Dichroic Reflections

swamp rowing

I went rowing this morning on actual water, more or less. The conditions were beautiful: enough breeze to dry my sweat without ruffling the water, cool enough that I was thinking about my rowing instead of how much I hate overheating. The sky was still dark that I could see stars as I carried my oars down, with the Hunter bringing the first harbinger of Fall.

There was only one problem. If you had seen me, your first thought would probably have been, "How is she rowing on sod?" I mean, really, it's bad when you can hear your boat cutting through the vegetation; at one point I thought I could just get out and walk back to the beach.

It's probably best illustrated by a photo I took of Rudder last Friday:
(More photos here.)

I saw something this morning I'd never seen before: one guy was out in a single, sinking, but slowly, so his boat was under all the vegetation and his body was above. It looked as if he were sitting on the grass. I never did get the whole story about that, but someone in a safety launch was coaching him and got him out before he'd even gotten entirely wet.
Other than that it was a good row, and I even got in more distance than I'd thought I would. 28K for the week so far, and if all goes well, I should just about double that this week. Another half-marathon Saturday, oh joy. The last one took most of the weekend to recover from. This one I can either do Saturday late morning after flying and then have to be lively enough for the get-together we're hosting for RUdder's coworkers that night, or do it Sunday morning after the get-together and hope I'm coherent enough for work Monday. All things considered, including Monday's erg piece, it's probably better to do it Saturday and have Sunday to recover.

ex liber rex quondam et rex futuris

This time around, I read The Once and Future King with a more critical eye. I still like The Sword in the Stone better than the rest of it, and prefer the standalone version of TSitS to the rest of it, but saying that the later books are not as good as the first still leaves them a lot of room to excel.

White switches gears after TSitS; that book is clearly aimed at children or possibly young adults, while the rest strikes me as more of an adult book. Those are difficult distinctions to make, especially for someone who can read Austen and Milne, Trollope and Travers with equal enjoyment. Maybe one over-simplified way to distinguish is that children-readers are still learning What is in the world, and What is the world, and should be educated by their books; young adults have learned the What and are wondering Why the world is and what it is For, and can be led by their books to ask the questions in ways that will permit them to find their own approixmations to answers; adults (some adults) know What is What but have forgotten that they ever wondered and may be led by their books to reexamine their questions and regain their wonder. By that standard, the later books are aimed at adults, while the first is for children verging on young adulthood.

(The later books' independent titles are The Queen of Air and Darkness, The Ill-Made Knight, and A Candle in the Wind, but I don't think anyone has read them separately since the omnibnus was published in 1958.)

I surmise that the change in tone is because White had a freer hand with TSitS, whereas in the later books he is retelling and expanding on stories told by Malory (who makes a cameo appearance in the last chapter). The extraordinary thing is that throughout all four books, both the TSitS and the other three adult books, he uses a style more common in children's books. (In fact, it's a little similar to the style Lemony Snicket uses, except that White explains not only words but characters.) While he is showing his reader the characters and their world, he pauses to tell in authorial voice exactly what he's showing: that Lancelot acts as he does because he has a purely Medieval religious view of chastity and purity, for example, or that Guinevere's contradictory actions are because she was "a real person", who can't be confined by simple labels: "Sometimes she acted one way, sometimes she acted another. She always acted like herself." And always there is Arthur in the background, lit by his dream and desperately trying to kindle a flame that will burn through England before his candle gutters.

He uses the technique not only to explain how his characters are as different from modern ones as a castle from an office building, or to peel back years to let a middle-aged reader (one who has developed the "seventh sense" of balance) recall the unsteadiness and fire of youth, but to insert comment about his own times (Merlyn's view of Hitler is especially good).

It ought to be very annoying. This is exactly the sort of telling, not showing, that authors are warned against. It ought to be grating enough to make the reader want to throw the book across the room. In lesser books, it is. Maybe it is in this book, for some people. For me, though, it's only charming. It deepens the characters and does wake my wonder. Maybe the cozy charm is because for me that wonder was so closely tied to the English books I lived in as a child, or maybe it's related to what Matociquala said about J.K. Rowling, and it doesn't matter what White does wrong, because of all he does right. (Oh, dear. I typed that first as "... all he does write." Ouch.)

I don't know, but now I want to go reread The Sword in the Stone, the better version where Margan Le Fay's castle is made of candy instead of lard, and The Book of Merlyn, which is really a book of old age, as well as of (appropriately, considering what book I picked up after TOaFK) freedom and necessity. And then I want to walk through a castle and work out, as White says any sensible person would, which were the granaries and which the armory, where the barbicans were and where the lord and his family lived.

not kindred

Today I am wearing black trousers, a fitted white button-down shirt, and a black and white houndstooth plaid vest. A coworker (the same one) commented that it was the most professional outfit she'd seen me in. It's certainly not the most professional outfit I've worn here, but then again she doesn't see me every day. (It hasn't escaped my notice that she'd get quite offended if I made the same sort of comments to her that she makes to me, but luckily I find her amusing.)

