Looking Back

Tuesday, Jan. 01, 2013 - 5:40 a.m.

Matter Of The Heart

In January, a trip to the emergency room for a rapid heartbeat revealed a diagnosis of congestive heart failure.

It was treated with medication and changes in my diet, and I'm one of the fortunate ones who responded beautifully.

The underlying cause turned out to be hyperthyroidism, and a radioiodine ablation in May took care of all of my symptoms.

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Hobbies & Stuff

My shaky hands quit shaking. Apparently the hyperthyroidism was what was causing them to shake in the first place.

So I began noodling around with lettering and some basic artwork.

My eventual goal is to be able to make custom artwork for convention badges without taking six blithering weeks to develop and render it.

I still play the bass guitar occasionally, although it's been awhile since I actually picked up the instrument.

I've also managed to go glopping through a thrilling midlife crisis consisting of collecting nail polish. I seem to have at least some shades of every color I wanted as of this writing. Budgetary and space concerns means I'm keeping that at a minimum these days, but my nails -- even though they're still bass-playing short -- look amazing.

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Look & Feel

I finally got my dental work completed. There's a few more things left to tune up, but basically my old chompers have finally been replaced with new chompers and they are actually cosmetically pretty nice.

My hair turned significantly greyer after my thyroid ablation, and after experimenting with black dye that made me look like a caricature, I steeled myself and let my hair grow out. Yes, that was a pun.

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Passings

Hm. I don't know.

I see the In Memoriam listings here and there and the only one that's really honked my horn seems to be Davy Jones.

I keep thinking Whitney Houston should have taken better care of herself. Poor thing.

I know who I'm *going* to miss when the cosmic bucket is finally kicked, but I'm not going to jinx them by mentioning any names here.

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All right, that's it. See you next time, whenever that will be.

Happy 2013.

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