A bad week for our dogs. Challenging for us, too.

Monday morning, TYG discovered Trixie had bled onto the bedsheets. We checked her over and found bleeding from her butt. We were able to score a same-day vet appointment and they confirmed her anal gland had ruptured. They did whatever you did to fix that and sent me home with Trixie and some antibiotics.

She did not enjoy her vet trip.

The bottle of meds had a leak or something because there was nothing in it when I got it home. I picked up a replacement Tuesday. Fortunately Trixie made a full recovery almost as soon as they fixed her gland. Yay.

Yesterday TYG became convinced Plushie’s glaucoma had suddenly gotten worse. I took him to the vet today to check his eye pressure (TYG’s workweek has been insane which is why I handled the dog stuff). TYG was right — it’s elevated. They sent us home with directions to increase the dosage of some of his drugs. It worked, yay! However it’s still upsetting every time life reminds us Plushie will not be the world’s first dog with Wolverine’s healing factor.

Despite all that, I did get a full week of work done. Partly because with Jekyll and Hyde under way, I’m doing research reading which helped me make use of my time waiting at the vet. I also did some research reading for Savage Adventures and proofed another chunk of the book.

I did some good work on Southern Discomfort, cutting a couple of scenes based on writing group-feedback and going through to eliminate the excessive use of “but” (way too many compound sentences) and “just.”

I wrote an article for The Local Reporter on policing stats in Carrboro, one of the local towns in the Triangle. At Atomic Junk Shop I wrote about Marvel’s art in 1968 — much as I’m a DC fanboy (and find a lot of Marvel’s writing in this period mediocre), the visuals at Marvel are amazing. This simple but effective splash page by John Buscema, for instance—

— or John Romita’s shot of Spidey here.

I also blogged about several random Silver Age stories from the same period.

I did not get any work done on Let No Man Put Asunder. It would have taken more creativity than I could focus. Overall, though, the 4-day week continues its effectiveness.

Oh, and here’s a link to a Con-Tinual panel on character conflict in comics.

Send positive thoughts for our dogs, if you would be so kind.

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