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.

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.

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.

Sunday evening asnd all is well

We're back from San Diego; I'll write more later, but wanted to report that all is now well in my house.

(I don't actually like ice-cream cake quite as much as Rudder seems to think I do, but I did love getting an ice-cream cake with "#1 Crew Chief" on it for reasons related more to the intention than the taste.)

a little down

So far it still looks like we're headed for San Diego this weekend, though Rudder mentioned he might be coming down with something. I hope not, but given the week we've just had, with erratic hours, food, and sleep, it's far too likely. I do wish he'd won a medal; coming in 5th in his single race in the final at a worldwide event is nothing to be sneezed at, and he and She-Hulk did well in their mixed double, but sitll it's nice to have something tangible. (She-Hulk did win a bronze medal, for a women's quad).

Next question is, how do you plan a romantic weekend with someone who's just not inclined that way? I think he just finds candles to be uselessly ornamental. I told him I'd buy a new bathing suit, except for three things (1. he wouldn't notice; 2. his favorite kind of suit, at least on me, is the Speedo racing one-piece, not exactly what I had in mind to set a mood; 3. he'd find it far more exciting to know I'd saved the money toward the potential RV trip) and he started laughing because it was so true. Actually, I think I'd find a guy who was always trying for moonlight and roses to be annoying and exhausting, always trying too hard, but it would be nice for brief intervals. I won't be trading Rudder in any time soon because while I might find someone who didn't have his faults, in all my life I've never met any other man who didn't have much worse faults of his own. And if I did, he wouldn't want me, anyway - I have no illusions of perfection in myself. Still, while I have met happily married women who don't seem bothered by their partners' flaws, I've concluded that they are either far more patient than I, or just more reserved in talking about their annoyances.

Don't mind me, I'm still feeling a little down and unappreciated because of this past week. And it's really aimed at evreyone who was there, but poor Rudder gets to bear the brunt of it because, as the one who's married to me, he's the only one I think has obligations beyond common courtesy and friendship to consider how I feel.

Tell you what: you go read someone who's in a better mood and meanwhile I'll sit here, count my blessings, and try to appreciate what I have.

Oh- one thing about this, is that I feel a little better about skipping the Head of the Charles this year to go to JournalCon. I was expecting more people there, though - anyone going who hasn't yet registered?

the military calls it a 'Charlie Fox'

America West is based in Phoenix. One would think, therefore, that they would have figured out that it gets a bit warm here in summer.

Apparently not, however. Apparently on their longer flights, those requiring a full tank of fuel, they have taken to kicking off a few passengers on flights leaving in the full heat of the day. They also may delay flights a bit, waiting for temperatures to drop a few degrees. Those most recently checked in get the boot first.

Yesterday, I left work a little early to take Rudder and She-Hulk to the airport. Plans were to drop them off, then return tonight in She-Hulk's car and leave that in the parking lot, so we could all ride home together in one vehicle. (Her truck, because Rudder's truck is too big, my car is too small, and my pickup only seats two comfortably.) I got them to the airport nearly two hours before their flight, but of course many other people on the plane were coming from connecting flights so would have checked in hours before. This is all about the World Masters' Games, which is not just a regatta but includes a wide range of sports, so apparently there were athletes of all types at the airport in the same boat, so there were a lot of upset people in the Customer Service line. About two hours later, I got a call saying they were on the bubble for getting bumped, and that the flight was being delayed a bit in hopes the temperature would drop two degrees. Two hours later, I got a call asking, "Could you look up the distance from Kalispell, Montana to Edmonton?" We discussed several other cities. Calgary was out for some reason; either no flights there or no excess capacity. At about 9:30, they asked me to come get them. However, they weren't quite done yet. There was still finagling to do. The airport is twenty minutes away, but I still got to circle it a couple of times and try to wait in a fwe different inconspicuous places, thanks to the post-9/11 No Waiting signs. No one hassled me, so apparently I looked fairly innocuous.

After all that I got to bed at nearly 11. I decided not to erg, as planned, but unfortunately I was up around 4:30 anyway, because Rudder was tossing and turning - nervous energy from his taper, I presume. Also, after all that he was very quesdy and headachy by the time we got home but seems to be better this morning. At 5:30 I gave up and got up to go to work. Rudder and She-Hulk were somehow able to check me in last night, so I should be all right, but my flight arrives after 11. This is going to be a very long day. Mine won't be as bad as Rudder's though: after all that, they still couldn't get on a flight that actually goes to Edmonton. They'll be flying out this morning, but to Kalispell, Montana, and driving 370 miles to Edmonton. AND Rudder will now be leaving a day later than planned, to drive the car back to Kalispell. So they won't get a practice row, they won't have much time to rig, and they’re worried about getting in before regiatration closes because Rudder's singles race is first thing tomorrow.

I am having Tea. In fact, I've pulled out the big guns in terms of comfort drinks and am having peppermint Tea. I hope it helps.

Later: She-Hulk called to warn me that the airport economy lot, where I usually park is full. I have a feeling it may empty by evening, but I'll either call ahead or park elsewhere. Also, I should have mentioned that the airline did give them each vouchers good on any flight. The problem is, you reach a point in life where time really is more valuable than money.

At about 2 (their flight was supposed to be at 10) She Hulk called from Seattle, whence they were about to get on a plane to Calgary. So the good news is they'll only have to drive 200 miles, not 400. Yippee.

good plans

I am looking forward to this weekend. It starts tonight with an hour-and-a-half massage, followed by going home to wine and salmon grilled by Rudder. Tomorrow with luck my Potterbook will be delivered in the morning, as it was last time, but until it is, there's Order of the Phoenix to finish rereading, then Wild Swans to finish for the first (and not last!) time. (Also, if I can get Rudder to listen for the delivery, I ought to erg a bit.) Then there will be reading of HBP for several hours after delivery.

I hope it does come before noon. I can't stay up too late because on Sunday I have a short cross-country flight, just to an airport near Tucson and back to eke out a few more hours. We'll probably have breakfast at the airport after the flight. Afterward, I really ought to study up a bit, having promised myself to take the written exam soon. Also, along with all the reading there will be knitting. I finished the back of my sleeveless turtleneck last night, though I may go back and add a few more rows. It seems short. Now there's only the front to finish, two short shoulder seams to sew, and the neck to add. With such sedentary plans for the weekend, I ought to be able to get it done. Then I can decide whether to begin a baby blanket or another sleeveless top to take with me to Edmonton next week.

Also, there will be snuggling. Though I think Rudder knows but I'd probably better warn him that pre-delivery snuggling may be broken off abruptly if the doorbell rings. (No, I'm not that bad. I'd put the book down and come back, really I would. But I would make sure to get it, first.)

Yes. Good weekend plans.

back on, finally

My local network has just come back, after being down for most of the day - not internet, no intranet, no email, no shared drives. Very annoying.

So no time for a long entry today.

A few quick things though. Last night I gave in to my impatience and looked at a site purporting to have spoilers for HBP. For those avoiding spoilers, you may not have to worry much until after the book actually comes out. The information on that site (various postings to a forum) was so contradictory that I have no more idea not what happens in the book than I did before. It's quite possible that some of it was accurate, but there's no way to tell which parts - at least, not without spending a whole lot more time than I have to follow each thread and assess each poster.

My knee still hurts from Sunday's thwacking, but I was able to do my normal gym routine today. Knees always take a while to heal for me.

Also, when I said recently that I'd gained a few pounds? Impartial evidence: a coworker I see infrequently asked if I were pregnant. Granted I'm wearing a loose dress that I actually could wear for at least a few months of pregnancy, and that I was probably slumping, but still. She wasn't obnoxious about it, and I think I managed to keep her from feeling bad for asking, but still. I am NOT happy about this.

being chosen and that damned tact thing

I pissed off someone I like and respect a lot yesterday. I knew what I said would probably enrage her, and I think she had a right to be angry with me, but I'm still not sure what else I could have said. I suppose I could have timed my comment better. She'd been treated badly by a couple of people and made a generalization about disliking the whole group they belonged to. I called her on it.

Now, the group she made the statement about is not a group that generally gets picked on too much (sorry, being purposely vague here). Further, my friend has had to deal with far more than her share of prejudice herself and it sucks when it seems like everyone else can get away with stuff and you can't. But still, I had to speak up.

Why? Two reasons: for her sake and for mine. I don't have the right to enforce a code of behavior on another adult, I know, but still, I believe that what she said went against her own true beliefs, and that she said it only because she was tired and frustrated and ticked off and just ready for someone else to have to do the hard work for a change, please God, I've done my part. I know that feeling well. But I don't believe in unconditional love. I believe in helping each other be what we can and ought to be, and helping to carry a burden when we're too tired.

But still, she's an adult, and I don't have a Behavior Police badge. It is her right even to hate if she wants to, and I probably just came off as pompous and interfering. So I guess I did it more for me. Whenever I've been silent in the face of prejudice I've regretted it, because whatever other people's standards may be, I'm not living up to my own. Her comment was mostly harmless, but if the last century's history proves anything, it's shown us what happens when you start generalizing groups of people, and where it can lead when you regard them as 'other'. As a Jew, I've heard a lot of discussion of what it means to be the Chosen People; I don't necessarily believe that Jews are specially chosen by God but I do believe that those of us who have seen and known what prejudice can do, whether Jews or any other group that's been the target of hate, do have a special burden. And it does suck, when we're tired and when people have been nasty and when it seems like everyone else in the world can say whatever they want and why should we have to be any better? But I believe we do. At least, I do, since I'm the one I can choose for. So I did it largely for me, so I wouldn't have to think less of myself for keeping quiet out of fear of having someone I care about angry at me.

But I wish I hadn't had to make her more upset than she was or get her mad at me. Sigh. I suppose I could have waited and commented later. It's that damned tact thing again. I never was good at that damned tact thing.

On a happier note, I think I didn't mention the good dream I had the other day, a couple of days after that awful nightmare. Best party I've been to in a long time. My friend D has a party every year on July 4 for his birthday, and I've missed it every year since leaving Philadelphia. This year, though, he made it easy to attend: the party was in a big building, and every door opened on a different city, so guests didn't have to travel to get there. For some reason, I took my mother and grandmother to it, which seemed to surprise everyone there, but they had a great time and the other people there seemed to enjoy them as well. (Do you think people's surprise might have something to do with my grandmother having been dead for eight years or so? She was alive in the dream, though - another nice thing about it.) I didn't actually realize about the doors to different cities until I tried to leave - I went out the different doors and couldn't find the lot where we'd left our car, until I went out one last door and the sky was still light, having been dark outside the other doors, and I realized that was because all the other doors led to later time zones where the sun had set, whereas in Phoenix it was still daylight. Good party, anyway. I think more people should set their parties up like that.

whang on the patella

Amusingly, Rudder's flight yesterdaywas apparently delayed because an early-morning flight got delayed and the repercussions reverberated through the day - the flight before his got delayed to his flight's time, his flight got delayed to the next scheduled slot and so on. Or that's his theory.

Meanwhile, when we were ready to go we stepped in and just flew off. Ha again.

I began reading Peg Kerr's Wild Swans in Santa Babara - I was going to save it for the upcoming Edmonton trip but it somehow found its way into my bag. I expected to like it; I like her writing on her web journal and a lot of people whose opinions I respect seem to love it. I was worried, though, that it might be depressing, since I knew part of the storyline involved the early days of AIDS, and that the two plots might be too disjointed, as some Amazon reviewers seemed to suggest. That wasn't my response at all; I got sucked in heard and early. I've peeked ahead, as I usually do, so I know that even the sad parts have enough grace and love to keep them from being unbearably depressing. Now I'm back home I want to finish rereading Harry Potter 4 and 5 before next Saturday's delivery, but I have a feeling I'll be done Wild Swans by then too. In fact, it's probably the ideal thing to read Saturday morning: not Potter-related at all and gripping enough in its own right to keep me from fidgeting while waiting. Only problem is, with Rudder gone and correspondingly fewer distractions, I'll be done it by 9AM Saturday. If you calln being swept along in a book a "problem".

Last night I whanged my knee on a corner of the (large, heavy, wooden) bed, smack in the middle of the kneecap. OwowowOWOWow. If you've heard of glass jaws, I think I have a glass knee; I certainly crumpled after I hit it. It's not swollen, that I can tell, but still hurts today - not so much in walking as when I climb stairs. I did erg to warm up at the gym this morning, and did do my regular seated leg presses, but I took the weight on that down a notch. Since what hurts is bone (tendon? cartilage?) and not muscle, I don't know if I need to avoid exercise that hurts it or if it doesn't matter, but it only hurt a little during the presses. Less than going up stairs. Still. Ow.

London calling

It sounds like all the people I know of in London are OK. I'm trying not to feel too relieved, reminding myself that that means the people someone else knows in London are not OK.

I rowed this morning, which meant I heard the news on the car radio at 4:30 AM. That's a horrible and appropriate time to be blindsided by news of tragedy. My first thought was of Ruthie, then I started running down a mental list of UK pifflers, trying to remember who is and isn't in London. Three and a half hours later when I got to work, most of those people had checked in. So I had a bit of relief until I remembered that M'ris is in London right now. Within an hour, though, Timprov had heard and posted that she, Mark, and their party are unhurt.

The first time I remember the Internet being used to report and check in disaster must have been about 1986, when there was a big earthquake in California (LA?). That was before the World Wide Web, but newsgroups were very active and one was set up that day for people there to check in and others to ask if someone had been seen and was OK. I knew then - I'm not prescient; it was obvious - that something had changed in the nature of communities and in how people talked to and cared for each other.

Today a community has been set up on LiveJournal set up just for Londoners to check in, and a list of those LJers who are known to be unhurt. I'm sure other web communities have done the same. People are talking about who's there, who might be hurt, who has checked in.

Funny thing: nobody I know only from physical meetings is in London now (to my knowledge). I'm grateful to the Internet for providing a means for me to hear that everyone there I care about is OK. But everyone there that I care about, is a person I've met online in the first place. I'm grateful for that, too.

it came by night

I had a horrible nightmare last night. Rudder and I had decided to take cryogenic sleep for 10,000 years. Actually, it wasn't really cryogenic - you just got a shot and went off to sleep. No chilling, no special maintenance facility, just sleep in your own house. It was mostly his decision, because he was bored nad unhappy with his job and thought things would be better that far ahead. He got his shot and had chosen to lay on a pallet on the floor instead of in a bed; he was drowsey but still awake ad talking to me. I was about to go get my shot, when someone from work (a specific, current coworker) called with something she needed me to do. Rudder wanted me to ignore the request, since after all they'd have to manage without me for the next ten thousand years, but I decided to do just this one thing first. When I got back, he was asleep. I stood there and looked at him and realized that we hadn't thought this through nearly enough, and that I didn't really believe it would work or that we'd survive, asleep, for all that time. And I realized I had to decide whether to follow my husband into a sleep I thought would likely kill me, or live the rest of my life without him.

That terrible decision was what made it the worst nightmare I've had in years.

Note 1: When I woke up, I deduced that he had decided to sleep on the floor on the theory that the bed would rot before he woke up. Why he thought the building would last ten thousand years, I have no idea.

Note 2: He actually is a little tired of his job, having been in the same position too long, and as I've noted, they're reorganizing, so he'll need to make some changes that could affect me. But we've talked it through, I made a conscious decision to follow his job (it's his turn) and I'm much happier about that than my subconscious seems to think.

Note 3: And then there's always Plan C: the RV trip.

*****************

In a totally unrelated matter, I've just finished two Sean Stewart novels back to back. Perfect Circle was good, along the same vein as his Mockingbird and Galveston, though a little more depressing than either. But his older book Nobody's Son totally blew me away; it was different enough from anything else of his I'd read that I wouldn't have guessed it was by the same author. I think it's a YA novel; one of the awareds listed on the front cover was for YA books, though there is a little sex (within marriage) and some very adult decisions to be made. What makes it a YA for me, is that Stewart directly discusses meaning-of-life sort of issues that adult books tend to address in a more indirect way. As a not very subtle person myself, that's one thing I appreciate in the genre. It's probably one reason I read speculative fiction, as well: adult SF and fantasy is much likelier to be more direct than "literary" books. LOTR is a prime example, and though Sean Stewart's own adult fiction is a bit more oblique, it's not hard to find the important points he's making. Even for me.

anniversary weekend

We were all gathering last weekend for Rudder's grandparents' 65th wedding anniversary in Sacramento - all of the children and grandchildren, and assorted spouses. (Unfortunately, the one set of great-grandkids and their mother couldn't come. They had good and sufficient reason, but I was hoping to see them. And their father forgot to bring pictures.)

My poor mother-in-law did not have a great weekend. First, on the drive down from Oregon, the plastic lining the right front tire area came loose There wasn't a dealer near, so they ended up taking it off and fixing the loose ends with duct tape. After driving a 1966 truck into extreme geriatric old age, they had decided to treat themselves when purchasing this latest car a couple years ago, which made this sting a little more; as the MIL said, you don't really want to be driving your BMW with duct tape holding it together. Next, on the way to the airport to pick us up, the two of them both missed seeing a stop sign and got pulled over. They didn't get ticketed at least, and it gave them a story to tell all weekend (ou know how parental types are, with the repeated stories. We went to see the grandparents, picked up Rudder's brother from the airport, then she and I lolled around the hotel pool, in the course of which the pool light came out in her hands. We did get it to stay in place, eventually, and I was hoping this string of little misfortunes was just going to add a little color to the weekend. Unfortunately, things blew up after that

Saturday night, we all gathered at the local aunt's house for dinner. Everyone ate the same things, so we don't know if it was something else she'd eaten or a bug, but the MIL woke up at 5AM to throw up. She stayed in bed all day, but it didn't help - there was a period in the afternoon when she couldn't even keep water down. And she wasn't able to make it that night to he formal dinner celebrating her parents' anniversary.

We had a good time otherwise, but my heart's still a little broken for her. Sixty-fifth anniversaries don't come around often, and they'd decided to get everyone together because her mother's short term memory has gotten very bad; soon she won't be able to share in a conversation at all. (Right now she mostly can't; but every once in a while an old memory will get through or she'll respond to flattery.) So we took any many photos as we could (so did everyone; we have pictures of people taking pictures because it was a true representation of our weekend) and we tried to remember all the stories we cold to tell them to her. But it's not the same.

Rudder and I got home yesterday, our twelfth anniversary, by around 1:00. Much as I love fireworks it's just too blasted hot to be outdoors for long even at night, but I did want to do something celebratory. We went to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which I highly recommend as an anniversary movie. It reminds me of True Lies, but this time the wife gets to kick ass too. It wasn't exactly profound, but clever and witty and some parts of the marriage rang true to life for us. Afterwards we had an early, relatively fancy dinner, consumed most of a bottle of wine, and engaged in other celebratory activities. Rudder passed out (not literally) very early, but fortunately woke up again before I was ready to go to sleep, so I didn't end up feeling abandoned.

He had to work today, but I have the day off, which has been handy. Every holiday should be followed by an extra day for getting chores and errands done!

wardrobe maunderings

Sigh. I was trying to be good about not buying any clothes or books not absolutely necessary until we figure out whether there any of the possible-futures involving a spell of joblessness will come to pass. (For anyone not keeping up, these are good futures, involving either extended travel or a move to a new place. So don't worry. I suppose in this decade, nonintentional joblessness is also always a possibiliity, but though that chance is more likely right now than normal for both of us, given out various reorgs, I still don't think it's imminent.) Anyway, it's not like I don't have shelves and shelves full of books and closets full of clothes.

But we have this do for Rudder's grandparents this weekend, and the main affair is supposed to be fairly dressy. I was planning on wearing either a silk sleeveless shift dress, which has the additional merit of being reversible, or the very full, long raw silk black skirt I got at the RenFaire, but the shift didn't quite look dressy enough and none of the tops I tried with the skirt looked right. So tonight may involve a quick trip to Nordstrom.

Unless....
Hmm. Maybe if I wear the red twin set with that skirt. The underneath part is a camisole with ribbon straps, the same ribbon trims the cardigan, and it's even got a bra built into the cami. I think that may work.

I just called my mother-in-law to check how dressy this affair is, and she told me how she'd worked with a personal shopper at Nordie's (she doesn't get to the city too often, so works with one to save time when she does) to get just the right outfit. This is one reason I enjoy talking to her much more than to the people who told me before that reunion in Houston, "Oh, it's casual, just wear anything." She understands that worrying about clothing may mean not that you're obsessive or shallow but that you want to look nice beause you care about the people you're seeing. (It could mean you're obsessive and shallow too, but I don't really do this often.) Also. I wouldn't spend time dithering over clothing if I didn't enjoy it.

I'm lookng forward to seeing all of the in-laws this weekend. Unfortunately, the ones with the little kids we haven't seen since we visited them in Korea won't be able to make it after all, but all the rest will be there. Should be fun.

imprefect present

One thing I'd nearly forgotten, in the rush to get ready for the trip for Rudder's grandparents' anniversary and all the other July travel, is that it's our anniversary on Monday. We're flying home that day, so we can go out for either a nice dinner or fireworks that evening, but I really ought to get him something. Only problem is, I have no idea what. Dang.

logistics

Re the last entry: commenter who said "I'd love to" without leaving an email or webpage? Um, yeah, not the most helpful thing ever. (Unless you're one of the ones who emailed me, in addition.

I had a long IM conversation with my brother last night - long in terms of time, anyway, which got me thinking about the medium. I'm not convinced IM is the most efficient means of conversation ever. If you want to get things said, phones are faster. If you want to get complex messages across, email is better. It's too slow to feel like real conversation, but not slow in the same convenient ways email is. Where I think it shines in in cases where for some reason you can't talk, during a class or meeting, say; to bring in different people conversing from different areas, as in a chat room; and to keep a desultory background conversation going while you do other things. But not for primary communication, in most cases. I'm likely showing my age, but I'm not sure if it's that I'm old, inflexible, and unable to adapt to this technology or that not being affected by trends, I can take a step back and look at it dispassionately. I'd prefer to think the latter.

We're still looking at the RV-travel thing, though we're also still exploring other avenues (i.e. the ones where we stay with our career path).

The logistics of the travel are a bit forbidding. One thing is that in going fulltime but for a limited period, we'd be doing it the most complicated way, almost. We'd be selling our house, but eventually coming back and buying another, so we have to put our furniture in storage instead of leaving it where it is or selling it off. And then there's the issues we'd have anyway. Phone (easy enough). Internet (not so simple). Life insurance. Health insurance. Disability insurance. Choosing the vehicles. Buying the other things we'd want - two kayaks, probably a new laptop Figuring out the minimum number of books I can stand to live with and choosing them. There would need to be some purchases there, too - a Writer's Market for writeup of the trip, a paperback dictionary so we wouldn't need the big one. Lots of maps and lists of campgrounds and such. Figuring out minimum clothing. Figuring out what we'd need to do to the house before selling it (possibly not much, in the current bubble, but the upstairs carpet is trashed). Listing the places we'd want to go (which is not a choore but a pleasure - we did some of that last night). Figuring a loose itinerary based on it. (A bit harder.)

But the hardest part of all, even harder than choosing books, would be what to do about the cats. If they were kittens, I'd give them to a pet adoption place. If they were nice mellow adult cats, I'd ask all my friends if anyone could give them a home. What they are, though, is old and crochety. And they have their claws. I can't in good conscience give them to anyone with small children, because I don't know how they (the cats) would react, and the possibilities are dire. And at 14 and 16, it's likely they'll be having health issues soon, though they've been extremely healthy so far. (I credit Science Diet.) I think between the two of them they've needed maybe two vet visits, other than for shots, yearly exams, and the exams required before taking them on the plane when we moved here. We've considered taking them - maybe adding a cat flap in the door to the 'garage' area and putting a litter box there. They hate riding in cars, but have always been in carriers. I don't know whether this would seem like a car to them. Another possibility would be seeing if Rudder's parents can take them. Or mine, but mine have made their opinion of cats clear over the years. It's a quandary.

on the road again, big time

This is what my July looks like:
First weekend: travel to Sacramento for Rudder's grandparents 65th anniversary.
Second weekend: Fly (as pilot) to Santa Barbara and back the next day.
Third weekend: possible trip to San Diego to get boats on their trailer to Edmonton.
Fourth week: Travel to Edmonton for World Masters Games.

I don't think I'll bother putting the suitcase away between times.

I may get a break the 3rd weekend; that trip depends on when they decide to load boats and on whether I can find an alternate method to get my Harry Potter fix. It's also possible either they won't load that weekend or I'll send Rudder without me and will stay in my chair from the time HPVI arrives until I finish it. If necessary I could probably buy it at midnight at a local store. If I don't get enough notice to cancel the one I have pre-ordered, well, I'm sure I can find a good home for my spare copy.

I did get all my photos moved over here yesterday. However, when I moved my old archives here, the script didn't handle line breaks well. So old entries have odd line-wraps and the links to photos and pages are mostly broken except in the cases where I've fixed them by hand. Also, the first three months or so didn't transfer over, for some reason. I think what I'll do is try to import the missing old entries (will probably edit the file by hand, since it's not more than 90 entries) and will gradually fix old entries with photos and links. (I can search on .jpg and http.) There are just far too many to fix them all.

housecleaning and stuff

I've actually managed to fix the issue with the story being all narration and no dialogue. I haven't gotten any farther on the plot, or figured out how much Antarctica I need, though.

Several people ahve commented on my post about writing fiction, and from some of their comments, I think I may have been unclear. The reason I don't do it much is not just because I'm not good at it; it's that I have no real drive to do it the way I think some of you do. I don't have characters coming to me and asking to see the light of day. It's very rare for a plot to come to me and want to be written; if I spend time trying to think of some I can grind out a few. Maybe one will taken wing to the extent that writing it is fun, or maybe not. It doesn't feel like my metier.

It doesn't feel awful or painful, either, and sometimes it's kind of fun, and sometimes it's satisfying, and sometimes I want to do it, because the alternative is to do something less fun. Rather like housecleaning. Braincleaning, maybe. When I've talked about what parts are hard for me to do, it's not meant as a complaint, but as a data point. I'm actually finding it fascinating as a matter of cognitive science to see what aspects come easily and what things are hard, especially as I've read the journals or books on writing from enough writers to suspect that at least some of the issues are different for them. I haven't yet figured whether it's just that each person has native strengths and weaknesses, or if fiction writers as a class have a different knack. Maybe there's a thesis in there for someone; it's an interesting question. I love learning about learning - metalearning, I guess.

Meanwhile, while things are slow, it's occurred to me that this is a good time to do some other housekeeping I've been putting off: downloading all the images on my old Diaryland site so I can stop paying for GOld membership, moving them here, and changing all the links to point to where they should go. (Fortunately, I think I can do a search-and-replace operation for that last part.) After that, I may migrate from MovableType to WordPress; the Outlaw site uses WordPress and it's been generally well-behaved, though I haven't entirely figured out all the template stuff. Setting up a new blog on WP was incredibly easy; I suspect migrating is a little trickier and riskier, though my host does have some tools to help.

Anyway, just a warning: if this site goes down in the next few days, that will be why.

what happens when

F*ing cafeteria is out of F*ing Gatorade. I nearly cried. (There was a little sign saying how much it would have cost if they'd had any. I found that less than helpful.)

Rowing 9500 meters (including some interval pieces) in 90+ degree weather has made me demonstrably stupider. (I turned onto the wrong street on the way to work. Quod erat demonstrandum.) Stupid and emotional, not a pretty combination.

Oh yeah, this is what happens when I row hard. I had forgotten.

Somehow listening to the Charlie Daniels Band singing The Devil Down to Georgia seemed like the appropriate thing to do, though I can't say it helped any. Apparently when I'm stupid and emotional I want to listen to country music. Not sure if that says anything about either me or it.

By now, I'm more or less coherent and able to take the stairs at something better than an arthritic crawl. (I'm currently listening to the score from 1776. Back to my roots.) I've been immensely enjoying a discussion in her comments with RJ Anderson on matters of religion. One part of that enjoyment is because it's weaving in so nicely with what I've been reading in The Jew in the Lotus, and another major part is the articulate RJA herself. What a pleasure to debate with someone who disagrees with me on the postulates in question but who is civil, knowledgeable, and logical. I've had arguments with too many proselytizing Christians who claimed to believe every word of the Bible but who knew less of their own New Testament and history than I do, not to appreciate one who doesn't proselytize but simply sets out her own beliefs, and who knows not only her own history and theology but some of mine as well. Educational.

filling time with fiction

Would the person who's been Googling Dichroic Reflections along with my full name please leave a comment to tell me who you are? Then we can figure out if I'm the one you're looking for; there are at least four of us in the US with this same first and last name. Thank you.

I have been extremely bored lately, for large parts of my day. One result of this, in me at least, tends to be that I'm driven into creativity. Apparently I'm too lazy to create things unless I have nothing else to do. (Or multitasking - I knit because it's something I can do while reading.) Since I owuld be conspicuous taking knitting with me everywhere, I've been venturing into new territory and trying to write fiction. It's something I can do inconspicuously anywhere I have a pen and paper or computer. Or even without, if it's just a matter of thinking up plot ideas.

I say "just" but the truth is that figuring out what should happen is the hardest part for me and is the main reason I've never really been a fiction writer. One thing I've noticed, though, in recent years is the number of books, even great books, which really have no plot in the classic sense of a story with crisis, climax, and denouement. Tristram Shandy is probably too weird to be a good example, but, for instance, what happens in Little Women, other than that the characters live grow up? (Or don't in Beth's case.) The same could be said of Tom Sawyer, but in that case the book is really a string of episodes with a different plot in each section - the whitewashing, the raft episode, Injun Joe and the cave. On the other hand, I'm not quite bored enough to want to write a whole novel, and short stories do tend to have something resembling a plot - a small one at least - with some sort of problem that is solved. One way to avoid that is to write something that's not a story but just a vignette, a peek into a window, as I did here, but really, that's cheating a bit.

Next, there comes the technical challenge of assembling the story. I can write grammatically, and if not well at least fluently, and in different voices to some extent. Those things could definitely be improved, but at least my prose isn't going to cause the casual reader actual pain on the first glance. But it is interesting to realize what else there is to writing a story that I simply don't know. The thing is, though I'm only a so-so fiction writer, I am a very good reader. This means that I can often see what's wrong, but have no idea how to fix it. For example, I can write conversation, I can write description, and I can write narration, but I have no real idea who to balance them and move between them. (That's exactly why the Una story is almost all dialogue, with one long chunk of description cribbed from -- well, heavily influenced by -- Montgomery at the beginning.)

The current story is in omniscient third person, and the heroine is said to have done this and that and even thought this and that, but she never actually talks to anyone. Mark Helprin did write a story like that, but I think I need to assume that's because he knew what he was doing, and I don't. Also, the point of his story is that his hero really is very isolated and hardly talks to anyone. Mine is hanging out with her friends, and presumably chatting to them. I think the solution may be to introduce another character or three, sketchy ones, just so that she can be talking to them and telling her own story. Another way would be one L.M. Montgomery used, in which the character addressed various remarks off into the ether, to herself or no one, but that seems artificial. (Even though I've been known to do it myself.)

