Many apologies! I tried tweaking my http config file and ended up sending my new writing site to the old non-functional mockup. Doh! Anyway, the second part of chapter one should automatically publish itself around midnight tonight, so you’ll be able to read it tomorrow. I added a disclaimer so people who first hit the site will know to read from the beginning.

Some or even most of you are probably wondering where I’ve been for the past two weeks. My posting frequency has been eclipsed by the ever silent Justin, and for that I apologize. Normally this would mean I have been lazy playing videogames or otherwise frittering away my time. On this particular occasion, nothing could be further from the truth. For the past week, I’ve been busily hacking away at a Django app which will serve as the launchpad for my Webfic based on the Kildosphere mythos I’ve been slowly accumulating in my addled brain. Many late nights into the wee hours I have toiled, trying to get the system functional and fully cached. Though the result is still in need of work, and I likely need to tweak the design, I have reached a final product worthy of unleashing upon the unsuspecting populace.

After three weeks of wearing glasses, I’ve been getting somewhat impatient to resume contact wear. To that end, my followup appointment came up yesterday. As expected, a topographical scan of my corneas revealed they have indeed reverted to some ideal state unencumbered by daily plastic assaults. The doctor described my eyes as a textbook example of healthy corneas, astigmatism and myopia notwithstanding. Apparently the contacts had been slightly flattening the surface, slightly suppressing my astigmatism by about one point. For those of you with normal eyes, most people with corrective lenses don’t even have one point of astigmatism, evidenced by the rarity of toric contact lenses. I have over four points, and the contacts had reduced the worst eye to 3.5. This would explain why my vision slowly deteriorated after getting my new glasses. As my corneas healed, my glasses which were only designed for 3.5 points of astigmatism had to suddenly correct 4.5.

I’m actually pretty good at Mario Kart DS. Unfortunately I also get incredibly angry when the CPU controlled characters do cheap bullshit to win. I guess it finally got to me. One particular round, in a single lap, I was hit with no less than three blue shells. And that came after I was hit by two blue shells and two red shells almost consecutively. I reset the game. Almost immediately into my next attempt, I was hit by a red shell, and then whoever was behind me knocked me off a ledge.

Today I had my first MRI. As I type this, I still have the heart-monitor leads attached to my chest. I went to the [Cardiac Center* at The University of Chicago Hospitals expecting to be crammed unceremoniously into a tube for an indeterminate amount of time, but that would have been too easy.