I approach this post with some hesitation. When I arrived, I was logged out of the system; Aaron had taken steps to try to correct this problem, and in fairness I am not certain that they did not work–I have not had occasion to log in, I think, since he made the corrections. (The problem seems to have been that I was running two separate accounts on the one system. This arose because I came to the articles/blog side first, and created a login that had punctuation, then went to the discussions side where punctuation is not permitted. Apparently although there are different rules for the two sides of the site, they use the same membership database somehow, so that had one computer logged in to two accounts. Everything has been consolidated since, so hopefully it will work. If that’s not the problem, then it’s because I’m using software that is considered archaic to programmers, and I’m going to have to choose between upgrading to the latest garbage being forced down our throats by companies who make their money by making their own products obsolete, and living with the problem. I will probably choose the latter, with no offense taken from those who have attempted to help resolve the matter.)

The concern is that on any day when I have arrived to find myself logged out, I promptly lost whatever I posted. I am hoping that I have addressed this issue this time: I logged in on the discussions side, using that identity, and then closed all site windows and returned to load the site afresh. Everything looks good for the moment, but I won’t know whether it actually works until I save this post, after which point there won’t be much I can do if it doesn’t work. Thus this is an experiment.

It is also a legitimate post, though. Every time I have done this before, the lost post has reappeared eventually as a saved draft, and so I will be able to post it, even to mark it with today’s date, when that happens (it is September 18th today, which come to think of it is my little brother’s birthday; I should do something about that). Thus I should include the usual reports of my progress.

That progress is minimal. This is not surprising, given that yesterday was so rough just getting through the regular work, and today, being Tuesday, has a heavy workload itself. However, I have not accomplished nothing. Last night, with a few spare moments, I tackled the cleanup of a couple pages of the martial arts site; today, while I was getting the oil changed in the truck, I did some editing of my Romans notes. It’s not much, but it’s not nothing.

I also got news about the car last night. It seems that the parts that were giving them so much trouble arrived and were installed without any problem, but the part that they thought was fine was not the right part–one of those situations in which the car was manufactured near the end of the year, so some of the parts were from the next year’s design. That makes it most of another week before it will be on the road. It also means that our busy weekend will not have the advantage of two cars. We’ll manage.

–M. J. Young

It appears that the Brief Nine Hour Errand post I mentioned writing yesterday has not resurfaced. Permit me to summarize it briefly, if that is possible. These were the things done since Sunday night, mostly on Monday:

• The Multiverser.org web site was expanded with a fairly decent support section including On the Fly character creation papers, Magic Skills Worksheets, and hand-outs and maps from the world books. There’s a lot more to do, but at least there is something there.
• I took my mother-in-law to get medical tests. Since this included a fasting blood test, I had to leave the house around eight so she would not be starving; she was not ready when I arrived, and we had trouble finding the lab (which was inside a building which did not indicate anywhere on the outside that it was there), and then had to go elsewhere for the x-ray. We scheduled this for Monday so that I would not have to make multiple trips this week, but it meant taking her out for breakfast after the tests, which proved to be lunch since it was after noon by then. We stopped by the house before going shopping, and the brief visit to pack away her leftovers from the diner turned into a lost hour. Note that I am fighting for consciousness during the downtimes, and occasionally losing. The trip to the store followed, but my departure from her house was delayed a bit longer than usual because she missed her daughter’s birthday and needed me to deliver card and gift, which had to be prepared. It was after five by the time I was on the road again, and I was exhausted.
• Mercifully, one of our houseguests manages a sandwich shop/deli, and he was able to arrange for food for everyone at a cost considerably below what I’d expected to pay. On the other hand, it was not pizza, not the sort of thing that is shared among several, and two houseguests arrived late last night who were apparently expected, but not by me. Still, it was after six by the time I got home, and I was completely exhausted and glad to have brought supper with me, which I hid in the oven before crashing for almost three hours, asleep in front of a television. Then I began my morning study.
• That ten hours was not entirely lost. I took my Romans editing with me and made some progress, when I could stay awake to do it.
• As I mentioned yesterday, I was logged out on both sides when I got here. That seems to be why I lost the post.