My wardrobe is best described as "eclectic"; the outfit I think of as most quintessentially me is probably a plain fitted jersey T-shirt and jeans, but I also enjoy wearing wide flowing skirts, short straight skirts, silk blouses, plaid flannel shirts, sweaters of all descriptions, fuzzy fleece pullovers.... I don't like wearing the same look every day; I get bored. So I strive for a basic level of professionalism and wear what I like. (Though I may have to give up the denim skirt I wore Friday. That front slit is unexceptional when I stand, but rises higher than is comfortable for work when I sit down.)

The coworker's comment is interesting, because the more I talk to her, the more orthogonal I think our views of the world are. Her clothes are professional enough, but I find them boring. They're not the sort worn by someone who doesn't care at all about clothing, or I probably wouldn't notice them at all; they want to be looked at but they're the sort of suit that sacrifices quality to achieve a dressy look with cheap fabrics. (They are, in fact, the sort of clothes that are one reason I don't wear suits or suit separates much, because when I go looking in department stores for suit-ish clothes I get disgusted with the sleazy fabrics. I'd rather wear honest cotton or wool, so I do, but seem to end up with less dressy clothes.)

It goes far beyond clothes, though. She's on a no-carb diet; if I were to diet I'd still want to eat what I liked, but less of it, and I don't believe in limiting the variety I eat. She's always looking to meet men; maybe I would be if I were still single, but when I was I tended to prefer to live my life and just meet whoever came along into it, instead of looking for them. I've always preferred to become friends before getting romantically involved, though when I met Rudder, everything sort of happened so fast that we did both at the same time. She's a political animal, work-wise; I understand the importance of the politics that are inevitable in every group of humans, but tend to avoid them when possible out of both lack of interest and a feeling that I wouldn't be good at it anyway.

She works out, but from her comments, I think she may be the sort of woman Marn talks about, who gets on the cardio equipment and says, "Well, time to burn off that doughnut!".

Most notably, recently we were discussing weight, and I proudly told her about Old Salt's comment, "My God, you're buff!" She said, "And you took that as a compliment? See, I'd be insulted by that."

I can't even get my mind around that. Also, you know those women on the front of muscle magazines that so many women are afraid of looking like? That doesn't happen by accident. Really. (In fact, I don't think it happens at all, save through better living through chemistry.)

She does read, some, or at least I've seen a book in her car (French Women Don't Get Fat) but I don't think she really understands about books, or why anyone would want to live with a nose in one. I'd be surprised if she walked into my house and didn't immediately ask, "Have you really read all of these? And why?"

She's nice enough, and I like her well enough as a work-buddy, but somehow, well ... I think Miss Cornelia Bryant would say she's " of the race that knoweth not Joseph". Which is ironic, because in many ways, Miss Cornelia might approve more of her than she would of me.

workout entry

Because I really should start doing this again. Don't worry, I've been working out 3-4 times per week all along; I'm not going into these kinds of distances cold. I just haven't been recording them here.

Monday, 8/8: 9000m on erg: 3000 at marathon pace, 3000 at 10km pace, 3000 at half-marathon pace
Tuesday, 8/9: 11000 on erg: 1km warmup, 2x 2000 at 5km pace, 3000 at marathon pace
Wednesday, 8/10: 1500 on erg to warm up, including 1x20 at low rate high resistance, then weights.
Thursday, 8/11: flew
Friday, 8/12: 6000m in the single, then met Okie in launch to photograph duckeweed on the lake.
Saturday, 8/13: half-marathon on the erg.
Monday, 8/15: 9000m on erg: 3000 at marathon pace, 3000 at 10km pace, 3000 at half-marathon pace

to train to

Cross posted to Gymrats on LJ - I don't there there's much crossover in readership.

As I close in on finishing my IFR, I've begun to train harder again. We'll see how it goes, but last Monday I began training for the Marathon Rowng Championships in November (despite the name, anyone can enter). I did it last year, but had a better aerobic base by now. Still, I completed a half-marathon this morning on the erg (rowing machine) so I ought to be all right. (One coach I know claims the erg is 20% more effeort than a boat). I'll just be shooting to finish, not going for speed. Right now I'm building a lot of my distance on the erg; it lets me sleep longer (as opposed to driving to the lake, getting my boat out, carrying it down, rowing, carrying it back up, washing it, putting it away, and driving to home or work, whereas I have an erg int he spare bedroom) and it's still pretty hot here. As we get closer to the race, I'll shift more and more to the boat, to work on form over that long a time and to toughen up my hands and seat.

