Dear JD, JWR, NWK:
Thanks for the good wishes. I will need to be on temporary leave from Beta, because of a hemorrhagic stroke that I suffered on New Year's Eve, and for which I'm currently being treated at an acute rehab center near my home. This kind of stroke, which is caused by a broken or leaky blood vessel on the side of the skull rather than inside the brain tissue, is less dire than many other strokes (though if it had not been properly diagnosed and treated, it could well have been fatal or permanently disabling). In any case a battery of mental tests have shown no significant mental deficits resulting from the stroke. (This includes the infamous puzzles about the three families, one with one child (a girl), one with two children, one with three children, one with a jet ski, one with a canoe, and one with a "small" sailboat: Now tell me the names of the three families and how many children each has, as well as which boat each owns.)
Anyhow, I cheered myself up the second night in the ICU, while the titanium staples in my forehead were healing, by asking for my Rinkya box and cherishing my wonderful new Princess Syaoran cel. While I will need to back off my Beta duties for some weeks, I think in the long run I will be restructuring my life around things that I love and find healing, so Beta and RS will in the long run benefit from the stroke. But please do not be miffed if I am silent or absent from both for several more weeks while my slow healing takes place. '