And then there's the problem of how much. I suspect this is an authorial problem in general, not one that's specific to me while I don't know what I'm doing. For example: This is a short story. In the middle of it, the heroine needs to go off to Antarctica. (Actually, she just needs to go somewhere remote, with wide spaces, and unlike home, but since I've been to Antarctica and can describe it, that's where she goes.) So she could go there and back in one line, and I could just spend some time discussing what she thought over while she was there, or I could talk about where she went and what she saw and how long it took, or I could talk about how she got there and the people that she met, her opinions of Buenos Aires and Ushuaia on the way and how she found penguins enchanting and seals dead boring. The trip could be anything from a paragraph to pages and pages, and the trick is to figure out what is actually necessary to the story.

And then there's the fine-tuning, making sure that every sentence is necessary (I can't really get it down to the word level now) and that the voice speaking is never out of character. That I know for sure is something all authors have to work on, though clearly they're skills that can be honed to work better and faster.

There's definitely an unevenness in quality between different stories, too; for instance the current one isn't nearly as good as Una's story. I don't knwo whather that stems from the compellingness of the original idea, the characterization, or the execution.

Also, there are some daily-life issues. It turns out that I can get pretty far back inside my head while figuring out a character or story point, which is not always a good thing while driving or in a meeting, about like being unconscious real world while reading a very good book.

I'm still bored - for one thing I can't think of enough plots to keep myself entertained - but at least I'm learning some of the dimensions of what I don't know.

whatever was wrong, isn't anymore

I do feel a little better today - did a slightly light routine in the gym this morning. And I figured out why my tonsils are probably sore and swollen due to our high pollution levels - there's been an alert yesterday and today. So that's good.

an audacious idea

No beef last night. I was still a little on the low-energy side this morning, having again slept like a dead thing, but was able to manage 4k, on the erg with slightly less frequent stops. I've also gained about 4lbs since the weekend, so I'm beginning to wonder if it's a thyroid thing after all, or what. I've got an unexplanied sore spot on my neck, too, but probably not in the right place.I think I'll give it until after next weekend and see if anything's changed. It probably will, but if not I'll go see a doctor.

I'm beginning to like the Madeleine and Pooh cartoons shown at 5AM on the Disney Playhouse, for erging purposes. I especially like the way all the Madeleine characters will exclaim something in French and then repeat it in English - that way it's still clear but they don't have to dumb it down to far. Also, all the narrator's lines are in rhyme, in the meter Bemelman originally used:

In an old house in Paris, all covered in vines, Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. The smallest one was Madeleine.

Because really, how could I not like a story in which the smallest girl got to be the heroine?

I've been cleared to mention here that with changes going on in both our companies, if the worst happens to both of us (or the best , depending on your viewpoint) Rudder and I are playing with an idea we've been talking about for years: take to the road for six months or a year, in an RV with space in back for bikes, windsurfers, kayaks, and whatever. We spent Sunday afternoon going around looking at RVs to see the costs and possibilities. It looks like this would actually be financially feasible, given what's going on with real estate prices in our area. Of course, it's a giant leap of faith, making the assumptions that we could stand each other for that long a time in that small a space and that we could get back to work fairly quickly after we were ready to leave the road, and the logistics are very complicated. And most likely, we'll just stay with our jobs and ride out the waves. Still, what an adventure!

Not the least of the logistics is figuring out how few books I could get by with, for a year or whatever. We'd occasionally swing by wherever our stuff was stored, so I could rotate the stock then, but it wouldn't be frequent, and without much money or space, I wouldn't be able to buy new books. Thank goodness I'm a rereader; that makes it far easier.

Another issue is how to get mobile internet access; I'm sure this is a solved problem, but I just don't know the answer. One way would be to get a wireless internet card in a laptop and just take it to wireless access zones, but I'd like something at "home" as well. I'm sure there's a satellite method of some kind.

Another nontrivial issue is what Rudder will do when we're not sightseeing or doing something active and we're stuck indoors. As he pointed out, he does't really have any sedentary hobbies other than watching TV, which he mostly does only when he's pinned down by the need to eat. I'd love to get a book, or a column (hello, Outside?) or both out of the adventure, so that's one thing we could work on together.

And then there's the issues of how much stuff we need / can do without, how much it all would cost, health insurance, and such. And right now it's only a contingency plan, not a real one. We do have careers to worry about. Still, it's a lot of fun to think about and plan, sort of like the "if I won the lottery" game. If anyone reading this has done such a thing or knows someone who has (and who has actively traveled, not just pulled up a trailer somewhere and parked) I'd love to get in contact.

And if it really does happen? Then you'll hear lots about it. I'll be checking with everyone I know to find people and places to visit.

woolly headed

First, the calming things meme. Tagged by Taelle.

Things you enjoy, even when no one around you wants to go out and play. What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level? Make a list, post it to your journal... and then tag 5 friends and ask them to post it to theirs.

1. Reading. Actually, if it's to calm down, then it's more likely I'll be rereading.
2. Pedicures. The end result is nice but it's the process I enjoy..
3. Massage. Either by Rudder or by a professional. The latter last longer and are technically better, while the former convey love as well as feeling good. Both kinds are wonderful.
4. Hot showers. I don't tend to take one unless either I feel dirty or it's first thing in the morning - I mean, I don't think "I need to calm down, I'll go take a shower." But they do have that effect. Emma Bull wrote something along the lines of "A quantity of hot water poured over the head is a sovereign rememdy for most ills."
5. Rowing, but only if I remember to take the effort to clear out my mind and concentrate on what I'm doing, instead of what I need to do better or do next.

I am a total hypocrite about these memes, because I like being tagged but don't like tagging others for fear of being a nuisance. Also, I think most people I read have done this one. But if you haven't and you want to, please take yourself as tagged.

I'm still feeling unenergetic and woolly-headed, especially first thing in the morning. I stayed home and took it easy yesterday, and skipped working out this morning, but it didn't seem to help. I've been feeling this way since sometime Saturday, I think, and it kicked in fully while I was at the gym Sunday. I'd do two reps and my body would sort of coast to a stop, without my really planning to. Same thing on the erg yesterday morning - I did 2km in over 14 minutes, and that's only the time the erg counted - it pauses the timer when you stop moving. (Rudder's comment was, "I didn't know you could row so slow.") I've been getting enough sleep, food, and water, so that's not it - I was beginning to wonder this morning if it could be some sort of thyroid thing, but that probably wouldn't hit so abruptly. One unusual thing is that I've had beef for dinner each of the last three nights (homemade tacos, brisket, then burritos from Chipotle). I do know that my body seems to have a harder time digesting beef - I surmise it's too much protein at once, but don't really know. So I wonder if that could be it; I'll avoid it for the next few days and see what happens.

It's supposed to hit 107 here today and our unusually cool temperatures (only in the 90s until the last few days) are probably gone until fall. I wish the weather reporters weren't so damned chipper when they tell us that.

Assorted TMI below the cut tag.

I've never really noticed the reported effects of eating asparagus, but I sure can tell when I've had coffee.

Another sign of aging: my days of roaming free, mammarywise, seem to be over. I realized it yesterday - after I decide to stay home and rest, I changed to a halter top without underpinnings, and by afternoon was noticing an ache in an odd place (not quite where I'd have expected for that cause, though I'm not sure what I did expect). I'd done a pretty heavy workout the day before so that could have been it, so I'm testing today by wearing decent-for-work but not terribly supportive underpinnings, and noticing the same thing. Damn. Still no sag, courtesy of being fairly flattish for so long, but I think if I want to stay that way, I'd best start wearing underwires and other constructed garments more often. Damn damn damn. And I proabably need to take that into consideration when figuring out how far to taper the top of the tank top I'm knitting. I wasn't planning to worry about hiding straps - I don't care if they show a little, but they look stupid if they're in an entirely different line.

I'm going to try to spend less and save more for a while - no new clothes or books. I do need some cosmetics and toiletries, and I won't change to cheaper brands at the moment, but I'm just going to replace the things I use every day. Both of our companies are in flux, and the better our financial situation, the more freedom we have to explore different options if necessary. I'm a little too superstitious to say more now though, for fear of Murphy butting in. his ugly head.

tired and a little needy. also impressed.

I didn't row Wednesday due to lack of sleep (Rudder woke up with an unsettled stomach, and when he's up, I'm up, because I sleep too lightly to be a asleep in a room with someone who's awake. He felt better by morning but we were both a little short on sleep. You didn't need to know any of this.) so I did today. (Yesterday morning I went flying before work, to get ready for a stage check - practice checkride - that's supposedly going to happen this weekend.)

So anyway. Short-interval workouts are insidious. 30 seconds on, 90 seconds off, with the "on" being at race pace or actually a bit higher, more like the all-out effort I'd use for a racing start or a power 10, and the "off" at a paddle. Eighteen of those, plus about 3500 meters etady state to start and maybe another 500 at the end, and I'm beat. I'd like nothing so much right now and to go home and take a nap. Or just close the door and crawl under my desk.

It's a little annoying that the place we fly out of hasn't scheduled either my stage check for this weekend or Rudder's flight in a Cirrus, whose company reps are bringing one in for people to try, considering that it's now Friday and thus the weekend is TOMORROW. Perhaps they haven't noticed.
(While I was typing that someone called me and told me they have Rudder scheduled in the Cirrus for 8AM tomorrow. Wonder when they were going to tell us? Still no word on the stage check, though.)

So that's today. Back to yesterday-matters. First, if you haven't read the fanfic story I posted yesterday, scroll down and read it. I'll wait. (Unless of course you've never read L.M. Montgomery's Rilla of Ingleside, in which case don't bother. It's not a standalone sort of story.)

Back? Good. Tell if you like it. If you don't, tell me why not. I don't intend to make a practice of this, but I didn't really intend to write this one either, so in case it happens again, I should learn what I can from this. I have gotten some nice comments from people whose opinions I respect (and one sort of confusing one) but it's kind of bugging me that none of the people in the group I actually wrote it for have commented. (One exception, but she beta'd it for me, and she's too nice not to comment on the finished version after I asked for her help earlier.) There is no reason on earth this should be bothering me; I sid it was a gift for the list, and once you've given something you can't attach strings to it. Also, as I keep reminding myself, not everyone reads their email every day.

Also also, it's just a little fanfic: I took some care with it, but it's not really a serious effort. It's short and simple. I wrote it in a couple of days and didn't take as much effort as I would have if it were to be published somewhere other than my own site or maybe a fanfic hive where it will sink unnoticed and rarely read among a horde of other stories, many with the sort of grammar that discourages reading past the first paragraph. (Note: I'm taking about this one story only. I have read and enjoyed fanfics that were very well-written carefully crafted stories that undoubtedly took loads of time and effort. This wasn't one of those. I know because I was there.)

But this has given me a small insight into what it must be like to have written a book. Magnify my feelings a thousandfold and I can glimpse what it must be like to send your craft, your oeuvre which you've labored for years to built, then polish and make water-tight, out onto the wide oceans, and then wait for news of it, for people to tell you they've seen it and it's afloat, trim and trig and on course. Or before that, when you're sending out the manuscript to only a few people, but a few whose opinion matters, because if they like it they will publish it and then it can venture out into the wider world. Very scary. It makes me think authors must be stern and resolute people, with strong stomachs. (I can think of a few who might laugh to think of themselves in that light. Unless you can honestly say you really do write for yourself and not for the world's opinion, at all at all, t's probably best to just go around the corner and laugh quietly to yourself. Let me keep being impressed and take the compliment as it's given.)

a feelig of unnameable dread

Two observations:

I. I'm not really all that good at enjoying things while they're happening, though I try. I do better with anticipation and memory.

II. We're in the middle of a corporate reorg at work (I can write that because it's been officially announced in the news and everything). We won't know what's happening down at my level for at least another week or three. It's really not helping that I'm being earwormed by "The Sword of Damocles" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

adjusting attitude and altitude

Today's features: a short story, some dithering, and some musing. I'll tell the story first, because it's inspiring.

I've been hearing stories for a few years of how colleges are so desperate to meet their Title IX requirements that they've been giving rowing scholarships to tall athletic girls even if they haven't rowed before. I hadn't seen any concrete examples until now, but I met one this morning.

The college who gets this girl will be happy with their bargain, though. She'd been burned out on her other sports and is looking forward to trying rowing, but she's never done it before (she did visit a practice at the school she'll be attending). This is the only city in this state with any rowing at all (well, one new junior program is just starting in another town). So she got in touch with someone here, arranged for a private lesson, and drove three hours to get here. She'll be coming to town on weekends to take lessons the rest of this summer. I was impressed - I haven't seen that kind of initiative even from most masters rowers. With that committment, I'm sure she'll do well.

And I checked - the coach at her prospective college didn't tell her to do this.

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The dithering: I am not, as may be obvious from yesterday's entry, enthusiastic about tomorrow's flight to San Diego. In fact, I've been very nervous. This morning I went rowing, did a hundred meters, and thought, "OK, if I'm doing 10,000 meters today, that's 1/100th down, only 99 more like that to go. I can do this."

Now, I do tend to do fractions like that to keep myself going, and it's OK to do it sometimes - to think, "OK, I'm starting the middle third of the practice now," or, "Last half, it's all downhill from here." I count off hundred-meter bits to get through the end of practice, too, sometimes to the tune of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" or "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain", with improvised lyrics. (In my head, not out loud.) That's all fine. But to start a row counting it off as one more series of ordeals to get through, especially at a time when I'm rowing for pleasure and maintenance, not intense training, is a bad thing. It makes rowing one more stressor, and in me, it's a sign that I'm pretty stressed out already. Of course, tomorrow's flight is the main thing hanging over me right now.

So I sat up straighter, tried to row more smoothly, and tried to appreciate the milky reflection of the sky right before the sun rose, the way the sun seemed to pop up all at once, the motion of my boat, the feel of the horizontal lines I was pulling, and so on. And I'm trying to convince myself that tomorrow's flight will be an adventure, a fun challenge, and even a little bit miraculous, that I can fy a tiny airplane all the way from the desert to the ocean. It hasn't entirely sunk in yet, but I'm working on it. (It will help if Rudder can keep from nagging, "Have you considered this? What about that?" Having another pilot in the house is not always as helpful as you'd think, especially when I'm better off not dwelling on this more than enough to get everything ready.)

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The Musing
Sometimes you see a face that seems to belong to another period - it's not clear if it's a matter of expression or what, though I don't know why faces ought to change by decade. Connie Willis, in To Say Nothing of the Dog has Ned initially thinking that Verity must be a Victorian contemp because of her perfect Waterhouse face; I once knew a woman who always seemed like she ought to be wearing 1940s outfits. I can't say what the changes stem from, or even if they're real. Some of it is probably hairstyle, too.

But bodies really have changed over time. If you look at a random group of people today, you'll see a few really fat ones, a majority who ranging from a little to a lot puffy around the gut or the hips, and a few hardbodies who obviously spend a lot of time in the gym. There will be only a few people who are somewhere in the middle, without either extra fat or bulging muscles, and maybe a couple of skinny ones. If it's a young group, there will be a few more in the middle group, and several who have that stretched exaggerated leanness of adolescence, but there will still be quite a few carrying extra weight.

Now go look at an old group photo - here are some from the building of Hoover Dam and here are a bunch of WWII bomber crew photos. It's easier to see in men, because there are just more group ohotos of them, and because they're likely to be wearing more form-fitting clothes. It would be easier still to see in a photo where some of the men are shirtless, and I have seen some like that, but not online. What you see in those is very, very few overweight people - but notice also that none of them look like gym rats. You rarely see bulging biceps or pecs, or carved washboard abs in old photos. What you see are barrel chests on some guys, and long stringy - but obviously strong - muscles on others. (The military guys may be a special case, because they're young and in military training, but remember this is just after the Depression. Some of those guys were eating better than they had at home. And some were flying missions nearly every day, which doesn't leave a lot of time for jogging or lifting weights.) I think there are two factors involved: fast food hadn't been invented yet, and peope got their muscles not by working out, but by plain working.

There is one place you do see the older physiques still, though: in athletes. I don't mean Olympic athletes, so much: for those people, working out is a full time job and they do have the carved washboard abs - though even there, only the weightlifters have large bulging arms. Other athletes' muscles are defined, but compact, because they can't afford any wasted weight. But think of the athletes you know: soccer-playing women, surfers, people who play Ultimate Frisbee twice a week. Think even of some of the pro sports: baseball players don't tend to be bulgy (or when they do, steroid rumors arise). Most basketball players have muscles, but they're not huge. Weight lifters do get huge, because they're building muscle for one quick all-out effort, and have no penalty for carrying excess around. Body builders look good, of course, but they just look fake to me, especially the ones with the dark even tans that you know come from a bottle or a tanning bed. Maybe it's the engineer in me, but I do like the idea of a body built more for use than for show.

(Now if I could just get rid of a little of that useless flab....)

still pretty happy about the sweater

My fortune cookie from lunch says, "Consolidate your interests while the lights are active." ?????

They're putting together a care package for a guy from work who is in the National Guard, serving in Iraq. I've never met him; he was called up before I started in this job. I've asked others about him, and if I can get to a bookstore in time, I will buy a book I think he'd like. ("Freakanomics", because they say he's very intelligent, argumentive, and political; I figure he'll like it whether or not he agrees with the book's arguments.) Meanwhile, I've put in a box of maxipads and one of tampons (in plain paper bags) with a note asking them to pass them on to some of the women in his unit. I keep hearing that there are shortages of such things over there, and that strikes me as an appaling way to treat women you've asked to put themselves in harm's way.

Speaking of the war, last week I was very excited by the news that moderates of both parties came together to broker deals first in relation to filibusters and next to agree on stem cell research. I get so frustrated with party-line politics, and was pleased with the recognition that one does not necessarily have to disagree on everything with members of the other party. However, the thing that annoyed me was the right-wing argument that "some people believe that stem-cell research is immoral so they shouldn't have to see their tax dollars used for it." Funny thing, there: some people believe that the war is immoral, yet I don't see those same senators heaving any trouble with applying their tax dollars to it. How come?

awards and anticipation

Awarded Most Egregious Phone-spam: It rang on my work phone, the caller ID showed up as 999-999-9999, and when I picked it up, an automated vaoice said, "Please hold for the next available representative." Not bloody likely.

Awarded Worst Hold Music: The maker of our boats uses automotive paint. We chose our exact colors by looking around car lots and then telling him the make and color name we wanted. When I called a local car dealer to find out idf they had touch-up paint in the color I need, they guy put me on hold while he went to look. The hold music was a song about the dealership. Ick.

I think I need a new trip to plan for. What I would like to do for our 40th birthdays is to take a trip we've talked about for a long time, where we'd take a year off, buy a horse trailer (so we could have living quarters up front, kayaks and bikes and boxes of books in the back) and travel around the country. For that to happen, though I need to start saving, uh, a while back. It would probably still be doable if we started right now, but there are two problems with that, for me: the IFR training, and the fact that I'd somehow have to convince myself to go into squirrel-hoarding mode, a thing which I've only done successfully when we were planning our wedding. Even that was easier because I got to buy and pay for things along the way (e.g. a dress) instead of saving one huge sum. Another problem would be holding Rudder to the at least theoretically affordable horse trailer. He dreams big. His fancy tends to run to a specially-designed Mega-Mover that would allow us to take our rowing shells along as well.

Failing that, I'd happily take a week in Italy or Scandinavia to celebrate the milestone birthdays. But I would like to have something big and exciting to plan for and anticipate.

family memory

There were some good things about this weekend's non-adventure. For one thing, I took along a sleeveless sweater I had started last fall and had abandoned in order to focus on gifts and then other projects. I've recently gotten back to it and had completed about half the first side when we left. I finished the first ball of yarn on Thursday's drive (this is why it was a good thing we turned back to get more yarn) and by the end of the trip had finished that side and gotten nearly halfway through the other. Now I have confidence that I can finish this, which is always a nice thing.

I think I may do another sleeveless sweater next. Given the combination of hot climate and (sometimes over-)air-conditioned office, I wear them a lot. I'd like to do the next one in the round; I haven't seen any patterns for sleeveless sweaters done that way, so I may either adapt a pattern from the Yarn Girls' book or make a top-down raglan and stop with cap sleeves instead of continuing the sleeves on down. I think that would look good in a rustic slubby sort of yarn. (Or if anyone has a pattern to recommend....)

Even better was the time we got to spend with Rudder's grandparents. His grandmother has some fairly severe Alzheimers or similar memory loss (I think they said it wasn't Alzheimers but the practical result is the same), and has been getting worse fairly rapidly in the last couple of years. It was good to spend time with her before it gets worse, and good to give Rudder's grandfather a break where he could get out, talk to other people, and have someone to help watch and talk to her.

She's still able to reason, though her memory is pretty far gone, which means that she has no idea (I don't think) who we are but is able to figure out that we must be family. On Friday evening, she walked into the bedroom when she wanted to get a glass of water, and had to be directed to go to the fridge instead. I couldn't tell whether she recognized the restaurant we ate in, though it's been in Sacramento as long as they've lived there and they used to eat there when they lived in the neighborhood (this would have been the 1970s and possibly the 60s). Several times she got into the back instead of the front seat of their car. At one point she called Rudder by his uncle's name (her son's) which seems like a good guess, though it's also not clear if she normally remembers names. The most interesting thing, from a cognitive perspective, is that her personality is still the same, despite the memory loss. She talks a lot less, but when she does, she still likes to be dogmatic and forceful as ever. She just lacks specific nouns. So she'll make statements like, "What you need to do, is to do that and then the other thing," or will finish statements with gestures, like miming eating while we were talking about Rudder and his grandfather bringing back the food. It was fascinating, and in some ways a little less sad than it would otherwise have been because she so clearly is still the same person she was. Of course, this is much easier on me, who met her as an adult, than it is on Rudder's mother and her sibs, and I expect the family gathering this summer will be both sad and happy. Rudder and I will probably be the ones playing with the little kids and telling stories to the not-so-littles. Some of those stories will definitely be about the grandparents, since I think only the oldest of the next generation will have any memory of their grandmother as she was, and the youngest of the grandchildren (now in college or recently graduated) didn't get to see those grandparents all that often.

the full story

We left work early Thursday afternoon. I picked the Antkeeper (she's a grad student studying social insects like ants and bees) up on my way home, feeling all proud that I'd remembered to drive the pickup that morning (since the Mozzie car would not have fit both her and her bags). We grabbed some sandwiches for the road and went to my house where Rudder had the Hummer almost fully loaded. The Antkeeper and Rudder had loaded the boats on tpop the day before. We were on the road out of town by 2:30, turning around only once - before we got out of our subdivision - when I realized I'd forgotten an extra ball of yarn. This turned out to be a good decision.

We talked and listened to music on the drive from Phoenix to and through LA, stopping as usual in Frasier Park, just on the north end of the Grapevine. The three of us shared a room that night - piling people into hotel rooms is par for the course on a rowing trip. Rudder and I didn't sleep especially well, probably because of the small bed, but we were up and on the road again by 8.
A couple of hours into the drive, my cell phone rang. It was She-Hulk, calling with bad news. The CSUS Aquatic Center, organizer of the regatta, had called to say the race had been canceled: floods had swept away the race course. I plunged into a flurry of phone calls, to CSUS, to our answering machine, to the race organizer contact, interspersed with fervent thanks for the invention of cell phones and was able to confirm the cancelation report.

We pulled into a gas station to confer. Since Sacramento was by now only about four or five hours away, and since the Antkeeper had a friend and Rudder has grandparents in town, we decided to continue on. We debated on whether to return a day early. Rudder and I decided to stay until Sunday, while after a few more calls, the Antkeeper decided to hang out with her friend that night and return home the next day Coach DI, who had driven the boat trailer up and had arrived before the decision was made to cancel.

Apparently, water had been released from the dam and the course had been washed out only the night before, which is why the race had been canceled with such short notice. Some rowers were already on a plane by then, some decided to go anyway since their tickets were paid for, and some decided to stay home. She-Hulk was among those deciding to stay home; fortunately we were able to cancel her hotel room (which Rudder had booked, and which she and the Antkeeper were going to share) for both nights. The Antkeeper stayed with Coach DI and another woman, since she'd be riding out with them.

That afternoon when we got to Sacramento, we unloaded the boats so as not to have to drive around with them, then headed out to the west side of town where both the Antkeeper's friend and Rudder's grandparents live. We spent an hour with the grandparents, got the Antkeeper hooked up with her friend, and headed back to the east side of town to meet another rower and his family for dinner. It turns out that a two-year-old is of great amusement value when you have a long wait at a restaurant. We enjoyed hanging out with both him and his parents; he's a fairly placid kid, a little shy with strangers, and easy to amuse. Toward the end of dinner, he and I were dancing (me sitting down, him standing on the bench on the other side of the table) and he was just having a ball. His parents have tried to bring him up to be easy to travel with and self-sufficient as two-year-olds go, but I also think he's just naturally a happy little kid.

It turned out that the hotel did have internet access, with some finagling (they had a kit to split from the the TV cable) and Rudder had brought my old laptop for the purpose of downloading race data from the boat computer, so I was able to get online to tell another diarist (who usually doesn't post about what city she lives in, so I won't name her) not to come out to the regatta, as she'd been thinking of doing. Unfortunately, that wasn't until night and she didn't check email so had to find out the hard way. Too bad, because I'd looked forward to meeting her.

On Saturday Rudder and I and his grandparents toured Fort Sutter and then went to the McLelland Field aviation "museum" - actually an outdoor display of static planes but quite a few were open, with volunteers to explain them. We fortuitously ended up having lunch at a restaurant the grandparents used to frequent years ago when they lived in that part of town. I would have liked to see the Governor's Mansion, but we'll be back in July to celebrate the grandparents' 65th anniversary with all of Rudder's aunts and uncles and cousins, so maybe then.

After that, we loaded the boats back on, then had dinner at a brewpub where we'd eaten after last year's regatta (after a lot of discussion about which exit it was on). The people who had chosen that place the previous year had done so because there was room to park with boats on top, so we knew that would be OK.

And yesterday we drove home, all 12 hours of it, with only one small spat to mar the trip (my not-so-faithful navigator was sleeping when he should have been guiding me though the tangles of LA, then wouldn't admit he'd been asleep). Other than that, it was a good trip, though not entirely the one we'd meant to take.

damned dog. or rather, damned human.

We may have to call the cops on a neighbor tonight. Someone down the block has gotten a new dog that barks ALL NIGHT LONG, and has for the last several nights. It's not that close, but it's just loud enough to be annoying. Last night it even kept Rudder awake, and he's been known to sleep through ringing phones. I'd have called last night, except I'm not sure which house the dog lives in. Then again, I suppose a police officer could easily have figured it out by listening.

I suppose I could go over and ask them to bring the dog in, but by the time it bothers me, I've usually gone to sleep and woken up again and am not inclined to get out of bed and go bang on a stranger's door. Last night the barking stopped at about 3AM, but I'd much rather not have been awake to know that!

Tonight, right before bed I'm going to walk down the block or on the bike path behind us and try to figure out which house it is, then take the cops' phone number to bed with me in case it doesn't stop at a reasonable hour. (Why would it? It hasn't for the last few days.) What I don't understand is, why can' dogs bark all night? I mean, physically. I'd be hoarse if I yelled for half an hour. Even my cats go hoarse after too much yowling. Why don't dogs have some sort of physical limits?

P.S. I use the term "neighborhood" loosely. What this is, is a subdivision. We say hi to the people on either side of us and wave at a few others when driving by, but otherwise we don't know the people on our street at all, and we've lived here nearly eight years. What I grew up in was a neighborhood, where on summer nights you sat on the steps and talked to the neighbors. If I lived in an actual neighborhood, I'd know who had gotten a dog and I'd know the people and could go over and ask them nicely not to let it outside to bark all freakin' night. (Ahem. Nicely, I said. It might have taken a little practice beforehand.) On the other hand, if the people who had the dog knew their neighbors, maybe they'd be a little less inclined to keep them awake all night.

ends

There are thousands of tiny divorces going on all over my head. I'm not talking about my marriage; I'm talking about my dad-blasted split ends. They are both infuriating and addictive to break. Of course, it would probably be better if I either left them alone or used scissors instead of just pulling them apart at the break.... but they make such a satisfying pop when they break.

Meanwhile it's 4:13 on Friday the 13th, and I could leave now except that I need to meet people at the boatyard at 5:30 and it's only 10 minutes from here and there is no point in being there early so there's no point in leaving work early. Except of course there always is.

romance?

Rudder and I had the whole lake to ourselves this morning. No other rowers or coaches were out to see the sunrise over the water. You'd think it would be romantic .... if we hadn't been rowing in separate singles, generally at opposite ends of the lake!

looking ahead

I operate best when I have things to look forward to, so this list is for my own reference. Now that my Houston reunion is over, upcoming events include:

• the Gold Rush regatta in Sacramento, Saturday 5/12, and the drive there and back with Rudder.
• a work holiday on Memorial Day, 5/30.
• another trip to Sacramento on July 4 week, this time to celebrate Rudder's grandparents' 65th anniversary. (And our 12th.)
• the release of Harry Potter Book 6, not to mention Johnny Depp's turn as the Willy Wonka, July 16.
• A trip to Edmonton for the World Masters Games, end of July.

And, one hopes, plenty of smaller or unplanned pleasures sprinkled in there - otherwise June would be a desolate month! Tonight, for example, there will be rereading of the second of the Sarah Kelling books I bought in Houston, probably followed (some other night) by the Peter Shandy book I also bought, and then a return to Joseph Ellis's bio of George Washington. One of the things I love about books is that they're always there when you want them.

after a decade away

I'd say the weekend in Houston was a success. The beginning was a little rocky, in that I finally managed to find what seemed like the very last parking space in the airport's humongous East Economy lot and then got to wait forever for Southwest Egg Rolls to go at the airport Chili's. Fortunately I had allowed enough time for parking and had checked in online, and the egg rolls were actually fairly tasty. In compensation, the flight to Houston was blissfully empty and I actually got a whole row of three seats to myself, so I was able to lie fetally and doze a bit. That was also fortunate, because I got to the hotel after midnight (only having gotten a little lost: I got off the freeway at the right place but couldn't quite figure out how to get from the feeder road - Houston has feeders alongside all freeways - onto the street, so I took the long way around).

I wanted to get to the boathouse before 7. I'd been in contact with their scheduling person and had been told I probably couldn't get into a boat (they have a regatta next weekend) but still wanted to go say hello to any oldtimers around. As it turned out, no one got to row that day; the wind was high and there were whitecaps washing over the deck. I spent some time talking to rowers new since my day and peeking around the boathouse, and then got to talk to a couple of old friends. They didn't know I was coming, but both recognized me right away, and they haven't changed much either. (Their daughter, who I knew from when she was remarkably untemperamental six-year-old, is now a junior in college.) I've had dinner in their house and they've celebrated New Year's at mine, and in fact after we sold our house Rudder lived in their old one (for sale at the time) for a month before moving out to join me here. It seems incredible that I didn't keep addresses for all of these people, at least for holiday card purposes, but somehow I didn't. We went off and had (at a Starbucks that wasn't there a decade ago) and then I went back to bed to rest before the party later on.

I was at that party from 11AM to 8PM. It wasn't particularly raucous by company standards; as someone commented, in the old days there had been parties that led to divorces. But it was a good gathering, with a few hundred people there including all but a few of the ones I'd wanted most to see. There were a few spouses who had swapped around, a lot of kids who had grown up, a few people who looked much older and a lot more who looked pretty much the same. Everyone seemed as happy to see me as I was to see them. I don't care how many beers the person has had, it's still nice to hear, "You can't believe how good it is to see you!"

