Dichroic Reflections

soreness almost gone

I'm hardly sore at all today and the seat-belt rash seems to be flaking off.
(ewww.) Either I wasn't as hurt as I thought or all that exercise really does pay
off.

The best news this week is that I have moved into an actual
office! With real walls and a door I can close. Just in time, since it seems I
will have a long telecon almost every day for the next couple of weeks. It's much
nicer to use the speaker phone instead of holding the handset or even wearing a
headset. I've got a bookshelf and a cabinet and lot more space to move around in.
I've brought in a couple of Rudder's old NASA pictures and a stained glass cat
someone made for us for our wedding -- it's beautiful but we just didn't have a
good place to hang it in the house. And some more books. There's still empty space
on my shelves here and we all know how unnatural that is.

soreness almost gone

I'm hardly sore at all today and the seat-belt rash seems to be flaking off.
(ewww.) Either I wasn't as hurt as I thought or all that exercise really does pay
off.

The best news this week is that I have moved into an actual
office! With real walls and a door I can close. Just in time, since it seems I
will have a long telecon almost every day for the next couple of weeks. It's much
nicer to use the speaker phone instead of holding the handset or even wearing a
headset. I've got a bookshelf and a cabinet and lot more space to move around in.
I've brought in a couple of Rudder's old NASA pictures and a stained glass cat
someone made for us for our wedding -- it's beautiful but we just didn't have a
good place to hang it in the house. And some more books. There's still empty space
on my shelves here and we all know how unnatural that is.

that wet stuff

We finally got some rain last night. Boy howdy did we get some rain, not to
mention wind and dust and lightning a-plenty. We got so much rain and so much wind
that our back windows were leaking. Note the plural construction: I did not write,
for example, "our back window was leaking". I did not write "our bedroom windows
were leaking". No, our back windows were leaking. All of them. All at
once.

Apparently they're not really all that well sealed and the gale
winds were enough to force the rain in everywhere, so we spent a good hour placing
and replacing towels on the sills and bowls underneath. Our house has very few
windows on the front (north side): a couple small high frosted ones in the
bathrooms, one in the formal (unfurnished) living room that's protected by a large
queen plam and that's about it. In back, however, we have windows in the four
upstairs bedrooms and downstairs covering most of the walls in the dining room,
kitchen, breakfast area, and family room.

Did I mention they were
ALL leaking?

The downstairs ones weren't too bad, since there's a
porch roof over them. The three smaller bedrooms have relatively small windows,
and no one but an occasional cat sleeps there, so that wasn't too bad; we just put
towels in and moved stuff away from the windows. In our room, though, the window
is much bigger, and is apparently not at all well-sealed. Much replacing of
towels, moving of bowl, and finagling edges of towels (to redirect the drips into
the bowl) was necessary. I hear we got about an inch of rain on my side of town; I
hope it also extended up into all the reservoirs.

On the other hand,
since Rudder put all the sodden towels in the washer as he went off to the gym and
into the dryer when he came back, just about all of our towels are clean now. Not
that they weren't anyway, unless there are wild parties in the linen closet that I
don't know about.

Despite missing some sleep last night, I feel quite
surprisingly well today. A little sore still, of course, but not nearly as bad as
I'd expected. I've well worse than this after a hard morning the gym. Thanks to
everyone who sent good thoughts this way -- apparently they worked.

that wet stuff

We finally got some rain last night. Boy howdy did we get some rain, not to
mention wind and dust and lightning a-plenty. We got so much rain and so much wind
that our back windows were leaking. Note the plural construction: I did not write,
for example, "our back window was leaking". I did not write "our bedroom windows
were leaking". No, our back windows were leaking. All of them. All at
once.

Apparently they're not really all that well sealed and the gale
winds were enough to force the rain in everywhere, so we spent a good hour placing
and replacing towels on the sills and bowls underneath. Our house has very few
windows on the front (north side): a couple small high frosted ones in the
bathrooms, one in the formal (unfurnished) living room that's protected by a large
queen plam and that's about it. In back, however, we have windows in the four
upstairs bedrooms and downstairs covering most of the walls in the dining room,
kitchen, breakfast area, and family room.

Did I mention they were
ALL leaking?

The downstairs ones weren't too bad, since there's a
porch roof over them. The three smaller bedrooms have relatively small windows,
and no one but an occasional cat sleeps there, so that wasn't too bad; we just put
towels in and moved stuff away from the windows. In our room, though, the window
is much bigger, and is apparently not at all well-sealed. Much replacing of
towels, moving of bowl, and finagling edges of towels (to redirect the drips into
the bowl) was necessary. I hear we got about an inch of rain on my side of town; I
hope it also extended up into all the reservoirs.

On the other hand,
since Rudder put all the sodden towels in the washer as he went off to the gym and
into the dryer when he came back, just about all of our towels are clean now. Not
that they weren't anyway, unless there are wild parties in the linen closet that I
don't know about.

Despite missing some sleep last night, I feel quite
surprisingly well today. A little sore still, of course, but not nearly as bad as
I'd expected. I've well worse than this after a hard morning the gym. Thanks to
everyone who sent good thoughts this way -- apparently they worked.

aftermath

I went to the doctor yesterday (actually, nurse practitioner) and he moew or less
confirmed that the only thing wrong with me is a bit of seat-belt rash and some
sore muscles. He did give me some samples of a muscle relaxant -- not the good
stuff, I didn't want it since I still have to drive to work, not to mention
actually doing work) -- and some good advice about Tylenol, heat on my neck, and a
chair with more support for my head.

So I've borrowed a higher-
backed chair for the week and brought my microwaveable heat pack in for the day,
along with a small bottle of Tylenol. Come to think of it -- excuse me -- gulp.
OK, I'm back. Not that the pain is really all that bad, but I figure I should keep
taking the Tylenol to keep down any inflammation and the muscle relaxant to keep
my muscles from seizing up and throwing off my body to make other muscles sore.