So that’s what I did yesterday.

Today is not doing that much better. It is, of course, Tuesday, and that makes it my busiest day. I was looking for coffee when I arose right around noon when I was told that I had been asked to pick up someone and take him to work, so without coffee I got dressed and made that trip. It dovetailed into the next, taking my wife to work. I already knew that tonight my youngest would have to attend orientation for school, and this would bite into my time here; yet even as I have been writing this I got a phone call insisting that in the very little time I have between now and then I need to take him to the stores half an hour away (the local stores not having the right quality) to acquire a decent bookbag for the start of school in the morning. My predictions at this point have me starting the heaviest part of the workload sometime after midnight, getting up at six to get the boy on the bus before seven, leaving from then to take a houseguest to her school half an hour away, and picking her up from it around one in the afternoon. Hopefully I will be permitted to eat and sleep at some point, but it’s not promising.

However, I am grateful to the houseguest who has eagerly undertaken oversight of dinner. At least everyone will eat, and it will be good, and I might even have the opportunity to enjoy some myself.

I had better get that bookbag. Look for me on the forums later.

–M. J. Young

I did a bit of editing on the Romans notes last night, but I never did get into the pool.

Today was one of those days when there was just too much to do. In fact, it is one in the morning, and there’s still too much to do. I just finished serving dinner, my own plate now sitting beside me awaiting moments when my hands are not needed for typing and can move food to my mouth. I can’t say I got a late start; it just was not an early start. My mother-in-law had to go to the store, but one son who was going to stay with one of his brothers came home with his mother two nights back and was obligated to return to his brother’s house today, so that also had to be done. He was taking maximum advantage of his visit home, and so asked if we could delay our departure while he had lunch with a friend. I consented.

My consent was in part because I wanted to talk with my pastor about my next book–not exactly about the book itself, but about whether it would be inappropriate to give a copy of this terribly rough first draft to our Sabbath school teacher, in view of the fact that the Sabbath school program for the next quarter seems to cover a great deal of the area covered by the book (in different ways). I knew he would be at the church picnic, so I ran down there to see him and to visit with some of the others before making my trip. He thought it a good idea to pass the book to her, so I did. That set me back a bit, but not terribly as by the time my son was back from lunch I was headed back to the house to get him. My mother-in-law was not so prompt, and it was late by the time we were out of there, and I had to drive to Delaware to drop off the boy, and so it was ten thirty by the time I managed to get the roast in the oven, which I had had the foresight to defrost before leaving.

All of which puts me here, now, with much still ahead. That makes it time to move ahead.

–M. J. Young

Thanks in part to a few interruptions, it was six in the morning by the time I managed to finish yesterday’s Tuesday workload. That’s not a complaint, just a fact; some of the interruptions were enjoyable, and other than sitting in the car waiting for my wife to come out of work (during which time I did some editing on those Romans study notes and caught a half hour nap) most of them were relatively brief.

It is now six at night, and a little after; I need to attend to the making of dinner, but I also see substantial activity on the forum, so I’ve got a few hours of work here, too.

The new car is now insured, but I need the proof of insurance papers; I hope to be able to print those tonight, because tomorrow the car goes for a tune-up, and the papers need to be in it. I had to pick up and order parts for that today.

There was a bit of a tiff here while I was asleep, apparently. That friend who so often helps my wife clean her house, who is staying with us at the moment (a situation that still has not been explained to me), decided early this morning to rearrange the living room. When my wife wandered out there bleary-eyed in search of her first cup of coffee, she was immediately distressed by the new arrangement, and blurted out something about it, which really upset the girl who had hoped, of course, that her vision of a better way to arrange the living room would have been seen as a wonderful improvement. There were apologies, and I think it’s been smoothed. The entire account makes me feel secretly better, because I am always distressed by the changes this girl makes around here, and always being told that I need to accept the things I don’t like because of how much help she is. So maybe I have a dark side there. As far as the living room goes, I don’t know whether it was put back as it was or whether I’m just not aware enough of that room (I rarely do more than pass through it) to realize that it has been altered.

I ought to be making myself more aware of the need to make dinner.

–M. J. Young