When you're on a machine for that long, two hours in my case, what you watch is important. I can do short pieces watching the news, or 10K pieces watching watever catoons Disney and Nick have on at 5AM. For this longer piece, we had borrowed a copy of the documentary From the Earth to the Moon, and it was perfect. (Caveat: I'm a space geek, of course, but I think it would be good for anyone with an interest in space exploration.) Parts 1 & 2 took me through all but the last 1500 of my 21097 meter piece. The whole thing is 10 hours so it will last for a lot of erg sessions.

So far, we've found that action is good, anything where you have to concentrate is bad, anything very quiet is hard to hear, and comedies aren't great because it's hard to push it while you're laughing. Things that have short exciting or inspiring sections are great because they get you to ramp it up, or you can tell yourself that you won't take a water break until a given space mission makes it back safe, or whatever. Music documentaries can work, if they're about heavy metal so you have music clips for those power 10s. Action movies that aren't too serious, like Lethal Weapon, can work well. The Harry Potter books on audio worked well for me too. Anyone got any other good movies or audiobooks to suggest for training?

doubled reflections

Mechaieh prompts, "things that capture reflections... other than mirrors and eyes". That seems appropriate: I spent part of this morning at a photoshoot (I was photographer, not model). Our lake is now 15-20% covered in duckweed. It's reputedly nontoxic and reputedly harmless to fish, water birds, and the single beaver who live there, but it's annoying to row through. It adds resistance. Worse is the emotional trauma: pity a poor rower pulling her little rowing heart out, only to find that her distance is declining and her split times are going up due to foliage wrapped around the StrokeCoach impeller. Yes, of course I'm exaggerating - but it is annoying not to know accurately how fast you're going compared to other practices.

So this morning, Rudder and I arranged to meet the lake coordinator at sunrise, so that he and I could take a launch out and photograph the layer of green on top of our water and Rudder carving a path through it, in the sunrise light. I had to be careful to include some uncovered water in all shots, so it didn't look like I was just photographing sod. Still, annoying as the duckweed is, it's a pleasant way to spend a morning, riding around on a lake taking pictures of the water, the lake surroundings and sky, and of Rudder with his flag-designed boat, oars and uni lit up by the dawn. Photographing water: double reflections there.

I did row a lap first, which puts me up to about 37 km for the week. I'm supposed to erg 18km soetime this weekend, and may, if feeling either particularly gung-ho or especially fatalistic, turn that into a half marathon instead. Once you've rowed 18 km, you might as well row 21. My weight hasn't gone down, but I think I'm jiggling a little less, and a new mail-ordered pair of pants that were a little tight in the waist a couple of weeks ago were comfortable Wednesday. (Which might also be due to not washing them between wearings. They're in the laundry pile now, so I'll see.)

new glasses

They're a bit bigger than my old ones, mostly in width, and the left eye is half a diopter stronger. Between that and the fact that I'd been wearing glasses all day until I picked thm up, the distortion bothered me at first. It was making the drive home interesting. Then I got to thinking about what T.H. White had done with The Once and Future King, and how it differed from what Malory did, and by the time I was back on the subject of the new glasses, the distortion wasn't an issue any more. It bothered me again when I stepped out of the car and moved my head, but that was momentary. I like them; I think the frames are heavy enough to look like I'm wearing glasses and that they are a separate entity (as opposed to wearing frames so unnoticeable that the fleeting impression is of an inexplicably glassy eye) while not being so heavy that the glasses are all you see. And I think the upswept line is kind to my face.

When you've been wearing glasses for 35 years and are of an analytical turn of mind, thse are all things to be considered. Rudder likes them too.

BOOM. Damn. Ow.

RIP Swiss Ball / office chair.

I heard a loud hissing, then before I could even look down there was a pop and a thump, as I landed on the floor. It must have been loud, because the guy in the next office came running, and the admin around the corner poked her head in a minute later. I've had that ball for two years or so, and used it every workday, so it's not surprising it's died; what surprised me is that it didn't spring a leak and deflate, but rather exploded into two entirely separate pieces. I guess I bounced on it a few times too many.

Casualties: one knee seems a little sore (though that could be from the gym yesterday) and my butt is a little grumpy where I landed on it. Good thing it's padded. Also, I think my lower back is a little stiff from the impact. The thud hurt my head, like a fall in snowboarding, but that passed.

I've been called a ballbreaker before, but not in that context.

Today was my last lesson with the CFII I've been working with, and his last lesson as an instructor there. He took the controls and did a little joyriding on the way back in, but it's not really possible to get too wild in a Cessna 172. He's going off to go be an airline pilot and fly the big jets. I'm glad for him, but I wish it had taken another month or so. He's the third main one I've worked with and now I have to fly with yet another instructor to finish. It's a matter of finding someone whose teaching style meshes well with my learning style. Also, this one is a 20-year retired Navy helo pilot with over 50 combat missions, who flew in both Iraq wars. He was instructing just to build up fixed time hours to qualify for the airlines. I liked the feeling that whatever happened, he's flown in worse, and I like his laid-back style.

