Well, the last half of the month sort of… sucked. I screwed up my pill regimen, figured that out just in time to get sick, which turned into a sinus inflammation that had the exact shape of my left maxillary sinus sticking out of my face like an illustration in a text book. You know, I have never been more than vaguely aware that I even have maxillary sinuses. When I’ve had sinus problems before, it’s always been the frontal ones (the ones up behind your forehead).

I’ve been calling it a “sinus infection” but apparently very few such inflammations are bacterial in nature (though as with many problems, antibiotics are overprescribed); the swelling and pain were at last brought under control with a stupendous yet apparently medically sound amount of ibuprofen. I’m on mucus thinners now to aid in drainage. I slept most of the weekend, after not sleeping for most of the week before.

A couple of things added to a turbulent end of month. One is that someone took it upon themselves to put up flyers declaring Friday the 28th trick or treat day around our neighborhood. Official municipal trick o treating is on Halloween itself this year, as in most years. In order to make sure no one went home disappointed, we decided to be prepared for both nights. So I was prancing around in my shadow costume with half my face swollen under the mask for a grand total of five children… though two of the parties specifically told us that they were glad we were open as we were always their favorite house, so I’m filing it under “worth it”. Building a reputation as the cool house for Halloween is a year-to-year endeavor. Repeat business is key.

At the same time this has been going on, our landlords/my parents-out-law have been having a series of computer misadventures. I’m their (paid) tech support, plus they’re family, and I enjoy having technical puzzles to solve. Still, there’s only so many hours in a day, you know? It’s all got to come from somewhere.

Being laid up in bed without enough energy or concentration to do much more than tweet crankily turned out to be good for business in one way: someone at The Globe and Mail saw one of my tweet threads and commissioned an op-ed based on it. For those who aren’t aware, that’s Canada’s largest newspaper in terms of readers. Still pretty exciting, even though “Canada” and “newspaper”. I’ve got a second such commission to fulfill today.

I had already planned on beginning to shop around pitches for short non-fiction writing after the election business settles down and I have more space in my head to think. If everything goes to plan, I’ll start with two respectable writing credits under my belt that I didn’t have to go looking for.

Tonight is Halloween proper. I have a deadline for my second op-ed piece to meet, my out-laws called the “tech support number” on a ransomware pop-up instead of calling me first, and I need to get the lights and sounds rigged for tonight.

It should be fun.