I stayed until the bitter end, on the theory that I'd rather help clean up than sit around a hotel room, and of course the others who stayed were the same ones who were at all the parties back when. It was odd, though: as glad as we were to see each other, I still felt a little out of it, because of course I don't have the daily topics of conversation people who see each other more frequently have built up. Still, a good time, and a wonderful turnout for a reunion that had been planned on the spur of the moment two months ago.

The couple I'd met at rowing on Saturday called around and got a few people together for breakfast on Sunday. That was happy and sad: besides the couple who set it up, one old friend hasn't changed at all except to get a little grayer, and our old housemate and his wife (for whose first meeting and subsequent courtng we were present) haven't changed themselves but have a houseful of daughters (I'm sure three of them keep the house full), but an older couple (who also met via rowing) have had a lot of serious health issues, and he especially seems much older. We'd all always said those two were a perfect match; he is always nice and she has a veneer of sweetness covering more sweetness that goes to the bone. That hasn't changed, at least, and I think he was thrilled to be around a bevy of beautiful women (I am speaking here of the former housemate's three daughters). I got everyone's address and managed to snag the check because I'm obnoxious that way.

The former housemate and family invited me to go for a spin on their boat, so I did get to see all around the lake, and got better acquainted with the daughters. The little one was shy and stayed on her parents' laps, but the older two wanted me to hang out with them in the front of the boat - "it's bumpy up there!" Windy, too, but we did backbends across the cushions when the boat was going slowly and the middle girl (6 or 7, I think) pretended to surf. Fun. I'd had to go check out of my hotel room beore meeting them at the boat and when I showed up the older girl presented me with a sign with my name on it. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with it, but I don't want to throw it out.

I spent the afternoon exploring the new Kemah Boardwalk area, riding a few rides and then eating an insanely spicy Cajun Shrimp boil at the Flying Dutchman - the rides and hotel and shops are new, the Dutchman and a few other restaurants are longtime landmarks. After that I walked a few blocks over to see all the new shops full of tchotchkelehs (not my style, though I briefly contmplated buy ing a Hawaiian shirt for my mom), then drove by my old house. It hasn't changed much, except for a new back fence and some different plantings. I was delighted to see that the used bookstore in an old house nearby is still there, but unfortunately it was closed on Sunday. I did treat myself to a stop by Half-Price Books, since the one in my area moved away. They are run individually, I think, so the Clear Lake one has a much different feel than that had had - more of a used bookstore, not so light and bright but with more crannies. I've always liked it. (Note: Clear Lake is the big lake there, and also what the whole area around the Johnson Space Center is called.)

I finished with a visit to the Space Center, the JSC's Disney-designed visitor center, which was a mistake. The only real changes were a huge playset for the 5th-grade-and-under crowd, and the prices are even worse than they were: $4 for parking (the only place in all of Clear Lake, that I know of, to charge for parking), $17 to get in, $5 for some fried mushrooms. It did feel right, though, to finish the weekend by looking at all of the pictures of all of the astronaut crews, and while I don't cry at movies much, I do still tear up at their Imax film, To Be an Astronaut. I skipped the tram tour of the real Space Center, having seen it all and being short on time. If you're in the area and have some spare $$$, it's probably worth seeing. Once.

The trip to the airport was smooth; the plane home was more crowded so I ended up sitting beside a small but imperious lady of 19 months and her mother. Happy and secure children are promiscuous with their touch; she had no problem leaning on me, standing up in her seat to flirt with the man behind us, and grabbing at my book. I averted one tantrum by letting her play with my tape measure - it retracts! (But it's plastic, not metal, and with no sharp edges.) That kept her busy for some time. She liked me; she even kissed my cheek once, and softly touched my chin a few times. (See "promiscuous" above. It's tricky for an adult; I could put an arm around my friends' six-year-old when she leaned on me, even though I hadn't met her before either, but of course I didn't want to reach out to touch a stranger's child.) Her mother was doing her best to get the girl to wear her seat belt when necessary, and there were a few crying jags due to overtiredness, and of course it's impossible to reason with a less-than-two-old about why she should sit still during takeoff, or eat her own crackers and not everyone else's, or not rest her feet on a stranger. But she was very cute, and reasonably well-behaved for someone entering her terrible twos. She entirely charmed the man behind me.

And then, I got to come home to Rudder. SO all in all, it was a weekend full of high points.

the hard parts

I believe I'm ready for my reunion this weekend. I have my plane, hotel, and rental car reserved. I've chosen an outfit and packed all my clothes. I've talked to my old rowing club to see if I might be able to get in a boat. (Verdict: likely not, but I'll drop by anyhow.) Last thing this morning set up a photo album on the iPod with a selection of photos of Rudder, of our house here and of the desert around, of our Antarctica trip (I've had included photos from other trips but didn't have them loaded on the Mac) and some shots of people I hope to see this weekend.

Oddly enough, the hard part was figuring out how to get to the airport parking from work. I'm probably not more than a couple miles from it - our campus sits right next to the airport fence, with a runway on the other side - but the roads around the airport are tangled spaghetti and the parking lot arnd roads near it aren't shown on any maps I could find. Of course, I can get there by going far enough away to get on my usual route to the airport, but it will be rush hour so I'd rather avoid freeways.

Funny how often the easy parts turn out to be the hard parts.

weekend recap

Saturday was exhausting, though successful. The inaugural Arizona State Junior Championship Regatta, for which Rudder did a good share of the planning, went as smoothly as I've ever seen a regatta go. (Quite likely because Rudder did a large share of the planning. He's good at it.) She-Hulk and I and another experienced female rower ran the docks and, if I may say so, did it well and smoothly. A certain amount of chaos is inevitable when you have boats going in and out and a lot of coxswains who are not used to launching from and returning to a dock (because we usually launch from a beach, and Arizona State rowing is very nearly synonymous with rowing on this particular lake - the one fledgling club from elsewhere didn't compete this year). There were no accidents, every crew got off the dock quickly as requested, coaches were cooperative, and there was very little yelling compared to what's happened at previous regattas here. The one guy who has dockmastered every other regatta here was not able to do it this year for political reasons that were entirely not his fault - but he does the job with considerably more bluster than we managed. As far as I could tell, not only was everything smoother but a lot fewer feelings were hurt this year.

In addition to being out in the sun from 6 to noon on a hot day telling people where to go and what to do, we had to pull in every incoming boat and push off every outcoming one, both to expedite things and because of people not being used to docks. We also had to do safety checks on all boats. By the time I got home around 1PM, I was exhausted.

I'd made the chicken soup and the dough for the matzo balls on Friday night, and had done most of the cleaning. Saturday afternoon's itinerary was to make the torte, form and boil the matzo balls, make the asparagus and the Potatoes Anna, set the table, open the wine, and put out the matzah (with horseradish and honey to suit all tastes). By the time dinner was over I was exhausted.

It was a good evening, though. Dr. Bosun brought a salad as well as homemade applesauce, from her home-grown apples. (I didn't even know apples could be grown here.) She-Hulk brought pretty flowers. The Old Salt and the Mobile Monet brought one of the latter's paintings, a waterscape from Lake Tahoe, for which I'll have to find a place of honor. There's nothing nicer than being given something beautiful the giver has made, and I want to be able to see this. (There is a piece of calligraphy done by Mechaieh sitting in a lucite frame on a bookcase in my office, where I see it right when I walk in. It helps to know I'll see at least one good thing each morning.)

I spent most of yesterday recovering, except for the part I spent erging 10 km. At least the erg piece helped with the ache in my back, as did the application of heat afterward. I was expecting to be up a little late flying, but it was just too windy for that - still, I was sore and tired enough this morning to be glad to have an excuse not to work out.

Also, since I don't think many people read it, I should note here that I've posted my Pasadic apple crisp recipe, or rather my Pasadic variations on Mris's pear crisp, in my LiveJournal.

motivation issues

I just haven't been in a productive mood, workwise. That needs to change.

Or maybe it's a hibernation thing. It's been so cold in the office I brought in my Clapotis, because it's big enough to be either a scarf or lap blanket.

I'm flying again tonight; since it's cooled down a little and the front came in yesterday, I might be lucky enough to have not a lot of wind or thermals. Meanwhile, I need to up my mileage on the erg and in the boat for a variety of reasons. First, this IFR is taking longer than I thought. I don't need to learn much more but it'll still be a while because I need to log 50 cross-country hours before I can take the test. Second, my weight this morning was the highest it's ever been, ever, though I think I've gotten the flab down a little in the last couple of weeks. Third, the Oldtimer is giving me crap. He's hot on my heels on the Concept II log page for our group, and it he passes me it would be a severe loss of face for me. I have my reputation to maintain, y'know.

Plus, it looks like I may be racing in the Gold Rush (on the theory that I'll be there so might as well) so it's a good time to do a little more aerobic work. It's one of those things: I'll regret it if I do race (at least, right before the race I will!) but I'll probably regret it more if I don't. And if I don't do as well as I'd like there's always the "sorry, not in training!" hedge to console myself.

journalcon research

In case anyone cares, I've just called the Westin San Diego: JournalCon rates are not posted yet - the contract is still in progress. Regular rates are $50 more ($30 more with AAA discount) so con rates are worth waiting for.

I pointed out to Rudder the guilt-trippy position he'd put me in and as expected he said I had to make the decision on its own merits. Also, there will quite likely be other rowers going to Boston he could hang with.

the Dichroic fashion report

I don't case what the Manolo says: this is not a good year for shoes. I've been looking to replace a pair of dressy black shoes (for the crime of being uncomfortable) and a pair of tan mules (love them, but they're looking very worn). Both pairs have to be wearable without socks or stockings; even in offices much more formal than mine, most women just don't wear stockings in Arizona, especially in the warmer half of the year. (I do wear tights in winter.) I haven't been able to find anything I like. The best candidates have been merely OK, and I can't throw out a pair of shoes I love for a pair for which I have lukewarm feelings. (In the case of the black shoes, I don't love the originals but I can get by with plain black slides for most instances of that wardrobe niche.) I did find a perfect pair of black shoes with an ankle strap, round toe and kitten heel, but I've returned them because (unlike most shoes from Kenneth Cole Reaction, they had no padding underfoot and the toe part cut into my feet.

The majority of the shoes I've seen are either ugly or uncomfortable. Of course, that's true every year, but there are usually more exceptions to the general rule. One issue is that to many shoes I've tried on have long, pointy toes that add an inch or two to my feet. This is not a good look. I wear size eights, for cats' sake. That's not unusually large, until you factor in that I'm only about 5'2". In other words I'm this short because too much of me was turned up for feet. They really don't need shoes that make them look even longer.

The one style of shoes I do like this year are the ballet flats, especially the ones with the sparkly bits on them. I like sparkly bits. The only problem with the latter is that a lot of them appear to be made to the cheapest standards, i.e. those not incorporating comfort. The ones I've tried on were scratchy and unforgiving; I'm sure there are better-made ones, but I'm also sure those will cost far more than I want to spend for shoes that will last six months and would in any case be way out of style in a year. (I did buy a pair of sparkly flat mules on eBay for $13. For that price I can risk discomfort, though they may still prove unwearable.) The plain ballet slippers do look comfortable, but I already have black flats, and I wouldn't get enough wear out of red or pink or mint-green ones.

What this is a good year for, is skirts. I love wearing skirts that billow out as I twirl and this is the year for it - ethnic printed dirndls and boho skirts with gathers and just-below-the knee skirts with lots of gussets. They're not too long, either; I actually love ankle-length wide flowing skirts but I have to concede mid-calf ones probably look better on me from a proportion standpoint. Therefore, I've concluded to hold off on the shoes as long as possible and to stop up on hippie skirts so I don't kick myself in two years when I can't find any. I've been told I have a hippie-ish style (by someone who still has Eighties big hair, that was) and accused, less recently, of having "granola" tattooed on my forehead. It's not really true; what my style is, is eclectic, meaning I don't really have one. Still, these skirts feel just right to me. The first ones I saw were far too expensive, the downside of them being in fashion, but now I'm seeing cheaper versions.

I actually started with the belly-dance-ish outfit at the Ren Faire - I figured I could always use a wide black skirt, but didn't realize at the time that the wonderfully full raw silk skirt I got would actually be in fashion for summer. (The coin belt and midriff top may get considerably less wear.) Since then I've succumbed to a khaki skirt that's narrow at the top but that has all kinds of gussets and inserts to flare it wide at the bottom, an apricot ethnic-printed (Moorish, sort of) skirt I can wear with plain brown or black tops, and a turquoise peasant skirt.

I'll probably wear that last at my Houston reunion, with a turquoise-trimmed black tank that has a design on the front that reminds me of something you'd see at a Grateful Dead concert, or on the wall in one of the druggier off-campus student houses in my college days. And it has sparkly bits on it. Did I mention I like sparkly bits? Anyway, it shows off my shoulders and it hides the jigglier results of not being in training, while showing off enough leg to prove I haven't been out of training for too long. And it's comfortable, it's cotton so it won't stick to me in Houston humidity, it's washable and not too binding to play volleyball if I want to but dressy enough to give me an excuse if I don't, and I can wear it with flip-flops (Teva ones with extra straps, so I could play v-ball in them if necessary) to dress it down a bit. And then I can come back to work and wear it with a black shell and blazer. It will be good.

rowing flying sleeping

One other issue with JournalCon: when I mentioned it to Rudder last night, he said that if I don't go to Boston, he probably won't either, because it wouldn't be any fun without me. This is sweet, but guilt-inducing. I pointed out that he probably wouldn't want to go to the con; he agreed but said he'd rather stay home alone than go to Boston.

I don't believe he's trying to guilt-trip me; he generally just doesn't play that game. Still, it's having that effect, even though I've gone with him twice now. (Though he went with me once when I was racing and he wasn't, and last year we both competed.) I don't know. He may actually be looking for reasons not to go. It's a bit of a trap: if you do well enough to get an automatic in for the next year, it's prestigious enough that you feel sort of obligated to go and it can be hard to escape. There are quite a few other races near that time too, on other weekends: Newport, Marina del Rey, Austin, Atlanta, and of course the marathon in Louisiana. The sensible thing is probably to take what he says at face value and make my decision based on what I want to do. I'm not good at being sensible that way.

Flying last night went well. I was afraid it wouldn't because I was tired after work and it's a longer drive to the new flight school. But it was a nice night, and I had an instructor I like. We did a DME arc and two ILS landings (if you don't know what those are just nod and smile and move on). After we landed in the warm twilight and logged the flight, the night was so nice that I decided to put the top down for the drive home. Oops. There are diary farms near the airport. Note to self: in future keep car as sealed as possible when in proximity to large numbers of livestock.

This morning I skipped the workout, because tomorrow's video/coaching session will being me to 5 workouts for this week. Instead I stayed in bed until 6. It was wonderful. Tomorrow I may get to sleep until all of 6:30!

Yop!

Some days I feel like a Who, as in "Horton hears a..." I seem to spend an inordinate amount of my time reminding people that I'm here - I and others like me.

The most recent thing to spur a reaction was someone who wrote a sentence beginning with "All Jewish women..." and ending with something that I not only wouldn't do but couldn't. ("All Jewish women take on their husbands' minhag" (family ritual customs) - a bit impractical for a woman who has married a man who's not Jewish.) It's not only religion, though - far from it. There have been people who unthinkingly assumed that because I seemed like a nice, reasonably normal person I must be Christian, but there have also been people who designed rock climbing walls that only worked for tall people, or who designed engineering processes that failed to consider software engineers, who only considered male points of view, or who commented that Americans (implying "all Americans") are fat and lazy, despite actually living in the US and seeing plenty of people who were neither on a daily basis. (This was someone who came from a country - Zaire - where fat people were rare enough when he lived there that it could be assumed almost anyone who carried extra weight was rich and didn't do physical labor.)

In each of these cases I feel like I'm jumping up and down yelling, "I am here, I am here, I am here, I am here!" I'm short, Jewish, female, nonobservant, a software engineer (or I was), and an American who reads, doesn't watch much TV, and whose besetting sin isn't gluttony (much). And I'm not the only one. I'm beginning to dislike words like all and every and to have a kneejerk assumption that tolerance is alway good. Of course it's not ("Oh, the Nazis have overrun Poland? Oh, well, it's just their little way, and they're not bothering us any"), because kneejerk reactors run exactly the risk of doing what I'm complaining about and assuming every situation is the same.

What I really need, I think, is a little guy riding on my shoulder yelling, "Yop!" at intervals.

won't it be a jubilee?

I'm getting very psyched for this Houston reunion, as I see the names coming in on the reply list. The guy whose boat I first water-skiied behind will be there. My old lead who used to draw us system diagrams that inevitable ended up looking like a plate of pasta, and who used to organize all the Hawaiian-shirt Days, will be there. The guy who limited himself to spending $200 at the local RenFaire will be there (a man after my own shopping heart). The guy who once tried to tie my toes in knots (at a party, not at work) will be there. My old boss that the song "Big Boss Man" always reminds me of will be there (he was a good guy, actually, but ..."he ain't so big... he just tall, that's just about all"). The guy who heard that a co-worker had been born in 1968 and said, "That's the year I lost my virginity!" wil be there. The guy I taught to use a mouse, back when it was something not everyone could do, will be there. The guy who used to have a block of ice with a channel carved into it at his parties, to drink shots from, will be there. The guy who looks like Tom Petty will be there. The HR woman who hired me into my very first real job will be there. A whole bunch of people with thick Texas drawls and deep Texas roots will be there, the sort who could be characters in a novel by Sean Stewart, and I'll have to adjust my own speech so they don't all tell me to slow down. (It was never the Texans who bothered me: true Texans may be conservative, but it's in the traditional sense and they tend to have a live and let live attitude. It was all the Bible-belters who moved in from elsewhere and wanted us all to be pod people that annoyed me, including the one who was elected governor after Ann Richards.) And all the good ones will probably have a few beers, tell stories, and either stay all night or move it off to a bar by the water. I love bars on the water. Can't wait.

where to go, where to go

Yikes. Looks like I have a tough decision to make around the third weekend in October: Boston for the Head of the Charles, or San Diego for Journalcon?

Rudder's pretty definitely competing in the HoCR again, but I don't know if I would be and likely wouldn't be asked until much closer to the regatta. Last year's crew were pretty happy with me (she said, smugly) but a couple of them have moved since then and wouldn't be rowing with the same club anyhow. And of course if anyone asked me to cox and I had decided to go to Journalcon, I could always say no. Anyone going to either Boston or San Diego that week, please weigh in.

problems

No luck on finding the Fabulous Outfit, thought I did get to do some shopping this weekend. I saw some very cool peasant skirts and a tube top I liked, but price convinced me not to buy. ($44 for a smocked tube top?? $98 and up for skirts with raw edges? Yikes.) I did end up buying a skirt and shoes from Nordstrom online, because I couldn't resist the skirt even though it won't be delivered until July and because the shoes will replace a pair that's too uncomfortable. I'm too old to wear uncomfortable shoes. Everyone's too old to wear uncomfortable shoes, in my opinion.

I do have things I can wear for my reunion in three weeks, so that's not a dire situation, but I have a couple other shoe issues - worn-out ones I like and wear a lot that I haven't been able to replace. I have very specific niches in my shoe wardrobe; these are "low-to-medium heeled comfy but not too casual shoes that can be worn to work and that don't require socks." one pair in black and one in tan. The niches are currently filled by a pair of black slides and another of tan mules, but both are looking a little ragged. The tan ones are especially worn, and for some clothing the black or dark brown shoes that are most of what I own are just too severe.

My other current problem is Passover dinner, what to make for. There will be matzo ball soup, of course, and a deep-fried turkey. Conveniently, peanut oil is even kosher for Passover, not that any of my guests would care. (One guest is even Jewish. I think two Jews - him and me - is a record high nmumber for my "seders".) Bread, of course, will be matzah. Now I just need a salad, a couple of side dishes, and a dessert. Currently under consideration for the latter three are asparagus, scalloped potatoes (the milk in which is even permissable since we're having poultry instead of beef) and my Pasadic chocolate torte, which uses ground almonds instead of flour.

Yes, my biggest problems are shoes (of which I have a rackful already) and what to serve guests for dinner. And also split ends, as usual. We should all have (only) such small problems.

storyhearing

I think writers should have an idea bank, to which people could donate ideas for stories or essays. That way, no one would ever have to answer the question "Where do you get your ideas?" over and over, because the answer would be, "From the bank, if I run out of my own ideas." More importantly, I could have the pleasure of reading the story of the linguistics proessor who had a stroke, or the one about the Confederate reenactor who slipped back to the real battle, or the essay comparing Franklin's autobiography to Asimov's, without the bother of thinking them out myself.

If there are natural-born storytellers, I think I'm a natural-born audience member. Whatever you call the people who sit at the griot's feet, that's me. Not that I don't like to hold forth, but my proper place is on a soapbox or in a conversation, not in front of the fire when dinner's over and the tales are being told.

That's not a complaint, there - storytellers need audiences, writers need readers as much as readers need writers. There are just a coupl eof stories I want told so I can find out what happens next.

interviews

I have two sets of questions to answer, because other people were kind enough to give me things to think about instead of making me do it myself:

Interview meme:
1. Leave me a comment saying “interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions here. They will be different questions than the ones below.
3. You will update YOUR blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions

From Natalie:
1. What's your favorite yarn to work with?
I'm neither that picky nor all that experienced, so I'd sjut say a nice soft good-wool worsted weight. Two of those I've liked were Lorna's Laces Shepherd and Manos del Uruguay.
2. If you could go to any time and place, where would you go?
Depends: do I get to come back> If not, then it has to be either now or in the future, because I'm not giving up modern medicine. To visit, Samuel Johnson's London, ancient Ireland, or Britain after the Romans left and the Saxons had recovered a bit, but pre-Conquest. Actually, make that at the time of the historical Arthur (Artoris) so I can see what bits were based on fact. Also, Philadelphia at the time of the Declaration of Independence.
3. If you could only have one book to read for the rest of your life, what would it be?
I think I'd have to kill myself. No, wait - unless it was The Neverending Story - not the real book, but the story in the book that was literally Neverending.
4. Have you ever broken any bones? If so, which ones and how?
No. Not yet, anyway.
5. Styrofoam peanuts: irredeemably evil or a necessary evil?
Well, Styrofoam is recyclable, so not irredeemably evil. But I see no reason not to use air-popped popcorn instead.

From Brooke:
1. How did you get involved with rowing and what exactly is it? (I’m picturing rowboats like Kermit the Frog used to woo Ms. Piggy, and I know it has to be more high-tech than that.)
Think Olympic rowing. There's a picture of me and Rudder at here in singles. How I got into it: I had been playing Ultimate Frisbee a couple of times a week, starting November after I moved to Houston (1989). I met Rudder in March of 1990. By June 1990 it was getting too hot for me when we played in the evenings. (Ultimate involves a lot of running - think rubgy without the violence.) Rudder had rowed for a semester in college, wanted to get back into it, and had found the then=fledgeling Bay Area Rowing Club. (That's Galveston Bay, not San Francisco Bay.) He began rowing with them and talked me into taking a class, saying, "If you don't like it, you can always quit." Famous last words.

2. If you had to select one of your many interests and pursue it exclusively until you became and expert, which would you choose and why?
I'd read (actually, I think I already *am* expert there). Rowing and flying and knitting and beading, climbing and hiking and weight-lifting and so on all amuse or improve me, but I can do without any of them if I have to. Also, rowing is the longest-lasting of those and I've been doing it for fifteen years. I've been reading for thirty-five. It's sort of a habit by now.

3. How do you decide if you like a book? Is character development more important than plot? Do you like detailed descriptions or do you prefer writers who get down to the point? Do you always finish books or do you put them down if they annoy you?
No fair, that's three questions. a) If it's wonderful, I can tell because I want to reread it immediately or at least soon. (I thought I'd want to reread LoTR right away, but I seem to still be digesting it - in a sense I'm not done with the first rereading. Also, it's a big committment and sometimes no matter how wonderful, you just want a one-night-stand, bookwise.) b) Yes. I mean, my favorites range pretty widely. L.M. Montgomery, who is prone to descriptions of pearly skies over brooding lavender bays in twilight. Robert Heinlein does much less description except where necessary to the plot. Jane Austen described inner landscapes more than outer ones. Terry Pratchett doesn't do much describing at all, that I can think of.

4. With an unlimited amount of money, what are the first five things you would purchase for yourself? Who are the first five people you would buy gifts for and what would they be? Would you quit your job?
Oh, man. I think I wouldn't do much at all before I'd spent a lot of time thinking, because it would be so much fun deciding. I'd buy houses, more than one for me and wherever they wanted for my family and Rudder's - our parents, his gradparents, our brothers, and my uncle. There probably wouldn't be big initial gifts other than for family, though I'm sure over time we'd end up doing things like funding trips with friends. I'd buy plane tickets, or maybe part of a plane through one of those sharing services, so I could travel when and where I wanted instead of where the airlines went. I'd buy tuition, because I'd quit my job and go back to school for something like linguistics, cognitive science or folklore.

5. What is one thing new people knew about you before they met you? Do you think it’s easier to meet someone you’ve “known” online?
How would they know anything before they met me? If you mean meeting people in the flesh that I've known online, or meeting people that have heard about me from others, I think the two things that usually get conveyed are "small and smart" - more the latter for online people. It's not that I'm a genius, but that I'm smart in a verbal kind of way, so it tends to be more obvious than for someone whose smarts are more mathematical or theoretical, where you might not spot them on at first meeting. I don't know about "easier", meeting people that I've known online: I don't find meeting people especially difficult. What I would say is that when I meet someone in person I've known online, we're not strangers meeting for the first time. In some cases, we know each other better than we would if we had only met in person.

In a completely irrelevant topic, I did get in a spot of mall-shopping last night while Rudder had his meeting. It turns out that Land's End is not only no longer making the Perfect Work Pants (nonwrinkling, streatch twill, nice hand, right length, low-waisted enough for comfort, flat front, slight boot leg) but the new version that looks similar is not nearly as nice a fabric. Glad I checked then out at Sears instead of ordering). I used to be able to trust Land's End and L.L. Bean to keep putting out the same styles year after year, but aside from a few trademark items, they seem to be changing as fast as anyone else these days. I suppose that's not all bad; if they didn't change I'd never have gotten the Perfect Work Pants at all.

After being disappointed there I went to the Gap, where I ended up with another pair of khakis (similar to the other Perfect Work Pants, a pair of khakis I got there a year or so ago - I wish they'd had them in more colors, but khakis are always good for work), a low-waisted flared skirt in cotton sheeting also in a khaki color, very comfortable, and a pair of capris in a dark cadet blue. I bought the latter two a size up, partly because I like things a little loose and comfortable and partly because I didn't see my size there, but that turned out to be a mistake in the case of the capris. I'm wearing them today (with a black T and blazer). I couldn't really have gone smaller because there's no extra room in the legs (it's mostly muscle, I swear!) but I hadn't really thought about the combo of room in the hips and waist with the low waist in this style. I have to hitch them up when I stand up. And I checked - I can actually get these off without unzipping the fly. Oops. I think what I may have here are Fat Pants.

I barely managed to resist buying another skirt, in a very lightweight lilac cotton (muslin, maybe? I'm not good with fabrics) with a magenta satiny underlayer. It was so pretty, and fit well, but wrinkled quite a bit when I crushed a handful, and I couldn't walk in it wihtout having it cling to my legs. I can see the wrinkling; it's not unreasonable to expect people to iron their clothing (not me, but some people) and I might have considered it if that were the only issue. But the cling?There is such a thing as static spray but it's not foolproof. Don't these people test their clothing designs on actual people?

fabulous?

I am very much looking forward to going to Houston in three weeks. I can't tell you how odd it feels to type that, mostly because I hated living there and was glad to escape ten years ago. I quite liked some of the people I met there, though, and I haven't kept in touch with many of them - a few rowers, our friend B, and of course Rudder (with whom I've kept in touch in a most literal sense). My old company has completed or lost most of its NASA contracts and before folding up shop and stealing away, they're having a reunion for all of the people who have worked there over the years and the various incarnations of the company. (It was owned by four different large aerospace companies during the 7 years I worked there, and there were a few more before that.)

My current boss was bemused by the idea of a company reunion; he said, "It must be some company." I don't think it is really anything special; I think one main reason people want to meet up is because there was so much socializing there after hours from the company. I don't know if that's a particular company thing or a Texas thing. We had Happy Hours every month. (Note to party planners: you set this up by calling a bar and telling them you want to have a Happy Hour there and expect X people to show up. They usually provide a roped-off area or reserved tables, free appetizers, and drink specials, at no cost to you. At least in southeast Houston they do. Then you make sure X people actually show up so the bar will like you and want to work with you again.)

I haven't seen most of these people since I moved away in December, 1995. The reunions planners decided to use eVite to track attendees, luckily for me, because it's been great fun to see the names of people responding. As I read the names, faces I haven't thought of in a decade, and some I have, keep popping up in my mind's eye. I wonder who I'll recognize when I get there: who went bald or got tattooed, gained or lost weight or dyed their hair, who has gotten married or divorced or changed fields or had kids. This will be fun. (And if not, it's Texas, so there will be plenty of beer.)

Some of you will be realizing the great problem this all poses, however - more than one, really, but one that I can do something about. (The issue of how to look good in all the photos is probably insuperable. I don't think I'm bad-looking at all, but I mostly don't photograph well. Any photos you see here have generally been culled from a herd of much worse ones.) The big problem, though, is of course what to wear. First and foremost, it need to look fabulous without looking like I've tried too hard. It needs to be casual enough for Houston, comfortable and lightweight in the muggy heat, and forgiving enough to play volleyball if someone starts a game and I get dragged into it. (I'm not crazy about v-ball, but that never seems to matter. Then again, maybe wearing a dress would be a good excuse not to play?) Also, it needs to make it clear that I am no broader in the beam than I was a decade ago (or not much), and if it highlights the added muscle without spotlighting the flab I've added this non-competing season that would be good too. It doesn't have to be extremely professional, since this is not a current work group or in my current city, but sleazy is never a good look either. (Well, not at my age/shape.) Oh, and again, Clear Lake (in southeast Houston) is a very casual area. You might see some big hair, but most people will probably be wearing shorts. I suppose I could try some of the Bermuda shorts that are supposed to be in this season, but I have a hunch they're among the many styles that don't have quite the intended long and lean effect on someone my height.

I'm going shopping this weekend, and maybe tonight. (Rudder has a regatta meeting this evening.) I plan to cruise the mall with the word "fabulous" firmly in mind.

stream of consciousness splutterings

How did it get to be so late? The felted bag looks a little less like cat puke now it's drier, but still .... in future I think I need to felt only a) single-colored yarn 2) yarn with harmonizing (not contrasting) shades 3) yarn in shades that would look OK blended (i.e. not a problem if black and white blend to gray). I can't wait to go to Houston! And that's something I never thought I'd write. I need to write here about the reunion I'm going back for. I also need to write someone about the great magazine article I just read in More - it was about how unfair it is that current books about raising teenage girls seem to alternately demonize and canonize them, instead of admitting they may just be human like the rest of us. And who knew I'd enjoy a magazine aimed at women over 40 so much? I read it at the chiropractor's office and he let me take it home. I guess there's not a whole lot of difference in interests between 38 and 40-year-olds. Big shock there. It's been a very short day since I spent the morning offsite in training and forget to wear a watch so haven't really been tracking my afternoon. Stupid Land's End made a pair of perfect pants for me and now before I got around to buying them in every color has stopped making them. I need to go this weekend and see if the style that looks similar really is. (It's convenient having them at Sears so I can try things on.) I also need to see if I can buy something to make me look fabulous for the above-mentioned reunion (that I still really need to write about). Maybe a new face would help. Preferably a more photogenic one. Gosh, it's late. Need to get a little more work done today.

