Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Septimus Rivit's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, June 8th, 2011
6:15 pm	Three and a half weeks in hospital So, this account is a little late being written, as I was actually discharged last Wednesday, but I thought I'd write things down whilst I remember most of what went on during my last hospital stay.  It was an interesting one, as not everything went quite according to plan.  Forgive me if this is rather long, but I want to write things down so that I remember.  I was admitted to old, familiar Ward 14 on 8th May, a Sunday.  It was the usual round of people - the surgeon's registrar going over the consent form, my ICU nurse coming to explain what I should expect when I awoke (as if I didn't already know) and my anaesthetist coming to to talk to me, although he knows my particular foibles by now (no cannulas below my wrist, please, and extra anti-emetics, for all the good they do).   Then in the morning of the 9th there was the last of the showering in the pink clorhexidine gel, which combats superbugs, and the donning of the bum-revealing hospital gown, and I was all set.  I was a little bit surprised when I was not given a pre-med to relax me a couple of hours prior to surgery, but my anaesthetist must have judge me already sufficiently laid back.  Last year I had a couple of tablets of something very nice indeed, and listened to Faure's Requiem whilst completely off my face, but that lovely experience was sadly not to be repeated this time.  So, at about 8:30ish in the morning I was wheeled down to C floor to theatre.  I was the first time I'd ever been down there completely sober, so I enjoyed having a look around, glancing into the little relaxation room they've got for the surgical as they wheeled me past and all the store rooms and labs that are on hand to assist what they do.  On the noticeboard there were some fairly scathing newspaper cartoons of Mr. Cameron and his dealings with the NHS.  I was wheeled into the anaesthetic room, which adjoins the theatre proper, and given an inhaled anaesthetic which disposed of me in a few seconds.  I'm told the operation went smoothly.  I don't know, I wasn't there.  They replaced my tricuspid valve and revised the placing of my pacemaker wire, making sure it was neatly tucked away and couldn't move and damage the valve, as it did last year.  The only concern which was mentioned was that there had been a bit of bleeding which had ended up around my right lung, but no more was mentioned of it at that point.  I woke up in ICU at around 1am on Tuesday the 10th.  I remember being extubated - they use a little balloon to stimulate the coughing reflex to help them remove the tube - and I fairly quickly regained my clarity.  I was sick, as usual, a wonderful dark green bile that you only see on a totally empty stomach.  I was reasonably awake and compus mentis through much of the next day, although with drips in my arms, a central line in my neck, a drain emerging from a couple of inches above my navel and a catheter in the proverbials I wasn't about to walk off anywhere.  That said, with the assistance of two nurses, I did get sat out in a chair for a couple of hours.  I felt damn good, considering, and at some point in the first few hours I remember asking if  they had actually done the operation, as I felt as if they'd maybe aborted it before getting to the really invasive stuff.  Mum and Dad came in and introduced me to the University Challenge quizbook they'd bought in Waterstones, and I was sufficiently awake to answer some of the questions.  I even managed to eat most of a sandwich, although I don't think I kept it down.  I stayed in ICU another night, and the next morning was mostly dedicated to removing things from me.  Everything came out smoothly, even the large chest drain, which had given me so much discomfort last year and about the removal of which I was rather apprehensive.  The removal of the catheter is always an interesting experience - it's like nothing so much as pissing plastic (which is exactly what it is, of course).  By the end of the day all I had left in me were my pacing wires, of which more later.  By lunchtime of Wednesday 11th May, then, I was back on Ward 14, in the same bed as I had been in last year.  I was able to walk as far as the bathroom.  Being able to use the toilet without assistance from anyone else is a baseline of human independence, and one I was glad to have graduated to so quickly.  By the Thursday I managed a shower and a shave which, whilst leaving me absoloutely shattered, did wonders for my feeling normal.  I had some very, very strange dreams featuring imagery taken from the Book of Revelations, and the heart-lung machine had left me feeling a bit emotionally charged (it always does - a recognised side effect, and one I find not entirely unpleasant, since in me it just seems to lend great poigniancy to things), but mostly I felt I was making a swift recovery.  It was probably on the Thursday or Friday that I had my post operative checks - an x-ray, an ECG and a cardiac ultrasound.  Well, they didn't like my x-ray.  My right lung showed a pleural effusion, a collection of fluid around the outside of the lung, as well as partial collapse.  