Erik MH:

now

Health

After a full six­teen months of essen­tially not being able to accom­plish any­thing due to brain-fog and fatigue, long COV­ID seems at last to be in remis­sion. I’m tak­ing a low dose of nal­trex­one, as described by Reu­ters (“Addic­tion drug shows prom­ise lift­ing long COV­ID brain fog, fatigue”) and at NIH (“Safety and effic­acy of low dose nal­trex­one in a long cov­id cohort; an inter­ven­tion­al pre-post study”), and I have finally been able to resume design and cod­ing work. Hoorah!

Tolki­en

So after six­teen months of little to no pro­gress on any of my pro­jects, I am once again tak­ing up the reins and begin­ning to accom­plish real work again. I’m list­ing these vari­ous (dream!) pro­jects on the com­par­able “now” page at Ver­mont Soft­works.

Music

I was able to vis­it our friends near Buf­falo, N.Y., early this month, and there was time (as often) for play­ing duets — Car­o­lyn on cello, and me on bass and great bass record­ers. I had just broken in a beau­ti­ful new bass when COV­ID hit me in May, 2022 — and I wasn’t able even open the case over the ensu­ing months. But Car­o­lyn and I had a lovely time, and I’m now motiv­ated to re-break in the bass and pick up where I left off. I’d love to find some kindred spir­its nearby to play with.…

Fam­ily

The first­born has nearly fin­ished their lin­guist­ics degree at Brown Uni­ver­sity; one last class to take — prob­ably in the autumn of 2024. They’ve been liv­ing with us recently, which has been lovely, but they’ve been work­ing remotely “at” Brown and are hop­ing to move back to Provid­ence late this year.

The second­born gradu­ated from Amh­erst Col­lege with a double-major in geo­logy and drama, and are work­ing in the Geo­logy depart­ment at Amherst.

Soon…

Early next year, I’ll be escap­ing the long dark cold of Vermont’s winter (now with more ice and slush thanks to cli­mate change!) by spend­ing eight weeks in Lima, Peru. I’m look­ing for­ward to explor­ing the city, get­ting to know some people, and finally learn­ing more Span­ish — but I nev­er­the­less plan to work full-time. If this goes well, I may make a reg­u­lar thing of it!