[Sca-cooks] What has happened to Adamanteus?

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Huette von Ahrens:
>I have been noticing that Master Adamanteus has
>been absent from a lot of discussions lately.
>Has something happened to him or his computer?
>Does anyone know?

Hello, I'm alive. Sort of...

Could we have a little tear-jerking music here, Professor? The tale I 
am about to tell is not pretty... The not-so-short and not-so-sweet 
version is that over the summer I became aware (yeah, this sounds 
really dumb) of some problems with my legs -- basically tendinitis in 
both Achilles tendons. I attempted to correct this, or at least keep 
it from getting worse, by vigorously exercising, hiking locally, and 
such.

Eventually, when this did not improve, my doctor sent me to a 
physical therapist, who determined that there was some pretty 
serious, broad-spectrum joint damage to ankles, knees, and hips. 
Nothing irreversible, but requiring a lot of work to more or less 
redesign my entire stride. I have about six exercises to do in 
between the three or four sessions of PT per week. Not only does this 
take up a lot of time, but it is also very tiring.

A couple of weeks ago, I also came down with some kind of flu-like 
symptoms, your basic 48-hour bug, with heavy concentration on chills, 
fever, and, of course, aches and pains in the joints. (This is 
something I have experienced so infrequently in my life that I 
honestly didn't recognize the symptoms for what they were.) While in 
the middle of all this, I managed to throw my back out pretty 
spectacularly (still not sure how this occurred, but I was probably 
low-level delirious at the time, so whatever it was I did must have 
seemed like a terrific idea at the time). Naturally, being me, I 
attributed the pain of this injury to the flu, and ignored it, apart 
from the occasional ibuprofen (acetaminophen being The Devil's 
Placebo Analgesic).

It also turns out that I am no longer able to injure my back, see my 
chiropractor once, and be 100% healed the next day, which was, once 
upon a time, my standard experience. I must be old or something ;-). 
I'd better learn how to do that before it kills me.

Anyway, I have a messed-up back, am dealing with the chiropractor 
three times a week instead of the physical therapy (temporarily 
suspended), am looking forward to the comparative luxury of painful 
PT four times a week, and am not able to sit at the computer for very 
long stretches.

Add to this the fact that my lady wife has volunteered for a job in 
the PTA of my son's school, and it turns out this involves a lot of 
computer time. Naturally, this machine is the only one of three 
available computers we have that'll do the job, at the moment. So 
some of the time I could actually be at this machine, being a good 
and more active list-member, I actually can't get at this machine, it 
being occupied with all sorts of Book Fairs, Bake Sales,  auctions, 
etc. At least she no longer complains about my changing the OS about 
every six months... Oh, and I forgot to mention I have also been 
transcoding a lot of video footage, which can be very 
processor-intensive, sometimes occupying nearly every bit of power 
this machine possesses, for anywhere from 20 minutes to two days at a 
time, depending on exactly what I'm doing, and how.

I feel like a cross between some kind of Warner Brothers cartoon 
villain, caught out in a rain of anvils and old-fashioned 
cannonball-shaped bombs, and Kenny from "South Park".

I owe profound apologies to several people on this list for being 
incommunicado for so long, but the past couple of months have been 
difficult. I've been trying to at least read most of the posts from 
this list, if not respond to them. I also expect things to improve, 
gradually. I stress the word "gradually", because if all this becomes 
a major topic of conversation, I probably won't be able to take part 
in it, not for a while.

Ah, well, back to Bernard Cornwell... many thanks for thinking of me...

  Kenn... I mean, Adamantius