There was a slight trace of blood in the urine sample they took,
which could be an indicator of kidney damage but I figure that's more likely to
natural female events due today. I'm supposed to drop off another sample once my
period is done, just to make sure. Problem is, I'm not generally anywhere near the
doctor's office at the times they're open, so I may have to ask Rudder to take it
-- a test of either true love or natural unsqueamishness.

The NP also
advised me not to work out until the soreness goes away, so I don't tweak anything
else, which gives me yet another reason to be thankful. I'm very glad I had
decided not to race in Masters Nationals, because if I had I'd be grievously upset
at losing a week of workouts just now.

if this were Liavek, it would be my birthday

What a way to start a week. I think I've used up all my allotment of good luck for
the rest of the year. Pity it's only July.

Things started out
normally enough: woke up at 4, went rowing. Actually, first I woke up at 1 when
another storm came in. I don't know if we got any rain, but there was a lot of
wind and lightning that was nearly constant but far away. The lightning had died
back to only a flash every thirty seconds or so by the time I reached the lake.
I'm generally on the overconservative side about mixing water and lightning, but
decided to go out this morning because it was all so far away that I never did
hear any thunder. The lightning did go away almost completely by the time I got
off the water. One bit of luck. (What kind of particles or waves does luck come in
and how is it measured?)

I showered and dove off to work. Halfway
there, while driving in the left lane on a three-lane highway, I wanted something
I can't even remember now in my purse. I reached over to get it out of my tote,
looked ahead again and realized I had somehow quantum-jumped over to the left
shoulder. I'm still not sure how that happened, since I don't think my eyes were
off the road for more than a second. I attempted to get back in the lane but
apparently jerked the wheel too hard; as best I can figure, the rear end swung out
and I cut across three lanes of traffic, hit the right side barrier with the right
rear of the car, bounced back across three lanes again, hit the left wall,
and finally managed to stop the car.

Somehow, miraculously, everyone
else on the freeway -- and this was morning rush hour -- managed to avoid me. A
very nice man stopped to see if I was OK, called DPS, let me use his phone since
mine didn't seem to be working, and waited until the cop came. The fairly nice
police officer called the tow truck and waited until it came. (Though he did cite
me for "failure to control vehicle to avoid a collision".) The quite nice tow
truck driver took me to one mechanic, then when it turned out he didn't do that
sort of work, to another. (First the insurance office wasn't yet open, then the
chick there was too clueless to tell me where to take the car.) And the nice body
shop guy gave me a ride home.

The car has a crumpled hood, some
dripping fluid, a rear dent, and probably a bent frame. No idea what will happen
with it.

Meanwhile, I have a rash from the seatbelt angling over my
left collarbone and a sore muscle from my neck to my left shoulder blade. I have a
doctor's appointment this afternoon just in case, but I really doubt anything else
is wrong.

I'm staying home all day today (can access work email from
here) partly to rest my neck and because it all took so long, partly because I
really am not looking forward to driving that road again. Meanwhile, look at my
luck. I'm a little sore and will have to take defensive driving, but no one else
is hurt (I still am amazed they all steered around me), I have another
vehicle I can drive, and while I have to pay the $500 deductible, I can spare
the money without worrying about making my next meal or rent check.

I
am a lucky girl today. Tomorrow, I'd best be careful.

the meeting

So OK, here's the story of the week's meeting, since I have time to write
it.

First of all, this is the semi-annual face-to-face meeting of a
group that's scattered all over the country. Normally when this group meets, they
call it a "relaunch", which is a whole 'nother story. This time, however, they
decided that they didn't want to do the standard relaunch activities, so they
needed another name. Somehow, they ended up deciding to call it a "rendezvous".

Is it just me, or does that sound like it involves a motel that
rents by the hour rather than a conference room?

So then the
facilitator (who by the way is an outside consultant who actualy runs meetings for
a living. Just imagine.) and the head of this group had apparently decided that
the meeting needed a theme. Within the first couple of slides, I had noticed that
they all said "Rendezvous at Rivandell" at the bottom. Then they made us watch the
entire scene from the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring where Bilbo has a
party and disappears in the middle of this.

I should mention at this
point that the meeting attendees ranged from people who hadn't even seen any of
the LOTR movies to some of the ones who run the local F&SF conventions and
practically have the books memorized. Bad mix -- in my opinion that kind of thing
should only be used where either no one has more than a passing familiarity or
where everyone including the organizers knows it extremely well and can discuss
parallels, analogies, and lessons to be learned. As it was, some of us were just
annoyed when the department leader kept referring to the LOTR cycle as a "movie"
and saying she figured "that just about everyone had seen the movies". (Book?
Read? What?)

Then another consultant came in and started telling us
we were on a journey, like a hero's journey. I leaned over to one of the other SF
geeks and said, "What, like a Campbell mythological thing?" about a split second
before the speaker said, "Some of you may have heard of Joseph Campbell," who
according to him seems to have done nothing but talk to Bill Moyers on PBS. Then
he pulled up a slide showing the phases of a hero's journey, a la Campbell, and
describing how this is a "left hand journey" because we're taking the road less
traveled (he did *not* mention Frost) and showing the hero going on a counter-
clockwise path.

After half an hour of this, I couldn't resist
anymore. I raised my hand and said, "Excuse me, but I have some serious
reservations about this analogy. I don't think it's really a good one for a group
that wants to make a defined journey in a reasonable amount of time. After all, in
the standard hero's journey, the hero knows what he wants but has no idea how to
get there, and it can take years -- the prototypical case would be Odysseus, who
expected to get home in a couple of weeks and ended up taking seventeen years. Or
Moses, who took forty years crossing a rather small desert."

He said
something about how we do have to face trials, yada yada yada. Then after another
ten minutes blather, another of the local mythology-heads said, "Excuse me, but I
can't stay quiet any longer. About that left-hand journey ... you do know, don't
you, that in conventional paganism going counter-clockwise is always a Bad Thing?"