This weekend, I'm flying with RUdder as safety pilot, just to practice my approaches. We'll see how that goes. It's legal for me, as a VFR pilot, to fly under the hood with any qualified pilot as safety, and I'm more than completed all the dual flying instruction required to quality, so now it's just a matter of finished my cross-country reqrirement and getting proficient enough for the checkride.

question authority, and everything else

Why is my body so binary? That is, why can it go from feeling crappy to starving, or from starving to feeling overfilled and crappy so quickly? (In the latter case, it took about 8 peanut-butter-filled pretzel nuggets today.) It doesn't happen all the time, and in fact much less often than it used to, but I still don't know why and can't predict it well. My best theory is that either aging or exercise has greatly helped the IBS. But why?

Why does the local hippie-granola Co-Op still sell Chai Tea Luna bars? Or rather more importantly, why doesn't everyone else? Back before the supermarkets stopped carrying them, it seemed like every Luna-bar-eater I talked to agreed with me that Chai Tea was the best flavor. So if Luna is still making them, why did most outlets quit selling that flavor? And why do they still sell the yucky Toasted Nut and Cranberry ones? The only excuse I can think of for the latter is to market to people who believe that food must taste awful to be good for them.

Why do companies assume that body part sizes are predictable? No, not that one - well actually, come to think of it, that one too. For another example, I recently tried an off-the-shelf mouth guard. I knew I needed small, given that every dentist who works on my mouth comments on how small it is and pulls out the child-sized implements, but for some reason the packaging tells you which size to get based on your height. I am a small person with a small mouth, but it has not been my observation that these factors are generally related. (Maybe they should go by hat size or number of fingers you can cram in your mouth?) Similarly I was at the afore-mentioned co-op buying a small-sized Diva Cup, because I can feel pressure when the other one is in place and it's sometimes uncormfortable. I had originally bought the larger size becuase it said women over 30 should, even if they hadn't had kids - maybe I should have known to get the small one, but the problem with being a straight women (with decently reticent friends) is that there's very little opportunity to assess comparative sizes. I'm hoping this one will be more comfortable, not to mention easier to get in and out of place.

How could I have had one person say, "My God, you're buff!" and another ask, "Are you pregnant?" within two weeks of each other, even given the difference between work and workout clothing?

Why are plumbing chores always ten times harder than expected? (Rudder just replaced our reverse osmosis system - I'm not fussy, but it's unversally agreed that the local tap water is undrinkable, at least in terms of taste. It took him three days.)

Why do office jobs have to be so sedentary?

Why, even with my current shorter commute, does working out more still have to mean sleeping less? Somehow, I still think I should be able to exercise, work a full day, have dinner and a little time to relax, and then be able to get as much sleep as my body needs, even if that's more than 8 hours.

Why are RVs never designed with bookshelves?

How am I supposed to finish my IFR when yet another instructor is moving on? I'm glad when they get jobs with the airlines, but I'm getting tired of breaking in new ones. Having finished the required of instruction, I'd consider just flying with RUdder until I was ready to take the test, but he doesn't know enough about using the GPS and autopilot. (He did his IFR before those were common on small planes.) And anyway, learning from him is difficult for me, at least if I want to stay married to him.

Why don't I have a copy of The Sword in the Stone? (Other than as part of The Once and Future King.) How can I have missed on getting that?

I could probably sit here and ask questions all day.

connecting to rainbows

This morning a rainbow kept me company most of the way to work, a good long one with about forty degrees showing I don't think I ever saw a rainbow, or not more than a tiny sliver of one, until I grew up. The city I was born, raised and educated in is not a good place for them, because of weather patterns, topology, architecture, and vegetation. I think there probably are fewer of them to begin with, because there are hills but no tall mountains to snag clouds, and so the weather patterns are a wider-spread and more uniform. Showers in one part of the sky and sun in another are not unknown, but they're notable. Here, on the other hand, rainstorms can be watched coming in and going away, and more often than not there is sun in part of the sky except while the storm is right overhead. Also, in my birth city, rowhouses crowd in, not tall but close together, and the streets between them are lined with tees, so that a much smaller sliver of the sky can be seen. Walking in the city feels more like being in a canyon lidded with an angle of sky, than as here, being on a plain roofed with as bowl of sky. If there was a rainbow in the area there, I had less chance of being able to see it.

