I first was made aware of the Fantastic Four in the mid 1960’s– this was a few years before I started getting any comics. Yes, all my vast knowledge of the world is from sci fi and superheroes on tv. Both live action and animated. As it should be. 

Hanna Barbera did a lot of this genre in the ’60’s but as far as Marvel went, the FF was the only franchise they took on. They utilized all the same talent from their other shows, with great voice acting, musical scores, sound effects and design work. The animation was a bit basic but very fun and you got to see the Thing punch out monsters, moloids, mobsters and Doctor Doom. Another thing it had going for it was that it had the advantage of adapting early FF comic stories from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. This was huge because of the many positives with the Hanna Barbera shows, memorable stories weren’t one of them. Here, they started with good stories and animated them. They only produced 20 episodes total and ABC ran them for three years straight in reruns. All in all, a solid cartoon of the time. Not sure if it’s available anywhere but probably on YouTube. If you want to see stories based on classic Lee/Kirby FF comics, I’d recommend giving it a look. Interestingly, AT&T/Time-Warner (owners of DC  comics) own the entire Hanna Barbera library, so this original FF cartoon is the *one* piece of Marvel that Disney does not own! 

Fast forward to the late ’70’s and shield your eyes before the horror that is H.E.R.B.I.E.. Blame the DePatie Freling studio, blame Stan Lee, I don’t care. Whether it was a rights issue or the sublime idiot patrol who was always looking to protect children from every aspect of life including that fact that fire is dangerous, the Human Torch wasn’t in this cartoon. They replaced him with H.E.R.B.I.E. the annoying robot. What do the letters stand for? Well, considering how fast this show died due to the producer’s bad judgement — I don’t care. This was just unfortunate. But not THE most unfortunate FF related animated show to come out of the ’70’s. 

No, that would be 1979’s, Fred and Barney meet The Thing, a one time episode (in which Fred and Barney DO NOT EVEN ACTUALLY MEET THE THING) which spun off into The Thing’s own show. Which lasted for two episodes. All I know about the Thing’s own show…. was that it featured a teenage Benji Grimm… who wore… a Thing Ring…. and when there was trouble…. Benji would yell at the top if his lungs…..

“Thing-Ring, do your thing!” And a bunch of orange rocks would fly in and cover him and then he was the Thing. I take it back, since this was also from HB, Warner’s probably owns this as well. They can keep it.

At this point, I think I *would* like to point a finger at Stan Lee. I defend Stan quite a bit regarding comics history but I’d like to think Stan at least raised a ruckus when some of these ridiculous decisions came down the pike. He may not have had much say but still. We also had years when Avi Arad was stinking up the joint as executive producer giving the green light to a lot of total garbage. 

Moving on. 

1994 saw New World entertainment and Genesis productions put out an all new FF cartoon. This was both the worst and the best of all possible worlds. There were two, 13 ep seasons. The first season made the Thing Ring chant look intelligent. It was utter nonsense. From the mindless theme song to the constant disrespect of the characters to insulting the intelligence of 7 year olds everywhere. It was DOA. Just horrible and silly. But then something amazing happened. 

The powers that be saw they done wrong and totally revamped the show. They got good scripts, started adapting faithful versions of famous Lee and Kirby stories as well as ones from the John Byrne era. The animation was much much better too, with a different studio and they even had the one and only John Buscema –a giant in the comics industry –doing storyboards! The difference between seasons is day and night. They sell the whole package on DVD and I heartily recommend it as the second season alone is more than worth the price. It truly was nearly worthy of the Bruce Timm DC animated series stuff and you don’t get any better than that. That second season was and is one of if not the finest Marvel animated series to ever come out, period. There’ve been a ton of Spider-man and X-men series but none quite as good as season two of the FF. YMMV.

Speaking of not quite as good, starting in 2007, an American/Canadian/French company put forth a new version of the FF, called Fantastic Four, the World’s greatest heroes–with an anime look and feel. Over a span of three and a half years, they put out 27 eps. When the show premiered, I lasted all of ten minutes. The animation wasn’t bad but it’s clear this company knew almost nothing about the FF and desperately wanted to put their stamp on it. The story, personalities and dialog for the characters were aimed at a younger audience. The character designs left a lot to be desired as well. Red, white and blue costumes didn’t really say FF and the Thing just had long, baggy pants and a sloppily painted 4 on his chest. Some defend this as an overlooked, under appreciated cartoon. I would say these people might be into the anime angle and *as* a kind of dumbed down anime in look and feel, I guess that’s fine but there’s little of the actual FF in the mix. I can no more recommend this than I can the HERBIE debacle, just for different reasons. 