I felt alright, maybe a little bit easily winded, but I chalked it up to having just had heart surgery.  My oxygen saturation had been a bit low, though, and my doctors had a reason for that now.  Although there had already been some mention of a drain Mr Weerasena, my surgeon, wasn't dreadfully worried and just upped my dose of diuretics in the hope that I'd pass the excess fluid out as urine.  On the Sunday I had had my main dressing removed and my pacing wires taken out.  Pacing wires are conductive wires which are lightly sutured to the outside of the heart whilst the surgeon is in there and fed down to just above one's navel, where they are tied off outside the body.  The idea is that, if a dangerous arrythmia develops, they can plug you straight into an external pacing macine and that can take over the running of your heart.  I was on such pacing for a few hours last year, but as it was it proved unnecessary this time, as besides being slightly elevated, my pulse has pretty much behaved itself.  A nurse came and undid the knots keeping them in place externally, and then just pulled them out.  It's not (usually) painful, but it is a bizarre sensation, as if you're getting rope burn inside your chest.  I was deemed well enough, after that, to go downstairs and across to the Brotherton Wing and attend Mass in the chapel.  I'd just put on clean pyjamas for bed time when a clear, pink-tinged fluid began seeping abundantly from the bottom of my sternal wound.  This was a bit alarming, but it seemed to stop when it was redressed.  It was alright until morning, but when I sat up for breakfast it started again, just as vigorously.  I went through three sets of pyjamas that day.  The doctors declared it to be serous fluid, probably from the pleural effusion on my right lung, mixed in which a little blood to make it pink.  They did an ultrasound of the lung and saw that it had got worse, not better, and then they started worrying a bit more.  They put a bag on the point from which it was issuing so as to measure how much was coming out, and started talking in earnest about draining the lung.  The drain came on the Tuesday.  Dr. Eva arrived at my bedside with a cart full of tubes and potions and she and Sheena, one of my nurses, inserted the drain there and then.  We discovered that I am very unresponsive to lidocaine, so even after my third dose of it as a local anaesthetic, I could still pretty much feel exactly what she was doing.  Two minutes of shouting, quivering and squeezing Sheena's hand later, and the drain was in.  They gave me some stronger painkillers and I listened to the radio whilst gritting my teeth for the rest of the afternoon.  Radio 3 played Rhapsody in Blue, and that helped a lot.  The drain stayed in for a couple of days, and I discovered that they do settle down once they've been in a while, so I wasn't desperately uncomfortable.  I could be up and about, but had to carry a little clear-plastic bucket with me wherever I went, into which the drain emptied.  It didn't drain much, but it had a couple of inches of the pink fluid in the bottom.  It was removed a couple of days later, which was a lot less painful than it going in.  I had a whole weekend  of not having any foreign objects in my thoracic whatnots.  It was very pleasant.  There were other things to fix besides my pleural effusion.  I'm on warfarin now, and it transpires that I am very sensitive to it.  They gave me a normal loading dose and my blood turned to water - and tried to escape through my nose.  Also, something (they never quite decided what before it fixed itself) was doing unspeakable things to my lower digestive tract.  Unspeakable things, of which I cannot speak.  No, not what you're thinking.  The thing that's worse than that.  But all this was overshadowed by the next week's plan: another chest drain.  On the Tuesday of my third week in hospital (or maybe the Monday, I can't remember now) they decided that the problem with the first drain had been that it was not big enough.  This time, mercifully, they decided that they had best not skimp on anaethesia and took me down to theatre to give me a general.  So that was fine.  They gave me a few strong painkillers as the anaesthesia wore off, and after a few paltry minutes in the recovery room I was returned to the ward.  I was told that a lot of fluid had come out on initial insertion but that not much had come out since.  This one was in some ways more uncomfortable than the first, especially when I coughed.  On the Wednesday or Thursday I found out why.  By some mischance, the drain had passed through my pleural cavity, through my diaphragm and  into my liver.  Apparently, my surgeon says, my liver just shouldn't be there.  I have a crazy diaphragm which, rather than live somewhere low down in my ribcage, lives more or less on a line with my nipples.  That'll be why I'm no good at singing the long phrases in choir.  It's was also why on the Friday I had my third general anaesthetic in as many weeks, this time overseen by three surgeons: Mr. Weerasena, my cardiac surgeon, whose case I am; Mr. Milton, a thoracic surgeon; and Mr. Hidalgo, a liver specialist.  Thankfully, the drain came out without my liver being all nasty and bleed-all-over-the-place-y, and a third drain was placed a little further up, into the actual pleural effusion.  