It turns out that sabbatical is not all that conducive to blogging. I’d left Montreal assuming I’d get so much done with all this time on my hands, and I’d be recounting all sorts of exciting things that have been happening in California, finishing the book in no time flat, undertaking several music projects and traveling up and down the coast every weekend. It may have been a little unrealistic. (I need to do a better job of imagining myself as a person with limits.)

Instead, I’m just having all sorts of stuff happen in California. I’m currently making a Very Big Push to get a revised mp3 manuscript out the door and hope to have a fully revised version by the time my mom visits in mid-Feburary. It’ll require logging some extra hours above my no-more-than-40-a-week rule, but my last big conceptual challenge is close to being dealt with (though I am currently crowdsourcing a coinage which is a bigger-than-anticipated hurdle) and then it’s just a matter of doing what I’m told and cleaning up prose. Or so I think. It’ll still take tons of time, I’m sure.

I am feeling better than I was in the fall, and it’s amazing how productive I can be when I’m not hypothyroid. More than once this term, I’ve worked all day, gone swimming, come home and made dinner, and then got inspired to make music for an hour or two before watching TV and cashing in for the night. That would have been physically impossible for me in the fall. Now, it’s possible my thyroid medication is in fact overcompensated, but that is an issue I’ll deal with after the next blood test. I wouldn’t want it to be fixed too much the other way.

I also would love to tell you about the Center, which is a truly amazing place, and some of our adventures in California thus far, and get into some serious US-Canada comparison. For now, let me just say that mail order is SO MUCH BETTER here. It’s kind of dangerously easy to order stuff for not much money. The entire US appears to work like the app store. All that may happen in due time. But this weekend we are gone to Oregon, where I give two talk and then we spend a day in Portland.

Source: Thyroid Cancer Superbon