I’m certain that the ’90’s cartoon may have been produced in part because of the doomed Roger Corman produced live action film that never saw the light of day. Ditto the 2007 international anime show probably tried to cash in on the Tim Story films from 2005 & ’07, even though the cartoon bore little resemblance to any version of the FF ever. 

Now that Marvel has the movie rights back for the FF, we’ll see if there are any more animated attempts to try and cash in on that. With Disney in charge, I’m at least hopeful, because the thing IS.

The year was 2002. It was a lovely day. Linda was working on some project, I was upstairs, the kids were on the front steps, entertaining themselves. Age check: Theresa was 8, Matthew was 5. A bit of time passed and Lin noticed the kids weren’t on the front steps. This sometimes meant they might pop over next door to the neighbor kid’s house. She phoned the neighbors. The kids weren’t there. The rest is a bit of a blur.

High alert. 

Every second counts.

Called the police.

Alerted the neighbors. 

ALL the neighbors.

While a couple neighbors monitored our yard in case they wandered back, I hopped in the van to cover the surrounding streets, while Lin hopped on her bike to cover sidewalks and trails. 

We reasoned they couldn’t be too far if they were strolling on their own and then the dark thoughts started to seep in. 

Keep looking.

It’s hard to remember how much total time had passed since we noticed they had gone missing. I want to say 40 minutes but it might have been half that, the way time passes during something like this. 

And with every minute that passed, I was quietly losing it. 

I don’t know what we would have done, if the black police SUV hadn’t pulled into our driveway at that moment with the kids.

The kids were perfectly fine. A little confused as to what all the ruckus was about, with cop cars, neighbors, us, all standing around stunned like a mushroom cloud had erupted in the distance. 

The kids just wandered over with these very interested “what’s going on?” expressions. They were probably sensing some mix of panic and relief. I said we’d explain in the house. I rested my hands on their heads and steered them toward the safety of the house they wouldn’t be leaving for a 100 years because we were about to become far more over protective than we were before. 

The rest was again a bit of a blur.

I choked out a thank you to the lead officer.

Wordlessly hugged a few neighbors.

Then went in the house and Lin and I did our level best, through tears, and raised voices to explain to our children exactly why we were crying and raising our voices. 

They just thought they’d go for a walk. Not far, maybe a few blocks to the store. They just didn’t think to mention it to us. 

By the end, there were hugs and tears of relief, understanding and exhaustion. Matthew laid on the bed through the talk simply squeezing his lip and nodding through most of it. The enormity of the mishap was still partially lost on him but he knew that he and his sister indeed did something not-right to make both parents get that emotional. 

In the past, we’d thought we’d always been very cognizant of what the kids were up to, where they were and very very seldom ever even had people babysit for us. They were almost never out of our sight. 

We thought we were vigilant.

Then you suddenly find yourself in Limbo, possibly staring at Hell. 

You know the drill. Next chance you get, just hug your kids. 

Admittedly, things have been just about perfect in the world these days, with nary a problem. You just knew the fun couldn’t last.

For you see, the Murder Hornets are coming soon to your town. Originating overseas, the Asian Giant Hornet is about two inches long, mostly surviving by consuming large bugs like wasps and bees. They kill their prey quickly by lopping off their heads, then consume everything. The Murder Hornets, as they were called over in Japan, also carry a neurotoxin in their rather painful sting, and if you get stung multiple times by these orange and black striped bastards, they could indeed kill you. 

They made landfall in Washington state in late 2019 and have been wreaking havoc with the bee colonies there. I believe the cold slows them down but as spring weather advances, so do they. 

I’m really hoping that somebody is more prepared for this than they were the virus. 

Hearing about the Murder Hornets, it occurred to me that it had been quite a while since I heard about the Africanized Killer bees that were hitting the US from the south. So, of course I also had to look that up to check in on that swarm. Turns out, the Killer bees have stayed in the south, as they don’t adapt well to winters. The Killer bees have allegedly also calmed down a bit in their aggression as there have been fewer predators for them here. Is it possible they’ve been downgraded to Manslaughter 2 bees? I’m not sure.

