Unfortunately, this is no comic book universe. When two of those mutations combine, you don't get superpowers. You get ill. Which, as chance has it, happened to our daughter. Now, before I tell you what it is she has: You may have already heard about it. And what you heard is probably outdated and/or exaggerated, based on worst cases and not the average case.
So with that in mind, what Z-Girl has is known as Cystic Fibrosis or Mucoviscidosis. The gene defects cause the transportation of Cloride ions out of cells to not work properly, which mostly leads to body fluids being way too thick. Life expectancy is lowered mostly due to lung damage caused by infections to something in the 50s range. Z-Girl is still doing pretty well in that respect. Other harm done is in the pancreas, hers is almost completely non-functional. Apparently that can be compensated quite well with the right nutrition and additives that replace the enzymes the pancreas usually spills out. Z-Girl is doing fine right now. I repeat: She is doing fine. She learned to accept the no always tasty additions to her meals, and the inhalations we do to keep her lungs healthy are a funny game for her. And in between therapy, she is just a regular little girl. There is little she is not allowed to do for health reasons. Knows all the planets up to Saturn and many letters already, too. And apparently, right about now drugs are entering the market that can do something about the malfunctions in the cells themselves. So hopes are up.
However, she does require way more care and attention than a regular child. And her sleeping patterns are fluctuating. That, I hope, explains the extra little time I had lately. Won't improve much, I'm afraid. Also, turns out slowly learning your child has an incurable illness is quite the emotional roller coaster. That seems to be mostly over now. After all, It's a quantitative change only. Yes, she will die too soon. We all do. Yes, there is the risk she will die extra early. Applies to all children. On the plus side, I'm much less worried now about fatal freak accidents. On the minus side, the zombie apocalypse has become more scary. Where would we get her medication, then?
Secondly: VACATION. I will be out of the country starting the the first of September for two weeks. Yep, that's Ladle Sunday. So no recordings from me this ladle. I'll try to get the server up, but the launch loop script has been simply exiting lately and I can't tell why, the whole screen session dies.
And lastly, my home server (hosting recordings, one master and the bzr/svn sync) may be on the way out. Found it overheated with fans going berserk this morning. It's a 15 year old laptop that has been running 24/7 for more than half its life, I'd say it had a good run. It looks recovered now, a couple of minutes of rest and a breath of fresh air (now it's running with the lid all open) helped. The screen has a couple of dead spots now, but who cares? I'll see if I can transfer the hosting functions to the NAS, which should be fun. Anyway, just so you know, if master1 is not responding, it may be because it is on fire.
Dwarfs are completely out. I need to get a proper book one of these days.