And I think it took me ten minutes to scrape myself off the floor
and stop laughing. Pity she only sat in that first day. But we didn't really hear
any more about heroes' journeys!

the impossible closet

So, after an all week meeting that included not one but TWO evenings out until
nearly 10 (translation: two hours past my bedtime) and only one missed workout (Go
me) the big plans for the weekend include sleeping in and cleaning out my closet.
I intend to throw out anything with holes or even incipient holes and give away
anything I haven't worn in a year or have to force myself to wear. ("Well, my mom
gave it to me, and it is a nice shirt, even if it really isn't me.") There will be
exceptions granted for reasons of sentiment, like the gaudy Hawaiian shirt I wore
when I met Rudder (which is also handy when they declare Hawaiian Shirt Day at
work) or the long ball skirt with the black tulle over lilac satin which I love
but don't wear often because I get invited to so few balls, or the adorable denim
dress that just has a bleach spot I keep hoping I can find someone to dye back to
blue. Anything irreparable, however, is gone no matter how much I like it. Regatta
shirts I never wear will be stashed away in hopes of someday making a quilt from
them.

The idea, naturally, is to make room for a bit of shopping; my
idealistic and probably unreachable goal is to have a closet full of clothing I
love.

blinky

Blink. Blink. Blinkblinkblink.

I'm trying out a new kind of extended-
wear contact lenses. The annoying thing about contact lenses isn't so much wearing
them, it's putting them in and taking them out, especially when, like me, you're
generally in a tearing hurry to get out in the morning and to get into bed at
night. So lenses you only have to change out once a week are kind of the Holy
Grail for contact-wearers: no surgery, no nightly and mdaily cleaning, and you can
see all the time -- but this applies if and ONLY if they're comfortable all week.
I tend to assume that extended-wear lenses are bad for the eyes, since that's what
every optometrist I'd seen for years had told me, but things seem to have changed.
The last eye doctor I went to did have me try some extended-wear lenses, but he
pushed them so hard I figured he was getting a kickback from the manufacturer. I
tried that kind, but didn't find them as comfortable as my usual Accuvues. This
doctor didn't mention these new lenses until I asked a relevant question, and it's
been a couple of years so I figured I'd try these. They're supposedly much better
for the eyes because they let enormously more oxygen get to the cornea than older
types.

This doctor was careful to warn me that some people just
couldn't wear or didn't like these lenses. He examined me after I'd worn them a
little while and told me one problem might be that apparently I don't blink fully
-- my eyelids don't quite touch on each blink. Have you ever tried to change the
way you blink? I mean, every time? So now I am trying to achieve a "full blink"
(his words) without looking like some kind of raving blinky freak.

red X reject

Once again, I am a Red Cross reject. At least by now I know enough to ask them to
stick my finger first so they can reject me before we spend ten minutes on
the personal and embarassing questions. At least they gave me cookies. (Nutter
Butters! Yum!)

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten to write up the LOTR
meeting story. I'll do it as soon as I have sufficient time on the home computer
to write, which may well not be until the end of this week. But just to whet your
appetite: virtual kisses to the first person who can correctly explain why a
mythological hero's journey, a la Joseph Campbell, is *not* the best model for a
group trying to have measurable impact on work processes in a reasonable amount of
time. (Hint: think Odysseus. Think Moses in the desert.)

tell you later...

I'm in meetings all week and may not be able to update much, but if I don't get to
it later today, someone please remind me to write about the Lord of the
Ring-themed meeting and the widdershins Campbellian mythological metaphor they're
ill-advisedly (in my opinion) using. And yes, this is work
stuff.

Believe me, this one is worth hearing.

new starts and wishes for new beginnings

The problem here is that I have an entry I should write, about quasi-cancer and
what happens after (don't worry, it's a long time ago now) but I don't really feel
like writing it and I most definitely don't want to write it from work. I think
it's blocking other subjects. So move along, no profundity here today. (She said,
as if there often was.)

Today was my first day of training for next
spring. I've decided not to race in Masters Nationals next month or in the head
races this fall. I may very well never do a head race in a single again in fact.
There's nothing left for me to prove to myself: I know I can do it and I know I
don't like it so why bother? Unfortunately I didn't get to row this morning (and
thus didn't get to try out my nifty new rear-view mirror, rigging wrnch or seat-
pad, sigh) because it was too windy. I did virtuously go to the gym again. I've
switched back to shorter sets with heavy weights, so buffness and muscularity will
be approaching in short order. (Um, they will, won't they?) This is feeling oddly
as if it were part of a sensible plan: heavy weights and less time on the water in
the off season, grading to lighter weights and longer sets to more days on the
water and fewer in the gym as the race season culminates. Sensible it is, really.
Planned? Um, no. Or at least only in the short term -- I did make each decision as
it came according to what made sense at the time. I do expect to be planning this
year a bit more, going from long and light rows with the emphasis on form
alternating with resistance rows, to more endurance work to shorter intense bursts
by next summer. I still won't be fast because I have reason to believe I'll still
be in this body at this height by then, but maybe I'll be
faster.

Rudder's even been making comments lately at how impressed he
is that I stick with this and at my speed-to-height ratio. Whether these stem from
actual impressed-ness or from a desire to keep peace in the home and maybe to
reassure me a bit, it's probably better not to ask. (Rudder knows it's not always
easy for me that he rows with another woman because she's a better partner for him
in size, strength and time available for training. I trust him totally, though,
and I trust and respect She-Hulk, and I'll have no qualms about them being in
Sacramento without me for the first couple days of Nationals -- maybe some envy
that I can't be there, but no qualms.)

I'm now in my annual Autumnal
throes, triggered as usual by the arrival of the first L.L. Bean fall catalog.
Yes, OK, I'm a materialistic beast, but it all goes together for me: leaves
turning and air that's crisp instead of ovenlike and sweaters and a utilitarian,
out-doorish style, fleece and long sleeves and should-I-wear-a-jacket, bonfires
and the start of a new year in both the Jewish and school year calendars. I miss
all that. I think I may wait until the first of August to let my credit card start
a new month and at least buy some long pants. It's easier than buying golden
leaves and crisp air.