And as of tomorrow the boss is out for 3 weeks!

good times in San Diego

They Might Be Giants make particularly pernicious earworms. Anyone who has read Mercedes Lackey's SERRAted Edge books (the ones with Tannim the mage) may recall why they are particularly dangerous (or useful, depending on your perspective).

The weekend in San Diego was all right. Rudder's team came in fourth in their heat, which put them in the Petit Finals where they came in fourth again. Not too bad for a scratch team with two experienced very rowers, a few other Masters rowers, three ASU guys and two juniors. The weather was pleasant and so were the people I got to hang out with. (None of the ones I was glad to avoid when I left their respective programs was there, except the coaches. Coach DI is perfectly pleasant as long as he's not my coach anyway, and in fact I think he has mellowed a bit. He still can't organize worth a crap, but the parents in his juniors program generally take care of that and I think he's gotten a lot better at dealing with his rowers since his early coaching days. Yosemite Sam, on the other hand, was nice enough but appears to have morphed into the I-ching of rowing. Before each event he would given his rowers vague oracular pronouncements that made little or no sense and weren't particularly inspiring. At one point he told an outgoing cox to "paint a good picture". I knew what he meant - he claims a coxswain's job is to "paint a picture" for her rowers of where they are in relation to the course and the competitors - but I'm not at all sure she did.

Anyway, it was a pleasant weekend. It's odd to just show up to row with boats and everything all taken care of instead of having to do it all ourselves. I finished knitting the bag I was working on. We got home relatively early, so I took a stab at hand-felting it. It's nowhere near as dense as I'd like so I'll throw it in the washer next. I also started on some socks with actual sock yarn and size 2 needles, aka string and toothpicks. Tonight it will be time for laundry and all of the other minutiae of daily life, including the good bits about life with Rudder and the less good bits about stepping up my workouts.

if you were wondering

Later note: The review went reasonably well. I am a "valued contributor", as opposed to "needs improvement" or "promotable", which isn't bad given that I've only been in this job for six months and am still learning. And I even get a tiny raise, despite having gotten a big one when I got this job. Woohoo!

"Bah!"

Arg. Just asked by the boss to prepare a complex report for the uberboss.... by Monday. I don't think he realizes how much work these entail. I keep trying to tell him, but it's not penetrating the Don't Want to Hear it field bosses tend to have. He doesn't quite wave his hand and say, "Bah!", but close.

Unfortunately I can't work on it this weekend unless I take my laptop to a San Diego beach, which doesn't sound particularly good for the laptop.

And since I have an annual review meeting this afternoon, I suppose I'd best get back to it.

Debrief. Unpack. Repack.

It's been a while since I did a real update here. Let's see:

Last Friday I went to the gym, went flying, and then got to hang out with Egret and chicks. They were a little shy of me, since we haven't seen each other in a couple of months, but eventually made friends, and we had a good time until I was about to walk out the door. I was saying goodbye to Egret and T2, took a step back to open the door, and tripped over the boy, who had quietly come up and laid down right behind my feet. I didn't fall entirely on him, but stmbled a couple of steps before I could get away and off him. I'm not at all sure I didn't step on a hand or foot. He was screaming, of course, and I still feel bad, though Egret and T2 have assured me they've done the same thing several times when he's snuck up behind - of course he's still got that baby assurance that everyone knows where he is and what he's doing and will always catch him if he dives or avoid stepping on him. On a good note, I told Egret about baby sign a while ago and she's been using it and says it's really helped. She uses Ameslan with a few signs they've adapted themselves because it worked better for them than Baby Sign.

That evening we went out to a local seafood place that's entirely underground. Dinner was nothing spectacular, but afterwards, I decided to try some single-malt Scotch. I've always figured it would be something I'd like, but had never gotten into it. With vague memories of Iain Banks' Raw Spirit (Thanks, Mechaieh!) I decided, instead of trying something more approachable like Glenlivent, to dive straight into the peats of Islay, with a glass of Laphroig. *cough* I'm not good at identifying subtle flavors in wines and liquors (hmmm.... an oaky nose with hints of cedar, vanilla topnotes, with a finish redolent of varnish and elderberries). After my eyes stoped watering, though, I noticed three flavors in each sip: an initial hint of chocolate (and here I'd thought Banks was halucinating when he mentioned chocolate flavors in Scotch), followed by fire down the throat, and finishing with smoky peat. I'll do it again, but I'm fairly sure Rudder won't be ordering Scotch any time soon. Or at least not Laphroig.

Saturday was rowing and food shopping. On Sunday I finally got to fly a short cross-country. However, because the GPS database in the place wasn't up-to-date, we couldn't fly the IFR I'd originally planned and ended up flying a shorter VFR X-C, to an airfield just north of Tucson where a lot of retired commercial planes line both side of the field. It was fun, but I was so disgusted with the plane situation, and even more with the fact that they currently have NO aircraft with updated databases, that we went to breakfast at the next-closest local airport and I signed up with the FBO Rudder flies with. (It's the same one I got my private ticket at, though under new management.) My CFI, whom I like very much, was also infuriated and promised to go head-to-head with the management about the unacceptable situation. I really don't want to fly there at all anymore, but if he does that I may split my time, flying at the closer place on weekdays after work and doing my cross-countries on weekenda at the other FBO.
[Glossary: VFR: visual flying rules, i.e. I get to look out the window. IFR: Instrument flying rules, flying totally by instrument. CFI: certified flight instructor. Private ticket: private pilot VFR rating. FBO: Fixed-base operator, i.e. flying school and airplane rental business.]

After that we went to She-Hulk's for Easter dinner, which was delicious, and had a good time swapping stories with some of her geriatric neighbors. Funny old guys. So I got to row, fly and socialize with friends including babies and old people. A good weekend.

On Monday afternoon, the boss, two other coworkers and I flew out to Seattle. Monday night, I was lucky enough to meet up with two other members of my L.M. Montgomery list - we weren't sure if one could make it because she has a baby and a toddler, but luckily her husband was able to watch the kids and she drove all the way across town to my hotel. The other one was able to make it despite having had her car broken into the day before (and her dog in the back seat objecting to the plastic now coverig a window), and we had an excellent seafood dinner served by a very funny (and good) waitress. After that we went to JoAnn's across the street, because two of us sewed and two knit, though we didn't end up buying much. (The yarn was pretty much the same as at my local Michael's.)

On Tuesday after a day of useful benchmarking meetings, the company we were visiting took us to tour their factory - very cool_ and then for an even better seafood dinner (the SeaStar in Bellevue, WA - yum). One of the memorable parts was a woman at a table near us with a fox stole around her neck, complete with head and paws. Not the thing to wear in front of a tableful of engineers; we're not known for fashion, which makes it easier to notice when it's getting silly. (Also, the guys thought it was funny that she was wearing the stole with jeans, and I thought it was funny that the elegant upsweeping she was attempting to set off the fox was actually just help with a cheap plastic clip instead of being anything requiring actual effort or skill or or even anything prettier.)

After another day of meetings, we got to tour the distribution center, which was far more interesting than you'd expect a warehouse to be. (I kept picturing he whole thing as Santa's warehouse and envisioning all the people riding around on three-wheelers or forklifts in little elf suits.) The flight back was all right, though I was a little tense after hearing the conversation of the couple next to me: "I took Dramamine so I don't think I'll throw up." Thankfully, she didn't. The only bad part was the freeway going home. Three lanes were closed and the fourth was crawling so I had to take surface streets and got home a little later than I'd hoped, so I slept in a little and skipped the gym this morning. Oh well.

Plan for tonight: Unpack. Repack for this weekend's regatta trip.

caught between the horns

I was going to start an entry about how spoiled I really am ... we were just treated to dinner by the company we came to visit at Seastar, in Bellevue WA. The food was incredible, the place was beautiful, the company was amusing and we even got to laugh at a woman in a fox stole (head and all). And it wasn't even the best restaurant I've been to this year. (That would be Kai, at Wild Horse Pass Resort in Chandler, AZ. It's too close to bedtime to look up links, sorry.) Today was interesting; tomorrow may be less so but shouldn't be awful, and I get to sleep with Rudder at the end of it. Last night, I had a great time meeting two list-friends and enjoying some excellent salmon.

On the other hand, the world seems to be falling apart for a few too many people I care about. A member on a list I have moderated for years has died. Another has lost her daughter to cancer, far too young. Outfoxed's business is in trouble, and it's more a part of him than a job. Jenn is still hurting, when circumstances bring pain to the surface. There's earthquakes in Indonesia an as always there's starvation and violence and sorrow around the world. It's hard to be happy for me and sad for others without feeling heartless and spoiled and without having the grief seem too pale and thin to be real.

To bed. I'm babbling. And on the other hand, Jen is home and is a mom. There's bliss in the world too. It's a funny world, isn't it?

Northwest Passage

I'm heading off to Seattle this afternoon. I think I'm set: I've printed out my boarding pass, charged my phone (and packed the charger), and checked that my boss will be leaving on time, unlike a previous boss who once missed a plane through sheer cockiness. (I wouldn't have minded, but he ended up in Cinncinati instead of Cleveland where I was and where we were supposed to be - and he had the rental car info and we still had to drive to Pittsburgh that night.) I've forgotten my umbrella but have packed a Goretex jacket, so I should be all right. And you can tell where I prioritize work via relaxation during travel: I have packed one knitting project (after much deliberation I packed a larger project on plastic needles instead of a portable sock on sharp metal needles) and about three books and a magazine. I do hope I don't end up sitting next to the boss because I intend to knit and read In Style on the plane and not pull out my laptop.

Actually, I packed four books, but I've brought Anne's House of Dreams not to read but to carry so friends from my L.M. Montgomery list can recognize me in my hotel lobby tonight. I've got said friend's number programmed into my cell phone. I've left an itinerary for Rudder. It's not that I don't travel much, just that it's been a while since I've traveled on business, and I never have for this company, and it's also that I packed last thing last night and didn't make a list so I'm worried I forgot something. I probably did, but it probably won't matter.

plans and randomizing (or not)

Thanks be to Jesus. No, literally - I get tomorrow off from work. So far plans include relaxing with reading and knitting, a flying lesson, paying bills, doing laundry, going to the mall and/or yarn store, visiting Egret and chicks... it hasn't escaped me that all of this is not entirely compatible with that "relax" idea.

The iPod shuffle feature is the best music-playing-related idea ever. Yes's Stormship Trooper followed by Bruce Cockburn followed by Robert Earl Keen twanging Happy Holidays Y'all followed by Steeleye Span followed by later Neil Young followed by Metallica followed by Bruce Cockburn. At least it would be random, except that my iPod seems to have a Bruce Cockburn fixation. This would be good if I have a Bruce Cockburn fixation but I don't, which is exactly why there's only one CD of his loaded on the iPod in the first place. Despite that, anytime I listen to more than a few songs in a row, there's Bruce. I am liking him more one song at a time than in whole-album doses, but still. Maybe the thing to try is uploading my one Springsteen CD to see if it's just something about the name Bruce the silly iPod likes. Besides, I need Thunder Road in my rebellious-mood playlist.

Right after we get back from this long weekend I'm off to Seattle on business for a couple of days, where if I'm lucky I may get to meet a couple of online friends. One of those goes back a good 6 years or so, through several jobs on my part and marriage, infertility, and then miraculous motherhood (twice!) on hers; the other is a more recent acquaintance I'm looking forward to getting to know better.

After that we may be off to San Diego, a bit unexpectedly, for the Crew Classic regatta. A local men's boat is short one rower and has more or less begged Rudder to fill in for the race. I'm not sure they entirely realize how long it's been since he last rowed sweep (one oar instead of two) but it's not so differnt that he won't do well.

One final thing: I'm somewhat glad I did see the Lord of the Rings movies first. I don't think I've come across more utter emotional desolation than the scene where Sam thinks that Frodo is dead, when he resolves to take on Frodo's mission, then come back to stay with his master forever. Snif. After all, even that tear-jerker scene that hit me so hard so young that it's part of my emotional landscape, the death of Beth in Little Women, isn't seen as parting forever by the characters. And Beth has more or less finished her life, as she says herself - her death doesn't presage desolation of the whole world. I understand why people skip some of the Frodo chapters, or alternate with the happier ones of the rest of the Companions.

getting past the news

Just three quick comments, and then I will declare this a Schiavo-free zone (the main page, at least: people can comment anything they want as long as it's not sp@m).

1. At least this sad story will have done some good if more people are moved to make Living Wills. I confess I've been delinquent on this myself; Rudder knows my preferences and so do my parents, but I should write it down.

2. I find the idea that my parents would know what I want better than Rudder does (because "they nurtured me as a dependent child") to be mind boggling: I've been out of their house for except for short periods for over two decades, and living with him daily for nearly three-quarters of that period.

3. As I understand the case, the heart attack that caused her coma was brought on by an eating disorder. How ironic that the root cause of her current death by starvation is that she was trying to starve herself.

OK, there. It's out of my system.

In much happier news, I've started knitting a to-be-felted bag based on the French Market Bag at Knitty, in the Manos del Uruguay I've had laying around since I didn't use it for Clapotis. I may use fewer stitches because the gauge is larger than that in the pattern, and I haven't decided whether to do the handles as in the pattern, or like a Booga Bag, or some other way entirely. What I really like about this pattern is that the bottom is knitted as a circle, and then you just go straight up the sides. I really don't like picking up stitches much, though obviously I can do it. ("Obviously" because it's just not that difficult.) I still can't imagine what this variegated yarn will look like when felted, but I do like the colors so am just working on faith. It's a nice change to work on something that grows so quickly: right now the bottom is 72 stitches around, or not much more than I expect my next socks (of actual sockweight yarn) to be, yet it's maybe 8" across.

I don't do windows.

I actually had a salesman refuse to sell to me today. I'm so proud.

Background: I've still got this cold/allergies/whatever. so I stayed home sick today to see if rest would help. This meant I got to be the one to see with the window salesman Rudder had scheduled for today. We'd already gotten bids from two other companies; Rudder had worked with those. I think this guy had insisted on being last.

He showed up and spent a lot of time trying to convince me that his were fine products of their kind and were far better than our existing windows. He's entirely right, of course, this being why we asked him to come give us a bid in the first place. (I may have rolled my eyes at this point, because I didn't need to know why we needed new windows but why we needed his windows in particular.) He told me his windows were far better than any of the competitors, and that their price was better, but he had no numbers to compare to the others. He did say the numbers were on the window manufacturers' webpages. He measured all of our windows and started talking about prices. Then he started doing the used-car salesman "What would it take to get you to make this decision immediately" bit. When I told him I wasn't going to decide right away because I don't do that on multi-thousand-dollar deals, as a matter of policy, he started getting a little upset. I think he assumed I wasn't deciding because Rudder wasn't here. I told him Rudder would have said the same thing. (True.) I also told him I wouldn't decide without looking up his windows' data on the Web, since he didn't have it, and that we weren't sure whether we wanted to do this instantly or wait a few months, which is also true.

At that point he decided he didn't want to deal with me because it was "evident I didn't trust him", and refused to write out the prices he had previously mentioned in an actual bid. (Also, when he was going to write them out, it was apparently going to be handwriting on lined paper, instead of a form listing exactly what he was offering, as we've seen with bids on other house improvements.) Well, duh I don't trust him. I've never met him before and know nothing about his company. I don't distrust him either (or rather, I didn't before) but I am certainly not going to fork over a few thousand dollars without checking actual data.

I am still going to look up his windows' data, however. I can only assume his reluctance to share it means he's got an inferior product. And if that's not the case, I may well write a letter to the company's owner. I haven't counted how many ways he insulted me/us, but there are definitely a few. Let's see: getting upset at dealing with me instead of Rudder (not sure if this is sexism or assuming we don't trust each other, but either way I don't like it). Pressuring me to make an instant decision. Wanting me to trust him with no accompanying data. Comparing his window to the existing ones instead of a competitors'. Getting upset when I asked him a couple of times about things other installers had said would be problematic (like the windows with no border from our stucco or the one touching a kitchen counter) despite not being an installer himself. Asking me to feel how strong his windows are. (Sorry, my built-in sensors aren't that accurate - can I use a baseball bat?) I think I'm better off without him.

he's back

My cat came back!!!!! In fact, I saw him at the back door not five minutes after finishing the last entry. I didn't even know he reads this :-)

Donne but missing

Funny how often these entries seem to be a balance between the good and the bad.

The Good:
An online discussion on John Donne I've signed up for started today. My university's writers' group this for alumni (of the school, not just the group) as a free seminar / salon sort of thing - they've done a couple before but this is my first time, since the earlier ones weren't on topics in which I was interested.

The Bad:
Outweighs the good, I'm afraid. We seem to be down one cat. He's been missing since sometime this weekend (though we really figured it out yesterday - this is the scaredy-cat who spends most of his time hiding, so his presence at any given time isn't expected. Rudder says he had the door open a lot over the weekend, so that cat may have run outside. However, outside is one of the things he's scared of, so he's never gone more than a few steps outside before, meaning if he did get brave and wander away he might not know where home is. We've looked around the front and back and called for him (he usually meows back) but have gotten no sight or answer.

Rudder's not home yet either, and he'd normally be in bed almost an hour ago. He did mentino something about an all-day meeting, so presumably it ran late. At least I know he knows how to get home.

good influences

Or maybe I just didn't listen to enough music this weekend. It's hard to listen to I Know my Love (The Chieftains with the Corrs) without chair-dancing. (Ball-dancing in my case, but not the graceful kind.) It's hard to keep a down frame of mind while dancing around the office.

bleah

Not one of the great weekends, I don't think. Let alone one of the great birthday weekends.

Thursday: Rudder had a regatta meeting; we debated whether he should stay home, but I ended up telling him to go (because it was the first meeting on planning this particular regatta) while I went for a massage, which was half price courtesy of his birthday gift. (I get one free one a month for 3 months plus member rates the rest of the time.) He got home around 8:30, which wasn't particularly helpful since we were both planning on rowing Friday morning, with all its incumbent 4AM alarm times.

Friday: Rowing was OK. Work was as usual. The chiropractor was a little disappointing since he didn't seem to recall that he'd said the previous time we'd be teaching me more exercises. (I kep quiet to see if he would remember.) I think I may go today, then quit. They did manage to mostly fix the hip joint problem I was having, and I don't see that we're doing anything to work on the crooked spine issue.

After that, Rudder and I went to dinner. This was supposed to be my birthday dinner, until he headed the wrong way, toward the new fondue restaurant instead of the fondue restaurant I'd been wanting to try and whose menu I had looked up online and shown him. He made it clear that he was too tired to go to the restaurant I wanted (maybe 3 miles further away). So we spent the rest of dinner (which was OK but not great) discussing whether that would be my official birthday dinner or not. I think we decided on not, but made no plans on what would be. I can't think of a more depressingly pointless dinner conversation, on further reflection. (Actually, I suppose I can. But this one was depressing and pointless, anyway.) Also, my allerigies or whatever weren't doing wonder for my ability to taste anything.

Saturday: slept in a little, went to the lake, did a little work on my boat, and had a nice breakfast/lunch with some of the characters we did last fall's marathon race with, so that was fun. However, since Friday afternoon, I'd been feeling ill, and the chicken soup I had Saturday at the restaurant didn't cure it. (Even though it had both matzo balls *and* kreplach. My illusions are destroyed.) I spent the afternoon resting and trying to figure out whether I had allergies or a cold. At 5 or so we went out to find sunset light and wil;dflowers, but what was supposed to be a half-hour drive to a state park ended up taking more like an hour and a half, due to unposted highway closures and roadwork. We did get about fifteen minutes of decent light at the park, though some of the flowers were closing for the night. Goign home took almost as long as getting there, due to trying to avoid the closed highway, and by the time we got home three and a half hours later, Rudder (who was driving) was not a happy man.

Sunday: The plane I was supposed to fly in Sunday morning had a small tangle with a lightpole, so they called Saturday to say they could put me in another plane on Sunday afternoon. An hour before the flight my instructor called to say we couldn't do an instrument cross country in it, because the GPS database was out of date. We could still fly it, but couldn't file as instrument so couldn't get the practice I needed at talking to control. Because the instructor and I both had colds or allergies we decided to just fly locally instead of doing the cross-country I had planned, which turned out to be a wise choice. By the time we finally landed for the last time, I could hardly hear. (I hadn't thought my ears were clogged or I wouldn't have flown at all, but apparently I was wrong.) Apparently I have a geas on me relating to cross-country flights. Every planned one so far has had to be cancelled due to weather or other factors.

Monday: Rudder emailed to say he'd booked flights to Edmonton in July. I had talked about possibly not going or going for only part of the time, since I'm not racing, but hadn't decided. He went ahead and booked flight for only himself and She-Hulk without asking me. Since it's still FOUR months off, I had expected to have some time decide - he said he hadn't planned to book this early either "but flights were cheap". Then he tried to tell me I had plenty of time to decide and the flights wouldn't fill up and wouldn't necessarily get more expensive, which of course would be a lot more convincing if he hadn't booked his own right away. Without asking if I wanted one. (I think She-Hulk did the booking, actually, but I'm sure she asked him whether I would need a ticket.) That's rectified now, and I think he understands why I might have been a little upset. I think.

On the plus side, I finished a sock and started another. Yee-f*ing-ha.

Maybe all my good luck's going to Jen. I'd like to think it's off doing something useful like that - she seems to have more freak bad luck than almost anyone else I know and it would be awfully nice if none of that happens to her while she's off meeting Li. A minorly bad few days here seem like a small price.

the proper frame of mind

I have figured out the proper mindset for one of my birthday gifts, though it took a little thought. My mother gave me something that is basically a long strand of tiger-eye colored beads (I think they're those fiber-optical things rather than actual tiger-eye, though) interspersed with magnetite at intervals, which looks like hematite but is magnetic, hence the name. Light brown with gunmetal gray. Hm. Interesting choice of colors. The magnetite beads attract each other, so the strand can be wrapped as a bracelet, long lariat, double wrapped with lariat end, or choker - at least, it could be a choker, had the maker not put little pewter charms on the end that look silly when coming off two different spots. I may remove one. Or it can be a headband, except that it tends to seize on to hairs and take them along when removed. Or a belt, I suppose.

I happen to know that she bought this months ago at a craft show and has been waiting for my birthday ever since. One would think that her thoughts on seeing this would be something like, "Dichroic does beadwork, and this is just a straight string, so I bet she could make it herself in ten minutes, for cheaper. Also, light brown and dark gray?" At least, if one were me, that's what one would have thought.

Upon reflection, however, I realized that's probably not what my mother would have thought. (I believe I know her pretty well, better than she knows me, though it's possible we're both wrong.) I bet she saw the bead table and thought, "Beads! Dichroic makes beads! And so she went over to the table and then the seller probably showed her how this thing can be a bracelet, a necklace or whatever, and she probably thought, "That's cooler than shit! " (Well, the Mom equivalent of cooler than shit. Not a phrase she uses.) "That reminds me of Dichroic. I bet she'd love it."

And it took me a little while to think it through, but really, to have someone think of you when they're faced with the Coolest Thing Ever, that's a pretty good compliment, isn't it?

Even in brown and gray.

Actually, it's sort of growing on me - from a distance, the brown beads look not like tigereye but like wood, so it's got kind of an ethnic-funky thing going. I still may do a little surgery so I can wear it as a choker, though.

not quite 100

One of my discussion lists has a tradition that on your birthday, you post 100 things about yourself. As I did last year, I'll just use that list for today's entry. (I get lazier as I get older.)

(Almost) 100 things

1. I've completed "100 things" birthday lists a couple of times before so this is really hard!
2. I have a pilot's license that I got the year I turned 30.
3. I'm working on an Instrument Rating.
4. I fly a Cessna 172.
5. I row a Hudson racing single.
6. I learned to knit last summer, mostly from a book. (Stitch 'n' Bitch.)
7. Finished Objects include several scarves, one Clapotis (sort of a cross between a scarf and a shawl), two small stuffed bunnies, 1 pair of socks, and one poncho (in a lace pattern with lots and lots of mistakes.
8. Objects currently on the needles include one sock for me, one cabled scarf for a gift, one sleeveless sweater for me.
9. On Myers-Brigg tests, I consistently come out an ENTP.
10. Despite that E, I do need to spend some time alone now and then.
11. And if I don't get enough reading time I get a bit squirrelly.
12. I learned to knit specifically because it was something I could do while reading. (Unlike beadwork, or cross-stitch.)
13. I have learned that magazines are easiest to read while knitting, large hardbooks next, then smaller hardbooks, then paperbacks. Paperbacks just don't want to stay open on their own.
14. I've kept an online diary for 4 years now, since March of 2001.
15. I've written 1500 entries so far. (And you thought I talked a lot here!)
16. I began on Diaryland.
17. I now have my own site here.
18. The riseagain part is mostly from a Stan Rogers song.
19. The dichoic part was inspired by the earrings I was wearing when I first began my diary.
20. I think it's appropriate because dichroic glass reflects multiple colors and I have a lot of variant interests.
21. I also have a Livejournal. I don't post there much; it's mostly so I can have a friends list to read other Livejournals.
22. I've been online since the late 1980s.
23. I was on my first mailing lists in the early 1990s - Alan Rowoth's folk-music list is one I was on for years.
24. Currently on quite a few mailing lists, but most are set to nomail.
25. I drive the tiniest car you've ever seen, a Toyota Mr-2 Spyder.
26. My husband's truck is huge, a Hummer.
27. They look very funny in the garage together.
28. I have brown eyes and hair.
29. I've only got a few gray hairs, so far.
30. I've had highlights a couple of times, but right now my hair is entirely its natural color.
31. I don't blow-dry - I just towel-dry, comb it, put in some stuff so it won't frizz, and go, even when it's long.
32. If I'm putting it up I usually wait until I get to work so it's dry so there will be some curl.
33. I go to the Renaissance Faire every year.
34. I really like buying unique jewelry there and especially hair ornaments.
35. I've been thinking of joining the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms).
36. I really want to find more of a community - this isn't a very easy area to make friends in.
37. Also I want people to sing with who don't believe you can't sing unless you're of professional quality.
38. I'm not!
39. I think I have reasonably good voice control; I just don't have a great voice.
40. I took guitar lessons for a couple of years, but I'm not very good at it.
41. I haven't played much for years.
42. I own a mandolin but can't play it at all.
43. My brother gave it to me for my last birthday.
44. He thinks I'm more musically talented than I am.
45. Most workdays, I eat fruit (a Clementine in winter, graes in summer) and some cereal in a bggie for breakfast
46. Which I eat in the car on the way to work.
47. This is a holdover from when I either rowed or lifted weights, showered in a gym, and then went straight to work.
48. Now I have a shorter commute, I shower at home after the gym.
49. I'm semiretired from rowing
50. By which I mean I'm trying to stay in reasonable shape, but not training to compete.
51. I find it wonderfully freeing to be able to decide not to work out if I don't feel like it.
52. Right after Xmas and in the first half of January when I wasn't working out at all I lost a couple of pounds.
53. Now I'm being pretty good about working out around four times a week and my weight has ballooned. (Well, up 5 lbs.)
54. I have no idea how this all works.
55. I have never been on a diet in my life.
56. But it's pretty clear I do eat too many simple carbs.
57. This would be because I count pretzels as a food group.
58.Snyder's sourdough hard pretzels are my favorite.
59. And soft pretzels are one of the major things I miss from living in Philadelphia.
60. Folk music is another thing I miss.
61. So is being able to walk or take public transportation everywhere.
62. I didn't get a driver's license until I was 22, a week before...
63. I moved to Texas for my first job. (Hey, it's hard to get 100 things! I wasn't going to waste items by combining them!)
64. I spent 22 years in Philadelphia, 7 in Houston, and I've been here for 9 in Phoenix.
65. I use the word "in" loosely, meaning the greater city area including suburbs.
66. The main thing I miss from Houston is all the water (we lived in the SE end of town, by Clear Lake).
67. I escpecially miss retaurants and bars on the water.
68. I also miss being able to send out an emai on Friday afternoon and gather a posse of people to go out with that night.
69. That really stopped even before we moved away, as our friends got older and settled down.
70. Not that we're big partiers...
71. But Rudder and I have never understood why so many people stop doing anything when they get married, even when they don't (yet) have kids.
72. We believe being married gives you a partner in adventure, not a reason to stop having them.
73. In my opinion we've lived here far too long and it's well past time to move to someplace cooler.
74. I'd like to live in a variety of places, for say, 2-5 years each.
75. Then when we got tired of moving we'd know where we'd like to go back to, to settle down.
76. Unfortunately, Rudder likes it here more than I do - he isn't adamant against moving, but wants more of a directed goal, somepleace to move *to*.
77. My idea is to move away *from*, just to keep trying new places.
78. I've been working intermittently on cataloging our books and am still not done.
79. I'm up to 1100 books catalogued.
80. Some of my best friends are fictional. (If you read the note I wrote the other day on how children read, I think it explains 80. Some others of my best friends are online, I think for similar reasons. Sometimes blogs and email lists give you a better view into someone. Sometimes it's just a view of a different side.) (Later note: Note referenced above was in an email, not an entry here. Oops. See last entry on March 11 for what it said.)
81. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. My job is OK but I think ideally I'd like more freedom to work anywhere, anytime. (Without, of course, sacrificing pay or working more hours. I did say "ideally".)
82. In retrospect I wish I'd had more trust in my future in college, to major in anything I wanted and trust I'd be able to earn a living with it. (Though that hasn't worked out for all of the people I know who've done it, it has for some.)
83. I find it slightly embarassing I don't speak more than a smidgen of any language but English - I can order from a menu or ask for the simplest of directions in Spanish but that's about it.
84. This is despite a year of French (4th grade), one of Latin (5th grade), 6 or Spnish (5th - 10th grade) and 6 of Hebrew school (of course, not all of that was language training).
85. And yet I think I have some talent for languages - I have a good eye for cognates and a good ear for accents.
86. Unfortunately I didn't figure that out until well after all those years of language classes. (For anyone outside the US reading this, this is unfortunately not uncommon. My husband had German for a few years in high school and knows considerably less of it than I do of Spanish.)
87. I am good at and comfortable with talking to strangers but not great at making friends.
88. This may be due to high expectations - read too many books in my youth about people who had bosom friends with whom they could share all their interests. This doesn't work well for me because there aren't too many people with such an oddly assorted set of interests.
89. Right now my biggest ones include rowing, knitting, flying, and as always, reading. I can't think of anyone interested in more than two of those - or at least, not in the same parts I am.
90. But I also think it doesn't necessarily matter that friends have the same interests, as long as they're interested in hearing about each other's interests.
91. Anyway, this is one reason I place a high value on the friends I do have, even those I don't see or hear from often.
92. I was born March 10, 1967, at 11:30 in the morning. It was snowing when they brought me home from the hospital.
93. And I've decided I am now officially too old to be bound by silly and arbitrary rules, so since I do want to post this today, I will end here!

ramblings

This is scary: I noticed, after posting it, that this is entry #1500. It's completely unorganized - 1500 entries in and I still haven't gotten my thoughts together. Or maybe there is an organization, and it's a common one for me: in order, I've written about the Good, the Bad, and the thing I need to do better. I'm not sure what that means, except that though I'm not entirely an optimist or a pessimist, I'm closer to optimism (because of the eternal hope to do things better).

