This is the second part of my diary of my wife’s cancer. The first part is here. Tuesday, December 6th, 2016 It’s the day before Wendy’s operation, a bilateral mastectomy. We’re putting final touches to plans here and there but it feels rather like having your first kid: sure, you buy the stroller, put…

A year ago today I started keeping a diary of my experience being husband to a wife with what turned out to be Stage 2B breast cancer. Here’s the first part. Wednesday, October 26, 2016 We go in for the biopsy, finally. It’s been a few weeks since Wendy found the lump, but we’ve…

People asked how I did this: so here’s the story. At the very beginning of 2015 I left Twitter. I’d spent five years there and was more than ready for some time off to recover and to figure out what might be next. …

I left Twitter five months ago; here’s where we’re at — So much has happened since last time. The recent months have formed Phase 2 of unemployment, and as you remember Phase 2 is about making exercise a habit cementing family bonds pursuing some personal projects finding a job I’ll update you briefly on progress in each area below. Exercise I’m proud…

I’ve never written a Twitter bot before — It was Hunter who gave the initial prompt back in the day: and so on 15 March 2013 I registered @congratsbot. Then just 26 months later @panzer pointed me at this Tweet: and I figured I’d build it. There are a few hundred Tweets each minute containing the…

tl;dr: I made push.twtt.rs, prompt.twtt.rs and circles.twtt.rs for your (and my) enjoyment. — I wasn’t the first to mock up imaginary push notifications from Twitter, and I regret that I don’t even remember from whom it was that I stole my first base layer (including the “May 2B” typo) I got hooked on this idea, though, and did a few over the…

It’s been about six weeks since I left my job, and I wanted to give you an update on how it’s going. — As you know I’m currently in Phase I of my unemployment, and you’ll doubtless recall that Phase I has the following themes: personal decompression; reunion with family; recovering some level of physical fitness; and making some local connections. I’ll update you briefly on progress in each area below.

My grandmother was born during World War I and had her first child during World War II. In England at the time there was food rationing, which believe it or not continued after the war ended: in 1946 bread rationing began, and in 1947 they started rationing potatoes. …

Something I have not appreciated until recently is how death changes the future as well as the present. The change from “he is” to “he was” is simple to get one’s head around. Someone disappears and they move into the past. That thought is accommodated with relative ease. What I wasn’t expecting is to feel so moved by the loss of the future. Somehow “he will” to “he would have” is a much tougher transition. Simple future to conditional perfect. An entire existence, stretching endlessly into the future, draining away in front of your eyes.