Tuples and Attributes

This is not, perhaps, my most coherent post, but I felt the need to reflect a little on this tumultuous year.

The year was full of highs and lows. The lowest by far being the death of my partner, Jackie. The highest, being able to spend time with friends in both Eureka and Palm Desert. Second on the low list would be having a stroke and on the high list it would be attending a flower-making conference in Portland and connecting with the people there.

I bought a new house and had lots of things to do to it and yet still haven’t had even one offer on my old house. This is a long time to be paying for two places!

I have spent much of the year getting physical therapy for a SI joint problem. Then switched the physical therapy for speech and voice therapy to deal with the aftereffects of the stroke. I’ve had to have two new crowns put in and a tooth extracted and a bridge put in. In the summer, I found out I had some sleep apnea and have since been learning to sleep only on my sides. After monitoring my heart after the stroke, it turns out I have some atrial fibrillation; I go in for a chemical stress test next week to check that out further. To bring the year to a close, I found out yesterday that the reason for my vision problems over the last few months is that my eyelids are drooping to the point I need surgery to lift them.

And yet I feel good. I am happy in my new place. Physically, I actually feel quite fine. While walking any great distance isn’t that comfortable, I am able to use my rowing machine on a regular basis. I miss both my mom and Jackie tremendously but I’m gradually learning to get along without them.

I hope to visit my friends again throughout the next year. And I hope to get at least one real vacation in. And I hope you and yours find 2025 to be an improvement over 2024.

I’ve enjoyed playing a number of RPGs (Role-Playing Games) over the years. I’m old enough to remember when they consisted of typing “turn left” and “open the door” and receiving some text-based response to tell me what I found.

The first really stunning graphic-based game I played was “Myst” back in 1993. It was beautiful for its time, but quite static. The company Sierra put out a lot of animated looking games and provided hours of fun. Then, in the 2000s, computers and graphics cards became robust enough to create worlds that could be explored on one’s own terms rather than having to follow a linear plot.

I prefer games that concentrate on storylines and characters as opposed to shoot-em-ups and over the years I’ve enjoyed most of the Fallout series and the Elder Scrolls series. But by far my favorites have been BioWare’s Mass Effect and Dragon Age series. The first Mass Effect came out in 2007 and the first Dragon Age in 2009 and I have played every game in both the series.

Because these games are so involved, they don’t come out very often. There have only been 4 main games in the Mass Effect universe. The 4th game in the Dragon Age series just came out this Halloween. I waited a bit to buy it, knowing I would probably become quite immersed in it, but then it went on sale for a mere $39 and I bought it on December 16th and installed it on the 17th.

It took BioWare 10 YEARS to complete “Dragon Age, The Veilguard”. If you’ve ever played one of these games, you’ll understand the huge amount of effort that goes into making these programs. Frankly, I don’t know they do it.

All of which is to say that so far, I have clocked just under 75 hours in the game since the 17th. I’m estimating I’m probably 1/2 to 2/3s through. So if you don’t see much from me for another little while, it’s because I’m off in the northern realms of Thedas trying to figure out how my little team is going to bring down 2 rogue gods!

Most people have to look very closely in order to understand why this is my “Holiday Paisley” shirt:

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Since my little stroke I have been working with a speech therapist. He has had me doing all sorts of lip exercises and reading Dr. Seuss tongue-twister books aloud. My pronunciation and intonation are basically back to normal.

As a result of the lip exercises, I can now sneer and curl my lip! I guess I never felt the need for those expressions before because it took me several weeks of work to be able to lift my upper lip — not because of the stroke, but because I’ve never used my upper lip that way. I still can only do it reliably by looking in a mirror.

What still hasn’t gotten much better is my singing ability. So yesterday I had my first session with a “voice” therapist as opposed to my “speech” therapist. I felt my voice was different than before and she confirmed that it is, indeed, just a bit lower than would be expected.

Then they looked at my vocal cords while I made various noises (having a tube threaded through my nose was a bit disconcerting, but not painful). Sure enough, one side is just not working as well as the other. I now have my first month of voice sessions set up. They seem to think whatever is wrong is fixable. It would be very nice to be able to sing along to songs again without cringing at the sound I produce!

This comic actually made me laugh out loud.

Those of you who know me will probably find this musical choice quite understandable. Tim Minchin is an Australian musician/comedian I discovered years ago. This is his well-known holiday song about Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere.

Because my mother loved Christmas music, I have accumulated quite an eclectic mixture of Holiday albums over the years. She favored the more traditional “Christmas music” while I tried to mix in “Holiday music” or at least instrumental versions of the standards.

I started playing my holiday play list for her the day after Thanksgiving and ended on New Year’s Day. That’s a lot of hours so I kept expanding my collection so as not to have too many repeats. A few, like the Trans Siberia Orchestra albums were not to her taste, so this year my play list has changed once again as I have added some items (and deleted some others that I find just too “treacly”).

Here’s a link to one of the songs that she just didn’t appreciate as much as I do. Click the link, scroll down to the video of “Sugar and Booze” and enjoy!

https://www.anagasteyer.com/