As I write this, it's just shy of the end of 2023.ev. I'm now up and around and functional enough actually think about writing. Not because of any New Year's festivities, unfortunately.

If you guessed that I caught covid-19 in December, you'd be right.

I went on travel for a week for work in December, which is probably when I was exposed. It might've been at work, it might've been at the hotel (where, during that week, two wedding receptions and four holiday parties were held), for all I know it might've been at the airport when the TSA …

Well, happy friggin' new year, everyone. It's 2021.ev at last, the year when the Internet is supposed to look like this or something.

Of course it's never that easy. 2020.ev had one final kick in the crotch lined up, this one for me. I may as well tell the story as it unfolded, because that's how it seems to make sense. You may as well get your buckets of popcorn ready because why not, it's story time with Uncle Bryce again.

So, 31 December 2020.ev. I had an errand to run (one of precious few these days …

As you no doubt have observed I've been conspicuously absent for the past couple of weeks, at least since returning from a long-overdue vacation with Lyssa in lovely Portland, Oregon. Much of my time has been spent at work doing the things that bastards like me get paid to do: run and fix backups, install software, patch systems, run audits, and generally keep things chugging along smoothly for the folks who do everything else. Due to the weather in the DC metroplex taking a turn for the rainy and cold (as it's wont to do every Samhain) my commute has …

While sitting in the dentist's chair this morning I discovered something very interesting.

Granted, I only went in for a checkup and cleaning so it wasn't as bad as it usually is. Given that about a third of my teeth are artificial in some way - usually cored, packed with plastic and capped with surgical steel and porcelain - it should have been obvious in hindsight. It appears that the physics of sound propagation through modified teeth are markedly different than those customary to un-altered dentition. To put it simply, I've never felt the cavitron hurt quite so much because the sound …

When last I went in for dental work I'd done some planning ahead and made an appointment to get one last problem taken care of, namely, the oldest and first filling in the clinical disaster area known as my mouth that had started leaking a few years ago. So, I went in to see my dentist this morning... after the usual round of novocaine injections and pleasantries Dr. Huang started to drill away the old filling and clean the decay and accumulated cellular garbage out. About halfway through the procedure I started feeling everything. Not because the local gave out …