REAL sports

Why is it that ESPN can televise lumberjack sports (log-rolling, "hot saw", etc)
but will not be at US Rowing Nationals?

I mean, why aside from the
fact that the lumberjacks havesponsors eager to distract the American public from
what some of them are trying to do to our National Forests?

Log
rolling and such are pretty cool to watch, actually; I wouldn't want them to go
away. I would like all those big-money spectator sports that bore the piss out to
me to go away -- those sports like like football, basketball, and so on, that are
watched by people who would never think of participating in them. Or at least, I
would like them to recede a bit to make room for sports that are watched and loved
by people who do this or something related to it or something to train for it
every damn day. Move over, you big hunks of overpaid meat in cleats. I want
to see men and women who work for a living and play sports for fun.

She kissed a girl

There are no doubt lots of things about parenting I don't understand, but here's
one of them. It should be remembered that most of my opinions about the parenting
of teen-agers derive from being on the other side (that is, I have been a teen but
haven't been a parent). I've seen this situation several times, with differing
details.

So imagine you have a daughter, late high-school-aged.
You've just found out she's sleeping with a girlfriend.

What
confuses me is that in every single case I've seen, the parent's primary reaction
(whether favorable or not) is to the word "girlfriend" rather than the words
"sleeping with". I mean, if I'd had a nice Jewish boy whose family my parents know
(in other words, the most appropriate date possible, in their eyes) sleeping over
when I was that age or even when I was in college, I think my parents would have
hit the roof. (I may be wrong, but I doubt it.) I know this isn't true of all
parents; my college boyfriend's parents didn't seem to mind me staying over.

Has this changed? Are more parents just comfortable with the idea of
their late-teen kid having sex? I guess I tend to think that if I were a parent, I
might be comfortable in the abstract with the idea, if I thought my daughter were
ready to make her own decision, but not necessarily with it happening in my house,
especially while I was there. Or maybe even that would be OK as long as I didn't
have to think about the details much (in other words, about the same attitude I
have toward the idea of my parents having sex). I just don't
know.

But it still strikes me as odd that no one (in the several
cases I've read) ever seems to worry whether their daughter is old enough to have
sex at all whether with a guy or girl. Maybe it's just easier because with a girl
they don't have to work about pregnancy at all, AIDS is much less likely, and
another girl is less likely to be able to overpower their daughter. Maybe the
shock factor, for those that disapprove, is enough to overcome anything else.
Maybe I'm just hopelessly out of touch and can't know without actually being a
parent. Maybe I'd even encourage it, in order to not have my kid sneaking around
behind my back.

Maybe it's a good thing I don't have to worry about
these things.

announcements

It's a day for announcements, and apparently a week for babies -- SWooP just
mentioned a friend being induced, someone on my LMM list just had one, and
....

I would like to extand a Welcome to the World to Ar (boy) and Og
(girl), the much-wanted twin spawn of Egret and T2. (The noms are their initials,
but I just like the cavebaby sound of Ar and Og.) Mother and twinlets are doing
well but we haven't seen pics yet. As their honorary auntie I would like to play
fairy-at-the-christening (don't worry, the bad fairy wasn't invited this time) and
wish for them luck and love, wit and wisdom, health and wealth and charm and
beauty (which latter three may not be on a par with luck and love insofar as real
value, but they may make the rest easier to exercise).

I'd also like
to announce the winner of Tuesday's href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/acontest.html">contest, that poster
character for Cool Older Womanhood L'Empress. Go read her -- she has a lot of insight
into a lot of aspects of life. ANd I still want to learn more about Jonah training
someday.

And with luck maybe tomorrow I'll be able to announce that
we've had a bit of rain!

hot hot hot

I'm fairly surprised to get only one email for yesterday's href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/acontest.html">Contest. I hope this means
that all my readers are already Gold/Supergold members, flush with cash, or both.
At any rate, it certainly does eliminate controvers yover who won. More later on
that.

At the bottom of yesterday's entry, I was not just whining when
I talked about the heat here; it turns out that yesterday we set what the local
news is calling a "particularly nasty" record, for the highest low temperature
ever in the Valley of the Sun. We row at 5AM, which is right at the coolest part
of the day. As it turns out the coolest yesterday ever got was 99 degeres. Ick ick
ick ick ick. They're s[eculating that this might turn out to be the hottest July
ever. Now, that can be pretty unpleasant when you're talking about hottest ever in
a place like, say, Philadelphia, but imagine it when you're already in a place
famous for heat. And before you tell me it's a dry heat, bear in mind that this is
July, not June. Normally what happens is that we get our hottest weather in June
when it's dry, then the monsoon starts at tthe beginning of July, the humidity
rises, and temperatures fall a little. Not this year; the monsoon is here and
we're getting dust storms and 115 degree temps in the same day.

It
does give me a lot of sympathy for the service members still marooned out there in
Iraq, where it's even hotter. At least nobody is shooting at me.

A Contest

Time for a little practical two-for-one action.

I am solvent at the
moment, which as any habitual reader of on-line diaries will know, is not true for
many people online. Apparently, Diaryland itself is one of them at the moment.
Also, I am only 15 episodes of blogorrhea away from my 1000th entry here -- at my
usual rate of writing, that means I'll reach it in a week and a half. I was trying
to think of an appropriate way to celebrate my thousandth, and what better than
promoting the health of the host of all those words?

So here's the
deal: I'll celebrate by holding a contest. I was going to make the winner just the
first person to email me (decided to use email instead of the Guestbook to avoid
embarassing anyone). Then I thought about asking some questions based on what I've
written in here, but that seemed too self-aggrandizing and too many hoops to jump
through. So you just have to email me, but let's add some rules to make sure the
money is used effectively. Hmmm.... OK, this is open to anyone with a Diaryland
diary that is at least three months old with at least thirty entries in it --
that's an average of one about every third day. And they have to be reasonably
spaced -- I mean, I don't care how regular entries are, but I don't want to
sponsor a journal that got written in for a month and then left to molder, or even
one that got written in, dropped, and then picked up again in that last week. I
get to decide what constitutes "reasonable", but hey, it's my contest. Oh, and
this isn't a rule, but please don't enter if you have so much cash on hand that
you wouldn't notice an extra $30. Go run your own contest instead. The e-mail
link is in the drop-down at left; the winner will be the sender of the first email
I receive asking to be in the contest.