As for stopping the Murder Hornets… even with years of advance notice, to the best of my knowledge, no one did anything to stop them–perhaps it wasn’t possible. So, I’m not sure what can be done against larger, deadlier, cannibalistic Murder Hornets. 

I guess the best case scenario would be if the Murder Hornets head south for better weather, where they’ll encounter–hopefully–greater numbers of the Africanized Killer bees that will make a fight of it, maybe wiping each other out in a climactic battle at the Alamo. Any survivors, we go in and take them out with Raid Wasp & Hornet killer.

Raid Wasp & Hornet killer

A magnificent product, where, from a comfortable distance, you can produce an  immensely potent 13 foot stream of liquid death toward any mass of winged, stingish, malevolent insectoid menace. 

Raid Wasp & Hornet killer. 

From SC Johnson.

Even the simplest operations require more extensive planning. 

Had to go to the bank to deposit a check. The bank doesn’t open until 10am, so the timing worked out fine, as the mail with the check got in at 9:15. Got to the bank’s drive thru at 9:59 and there were already six cars in the three drive thru lanes, awaiting the opening bell.

As I sat third in line, with more cars arriving by the minute, it only then occurred to me that I’ll have a contact contamination risk via the banking cylinder that goes in the pneumatic tube. With at least two cars in front of me, passing the cylinder around like a pitcher of beer on St. Patty’s Day, not to mention where tellers have been, I’d have to be conscious of not touching my face after the transaction. 

So I await my turn, kicking myself for not thinking to bring wipes with me for an immediate wipe down afterward. 

My turn comes, bing bang boom, and I zoom off home, having to scratch the phantom itch on my nose the whole way. 

Arriving home, I grab the spray cleaner and wipe down all the affected bits. 

Mental note: maybe keep a pack of wipes in each car for these drive thru scenarios. 

Only a month or so to go before we flatten the hell out of that curve…hopefully…..

Now full disclosure, my mom was, in her younger days– in my mind, a rather impetuous driver. One might say crazy or irresponsible but we see things very differently as children than we do as adults. I remember seeing my mom eating while driving, doing paperwork while driving, and most worryingly, race trains. At some of the train crossings back in the day, there were no guard posts that lowered. So you could see the train coming and mentally map out the time/speed distance and calculate if you were going to make it across the tracks before the train got there. Let’s just say mom usually calculated correctly and we won’t go into how I reacted when she attempted it. Mostly because the train always seemed to be coming on my side. So it was often an adventure. But again, the eyes of youth. On the side the train was aiming at.

One morning though, she was driving me to school. And to be fair, I don’t think the following was her fault. I don’t know the circumstances as I again, usually walked but this was to my high school. Still a long haul and for whatever reason, she was driving me when suddenly, a car coming the opposite way decided to make a left directly in front of us and WHAM. 

A second later, I was sitting there in the passenger seat with my forearms crossed in front of my face, and when I lowered them, I assessed the situation. The windshield was smashed, mom was seemingly okay and I tried to open my door but it, like the entire front of the car, was accordioned. But hey, I was fine, she was fine. Mom got out her side and I followed. Adrenaline was flowing and I felt fine and I guess the old adage was true, any crash you can walk away from…

Then mom turned to look at me, a look of worry on her face and she said “oh, Rick.” That was an odd thing to say for her and quite sentimental in tone. Very unusual. And right on cue, blood started flowing down in front of my right eye from my forehead. So THAT’S why the windshield was smashed! Something hard hit it alright. My head. 

Still, it only stung a bit. Adrenaline. Mouth hurt a bit too, because it partially knocked into the dash but thank god I’d gotten the braces taken off a few months earlier or that might have been horrific. What followed was my first experience with a local anesthetic and having a very nice Doctor (a specialist in fact) sew me up, while I think I may have rudely pointed out how funny looking he was while all doped up. 

The aftermath of that: I think we started being vigilant about seat belt safety– well I did anyway. And in an effort to reduce the scarring on my forehead, as it healed, I had to apply this medication or salve or whatever it was for a couple weeks. 

But it was blood red! That seems like a flaw in the presentation. While that stuff was on, it looked a fresh wound! After that, mom may have eased up on the road in general, I’m not sure. Probably not. Anyway…

Buckle up, kids and don’t race trains. 

