Personal blog - and temporary home page until new website is finished - of writer, editor and graphic artist Christopher Mills


Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Tuesday Morning

Well, it's nearly 4 AM and I'll be heading to bed shortly. Yesterday was a total wash – I woke up feeling miserable, and discovered that the wife had woken up sick, too, and stayed home from work. Then, I had to drive to Waterville for a CAT scan, which meant drinking down a half-gallon or so of barium solution... urrgh... and that sure didn't help my stomach much.

The scan was just a routine follow-up to see if there was any sign of my cancer coming back. I won't have the results for a few days, but I'm not overly concerned. Not about that, anyway. From everything I've been told, the cancer seemed to have been fully contained within the kidney they removed and the chances of it having reappeared are really slim.

But, still, I felt lousy all day, and was completely unproductive.

Did a little reading over the weekend. After a couple of years of hearing good things about the series, I finally picked up the first two "Alex Rider" teen spy novels by Anthony Horowitz. I read the first novel, Stormbreaker, Sunday afternoon. It was an entertaining update/homage of Ian Fleming's Moonraker novel, and I understand that the other Rider novels all parallel the Bond books, as well. I've got book two, Point Blank, here also, and will most likely read it this week. I enjoyed Stormbreaker well enough, but not as much as the first two Young Bond novels, which are aimed at pretty much the same audience. Still, there's seven books in the Rider series (so far), so maybe they get better.

Saturday, I found a new place where I could trade in used DVDs for store credit (the store I used to go to closed), and hauled in a bunch of discs I didn't want anymore. Came home with a couple of season's worth of Scrubs (a sitcom my wife and I have recently got hooked on) a few Doctor Who adventures, and a few cheesy B-movies that I'd been wanting, including the 1985 Golan-Globus/Cannon Films classic, American Ninja. It's not a "good" movie, by most anyone's definition, but I enjoyed seeing it again... and frankly, I had more fun with it than just about any new action film I've seen in the past decade.

Over the weekend, I also recorded another podcast interview, this time along with my collaborator Joe Staton, about Femme Noir. That should go live at the Ape Entertainment website sometime this week. I also did yet another Femme Noir interview for The Pulse comics news website. Again, it should be up shortly. I'll post links when available.

Well, that's it. Time to hit the sack and hope that I feel better when I get up.

Later.

4 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

Sorry you're feeling poorly. I've never had to have that barium solution and I sure hope not to. Sounds disgusting. My son, Josh, had to have it.

I went to the closest comics store to preorder femme Noir but turns out to do so I had to open three folders and order three different comics regularly. I'm not sure why. But i'll have to order it online.

I bought a few Conan comics, though.

Paul Bishop said...

Sorry you're feeling puny. Keep with the Alex Rider novels. They do get better as they go along. Point Blanc is quite good and an improvement over Stormbreaker.

I find the Young Bond novels better written, but the ALex Rider books more fun.

Bish

Charles Gramlich said...

Yeah, I was able to put in a preorder for Femme Noir from another comic book store today. He said he won't be ordering until March 1 but would include it then.

Mysterious Pants said...

I too, am familiar with the "liquid chalk" taste sensation of barium, so I can completely sympathize- I hope that your whole health situation will continue to improve.