This is an update, and it’s going to be a rather negative one.  Feel free to skip if you like.  This post is personal and has nothing to do with books or fiction writing.  Academic writing will come into play.

My wife had her lumpectomy on the 2nd.  Everything went fine, and she came home that day.  We will get the results of the pathology report on Wednesday, the day after tomorrow.  My in-laws came up from where they live, a city three hours drive away.  My father-in-law stayed through Saturday, the fifth.  It was the last time I ever saw him.  My mother-in-law stayed through the next week.

I went to Costa Rica on Sunday the sixth.  This was a business trip that had been in the works since before my wife was diagnosed with cancer.  The university at which I’m employed opened a branch campus there last fall.  Physics was being taught for the first time this spring, and I was helping set up a lab.

While I was gone:  Monday night the sewer line under the house backed up; my wife had to call the plumber on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, my mother-in-law was running errands in my wife’s car (formerly known as the Out of Town Car) when a guy ran a red light and hit her.  No one was hurt, but the car isn’t going to be going out of town until the insurance is settled and repairs are done.  My car wouldn’t start later that day for some reason, but it works fine now.  Fortunately my son has a car.

Thursday night I opened my work email to followup on a prior conversation with my department head. I found an email from a sales rep at a textbook publisher.  I am coauthor on our lab manuals.  The sales rep claimed she had met me and my coauthor before.  Maybe, maybe not; I don’t remember her.  The email was addressed to both of us, and the sales rep told us that they had taken our lab manual, scanned it, added some figures, and printed it.  They had also created an ebook version.  They had had a meeting with some of the faculty earlier in the day and discussed bundling their version of our manual with their text book. She was sending us a copy for our convenience.

Uh, no.  This was all news to me and my coauthor.  This was done without our knowledge or consent.  And we won’t give it.  I said as much in a sharply worded email (after I cooled off enough to maintain a level of semi-professionalism) to the sales rep.  She had CC’d three other people at her publishing house.  I made sure they were included in my response.  I haven’t heard a response from them yet.  If anyone knows a good intellectual property attorney in west Texas, please let me know.  I hope it won’t come to that, but I want to be prepared.

I thought my life couldn’t get any worse until Friday evening when I was packing to fly home at dark-thirty the next day and got a text from my wife telling me my father-in-law had passed away.  This was unexpected, as he was supposed to have come back and picked up my mother-in-law over the weekend.

Obviously, this has been hard on everyone.  Because of some issues with family members being able to get here for the funeral, it won’t be held until the weekend.

I don’t know when I’ll get back to posting on a regular basis.  It probably won’t be for at least a week or two, although there may be the occasional Save My Sanity post.  I will be back, but don’t be surprised if there is some radio silence for a bit.

As you might guess, I am not having Happy New Year.