The New Nigel

So …. Santa brought me an iRobot Dirt Dog today and it has to be the coolest gift I’ve gotten in my adult life.

 

It’s loud, especially on the wood floors.  It wanders aimlessly and bumps into things.  It gets tangled up in rug tassels.  So of course we named it after our late, lamented cat – he did the same things.  This Nigel, however, sweeps up loose crud on the floor instead of adding to the mess (man, could that cat shed.  I swear I could knit a new cat from what fell off him every week).

 

Tonight I set RoboNigel loose in the StarshipModeler stock room and shut the door.  Forty minutes later, he announced the demise of  every last dust rhino with a cheerful beeping.

 

I have no idea how rugged he is, or how long he’ll last, but for now — I’m quite impressed.  And I’ve wasted far too much time watching him work, when I could be boxing up these Prometheus kits….

 

I can’t help but ponder whether to modify him to look like a scutter or a DRD … though I guess I can’t do anything more than paint or he won’t be able to get under the shelves.

Wake Up Call

On Sunday morning at about 4am, I woke up with numbness and weakness all down my left side.  I’ve been a bit stressed out (when have I not been?) and I thought it was just my body rebelling against too much work and too little sleep, or maybe too much caffeine the day before.  But by 5am it was worse and I did something I have never done before:  woke Linda up and asked her to take me to the ER.

 
Once there, they determined my blood pressure was through the roof and gave me “60cc’s of something-or-other, Stat!” in order to bring it down.  After two days of tests (including an MRI and something called a TEE, where they stick a probe down your throat to do an ultrasound of your heart) they determined I had experienced a Transient Ischemic Attack or TIA.  A TIA is a “warning stroke” or “mini-stroke” that produces stroke-like symptoms but no lasting damage. 

 
TIAs occur when a blood clot temporarily clogs an artery, and part of the brain doesn’t get the blood it needs. The symptoms occur rapidly and last a relatively short time. Most TIAs last less than five minutes. The average is about a minute. Unlike stroke, when a TIA is over, there’s no injury to the brain. They can occur days, weeks or even months before a major stroke, and are important predictors of major strokes. In about half the cases, the stroke occurs within one year of the TIA.

 
So …. I’m back home now, on baby aspirin (to reduce the chances of those clots forming) and blood pressure meds, probably for the rest of my life.  Still recovering from the after-effects of anesthesia – they had to knock me out to do the MRI because I’m insanely claustrophobic and again for the TEE, because the first time they tried with the “twilight sleep” they gave me the max dose and I was still fighting the docs as they tried to stick that tube down my throat.  Turns out I have an unusually high resistance to anesthesia…. who knew.  Not looking forward to seeing the bill from all this — they had to knock me out for the MRI as well because I’m insanely claustrophobic and that MRI machine was bringing uncomfortable memories of the Quigley at OCS — and who knows what the insurance will choose to cover.

 
Anyway, with the right meds, changes to my life, some luck and the grace of God, this will be just a wake-up call and not an omen. 

 
But it has pretty much freaked me out.

The Hits, She Keeps a’coming

The 72d scale Raptor will be ready for sale next week.  Meanwhile, feast your eyes on what Neil Prentice has done with the kit to date:

Image:  Front view

Image: Looking inside

Image: Further back

Image: Back to the front