Just a very quick check-in to let you know I'm still alive and, with the inestimable help of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Mn, I am keeping things under control. Once again my Lambda Light chain numbers are in the normal range. Now I just have to get my foot healed up so I have a chance of getting out of this bloody wheel chair. Strange to think that my foot off all things, would be giving me he most trouble. Unfortunately, the Amyloidosis makes healing go very slowly. Oh, well. You put up with what you have to put up with while working your way around or over the "minor" problem.

I hear things now and then floating out in the air. For instance, I hear that word was floating about ComicsCon in San Diego that I am displeased with Red Eagle. Too true. Too very true. In a few more months that last contract they have with anyone on God's green earth that so much as mentions my name will come to an end and we can see what happens after that. You see, among other things they forgot an old dictum of LBJ back when he was just a Congressman from Texas, when he famously, or infamously, said "Don't spit in the soup, boys. We all have to eat." Worse, Red Eagle though they could tell me they spit in the soup, or pee in it, if they wanted to and there wasn't anything I could do to stop them. You can't apologize your way out of that with me, not that they tried. There isn't enough money in the world to buy your way out of it with me. Not that they tried that either. So they get no further help from me. Once they are completely out of the picture, we'll see what happens.

I seem to feeling rather viperish today. I also hear that a certain writer, on hearing that I had heart problems, announced that his cardiologist, on holding his (the writer's) heart in his hands said that he could have been holding the heart of a sixteen year-old or some such. My cardiologist told me much the same thing, but I made him give it back. Ahem. A question occurs. What was wrong that anyone had their filthy fingers palping his actual heart. All my heart examinations have been via catheritazation or electrocardiogram or echocardiogram or the like. Only if they saw cause would anyone be sticking fingers into my chest must less fingering my heart. Some discrepancy there, eh?

On, well. Down, Simba! Down, Big Boy. That's what Harriet says when I get like this. Lets get on to something a little more pleasant.

Many people have given gifts to Hematologic Malignancies Program --

amyloidosis research since the last time I thanked anyone. For donations since then. my thanks go out to Virginia A. Schomp and Chip

Bigness, Mrs. Janna Kamenetsky, Mr. Tony Witherspoon, Mr. Ryan Breen,

Mr. Nathan Chu, Mr. Todd Lyons, Ms. Kathleen D. Moore, Mr. Doug

Carrithers, Mrs. Deborrah M. Kozel, Ms. Melissa Craib and Friends at

TarValon.net, Mr. Eric Selby, Mrs. Carolyn Goodwin, Dr. Chris

O'Sullivan, Mr. Georgy Kantor, Mr. Andrew Childs, Mr. Doug Peters, Mr.

Scott Dimick, Ms. Pam Harley and the Hattie Mae Lesley Foundation. Thank you very much, one and all.

I'll get back to when I can. Until then, it's back to the grindstone for me.

RJ