It sat right next to a nerve, so it hurt like hell if I moved the wrong way, but unlike the first two it actually drained off the fluid.  I woke up in ICU, where I was kept for observation, but apart from waking up with vast quantities of phlegm making me feel like I was drowning and the mandatory ICU vomit-session, I was well enough, and only stayed a night before returning to the ward.  That drain came out last Wednesday, and that's when I got to go home.  I had, despite all that, a very tolerable three and a half weeks in hospital.  The staff were, as ever, very caring.  It was a great privelidge to be in long enough to see so many people come in ill and go out having had successful operations (the usual stay is about a week).  The only sadness was from the two deaths I was aware of, one of them a young man of 18 who had the same congenital defect as I do, and who passed away after battling endocarditis for two months.  The last-ditch operation to excise his diseased pulmonary valve was not successful.  The other man was Brian, who I didn't get to know as he spent his time in isolation in a side room across the corridor from my bay, but to see the nurses come and go all day one could tell he wasn't doing well at fighting his infection.  One night he went to ICU and he didn't come back.  Sometime next week I hope to meet up for coffee with Cilla and Denise, two friends I made on the ward who, like me, had been in for a while.  Cilla's just been released, and Denise hopes to be home tomorrow.  I wish I could remember all the people I've shared a ward with, people who have, for the most part, done their very best to be cheerful and positive whilst having unpleasant things done to them.  They've been good company, and I have enormous respect for them.  (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 1st, 2011
3:45 pm	A Date I got word yesterday that my next surgery has been scheduled for May 9th, so I'll be admitted to hospital on May 8th for that and probably spend about a week as an in-patient before being discharged.  I'm likely to be off work for about three months and will be in Halifax for most of that.  (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011
1:42 pm	Lest you imagine my lot to be a bad one, however... I have also more or less finished moving into my new house.  I still need one or two bits of furniture - more chairs are a must, and a table upstairs would be nice too, although not a necessity - but most things are in place.  Almost all of my things are out of my parents' house now.  I still have things to put on shelves or otherwise find a home for but things are gravitating towards where they belong.  I've been buying lots for the kitchen, and have been finding out just how many little bits and pieces you find you need.  My latest additions are a cheese grater and a wooden spoon.  I should invite people round for some sort of house warming, once my last chairs arrive and there's room for everyone to sit down.  (Comment on this)
11:00 am	Sic Transit Gloria Mundi So, the Chapterhouse is going the way of all things.  Business has not been great, and Martin has found someone to buy the place.  They're turning it into a glass emporium, and my services are no longer required.   I'm working on CVs and so forth and giving some thought as to where to go next.  I still have the post office two days a week and enough saved up that I should be able to keep my head above water for a little while.  I never intended to stay at the bookshop for so long, but my MA took longer than I'd ever intended, and, well, I really like it here.  Things are complicated a little by my impending operation - it's hard to look for jobs whilst you're anticipating a three-or-four month convalesence - but there you go.  I love the book trade; if I can find another job working in one, I'll lock my jaws onto it like a rabid squirrel.  One day, perhaps, I should seriously consider trying to set up my own.  As some sort of monument to my time here, I have exported a list of books I have ordered in for myself over (almost) five years.  It doesn't include books I've bought direct from the shelves, but it's an interesting view into my reading habits over the whole period.  So much has changed in the intervening years.  ( Books under the cut.  ) So there we go.  That's it.  (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 24th, 2010
10:56 pm	Some Happiness and Some Sadness I've had two very pleasant weekends in a row, and I'm hoping next weekend may make it a hat trick.  Last weekend was Nick W.'s house warming party down in Hampshire, so that was a car journey down south and a fun time with some of his other friends.  This weekend was Camo's annual birthday bender, which had already been going on for a couple of days by the time he shambled into Halifax early yesterday afternoon.  Scarf and I met up in the Sportsman and had a little bite to eat before other people arrived, and the evening saw us in the Goose, Fagin's and the Courtyard.  People other than myself drank an awful lot of tequila and politics and religion were discussed at length.  I ended up horrifying Natalie with my contentious opinions on touchy subjects, and the night was a success.  