Please tell me in the email if
it's OK to announce your nom and site here if you win. If you don't want me to, I
won't.

One more thing: if you already have a gold membership, a new
one just adds time onto it, so you can still enter.

---

In
other news it is ferociously hot here today. The humidity is up and the
monsoons are here. I hear we had a little rain (very little) over the weekend, and
there was a nice dust storm last night, but those didn't have any effect on the
temperature. The forecast is saying we may be getting some thunderstorms with
actual water, but judging from the predicted highs those won't affect the heat
either. This is how hot it is: we unloaded the Orange Crush and rigged the boats.
We were done by 5:30 and could have gone for a short row, but it was so nasty out
that even Rudder, apostle of the Protestant Work Ethic, decided not to. I'm
definitely taking the rest of the week off practice. Maybe next week will be
cooler.

I'm back and I'm sleepy

Getting in after midnight = not a good thing for rowers.

Driving six hours
home after several races and a day by the water, also not so good. I seriously
considered a sick day today but there's one meeting right at the end of the day I
really don't want to miss. (Of course if I had taken a sick day, I'd have missed
out on the current crisis, which would have been nice, excet then I'd have had to
come back to it tomorrow.)

She-Hulk and I beat a couple of other
boats (Yay!) so I'm pretty happy about that. We came in 4th of 6, so one place
higher and we'd have gotten a medal. She did get a silver medal in the double with
Rudder, who also got another silver and a bronze, so they're happy. I was a bit
farther behind in the single, but at least not embarassing so -- though I'd have
been really happy to beat some other boats there too. And yeah, OK, you have to
row your own race and just do what you can do without worrying about others and
all that crap, but if that were all there was to it, you could just stay home and
row 1000m pieces. We go to races to figure out where we stand in relation to
others. (I find it amusing that the last person who gave me that speech, about
just rowing to the best of your capability, is a world champion on the erg -- so
he's not exactly an expert at coming in last.)

This was my last
regatta for a while, since I don't want to race in either Nationals or the head
races this fall. (Though I might do the local one.) Now I just have to decide if I
want to take this week off ffrom training or wait until after Nationals next month
and see if I can persuade Rudder to sleep late with me. Right now, doing both
sounds like the best idea.

a Hummer in a hat

Oops, never posted today, did I? I got landed with a couple of humongous tasks due
in two workdays, along with the usual busy-ness.

We spent this
morning getting the Orange Crush behatted again with three boats, and stuffed with
riggers and assorted other paraphernalia - we were planning to put all our boats
on the club trailer, but AussieCoach is being a prat and wanting to load up and
leave so late that we'd miss the race meeting, eat dinner way too late, and be
exhausted by race time. (Maybe this will give us an advantage over the people who
are loading with him ....) The good news is that we've *finally* found a race
schedule and they've done a great job sorting the races out -- "great" in this
context means that they've divided things by age so that none of the races we are
in has heats. She-Hulk and I each have two raes and Rudder has three, as opposed
to the five (!) he had two weeks ago. The last race any of us is in is supposed to
be at 3:48, which means that even if the whole race is on time, we won't be packed
and leaving until 6, so we'll get home around midnight. Feh.

When
Rudder got the Hummer, the dealer had put chrome letters in the embossed H U M M E
R on the back bumper. They keep falling off -- the dealer replaces them every time
they service the vehicle (oil changes and such are free there) but they just fall
off again. Currently it says UMM R. Good thing Rudder got the rear-mounted spare
tire, which hides it.

Grammar question of the day: when did "cliche"
become an adjective? I've been seeing it used that way a lot lately, as in, "I
know it's cliche but I really believe it was meant to be." It's true and I think
it's a good thing that English words (even ones so recently borrowed as to still
be often spelled with an accent) move easily among parts of speech but somehow
this move seems wrong. I keep thinking that "cliched" would be more proper, but
I'm not sure why -- I can't think of other good examples of words morphing from
noun to adjective.

No, wait, I have. You can say, "It's music," or
"It's cardboard," in a way that you can't say "It's bear," or "It's car," and in
the first two cases, come to think of it, you really are using those nouns in an
adjectival way. Interstingly, my Webster's lists an adjectival sense for carboard
but not for music, though I would argue the two uses are parallel.
Interesting.

And yes, I do think as I write.

A minute
ago I somehow deleted all the above by mistake and was able to rescue it by right-
clicking in the boax and picking "Undo". That may be my entire ration of magic or
luck for today.

golly, and ouch

Gosh, my body hurts -- my ankles and the tendon in my shoulder that always seems
to be strained and my knees and the foot I've been sitting on.

Worse,
lately I seem to have co-opted Beaver Cleaver's vocabulary of expletives. "Gosh"
is bad enough but I've even caught myself saying "Good Heavens" in public lately.
WTF? Maybe I'll start using "Merlin's Beard!" as they do in the Harry Potter
novels, or my all-time favorite from a girl I knew in college, "Holy Hammer!" I
have no idea where that comes from, and neither did she, but it always sounds like
an invocation of Mjöllnir to me.

And the effort to type that
correctly has just reminded me, in a stream of consciousness way, of a restaurant
in Philadelphia, though I don't think it's still there. It was called Frög, and
was reputed to be very good -- I never ate there because it was well beyond my
budget at the time. Anyway, the monicker is pronounced just plain "frog", because
as cognoscenti (and I, for some odd reason) knew, that is not an umlaut above the
'o' -- it's eyes.

Gee.

