Notes from Maine - 2022/03/06
My father is back at home after another hospital visit. He went in for a couple of weeks and they got a better handle on the fluid in his lungs and managed to bring his pulse down. My brother elected not to send him to rehab—Dad doesn’t do well in those places. He’s good a refusing therapy and just languishing in bed. At home, he’s easier to coax into his normal routine so at least he moves around. While in the hospital, Dad had a stroke. It was lucky he was in the right place. It was lucky my brother was visiting so he could get a doctor immediately. The imaging showed no real damage and now they have Dad on thinners to prevent more strokes.
These problems will continue to compound, I’m sure. At least he’s home and relatively happy. We have plenty of people helping him—keeping him safe and comfortable. It feels like a nice, soft landing, to a long life.
Out in the barn, my friend Earl is a dreamboat this week. At least that’s what Maybelle tells me. Next week, he’ll be a jerkface again, according to my calendar. I’m starting to get a handle on these swings. I warn Earl that a change is coming, but he doesn’t listen to me. It’s amazing to me that I lived with horses for so many years without knowing about all this drama. There is fresh entertainment every day, and I’m there to witness it because there’s so much extra work involved with keeping the horses apart.
I spent last night working on an Atari circuit board from 1978. Fixing old electronics is fascinating. A modern processor has 60 billion transistors. The board I was working on last night has a processor with 4,100 transistors. So, when I’m working on something from 1978, I can develop a pretty good sense of how everything works. There’s no generalization required. You can fit the entire concept of the machine inside your head and think through where the problems might be. An errant chip here, or a broken trace there will cause a particular malfunction. Witnessing the malfunction, I just have to trace back to see where the signals became corrupted and then set them straight.
I’m telling you all this to try to bolster my confidence because that board completely befuddled me last night. My friend came over and we traced through signals for hours and hours. I replaced bad parts and nothing changed. We injected the proper voltages, and nothing changed. It was a fun evening and I have zero to show for the effort. But it was a fun evening. I guess that’s enough.
After spending time on broken hardware, returning to writing is pure joy. As long as I can believe the story I’m telling, there are no rules about what can happen. The laws of physics bend to me instead of the other way around. I feel a tremendous responsibility to the characters I write about. They’re real people who deserve to be treated fairly. Bad things happen to my characters, of course, but I try to make sure that everything fits within the established framework.
I have some friends right now (fictional) who are going through some drama as I write to you. I’m dying to get back to them so I can see them through the crisis they’re facing. I think everything is going to be okay, but it’s impossible to know. The only way to find out is for me to finish writing that book. I think I’ll get back to it. Hope you’re well.