Next weekend will be Natalie and Scarf's Repo! The Genetic Opera themed halloween party, and my costume promises to be outrageous.  It'll be good to see so many great people on three consecutive weekends.  On a sadder note, however, my parents told me today that Julia, an long-term friend of the family, passed away earlier this week.  She was perhaps a little younger than my father, maybe in her late fifties.  I last saw Julia late last year when her niece Sarita started a music degree at York University.  She was a cheery, friendly woman who was very happily married to one of my father's Swiss friends, and was a language teacher and devout, thoughtful Catholic with whom I felt I had much in common.  I'd only met her perhaps half a dozen times in my life but we had exchanged a few emails in the months leading up to March and she had lent me a very interesting book on Catholicism and Zen Buddhism which I'm sorry to say I have yet to finish.  A few weeks after my own tachycardia in March, dad spoke to her husband and discovered that Julia had collapsed with a practically identical tachycardic episode and had, like me, been fitted with a pacemaker whilst they had been away in Switzerland.  I emailed her a couple of times over the last few months to ask her how she was and received no reply, so I sent her a letter last week.  Her husband rang back yesterday to say that, after a three week stay in intensive care battling an infection (endocarditis, I think) she died last week and her funeral is scheduled for the week after next.  She is survived by her husband, her son, and her elderly parents.  I regret not getting to know her better, and I certainly regret not being more persistent in trying to contact her - I've been thinking about her a lot, as her situation over the last few months has been a more difficult mirror of my own.  If anyone can spare a thought, a prayer or some positive energy for her and her family, that would be nice.  (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, October 8th, 2010
10:55 am	Houses and Squirrels and Bears, Oh My! So, my morning began with a wander over to the house in which I hope to soon be living.  It's near the Ouse (a double edged sword given how often it floods, but it is behind the flood defences) and has a distant view of the Minster.  It seems like a nice place to live, and wheels are in motion.  From there I wandered down the river, across Scarborough Bridge and through the Museum Gardens, where I said hello to the squirrels as usual.  I was approaching the gate onto Duncombe Place, and not particularly near the trees, when I felt something climbing up the back of my leg.  In my surprise, I exclaimed a very mild oath and gave my leg a shake, and the squirrel in question scampered off behind me, chastened.  Evidently they view me as their totem animal and wish to be near me and adore me.  No bears, though, which is always good news.  (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 28th, 2010
8:02 pm	Nothing to report I've been to see the pacemaker clinic and have nothing to report. I wasn't discussed at this morning's surgical conference, so it'll be a little while before I have news. I do now know my pacemaker's just sat there like a supernumerary kneecap since they last checked it, though, so that's good. I did have a nice couple of hours pootling round Leeds, though, since LGI took not much time at all. I indulged myself in Waterstone's, which is very bad of me, and browsed a music shop in the Merrion Centre, to no avail - no one seems to stock Corea's "Piano Songs for Children", and I don't want to buy it from the interwebs in case I look at it and it's more complicated than it sounds. I also popped into St. Anne's cathedral and listened to the choir sing vespers, which was absoloutely beautiful.  (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 25th, 2010
10:13 am	Paracetamoxifrusebendroneomycin So yesterday I went to Leeds to see Dr. Ballard. No news there, except that I'm now off the co-amilofruse so I should, at long last, be less thirsty and full of pee. I have another appointment on Tuesday, this time with my pacemaker specialist Dr. Blackburn, but Dr. Ballard wants to talk to my surgeon and hopefully have a quick chat about possible dates with him, too. (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
8:44 am	LJ spell check does not know about Cistercians In the last couple of days I've actually felt quite healthy for the first time in six months. I would encourage you all to enjoy to pleasures of walking briskly and being able to pick up heavy piles of books without falling over or dropping them, as it's pretty cool to be able to do both these things. I'm pretty much back in York now, although I am popping back to Halifax this weekend one last time before truly settling in. Tomorrow is an appointment with Dr. Ballard in Leeds, and I'm hoping he'll not have any real news for me. It would be nice if he takes me off co-amilofruse and ups my dosage of bisoprolol, though, so I can be both peeing less and (as a side effect) extra chilled. Tuesday was an interesting evening - dinner again with Eeyan and Father Stephen, and got to meet Stephen's friend Brother Benedict from the Cistercian community on Caldey, off the Welsh coast - also saw Jenny again for the first time in a long while, and it turns out she quite likes me, which is good - I thought we'd got off to a bad start. Anyway, dinner with a Trappist of the Strict Observance was not as quiet as might be expected, and I'm glad to have met him. And last night Dave, Lucy and Kit came over. I'd kindly been given a bottle of wine by Noel, but being teetotal at present, Lucy took that bullet for me, whilst Dave conked out on the sofa. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, September 4th, 2010
