I didn’t know what to title the post, sorry.
Mum has been back to her specialist. She can drive and walk and lift heavy Christmas presents. He is very happy with her and says she has healed fast after her open-heart surgery. She is in a heaven of family presence. She has her brother and sister with her and they all care about each other. I think she wanted that more than anything for most of her life after her kids (of course).
The new Stationmaster base antenna arrived this morning. It is a lovely, light antenna although there are a few better ones this should be as much as I need until I get far enough into the Ham thing to go 10 metre band. Al is having me add a small UHF half-wave folded dipole to the mast. I have all the parts and just need to design the way it goes into the pipe that will support it and get some brackets. Both antenna have to have the fittings water-proofed so I have been studying that and have some good solutions. Getting that together will mean another delay but the hole in the ground for the spigot must still be dug and the concrete poured so it will not be the only delay. The final type of cable is also in the process of being decided. Among the things affecting that. and all decisions. is my inability to travel without assistance. The author of this antenna is Martin E. Meserve. K7MEM. I am not used to giving credit for this kind of things and have finally caught up a bit.
LMR400, RG8, RG213, Mil spec RG58 and even Heliax are under consideration. The UHF antenna is far more likely to get the good, low-loss coax if I can afford it.
The pain has crawled back into whatever ether it crawls out of and has been absent for a couple of days.
There have been a few long conversations across the radio bands with local radio guys. (I try not identify people unless they have a business to advertise.) I have enjoyed those a lot. I enjoy the challenge of getting the antenna and radio working and then the satisfaction of using them. I enjoy it especially because I am almost too ill to do it so it has more value.
The hospital contacted me to tell me I am due to go for a Coronary Angiogram just days before Christmas. That means they saw something dangerous at the CT Scan last week! They are gonna run a probe into my heart! One of the worst side-effects of this procedure is death. CRAP! and it hurts if it doesn’t kill you . I definitely will not be lifting that antenna mast or a bag of concrete until after Christmas. No images, sorry. All that pain a few days ago sapped my energy and intellect. This is as good as I can manage for now
Or it isn’t!
I should mention the dream.
I just appeared. I was standing in a sparsely furnished house. It was a large house with wide rooms that could have been an exhibition home. The first thought was that a woman had died here. Then the view shifted and I was behind and above myself. Although my feet were bare I was dressed in a suit. There was the figure of a bride beside me. She was dressed in white with a wide veil but she did not enter my thoughts as a living thing. Certainly not as a personality. I then sat on a lounge alone. It became dark and I felt I was intruding. Not a small intruding but something like I was robbing a nunnery. I had no pants. Underwear but no pants. I felt horribly vulnerable. I was alone. I felt alone even earlier when I was looking down on the couple that included me. The room lit slightly and I began to look around. Someone I could not see berated me furiously suggesting if someone saw the light they would bring me grief.
The front wall of the room became a large window. A car drove past on the road and the voice suggested that I was in trouble. A bride and groom were unveiled when the interior of the car was lit by some light. I remember expecting some bad reaction. I felt as though I was caught breaking in. The woman who was on the far side of a man in a black tie and jacket leaned over him and looked out the window at me. He didn’t flinch. The car went by.
The voice or thought became extremely disturbed and demanded I turn the light out. I was sitting on the couch with just my under-duds under a black tie and jacket and white shirt. I could not make my legs work. The light stayed. The same couple went by in the same car and she leaned sideways over the guy and looked again. She had black hair and bright red lip stick which she wiped from the corner of her mouth as she smiled at me. She was still a bride.
The panicked little voice faded out and a woman’s voice entered the room further pasting me to the couch. “I died here.” she said. It woke me. I want to say some emotion washed over me and it did but the change in the way I was experiencing the space woke me. Just a dream
A day later and I am uncomfortable and depressed. All this pain and injury to save my heart. This is nowhere. I just tried to work on a drawing and I don’t have a table that matches the only stool I have so I can work on it. It is just a cartoon. It should be a couple hours work. The room is filled with clothes and boxes and shit and has carpet on the floor. It isnt suitable for working in. Painting or drawing I have lost all of the momentum I had built up and the room is just a pile of unfinished work. I cannot finish it. Every time I touch a work I have to remodel the crap in the room to get the space suitable. I cannot do that and then find enthusiasm for art.The chemicals give me headaches and lightheadedness. Am i really going through all the pain and anxiety of more heart procedures so I can keep doing this? Really? The repeater is off on UHF again so that handset is just a pile of junk. Last night the moronic boomers carried on until nobody was left on channel and I begin to wonder if I will hang the stationmaster and why I would. I got the radios to break these terrible depressions and loneliness and because I love the technology but really. This is a shit-hole. I will die in a shit-hole in a country that betrayed all of us. So the question is; Why? Is it time to consider booze and pills instead of waiting. Maybe a train trip to the mountains and a look at the three-sisters as I plunge by. Every little thing is such a drama. I cannot justify not doing it. That is the problem. Since the world no longer allowed me to have private rental and I lost my ability to choose and ended up in this shit-hole it has really not been worth the fight for relevance. It isn’t is it? I needed to sleep but I have been too uncomfortable and my brain will not shut down while it is so dissatisfied. Valium and another round of pain meds has me almost unconscious so I will sleep soon but that isn’t a good life either. It is a rolling tragedy.
Oh crap, how many tablets did I take then. I must have forgotten and gone back twice. I hate being smashed and now I seem to be on the verge of just that. Better get down on the couch before I drop, That doesn’t happen. I never do that. The angina has been biting hard all morning. Maybe it got me. That could take the decision from me. Maybe I should kick out and buy a six element yagi for the mast. Does having things make you happy? Only if they fucking work and so far they don’t work very well.