As a result, when I see rainbows, I pay attention to them. Even though they're not rare here, they seem to be less common in the morning than in the afternoon. I put on a CD of Irish music to go with it, not because we saw any rainboaws there but because music from that misty climate seemed appropriate. (And after all, where do leprechauns keep their gold?) For a moment there was even a double arc. Eventually I went through some heavier traffic and had to concentrate, and when I came out the rainbow had faded. But the song that was playing then put me in mind of the Ring of Kerry and the Cliffs of Moher, which had me thinking of the ocean in general. I miss living by water, and the ocean is the best water, because it was waves as well as the relfections all water has, and maybe a little just because of its salt. After all, our most distant ancestors came from the sea, and we retain its echo flowing in our veins. (Never tell me there's no poetry in science.)

A small sliver of the other end of the rainbow peeked out at the end of my drive, then hid behind the buliding. As I walked in the door, I asked another woman walking in if she'd seen the rainbow. She said, "Oh, no. Was there a rainbow? I don't notice anything in the morning." I am not known as an observant person, but there are some things that really ought not to be missed.

enough with the sqeaking

I've been watching Disney Playhouse while I erg (because it's about the most intellectual stimulation I can handle at 5AM and while on the erg) and have realized a trend: it seems like a lot of the old standby kids' shows have added characters since my time, and they nearly all seem to be modeled on small childnre. (You can tell they're small children because they have high squeaky choices, though in my experience even toddlers are not uniformly squeaky in real life.) I'm a first generation Sesame Street kid, for example; I remember when Mr. Hooper was alive, Snuffleopagus was a mystery, and Oscar was orange (he turned green a few seasons in). Occasionally, Buffy St. Marie came on and sang folk songs. Back then, the focal Muppets, if I can call them that, were Kermit, Ernie, and Bert, with frequent appearances from Cookie Monster and Grover and occasional ones from Herry and other monsters. Those were still the main characters when my brother was watching the show, around the time Cookie Monster was wearing gold chains and singing "Disco Toothbrush. By the time I was old enough to babysit, Cookie Monster was doing rap, and Elmo had been added with a full range of toys for sale. Now I think they've added a new even squeakier girl Muppet. Similarly, I had both original and Disney versions of Pooh, but the latter were still based mostly on the former.

Now, on both the puppet and cartoon versions of Winnie the Pooh, they've added a squeaky little bluebird named Kessie - on an episde that must have been her first introduction, Rabbit adopted her as a baby bird who could barely talk. Now she has a full vocabulary and speaks in an infinitesimally lower register, but is still plainly a small child. (The cartoon Pooh, which is less uniformly cheery than the puppet version, also has a very funny grumpy old gopher gaffer who wears a miner's lamp and some annoying Heffalumps with Bronx accents who seem to have strayed over from a Bugs Bunny cartoon.) I dfon't really see why Kessie is needed; if children want a Very Small and timid animal to identify with, there's always Piglet - but they've lost the whole point that the Hundred-Aker Wood and its inhabitants are all in Christopher Robin's imagination. Who needs more to identify with than that?

Reputedly, Barbie was invented when a female Mattel exec realized that her own daughter preferred playing with older dolls, instead of babys. (Yes, I know, she was then based on the German Lili dolls, but those were for adults.) I think maybe the producers of kids' shows need to learn the Barbie lesson again. Kids like playing grown-up, or rather kid-appropriate versions thereof - pirates and princesses, parents and pioneers. That's how they learn. I'm not convinced they need a squeaky-voiced little-kid character in order to be able to identify with a story.

No, in this case I am NOT interested in expressing my opinion

These stupid phone surveys have gotten to be very nearly as irritating as phone solicitations were before the Do Not Call list went into effect. We've gotten calls nearly every night this week, and I am now Officially Annoyed.

This last one was the worst so far. Transcript, with commentary in square brackets:

Caller: "Hi, I'm calling with a survey about opinions on political issues in your area." [They're getting more brazen - this one didn't even give the standard speech about how she wasn't selling anything.]
Me, being polite: "Sorry, I don't want to do a survey now. Please take us off your calling list."
Caller: "Sorry, I can't do that - I don't even know how to do that. [If that's not illegal, it should be.] All I can do is put down a refusal."
Me: "Please do that."
Caller: "Actually, the survey is for the male head of the household."
Me: "He refuses too."
Caller: "Actually I can't take a refusal from anyone but the person I'm supposed to talk to."
Me, losing patience, "Well, then I'll just have to hang up and I suppose that counts as a refusal." *click*

This is ridiculous. My loyalty is to my husband, not some intrusive surveying, and I have a right to protect my family from petty annoyance. I believe phone surveys ought to also come under the purview of the Do Not Call list. They haven't woken us up yet, as the phone solicitors used to do, but now we're in training for fall and back on rowers' hours (at least Rudder is; I can sleep later while I'm only erging) I'm sure that will happen soon.