Oh and in other news, I have just
earned my ninth DUCK! Only one more
to get to 500 miles. I wish I had announced the last one, so that I could have
used the word "antepenultimate" -- though if you'll excuse my repeating a pun I
used over at Fivehundred, perhaps that would be "antepinnipedultimate" for ducks.
Note to SWooP, Diddyback, Natalie, and href="http://caerula.diaryland.com">Caerula: apparently your collective
influence does not entirely cancel out a dose of Levy-ty. Sorry I had to run off,
anyway.

Gee whiz.

tapering

I can't imagine why anyone would think I'm a difficult person when it takes so
little to make me happy (at least briefly). I was unreasonably excited last night
because I got to sleep in all the way until 6 this morning. Not counting the
usual-schedule-induced hourly wakings at 3, 4, and 5 AM, of course. Or the cat's
yowling at some point, though he stopped before I had to drag out the squirt gun.
And at least I didn't, like Rudder, wake up to find that one of the cats had
yakked up on my shoes. (He didn't wear that pair yesterday, so it might not have
happened last night.) Yes, it's official: my favorite part of racing is tapering
off training in the week before.

I did enjoy my practice with She-
Hulk yesterday. If we row that well in the race Sunday, I'll be happy, and if
anyone else beats us, it will be to their credit, not our shame. We row fast. If
they row faster it won't be from our lack of effort.

This is my last
race until at least December or so, since I don't plan to do any head races this
fall. I don't like doing longer races, and I've satisfactorily proved to myself
that I can do them in a single a double, or any other boat. So first, I'll take a
week off training and then I'll start a long-term plan focusing on next spring. I
do hope to do some coxing this fall so I can still pariticpate in some races; I've
spoken to Yosemite Sam about coxing for his crews, because though he's not always
great at imparting his knowledge, he was a world-class cox and I hope to learn a
lot (he was alternate cox on the crew that didn't get to go to the 1980
Olympics).

Oh and if anybpdy's wondering, I did buy href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/restopants.html">those pants yesterday.
Willpower R not me. Maybe it's a good thing I sublimate to relatively harmless
lusts; imagine if these were a man.

Stolen from Coriakin:

src="http://images.quizilla.com/D/dunkelza/1052955768_Themanwhosoldthemoon.gif"
border="0" alt="The man who sold the moon">
You belong in The Man Who Sold The
Moon. You are a
dreamer. People don't understand you your
calling, and
often get in your way. Frontiers
call to you, and you will breathe your
last
breath as you gaze back from a distant horizon.

border="0" alt="rapier">
You are a rapier! You"re fast and very sharp.
your
only weakness is that in certain
situations you can be thin and
easily
breakable.

resistance to pants is futile

Have you ever just lusted for a particular article of clothing? One you tried on
and it just looked so good that even though you were strong and resisted spending
the money you were still thinking about it three days later?

In a
local sporting goods shop the other day, I tried href="http://www.altrec.com/shop/detail/14942/">these on. They are
inordinately comfortable -- low and loose on the hips, lightweight and soft. They
have spiffy seams, and the pockets zip closed just in case you might want to fall
in the water while wearing them and not lose your car keys. (Note: just take the
keys with you. Those car remotes don't like getting wet, according to my users'
manual.) And they looked damned good -- for one brief moment back around 1980,
knickers were in fashion, and they suited me so well I've been waiting for them to
come back in ever since. This pair may be called capris, but they're just calling
them that so they sound fashionable. I mean, come on, it's got buttons on the
cuff!

I resisted buying them because they met only two of my three
major criteria: comfortable, looked good, but -- oops! -- not reasonably priced.
They've been lurking in my head ever since, whispering "Resistance is Futile" so I
may have to just given in and join the collective ... I mean, buy the
pants.

I think it's all a function of being happily married. I don't
obsess over cute guys (much) so now I'm just sublimating, projecting my wants onto
clothing. At least they're less likely to break my heart, pass on diseases, or
make me crazy... crazier.

another Potter-ish post

It's time for me to admit something. Over the past several years, I have read
enough Harry Potter sites, chat, fic, and related articles to conclude that I am
just not like other women.

I do not find Severus Snape in the least
sexy.

Oh, I can see the appeal of the bad-boy archtype, but for me
that tends to run more in the direction of youthful rebellion -- say, Brad Pitt in
A River Runs Through It or Sean Penn in Racing with the Moon. But
Snape? No. First of all, he is downright mean-spirited and nasty. Arguments have
been made that it's necessary to keep Voldemort from knowing he's joined the good
guys, but I think that incident in the latest book, in which (deliberately vague
to avoid spoilers) he stops doing something he knows is necessary just because his
wittle feewings have been hurt disproves that thoroughly. And then he's unfair and
petty to those over whom he has power, which I find inexcusable. Finally, there's
the greasy hair. And that makes all the rest of it redundant: I have never, will
never, could never find that sexy. Eurrrghh.

And then there's Sirius.
Sirius comes much closer to being attractive: he has a sense of honor, loves his
friends, has principles and lives up to them. He apparently started out extremely
handsome and is now romantically and Byronically wasted. He was apparently a bit
of a jerk as a teenager (along with James) but I'm willing to give him credit for
having outgrown that. And he is also a "bad boy" but in a far more appealing way.
No, there's only one minor problem with Sirius: I've convinced that his time in
Azkaban left him a bit mad. First, there's the entire plot of Prisoner of Azkaban:
I agree he had to break out of prison, but about three minutes' thought suggests
any number of ways he could have handled things better after that. (Sample: go to
Dumbledore first intead of last.) And then he keeps taking risks, and trying to
get Harry to do so, just for the thrill of it when there was no real payoff. Fine,
if you're talking about bungy-jumping for fun, but not terribly sensible when the
stakes are that high. (Of course, if you're a big Sirius fan and primarily
interested in him for reasons other than waging a War against Evil, I suppose a
bit of mad recklessness might not not be altogether a bad thing.)

the preflight gavotte

I've had this first line for a while but am still trying to find the right setting for it.

Between rolling and flying, airplanes dance,
A small excited jig from wheel to wheel
Anticipating flight. For in the sky's
An airplane's proper place.