12:27 am	That still only counts as one Apologies for spamming your friends page with my toy soldiers, but I like to think this one is pretty cool even outside the usual demographic (even if I do say so myself). The largest, and also the most awkward to assemble and paint, miniature I have ever encountered. The mumak itself is no problem, but the howdah is a pain in the proverbials. ( More pictures ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 3rd, 2010
11:51 pm	Androcles, Master of the Forge My latest miniature. The colours haven't come out so well, although I thought I used my usual lighting and camera settings. Mostly just an ordinary techpriest, but I've switched out his head and body. I hesistate to call it a conversion, as the most technical thing was pinning the servo-harness to the body. Hmm. Kinda looks like Dr. Octopus, now I think about it. Moving as I am to York it's likely that my current painting momentum will be curtailed, but I still hope to snatch weekend time to paint up the next two dreadnaughts and maybe finish off my assault marines. I've also discovered that I own an ungodly number of scouts in various different previous paint schemes or paintless, and so I have plenty to go at. I should figure out just how many points of Marines I have now. Lots. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
12:58 pm	We're through the looking-glass here, people. So I'll be staying in the Bishop's spare room from Sunday for at least the next few days.  Life at St. Anne's Monastic House will, as usual I'm sure, be fairly bizarre (not, I hope, unpleasantly so).  Pray, my brothers and sisters, that I can survive a few days / weeks there without accidentally waking up in a habit one morning.  (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
10:11 pm	A Status Update So I saw my surgeon's understudy in Leeds General Infirmary yesterday.  He once again explained the situation to me (actually, he prefaced this by saying "I have bad news," which was extremely unhelpful, as the information he imparted was not news, and also slightly less bad than I thought) and then laid out the current, slightly sketchy plan for the medium term.  They will be replacing my now defunct tricuspid valve.  This replacement will be a tissue valve.  This will require another median resternotomy, which will again leave me with a couple of months of work at least.  Using a tissue valve rather than a mechanical valve means I shouldn't need warfarin, which is good - warfarin's other use, you may recall, is as a rat poison.  None of this bit was news.  What I did learn yesterday was that I'm not being considered an urgent case.  This is good, as I've tried being an urgent case earlier in the year and it's bad for your health.  I will be seeing Dr. Ballard, my lovely Scottish cardiologist, on the 17th.  He will be doing an echo and some other things and thereby seeing what is happening inside my heart.  If it doesn't look too horrendous and if I am still asymptomatic (other than being just damn tired, which is to be expected) then they will start thinking about the operation for some time in the next few months.  This means that I'm going to be in York working and looking for a new house from the beginning of next week.  Looks like it's time to email the Bishop and call in that offer of a spare bedroom.  If I do end up living with him for a while, it will be very nice, and also very, very weird.  (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, August 23rd, 2010
10:13 am	London So, I returned from London on Saturday.  It was very tiring, but good for morale.  We arrived on Sunday evening, having taken the train down.  On Monday we visited the Tower of London and pottered around there most of the day.  There are lots of unexpected points of interest - they've got a lot of arms and armour on display at the moment, and one belonging to Henry VIII has an absurdly large codpiece.  There were also some very interesting bits of graffiti in rooms which used to house prisoners of the Tower, including a lot which were clearly left by Jesuits - IHS, Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam, and all that.  After the Tower we took a walk along the Thames and across Tower Bridge, walking most of the way back to our rooms in High Holburn and stopping on the way to eat on just about the windiest terrace we could have picked, a restaurant overlooking the HMS Belfast.  Tuesday was the British Museum, and therefore garuteed to be brilliant.  The Egyptian and Assyrian galleries were fascinating, and I tracked down the Queen of the Night in one of the upper galleries, a lovely Mesopotamian relief of a figure who might be Lilith, Ereshkigal or Inanna (or someone else, the jury really is out ).  