The More You Know…

Night–Car driving around at night, while defiant teens crowd the street

Day now. A little urban town square with a cafe

Me riding a bike

Mike Edsey hanging out a window singing while I ride also singing 

Taking a nap in the cafe with my pillow as Mike talks out his window above

Jim Wilieko joins us at the cafe

Jim has a weird cylinder phone with legs

I go to my official office downtown which is filled with junk, no room

And my laundry’s piled up in the hallway outside the office

I’m consulting a nurse on a body they found in the gall– disease victim

Businessmen in the hall want to talk about this new collaboration on Barbarella?

Make of that what you will.

23 years ago, Matthew Magnus Lundeen ushered forth into the world. He wasn’t exactly on time and was reluctant to come out. He’s been more punctual since. 

My wife probably has a plethora of gems written down about the many little comments he made and stunts he pulled. But I don’t have that in front of me, so I’ll just go with the flow. Bits and pieces.

I could go into the many things he did when he was tiny, like at age 2, he hoisted a steak burrito from El Faro in one hand and started chomping on it. Or the months he paraded around the house in nothing but a diaper, holding a Batman plush doll and an empty gallon milk jug. Or his steadfast refusal to ever eat applesauce. But I’ll go current:

*He speaks Japanese to a degree, but he insists he isn’t fluent.

*When it comes to the most complicated Japanese names in anime, he rattles them off as easy as we might say John Smith. 

*He’s always furiously writing, whether it’s reviews or fiction.

*He’s good in escape rooms.

*He’s a quick wit and funny, but humility prevents me saying who he got it from.

*He remembers the most obscure things we did from years and years earlier.

*He has good, honorable, loyal, solid friendships that have lasted years. 

*He’s graduating college as a member of the Honor Society.

*He’s a kind person. A good person. 

I can’t ask for more than that. Lin and I are both very proud of him. 

Happy birthday, bud!

A number of years ago, I happened upon the beginning of a run of X-Force from Marvel comics. The run went from 2010 to 2012, and after seeing some preview pages, and saw there were multiple back issues available digitally, I started scooping them up. Now even though the story by Rick Remender was very good, it was the art that elevated it to epic status. The art on the first four issues was by Jerome Opena and the colors by Dean White.

Opena is one of the most amazing artists I’ve ever seen. He delivers such power, depth and drama to his incredible storytelling, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen the like. In addition to a couple stretches on X-Force, Opena did the first few issues on an Avengers run shortly thereafter and once again, although Jonathan Hickman can deliver some big stories, no one can realize and elevate the material like Opena. He transforms anything he works on into a must see event. 

Now, although I could just dive into just his pencils and stare at them all day, he is perhaps only 60% of this team. There are colorists, and then there are colorists. Sometimes, a colorist just adds color to a comic to add a little dimension. Sometimes they over do it and overwhelm an artist’s work. Sometimes they perfectly compliment the pencils and inks and make a superior product. And then you have Dean White. His color sensibilities, and painted highlights accentuate and further flesh out every scene. His color work is almost as important — maybe AS important in this transcendent experience as Opena’s contribution. The coloring is that good. 

These two together on a book is pretty much my dream team of artists. They are both at the top of their profession and compliment each other perfectly. I’ve seen White’s coloring on lesser artists–they didn’t deserve him. Having seen Opena’s work without White, it’s still stellar, but not as good as with White. So, if you get the chance, I highly recommend taking a gander at the X-Force issues from 2010 and those first three Avengers issues from shortly thereafter. 

And now, I’m just going to throw an assortment of work below from these two, plus a couple pages of just Opena’s pencils to see the differences. Enjoy.

You. Are. Welcome!

At least, that’s what I thought back in the mid ’70’s when I lived in an apartment in Worth, Il. I was just me and my mom at that point and I spent a lot of time on my own. We had food but not much and sometimes I needed something a bit different than left over chop suey or pot roast. >shudder< I walked everywhere back then, as I was only 13 or 14. Walked to school, which was a mile away, dentist appt.’s, the drug store where they had some comics, my cousin’s house, all the same area, a mile away from the apartment. But a mile in the opposite direction was only one destination for me. Pepe’s. I think they charged .35 cents a taco or some ridiculously cheap price, so if I scraped up a little over a dollar, I could feast on three beef tacos. I had to make sure to grab extra hot sauce packets because their hot sauce really made the experience. So, a two mile round trip walk for three tacos. It was worth it. 