So far the thing I like most about the iPod is the shuffle feature. My biggest complaint about local radio has always been that they pick a set of 10 songs and play them until you want to hold the lead singer by the ears and yell at him to SING SOMETHING DIFFERENT THIS TIME, I'M TIRED OF THAT SONG! even though you know that not only would that be unproductive, but even the DJ really has little choice in the matter.

One recent local exception, now coming to a station near you: Alice Cooper's radio show. Alice (yes, the guy who used to wear all the face paint) is a local resident; he owns a restaurant and sponsors golf tournaments and stuff. He's been doing a stint on the local radio station and I think it's now syndicated. He plays everything from old Yardbirds to obscure songs of his own to new stuff. Dee Snyder (of Twisted Sister) has a similar show that gets played here on weekends. I'm beginning to like this faded-celebrity-DJ trend, because these guys do know music and seem to have enough clout to pick their own music.

Back to the iPod shuffle, it's like having a station that not only plays variety, but plays a variety of stuff I like, with no commericials. I really don't listen to my CDs all that often, except while driving, and I'm beginning to think it's just a dislike of listening to 13 of the same sort of songs in a row. (This would explain why I have so many tribute CDs, where a variety of bands sing songs by Bob Dylan or Richard Thompson or whoever, and also a lot of compilations, like Live at the Wherever.) So now the music flips from Garnet Rogers to Cosy Sheridan to Neil Young to Boiled in Lead to the Grateful Dead to Greg Brown and it's a Good Thing.

The Bad Thing, on the other hand, would be that I just remembered I don't have a birthday card for Yogi, my former coworker born the same day I was. I don't want to send an e-card because she usually sends me paper ones, but I might have to. I have a flying lesson tonight so won't have much time to shop for one. At least if I send it tomorrow it should get there the next day, via interoffice mail (same company, different site). Damn. There went that resolution, in near-record time. Does it count if I send an electronic one but I send it the day before so it's obvious I didn't just forget?

Also, note to self: I *will* get up and row on Friday! I took today off exercising because yesterday my body so clearly wanted the day off. I'm taking tomorrow off because I'm self-indulgent. Friday I will row. What I will not do is allow myself to need bigger clothes, and I won't diet, so there's not much choice left. I'm actually up 4-5 lbs, but so far the clothes all fit. My tight jeans were tighter than I'd like but they were also just out of the dryer. Still, I noticed my cheekbones in the mirror yesterday while erging. In other words, once again, I have no idea what my body's doing. I wish I came with an Owner's Manual.

uphill

Note to self: it is not really possible to reach under your desk while still sitting on your ball. Ouch.

Today's erg piece was fairy torturous, which is why I only did 5K. It's not that I was rowing hard at all, just that my body was putting in a strong vote for going back to bed. That was followed by a visit to the dentist. Week before last I had a dentist appointment at 7AM, got my teeth cleaned and went to work (actually, went home and telecommuted) and it all worked out well, so I figured a similar schedule would work well today. Unfortunately I forgot about one minor difference between getting teeth cleaned and getting a filling that makes before-work appointments not such a great idea. That was why I got to come in to work this morning with rubber tongue, numb lip, and teeth that didn't quite feel as if they fit together.

Just to make matters worse, I was scheduled to do a walk-through of one of the buildings on site with my boss all morning, which meant I got to try to talk to him and a bunch of people I don't know with a mouth that wasn't quite working right. "Hewwo, myf nam iv Paula, sorry I dust goh a fiwwing dis moring...."

At least the day has been uphill from there. My jaw still aches a little and my legs are tired, but I got the iPod reconfigured and reloaded last night, and I've got the Chieftains with Diana Krall trying to distract me from any minor physical issues.

product report: iPod

I was having a a most excellent day, but now my bubble is slightly busted. (I'm not sure that's possible, any more than being slightly pregnant.) With clear and sure decision, Rudder bought a new digital camera Saturday. We have a small digicam, but this one is on a par with our film camera. This will be nice, because we'll no longer have to tradeoff for who gets the good camera. (One afternoon in Antarctica, we got some spectacular penguin photos; unfortnuiately, he had the small digicam that day so they aren't quite as spectacular as they could have been.) After much vacillation, I ended up buying an iPod photo, which (with an accessory, due out later this month) can store photos to get them off the flash cards; can be taken to work to show digital photos around, and of course can play music and audiobooks.

In an attempt to justify blowing the money on it, I took it to the gym this morning. I don't normally listen to music in the gym (except what's played over the loudspeakers) but this turned out to be wonderful. Who knew? (Aside from everyone else in the world, I mean.) Moreover, I'd only loaded on a few CDs and a couple of bought songs: a tribute to Townes van Zandt and one to Bob Dylan, a Steeleye Span CD and one each by Stan and Garnet Rogers. Not, in other words, a likely pick for workout music. As it turned out, it worked perfectly, especially when a whaling chanty came on as I was doing lat pulldowns. The armband I had bought to holster it worked well enough, except that it was a little uncomfortable erging. However, the shirt I was wearing was actually designed for cycling, and so had water bottle pockets on the back. I popped the iPod in one of those and i worked perfectly - cords were kept out of my way and I was able to shift it enough to the side to be comfortable even during exercises involving a backrest. Also, the sound quality was fantastic and even without being loud thoroughly drowned out the gym music.

If I were doing a lot of this, didn't need the photo capability, and had the discipline to keep downloading different playlists, one of the miniscule iPod Shuffles might have been even better, but even though the iPod photo is the largest of the current flock of iPods, it's nowhere near big enough to be annoying.

However, there is one downside, which is what burst my bubble after I got to work. It turns out the iPod can sync to a Mac or a PC, but not both. I tried to upload iTUnes on my work PC, figuring I'd be able to listen to a couple of CDs I'd uploaded here (no dice; they're in RealAudio .rmj format) and in the process of loading software it reformatted the iPod and wiped off all the songs and photos I'd loaded last night. Grr. The manual warned of this, but of course I didn't read it until afterwards when it was too late.

Also, the controls take some getting used to. Still, I'm pretty impressed with the product - of course, being from Apple, it worked right out of the box. (Well, after charging.) Long may they run.

chiro ok, brain not too good.

The chiropractor visit was all right; I can't say I feel better but I don't feel worse either, and I do seem to have more flexibility in the hip joint that's been bothering me.

I'm feeling a little stupid just at the moment for not having figured out the second entry in Theresa Nielsen Hayden's Old English entry. I got the other two on my own at least (more or less; my New Testamant knowledge isn't quite good enough to identify the exact location of the first one).

Not much else to say. Rudder gets home today - yay! I found out one of my favorite people ever to share a mailing list with, who posted today after lurking for a very long time, was in my area last week. Boo. (I only recently rejoined that list after a few years away, and haven't posted much this time, so far. She wouldn't have known I'm here, if she even remembers me at all.)

Off to meetings.

Old Home Night

It's practically Old Home Night around here. First I caught the end of Rocky III (Hell, I don't know, maybe it was Rocky Iv. Or V or XII. I don't keep up.) which left me with pretty much the same impression as all the other Rocky movies I've seen: boxing just looks like a really, really bad idea. At least with all the sports I've done, getting hurt is just a side effct, not the main idea.

I've also been reading the latest of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum mysteries. Trenton's right over the bridge from Philly, so despite the lack of bounty hunters, low-level Mafia, really hot cops and even hotter mercenaries in my early youth it somehow reminds me of home. Must be all the rowhouses. Then I read Sixweasel's latest update and it was like a continuation, only with a slightly less obnoxious family, without the hot cops and mercs but with all the assholes. Or maybe she's got the hot cops, I don't know.

I need to go to bed. Going to bed not alone would be even better but Rudder doesn't get home until tomorrow morning. And I'm postponing going to sleep because I'm hoping he'll call home, if the vendors clamoring for his attention release him at a reasonable hour.

do what?

My brain is sort of in the mode of, "Whadda you wanna do?" "I dunno, whadda YOU wanna do?"

Unfortunately, there's only one of me here.

innate abilities

I did go to the Stitch'n'Bitch last night; first I got to have dinner at Wildflower with Kim, Jen, Brooke (and Jack) and Pam, then I stashed my stuff on a chair and did something more crucial than a stitch'n'bitch, the obligatory Changing Hands book browse'n'buy, then I knitted several inches more on my current sock and hung out with Becky and Alison.

Oddly enough I spent some time teaching a woman on my other side who has been knitting for years, but who may be one of the least adventurous knitters I've met. She learned from her mother in Continental style, and has made mittens and sweaters for her kids and grandkids.... but only things involving knit and purl stitches. She wanted to learn lace, so I showed her a simple YO k2tog pattern. Apparently she learns best by having someone demonstrate what to do, and the only other knitters she'd known used the English style and couldn't teach her. It must just be a (lack of) spatial sense thing; since the major difference is just which hand you hold the working yarn in, it just doesn't seem like a big deal to me to learn it one way and then convert to a method I found more comfortable. It's becaue I can do that, I suppose; whenever something comes naturally or has been learned well enough to be internalized, it's always hard to understand why other people can't figure it out. Still, it seemed funny to be teaching someone who has knitted sweaters, while I'm only 4" into my first one, and who has knitted for several more decades than I have years.

Tonight's adventure is the visit to the chiropractor. I wasn't sure whether thye can work with me in office clothes, so I brought shorts just in case.

Apropros of nothing, there are a lot of phrases I do not like, that I hear a lot. What they have in common is that they're generally euphemisms and usually either coy, or sexist. A sampling: "passed away", or worse "passed"; "loved ones", "little ones" (oddly, I don't mind a singular "little one" so much , as in Malvina Reynolds "Turn Around"), or "little man", especially when used to imply that that tiny bit of extra flesh makes him somehow more important. I don't know why I dislike them (except in that last case, where I know exactly why) but I wish people would just say "died", "family" or "people you love", and "children". I could also do without "hubby", though for some reason, possibly the Trumpkin factor, I don't mind "DH". I'm trying to think of other ones, but all the phrases I'm coming up with now are political, which is not at all the same thing.

early morning ambivalence

The massage last night did help with that problem in my hip joint - I had way more extension when I stretched this morning. Of course, that means I stretched it wa-a-yyy out, which I'll be regretting tomorrow morning, likely right around when I meet She-Hulk to go row. Oops.

I'm ambivalent on the 'go row' thing, anyway. Time on the water - yay! Waking up at 4AM and going out in the dark and cold, not so yay. I think going there will suck, being there will be good, having been there will be very good. (At least until tomorrow night when I go to the local Stitch'n'Bitch gathering and try to stay awake past 8.)

Oddly, that seems to be about all I have to say today. Off to go look up chiropractors and get this hip joint fixed.

free?

Drat. Yay. Not sure which.

Rudder's off on a business trip for a few days, so I did what I usually do to treat myself in his absence: I got a massage. Afterward, oddly, they told me it was prepaid and charged me only for the tip.

I thought maybe there was a mistake; they work on a membership basis, where a membership fee buys you one free session a month and reduced rates for any others. But they seemed fairly sure, so I took the gift of the Fates.

Shortly after I got home, Rudder called. It turns out what it was, was not the gift of the Fates but that of the Rudder. He bought me a three-month membership for my birthday, and told them it was not to start until March 10, but apparently they're better at effleurage than at thinking there. Or reading a calendar.

So yay for a massage a month, but drat for the spoiled surprise. I believe I will just be sensible about this ... and treat myself to a reduced-rate rubdown on or near my birthday.

restaurant review

Rudder and I have a new candidate for Most Romantic Restaurant in Town (actually, just outside town). We've been to a lot of the other candidates, and though we've been impressed with some, we never thought they were as romantic as billed. At some, Rudder hasn't been impressed with the food - he's not a big fan of cuisine that attempts the unusual just to be unusual, or puts sweet sauces on all the meats or that doesn't provide enough food to be filling. (He's not just a meat-and-potatoes man; he's more adventurous an eater than thatt, but I think he wants those basics fulfilled before a chef starts trying to get fancy.) At others, the atmosphere hasn't been terribly conducive to romance.

For some specific examples, at Wrigley Mansion, I liked my meal, but Rudder didn't like his food at all. The mansion itself is beautiful and the view from its hilltop is amazing, but we didn't have a view at the table, and the room layout was very open so that we didn't feel secluded from other tables. At T. Cook's, the food was excellent (my journal entry from that day says I had lobster tortellini and he had a steak) but the atmosphere was romantic only if you believe that anything French Provincial is so by definition. Actually I'd call the decor "French barn"; we loved the look of the building and would like a house designed that way, but it was light and open, with again, no seclusion from other tables. The worst for romance may be Fleming's. We've been there several times, because they have the best steaks in town and one of the best wine selections. The room is darkened, with wine displayed around the walls and the service is always good. However, they also have a high noise level and a TV at the bar that faces into (and can be heard from) the restaurant. Maybe it's just me, but I consider "TV" and "romance" to be antonyms.

OK, so. On Friday night we went out to celebrate Rudder's annual bonus, and had decided to try a place I'd heard about in the Indian reservation just south of us. The restaurant is Kai, located int he Sheraton Wild Horse Pass resort. The chef (Janos Wilder) is classically trained but is mindful of his surroundings; using local products and influences in every dish. The servers were all attentive and well educated, and took care to point out the vegetables that were raised for the restaurant in a project at nearby schools, and the other local and traditional ingredients. The presentation of the food was also impressive, though the chef did fall prey to the Tower of Pisa shool of thought a bit too much. That's the one in which all food must apparent be somehow guided into a round shape and then piled up so that all flavors are layered. It does generally end up leaning, at least after the first bite.

The obligatory list of what we ate:
For appetizers, Rudder had butter-braised lobster with tear-drop tomatoes and avocado mousse (unexpectedly tasty) and something or other else I forgot. (See, you can tell it's a fancy place because the appetizers had their own little side dishes.) I had baby greens in pomegranate vinaigrette. Even the greens were round and vertical, in three little bouquets sprouting from rings of beetroot. On the side was a thinly sliced tiny pear no bigger than an olive and a bit of something unidentifiable and slightly sweet, with a texture partway between cornbread and granola bar.

For dinner, he had a buffalo tenderloin (there was sweet sauce, but it was drizzled in a thin ring around the platter, so the meat wasn't marinated in it and I had salmon and lobster. The salmon was rolled into three roulades with wilted spinach with slivers of mushroom on top of each, all sitting on lobster tabouleh, with a lobster claw perched atop the whole thing. For dessert, Rudder had Kahlua ice cream with whipped cream and cherries on more fry bread - fry bread is a traditional Navajo (and, I think, Pima) food and apparently the recipe used there came form their baker's grandmother. I had three types of not-too-sweet sorbet (one was strawberry-chipotle) with slices of grapefruit between.

The food quality was definitely there, and the sense of place added by the local ingredients and recipes added to the experience. So did the Navajo flute music playing quietly int he background. As for romance, we were seated at a small table by a window, from which we could look over two pools, a lake and part of a golf course to see the sun set over the Estrella mountains. The room was open, with no division between tables, but the low light and the few tables in the place kept it feeling intimate. The wine list was also fairly detailed. Nothing on it looked terribly unusual, but the Karralaa Shiraz we had was very good. We'll definitely be going back - not soon, because the price was an fancy as the food, but we'll be going back. (Of course, just because this place gets our vote for Most ROmantic, don't think we didn't have the usual geeky conversations about flying or whatever.)

The resort the restaurant is in in very nice, too; it's very careful to be appropriate to its place, with little plaques explaining ornaments of design features (one wall is designed to replicate one at the Casa Grande National Monument, not far away). It's only about 15 minutes from our house, so definitely seems like a good place to go for a glass of wine of an evening - or a spa weekend, if I had some spare cash and could talk Rudder into it.

dream party

The other nght when I couldn't get to sleep, I was thinking that it's been a while since I've been to the East Coast. I saw my parents last fall when they visited us, but there are a lot of other people in the Mid_Atlantic states I really would like to see. From there my mind drifted as it does when you're laying in the dark with your eyes closed, and I got to wishing I could just throw a big party and invite everyone.

There are well over 20 people - I counted, including SOs - I would love to meet up with in that area, stretching from NE Philly to Alexandria on the SW side of Washington DC and filling a lot of the points between. (This is not to say there aren't people elsewhere I want to spend time with, just that there's a concentration in that one area.) Fantasy parties have the advantage that no one can't make it that day, and you never have to worry whether people will get along. Ideally, I could rent a big rambly old house for a long weekend, say somewhere on the north end of the Chesapeake Bay, fill it with food and drink, and invite people to come when they wanted and stay as long as they wanted. Make that a big rambly sound-insulated house; we could have quiet zones for sleeping, noisy zones full of music (and since this is my fantasy, music-making), and lots of space in between for talking.

If you're reading this and you live in the Philly-DC span, you'd be invited. (If you live elsewhere and wanted to come out, you'd be welcome.) One thing I realized as I thought about the people I'd like to spend time with is what a diverse group they are, more so than a group of my friends out here would be. There are people in their 20s and people in their 50s. (If people came from farthere away, there would be a wider range.) There are people I've known since birth, since grade school, high school, college, and people I've met in the last couple of years. There are people I've known online or known of for years and never met in person. There are a surprising lot of people who wouldn't know each other to start with, some of whom I've wanted to introduce for years. There are people who know each other, whom I know from different contexts so we've never all met together at once.

The majority would be readers - we might also need some alcoves to sneak away and read. There would be several folkies. There would be a lot of skiffy types, including some who have gone to several of the same cons and (AFAIK) never met. There would be people whose schooling stopped at high school graduation and people with doctorates, but no one who considers their education over and done with or who uses their brain only to hold the pillow down. (At least not all the time - occasional mindlessness is no bad thing.) There would be people with kids and people who live alone. There would be se married people, single people, and people with other arrangements. There would be several who identify as LGBT (well, LGB but not T, but that's only as far as I know, which isn't very far). There would be people who are doing OK financially and people who eat ramen by necessity just before a paycheck is due. And all of them are people I haven't seen in too long and want to spend time talking to - the one drawback to the party idea is that the fun of seeing people enjoy each other would probably be counterbalanced by my not getting to spend a lot of one-on-one time with each.

I'm not really planning to do it, even though it's at least technically possible, because experience tells me that I'd pick a weekend when half of the invitees would be unable to come and that none of the pairs I'd want to introduce to each other would both be there at the same time. But it was fun to think about and it sure would be fun to do.

She got off!

Thanks to a morning dental appointment with a telecon scheduled right afer it, I'm working from home today. Remember the scene in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix after Harry's trial where Ginny, Fred, and Gearge Weasley are doing a happy weasel-dance around the kitchen table, chanting "He got off! He got off! He got off!" That's about my reaction to working at home.

Why?

• For some reason it feels like a vacation, but I still get as much or more work done, so there's no post-vacation workpile hangover.


• I don't have to spend 8-10 hours under fluorescent lights


• Supermarket sushi or even a can of Campbel's beats the hell out of cafeteria food (I'm terrible about taking lunch).


• The chairs are more comfortable. If I want to I can unplug my laptop and go sprawl on a sofa.


• I can do whatever I want during breaks.


• Cleaner bathrooms with softer toilet paper.


• Better snack food and provisions for cooking.


• No traffic. No time wasted in traffic.


• No one cares if I knit while on the phone.


• Cats are often better company than coworkers.


• Bigger rooms - less feeling closed in.


• Windows.


• Quiet. No other people yelling into speakerphones with their doors open. (This and the lack of fluourescent lights may be the two biggest reasons home is more relaxing.)


• I can listen to any music I ant. Mostly I don't, but I could. More important, I can sing along. I can sing along even if not listening to music.

consanguinity of days

I have an odd memory for birthdays. I'm not bad at remembering them in general, and it's probably common to find it easier to remember the ones that are on or near to holidays. But if your birthday's close to mine, I will remember it forever, whether or not there's any need to.

I mean -- my birthday's March 10. And so:
I have a cousin whose birthday is March 7 and another whose is March 11. I haven't seen either since maybe 1992. A kid who lived around the corner in grade school's birthday is March 13 - he must have moved away because I don't think I ever saw him after about 4th grade. A coworker from three jobs ago's is on March 11, but at least he and I still keep in touch. A coworker from my last group has my identical birthday, even to the year - in fact I think that's one reason she and I keep in touch. Another from that job was born the same year a week later. My husband's grandmother's birthday is March 9, which is more than he remembers. She was born two days after me, and it must be either the same year or the year before, since we would have been in the same grade in school.

I think I may make birthday resolutions this year, since after all it's a new year of me. There's an old woman in a story by L.M. Montgomery who had resolved that her birthdays would be days of happiness for toher people, if she could manage it. I'm not sure I'm ready to try that. (Though all of my reasons not to collapse on investigation: I hardly see people outside work? The make it happy for them. And so on.) One of mine is going to be to be better at celebrating other people's birthdays. I've been terrible at that this year, at least for the ones I'm not on a gift-exchanging basis with, and most people really do seem to enjoy and appreciate being thought of, even if it's only an e-card.

uncurling the hedgehog

Pardon me here while I indulge in a little unlicensed pop-psychology analysis here. Yesterday, someone took me aside to tell me she felt our relationship was strained, and that I had made some comments that she thought were very hostile. I explained carefully that I'd had no such intent and apologized for anything I'd said that had come out sounding offensive, and we parted friends, but I think I need to be more careful of my speech in future. (Whereas her comment was that some comments she made that sounded patronizing were just because "that's the way she works and I just have to realize she doesn't mean to patronize" which doesn't sound quite like a fair trade, but anyway. Anything for a peaceful life.)

Of course, I don't feel that anything I said was nasty at all, but then I would think that, wouldn't I? If she thought I was being hostile, then others could have the same reaction. I want to write down a little analysis of her character here, so I can think out how to talk to her and (potentially in future) others like her. My reading is that this woman is, mostly, fearful. Somehow I think she's worried about not being as good as others - this may have something to do with not having the technical degree other people in her position have, though (as she's explained to me a few times) she has the practical experience to make up for that. I think she's afraid she won't get her fair share, of respect or whatever other good things are to be had. I think this explains a lot of her politics, as well. She supported GWB in the last election, which I know because she went around buttonholing everyone and telling them they ought to vote for him. She doesn't seem to be terribly conservative on most issues, except maybe for immigration, ironically the one place where Bush himself actually seems to have a desire to help the most needy. (She was fairly ticked at him for that.) I think she might be among the group that supported Bush and his ilk out of fear that the liberal elite might get a foothold and laugh at anyone not in their group. (People in this group might say their fear is that a bunch of over-educated book-smart types might gain power and not respect the people who have worked hard for what they have. I sympathize with both the need for respect where it's earned and the need not to be laughed at, but am not quite sure why a government aimed at making the rich richer would help with this, even if they do have down-home accents and attend your church.)

Also, I think her attitudes on a lot of things are a little behind the times; I get a distinct feeling that she feels a bit lessened that I'm married and she's not, though we're about the same age, and that despite working at a high level in a mostly male field, she expects different treatment from a female peer than from a male one.

In short words, I think she's defensive and that I need to be careful not to make her curl up and fan out the quills. In relationships, perceptions are the reality, and if she felt I was offensive, then I was, whether or not I meant to be. I'm very glad that she had the guts to take me aside to talk instead of just fuming, so that we could mend our relationship instead of having it fester, and I want to show my respect for that by still talking to her (more carefully) instead of being the sort of ass who tries to avoid being offensive by just avoiding the offended person entirely.

Outlaws up

If anyone's interested, our rowing website is .... well, not done, but drafted and populated. You can see it here. Feedback is welcome, as I've only tested it on a couple of browsers so far. We're still battling issues of sizing and placement of links that show up differently on differend monitors/browsers.

Also, you can buy gear with our logo here.

Yesterday, my flight was cut very short - the clouds above masked a low fog layer - it was thin enough to see through, more or less, but not legal to fly in without an instrument clearance. (And of course, no guarantee that it wouldn't thicken on us at an inooprtune time. When you're in the air, any time fog thickens is an inopportune time.) So my flight went as follows: take off, climb less than a thousand feet, enter fog, descend, turn around, land. A very expensive fifteen minutes. On the other hand, experience in dealing with weather and in landing from a lower altitude than standard pattern is useful.

We'd spent Saturday helping clean up the boatyard, then working on stuff around the house. Since I had my Sunday morning back, Rudder graciously acceded to my request that we do something fun with the rest of our weekend. We decided something outside would be more fun - despite the cloud layer, it was a nice, cool, partly sunny day, and decided to drive up north to see whether all this wet weather seemed to be helping the trees on our porperty to do better. The short answer is "no", I think just because trees don't do anything in one-season time increments, but the drive..... well. The desert was unbelievably, lushly Technicolor green. We saw actual waterfalls on the mountains, more than a few of them, in a bizarre desert-impersonates-Yosemite act. There were black-eyed Susans and other yellow flowers and purple lupines along the road. It was spectacular. Then up on the Mogollon Rim (6000-7000 feet elevation) we got rained on and drove through wisps of clous, then saw patches of snow under the junipers. As we rose higher, there were blankets of snow under the aspens and then coverlets of snow on the pines. We drove through rain, snow, and clouds low enough over the snow covering to give me a new understanding of the phenomenon of whiteout - I was trying to imagine navigation if there hadn't been a road visible under us. There are other places in the world that can provide as much variety in a two hour drive as Arizona, but possible not a lot of them. Which reminds me:

Ten Things I've Done That You Probably Haven't

• Hiked through a rainforest to get to a glacier.
• Slept outside on the continent of Antarctica.
• Traveled on a ship through the Drake Passage
• Kayaked in fjords on three continents. (Well, technically New Zealand isn't a continent but I suppose you could call it the Asian Pacific.)
• Stood at the bottom of a Titan missile silo and looked up.
• Flown in F-16, A-10, Space Shuttle, C-130, and A340 simulators (the high-level ones real pilots and astronauts use to train).
• Gotten married in Valley Forge
• Sung at the lighting of the City Hall Christmas tree in Philadelphia.
• Visited the Demilitarized Zone in Korea
• Eaten alligator, kangaroo, and rattlesnake.

one wasted day

My opinion of the Get Motivated! seminar I went to yesterday? If it comes to your town, don't go. It wasn't even worth getting out of the office for a day. The best thing about it was that I got about 4" done on sock #2, which I had foresightedly cast on the night before because I'm close enough to the end of sock #1 that I was afraid I'd run out of knitting. The final count was as follows:

• 1 speaker with no focus and several unrelated anecdotes, includingone he nabbed from Robert Fulghum.
• Two speakers whose entire substance was only a sales pitch for their (several hundred dollar) seminars, phrased so that wasn't obvious until the end of the speech when they revealed the techniques they were discussing could only be used with further training and a $200 web site subscription.
• Two lousy singers including one who made the national anthem impossible to sing along to, then invited us to sing along with God Bless America and did the same thing to it.
• Two Christian preachers who totally blindsided me (I was expecting to hear about business, not religion) including the seminar producer who gave a literal out-and-out come-to-Jesus speech, and whose speech involved a lot of annoyingly bad logic, and another who gave us a list of four websites with information "disproving" evolution. (He certainly motivated me .... to walk out of the seminar. I didn't but only becaue we'd carpooled.)
• One general who gave a speech that was very funny and rah-rah patriotic but which had no content on any of the numerous interesting and useful things he could have discussed about his last campaign.
• One famous but agedcomedian whose speech was supposed to be about laughter as a business tool but was actually just a stand-up routine.
• 1 annoyingly perky mistress of ceremonies in an eye-smacking pink suit, running things. (I would have guessed she was on speed, but she and her husband run the seminars so I suspect she was merely buoyed up by the thought of all the profit they were making.)
• Two speakers I'd actually go hear agin, if I didn't have to sit through the rest of them to do it.

If you ever get a chance, Joe Montana and Rudy Giuliani are worth hearing speak. But if someone invites you to this seminar thing, run away. Or take your something to do and earplugs.

I have certainly learned my lesson, though. When I was invited to this seminar by a coworker, I didn't ask to see the brochure and read through it carefully. Someone told me the brochure did discuss exactly the sort of thing that would be discussed, including the religion, so if I wasted a day, it's my own fault for not checking up more carefully. I suppose this even falls into the "preparation" theme but Montana and Giuliani discussed. Actually, there's a second lesson as well: when stuck in a situation like this, carefully monitor anyone who talks about leaving. My boss and another guy snuck back to work (in the latter's car) while I wasn't watching them

I could

I *could* tell them I'm sick and go home. I could I could. I think it's mostly a matter of having eaten too much at (and before) lunch but somehow a nap sounds like the best idea ever right about now...

thinking about people

I keep thinking I ought to move this site over to LiveJournal (I do have a blog there but rarely write in it) in order to see if I get more commentary there. Then I keep reminding myself that once I got there I'd still be me. I just don't think I'm the kind of person who everyone loves and reads, either in real life or in my writing voice. (My writing voice is probably closer to the me I am inside my head than the persona you'd meet in the flesh, because of getting to talk about anything I want instead of having to worry about conversing only on topics other people are interested in at that time and place, in short sound bites because that's all there's space to say. Work is for work-talk, rowing is for rowing-talk, airports are for flying-talk, if I ever had time for Stitch'n'Bitch sessions they'd be for knitting talk, and outside that I rarely seem to get to talk to people other than Rudder.)

Anyway, I think it would be fun to be the sort of person who gets hordes of comments on every entry, and constant phone calls in real life. On the other hand, I enjoy being me, too, and wouldn't want to give that up. (Possibly this is the appeal of Multiple Personality Syndrome.) Crankiness has its own satisfaction. Besides, one prerequisite of being widely loved seems to be being the sort of person who likes most people, and I don't. (I do seem to like a higher percentage of people I meet online which tells me that either I'd like people in general more if I knew them better, OR that the sites I read online tend to attract smarter, wittier, and more interesting people. Actually, the latter seems more likely. Also, print is in some ways a better forum for the exchange of complex ideas.)

Another side benefit of not having tons of casual on- and offline friends is that I do really appreciate and cherish the ones I have, which includes all of you who read this or leave notes here. (Spammers excepted. I may be getting mushy but I do have limits.) I love getting to read about the things other people really care about, and the things they're working on as well; it may be a little voyeuristic, but I find I worry when someone disappears, or is obviously unhappy, and I cheer when good things happen to people I read regularly.