Their current temporary exhibition also happens to include some wax tablets belonging to Dr. John Dee, astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I, bearing some very interesting seals, one of which I think may have been a version of the Seal of Solomon later published in the Lesser Key of Solomon.  It made an esoterica-nerd very happy.  After the BM, we explored Bloomsbury for a while, which pleased mum.  Wednesday... what was Wednesday?  Wednesday started off at the Courtauld Gallery in Sommerset House, where each room seems to have a famous painting or two.  Highlights were Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergere and some lovely medieval and renaissance religious paintings. After that we took to wandering down the south bank for a while before crossing the Thames again at Westminster, where we looked at the Abbey and the Cathedral (where we saw some interesting nuns - the blue-and-white-sari clad Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa's order). By Thursday I was starting to feel totally worn out, so we agreed to have a day which was mostly sitting down.  We returned briefly to Westminster Abbey to see a couple of bits we'd missed the previous day before heading for the Thames cruises and floating down past a dozen or more landmarks as far as the Thames barrier.  Feeling much recovered, I suggested we walk to Covent Garden, and there I found Treadwell's,a marvellous esoteric bookshop I had long wanted to visit.  As usual with books in that particular area of my interest, they don't come cheap (a lovely modern edition of the aforementioned John Dee's writings costs the princely sum of £52), but I did stretch to a copy of "Ten Years of Triumph of the Moon" a book which I heartily recommend to anyone who's a fan of Ronald Hutton's work.  Friday was a relatively quiet day.  We headed over to St. Pancras station as I wanted to see the statue of John Betjeman and then went next door to the British Library, where they have a lot of interesting tomes on display - pages from the Codex Sinaiticus, a copy of the Magna Carta and some surprisingly interesting things in their philatelic section.  We'd intended to spend the afternoon in the Tate, but by the time we'd finished at the British Library we just had time for another wander around Bloomsbury before returning, exhausted, to our rooms.  We returned to Halifax on Saturday, desperately in need of a good rest.  (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 14th, 2010
7:59 pm	Bugger this for a game of soldiers I've generally not found heart surgery and the subsequent recovery as objectionable as might be imagined. I'm not saying that I've found it enjoyable, but it seems generally to be the sort of thing with which I am well equipped to cope.  Being the lazy soul that I am, I have appreciated catching up with reading and being able to put my feet up, and being through such a situation gives one a certain sense of perspective which one can come to appreciate.  But this week has been a bit more crap than I'd like.  Nothing major has happened, I've just had to have my medication adjusted a couple of times and the side effects have knocked me out for much of the week - I spent most of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday sleeping and have done very little which has been fun (although I have seen Scarf, which was much appreciated, even if I did sadly miss his house warming).  As I've been coming off tramadol, an opioid painkiller, I've been going through some of its withdrawl symptoms and as a result have had really, really nasty dreams every night, the sort which are tailor made for one's personal neuroses which has added to the niggling physical discomfort of being tired most of the time.  Hopefully no more of those.  I've hardly left the house, and woke up this morning still feeling grotty, but I've come to realise it's now a matter of morale.  Now I'm feeling a little improved I have to get out and do things or else I will go crazy.  My room is starting to feel like a prison and I need to go and see people and do things.  Anyway, I'm off for a long planned week in London, which should be a relief if it doesn't prove too gruelling for me.  After that I have to see people.  Time to get texting.  (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010
9:54 pm	Ugh. Opiates and opioids sound fun, until you become acquainted with their side effects. I've come off the tramadol once already and had to go back on them due to inflamed ribs - hopefully after the next day or two I won't need them again for a while. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
8:10 am	This is a dangerously addictive game www.stupidvideos.com/flash_games/Doodle_God/ If you start playing it, you'll probably have to play it to completion.  (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