But I would often put myself through some trial or another for foods that I liked. A few years earlier, when we still lived in Oak Lawn, it was considered a huge treat to go to Jack in the Box. I loved the Jumbo Jack Burger but also their tacos. Another very distinct and wonderful taco recipe. Their tacos’ meat was almost sealed into a hard shell, so on the outer edges would be this crisp, hard, crunchy shell but when you got past the hard shell “moat” to the meat, the shell was softened and it was like hitting the mother-load of flavor. One time, I had to go to the dentist to have about ten teeth removed, mostly baby teeth I believe to make room for the new permanent ones coming in. Seems my mouth was too small and things were going sideways in there. Anyway, they extracted all ten or eleven teeth, so although I had the front four on top and bottom, I was missing most all of the sides and things were very tender. As a treat, my mom took me to Jack in the Box and of course, I had the tacos. Turns out, when tackling those hard, nasty, crunchy edges of taco shell, you really need those side teeth, not raw, newly exposed, bloody gums. Yeah. That was not pretty. Oh, but Christ, the soft meat was great when I got to it. Speaking of pain…

Moving forward again in time back to Worth, I think I was probably 15 (?) and I had braces. Each month, I had to hike over to the orthodontist to get them tightened up. Whenever this was done, the teeth would be *extremely* sensitive. The slightest pressure would be murderous for the next day. But here’s the thing. The diner across the street from the orthodontist had the greatest Italian cheeseburger ever. It was just the patty, marinara and mozzarella on a bun but that and a vanilla shake was pure heaven, so each and every appointment, I went there immediately after the appointment. No, I couldn’t go before the appointment because I had to do a good job of brushing my teeth before hand. And no, I didn’t want to come back another day because it was a mile walk and I was right there! So, I’d get my burger and of course, every bite into it was slow and tear-inducingly painful. It was so good, yet hurt so bad. 

I’d love to say this is yet another look into what makes me tick but it’s becoming painfully obvious that I’m an idiot that loves the taste of food too much for my own good. Not much mystery there.

Should probably get this one out there before my mind completely blocks out the experience.

Middle of last August, I was at Northwestern for a week so they could collect my stem cells. This was so they could freeze them, and I don’t know, run them through a strainer of some sort–basically make sure they were fresh and healthy stem cells, to be re-transplanted into me a week or so later, right after Labor Day. The hospital was good enough to comp my stay at Worcester House, an apartment complex a couple blocks away from NW. A small, basic apartment room with a fridge for food and medicine, and two single beds. This was very nice of them to do, because otherwise, I would have had to travel back and forth every day, which would have been a big pain, especially for my wife, who was driving me. Linda brought me there on that Sunday night, so we could get the necessary early start the next day starting the collection week. All that being said, the place wasn’t the greatest.

Not particularly clean and worst of all, the single beds were hard mattresses, covered with plastic and a couple flimsy sheets. These were beds for the transient, the incontinent, the dying, the fairly messed up and, at times, bloody patients that stayed there. There was no malevolence in the design, just the way they had to prep the beds for … us. 

Now, anyone keeping track back then will note some of the day to day photos I took of the time in the hotel room. Random visuals meant to interest, chill, and possibly concern you, but mostly give you an idea what I was dealing with at the time. Monday, we had to get up at 6am, walk to the hospital, get blood drawn, then off to the operating room, where they prepped me and inserted a six inch line into my neck, and down toward my heart. And so, once inserted, from my neck then sprung three cables to connect to various machines during the coming week. My collection was to start on Tuesday morning. 

So, we went back to the Worcester House, and at the appointed time that night, I had to give myself four injections of Nupogen that would heighten my stem cell production. I would have to give myself four injections each night at a certain hour. I’d already been doing this at home for the past four nights, and had four more to go. In the end, I would end up giving myself 32 injections in different parts of my body. It is *every* bit as fun as it sounds.

Tuesday morning, we got up at 7am, walked to the hospital, they took blood, and then I’d be hooked into The Chair for 6 or 7 hours, listening to the chug chug chug of the collection machine. There was no disconnecting possible for the duration, so, I had a handy urinal at my disposal. They also offered a mobile toilet set up. I withheld. Linda would go walk the town and bring me back treats. A vanilla shake in the midst of a day like that was heavenly. Yes, she is a saint. After the very long day of being drained, looking at fat plastic bags of my collected stem cells, (looked a lot like marinara), we ambled back to the apartment complex. Grabbed something to eat (not marinara), gave myself injections, and off to bed. 

