So now the other thing occupying our thoughts the last week-plus. This is about a dear friend's health and it probably won't have a happy ending. As I write this I don't know but there's a good chance that will change in the next nine hours.
The friend I mentioned back at Pinball At The 'Zoo, looking so worn and jaundiced that people were pressing for information or coercing ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunny_hugger into offering advice? And whose bar trivia team I was present at as they got to finals?
He'd gone to his aunt's house (the one he does team trivia events with) and collapsed asleep on a chair. She was so stunned at how awful he looked that she called 9-1-1, and the first responders immediately diagnosed him with liver failure and refused to take him to his preferred hospital because they wanted him at a nearer place. After a day or two of semiconsciousness he went under entirely. With news quarantine about his health broken everyone in Michigan pinball started saying how much they love him and wish for his best. Also a couple people got angry that others had known more than they did but didn't say; that reflex reaction to the shock of the news passed quickly, though.
So, Monday night --- the one where we'd fail to check the deer mice's water bottles --- we went out to see him, even if it could be only for a half-hour before visiting hours ended, to give our best wishes and say goodbyes if it should come to that. He was laid out in the bed, twitching some, probably more from the life support than anything else. He did a few times open his eyes just the slightest crack, and when the nurse came in for some tending he did sort of lean towards her but we don't know that this was anything but chance.
The next couple days, according to his aunt, he was draining fluids some and at least one number (I forget which) was improving. And then a couple days without catastrophic news, which is triumph enough.
Today I'm told they're putting him on dialysis and I understand this will be the thing that reveals whether he lives or dies.
So that's that.
Can't really say early-Halloweekends Cedar Point trips feel like fun right now but, well, should offer something to folks who skipped bad news. Here's more of the start of that Bonus Weekend Friday (it's not actually Bonus Weekend anymore) last September:
Tragic! This late in the season their ducks are falling all to pieces.
I don't remember the horse benches before but here they are for you people who want to rest in the old west themed area and get some light body horror out of it.
And look who's back! The formerly-green gryphon has returned to guarding Iron Dragon, although at a different spot, since the entrance queue got redesigned to allow for Fast Pass line-cutters.
And here's the new roller coaster, Siren's Curse, finally open (it had been for almost two months) for us to try.
Test run showing the thing that makes Siren's Curse: the track hinges and rejoins and you just trust that the brakes are holding you securely through this. (You can see there's a metal post that comes out stops the train from moving, among I'm sure several other braking systems.)
But first, Millenium Force. The new Top Thrill 2 tower offers a view we didn't quite have before looking back along the queue.
Trivia: In Spring 1971 GM proposed to NASA's Lunar Roving Vehicle team the proposal to add remote controlling to the third lunar rover, so it could work as a Lunokhod-1-like surveyor after the Apollo 17 astronauts left. Source: Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings, Earl Swift. NASA ultimately decided against it (although the LRV's camera was remote-controlled), but did like the idea.
Currently Reading: The History of the Telescope, Henry C King.