Posted by dichroic at 07:06 PM | Comments (7)

productive

Since my last regular post here, I have erged a total of 14km, rowed 10km, and passed the IFR written test. Not bad for one weekend. I've also done an unhealthy amount of cramming pretest, begun rereading The Once and Future King (I need to go see if I have a copy of the standalone version of The Sword in the Stone though, because I like it much better than the abbreviated version in TOaFK), knitted a little more of the rowing-rearview-mirror-cozy Rudder requested, helped Rudder a little on the first 1/4 of the installation of our new reverse osmosis system (it's being obnoxious and he's regetting buying it instead of just changing the filters on the old one, even though the old one was having other problems) and had breakfast Saturday with the Old Salt.

He made my day at that breakfast - made my weekend in fact, and possibly my entire month, because almost the first thing he said was, "My God, you're buff! What have you been doing, lifting weights?" So that was nice, especially because he's blunt enough that you know he means what he says, complimentary or not.

I guess I've officially begun training for the November marathon. Last week I put in 30km for the week, for the first time in ages (most weeks last year I did 30-40km), or timesliced another way I've done 39km in the last 7 days. Rudder found a training plan online that has you building up to 80-110 km per week, and today I did my first workout from that. It's been a long time since I've done a real planned workout piece, not just a "go out and row/erg". I can't say I enjoyed the way I felt when I got to my desk this morning, and tomorrow's piece is worse. The thing is, it's a 26-week program, but because we've been rowing all along and because of when the regatta is, we're starting at week 13. Rudder has himself and She-Hulk doing his own plan based on the peridicity of this one, the 100 km version, but with weights added and other fiendish changes, because he's a little twisted that way. I'm on the 80km version, because I haven't been training as hard and because I only want to finish the marathon, not set a record. It's a lot more distance than I've been doing, but only about one more workout per week (I'll mostly drop the weightlifting, as I did last fall) so it shouldn't been too much strain on my body. As he says, I may not adhere to it strictly, but at least it's a framework. Hopefully I can get my IFR finished within the next month, and then I'll have more time for training and more money for everything eles. Or more likely, for saving.

written test taken

In case that text isn't clear for you, the important parts are:

EXAM: Instrument Rating Airplane
SCORE: 87 GRADE: PASS

This is just the written, though. Next comes finishing up training, then the hard part: the checkride and oral quiz.

still not ready

I am really not ready for this exam. I found a practice test online, and am getting scores ranging from 60-80% (70 is required to pass). I'd be much happier with a 70-90 range. I'll see how I'm doing by Sunday; there's no hard deadline, and I can take the test pretty much whenever I want. I just want this IFR stuff over will, so I can quit hemorrhaging money on long / frequent flights. Once it's done, I should try to fly once a month or so, to maintain proficiency, but that won't be ungodly expensive.

Rudder and I may try to fly up to his Oregon grandparents' for Labor Day; that would give me enough hours to finish the cross-country requirements, and their town is remote enough that it takes very nearly as long to fly commercially and have to drive over.

I've been studying sort of backwards, reviewing test questions first and then when necessary reading up in the book. I had originally tried reading first, but some of the material is so tedious, and the authors make so many hoary and hokey jokes (any stray pilots reading this now know exactly what set of books I'm talking about). When I do the questions first, then when I read on the subject I'm having an easier time concentrating. Instead of dozing off, I think, "Oh, this came up and I didn't know it," so it's easier to pay attention. There are also DVDs to play on my computer, but those are even more annoying than the book.

Also, Rudder has gone insane. He's planning a third annual erg marathon despite saying last year in so many words that he wouldn't do it this year, and has presented She-Hulk with a marathon training schedule that involves doing 1,100,000 meters over the next few months. (He knows better than to try to talk me into that. He showed me an 80,000 variation of the training. Big improvement, not.) We're hoping this all wears off and he finds somewhere else to channel his formidable energy, now that the Charles race is out.

rough day all around

Yesterday was rough all around - I did 10K on the erg in the morning, work kicked my butt, and then the IFR study materials kicked my butt some more. I'm still hoping to take that test this weekend, but I'm not really ready for it. There's so much to learn and so much of it is arbitrary and unconnected. A lot of it strikes me as unimportant for a pilot to know, or as being something I can look up instead of memorizing when I need it.

Please don't tell me you're sure I'll do fine. I promise, if I tell you I'm not ready for a test, I'm really not. I'm not one of those horrid people who tells you they don't know anything and then gets a perfect score.

Yesterday I took a practice test in a book of Rudder's, which confused the issue further. Some things have changed and I think some of the things on it aren't in the newer test (other things, like GPS, have been added, however), so I did very badly on it. When I picked some random questions out of my own test-prep book, I did a little better but still not as well as I'd like. Also, I've been traumatized a little since the time, months ago, when I was reading comments to a rare flying entry on an otherwise political blog written by another pilot, for a in which any number of people claimed to have passed with a perfect score or with only one or two wrong. I don't think that's what will happen to me, and I'm used to doing well on tests.

I (finally!) had my interview for the job in which I am more or les the current incumbent (but not enough of one to be a shoo-in) today, too.

