Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Angelina - take care and hope you feel better soon.  Had all 4 of my
wisdom teeth removed at once years ago, and it was a bit of an ordeal. 
Looked very chipmunky for a while, but the mouth being fairly
fast-healing, the worst of it didn't last long.
  

    
JaNell -- "Isn't this you at www.xanga.com/danguyf ?"  Not really,
hence the default "I just created my site and haven't started my weblog
yet." that you see there.  Xanga, quite absurdly, made me sign up in
order to sign your blog.  I have no blog.  But yes, that was me posting
offering to help.
  

    
Angelina- good vibes your way!  A girl I knew had her wisdom teeth out
recently; I gave her the novel dedicated to her while she recuperated.
 It's a big novel, but she was still down when she finished.
  

    
E-mail from Dianna:

Neil - Your Nightfall poem is beautiful.

billbill - Thanks for putting up the link to it.
Perhaps we could do a deal - i'll send you many Tim Tams for a Tori
tourbook. :)

Tree - "Bonging" !? i've not heard it called that before! Tim Tam Slam is
what i know it by. But i can see why, yes... *giggle*

Pamela - Wow, that's cool - about your Chicago relatives :)
Extra apostrophes are fine. We can feed them to the bottersnikes and then
maybe they'll give the gumbles a break :)

Dan Guy - Xander is gorgeous. You must be so proud :)

from dianna - off to Sydney, back in a week or so. Take care everyone :)

Tree - If i get some time in Melbourne i'll drop you an email and see if
we can do sushi.  :)
  

    <scribbled by corey Thu 11 Oct 01 17:54>
  

    
Hi Pam!!!
<waves>

Look after yourself Angelina, I hated having teeth out, felt woozy for
ages afterward.
  

    
In an attempt to change "nothing" to "noting" I appear to have
destroyed my first post. Hi folks, I'm another old GEnite. Neil
suggested I stop in, something about a nice group of folks around here.
When I can think of something intelligent and funny to say (which may
be a very long time) I'll try again.

Neil -- Thanks for making the time to say "hello" to me at M.I.T..

Rick -- I was just glad I didn't run over anyone's feet. That chair
weighs 150 lbs. Add in the cargo weight and I was as concerned about
breaking off bits of the crowd as I was about the jostling.
  

    
Rick, Will, and Jo--Thank you for your well wishes.  I'm not feeling
better yet (at all) but soon, I hope...The worst is when people tell me
"Oh, it didn't hurt me at all.  I was back on my feet the very next
day!"  bwahhh!  That doesn't mean that I'm not miserable for a reason,
silly.  :)

Corey--Hi!  Nice to meet you.  Hope you'll have as much fun here as I
have.
  

    
Corey - Welcome!  It is a nice group here - you'll recognize a couple
of faces from the GEnie days, and the "feel" is very similar.  I've
been hanging around for a few months, and there's a really nice feeling
of community to the place.

So sorry about what happened to you at MIT - I left as soon as I had
said "hi" to Neil, so I'm not sure how long it continued, but for your
sake (and Neil's) I hope not long.  Hope you enjoyed the night, in any
case - it was lively, to say the least.
  

    
Hi, Cory!  Cead Mile Failte!

Spent the entire day watching all  (and I mean all) of Kevin Smith's
oeuvre with my friend Debbie, who had never seen any of them.   I had
forgotten just how much I love Dogma.  What a great film.  I wish 1/4
of all Catholics were as passionate about it as Smith is.  We had to
find Neil's thank you in the credits--in with Saint Mark, John Milton &
Thomas Moore, no less.  Nice company.

Just found out that Simon Callow is doing a one man show called "The
Mystery of Charles Dickens" here in Chicago for the first three weeks
of December.  Considering selling my firstborn in order to purchase
tickets--one problem.  No kids.  Bugger.  Considering relative value of
other family members.  (Pun fully intended).

 Angelina--get well soon!  Enjoy the drugs!

Um, er, um....le sange est sur le branche!    M.
  

    
Angelina - many many soothing and sympathetic thoughts are headed your way,
and healing wishes (with weird glittery wings, even), and don't let anybody
bug you with stories about how their wisdom tooth removal was nuthin'. Mine
had me laid up for quite a while, and I remember some of it all too well.
(Do everything they tell you and take all the antibiotics, if they give you
any. After you're better, you can ask if you want to hear what happened to
me, but I shan't tell you just now on the grounds that you are probably Much
More Sensible than I was, and will rest and heal like a smart person.)

I have blogged. I am no longer a blogvirgin.  And it's all JaNell's fault.

OK, it's all the Absolutely Barking Mad blogringiepeople's fault.