Another benefit of blog-reading is the insight into other ways of living. For some reason, polyamory fascinates me - I think it's because in my neo-hippie mind that's more the way life should be. In real life, though, I don't have any great desire to try it out for myself, partly because I'm too lazy and probably too selfish to do it right and partly because, well, see above about not liking enough people. Two things I have noticed, though I haven't collected data on either, and there are plenty of exceptions, is that people who write about being poly seem to be less happy on average and that people who work from home or who don't have jobs seem to get sick more. (If you're thinking you're in one of those categories and I'm wrong, see the part about exceptions. This is just a general impression I've been getting and it doesn't apply to everyone.) The interesting thing about both is I can't tell cause and effect. For example, it could be that some people are more likely to be unhappy for whatever other reason and need to give and receive more love to and from more people to stay on a reasonable keel, that they'd be unhappier monogamous. Or it could be a system that can breed more happiness and more unhappiness both, depending on the people and the situation involved. And the health thing could be that people who go out less develop fewer immunities or it could be that people who have more health problems are more likely to work from home or quit their jobs because they have to. (This does apply to at least two people I read regularly.) Finally, it could be that there's no correlation in either case but that people tend to need to vent about problems and are less likely to write when things are going well because that's the normal state, or that I notice problems more and so get a false impression. Whatever, it's interesting to think about blog sociology and to see trends and connections.

And I think when they taught me statistics, they ruined me for being judgemental.

sweet nothings

Valentines' Day isn't a big thing at my house, not least because the letter "r" is about the only thing Rudder and romantic have in common. We usually exchange cards, and we typically go out for dinner on the weekend closest to V-Day but then we go out for dinner on the weekend closest to everything else, too. On Friday, Rudder gave me chocolate-covered strawberries that he'd intended to save for V-day because they came with a note saying "best if consumed within 48 hours". (He admitted the strawberries were because he still feels guilty for Xmas, a stratey that would have worked better if I were particularly fond of chocolate-covered strawberries. Still, nice thought.)

On Saturday, it was cloudy again and Rudder had flying time scheduled. I went along both in case there was anything I could learn and because I get a lot of knitting or napping (but not both) done in the back seat. He'd never gotten actual instrument time before, a lack which apparently became much more urgent after I got some on Thursday. The clouds were clearing near us, but there was still cloud cover to the north and south. At the CFI's suggestion, he ended up canceling the original idea of doing instrument landings at local airports in favor of a cross-country to Tucson, and did end up getting an hour or so in the clouds. We'd left late due to having to plan the cross-country, and it took longer than the originally intended plans. Also, I hadn't eaten much that day and the emergency Powerbar in Rudder's flight bag was fossilized, so by the time we got back I was starving. I figured Rudder would be hungry too, and too tired for our originally scheduled mall trip followed by dinner at the fish place near it, so I offered to treat Rudder to a steak to celebrate his first true instrument flying. He agreed, though we did end up paying for it from the household account after all.

On Sunday afternoon, we proceeded with the mall / fish restaurant thing. (It's a really fatiguing mall, full of flashing lights and hordes of people, including lots of small children to trip over. It's a much more tiring place to shop at than our local mall, but it's an outlet place and I needed hose. And while I'm in parenthesis, I might as well admit that all of the previous drivel was just to explain why we went out for dinner twice in a row, so it wouldn't sound as if we were that spoiled.) During dinner, between craning our heads to watch the person making goofy hats out of balloons, I asked Rudder if that dinner counted as our Valentine dinner or the previous day's steaks. He said, "The steak place - that's at least a little more romantic."

I answered, "Well, it might have been, if you hadn't spent half of dinner analyzing the restaurant's order-taking system." (Yes, he is even geekier than I am - I didn't complain that we'd spent the other half of the time discussing flying.)

He said, "Well, here then," and mouthed noiselessly at me.

I guessed, "Sweet nothings?"

"Exactly."

"But how can I tell they're sweet?"

"Because I said them!"

Oig. Also yeesh.

So anyway, this morning while he was showering, I wrote out my card for him. I wrote,

_ . _.. .. ._.. _ _ _ ..._ . _._ _ _ _ _ .._ _.._ _ _ _ _.._ _ _ _

Oh, and I forgot to mention that last night, we were talking about the Morse code identifiers used in flight navigational aids. Serve him right when he has to go look up the code.

channeling Langston and Lindy

"Dona nobis pacem" says the old song: Give us peace, give us peace, give us peace.

But peace is not a thing to be given.
Peace is taken. Peace is earned,
Peace is held and peace is painfully made.

Peace is forged in the fire of a fierce determination,
Folded layers of decisions hammered for strength
With will.

Peace is built stick by stick,
Peace is balanced, stone on stone,
Stone on unthrown stone.
Peace is fitted together, each part slotted in
Where a place is found.

Peace is not poured in a pure stream from above;
Peace is built up from the ground by those who need its shelter most,
Holding it up,
Shoring it up,
Improvising as they build,
And propping where it starts to sag.

Peace is not the gift of gods or governments.
Peace is earned at the price of sweat, steel will,
Skill, care, unconfidence
And need.

I did end up flying yesterday - and I got actual! (That means flying in actual instrument conditions, with a clearance, talking to Center, and the whole bit.) The wind wasn't bad but there was rain and low clouds. Once we were off the ground and I saw how bad the visibility was, I started worrying I wouldn't be able to see the runway well enough to land - fortunately I could once we were down to 1000 feet height-above-ground or so, but we did quite a bit of flying in the clouds with NO visibility at all. My instructor didn't even have me put on a hood (really a visor, worn so you can't look out and can see only the instrument panel). It was some scary shit, especially on the way back when Phx Approach was supposed to be vectoring us and didn't say anything for a very very long time. That was because they didn't need to, since we were heading straight for our home airport on a VOR radial, but the thing is they didn't say anything to anyone else either, which means there's no way to tell that the radios haven't gone out. Which would suck fairly hard in those conditions.

So yeah, it was scary to the point of pounding head and dropping pit of stomach. Of course that's not entirely rational; I had a CFI with me and my instruments were working fine. But they can break, and I'm not comfortable yet with what to do if they did, and anyway, instrument flying is inherently not a safe thing to do. There are mountains out there, and my little Cessna doesn't have a collision warning system to detect them. (Ironic, since that's one thing my company makes.) I do have a GPS with them programmed in, but again, the pit of my stomach doesn't know from GPSes.

I kept telling myself it was good to be doing this now, while there's a CFI along and I'm training in familiar territory, than to encounter it for the first time alone in a strange area. Here, at worst, we could have gone down low and found our way home by following roads and landmarks. Rudder pointed out that also, this is a good time in my training to do this because now some of the other tactics I'll be learning will be extremely memorable. (What to do if the radios go out, for instance.) The pit of my stomach doesn't listen to him, either.

Good experience, though. (I tell myself again.) Next time it will be much less scary. And one good thing was proving again that I'm not ruled by the pit of my stomach, because I flew well, nailed the ILS approach at Casa Grande (best one I've done yet) and did two landings so good the instructor was impressed. There's nothing like a bit of motivation to do it right, I guess.

tut, tut, looks like rain

Well, today's customer meeting went well and even ended earlier than expected. Yay. The simulator was booked for tonight so I'm scheduled to be flying an actual airplane after work - I usually try not to because flying instruments is hard enough without doing it at the end of a workday. I have a funny feeling it might not happen, though, due to the amount of wind. I was going to call and ask the FBO so I wouldn't have to leave work early only to find out I wasn't flying. (And bear in mind the airport is only five minutes from my house, so it's not like I'd be driving across town.) Luckily, a jolt of common sense hit me before I dialed; still, it scares me that I even thought of the idea of calling ahead "so I wouldn't have to leave work early unnecessarily".

too much caffeine

I must have gotten enough sleep or something. I'm feeling relatively productive today. Unfortunately the boss appears to have gotten even more sleep plus a large amount of caffeine. Yikes. Now if only he'd read the emails in order...

On the sock issue, I concluded from responses in the Knitlist that Cascade can shrink so knitting with it stretched out was a bad idea. I frogged the sock all the way back to the first few rows. Sigh. At least I'm getting a more reasonable gauge so it's going a wee bit faster now.

Back to work.

football: sigh. Knitting: sigh. flying: not bad.

So, about them Eagles: sigh. Disappointing but no big surprise. Being a Philly fan is generally a lot like being a Red Sox fan, pre-2004.

The socks I am knitting are getting very much on my nerves, because they're taking SO FREAKING long - I started them last weekend and now I'm only about 4.5" in and I have to go retrieve yet ANOTHER dropped stitch when I get home. I know the reasons it's taking so long, but can't do much about it unless I frog the whole thing. 1) They're in Cascade Fixation and since I knew socks are supposed to be densely knitting, I'm knitting with the elastic stretched out and even with the size 5 needles I'm using, that gives me a gauge of around 7.5 sts and 13 rows per inch. The entire reason I selected Cascade as my first sock yarn was so I could use bigger needles, be able to see my stitches, and have it go faster. Sigh. (I've also just been told it shrinks a bit so this was probably not the best idea I've ever had. However, there's still tons of stretch in the sock.) 2) Since the Lorna's Laces yarn that was supposed to become socks for Rudder after I finished the Cascade ones for me turned out to be pinker than expected, he asked for the Cascade yarn instead. Since this is for him, I'm going back and ripping out rows when necessary to correct small defects, like loose stitches that leave small holes in the sock. Not that he'd complain, but he has tender feet and wouild probably not wear them if they're not comfortable.

Why is sock-knitting supposed to be so much fun? I'm not getting it.

On the other hand, I did my first ILS approaches in the airplane yesterday (I'd done one in the simulator last week) and they went fairly well. I'm a lot more comfortable flying these days, finally. If I can't be domestic at least I can be good at something. (Though also, the pot of chili I made yesterday to eat during the week came out reasonably well, if possibly a little heavy on the tomato sauce. So I'm not a complete failure, domestically speaking.)

the who from where?

Actual conversation, at work on Friday:

Me: So, will you be rooting for the Eagles Sunday?

Coworker: I dunno...... who are they playing?

Me: The New England Patriots.

Coworker: They're playing an international team???

The mind reels .... just so wrong, on many levels. Even worse was the part where she said, "Wait, I know my geography and there's no state called New England!"

Philly Girl sez:

Almost forgot to say: sorry, Patriots fans, but GO EAGLES!!!!!

too long in the spotlight

Whew. Well, that's over. The conference was trememndouly useful, there was a lot of interesting informaiton and I got to meet quite a few people I had only spoken to on the phone, as well as a few I didn't know at all. I think I'm in a position where a lot of people are as eager to meet me as I am to meet them, which made things a lot easier. Also, my presentation went fairly well; a few people went out of their way to tell me I did well and a few others gave me some useful information.

You know what, though? Being professional and charming and nice to everyone is just downright tiring. Obviously it doesn't come naturally to me. It's a funny thng, too: most people who know me would say I'm an extrovert, and I always score ENTP on Myers-Briggs tests, I don't have a fear of big groups, and I find it fairly easy to talk to strangers, but I think I do need down time to recharge. I can't be "on" all the time for too long without getting itchy. Also, since there were evening activities on Tuesday, Wednesday AND Thursday that all ran late enough that I went home and straight to bed afterwards, I had no time at all to read, talk to Rudder, knit, or stare aimlessly into space. Going too long without reading, especially makes me uncomfortable, like someone with Tourette's Syndrome trying not to twitch. Unfortunately I have a flying lesson after today's workday, but after that I can finally go home and not do much of anything.

At leawst not until tomorrow when I have to row, take the cats for their shots (yuck) and get my hair cut.

cons and chiros

Updates here may be sparse in the next few days I have a conference. It's local for me, but people are coming in from all over the world, and I have to go network, give a presentation, impress the bigwigs, and all that. (Yeah, I know - it sounds so corporate. I may even wear an actual suit tomorrow, albeit my trendy one with the long jacket. 2002 trendy, anyway - not much of a fashionista, me.)

I went to a chiropractor yesterday for a free assessment and checkup, and am thinking about starting a program with them. I'd love feedback from anyone who's been to one. I'm a little leery, because I've heard some unflattering opinions of chiropractry from doctors, and becaue my few forays into alternative medicine to date have been unrewarding (except massage, which is its own reward). Also, they set off my scam sensors when they added up my health insurance copayments and deductible and offered a 40% discount is I prepaid for the 21 sessions they estimated I'd need. On the plus side, $366 doesn't sound unreasonable for 21 sessions (of course, then there's whatever they bill my insurance), they admitted it might take more or fewer sessions, I like that they have me doing stretching and strengthening exercises, the place and people seem nice and sincere, and the coach at rowing camp opined that chiropractic treatment can be valuable for rowers. Also, it is undeniably true that my spine curves in one dimension so that my head is held a little to the left, and does not curve as it's supposed to in another so that my head is thrust forward a little more than it should be. I've seen this in posture checks over the years, in this chiro's X-rays, and in a doctor's X-rays of my spine a few years ago. And I figure have my spine go the way it's supposed to can only be good for rowing purposes, not to mention avoiding back problems later.

As I said, I'd really appreciate feedback from anyone who's been to a chiro and been helped or not helped by it.

Later note: A little due diligence informs me that I may be going to a chiropractor, but tno this chiropractor. They neglected to mention that they're not in-network for my insurance - in this case, the co-pays are probably less in- and out-of-network chiros (hard to tell, becaue in one case it's $30 and in the other it's 70%) and there's no deductible for in-network. Not a trivial difference. However, it turns out there are 23 chiros in my network within 5 miles of my house so if I decide to do this, it shouldn't be impossible to find an honest one. I should also state that, though my spine isn't quite where it should be, I have no back pain or other problems.

Little progress on the socks, probably because I have a fear of holes in them and so am holding the Fixation yarn (which is cotton with elastic in it) stretched tightly as I knit. I also have some Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock yarn fot future socks and even though it's nominally a finer gauge and I'll knit it with size 2 needles instead of the current size 5, I have a feeling it will knit up a little bigger for me. Or maybe not. I'm knitting the current ones toe-up, with a figure-eight cast-on, which I think is not usually the way people do their first socks but oh well. I also don't think knitting is quite as hard to figure out as some people seem to -- I see a lot of questions on the Knitlist to which my first answer would be either "try it and see" or "do the math" -- though I have a long way until I can do anything really complex. Another thing I want to try is Peace Fleece; some of their colors would be beautiful in a sweater and I want to support their principles. But that will have to wait until after at least some of the four projects I either have on the needles or have planned and bought yarn for are done. (Fixation ribbed socks for Rudder, in progress; Lorna's Laces socks for me, planned; cable scarf for my uncle which may not go to him until next Chanukah, in progress; sleeveless cotton sweater for me, about 4" in and put aside months ago to work on winter things. Maybe I need a sidebar here listing projects.)

Posted by dichroic at 12:22 PM | Comments (10)

anniversary week

It's funny how something can be all over the news for weeks, and then sink like a stone in still water. Once the ripples are gone, no one remembers unless it's personal. For me, these are a little personal and I want to bring them back to public memory. The deaths of a few explorers who knew the risks they took are not much compared to death tolls of unsuspecting innocents in Indonesia, but in another way, every single death is an equivalent tragedy, to those involved in mankind. The cllustering of these, three accidents in a week, is especially painful:

January 27, 1967: Apollo 1 explodes on the ground, killing 3 astronauts.

January 28, 1986: Space Shuttle Challenger explodes during liftoff, killing 7 astronauts.

February 1, 2003: Space Shuttle Columbia explodes during re-entry, killing 7 astronauts.

Annoying People, Type #3674

Annoying People, Type #3674

You know how some people will repeat what you're saying as you're saying it? I think it's a way to chime in and agree, to confirm they're hearing you, or somehting like that. Actually I don't find that all that annoying, unless it's done all the time /gritting teeth. However, yesterday in a class I saw that taken to a new level of obnoxiousness. There was a woman in the row in front of me who was chiming in along with the teacher. Frequently. And when she wasn't doing that, she was nodding or saying little encourgaing things: "Yup. That's right. I see that all the time." And when she wasn't doing that she was asking him questions, roughly three times as many as the rest of us put together, and when she wasn't doing that she was talking to the coworkers on either side of her. I think the man on her left was her boss; if I had been him I'd have been mortified. Oh and also, she laughed at all her own jokes, though no one else did.

The funny thing is that none of that would have been particularly obnoxious or even noticeable in a one-on-one discussion. In the class, though, it gave the impression that she thought she was in a private discussion, with no thought to the rest of us who were there and had paid to hear the instructor. Grr. I'm almost glad I didn't have a business card to give her when she asked. (My cards finally came in today, fortunately, becaue I'll need them next week.)

Here's one thing about being a new knitter: when you want to order online, you've never heard of any of the stores before. (Well, except eBay, and most of their things seem to be large lots of yarn. I'm not really up to sweaters yet) There are yarn stores in my city, but the nearest is a half hour away and I don't always have time to go - no time during the week and weekends are really the only time I can spend time with Rudder (when we're both awake). So I've been watching blogs and the Knitlist for mentions of purchases from online stores and noting when people seem to be happy with them, and also noting when Knitlisters are affiliated with those stores. (Somehow it seems reassuring that there's a real live person there.)

I'm guessing other people do the same, so I'd like to report that I've just made my first online yarn purchase, from Lamb's Ear Farm and was very happy with it. I ordered on Saturday, it was shipped Monday, and I received it on Wednesday. Also, Roxi was very prompt in emailing me when there was a question with my order (due to my typo) and in answering my questions. Also, the have a great selection and all of their yarns/colors are can be seen on the website. I'm sure I'll order from other sources as well (I'm interested in trying Elann and Knitpicks, for their low prices) but I'll definitely also be going back to Lamb's Ear for their selection, shipping and service.

I have no affiliation with any of the companies mentioned here, just wanted to share my experience because other peoples' have been so helpful to me.

prejudices?

I came on this link to the Implicit Association Test over at Scalzi's place. It's designed to show if you have unconscious biases for or against a group. (If you take one of the initial tests, designed to show prejudice linking gender to family/career or for or against fat people vs thin people or black people vs white people, you can then click on Measure Your Attitudes and select other tests, including a bunch about politics and religion. So far, it's shown that I have a moderately strong association between women and families and men and careers, no prejudice toward fat vs. thin people, a moderate preference for Judaism vs. other religions, and a moderate preference for black faces vs. white faces. Aside from the preference toward Judaism, and possibly the female/family connection, those results are not what I'd have expected and I wonder if it's really just showing I have a preference for right vs. left. Still, the tests do try to control for that.

(I'm human. I do have prejudices. I just try not to act unjustly because of them.) Anyway, the test is interesting and at least worth thinking about.

I had somewhere I wanted to go with this but can't remember it now. Incidentally, entries here may be a bit sparser than usual for the next little bit; I have training all day tomorrow and a conference part of next week. Meanwhile, my ends are splitting and I haven't had time to schedule a haircut. Cool Salon Guy is now Cool Work-at-Home Guy - he cuts hair out of his house since the salon he worked at closed, and unfortunately his house is a bit further for me. I keep debating whether to keep going to him; not only is it an issue of loyalty but I always enjoy talking to him and he knows how to cut my hair. On the other hand the drive is inconvenient and it just feels odd - not unsafe, just odd - to go to his house. I'll probably do what I've been doing: go to him and put the decision off another month.

Cool water

Chalk up one more reason to be glad I work here instead of at my old site. For what's supposed to be one company, there are a lot of odd little differences between the two sites. One of them is that there are bottled-water water coolers all over the place here; at the North site there are almost none - a few unfiltered fountains and one or two coolers that filter tap water, scattered over two enormous buildings. (To understand why all this really matters, you have to know that Phoenix-area tap water is undrinkable. I'm not fussy: I'll drink tap water in Philadelphia, Houston, Boston, San Diego, LA and pretty much anywhere else I've ever been including cities where many other people insist on bottled water, but the stuff here tastes nasty.)

I don't know if it's been on the national news, but apparently 3 of the city of Phoenix's water processing plants are down and one of the two remaining ones is working at half capacity. There's still water, but it may be contaminated and should be boiled before drinking. Apparently this problem arose because - wait for it - with all the rain up north some silt washed into the system and gunked it all up. (I wonder what they think people in other places, where rain is a normal occurrance, do?) I don't imagine many Phoenicians were thrilled to wake up and be told not to shower or to "shower very quickly" this morning. Fortunately I live in another contiguous city - especially fortunate since I was halfway through an erg workout when I found this out. However, both my current and former worksite are within the city of Phoenix.

I'm still on the e-mail list for my old site, so I was amused to be notified (not until after lunch, mind you) that they company would be supplying bottled water in the cafeteria for free - but the urged employees to be considerate of others and not take more than a bottle or two. Yikes. Here they just told us not to use the sinks, presumably in case someone wanted to lick their hands after washing them. (To be fair, some people do brush their teeth with that water after lunch.) But they left us bottles of hand sanitizer!

The funny thing is, normally our water is cheaper and we have restrictions more rarely than places that aren't nine years into a drought in the desert. (We don't know yet if this year's rains will be enough to end the drought - or rather, I suppose the drought is technically gone but water levels are still way low. Stay tuned.)

stuff

I think I'm in a holding pattern right now - rowing camp's over and I've got nothing exciting coming up unless you count a local work conference next week or a birthday in six weeks (a little too far away for even me to get exceited about yet.) Various stuff, good, bad and confusing happened otherwise.

The lake has reopened as of Saturday, but it's only open from dawn to dusk so I can't go back to regular training even if I wanted to. However, I was noticing my thighs touching as I walked today - not sure if they're actually bigger or if it's just that I've been wearing pants mostly instead of skirts, but either way it's an reminder that I should be doing a little more than the current low level of exercise. Rudder and I did go out rowing on Saturday; the lake water was brown and muddy, with trash washed up on shore, but beautifully calm. I just did one lap lightly, working on all the technique changes from camp.

Yesterday he went out rowing again while I went flying - She-Hulk came along to ride with me because she's been wanting to learn to fly and wanted to see what it was like. Unfortunately, since I hadn't flown in two weeks I kept overshooting my turns and having to tilt back the other way, which got her a little - not queasy, but on the edge of it. On the other hand I was flying under the hood, using instrument techniques, so all turns and changes in altitude were very slow and gentle and I made two excellent landings. In other words, aside from a little bit of turbulence, this was about as gentle as flight in a small plane is likely to be. Still, you do feel turbulence more in a small plane than a big one, and she was in the back seat which moves more in turns and from which visibility is more limited. I htink she liked it otherwise, and I suspect that in the front seat she'd have no issues - and of course more experience and being in control herself will both help. I do hope she decides to learn to fly.

I did get down to the decrease section on Clapotis but have put it aside for a few days. I only had one remaining ball of yarn which I'd taken a bit out of the middle of to match colors in an earlier section. I used part of it that matched onto the last bit well enough, but to go to my remaining bit I'd have had to do a transition from lime green directly to turquoise (it's supposed to go lime->olive->shamrock green->turquoise) and it looked too abrupt. I wasn't at all sure I had enough yarn to finish and had ordered an extra skein from Lamb's Ear Farm on Saturday so I'll have to wait. The people at Lamb's Ear seem very responsive and I know they're going to ship it today; I just hope it gets here quickly. Meanwhile I do have a few other things to work on.

The new bed has arrived safely and I can now sit up and read or knit comfortably in bed. It does rather, er, dominate the room, though. If I ever decide to hold court from bed (was it Louis XVI who did that?) I now have the platform from which to do it, though it's dubious how many courtiers would fit into our room now. The only real drawback to having a headboard when I'm not used to one is that now when I roll over, if my arms are above my head I'm apt to bang on it accidentally and I'm always afraid I'll wake Rudder.

Possible TMI below cut tag.

I'd been feeling a little odd lately - sort of a pre-period feeling in a post-period week; some of you will know what I mean. Combine that with the very light flow I'd had week before last, and, well, what LA had put into my head, and I figured I'd try something I'd always been a little curious about. One line showed. I can now confirm (at least, I presume I can) that pregancy tests do work even when you're on the pill (and, as always, that the pill really does work, but the past half of my life has been ample confirmation of that.

I'm oddly disappointed, somehow, slightly, and a little wistful. On the other hand, when I imagine how I'd feel if someone said, "You're fired and you'll never have a decent job again," I feel as if I'd been punched in the solar plexus and branded a terrible failure for life. If the pill did turn out not to be foolproof, I might not be aghast, but I think this is my brain's way of telling me which path I ought to take as long as I get to choose.

Another thing: I think if I did ever get pregnant under these circumstances (38 years old and on the pill) I'd be at such high risk that I wouldn't tell anyone but Rudder for a very long time - not even you virtual people out there in the electrons. It would be such high-risk and if I did miscarry far too many people I know, both IRL and on the web, would be hurt, either from reliving their own disappointments or from being happy about it and then having to realign emotions. But anyway, I'm not.

monsters under the bed

We ended up deciding on this bed rather than the leather one - partly so we don't have to worry as much about cat damage but mostly because we were worried about how well the other would go with the rest of our furniture, which is in Federal-to-Early Victorian cherry. (Repros, not antiques.) It's being delivered today. (yay!) So last night, Rudder wanted us to clean out under the bed before anyone saw it (anyone being delivery people, I suppose). Technically, I think he wanted me to clean it out, since he had a lake users' meeting after work. I took a look when I got home and it didn't look too bad - I cleared out a couple of pieces of junk and resolved to run a vacuum by the head and foot ends before I went to bed, figuring I'd let the deliverers of the new bed take apart the old frame.

When I got around to that, however ... oof. I had forgotten how much time the cats spend under the bed. Also, apparently our cleaning services gives people instructions that start with "Remember this isn't YOUR house. People that hire cleaning services are all slobs so you don't have to clean under or behind anything." (We'd been considering changing services, because they also seem to skip the erg room and their dusting tends to miss some areas.) I don't expect them to vauum the whole area under the bed, but they could do a lot better around the edges.

Vacuuming the foot end wasn't bad - we tend to stack workout gear there, so there were some fuzzies, but not too much. AT the other end, though, I had to push the bed out from the wall to get the vacuum in. By the time the space was wide enough, the boxsprings were falling off the fram (it's a king bed so there are two) and the further I pushed the bed out the worse it looked. Finally I leaned the mattress against the wall, took the boxsprings and stashed them in the hallway, and took the frame apart. (Of course Rudder got home just too late to help life the mattress.) Vacuuming it all up took one change of bag and several stops to clear cat hair from the vacuum beater brush.

Buying new furniture is a useful prod to deep cleaning. And stop looking at me like that. Don't tell me you regularly vacuum under the middle of king-sized beds either.

In other news, I broke down and made my first chiropractor appointment today. There's nothing particularly wrong, but the coach at rowing camp recommended it for rowers. At work today they had a car show for employee's cars - don't ask me how someone here affords a Lamborghini, but there were also lots of70s muscle cars, a couple of Model A's, some chopped and lowered street rods, '57 Chevys, a couple of race cars, and so on. I think my favorite was the VW Beetle converted to an off-road car - I don't think they kept anything but the sheet-metal. Anyway, they had free 5 minute massages, and one of Dichroic's Rules of Living is 43. Never pass up a free massage. It turned out they were from a chiropractor, and I figured my company would have made sure they were at least reputable. Maybe they'll know how to correct my curving spine and I'll instantly grow two inches.

Hey, it could happen.

Keilyn

Hello, my name is Dichroic and I am a procrastinator. I tend to get behind on things and lose track - or not lose track and then there's always that niggling guilt. It's even stupider when it's a pleasant task I procrastinate on.

All of which is to explain why I'm only now writing an entry to say why Keilyn rocks. I'm tempted just to write, "Well, duh." Obviously I think she's got great taste, because we have so many of the same interests - that's why she started commenting here in the first place. Of the things we don't have in common, some of her hobbies (like the SCA) are ones I've always had a tangential interest in and I think some of mine (rowing) are ditto for her. I've only recently started reading her LiveJournal (which I won't link because she hasn't linked it here) and she seems to be an interesting person in the view I get from that, as well. Also, once she commented here we corresponded a bit and found the coolest coincidence I've seen all year: we'd never met but her junior high best friend was one of my best friends in high school.

A lot of people seem to look back on their youth as a time of idiocy. In a recent comment on WeirdJews, someone wrote (not to me), "You are a goddamned idiot. Now, let's prove this mathmatically: take your age- subtract 10 from it. Were you a goddamed idiot back then? Of course you were! And you're just as big of a goddamed idiot right now - it'll just take you 10 years to figure it out." (That would be why I just set up an age poll on that community. I had a feeling few people past their 20s would write that.) Anyway, my first reaction was, "But I wasn't an idiot at nearly 28." On the other hand I don't think I was an idiot at nearly 18, or nearly 8, either - inexperienced, but not stupid or even terribly thoughtless. And I don't think my friends then were either - we might have been intense and inclined to take everything with the Utmost Seriousness, but no, not stupid, and not totally devoid of judgement either.

Wheer I'm going with this is that my high school friend certainly had good judgement in people; at last report she's still married to her boyfriend from back then - who incidentally may be the single smartest person I've ever met and who was also good friends with Keilyn. And good people don't generally age into not-good people - I suppose it could happen, but I think it would be fairly visible if it did. So despite a very slight acquaintance, I know Keilyn rocks, because I knew M and J and they knew her - and thought she rocked. Good enough evidence for me.

Maybe someday we can dig up M and J and all get together on one of my infrequent East Coast trips - now that would really rock.

rowing camp

I've got the usual pre-travel jitters, leading to agitation over such earth-shattering questions as: will I regret having chili for lunch on this afternoon's 6-hour drive? Will the scheduled 2-3 rows/day be too much, leading to shredded hands and an exhausted body? And how do we get to the boathouse in San Diego, anyhow?

Nevermind, it'll be fun - the chili will behave (probably), most of the rowing won't be very strenuous, and at least I can do something about that last one. And I get to spend a nice weekend with people I like on the water in Mission Bay. Sunshine is predicted for the weekend, and warm but not too warm temperatures. Saturday night we're feeding spaghetti to everyone in the rowing camp and we'll get to meet more people to hang out with when we travel to races. With luck I'll get both some ideas for maintenance training and then some help for when/if I get back into competition. I'll get a lot done on Clapotis on the drive. It will be good.

improved feed and what to put in it

OK, I've gotten my RSS feed set so now you can read the full text of this at Livejournal (at Dichroic2) or Bloglines or wherever. (Though as Natalie points out the atom.xml feed already did have full text.)

Now, of course, the challenge would be to write things anyone actually wants to read.

For the knitters: Clapotis is now officially half-done - I'm half through the 7th of the 13 repeats in the middle section. However, the beginning took me a long time to figure out and it seems to be speeding up as I go, so I don't think it will take as long to do the second half. Also, I've got about 12 hours in the car this weekend, which should contribute enormously to available knitting time. (And motivation.)

Rowing: Those 12 hours will be spent getting to and from San Diego for rowing camp - this is run every year by Pattie Pinkerton, the USD womens' rowing coach and former Australian national team coach. We haven't gone before because the last two years we had only just gotten back from travel and didn't want to head out again, but this will be She-Hulk's third time and she's really liked it. Rudder and I both wimped out on working out again today (I did erg yesterday) so I'm a little worried I'll be too tired for some of the three on-the-water sessions a day the schedule shows, but we'll see. I keep reminding myself I did a marathon only two months ago and finished 200 km only two weeks ago and can't really be all that out of shape. I think I'll tell Patty I'm pulling back for this year and ask her to help me figure out a maintenance progam so I won't be too rusty or out of shape when / if I am ready to come back to it.