Wednesday *night* was the point of this particular blog entry. Maybe it was the many bizarre, unfamiliar, somewhat painful and exhausting new elements in my daily schedule. Sleeping on the plastic bed was not great and the slightest movement meant you’d kick the sheets off and were laying on sticky, sweaty, plastic. The air conditioning would kick on loudly, as would the fridge, to startle me every 15 minutes, then deadly silence when they’d shut off. I also always sleep on my right, but the assortment of 6″ long plastic dreadlocks protruding from the right side of my neck made that problematic. I’ll also never get actual dreadlocks because of this incident, so hopefully that’ll put your mind at ease, if you were actually worrying about that. 

After laying in a chair all day, and not really being able to do much in the way of exercise, I just lay there wide awake those nights, but that was okay, because sleeping was worse. You know when you have a really bad nightmare, then you wake up and are relieved? You might even start laughing at how absurd the dream was? 

My experience was quite different those particular nights. I had nightmares about intruders in the hotel room, people coming to strangle me, being vulnerable, not being able to move, being trapped. In the dream, I wanted to open my eyes but I couldn’t, I was helpless. The kind of panicked delirium dreams you have when you’re sick. But part of this horrible dream was being in that hotel room, in pain, on that miserable bed, with things growing out of my neck. And I would wake up to a reality which was just as bad as the nightmare.

So I lay there sweating and shaking. Trying to find the part where I was relieved to be awake. No such luck. I think that night, I experienced Night-Terrors for the first time. So THAT’S what that felt like. That sucked. I was scared, depressed, and I just wanted all this to be over with. Oh, and just to make this picture one notch more pathetic, I also had this twitch. Some semblance of the meds, the injections, and whatever else was coursing through my body was making me occasionally convulse. Great for sleeping. A sad, sweaty Borg on a plastic bed, convulsing, with tears running down his cheeks, fighting off Night-Terrors. Sorry ladies…. he’s taken.

Now, here’s the thing. It was 3am. Linda was in the other horrible single bed, asleep. She was leaving in the morning to go back to work Thursday and Friday. Sure, I could have waken her up and she’d be there for me. But sharing my immediate dilemma–it would have unnecessarily over-worried her the rest of the week, and might re-evaluate leaving me alone in that place. And I felt she had to get back to work. The school she works at is great, as are the people, and they’d been incredibly supportive and generous every step of the way. That being said, she’d already taken three days off that week and I had no idea how many *more* she might have to take in the future, so it was best she go back and most importantly, not worry about me any more than she was already. So I wasn’t going to wake her. 

And really, those f****** beds were so horrible and small, she wouldn’t even have been able to lay with me and the dreads. 

So there I lay, needing a distraction. Something to engage me and point my mind in a different direction. At 3:30 in the morning. So, I decided to compose an email to a friend of mine, Eric, on the east coast. An email that detailed my current position, situation and state of mind, and that sorry, my friend, you get the short straw listening to all this. An email so sad, dark and depressing that it might alarm some people but A) I think I couched it within the proper context of it being really just a very bad night and the email was some much needed therapy, and a distraction, B) Eric knows me well enough to get what I was doing, yet C) if I sent this to any *local* friend, it might have gotten back to Linda and worried her even more. 

Writing the email worked pretty well. Talking about it, or writing about it did help. I think I felt a bit better that night afterward. Never got much sleep. There was much more thinking. See, whenever I’m in a bad scenario, and I’m feeling sorry for myself, I’m usually quick to *remind* myself that a lot of people have it worse than me. Whether it’s health, finances, etc., I’ve usually been luckier than most. Even there, in that lousy bed, with a shock of medical cables jutting from my carotid artery, shaking, sweating and swiping at imaginary dream demons, this was all a medical exercise to HELP me. Yes, I was miserable–and I didn’t yet know that the worst was yet to come the following month—but this was all for my benefit. A benefit denied to many others. Oh, and lest you think I’m overly noble, all this flowery pontificating is all well and good but that night, I probably wasn’t mentally chronicling the world’s underprivileged. I didn’t feel particularly lucky at that moment. Just mostly uncomfortable. I think at one point, I probably just thought “Someone’s probably worse off, right? Sure.” And also “My neck hurts.” And tried to stay off the plastic. 

So Lin went home early Thursday morning. I just did what I had to the next two days, which were just as shitty, then she came back and got me Friday night and took me home.

You’ll be happy to know the twitching died down by year’s end. Bonus!