tucker, who every year won prizes for Best of Dogs and Best of Hiking Buddies. On my birthday, sadly. Our walks and hikes had become almost daily routines no matter the weather, and he loved going in the woods more than anything. We always believed he lived as long as he did partly because he looked forward to going into the woods so much. I still remember the day in January 2019 when he walked to the edge of the woods, stared into them for a few moments, then looked back at me, and turned around and walked away from them, never to go into the woods again. I knew from that point on that Tucker wouldn't be with us much longer.
DECEMBER 2019: I went to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker with friends and family at the Salem Valley 8 in Salem, Virginia, the theater where I saw the original Star Wars back in 1977. This would be the last time I'd be with anyone else in a theater for a long time, and at this writing I still haven't been back to a theater with a large group like this one was.
JANUARY 2020: I first heard of a mysterious disease burning its way through China that some people were speculating might have already found its way to the United States.
(To Be Continued)