People with chronic illnesses have a clever saying: that they are “out of spoons” meaning they have no energy to do whatever is being discussed. Some tasks/activities require more spoons than others, and I’ve found myself not leaving the house much lately. Besides being sick quite a bit, I’ve also had a couple of major events that forced me to be social and “on”, and that really takes it out of me these days. Some days, there just aren’t enough spoons to do all the things I want to.

Sharp-eyed readers of this blog noticed that I didn’t post last week. I’ve been sick for much of November – first a mild cold, then later a more serious one. The more recent version had me coughing hard enough to give myself headaches, and nearly causing me to vomit. It was unpleasant, as I’m sure can be imagined.

But life moves on, and I have nearly recovered from the second cold. I’m still waiting for my dermatology appointment to suss out what’s happening with my skin rash, but we may have found it: at the urging of T, I switched soaps, and the itching, while still present, is closer to more normal levels. If the dermatologist has any further revelations for me, that would be fantastic; otherwise, I’ll be sticking with this new soap for a while.

One of the things I’ve been doing at home is getting rid of stuff. Between T and I, we have a LOT of stuff; our basement is jammed full of boxes, plastic totes, and shelving. To that end I’ve been spending some time culling my game collection. First up was a ton of games I was sent on spec for review; I contacted the company and tried to arrange a way to get those games back to them, but they never replied. Off those games went to a local store that buys games from the general public, funding part of my convention budget for next year. The goal is to get rid of enough things that T can park in the garage for the winter, which would add to her comfort level in a way we both want. Moving lots of heavy boxes around costs a surprising number of spoons, especially for someone with debilitating coughing spells, so doing this took longer than I would have liked.

Speaking of conventions, I’ve started looking at conventions for the coming year, and except for Midwinter in January, I really don’t see many gaming cons I’m up for attending in 2020. We’re set to travel to four Steampunk events this coming year – Geneva Steam in March, a day trip to Cog County Faire in late May, Michigan Steam Expo in late June, and TeslaCon in November. Other than that, my schedule is currently pretty open. I enjoy road trips: T not so much, so any other convention travel I do will be on my own. We also have a Fabulous Vacation to the North American West Coast in August, so we’re both looking forward to that.

I’ve done fairly well keeping up with my weekly blog this year. I’ve missed only two weeks so far, and have traffic levels already surpassing what I had in 2018, so that’s a big plus. I usually summarize these things in January, but that’s clearly a pretty dull topic for anyone but me, so I likely won’t put up a post about it.

Please remember that I will be transitioning away from Facebook early next year, so if you want to keep tabs on what I’m up to, please subscribe to get email notices when a new post goes live here. The end-of-year holidays are bearing down on us, meaning everyone is busy, but I’d like to thank all of you for reading my blog, commenting, and keeping in touch.