Last night I snacked on the crepes Sandra made for breakfast.

They were simple things, a little fatter than a true crepe, but thinner than a pancake. I filled one with the requisite strawberries and whipped cream, and bit into it.

Suddenly I was back in South Africa, on my way to the Kruger park, with Sandra and the rest of our group. We were eating at Harrie’s Pancakes somewhere in the middle of the Transvaal. It was 1999.

Anyway, that first crepe I had was pretty good.

I had the other four because I wanted to see the monkeys.

I haven’t started signing books yet, no.

For the last two weeks my fourth and fifth fingers in BOTH hands have been tingling, pins-and-needles-ish.

It’s not carpal tunnel. That’s the 1st and 2nd fingers, and the doctor did a couple of quick tests for CT, both of which were mostly negative (which means I may have a little bit of CT symptoms, but it’s not serious enough to cause the numbness.)

The problem is not the tingling. The problem is that when I draw or write, my entire right arm starts to go numb. Or sometimes not, and I’m fine.

The doctor suggested an MRI. I’m not keen on spending $5,000 as a first resort, especially since it would be $5,000 of my own money. And extra-especially since a little googling turns up “thoracic outlet syndrome” as a probable diagnosis. It’s one of those damnably contested diagnoses like “chronic fatigue syndrom,” where the patient can go from doctor to doctor for years and be accused of everything from hypochondria to malingering depression.

This page talks about the symptom “tingling fingers:”
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/sym/tingling_fingers.htm

There are lots of possibilities, but the 4th and 5th finger tingling points straight at “Thoracic outlet syndrome:”
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/t/thoracic_outlet_syndrome/intro.htm Sure, it might also be diabetes or multiple sclerosis, but I’m not exhibiting any of those symptoms (and I’m not half hypochondriac enough to imagine them into place).

The good news is that the problem has not slowed my output. I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to crank through the sketch editions and two additional weeks of buffer with little trouble between now and May 20th. But it’s probably going to hurt a lot, unless I can get in touch with a physical therapist who thinks he can tackle the problem without forcing me to spend hojillions of dollars on (probably) unnecessary diagnostics.

I’m too tired to write about FCBD. Fortunately celedoine was there at Dragon’s Keep, and wrote about it.

Granted, she wrote about what SHE did, but that’s fine too.

So… how many books will have been pre-ordered by the time I close pre-orders late Friday?

Hint: As of April 30th we’d recieved 1552 pre-orders.

Go ahead and guess. No fee to play, no prize to win.

I’ll go ahead and open with “2001”, because I’m a wishful thinker. Treat that as the extreme upper limit. You are allowed to be more optimistic than me, but we’ll just both end up being wrong together.

–Howard