I hope my American friends are all having a great holiday, and that the rest of you are having a great whatever-you’re-doing-this-weekend. I’ve gone two weeks without a post, first for health reasons and this week, more happily, because my mother is in town for the holiday. She told me there was something she wanted to discuss on her visit, and then said solemnly: “I want to play video games again.”
So today Mom and I will be trying out WoW and Kingdom of Loathing. If anyone has other suggestions, please share them! She is a casual gamer, but she did kick ass at City of Heroes a while back.
Next week I have a guest post from English comedian, actor, and writer Jim Sweeney. Americans probably know him best from his appearances on the original Whose Line Is It Anyway?, as well as a memorable cameo in Black Adder the Third as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Jim was very kind enough to write an account of his gradual nerfage from multiple sclerosis, which you will find entertaining, informative, and funny. Please look for it on Tuesday!
I send you off with Jim Sweeney’s tribute to the anniversary of the Comedy Store Players, in which he was a longtime performer. (I recommend watching it to the end.) See you next week!
October and December have parallel anniversaries for me, one set that is joyful and the other, not so much.
This October is the fourth anniversary of my diagnosis with CFS. And December will be two years since I had to stop working, which is how I mark the beginning of my disability.
December, though, is also the month when I met the man I was going to marry, eight years ago, and October is the month I married him. It will be three years on the 27th and it still feels like I just met him.
What’s the significance of the parallels, or all these numbers? Nothing, really. I didn’t have a good handle on my topic for this week, and I made a last-minute decision to ask someone I admire to do a guest post. In the process of asking, it just occurred to me that not only has my favorite season arrived, but it’s also “anniversary season.” I also realized the other day that in two years it’ll be a decade that we’ve known each other, and our five-year wedding anniversary. That’s kind of a nifty, satisfying coincidence, numerically speaking. (Not numerologically speaking. That’s just silly.) So I thought I’d mention it.
It’s natural to mark the passage of time, but I don’t tend to get maudlin over the medical anniversaries. I just note their arrival, think about it for a bit, and move on. I do tend to get maudlin over my anniversaries with my best friend and love of my life…because in the end, what he’s brought into my life is much greater than what the CFS took away.
This week, Skepchick asked the question “what kind of skeptic are you?” This question comes at an interesting time for me, but has been apt for quite a while. I’m often frustrated by my lack of capacity to do more with my interest in skepticism. Being as ravenous as I am to learn more about it, I feel I’m missing out on a lot of cool events that take place in Southern California’s robust skeptical community. (Of course, back when I was healthy, I was working and going to school, and didn’t have the time to do much more than attend a Skeptic Society conference.)
Surly Amy, Surly Johnny, carr2d2, and Tim3P0 listen to Brian Hart of the Greater L.A. Skeptics Meetup Group (not pictured)
Last week I had the great pleasure to enjoy some delicious shabu shabu and some even more delicious skeptical banter with an awesome group of people. It reminded me that, per Monday’s post, I really need to damn the torpedoes and go full speed ahead a little more frequently than I do now, because it’s just too much fun to be around like-minded people who also love to talk about this stuff. I’m lucky that Paul is also a skeptic — he comes to it from his engineering background and love of magic — so we can go to events together which makes it easier on me physically, not to mention how great it is to have a partner who shares my enthusiasm!
Of course I will still be blogging about skepticism (among the usual other things) here, and in February I will be returning to Skeptically Speaking‘s “Speaking Up” segment. I’m also very happy to mention that I’ve joined the team at Grassroots Skeptics as its editorial manager — doesn’t that sound fancy? — so I get to scratch that itch to volunteer my time for a cause I believe in.
I’m looking forward to upping the “active” quotient of my skepticism this year by continuing to connect and work with passionate and talented people, both online and offline. To illustrate the point, I send you off with a comic from the community favorite Tree Lobsters! by Steve DeGroof, whom I met during a Virtual Drinking Skeptically chat. I was in on I believe the first Twitter chat about confectionopathy, a treatment I am seriously considering. And by the way, Tree Lobsters! is running a fundraiser right now to benefit Engineers Without Borders.
