Grump Central Archive: Week of 25 October 2020
Saturday, 31 October 2020
It hit the freezing mark last night, and I wasn't prepared to make a fire, so it got rather chilly around here—the heat pump was at its limit.
Friday, 30 October 2020
The world is becoming increasingly passive-aggressive. After hosting my websites for nearly 15 years, my web host has discontinued all hosting packages that support multiple domains; to continue with them, I'd be forced to purchase an individual package for each domain I manage (about a dozen), which would be insanely costly. I asked them what incentive I had to stay with them; no answer. So, it looks as though I'll be going through the painfully tedious process of migrating to a new host over the next three weeks; please bear with me during any brief outages that may occur as a consequence.
Thursday, 29 October 2020
Still nothing.
Wednesday, 28 October 2020
I'm emotionally empty today.
Tuesday, 27 October 2020
Sometimes it takes just a random little message to turn your day/week/month around. The following is just such an example:
David, I was looking through your wonderful Avengers website the other day, and I stumbled across your house in the woods blogs. The location looks idyllic and I am in awe of your carpentry, electric etc skills, never mind the wonderful vision you had. [But] I was also very sad to see your grim health news. |
It was thirteen years ago when I first contacted you about The Avengers. Without your beautiful site and words, I would never have become a writer/editor of 20+ books. You were the inspiration... Thank you for being the main creative foundation. |
I hope you can enjoy some wonderful "moments of being," surrounded by nature, over the weeks, months or even years ahead. |
—Rodney |
Rodney is the son of Roger Marshall, a noteworthy writer for the original television series. Rodney dedicated his first book on the series, Subversive Champagne: Beyond Genre in The Avengers, in part to me, which was extraordinarily touching. When I asked Rodney for permission to reproduce his email, he graciously agreed and followed up with—
Discovering your Avengers website came at a very important and difficult moment for me and it is not an exaggeration to say that without it and its contents I would never have started writing. I was hoping that one day we could meet but even if that seems unlikely you made a big difference to my writing life. Your comments both about The Avengers and your own life touched me deeply. My clichéd ideas about a "cabin in the woods" have been changed by reading your own powerful and painful story. |
Thank you so very much, Rodney. You've helped restore my faith in humanity.
Monday, 26 October 2020
I need to look back on better days, because yesterday was emotionally far more brutal than I could have ever imagined. And so today's image is from this day in 2013, when I was full of hopes and dreams about a beautiful new future, free of the painful struggle that was to come.
Sunday, 25 October 2020
The crisis, alas, has not abated, and is now spiraling down into a black pit that threatens friendships as well as the emotional health of several people, myself included.