Also, this year I intend to keep logging workouts here but I won't be joining Fivehundred again unless I have a reason to set some distance-related goal sometime later this year. I made my 500 mile goal in 2003 (actually, I completed about 800 miles) and my 1000 mile goal last year. I don't need it for motivation; the need to train if I'm competing takes care of that, and if I'm not competing I don't think I need a distance goal. Still, it's a good site and anyone working on a fitness goal ought to consider it - it can be very helpful to have your numbers out there for the world to see.

Flying:I'm just under 20 hours into training now, working on VOR approaches and holds. The minimum training required for an IFR is 40 hours, but I'll take a lot more than that because at the beginning I had to spend a lot of time just burnishing off the rust - flying is definitely something that only shines in use - and because I need to build up a lot of time X-country time to meet the 50-hour requirement for the IFR rating.

Of course it's never a competition but all the same I was very disappointed, yesterday when I was reading the list of people who'd earned ratings at my school, to see the name of someone I don't respect much who had earned a private pilot rating in late 2003 and an IFR only 5 months later. I'm leff than halfway in and I've worked on this since September. There are lots of reasons: work (he had a much more flexible job), travel, racing, Christmas holidays, and so on, and if there's anything stupider than comparing yourself to someone else on this I don't know what it is (well, I can thin k of a few things :-) but still, it leaves me feeling I should do better.

Guilt can be useful. At least it nagged me into doing some of the reading/studying for this I'd been neglecting.

Politics: I heard something on BBC radio news yesterday that had me growling. Yesterday a plane 3 hours out of England, flying to NYC, was turned back because there was a man on board whose name was on the do-not-fly list. The pilot was told the man wouldn't be allowed to land in the US and so he had to turn the whole plane around. Correction: he chose to turn the whole plane arund and fly back to London. But they gave him the option to land in Bangor, Maine instead.

WTF?

So is Maine now not part of the US? Or does the FAA just not care what happens up there?

More to the point, why could they have not just had someone meet the plane and question the man, especially given the number of mistakes there have been over that list? Clearly they weren't to worried about the man taking over the plane or they wouldn't have given the pilot the Maine option - at 747 speeds, you're not *that* far from some major targets. I really really hate when my country makes itself look that stupid.

Work: I'm beginning to feel more productive lately, and that I'm starting to learn what I need to do here. Now I need to go from there and start getting a lot more done - it's easy to get in bad habits when you don't have enough to do or you seem to be floating aimlessly. Enough of that.

Plans & Goals: I've been seeing a few 101 in 1001 lists lately on various websites - 101 things you'd like to accomplish in 1001 days. I'm flummoxed at the idea of having 101 goals - either they'd have to be mostly tiny ones, or else I'd feel uselessly overwhelmed. Also, I really have little idea of what I want to be doing three years from now. Most of my goals are limited to the next year or even next few months or else they're vaguer lifetime things I just want to do at some indeterminate time. Here are a few things I do know.

In the next year, I'd like to: knit some socks including some well-done enough for Rudder to wear (because he likes them, not just because I made them). Knit myself a sweater or two, including one with sleeves. Finish my IFR and stay current. Get a lot more comfortable flying, including long-distance flying. Get to the point where both I and my boss think I am good at my job. Stay reasonably fit. Get my finances back in shape - this IFR has led to credit card debt and I need to stop that.

In the next three years: Move OUT OF ARIZONA finally (or at least out of the hot part of it) and maybe even out of the country for a year or two. (Or the international part could come later - no rush there.) Either get back into competitive rowing or move on into some other sport. Keep flying. Get better at saving / investing. Keep gaining increasingly responsible work experience.

In the next decade: build a house or at least a hangar with an apartment on our airpark property. Buy a plane. Figure out a direction to go careerwise and move on it, or else shift careers entirely (but to what?). Take a year or half-year off just to travel around the country. Widen and deepen my circle of friends. Keep working on that tact thing. Find people to sing with. (Not perform, or necessarily even sing well - just sing.)

I could probably come up with 101 goals, but for a lfietime, not just in the next 101 days. One thing that did occur to me is that, if I could persuade Rudder to do it, we ought to look into joining the local SCA. I think he's afraid the people would be too loopy for him (whereas I'd expect to find the sort of F&SF people I've always enjoyed, though I'd expect some loopy types too even from my viewpoint) , and he's never found the local RenFaire more than mildly entertaining. But I think it would solve some of our problems: a new circle of people to meet, swordplay for a new physical activity, people for me to sing with, fun things like catapults and trebuchets for him to build. And people for me to talk history with. I don't know much about the local branch though - I know there is one but not how big or how fun, how open to playing with stereotypes or hung up on authenticity, or how friendly. It might be interesting to check out sometime, though. Another one for the "sometime" list.

Hmm. It can certainly be debated whether I'm entertaining (or just prone to logorrhea) but no one can say I'm not offering variety: blogging, knitting, rowing, flying, life goals, SCA-ding, and even a gratuitous Tennyson reference. (Virtual prizes for identifying it.)

tree-huggers united

I'm not usually a big of "art installations", but I love this one.

oh, Pooh!

Saw this at Batten's place:

Indulgence is not a bad word as far as you're
concerned, your confidence in being yourself is
what matters more than all that.
The most loyal of friends and always good fun to be
around, everyone needs someone like you in
their life.


Which Pooh character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

feeling Lucy van Pelt-ish

I can tell I'm in an impatient mood. I went out at lunch to pick up some Chinese food and happed to be listening to Nancy Griffith's Other Voices, Other Rooms in the car. The giveaway was when I noticed I kept making up slightly revised lyrics to the songs she was singin. Sample verse from Bob Dylan's Spanish Leather:

How the f*** can you ask me again?
I have told you over and over
The same damned thing that I tell you today,
I would tell to you tomorrow.

See what I mean? I think I've been feeling a little crabby since just after Christmas. Mostly I think it's a post-holiday let-down thing; I feel like there's nothing much to look forward to, eventhough that's not strictly true. (We have a weekend in San Diego for rowing camp in a couple of weeks, for instance.) Still, I won't have much time off work until at least this summer.

This mood's probably been a little hard on Rudder. I had to bite my tongue hard last night to keeping from telling him to piss off or simply thwapping him with my mug. On the other hand, as I tell him, just because sometimes I react more drastically than others, doesn't mean I'm not annnoyed by the same things all the times. It just means that sometimes I show less reaction.

For some reason he particularly annoys me when he talks about my flying or flight-planning; it just feels like he drones on and on and on about it. And leans on my map and gets in my way. And tells me what to do like I'm an idiot. And tells me two different things two minutes apart. And did I mention that he goes ON and ON and ON?

I think I just have a low tolerance for flying talk in general just because it does tend to go on so long. Possibly also because when I was getting my private pilot rating I worked in an Air Force lab and Rudder had only recently completed his. So I got advice at work and I got advice at home until it's a wonder I didn't give up on the whole thing out of sheer stupidheaded rebellion. It probably exacerbates the whole issue that I'm a little dissatisfied with my flight school at the moment. Too many lessons cancelled due to issues with the airplanes and I'm not as thrilled with my teachers as I was with my first CFI, the one I worked with for my first rating. They're OK, just not great. I could move to another FBO (=flight school) but the others are at the next airport over, a 15-20 minute drive instead of 2 minutes, which makes getting to lessons before or right after work more difficult.

I'm also probably crabby either because I'm exercising less at the moment or because I'm feeling guilty about exercising less. But then if I worked out more I'd go back to being crabby at having to get up way too early and fit that in with the flying. Anyway the lake's still closed (becaue it's a river at the moment) so it's a moot point right now, as far as rowing goes.

So yeah, the reason's still in doubt, but the crabbiness is definitely here.

more bucks for the bang

Hey - those of you who work for Corporate Wherever, if you're donating to any of the charities working on tsunami relief, don't forget to check first if your place does matching donations. There's nothing up about it on my company's website (probably because this is only the second day we're back) but I've got a call in to the appropriate coordinator. I hadn't decided who to donate to (my top current choice is only accepting funds online, which I don't want to do from work) but I'll wait for that callback to try to double my impact. (Later: There's a press release. Now I just have to decide whether to donate through the company or direct to a charity as I usually do. )

*****************************************

I'm wearing my poncho today. Mistake-ridden it may be but after all that work I've got to get at least a little wear out of it, and anyway it went so well with a plain brown shirt ad flowing brown skirt that I decided to wear it instead of the sweater I'd originally planned. Unfortunately after all that work I made it too big and it's falling off my shoulders. I may need to see if I can unravel the (bastardized triple-needle join) seam and take five or so inches off of it. I did try it on as I was making it but was afraid it would be too tight and would bind my arms to my sides, plus it's a little tricky to get an accurate fit with a needle in there. (Yes, I know, I could have slid the stitches onto a piece of scrap yarn. I'm still new at this, remember?)

one death at a time

This has been a horrible, horrible holiday, not for me personally but in a wider sense. Two online listsibs lost their mothers in the weeks just before Christmas. I've just heard that a work acquaintance, someone I worked with fairly closely at my last posting, lost his daughter in a car accident on Christmas Day. Not only does he have to bury a child, which always seems the worst of personal tragedies, but his his three-year-old grandaughter (named Seven, oddly) is now motherless.

And of course this all pales in contrast to the tsunami death toll. Last I heard it's up to 144,000 and the news is rife with stories of parents whose children were ripped from their arms.

I'm not callous to the news, but somehow the deaths of people I know or of people close to the ones I know affect me more than those thousands in Indonesia. It's probably a universal human failing, but in another way it's not really a failing. I think it's because 144,000 deaths don't mean anything. They are a news item, an impersonal statistic I can't really understand on any emotional level. One death means something; one death can rend the world. Each of those 144,000 deaths rends the world for those that loved the dead person. It's not a tragedy, it's 144,000 individual tragedies. Some of them are even sadder, in a way, because no one's world will be rent, because every single person who knew or loved that dead one has also died.

It's going to be strange next year, when for some people Christmas will be the usual season of joy and for many, many, it will be the anniversary of tears.

old year and new year

I don't quite understand this. While there were many high points to 2004 that I can sum up easily - began the year in Antarctica, competed in and saw friends at Masters Nationals, did fairly well coxing in the Head of the Charles, completed a marathon, changed jobs, reducing my commute and getting a substantial raise, and beginning to work on my Instrument Flight Rating, our visit to the in-laws in summer and theirs to us at Xmas -- somehow my basic feelings for the year can be summed up as "Meh." There were parts of it that were wonderful, like the time on the Akademik Ioffe (the boat we were on to Antarctica) and the trip to Natchitoches for the marathon, I just don't feel especially excited or accomplished about the year overall. I have no idea why, but Rudder seems to feel the same.

We ended up staying home last night, with movies rented, Chandon champagne and shrimp on the barbie for dinner, and the evening went by immoderately quickly, then we slept in to an unheard of hour - nearly 10AM. This is what happens when you stay up past 8, I suppose.

I'm supposed to be flight-planning for a cross-country trip tomorrow. I don't like flightplanning much, because it's both tedious and scary (in that my neck depends on doing it right). Still, I'll have both an instructor and Rudder along for the actual trip. I suppose I should quit procrastinatig and get back to it.

unconnected brain offgassing

Random Observations:

I decided on the Noro Sillk Garden for th scarf - knitted the beginnings of it in both yarns to see how it worked out and the Manos was too heavy. Though if I do a second scarf of it, it might make a good shawl/lap robe for the office.

So far the Sillk Garden has broken three times on me (I don't think I knit all *that* tight) but at least it spit-splices well.

Watched VH1's 100 Best Heavy Metal / Hard Rock Bands last night. Why do they even try to make it suspenseful that Led Zeppelin was voted the best metal band of all time? And why didn't someone *tell* me Eddie Vedder was so good-looking? I mean, I've heard Pearl Jam, of ourse, but had never seen them.

Note to American Christians: As a semi-outsider I can report that the way you-all celebrate Christmas is terrible. Months of preparation for one day? It's just ludicrous and probably accounts for all those artificially high expectations that result in post-holiday letdown. I propose we all go to celebrating for all twelve days. Or we could do the Saturnalia thing, with the Lord of Misrule and all the role-reversals and such. And my company (and yours, if you're a wage-slave) should give me a holiday until Epiphany, too.

Besides, I've concluded I really need two weeks off: one to rest up and sleep and one to do stuff.

I rather wish some of you authorial types out there would read Diana Wynne Jones' Hexwood and let me know what you think. She's trying to do a lot of funky and confusing things with the structure - that is, some times the reader is supposed to be confused and sometimes I was anyway. I don't think it altogether succeeded; one indicator was that she had to explain a few threads in an Author's Note at the end. But it was interesting to watch her handling iof the tricky bits, and it's a good enough story that it kept me involved regardless. I'd rate it as a fascinating but not completely successful experiment. It reminded me of Fire and Hemlock more than anything else of hers I'd read, but I think the latter ties up the ends better. There aren't too many books I think ought to be longer, but this might be one.

I know part of the reason there seem to be so many miscarriages is because people know about pregnancies so much earlier, but I've known of far too many lately, some after the mother started showing signs of pregnancy. It breaks my heart, because some of these were so wanted.

end of Xmas

Well, yesterday's vegetable soup wasn't great - nothing really wrong with it, but it needed a couple extra hours in the crockpot. Other than that, I think my in-laws ae now convinced we're increedible cooks - the highlights at Xmas dinner were Rudder's deep-fried turkey and my cappucino pie. Yummy. The visit was a shining success in general. Rudder's grandmother commented that it seemed like we were always eating, which was true enough but funny, since I had the same reaction to visiting them last summer. Rudder's grandparents can't really walk far enough for any of the activities we'd have otherwise planned, so mostly we all just hung around, but I know everyone had a good time. Last night I dragged them all out to sit by a bonfire - I've been wanting to put floating candles on the pool for a awhile and this was my chance. It had been chilly but last night was cloudy, which holds heat in, so it was just warm enough for us not to freeze and cool enough to want to stay near the fire. The reflection of the fire and candles on the pol were magical and it turned out to be a great way to end their visit.

The only drawback was that I got very few gifts this year, especially compared to the loads of stuff I got everyone else. However, that was just because my family of course sent their gifts for Chanukah and some of our Xmas gifts were perishable things that we opened on arrival. For example we got lots of summer sausage and cheese, which were great to have with that many people around. Also, Rudder and I are giving each other a new bed, which we haven't gotten yet, and the grandparents' gift to us was their presence, which is a very nice sort of present but doesn't have a bow to untie. I did get a midweight fleece pullover from the in-laws, whicih is something I've been wanting - I've been jealous of Rudder's. Also, my MIL was delighted with the Moebius scarf and my GMIL seemed to like the scarf I knitted her, and I love giving gifts people love.

They left today because my FIL has to get back to work and they have a 2-3 day drive back. Now the big festive part of the holiday is over, Rudde is enjoying a nap and I'm looking forward to a whole week off work to do whatever I want. I'll post pics of the poncho later when Ruder's around to take pictures and, when I finish it, of the mini-Weasley sweater I'm knitting. (It's a top-down raglan and will be 3-4" tall - seemed lilke a good way to see how that works.)

yearly application of tact

My theme song this Christmas is from Stan Rogers:

At last, I'm ready for Christmas, I've even finished the tree, At last, I'm ready for Christmas, like I thought I'd never be, With feet propped up by a nice warm fire and a matching inside glow. At last, I'm ready for Christmas, with nearly two hours to go.

Granted, I'm more or less ready two days before, not two hours, but only because Rudder's family arrives today. MIL's hat is DONE! though not wrapped, the tree is decked and the ornament boxes put away, the house is straightened to Rudder's standards, and the turkeys are injected (with seasoning / marinade).

I have done my act of kindness and tact for this year, too. There's a woman on an e-list of mine who has put me on her list of "inspirational" forwards. These are almost invariably a) treacly, b) preachy, and c) about Jesus. Worse, this is the second time she's done this; she had me on her list years ago when we were both on a related e-list; I think then I just blocked her email address. I've made no secret of being Jewish on this list. I don't know in what universe it's acceptable to send stuff like that to someone not of your faith, and in my particular universe it's not acceptable to send ANY regular forwards to ANYONE unless they've asked for them. I might send the occasional joke or picture that I think a specific person might especially like, but her messages were coming several times a day. However, contrary though it might be to reason, I do believe her motives were benign; I think she's just honestly clueless.

I emailed her and asked her politely to stop, and it was one of the hardest messages I've ever had to frame. It was far more difficult than you'd imagine not to write "What part of "Jewish" do you not understand?" or "Please get your god out of my inbox," or some such. (As may be obvious, I am not a naturally tactful person.) But I did it, and I must have succeeded in non-inflammatory phrasing, because she agreed to take me off her list, told me with no hint of irony that she "appreciated my being Jewish" (arrgggh!) and asked for a copy of something I'd written.

I suppose there are things to be said for tact, in that it so often seems to succeed where direct speech would only raise defensive hackles. I'd feel better if I could think of a similarly polite way to educate her on why what she's done is unacceptable, but I don't think I can do that without being worse than the original offense, and using rudeness to teach manners is generally not productive.

(Of course, by venting here I've probably already voided any tact KarmaI'd earned, anyway. It's still not a skill I've fully internalized, clearly.)

the best present

TranceJen asked, "What was the best gift you ever got on Christmas morning?"

I can't really remember being all that excited by my Chanukah gifts, though I'm sure I was at the time. I suppose the best ones were probably the (increasingly larger) bikes my grandparents gave me when I was 4, 8 and 12, and I also remember getting various Barbie stuff. (My least favorite gift from the grandparents was the two sets of underwear - it might've been a birthday rather than Chanukah - with sort of training-bra tops like undershirts that ended mid-rib cage that they gave me when I was 12 or so and had absolutely no need for any sort of bra, training or otherwise.)

The best gift, the one that made me feel most warm and fuzzy, was just a few years ago and again it mght have been a birthday rather than Christmas. It was from my in-laws (as I've said here before, I lucked out in the in-law lottery) and it was the "gift of a relaxing evening". It wasn't so much that I really needed some de-stressing time just then, though I certainly did, as that the accoutrements were so perfectly me. As I recall, they sent me some nice tea, some fancy popcorn (on the cob) and a gift certificate to Amazon. I don't know whether they knew me well enough to do all that or whether they conferred with Rudder, but I think they get equal credit either way, even though they did say I sitll have to do the hard part and supply the evening to relax in. They also gave me last year a drawing (lithograph? I don't know about these things) of "She Who Loves to Read", of a woman wiht bushy brown hair curled in a cushy chair with a book (and two more books beside her), a mug of tea, and a cat. The only way you can tell it's not me (other than that the woman in the drawing has a blank face because that's apparently what this artist does, and I do have eyes, nose and mouth) is that I'd never be sitting straight in the chair; I tend to sling myself crossways.

Still to do: finish wrapping presents, finish knitting my MIL's hat, and do a bit of straightening. Also, maybe I'll make brownies this evening - though Rudder will be injecting turkeys, so that might not be the world's best idea if I don't want brownies redolent of onion and garlic.

almost ready for Christmas

Excellent weekend. It's not that we did anything terribly special but I got Rudder back and that's enough. For some reason, even though he was only gone for a week it was a very long week.

We are now more or less on track for the holiday and for Rudder's parents' and grandparents' visit. What I really need is a big DONE! stamp like they use on the show Monster House.

Food shopping: DONE!
All we need to do is pick up some milk right before guests arrive.

Boughten gifts purchased: DONE!
Including way too many extra gifts (to be marked "from Santa") and stocking stuffers.

Tree decorated: DONE!
At least, it's at a point where it looks all right if we don't do anything else to it. If I have time, I'll add a few more plain red and gold balls to it.

Homemade gifts: in progress -- all done but the hat for my MIL, and that's secondary to the long-since-finished Moebius scarf.

The beading stuff is put away and the ping-pong table is moved outside. There's still a little neatening to be done and guest beds to be sheeted, but the guest towels are out and the cleaning service will be in Sunday. I won't make the pies (one eggnog and one cappucino cream - I wonder where the espresso maker is?) until at least Christmas Eve. Aside from those I'm totally cheating on baking, having bought slice-and-bake cookies and brownie mix. Rudder will inject the turkeys on Thursday and deep-fry them Christmas day. The fridge is groaning with indigestion and bulging at the seams; Rudder's family went in for food gifts this year so in addition to the two turkeys we're deep-frying (one to eat and one to freeze) there's a smoked turkey, five kinds of cheese (well, I bought the Brie and goat cheeses) and I don't know how many kinds of sausage (plus the chorizo we bought for breakfast fajitas. The rest of this week will feature quit times at work, a party tonight, feverish knitting, and gift wrapping. Lots and lots of wrapping. Between the company of people who know how to be guests (not universal knowledge, I'm finding, but if you want to see how it's done right, invite Mechaieh to stay with you sometime) and the time off work, this should be fun and even relaxing. I'm hoping that "Lakeview time" is a traveling effect and that Rudder's grandparents bring it with them; when we've visited them we notice that time goes slower there and there seem to be more minutes in each day.

After the family leaves, we have a few more pleaant things planned. I need to row a bit to get used to the boat again; I've got a cross-country flight to plan and fly up to our property on the rim (VFR so I can enjoy the scenery); Rudder and I are 80% sure that this is the bed we're buying as our gift to each other. And though it willprobably take some weeks for it to be delivered, I'll be happy to spend plenty of the holiday break snoozing in our old bed.

plumbing emergency

Note the time stamp on this entry. It's not one you'll often see from me, considering our usual weekday bedtime is 8. Not only do we get up early for rowing but we both find massive amounts of exercise demand extra sleep.

Last night I noticed water dripping off the roof. My first thought was the heat pump, because we'd had one of the two replaced last summer. So I called those people and they said, yes the heat pump could drip when defrosting. It seemed to be dripping a *lot*, though. Well, tonight it was still dripping. (Both nights I got home after dark and wasn't too thrilled about climbing up on the roof when I couldn't see anyway.) So called back and they confirmed it wouldn't drip *that* much so I thought and finally realized it must be the solar water heater. (OK, I'm not too bright in plumbing matters.) Oops. I've called the company who replaced our solar panel a few years ago. (I was actually very pleased and surprised that both of these places were open, since I didn't get home until 6:30 or so.) They told me to unplug the control unit for now and they'd call me tomorrow and arrange a time to send someone that day.

I had made arrangements for the solar panel guys to come out tomorrow, then finally was heading up to bed (8:30) when I noticed a bulging spot on the wall by Rudder's side of the bed. And though it wasn't dripping and neither was the ceiling, the floor there was wet. When I looked in the erg room (the bedroom next to ours) the ceiling over the bookshelf was wet, too. That's when I got *really* worried. I brushed my teeth, cleaned the litterbox, washed my hands from that, turned off the water outside and called a 24-hour plumber. Then I called work to say I'd be in late tomorrow.

The plumber got here an hour later. (Thank goodness for 24-hour plumbing services!!) He went up into the attic, got all around in there and couldn't find the problem. Went up on the roof and finally found it, thank goodness. Apparently there's a hairline crack in the pipe to the solar panel. Over time that saturated the cover around the pipe. I think most of the water dripped off the roof, but the saturation in the pipe covering backed up and that's what got behind the walls. So since the broken pipe's outside, he can get to it to fix it relatively easily (note: his first try just failed when he turned the pump back on, so only relatively easily) and all we'll have to do is patch the spot on our bedroom wall where the bulge was (it's not all that big; the bulge was fist-size) and maybe put some spackle on the ceiling in the erg room. Whew. Since it is the pipe to the panel that's leaking, at the very worst he can turn off the valves to the solar. The water heater uses a combination of electric and solar power and can works just fine on electric alone, so that wouldn't be a big problem.

My plan is to get to work 10 hours from whenever I get to bed - 8 to sleep, 1 to erg, one to shower, dress, and drive. It's probably a good thing I was there from 7:30 until 6 today.

On the plus side, I used the time to get a bunch more cards done and more of the tree decorated. It's not my first choice of ways to find more time, but at least I can hope for a happy ending....

weird

I should really avoid reading WeirdJews. I keep getting sucked in to commenting on things I don't know enough about, at least not compared to some of the people there. Clearly, it's all Mechaieh's fault - that I get sucked in, I mean, since I had never heard of the community until she mentioned it. Not her fault that I comment when ignorant, or that I'm ignorant to begin with.

It is pretty interesting to see a community combining Jews who are weird because they are frum with ones who are weird because they are intermarried or into Zen Buddhism or pierced and tattooed. Sometimes there are fireworks but I suppose being there at all says a lot for people's willingness to build community.

And me with my menorah in one room (the holiday is over so I need to clean off the wax and put it away) and my tree and much assorted paraphernalia in another. Between the beading stuff and the tree-and-house-decorating stuff and the not-being-home-much, my place is a mess. I hope I can get most of it done and put away by this weekend.

Come to think of it, this will be Rudder's extremely rural paternal grandparents' first visit to our house - they don't travel much. They live in a town of 3000 people, the biggest one for a hundred miles or more in every direction. There are several churches, but I'm not sure if there's fast food (not much of a loss there) and they have to go to metropolitan (not) Klamath Falls for any shopping much beyond a supermarket or hardware store. And they have wonderful stories about life during WWII or growing up on a homestead. I wonder what they'll make of my menorah and mezuzah?

They know I'm Jewish, of course, though we haven't ever talked much about it. They must have met other Jews .... I think.

the tree

What do the Rose Window of the (US) National Cathedral, a hiking boot, the Eiffel Tower, a kayak (two, actually), a Beefeater, the Sydney Opera House, a leaf from Walden Pond (dipped in gold: I'm not sure Thoreau wold approve), some Korean tassels, an Alaskan sled dog, a Waterford crystal goblet, a REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT tag, and glass art from Oregon have in common?

Ans: They're all on my tree right this minute. We have a "travel" tree, for which we pick up ornaments wherever we go. I haven't even started on the shiny balls and icicles yet, because it's so much fun to hang these first for all the memories they bring. There are also the red and gold balls and crystal ornaments from our first Christmas tree together, and the tuna-can snowflakes from the tiny tree I had for a friend who visited me at Christmas before I'd even met Rudder.... those are good memories too. It's not my holiday, but I do love the accoutrements.

in order (more or less)

This morning for some reason I have Jimi Hendrix's Stone Free running around my head. Now it seems to be some tiddly circus music. Of course, everytime I think about that the Hendrix comes back but only for a moment and then it's diddly-ump-ump-ump, deedaly-dump-bump-bump again.

One thing I'm pleased about is that with all the running around this weekend, I really did get a lot of stuff done and did it in the right order. (As in, "I need to do some holiday cards and also laundry this evening so I should start the laundry first so there's time to get it into the dryer before I go to bed.) And I worked steadily instead of running from one half-done task to another. That doesn't mean I'm becoming more organized or anything, but it is a good sign that I'm not sleep-deprived any more. Tonight I'll buy some more strings of lights (whose price will determine whether I throw away or try to fix some old ones that aren't working right), finish putting the lights on the tree and get at least most of the ornaments on, and then write some more cards. Or it might be better to wait until Rudder's back to decorate the tree and get my last bit of holiday knitting done. What was that about doing things in order again?

Thankful for: Libraries. Just in general. I like libraries.
Holiday challenge: 59000m to go.

running like a chicken

Bad idea: getting a 9' tree right before the taller member of the household leaves for Europe for a week in prime tree-decorating time. We, uh, got a little carried away; we'd decided to put the tree in the front living room instead of the famaily room this year and the ceiligs are higher, and Rudder does have that tendency to go a bit overboard, and.... Actually I overstate. I think it was only 8 1/2'. Either way, I couldn't reach the top to put the topper on, and we have the Coolest Tree Topper ever, that we bought a couple of years ago. It's a Santa in a biplane; there's a candy-striped pole with a star on top that's hitched to the tallest branch and the biplane hangs off a hook and flies in a circle around the tree. I finally got it on by the simple expedient of bringing in clippers and lopping off that highest branch. (What? The pole is meant to go well above it. I didn't make the tree any shorter.) Only problem is..... apparently I hooked Santa onto his wire facing the wrong way. So he flies backwards. Oops. I'm not taking him off; it was hard enough putting him on. I think it will be easy for Rudder to turn him around when he gets home.

Other issue with a tree that big: I need to remember to get some more lights when I stop at the drugstore tomorrow. But the 2/3 that are lit up look good.

This weekend I did my best imitation of a cheicken with its head cut off: lots of running, not much squawking. Yesterday I went to a very high-maintenence party. There was a gift-swap and an ornament swap AND you were supposed to bring a dish. Yeesh. The first two were optional but I didn't feel like sitting around watching everyone else get presents. So I spent all day preparing for that. Correction: first I dropped Rudder off at the airport at 8, then I went to the boatyard and erged 8km, then I got check out in a coaching launch (She-Hulk and I were scheduled to do that at 9:30 and I didn't feel like driving home in between, hence the boatyard erging. I'm spoiled. Those ergs are icky.) Then I went to Ikea to get a prty gift in case I didn't finish the scarf I was knitting (and about $80 worth of other stuff for the house) then I came home and knitted frantically for two hours, finished my scarf but decided to also give the photo frame I'd bought, then I went to the supermarket for ingredients, then I made Mexican Layer Dip for the party. Then I went to the party. Did I mention it was 50 miles away?

At least I got to sleep in a wee bit today. Other than that it was a similarly frantic round. The List for the next week:

Finish lighting the tree
Decorate the tree
Finish decorating the rest of the house
Finish the remaining half or 2/3 of my cards and send them out
Knit one more dishrag
Knit a hat for my MIL
Clean house for company arriving 12/23
Erg 67000 km
Wrap presents
Make several more ornaments

Breathe.

On the other hand this weekend we got the tree and set it up. I got Rudder off to the Netherlands. I erged 18000m. I put together and shipped a gift package. I got organized for a group donation to the Heifer Project I'm handling. I did lots of cards. I finished knitting a scarf, made 8 beaded stitch markers and 4 ornaments, did assorted kinds of shopping, did 2 loads of laundry, saw some former coworkers I like, got checked out in the launch, made some decisions about how I'm working on the instrument rating, made myself some earrings (just since starting this entry) and probably other stuff I'm forgetting. So at least I don't feel unaccomplished.

Thankful for: All the stuff that's finished and done.
Holiday Challenge:67000m left to go.

holiday of light

I have a post brewing in my mind about Chanukah being about not giving way to despair, but I think this is almost a prerequisite. The first year I had this journal I posted the lyrics to Peter Yarrow's Chanukah song, "Light One Candle". Every year since then I have been unable to resist posting it again, because every year since then the lyrics have become more and more timely. This year, given Recent Events, the tune has taken a new direction in my mind, and I find when I sing it I'm less apt to think of the miraculous oil that burned for eight days in the long-gone temple of Jerusalem, and more to be thinking of the torch of Liberty, here in the US and in other places around the world. May it burn bright and untarnished.

Light one candle for the Maccabee Children
With thanks that their light didn't die.
Light one candle for the pain they endured
When their right to exist was denied.
Light on candle for the terrible sacrifice
Justice and freedom demand.
Light one candle for the wisdom to know
When the peace maker's time is at hand.

Don't let the light go out
It's lasted for so many years
Don't let the light go out
Let it shine through our love and our tears.

