Okay, since it is about the only thing I’ve got to talk about, here is the latest in Manglefinger news:

Today was the day I had to go in and get my sutures taken out (the ones that come out anyway), and I showed up way early because I expected I’d have a long wait, but I didn’t! I got in and out quickly and am now sutureless (except the ones that are still there).

The primary victory of today, though, is the fact I have finally reached the stage where I am allowed to clean and dress the wound myself. At last I can wash my damn right hand, which I have not done properly for over a week. It has been irritating. The (still kinda nasty looking) wound is now covered only by adhesive strips and I can get in there whenever I want to clean it. So nice.

I have to go back into the hospital AGAIN in two weeks for one last checkup. I’m confident I will use that trip as well for another excuse for a post.

Haiku!

What is a walrus?
why won’t anyone tell me?
I am so confused.

(That haiku is, for the most part, unrelated to my injury.)

Do you think that vikings would have developed nuclear weapons if they hadn’t been wiped out by the coming of the white man? This is my history question of the day. I need thousand word essays to answer this.

I didn’t get a chance to do anything comic-related this week, so we’ve just got the Phone Guys:

Also, Marq has provided what he calls a piece of SecGov fanart that will keep this week from being just the bare bones:

Today we’re back in the days of the Second World War in Britain. The fog is so thick that it’s ridiculous to think of flying in it, but then someone does fly a delivery in and it turns out she’s a lady. She expresses a desire to one day get back to Canada and teach flying, then the narrator tells us that she did. Happy ending. This one seems pretty short, comparatively, but that’s probably because it essentially does the “Someone is coming in? In this fog?” setup twice. Not a great use of time, but I’ll never be upset with hearing shocked British officers saying “Hullo?”

Marion Orr comes across as really nice in this one. She’s doing her duty with a smile on her face and all she wants is get back to a simple life. The world would be a good place if it was stacked full of people like Marion Orr. Even ignoring for a moment the landmark of her being the first woman to do what she did, just seeing any person with this attitude achieve their dreams would be enough for me. If she happened to break any barriers while doing so, good on her.

I don’t feel anything in here is great to quote, but I still like it. I easily lump it into the “backbone” category I also put last month’s Heritage Moment into. Four out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake.

Unfortunately, though, somewhere in my youth I lost most of my memories of this Heritage Moment. Well, I didn’t “lose” them, really, they just managed to meld with another commercial I would have seen on television in my youth, also involving a meetup between people on an airfield:

This Oil of Olay commercial stuck in my head better, but I’m still more in favor of the Heritage Piece. For the record. Maybe if the guy Marion Orr had been talking to had been named “Bugsy Brown” I’d know more about Canada. Better luck next time, Canada!

Okay, so a co-worker used his phone to take a picture of my busted finger while it was being treated at the triage unit in the hospital. I now have this picture, so naturally it is going onto my website.

If you are at all bothered by blood or injuries, especially fingernail stuff, you shouldn’t look. Seriously, you probably shouldn’t look. Anyway, I gotta say, it doesn’t look so bad. Though maybe that is just because I saw the other side of that finger as well. Apart from the nail, the other side had the real damage. But the important thing is that the image is now on the Internet.

Anyway, I’ll give some updates about other aspects of my finger healing. One thing, yesterday it took me about ten minutes to open a bottle of juice. That was effing annoying. Here I am at about minute seven, just in disbelief:

But apart from that I seem to be doing alright with the limited use of my dominant hand. As I previously mentioned, I’m taking antibiotics four times a day and I have to take them with food. As a person who will usually only eat once a day, but can manage twice if necessary, four is an insane number of foods to eat. Here’s how I am remedying this:

A spoonful of sugar-covered nuts helps the medicine go down. I discovered these Sweet Vanilla Almond things a couple months ago and I love them. I’ve only found them at one store (a Circle K), in my immediate area (though this could be, in part, because I am bad at shopping) so I’ve not had them often (only twice, I think, until now). Yesterday I went to that Circle K and bought every bag on display. Now, for the two times a day I have to force myself to eat, I will use these as incentive!

It is entirely possible I will be sick of them well before I’m supposed to stop with the medicine, but I’ll row that boat when the water comes. For now: So good.

Okay, as I said previously, today’s SecGov update is just some single thing I doodled at work one time long ago. But unlike I said previously, it will not be immediately followed by my next storyline. Instead, to give me just a little bit more time to heal my drawing parts, Marq will be back on Thursday’s page with another single page strip. Then, hopefully, next week will be back in action.

In other news, I think I have updated all the automatic credit card payments that I need to with my new credit card information. It is a relief to have it done, though in the process I discovered that there has been a thirty dollar a month payment I have been making for years and I simply don’t know what it was for. All this time I just assumed it had something to do with the site, but apparently not. The website it says I am paying has no explanation of what they do or anything. So I am not giving these people my new information (and anyway I don’t think I would know how to do so if I wanted to).

Assuming this doesn’t turn out to be something important that I don’t understand, it is perfectly likely that I am about to stop paying an unnecessary monthly fee that I have probably sunk thousands into at this point.