I do the same dance, sometimes. I jitter
In anticipation of returning to home
Or to you, to home, or to the sky or the water,
To my proper places when I've been too long away.
-pkb

We went flying this morning, me along as Rudder's safety pilot, to spot aircraft and make sure we're more or less where we ought to be while he practices instrument flight with a visor preventing him from looking out of the plane. I do really need to get back to flying myself. Maybe if I can talk my boss into lettng me telecommute some I'd have time to do it.

the tenth one

I always hate the feeling of realizing I am 8 days into a 9-day vacation from
work, even when I didn't go anywhere or do anything special.

Yesterday was nice, though. We spent the morning working on the
boats with She-Hulk. (I did point out that most men do not wake up at 5 AM on the
day of their tenth wedding anniversary to go off and meet another woman. She-Hulk
said, "But it's a rowing thing!") They disassembled the double and put on some new
parts while I washed and waxed my single and Rudder's. We spent the middle of the
day doing nothing much, went to a party in the late afternoon and chatted with a
bunch of other rowers, then went to href="http://www.royalpalmshotel.com/tcooks.htm">T. Cook's at the Royal Palms
resort for our anniversary dinner. It's been voted the Most Romantic Restaurant in
town, with which I'd have to disagree; it was light and bright, with an open barn-
ish layout. No privacy to speak of. But it was attractive and the food was
inventive and very good. Rudder was happy because it was also filling and the
portions were of reasonable size -- nouvelle cuisine is his idea of a Bad Idea. He
did claim it still didn't measure up to Commander's Palace in New Orleans, but
while that might be true, I question the accuracy of ten-year-old restaurant
memories. At any rate, both T. Cook's and Commander's Palace are among the
country's best, by all the ratings I've seen. If anyone cares, we split a warm
asparagus and a tuna carpaccio appetizer, both with morels. Both tasty. He had an
heritage tomato and mozarella salad, followed by a rib-eye steak, while I had
lobster with lobster-filled tortellini and more asparagus. They also served us
excellent bread and very fresh pesto with it. We had glasses of an Oregonian
Cabernet and a New Zealand Merlot, and finished with decaf, since we had a bottle
of sparkling Shiraz and Godiva truffles waiting at home.

Afterward,
we climbed up on the roof with the Shiraz and the truffles, a blanket and cups to
watch the fireworks. This was a little bit of a challenge: it's a two story house
but the garage roof is one one story and it's possible to get frm there to the top
of the house -- though rendered a little more difficult when carrying a bottle of
wine and squishable chocolates. The Shiraz was a disappointment, but we were able
to see about eight different fireworks shows. All but two were distant and behind
trees, and even the two best were rendered smaller than I'd have liked by
distance, but it was still fun just being up there, even despite the horrible
oldies-and-baddies soundtrack drifting over from a neighbor's
party.

The fireworks shows can best be described as "too long" but
that's a rant for another time -- and one I think I've already ranted.

ten years together

Today is the tenth anniversary of our wedding.

RE-STATEMENT OF ROMANCE
by Wallace Stevens

The night knows nothing of the chants of night.

It is what it is as I am what I am:

And in perceiving this I best perceive myself

And you. Only we two may interchange

Each in the other what each has to give.

Only we two are one, not you and night,

Nor night and I, but you and I, alone,

So much alone, so deeply by ourselves,

So far beyond the casual solitudes,

That night is only the background of our selves,

Supremely true each to its separate self,

In the pale light that each upon the other throws.

another relaxing day

So far today:

- rowed 10 km including 4 5-minute pieces at high
rates

- took my truck in to fix the one little bit they missed earlier in
the week

- renewed our boat permits for next year

- meandered around
the mall -- bought a lipstick and foundation at Origins, 2 CDs at B&N, and some
beading stuff. Tried to figure out how to make a rowing bear for Rudder, but
unfortunately Build-A-Bear doesn't really have much in the way of oars or spandex
unis. Though the saleswoman did tell me about an ASU rower's mother who sewed her
own bear uni. I bought chocolate at Godiva instead (we're not really supposed to
be giving each other gifts this year, the Antarctica trip being the big
one.

- went to the doctors' to have my clean bill of health certified for
the same trip. Given that medevacs from there are a pretty big deal, I can see the
point of requiring that.

Unfortunately, I forgot to get a card for
Rudder. Drat.

Don't tell anyone, but one of the CDs was John Denver.
Been meaning to get one of those for years. I really wish there were one with the
setting of John Gillespie Magee's High Flight he once did for a TV special
on NASA, but I don't think that was ever recorded. The other one was Violent
Femmes, which always reminds me of freshman year. I put the two of those on the
counter to pay and said, "Don't laugh."

SF/F list

I wrote an earlier
entry today, but what the hell. These seem to be mostly the older "classic"
works in F & SF, which means they don't match my taste much, and a lot of the ones
I've read only once were read long ago -- my college boyfriend had a very good
library. My comments are in italics. I stole this from href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/bafleyanne/40090.html#cutid1">Baf.

<
p>

Key:

* = I've read it

** = I've read it multiple times

# = Started but never finished, or have read some books in series

Science Fiction Novels

*Dune, Frank Herbert

**The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin

#The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac

**Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein

The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester

*A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr

Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke

#Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card (I read only the short-story version)

Hyperion, Dan Simmons

Gateway, Frederik Pohl

*The Forever War, Joe Haldeman

More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon

Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny

#Neuromancer, William Gibson

*Startide Rising, David Brin

*The Time Machine, H.G. Wells

The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick

The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin

Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner

*Nineteen Eight-Four, George Orwell

The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester

#The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury

**Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein

Downbelow Station, C.J. Cherryh

*Ringworld, Larry Niven

#2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke

#The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

*The Mote in God's Eye, Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

Way Station, Clifford D. Simak

Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon

Dying Inside, Robert Silverberg

The City and the Stars, Arthur C. Clarke

Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany

Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke

Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement

City, Clifford D. Simak

*Cyteen, C.J. Cherryh

*Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes

*Double Star, Robert A. Heinlein

Earth Abides, George R. Stewart

**The Door Into Summer, Robert A. Heinlein

Last and First Men, Olaf Stapledon

Ubik, Philip K. Dick

Norstrilia, Cordwainer Smith

The Witches of Karres, James H. Schmitz

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

**Have Space Suit -- Will Travel, Robert A. Heinlein

**Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick

**The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov

#"Riverworld" series, Philip Jose Farmer

Fantasy Novels

*The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

**The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe

"Earthsea" series, Ursula K. Le Guin

**Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

"Gormenghast" series, Mervyn Peake

**The Once and Future King, T.H. White

*Little, Big, John Crowley

**Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny

*"The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant", Stephen R. Donaldson

**Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey

"The Belgariad", David Eddings

**The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis

*The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers

"The Dying Earth" series, Jack Vance

**The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum

*Dracula, Bram Stoker

**The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

*The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley

The Stand, Stephen King

Watership Down, Richard Adams (I really should read this one)

**The Riddle-Master of Hed, Patricia A. McKillip

The Worm Ouroboros, E.R. Eddison

**Glory Road, Robert A. Heinlein

Mythago Wood, Robert Holdstock

*"Alvin Maker" series, Orson Scott Card (sort of a compromise rating -- I've
read the first two more than once, but never got to the third.)

**A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle

*Witch World, Andre Norton

"The Fionavar Tapestry", Guy Gavriel Kay

Deryni Rising, Katherine Kurtz

*"Discworld" series, Terry Pratchett (same sort of compromise)

*"Elric" series, Michael Moorcock

Replay, Ken Grimwood

Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury

"Fafhrd & Gray Mouser" series, Fritz Leiber (I want to read these, just haven't
come across them)

**The Incomplete Enchanter, Fletcher Pratt & L. Sprague de Camp

But no Connie Willis, no de Lint, no Lackey, no Bull, Shetterley, Windling, Dean,
Yolen, MacAvoy, Gaiman. Also, no children's fantasy but Alice and Oz: no
MacDonald, Nesbit, Cooper, Rowling, Goudge, Travers, Duane. More is Imcompleat
here than just Sir Harold de Shea.

morning challenges

This was my one and only day to sleep in during this week while I'm off from work.
Granted, I'd only have been able to sleep until 7, as we having people coming in
to tend to both the A/C and the roof, but still, that's 3 hours later than
yesterday.

The males in my house put a stop to the right quick. First
it was that damned cat whining at 3AM. My latest theory is that he's under the
delusion that he still has balls and that this is his version of the classic cat
singing on the back fence. However, his latest trick casts doubt on that theory.
This morning, Rudder told me, he decided to climb on top of the previously sleepig
Rudder, stick his nose in Rudder's ear, and THEN start mrowwwllling. I don't know,
maybe he's so confused that he wants to mate with Rudder's ear? (If it had been
me, I'd have begun playing kitty football at that point - when he was a kitten and
used to curl up and knead my neck while I was trying to sleep, I'd sort of fling
him to the foot of the bed. I think I may have gotten a spiral on him a couple of
those times. I suppose this might be part of why he's so
neurotic.)

Then Rudder's alarm went off at 4 and he went to the gym.
Then the cats decided that if he were gone, obviously I shouldn't be sleeping.
Then the older cat decided he wanted to snuggle up. He's long haired, so this
involves itchy fur in my face. I finally got to sleep at 5:30 or so, just in time
for Rudder to wake me up coming back from the gym at 6, when he decided that he
didn't have to be at work that early and so could nap a half hour before
showering. (He has his reasons for doing that instead of setting the alarm later
in the first place, but I'm not convinced.) And of course that involved the usual
discussion about whether we were going to nap or "nap". I elected to try for
actual sleep, but of course that still didn't work.

I could sleep
late, really, if only my co-residents weren't on such peculiar schedules.
Unfortunately, I can't nap inthe afternoon unless I'm either absolutely exhausted
or sick, neither of which applies at the moment. So much for luxurious late
mornings.

Dean, sports, and feline harrassment

After Natalie's comment on her contribution
to Howard Dean's campaign, I was curious and checked out his href="http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=about_issues">campaig
n website.

Wow.

I am very impressed with his
background and almost all of his positions. (I'm a little ambivalent on his
universal health care, because I don't like the idea of the government running
health care, but I haven't read the details yet. And I am willing to believe that
a physician has more insight than I do about how to run a healthcare system. Other
than that, though: Balanced budget? Check. Pro-choice? Check. Equal rights and
opportunities for all? Check. Strongly supporting individual liberties and
opposing the what I now think of as the Ashcroft/Umbridge crackdowns? Check. Gay
rights even including immigration freedoms (an issue no one who has read href="http://conspicuous.diaryland.com">Caroline or href="http://dashenka.diaryland.com">Enka in the past few years can ignore)?
Check. Cpatial punishment in extreme cases but only if applied fairly? Check. And
he has a background to support it as governor of Vermont, he cut state taxes and
even sales taxes, so when he talks about rescinding Bush's "irresponsible tax
cuts" I don't hear echoes of "tax and spend".

Caveat: All of the
above is from the Dean website. Before I spend any money or a vote on him, I will
be watching to see whether independent sources corroborate all of this. And I am
sure managing a country as diverse as this one is a far harder challenge than a
small state with a tradition of civic participation and
education.

---

We're into the worst workout season now,
the one where you can work up a sweat even at a light and easy paddle. And it will
get worse as the humidity increases, once monsoon season starts. After the next
race, I think I will take a week of from working out. And while I'm off work this
week, I may try to investigate other sports in which the irremediable aspscts of
my body size won't be a major handicap. (I can build muscle but not height.) So
far I'm thinking ballet, yoga, or martial arts. I'm too old for gymnastics, too
sensible to undertake a body-builder's diet, and too crabby to do the fake-smile
bit in those quasi-gymnastic fitness competition thingies.

And I'm
also going to end here because it's too hard to type with a cat sitting on my
mouse, lapping over onto the edge of the keyboard, and hanging his chin onto my
elbow.