12:07 am	Venerable Dreadnought From the sublime and ridiculous to the merely ridiculous. I have pictures of my Rogue Trader era venerable dreadnought. I'm afraid it is a very ugly model. It is, however, something of an antique, and I like to think it is at least a little less ugly than it was when I first received it (septimus-rivit.livejournal.com/138362.html). ( Read more... ) I don't think I ever got round to posting pictures of my librarian conversion. The hands took a lot of work, as GW hands are almost invariably carrying something. His hands are part chopped up plastics and part green stuff. The head was also a challenge, as most bare marine heads are gurning in a most ridiculous fashion. What I wanted to evoke was the feeling that he was walking towards you, pistol holstered and sword sheathed, ready to calmly wipe you out with the power of his mind alone. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. This does remind me that there are still things to do, of course. His base is completely untouched, and the rivits on his left shoulder ought to be picked out more clearly. I'm torn as to whether his backpack-skull ought to be obsidian (black with slight highlighting) or just bone. Anyway, the only other things I have been finishing are tactical marines. I'll take a picture of the whole force as it currently stands once I have two full tactical squads finished. I'm sure I'm actually rather ahead of the 1000pt mark I was aiming for. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 26th, 2010
11:04 pm	The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Every time I hear the opening notes of the theme, I cannot help but smile.  My parents bought me the complete boxed set of the radio series for my birthday and I have just (bonus disc notwithstanding) listened to the final episode, having listened to all five phases in full.  I've listened to the original two series, which were HHGttG's earliest incarnation, on many occasions and with great pleasure since early childhood, but it was the first time that I have listened to the tertiary, quandry and quintessential phases since they were originally broadcast whilst I was at university, having been produced two decades after the originals, bringing the radio series into line with the books.  I remember being a little wary of them when I first listened to them because they were produced after Douglas Adam's tragically early death and thus without his involvement.*  Having listened to them again, and with a little more time to digest them, I see they did a very good job on them and remained faithful to the tone of his work. One thing which did rankle with me when I first listened five or six years ago was the very end.  ( Spoilers, in case anyone of my LJ friends has not read Hitchhikers, which I very much doubt.  )  The boxed set I have, in fact, includes three endings which were recorded, only one of which was used.  ( More... ) Towel Day has been added to my calendar.  I won't be forgetting it next year.  So long, Douglas, and thanks for all the fish.  You should still be here today.  *Although Adams had earlier recorded a cameo as Agrajag which appeared in the Tertiary Phase, as there had already been abortive attempts to get the final books adapted for radio.  (Comment on this)
8:59 pm	Space Marine Woes Well, perhaps "woes" is too strong a word, but certainly I'm having difficulties.  The painting is coming along slowly but surely, with a tactical squad and a dreadnought (a rogue trader era dreadnought, in fact: septimus-rivit.livejournal.com/138362.html, of which more photos in the next day or two) and I am also working on a Master of the Forge.  My problem is background.  Ever since my idea of a chapter based on the Sacred Band of Thebes was universally ridiculed I have been trying to come up with a chapter background which is not too outlandish and yet has a little spice to make it interesting.  I'm not even sure of the name any more.  Here are some things I know I would like to include:  Dreadnoughts: This is partly because they annoy Dave, and partly because, as vehicles go, they're quite fun to paint (I normally despise painting vehicles).  The Shepherd of the Ancients: With all these dreadnoughts, I like the idea of having a Master of the Forge styled the Shepherd of the Ancients who is responsible for tending to the ancient, fallen battle brothers who take to the field in the chapter's dreadnoughts.  Shields: I like shields, I think the look cool.  I'd like them to be a common motif, borne by many characters and veterans and somehow tie this into the chapter's mindset.  Orthodoxy: The chapter is not particularly outlandish.  They are an Ultramarines successor and whilst not slavishly dedicated to the Codex, they do hold to the ancient ideals of the Astartes as much as any still do.  They therefore fight for the Emperor, the pinnacle of humanity and its saviour, not the God-Emperor, the Ecclesiarchy's version of things.  The Reconquista: The chapter was founded after the Fourth Black Crusade as part of the reconquest of my subsector.  This bit of the background is absolutely part of my canon, but the particulars can be fleshed out.  The Homeworld and Recruitment: Their fortress monastery is located on the sparsely populated near-desert planet of Allenor Lux, whose pre-Black Crusade history is more or less unknown due to the annihilation of its original population, although the remains of ziggurat structures remain, scattered thinly across the planet.  The population today consists only of the marines and their retainers - recruitment is primarily from nearby systems.  This gives me an excuse to have a bit of variety, thematically, and represent some of the diversity of my subsector in my marine force.  But I'm not yet sure how to tie all this into a coherent background.  Ah well.  (3 Comments |Comment on this)