Still, Rudder's day was more traumatic than mine. He's been trying to decide whether to compete in the Head of the Charles again this year. Unfortunately, in the flurry that was our July, he had totally forgotten that the deadline for singles entries is August 1 (for some reason, every other event has until September 1). He was upset about it to a degree that I think surprised himself; he hadn't been sure he wanted to do that race, but when he found out he couldn't, I think he was confronted by the yawning chasm of time that he would otherwise have spent rowing, and had no idea what to do with it.

Of course, part of the reason he was considering not racing was a promise to me to pull back a little bit and train less, because I am very, very tired of being woken regularly at 4AM. (I sleep lightly enough that it is simply not possible for him to get up without waking me, no matter how quiet he is.) However much I hate that, though, it was even worse to see how sad and at loose ends he was. I don't fully understand why this has to be so hard for him - I'd be delighted with extra time, and would have no trouble filling it as full as I wanted to - but with some of the other changes we're considering and with the way his job is going, putting the effort into house or work projects as he would otherwise isn't much of an option. He's considering other races for the fall now; with luck, since the level of competition most places won't be quite as high as ion Boston, he'll be able to pull back at least a little on the training.

singing flight

Scalzi began a discussion thread with, "Why are there so many songs about rainbows?" Actually, I'm not convinced there are. I can think of three, offhand: The Rainbow Connection, obviously; Somewhere Over the Rainbow; and Look to the Rainbow, from Finian's R.

But the real question, to my mind, should be, "Why are there so few songs about flying?" I 've never actually sailed anything bigger than a Sunfish (been on a few others were sailing, though), but I can sing you songs about sailing until you beg for mercy. (Granted, for most people, that happens in about five minutes.) There are hundreds of them, and not all the sailing songs date back to the days when people actually did sing attheir work. Yet there are hardly any songs about actually being off the ground, chasing clouds and rainbows. Not that you can get near a rainbow, but I have now flown through clouds. There are a few that are only tangential and don't really count, like Leaving on a Jet Plane or Early Morning Rain, but as far as actual flying songs, all I can think of are Archie Fisher's song Bill Hosie (about a man who built a replican Supermarine S-5 and Bill Staines' Tingmissartoq (about the plane Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh took up tot eh Arctic) and both of those are fairly obscure. Note: both can be found on Staines' album Looking for the Wind, should you want to hear them - but even that album, titled about his first landing at the controls, contains only those two and Early Morning Rain for flying songs.)

There are a few songs about flying without airplanes: Iron Maiden, Ani DiFranco, Reilly & Maloney and Richard Berman have all sung about Icaurs, though only the first and third of those really dwell on the flying experience, and there's I'm Flying! from the Peter Pan musical.

There's the Indigo Girls' song Airplane, but that's mostly about wishing you were back on the ground. John Denver once put the poem High Flight to music, but I've never found a recording. (He was hosting a special about NASA -I'd love a video of the whole thing.) There are a couple of songs about space flight, though I think of that as a different animal (an even more exciting one, in my opinion), but both Space Oddity and its remake Major Tom end with the astronaut's death. Elton John's Rocketman is about the dreary planetside part of the job. His Rocket Man is a trucker who just happens to drive a spaceship.

With the amount of time humanity has spent on dreaming of flight and on trying to get off the ground, you'd think we'd sing about it a little more.

a couple of oddities

Something happened during the Canada trip that actually made me feel a little better about the attack on American civil liberties beefing up of U.S Security: we met a Border Patrol officer with a sense of humor. Rudder had a small mustache when I met him and up until he turned 30; he'd always said he wouldn't shave it off until at least that age, so when he turned 30 I reminded him of that statement and asked him to remove it at least for a little while, so I could see what his whole face looked like. He decided to keep it off (and in my opinion looks better without it, though he looks awfully good with a beard, even a half-grown one), but his passport photo still shows him with the 'stache.

Coming through the Edmonton airport we had to stop at the US Customs desk, where the officer had to check our passports. We talked a little about what we'd been doing; he told us he lives on the lake where the regatta was held. The guy took a look at Rudder's photo, and She-Hulk commented on the mustache in the old picture. The officer, said, "Oh, that's a real SuperTrooper mustache!". The he flinched, when he realized he probably wasn't supposed to make personal comments.

It was probably funnier due to our food- and sleep-deprivation at the time.

