rocky day
Today has been pretty emotionally high-strung. I read this morning that our friend xnamkrad/Frank Darcy, the charming gentleman who ran the last two P-Cons, has gone into hospice and isn’t expected to live much longer at all, after spending most of the last fifteen months fighting stomach cancer. His daughter posted to his journal to let people know, and is passing messages along, which is incredibly thoughtful of her. Frank befriended Ted and myself early on in our introduction to Irish fandom, and I will absolutely never forget the entrance he made on Friday night at P-Con 5, clad in a tux and bearing a silver-headed cane. He looked smashing, and set off a fantastic weekend in absolute style. I don’t happen to believe in an afterlife, but if there is one, I rather think that would make a good entrance there, too.
The announcement made me very glad for my friends who have had cancer and who’ve come through it. Right now I’m full of hugs and tears, not just for them, but for everybody.
After that rocky start, I went over to the house with Mom and we unpacked the kitchen, or at least most of it. Poor Mom clobbered her head on the corner of a cupboard door. :/ And I went and collected aberdeen/Emily from the train station, which pretty much signaled the end of the working day. We came back to Mom and Dad’s, fed the Emily, and eventually my sister showed up to do her photo shoot. We turned the living room into a makeshift studio, which was kind of fun, and spent a couple of hours in fairly high hilarity (Deirdre and I amuse each other immensely. We’re like Click and Clack, except we don’t have any topic of expertise to get ourselves a radio show about. We just make each other laugh a lot. :)), and I think we got some awesome pictures. ‘course, the cable for that camera is in Cork (or missing somewhere in the new house), so as soon as Ted gets here tomorrow I have to upload pictures and get the best ones in shape for the promotional thing Deirdre needs them for. The deadline, of course, is Thursday, so it must be done Post Haste. It occurs to me that this probably means I’m not going to get any writing done Thursday, either, which is a bother. Maybe I can get a few hundred words in in the afternoon.
The evening has been exceedingly pleasant and low-key with family (my aunt is visiting) and Emily, and…and y’know, wisdom dictates I just go to bed now. Tomorrow Emily gets to watch me unpack more of the house (she’s lucked out: she doesn’t get to help, because she hurt her back. Mom pointed out I’d used that excuse myself at least twice in the whole moving house scheme of things, and it’s true. Very effective way to not do much work. Not actually highly recommended, but effective.). She really knows how to have a good holiday. :)
ytd wordcount: 242,800
miles to Isengard: 36.2
(x-posted from the essential kit)