Bone scan

This is one of the Discovery NM/CT 670 SPECT/CT machines at Kingston General Hospital. It's a combination of a gamma ray camera (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) and CT scanner (also Computed Tomography, repeated because there are two parts to the machine). I had a bone scan this morning, and found the technology fascinating.

Reflections on NaNoWriMo 2017

I participated in National Novel-Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) last year and "won" at 50,808 words.  However, that's a number that needs some commentary.

Cancer Diagnosis

Yesterday I found out I have prostate cancer. This is my reflections on the diagnosis, my reactions, and my experience getting to this point.

Sunday (final day) at Worldcon 75

On my last day at Worldcon 75 there were only three panels I wanted to attend, which was good because I was getting even more tired than earlier in the weekend. Afterwards I rested, did a bit of blog writing, met for one last time with some of the Writing Excuses Retreat members, and went to bed early to get ready for my 3am (Helsinki time) wakeup to start my 26 hours of travel homewards (arriving in Kingston at 10pm Eastern, 5am Helsinki).

Saturday at Worldcon 75

On Saturday I got into all six of the six panels I’d selected. I had once considered adding a few more, but con and crowd fatigue took me back to my room (with a little lunch on the way).

Friday at Worldcon 75

On Friday there were fewer panels I wanted to attend, which was good because two weeks of travel were catching up with me. I managed to get into all six.

Thursday at Worldcon 75

Worldcon 75 is being held at the Messukeskus convention centre in Helsinki, a large venue for a large convention. Because of the castle tour I described in several previous posts, I missed the first day, which may have been a good thing for my tension level. The organizers apparently didn’t expect the huge crowds, so lots of rooms filled up; one fellow writer only got to 3 of 6 sessions she wanted. By Thursday they had decided to stop selling day passes to be fair to people who had already paid money, and managed to rent additional space and move several planned events into larger rooms. This made the printed schedules completely untrustworthy; I had fortunately arranged to use the online scheduler on the website, and made it to 7.5 of my chosen 8 talks (1^st choice for seven timeslots, 2^nd for one; I don’t remember which one).