Oh, that includes me, now. So that
s OK, then. <grin>

Hello, Neil, in case you go whirling through here. <waves up at fast-moving
clouds and the odd stray witch or great drake and a few lost sight-seers who
were pretending to be in the Harry Potter books, and a very dyspeptic-
looking raven....>
  

    

Angelina, my sympathies about the tooths.  Mine also did not go well, and
I got all swelled up for weeks and could only open my mouth a fraction of
an inch, but I lost eleven pounds, and only burst into tears once when a
friend of a friend said that after he had his wisdom teeth out he went
home and ate a bag of Doritos.
  

    
Lori needs to have her wisdom teeth out soon.  We'll probably do it
right after Christmas so I can take off work and tend to her and
Xander.

Linda -- I am. *blush*

Neil -- The story of the ungelded boar much amused my
Pomeranian-owning officemate.

As Halloween approaches, Lori has begun running across articles about
Guy Fawkes Day and clipping them to put on the fridge.  She finds it
terribly amusing that I was named after him, and that the family mythos
is that we are descended from him.
  

    
*ohhhhh!* [lightbulb]  I suddenly understand that you are not "
that Dan guy.."  or "some guy named Dan", but a person whose actual
legal name must read "Dan Guy Fowlkes".  Heh.  That's pretty cool.

Rick, Corey (welcome, Corey!) - too bad I didn't find you at the MIT
lecture.  Was too busy saying hi to all the people who I know from the
MIT community,  of which there were far too many, to start guessing
what various WELL folks might look like....  but for reference, it did
go on pretty long - I was near the end of the line and I think it was 
noticeably after midnight when I said hello to Neil.  Actually I hadn't
been in the line at all, I had just stood around chatting with various
people and so much time passed that the line had gotten mostly
finished, and then I decided to add myself to the end of it after all.
  

    
Everyone--Thank you, I think your well wishes and energies are
helping.  The swelling is beginning to go down, and I can almost close
my mouth now (but there is no way to get more than a baby spoon in this
mouth.  aggghhh.)  To think I will have to do this again one day with
the other side is enough to bring me very close to tears. 
And...Doritos, Linda?  Some people have all the luck.  I am taking my
antibiotics regularly, as one of the teeth was already infected and I
don't want it to spread.

I didn't even know what a Pomeranian was.  I had to look it up.  I
thought maybe it was a flower or something.  :)

My little brother is bugging me to watch Planet of the Apes with him,
and I've never seen it, so I suppose I will do so.  

Angelina.
  

    
Neil - Thanks for the stories on your blog about the pigs and the
walnuts and Harlan. I needed a good laugh, as my life has been filled
with things that are entirely too serious. 
  

    
The doritos and teeth mentions remind me of getting braces when I was
a kid.  Anyone else have this experience?  My whole mouth got tender, I
guess because teeth were moving, and for days afterward, the hardest
thing I could eat were cheese sandwiches (which didn't help my social
life any.  I swear.  Geekdom is *hard*).

On a downer, and frightening, note (I'm sorry, but I find it
therapeutic here, and I need therapeutic right now), they just reported
an Anthrax case here in NY.  In Rockefeller center, ten blocks from my
job.  I saw the Christmas tree lighting there.  I'm finding some
comfort in the fact that it is, apparently, mail-borne, and Anthrax is
treatable if caught in time, but, you know, I can't say it's much
comfort.  I'm going home to South Jersey this weekend, and I'm not sure
I want to come back up here on Monday.  Well.  I *know* I don't.  The
next couple of paychecks will just help a lot, though.  And it's only
two more weeks.

That's it, really.  Thanks for letting me spout.
  

    

Actually, I'm hearing that it was cutaneous, not the inhaled variety, and
that's a lot more common and less problematic.  The Director of Public
Health for Stamford CT is my landlord, and he is here (in California)
fixing my fence as we speak.  We just talked about this very issue.  He
says that he is on a listserv about infectious diseases and he sees
reports of cutaneous anthrax at least once a quarter.  His job is public
health, including responding to these reports.  He remains very
unconcerned, and convinced that whatever reports we are seeing about
anthrax are not terrorist-related, and may be only (?!) bio-crime, along
the lines of the poisoned Tylenol of years back...

I just can't conceive of what's going on in the minds of these wackos
besides a lot of static hum buzz and click.  And the occasional
thought:  spread Anthrax! buzz hum click.
  

    
*coughs and sputters and reminds self to not read Neils blog entries
while drinking anything*

Regarding anthrax... the NYC case is cutaneous. The package of powder
the woman opened did test positive for anthrax, as well. So, I guess it
has to go down as the first ones of these I've ever heard of actually
working... and makes me glad, as I've opened a few myself. 