Today's gaffe: apparently I did do a fairly hard gym workout this morning. Getting dressed afterward I omitted an item of underclothing generally considered crucial. Oops. Fortunately,I'm wearing a lined shift whose outside is a sort of tweedy woven wool, and I still don't sag so the omission doesn't show at all. I've been trying not to go without any more, though, after noticing that without support I tend to be a little sore at the end of the day - after all, I don't want to become saggy either. Oops.

harmony in the home

We left for San Diego on Saturday morning a little after 8 (this is called "sleeping in" in my house). It was nice, actually, not to have to drive out after work. As part of that whole romantic weekend idea, we'd decided to shell out for the beachfront hotel, a pricey proposition in Mission Beach in July. What I didn't realize was that Rudder had also booked an oceanfront room. We were in a small but nice room on the third floor, with a good-sized balcony looking over the beach. After we brought our clothes up to the room, Rudder began making noises about needing a cart to bring up "some extra stuff". He wouldn't normally have needed anything else, so figuring something was up, I invoked the Christmas present rule and avoided asking any awkward questions.

It turned out that he'd brought along an extra cooler (in addition to the one with drinks for the six-hour drive) and a large cardboard box. It is, apparently, very helpful to be able to rely upon your spouse's obliviousness (I wouldn't know). This was also aided by Rudder's own normal overpacking tendencies; if I had noticed the extra cooler, I'd have assumed it was there to hold some boat part or other, since the main reason for our trip was to pick up the boats the local Rowing Club brought back for us from the World Masters Games. I invented some errand involving going downstairs, and when I came back to the room, he'd gotten it all set up.

Given that we were only home for two and a half days between trips, he really outdid himself. There was, as mentioned, an ice cream cake with "#1 Crew Chief" in icing, packed inside our biggest pot (the one we used to brew beer in) in the cooler with some dry ice, to survive the trip. On the table on the other side of the room was a large basket packed with some fancy cheese, crackers, those delicate rolled cookies from Pepperidge Farms, English Breakfast tea (loose), wine, and champagne. Also a candle shaped like a rosebud, and a card.

Awwww.

Padding the basket, as had to be pointed out to me, was blue, red, and yellow tissue paper (our Arizona Outlaws colors), and it was topped with a copper ribbon, to match the star in the middle of the state flag (and our logo). He'd also brought all the necessary plates and utensils, even a cheese knife and a tea infuser.

As it turned out, the basket and wine were things we already owned, and I had bought the tea and forgotten about it a few months ago, but he didn't have a lot of time to work and I don't think the reuse devalues the gesture any.

The card was very sweet, but I will not share its contents except to say that Rudder writes the worst-spelled love notes you can possibly imagine (he's not lazy but dyslexic). For some besotted reason I find it endearing, and always have.

By the time we arrived, checked in and unpacked - and I'd thanked him appropriately - it was nearly 3PM. The traffic on Mission Bay Drive is much worse in July than in spring or fall, when we're normally there. We decided just to spend the afternoon on the beach. Rudder especially was still recuperating from the Canada trip. The water was cold, but I decided that the cold would be less painful than not going in. Rudder, never a fan of full immersion, decided it was too cold for him, so he held my pants and glasses while I made my way into the waves. I finally managed to go deep enough to catch a wave successfully, surprising myself with what may be my only actual body-surfing to date, and ended up getting wet all over, with a bit of the thin Earth-blood taste of the sea in my mouth. I didn't stay in long, because of the cold and because I didn't want to keep Rudder waiting. We walked a bit farther, then he sat by the hotel hot tub while I immersed to warm up. After I showered, we ate dinner at Nick's - I'd picked the name from the hotel guide, but it turned out to be the same place we'd eaten at in January, when we were in town for the rowing camp. We enjoyed it both times.

I really think I did handle this latest pique fairly well; Rudder knew I was mad at him, and maybe a little distant, but wasn't finding me unpleasant to be around. He naturally shows love by doing things for me (which, unfortunately, doesn't work as well on me as verbalizing) so presumably accepts love the same way. I made sure to keep doing things for him, even while talking to him less than I normally would, and to tell him flat out (but calmly) that I was upset and exactly why. (Also, to be fair, I didn't feel unappreciated just by him but by the whole group, but he's the one I have to live with and the one whose actions affect me most.) He implied at one point this weekend that he'd wanted to go out of his way to be nice to me - and did - partly because I "didn't bitch much this time at all".

I think I was also on his schedule. When he'd decided to do the World Masters a while ago, he'd said something at the time about not having much time to focus on me during the training, and having to do it afterward. He said something to a similar effect that reminded me of that this weekend, so I think part of this all was a reaction to Recent Events, but another part was the timing. Apparently I'm a line item on his schedule. I guess that's a good thing - always nice to be a priority - and I can't say I wasn't warned.

He's still deciding whether to race at the Charles this year, especially as I expect to be JournalConning that weekend instead. However, head race training is usually not quite as intense. Meanwhile, I'm having almost a reverse problem, in that he's taking all this week off from training (barring maybe a weight workout or two) but I can't afford to do that. If I'm considering doing the Natchitoches Marathon at all this year, I need to begin building up distance now. (A month ago would have been better, but all that travel interfered.) So paradoxically, now I have to worry about not waking him up. And after this past weekend, I actually don't want to wake him.