What does one do on a book blog when one hasn’t finished a book to review?

Oh yes. One talks about one’s day. That’s why they call it a web log.

It was a mixed weekend for me. I got one piece of good news and one piece of bad news. The bad news I’ll probably never tell you about (though I can be bribed, if it’s that important to you), but the good I’ll trumpet to the skies – if it works out. Watch this space.

Today was a big one, because I had a doctor’s appointment, which meant actually leaving the house and interacting with other sentient organisms. I once knew a man who refused to ever see a doctor. He was retired, living in Florida, and he spent his days by his pool, drinking beer and netting away any stray leaf or insect that happened to land on the water surface. He had skin the color and texture of fine Corinthian leather. I seem to recall he died suddenly one day, but I don’t know whether he passed the actuarial average or not. With that skin it was hard to guess his age.

Today’s was one of those appointments where you have to fast before you go in, so they can judge your blood impartially. Not that big a sacrifice, really. The doctor and I had the usual conversation, in which he reaffirmed the miraculous current state of prostate testing – you can either take a flawed test which is likely to give you a false positive and result in them carving out your bagel for no good reason, or you can wait and see. I chose to wait and see, rather than buying a chance in the prostatectomy lottery.

I told him what I do for a living now, and he thought it was pretty cool. I love talking about that.

The nurse stuck me twice, trying to draw blood, and failed to extract any. Which is slightly unnerving, though I knew my heart was beating, so I was pretty sure there was blood in there somewhere. She referred me to a technician who got it done in a minute. I acquired a flu shot and the second pneumonia shot, too.

I also got two things accomplished today that I’d been putting off – one of them being taking the Christmas tree down. And in the afternoon my forebodings of job disaster, roused by several idle days, were eased by a new translation assignment.

Which I’ve got to post this and get to now.