:-/

The one death in Florida was caused from inhaled anthrax - the first
known case of this in the United States since 1976. Now, of course the
problem with that assumption is most people couldn't readily detect
inhaled anthrax before Very Recently - in fact, the only reason it was
detected in Florida was because the CDC just trained the staff members
there for it, as part of a general implementation plan of training all
public health workers to be able to identify infectious diseases. (Wow,
that was a much too long sentance.) So, yeah, anyhow - it could be
that inhaled anthrax is more common than thought, and has been written
off as pnuemonia or other things. 

Two mailroom coworkers (of the dead man) have tested positive for
anthrax via nasal swabs, but aren't displaying symptoms, and are taking
preventitive measures (antibiotics, etc). Traces of anthrax have been
picked up in the mailroom, and the dead mans keyboard was covered in
the spores. It looks suspiciously like a mail package...

... which brings to the scary thing (for me) - yesterday and today the
Seattle HazMat has been active, running around in bunnysuits and
evacuating buildings that have received "anthrax letters". Looks like
yesterdays was a hoax... no idea on todays.  :-(

Anyhow, as you might have figured out, emerging diseases are a hobby
of mine. I subscribe to all the public mail lists from CDC, WHO, and
ProMED Mail. If anyone is interested in keeping an eye on what is going
on, I would strongly recommend checking out ProMED (they carry reports
from all major disease control centers). http://www.promedmail.org

-Kelly
  

    
Kelly --
We've had a rash of building evacuations here in the Detroit area as
well. Let me tell you, I've never been less pleased to be working in a
package receiving area in my life. 
  On the plus side, I got a good laugh at myself when I opened a box
that was primarily plastic packing peanuts, and contained a healthy
quantity of plastic dust "chaff". I exclaimed, out loud, "Oh no, white
dust!" and ran theatrically around the office. Combat stress with
absurdity, that's what I always say.

Neil --
One of my co-workers has a forty-foot Black Walnut tree beside his
house, and greatly appreciated your cabin story. It almost seemed like
fate, as we had just been discussing his tree earlier this week. And as
to the recently-gelded boar, I'm trying to figure out if the
prospective offspring should be called hameranians or what...

Angelina --
Welcome to the world of the recently extracted. Had one of my wisdom
teeth out about a month ago. I won't share my experience, but I'm
sending well-wishes your way.
  

    
Right.  Cutaneous.  I thought when I said "mailborne" that would
suggest cutaneous.  My bad, guys.

Bill^2: Thanks so much.  I *so* needed the mental image, and the
resulting laugh, I got from reading your post.
And I thought you were in North Jersey.  Detroit?  Far from home, no?
  

    
Abbe -- Yep, my parents have a sense of humour it seems; apparently my
mother was as tickled by the Guy Fawkes connection as Lori is.  Made
it really easy to come up with campaign slogans for school elections.
("The right Guy for the job.", that sort of thing.)
  

    
Is mailborne anthrax anything like an email virus?
*duck*
  

    
Will --
I don't think I've ever been TO, much less FROM North Jersey. It's
funny how one can get a skewed sense of people's whereabouts online. I
have been forever thinking one particular online acquaintance is from
Seattle, instead of his actual North Jersey, strangely enough.
Actually, come to think of it, he now resides in Hawaii. Which is just
about as not-North-Jersey as it gets. Anyhow.
  

    
(Crossover-pseuding from the Blog, because I'm rapidly degenerating
into a pseud-floozy.)

Adriana: you're most welcome.  We can't wait for the next one!

Linda: Wow.  You have the most impressive lawn care personnel.  Who
does your dishes?  The Director of Domestic Hygiene for the FBI?

Kelly: How in the world do you have time for all that, between working
your buns off, reknitting ribs, and dazzling crowds with mermaid
glitter?  How are your ribs, BTW?

Angelina: It must be going around.  Our best friend's wife just had an
emergency extraction, too, which is why she couldn't go see Adriana's
band.  Feel better!  Mine seemed to heal okay, when I had them done. 
The thing I remember most about it was the complete freak-out I did
when I came out of anesthesia (mine were impacted, so they put me
completely out) and realized that I had absolutely no sense of that
time having passed.  That was one of the weirdest sensations I've ever
had.  

Elise: Jane's photos of Dar Williams were GORGEOUS.  (But I was
disappointed that the flowers hid your face.)  And, following the
links, I found her art photo of Steven Brust.  If you talk to her,
please tell her that that's how I will ALWAYS think of him from now on.

Beauty and joy to everyone for the weekend.

-Pam
who's off to go talk seriously with people about Little Red Riding
Hood this evening!