Light one candle for the strength that we need
To never became our own foe.
Light one candle for those who are suffering
The pain we learned so long ago.
Light one candle for all we believe in
that anger won't tear us apart.
And light one candle to bring us together
With peace as the song in our hearts;.

Don't let the light go out,
It's lasted for so many years.
Don't let the light go out,
Let it shine through our love and our fears.

What is the memory that's valued so highly
That we keep it alive in that flame?
What's the commitment for those who have died,
When we cry out they have not died in vain?
We have come this far always believing
That justice would somehow prevail.
This is the burden, this is the promise,
THIS is why we will not fail.

Don't let the light go out,
It's lasted for so many years.
Don't let the light go out,
Let it shine through our love and our fears.

Don't let the light go out!
Don't let the light go out!
Don't let the light go out!

sigh

Not even 8AM and I am already not having a good day.

My Dad's still got health issues. The purely physical stuff is better but he's also bipolar (though it's usually held in check with maintenance meds) and is in a manic episode. Ever talked to someone who was clinically manic? It might be amusing IF it were someone you didn't know and you didn't care what sort of trouble they got into. Not so much in this case. It seems to be a relatively minor episode (he's not planning any get-rich-quick schemes) but he keeps calling to try to get me to help convince Mom they should buy a new car, and his is only a year old. At least he wants a Honda Civic Hybrid, not a Lexus.

My husband's got this itchy spot on his face and scalp - I can't see anything there to cause it but it's been keeping him awake and it's infuriating enough to make him go see a doctor (he generally only goes for serious things). My guess is spider bite - I'm hoping they can give him something to numb it.

And early this morning I had a small accident. No, not in a car, in an airplane. We were on the ground at the time (fortunately), taxiiing out. It was dark, there was no taxi line painted on the ground, and we clipped the wingtip of a parked airplane. Sigh. There was no danger or injury, at least. I couldn't see any damage to the Cessna I was in; the other one (also a Cessna 172) will need a wingtip (a small separate part) replaced. With luck that will be all the repairs necessary.

Nope, not a good day. I suppose this could all be worse. Hopefully the appropriate people / airplane doctors will be able to fix things fairly easily in all three cases.

forgetterizing madly

Chanukah begins tonight. There are at least two posts (well, one real one, one with lyrics) that I've been waiting for this holiday to post. I'd better start writing.

This Holiday Challenge - or something - is leaving me very tired. Yesterday I stayed home from work just from exhaustion, and yet I felt good Sunday until I did the 75-minute piece. (It was a new personal record, did I mention? Or rather, within it I set a new record for distance in 60 minutes.) I was tired again this morning but I think it was just from this morning's erging, not a cumulative thing. Rudder and I had a long discussion last night; he's contemplating scaling way back on training after the World Masters Games this summer, but isn't sure what he'll do instead. He needs to have a project, preferably with lots of activity involved or as he says, he's neither happy or healthy. I only the other hand can be perfectly content with sedentary pursuits (reading, knitting, beadwork) punctuated by activity, instead of constant activity. I'm still not convinced about blood-type-based diets, but that book was frighteningly accurate about the type of exercise we each see to need.

Unfortunately, when I'm tired I also get stupid. For instance I realized today what went wrong with the coaster I was knitting (and then frogging) last night: five repeats of a three-stitch pattern plus two plain stitches on either side does not add up to seventeen stitches. I can fix that though; what's much worse is that I can't find the beautiful dichroic glass barrette I bought Saturday. I know I was looking at it yesterday and I'm hoping I didn't absent-mindedly throw it away. It'll probably turn up in the refrigerator or someplace similarly unlikely. I couldn't find the shirt I wanted to wear this morning either. How do you mislay an entire corduroy shirt? I don't even think I've worn it so far this year. I wonder if I ripped it last year and threw it away. Maybe it's eloped with my barrette?

Speaking of dichroic glass, since my new job isn't oo far from a large bead wholesale sort of place, I've been meaning to go and today I nipped over at lunch. I hadn't been there for a year or more and it turns out they're now selling beautiful dichroic beads at a bulk price, $1 / gram. I see more dichroic earrings in my near future - I feel like I should recall a beadwork gift I mailed out a couple of days ago, just so I could redo it with my signature glass. Oh well, too late, and it came out well anyway with the beads I did use.

Another thing I forgot: to take pictures of the things I mailed this weekend so I could post pictures here of my finished objects later, after the recipient sees them. Oh well again. My forgetterer is going at full speed these days.

One more thing I've been forgetting:

Thankful for: Chanukah starts tonight, reminding me that we Jews are still here. From Haman to Herod to Hitler, there were a lot of people who tried to make sure that either I - me personally, this affects the person living in this head, it's not just ancient history -- didn't exist at all, or that I wasn't Jewish, in which case if I existed (and would all my ancestors have married the same people, given a wider pool to choose from?) I would certainly be a different person in many respects. That's pretty amazing, that I am here despite them all. Glad to be here, even if I was clearly brainwashed in all those Hebrew School years.

Holiday Challenge: About 110000 m left to go.

pooped

After yesterday's long distance piece (75 minutes) I'm totally wasted. I cranked out a very slow 7600m this morning, just so I wouldn't fall behind, and then called in sick. It's a perfect day for it, rainy and chill, and I'm sitting here with hot chocolate listening to the rain. I'm planning to mostly sit in one pace and just rest today. Well, and finish some knitting and beading but at least that's sedentary.

and...and...and

Dad's out of the hospital. Mom took him in on Friday for an alarming group of symptoms including dizziness, slurred speech, and short-term memory loss; it looks now like those were all caused by high blood sugar (he's diabetic and not particularly careful about it) and possibly a TIA (mini-stroke - he had one of those before when I was in high school). He says he feels better now than he has in 20 years, though from what my brother says I'm not sure I believe that. Still, though I know how serious diabetes can be, his is adult onset and not all that severe and I'm glad it's "only" that and not something new. At least that's something that's nonlethal, if he works harder at controlling it.

Meanwhile, my weekend was relatively calm and productive. I still haven't done anything on my cards, but I got two presents finished and mailed and another started. Also a small party on Friday night, a flying lesson today (ground, not in the airplane), a trip to the Tempe Arts Fest Saturday in which I only got to see maybe a quarter of the booths (it's enormous), 4000m on the erg yesterday, a 75-minute 144000 piece today incorporating a 60 minute personal record, a food shopping trip today, visits to two furniture stores looking for the bed Rudder and I have agreed to give each other for Christmas, calls to my parents each day to check on Dad .... I keep wondering, is this what other people's less frenetic weekends look like?

this and that (and that and that and that...)

I'm just back from the department Christmas luncheon. Well, technically it was a "holiday" lunch and everyone carefully said "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". But there were enormous wreaths on the restaurant walls including one with antique-ish but oddly disembodied Santa heads all over it (were their bodies cut off and used in the stew?) and the VP wore a Twelve Days of Christmas tie (which would come in handy as a cheat sheet if you were singing that song and had trouble remembering) so, you know, really it was a CHristmas party. However, it was free and there were steaks; I am not complaining. It was nice.

I am looking forward to this weekend. Aside from a small party Friday night and flying Sunday morning and some food shopping somewhen, I need to get finished making the ____ for ____ so I can mail it with the other things going out that way. (The scary part is that there's more than one object fitting in those dashes.) Then there's some other gift knitting I'm postponing because it doesn't have to be done until Christmas. And I need to do cards, though my decision to computer-print all the labels this year will help a lot there. (Does anyone really mind if the label isn't handwritten as long as the message in the card is?) And I need to read Mer's story because I promised and I want to give her feedback before it's too late to be useful.

Hmmm. So maybe if I print the story, since it will be on paper and not in a book and thus will lay flat, I can read that while knitting .... but not while beading. Drat. Or maybe I shouild try doing one thing at at a time to see if I finish faster. Or maybe I could figure out how to erg and read and put knitting needles in place of the erg handle.....

Not complaining, not at all. These are all pleasant tasks, with the possible exception of erging and food shopping. It all sounds to me like a good way to spend a weekend.

another Murphy day

Quite possibly this is the funniest thing you'll see this holiday season - at least if you're a geek like me.

Also, check this watercolor out - that's my lake and the rower could as well be me. I was able to find a phone number for someone who has the name of that artist; I'm thinking of calling him to see if he's done any others like it.

Today quite a few of the things that could go wrong did, though at least the first one to do so redeemed itself.

At ten 'til five, I got into my cold car (the garage door still being broken) and drove to the little airport a quarter of a mile away to meet my flight instructor. Five AM, no CFI. Five after, no CFI. At ten after I left a note and went home - I'd have waited longer but a convertible that has been sitting outside overnight is not the warmest of vehicles when temperatures are in the low 30s. At home I took off my jackets (fleece and shell), hung them off and had one shoe off and was considering whether to erg, work, or do some of the studying for the IFR I'd been neglecting, when the phone rang. Of course it was my instructor, who has just moved and who had seriously underestimated how long her drive to the airport would take. Back again to the airport, and we did have just enough time to get a good lesson in. ("Good" being a relative term. I don't like doing stalls, let alone doing them under the hood.)

Next it was home to wait for the garage-door repairman and to try to install the software and certificate onto my new laptop that will let me work from home in future. The repairman won that one; it was fifteen minutes after he'd finished that we (I and the person from the "Help" Desk) finally got the software in and almost working - that is, it seemed to be working and I got no other error messages but apparently the remote server was down so I couldn't actually log in. Then I walked over to tell my next-door neighbor his sprinkler-system pump was squealing. (He'd heard it but had thought it was a car alarm; I was afraid it might be his burglar alarm and was pondering whether to call the police if he hadn't been home.) Then it turned out the repairman didn't win after all, because as I was trying to leave for work the garage door wouldn't close all the way. By then, of course, the repairer was long gone, so I called his company, they had him call me back, and we arranged for me to leave the side door open so he could get in to fix it without me there.

The laptop had shown one odd behavior at home: when booting up the screen would go blank as if it were trying to use a projector or other monitor instead and I'd have to hit F8 to get the display back. This turned out to be foreshadowing. When I got to the office I found the silly thing had decided it likes its independence; now it goes blank while booting up in the docking station and will not show any display after the first Windoze splash screen, though it works well enough when not docked. I've called IT about it and after trying afew things they promised to send out one of their local people to address the problem. That was, oh five hours ago now. This laptop screen is tiny. There's a reason I used quotes when mentioning the "Help" Desk in the last paragraph. Eyestrain R Me today. But apparently the garage door is now working.

scraping

Last night our garage door broke (the spring above the door is now in two pieces) so I had to park outside .... and this morning I had to scarpe frost off my windshield. Here in Arizona, ice scrapers are NOT something we habitually keep in the car.

Of course it was just a light frost so a credit card worked fine for scraping purposes, but still, for Arizona this is just Not Right. And I erged at home this morning, so it was 7AM when I was leaving for work - not like it was a 4:30AM drive to rowing. Just Not Right.

a little mystery

Several things:

1) Today I received a mystery package, presumably a Chanukah gift. It was addressed only to me, not Rudder and comes from Borderland Books, but there was no note on the box or in it to say who it's from. I got Rudder to unbox it, and the book (I assume it's a book) is still in brown wrapping, so there might be a note inside. I've asked Rudder to look, so that I don't see what it is until Chanukah begins. Rudder is into delayed gratification so we generally don't open presents until the holiday. I don't much mind this, though I think it's silly when even on his birthday he waits until dinnertime to open presents. However, being fonder of short-term gratification myself, and because it's addressed only to me, I will assume it's for Chanukah, not Christmas. Anyway, if it's from one of you out there (and if so, who?) it got here, and I thank you preliminarily. I'll thank you for real after I open it.

2) Our turkey on Thanksgiving was the worst I've ever made. No fault of mine, I don't think - we got just the breast and it was way too juicy and the injected juices didn't taste like real turkey. Bleah. On the other hand, my kasha was flavorful, the cookies I baked were/are excellent, and the pumpkin pastries were great. The only problem with the latter was that I made the full recipe and had way too much left over after I filled the pastry shells. I put the rest of the batter in the fridge, got a graham-cracker crust the next day, and made a pie. Tasty.

3) LJ appreciation meme. Maria is true-blue; you can absolutely rely on her to always try to do right and act kindly. She is honest, good, and giving, and tries to improve in a way that's now out of fashion, but that I appreciate because some of my own ideas are old ones.

I can't write about Maria without writing about her faith and I think she'd be glad of that. It's a funny thing. I previously wrote about LA, who is not religious - not sure if she's atheist, agnostic, or Deist, but she isn't into churches. I could make a good case that LA is a good person because she's not religious; if you don't believe that God ordered the estate of the rich man ad the poor man, or that anybody's second coming will make everything all right, it stands to reason you'd better get busy and fix the world yourself, best you can. Maria is almost the polar opposite: she's a Christian who lives her faith and who is both better and pleasanter because of it. I know something about this. Like many American Jews, I suspect, I have a rather Christianized morality, from keeping company with Jo March, with Aslan, and with the Christianized versions of fairy tales we get from Andersen and the Grimms. (Also maybe from Hillel and the rabbis who stressed a merciful God rather than a purely just one and the need for men and women to treat our neighbors well, but that's another story.) Maria lives more like Jo March than like many more vocal modern Christians; she uses her faith as a yardstick not to measure other people and find them lacking but to see where she herself needs to improve, and she preaches only by her own example. I don't know if she believes that different people have different paths to righteousness or only that they need to find their own paths to Jesus, but either way she refrains from forcing her views even on those she loves most. Her joy in her God is evident and so is her joy in her friends, her family and her husband. I hope they all work to deserve her as she does to measure up to them.

traditions begin again

I hereby declare that this journal has been around long enough (since March 2001) to have Traditions. Two things begin at Thanksgiving for me every year: from Thanksgiving to Christmas Concept II sponsors their Holiday Challenge, to row 200,000 meters from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve, and I like to track the decreasing meters here. Also, the first year I kept this diary, I began listing one thing I am thankful for on each entry from Thanksgiving to Christmas (or at least once a day).

I haven't gotten my erg meters in today (though I have baked cookies, made kasha and bowties, and got my turkey in the over, so that will have to wait until after dinner. (Long after.) However, I promised to write about anyone who writes in and asks me to, so I'll combine two pleasant tasks here. (There's still time to get in on that. Yes, I'm talking to you.)

I'll give each person their own entry.

I'm thankful I know LA. I've been reading her now for a couple of years, during which she's variously amused, interested, educated and galvanised me, while talking about everything from politics to parenting to clothing to the Craft. I've seen her grow through difficult marital times and shrink herself down to where she's now longer camouflaging her fire in excess flesh. LA speaks her mind, always (at least always when she's online), but, and this is the beauty part for a data-driven person like me, she's never ignorant about it. She's opinionated but no matter how mad she may be she always has facts to back up her view. Even when her views are colored by her prejudices, she'll resist acting on them if the data points the other way.

Despite her views on "Chihuahuas", for example, she has taken pains to point out that she only includes in that class small helpless-looking manipulative bitchy women. As a small helpless-looking woman myself, I appreciate that. I also think it's kind of funny that tall, blonde, well-built, fiercely smart women sometimes think the world responds better to petite dark-haired women when it's so clearly the other way. :-) I wonder if Ellizabeth Peters had someone like LA in mind when she created the tall, blonde, well-built, fiercely smart and fearsomely educated Vicky Bliss -- who, Peters fans will recall, gets to sleep with one of the sexiest male leads *ever*, Sir John Smythe.

Another thing I'm thankful for is that the FDA has just approved a new drug for MS that apparently has a lot of promise. Because can you imagine an LA with nothing holding her body back from doing all her mind can accomplish? If this drug works as well as they hope, I'm standing back.

Holiday Challenge: The whole 200,000 meters to go. I hope to take 6600 of that off tonight.
Thankful for: See above.

dinner and not much else

My current knitting project is supposed to be small and easy - and it would be, if I didn't end up pulling out almost as many rows as I knit. I keep thinking I'm done with the two-color part only to see a hole at the join where I forgot to wrap the yarns around each other. I think this morning's telecon was a draw: two rows knitted, two rows frogged.

I am unreasonaby excited about the long Thanksgiving weeked, maybe mostly because I have very little planned. Thursday there will be cooking, of course, but it's just the two of us. We're having a roasted turkey breast instead of our more usual deep-fried huge bird (the latter will be for Xmas), tomato-and-bread salad, asparagus, kasha varnishkes, possibly stuffing (neither of us is a huge fan, but I want to try a new recipe), cranberry sauce from a can (Rudder doesn't like it and I don't feel like making my own for just me), and pumpkin pastries (another experiment - I'll make pumpkin pie filling and cook it in Pepperidge Farm puff pastry shells). If I can find or make daiquiri mix there may be cranberry daiquiris, from Rudder's aunt's recipe. There may also be cookie-baking. It's been a long time since I've baked cookies.

Other than that, there isn't much planned - one flying lesson, a little work on the boats, more knitting, purchasing Mom's birthday gift, some reading because I've done so little lately that I'm in withdrawal, and oh yes, approximately 26400 meters on the erg. Concept II's annual holiday challenge to erg 200,000 between Thanksgiving and Xmas begins Thursday.

sharing the love

I like this meme. I'm always a little skeptical of those that say something like "Comment here and tell me why you love me," because it seems a little presumptuous to assume people do. So here's a new twist I like a lot better, where no one will get their feelings stomped on. Kipped from the (very cool) Kiwi Maria:

1. Reply to this post if you want/need me to tell you how cool you are!

2. Watch my journal over the next few days for a post just about you and why I think you rock my socks.

3. Post these instructions in your journal and give your friends a much needed dose of love and adoration!

CAVEAT: if I barely know you, this might be a bit difficult. Please don't be offended.

mangling trees and manipulating wood sticks

It seems like I spent the whole weekend mangling and macerating trees - and when I wasn't doing that I still had my hands on wood sticks. On Saturday we drove up to our airpark property, because we needed to cut down a few more casualties of drought and bark beetle. We've been getting more rain lately as well as snow in the high country, so I'm hoping these will be the last to die. Cutting down a dead tree feels like attending a funeral.

On Sunday there was even more fun with clippers and saw as we did a much-too-belated trimming of our pineapple palm. Even after stomping the assorted (lethally sharp) fronds and other tree parts down three times, they were heaped up so high in my pickup that we had to strap them down. Disposing of them at the town dump, where you back up to a ledge and toss your debris down into a dumpster, would have been a lot easier if the wind hadn't been blowing over the dumpsters and straight at us.

That wind got me a little more free time in the afternoon, though: I'd been scheduled to fly but my instructor called saying it was just too windy. The downside to that is that I haven't been up for nearly a month now. I filled in the time knitting, paying bills, printing labels for holiday cards and doing laundry. A wild life, it is. The conclusion from the bill paying is that I am still quite broke, between the missed paycheck when I transferred jobs, some money I owe Rudder from all our traveling, my holiday shopping,. I ought to be in better shape as I "borrowed" money from savings to cover the missed check, but in fact I have been spending like a fiend. My new raise would help a lot, except that less than half made it into my check after taxes. I think I may just have to run a balance this month and next on my credit card, a thing I usually try to avoid. However, I do still have the flight training reimbursement to look forward to and a bonus in February. And there ought to be a decent tax return, but that may go to replacing all our windows.

Anyway. On Saturday night I went to the local Stitch and Bitch group's sleepover at my friend Alison's business. (Alison was referred to as Pigtails in her rowing days, during the early years of this blog, but she uses her real name online so I suppose I can.) That was interesting - I never get out to S'n'B things due to lack of time but this one was at a time I could make and close to home. There were only about six of us there, but it was nice to meet people, and they seemed interesting. (Looking through someone's copy of Bust magazine was especially interesting as its content appears to be an odd combination of Jane, In Style, Ms., and Penthouse Forum.) I finally managed to get the eyelash yarn scarf for Rudder's grandmother untangled and completed, got a good start on another dishrag, and got some helpful advice on changing colors mid-row.

I also concluded that when subsituting powdered cumin for toasted cumin seeds in dressing, it's best to reduce the quantity by more than a little, and Rudder perfected his salmon-grilling technique (apparently a combination of butter and Jack Daniels is useful in getting the grill to flare up and give it just the right amount of blackening). Yum.

Candles, dammit!

Note to merchants in the region of Chandler, Arizona: I am Jewish and I am here.

Your Christmas displays are all very nice but Christmas, despite the marketing pressure to start the holiday season earlier and earlier each year, is not unti December 25. Chanukah begis December 7 this year. I want my candles, dammit.

I'm talking to you, Michaels, with your aisles and aisles of candles. Christmas doesn't even need candles, now most people put electric lights on their tree. Chanukah observations require it - so where are they? And I'm talking to you, Pier 1, who try to cultivate such an international atmosphere. You have ginger-scented candles and pine-scented candles and beach-scented candles. How about some that will fit my menorah? I'll even forgo the scent. I'm talking to you, Walgreen, with your seasonal aisle full of wiggling Santas and gift wrap. And most of all I'm talking to you, Cost Plus's so-called World Market. How about those parts of the world that aren't Xtian? And how can you have a floor-to-ceiling banner talking about Chanukah, the Festival of Lights on which we kindle the "sacred Menorah" [sic] yet not have a single Chanukah item other than a few gift bags in blue and white with six-pointed stars? (Even there I had to check closely because they were mixed in with blue and white bags featuring Santa's elves.) And please, while I appreciated your salepeople's helpful attitude, it doesn't help when they tell me the holiday goods are stocked in phases. Chanukah is two weeks away!!!! It's not going to do me any good getting my candles in time for Christmas.

American is not a Christian nation. It's a nation founded on values with a historically Judeo-Christian background and grown on contributions by people of all faiths. Today we are a pluralistic society with many beliefs and many holidays. So how about we stock our stores that way??

My non-Jewish husband and I celebrate both Chanukah and Christmas. I wouold prefer not to start the holiday season already pissed off at Christmas for totally taking over my culture.

gifties

Before my head got hijacked again by the Israeli situation, I was thinking on more pleasant lines: holiday gifts. I do enjoy trying to find the perfect thing for each person. Rudder and I decided to buy a bed together - we just have a mattress, boxspring and frame, no headboard or footboard, and it's by the window so there's not even a wall to lean pillows on, and they tend to slip toward the window even while we're trying to get to sleep. The hazard, of course, is that it's already a comfy nest that's hard to persuade ourselves to get out of, and making it more comfortable may not help matters. I also have to get Rudder a gift for his birthday on the 23rd; so far I'm going with a ###### (letters omitted just in case he sees this for any reason) but still could change my mind and return it or possibly add something else.

I have the same issue with my brother and mother - needing both a birthday and a Chanukah gift. I've made a scarf for Mom, and she's asked for gym gear. I want to get her good wicking fabrics rather than cotton so it's just a matter of seeing what I can find that doesn't cost a fortune. (I have the same problem with my own workout gear - as much as I Like some of the things in the catalogs, I have issues with $40 sport tops (or $80 for fleece ones) and $60 pants.) I have one gift bought and ordered for the brother and just need another one now. He and my uncle are both fairly easy to buy for, because they have so many interests, and because I share enough of those interests to know what to get. I'm thinking of a nice leather passport wallet for my uncle. (The only problem with some of these gift ideas is making sure I don't repeat ones from previous years!)

Dad is the hard one. He doesn't have any hobbies to speak of but reading and napping, so this year I am going to combine pastimes and buy my father a husband. (You know, one of those pillows shaped for reading in bed - I just like saying it the other way.)

Yesterday, I had a revelation as to the perfect gift for one friend, but it's something I have to make - between that and a few other things, like untangling the scarf for Rudder's grandmother, my knitting needles will be busy. (I was binding it off when I realized I waw out of yarn and should have done so a row earlier. I tried to back up a row, dropped a stiches and now, several pulled-out rows of eyelash yarn back, am still in a hopeless tangle. It so was fast to knit that I'm tempted just to start over, but that's probably not the best idea.) I've got the Mobius scarf for Rudder's mother done, and he can deal with the rest of the gifts for his family. We also have to buy something for AR and OG, and maybe for Rudder's young cousins, but shopping for toys is always something to look forward.

Oh, and then there's a gift exchange - need to find something for that person. She's a reader and a knitter, and collects children's books - maybe I need a knitting book for kids? And then there are cards, lots and lots of cards since I have been so foolish as to sign up for not one but two list holiday card exchanges. Also, I htink the parents and grandparents in-law are coming for the holiday, so I believe some baking may be in my forecast, as well as assorted meal planning. For the rest of the next month, I may be found either on the erg (for the Holiday Challenge) or drowning happily in holiday clutter.

abandoned

I have a feeling work's about to be a little scary. Of the people who work in my department, one guy's off in military training about to be deployed to Iraq for a year, one guy's in the Czech Republic at our plant there for two weeks, and one guy's on vacation for two weeks. And then thee's me, in the job for about three weeks now. Yikes. There are other people in the department, but they all work on different stuff. Of course, the boss is still here....but I'm not sure if that's a helpful thing or not.

you know WHO???

I am glad I posted those questions the other day. I wrote them not as a test but in hopes other people would share some of the off coincidences and bits of knowledge that please them. I'd have to say that succeeded, at least as far as coincidences go.

As a direct result of some ensuing conversation, one reader and I discovered some mutual friends.

Now, the world has always seemed smaller to me than the number of people in it would indicate. I was amused when we were two days out on a trail in Big Bend, one of the more remote parts of Texas, and someone hiking by the other way recognized me from Houston. I thought it was a little bizarre when we went to a rock-climbing class at Smith Rock in Central Texas and ran into someone I'd worked with at Penn. Aerospace is a smaller world, so I wasn't terribly shocked to walk through the halls at my company right before I left and run into a coworker from three jobs before who was just starting there, or to meet someone yesterday who had first hired a rowing friend of mine who used to work at yet another site in this company and is now in DC.

But this .... this is really weird. I'm not sure I can get across the oddness of this coincidence without lots of background and more details on other people than I want to give, but I'll try. This reader suggested that we might have some mutual acquaintances given our common interests and city of origin, so we exchanged a few details of who went to school where and so on, and I suggested a few names. Now, granted some of the interest communities are tight, but Philadelphia's a big, big city. It turns out that my best friend in high school was her best friend in junior high -- so I realized later on that some of the stuff she'd told me were things I'd already heard, back in about 10th grade from our mutual friend. We never had met, because none of us had driver's licenses yet so it was easy to lose touch after transferring schools.

That's not all of it, though. I have (still have) a friend I met when I was in college. He was a bit older but worked in one of the labs and used to hang out with some of my other friends. We became good friends when I got into folk music, because he'd been a fixture in that community for years. It turns out this reader has known him since she was a pup, because her parents were into some of the same groups. Now, he has no connection (that I know) of to my high school friends other than me and this reader; if they were ever met at all, it's likely to have been at my college graduation party.

This is just mind-numbingly odd. Or as she wrote, "There are only 87 real people in the world. All the rest are just bad special effects."

Anyhow, answers are below the cut tag.

• What character appears in the works of both John Myers Myers and Susan Cooper? Golias in Silverlock is the archetypal bard; his use-name comes from medieval French romances and his other names are other mythical [song]makers throughout Western tradition. They include Widsith (Old English / Norse), Orpheus (Greek), Amergin (Irish), Demodocus (Greek again), Boyan (Russian) and the one I'm most familiar with, Taliesin (Welsh). It is Taliesin who guides Will and Bran through the Lost Land in Susan Cooper's The Grey King. Taliesin shows up also in Tennyson's Idylls of the King and, if I'm not misremembering, in Lloyd Alexander's Prydain trilogy, and in Charles de Lint's Moonheart (or maybe its sequel). He's an archetype and a well-known one; he makes appearances through a lot of fantasy.

  (And it's here I wish I were a fiction writer. You know how the subject of a wizard portrait in the Harry Potterverse can make appearances not only in adjacent frames but also in her or her other portraits hung anywhere in the world? What if Taliesin could rove throughout any of the books and myths in which he appears?)

• Name one book written by the man whose own personal library has been transplanted to the top floor of the Philadelphia Public Library's main building.
  When he died, the book collector A. Edward Newton donated his books to the Philadelphia Free Library. Newton was a contemporary and frequent customer of Dr. A.S. Rosenbach. His wife and daughter decided that if the Library were getting his books, they ought to have the whole library as well and so it was dismantled and relocated from his house in the suburbs, Oak Knoll, tothe Central Library in Center City Philadelphia, on the sixth floor just past the rare books section. They even have lighted backdrops outside the windows to make it look as if the room looks outside. I visited the library in December of 2001. Nearly two years later I was reading Newton's The Book Collecting Game and was shocked to realize I had actually stood in his library. Other books by Newton include The Greatest Book in the World and Other Papers; A Tourist in Spite of Himself and A Magnificant Farce and Other Diversions of a Book Collector. I have The Book Collecting Game and The Greatest Book in my favorite section of my library, the books about books. (My library doesn't compare to Newton's by several orders of magnitude in almost any aspect, but I like it.)
• When I was in college two of my favorite Japanese restaurants were named respectively Hikaru and Genji. For what literary reason is this amusing?
  The hero of Lady Murasaki's A Tale of Genji, which some people call the first novel ever published, is Hikaru no Genji, The Shining Genji. I think I learned about the coincidence of Hikaru and Genji while reading something speculating on Captain Sulu's first name. I still maintain a steady diet of F&SF is one of the easiest ways to become well-read, at least by proxy. (I mean, if you haven't read all the great stories and histories, you've at least read about a lot of them.)
• Cite internal proof (in his songs or on his CDs) that Stan Rogers read Robert A. Heinlein.
  If the lines in Stan Rogers' song Lies, "So this is Beauty's finish / Like Rodin's Belle Heaulmiere / The pretty maiden trapped inside the ranch wife's toil and care" don't owe something to the analysis of Rodin's sculpture in Heinlein's A Stranger in a Strange Land, I will eat my copy of Stranger. There was something on one of Stan's album covers, too (From Fresh Water, maybe) but I can't remember now what it was.
• In what way is John Adam's daughter Nabby's name the opposite of the word "apron"?
  The indefinite articles 'a' and 'an', and the possessive 'my' and 'mine' (archaic) sometimes bleed over into the next word. So "an napron" used to be "a napron" - this is also why you see "nuncle" for "uncle" in Shakespeare. John and Abigail Adams' daughter Abigail was called "Nabby" to distinguish her from her mother. I'm fairly sure that "mine" for "my" wasn't commonly used by the Adams' time but I'd bet Nabby for Abby, like Nan or Nancy as a nickname (originally "an ekename", meaning "an also-name" by the way) still sounded natural as sort of a survival from when "Mine Abby" would have sounded right.
Posted by dichroic at 10:14 AM | Comments (3)

the usual balance

The good news: Not only did I finish the Moebius scarf yesterday, late afternoon, but I thought I had enough yarn left for a matching hat -- and I finished that too! It's a simple hat with a roll brim. I got the basic pattern from the Yarn Girls' Guide to Simple Knits, but it was in fact very simple and I got bored a couple inches in so I added some mini-cables. I would have posted a picture, but Rudder had the digi-camera and he didn't get back until bedtime last night. I'll try to post one tonight or tomorrow.

The bad news: Well, they finally put me on the correct server for my new job site. Translation: I got here this morning and couldn't log in. We got that straightened out with one phone call, but somehow in the process they screwed up my email and I still can't get into that. Sigh....

Tomorrow I'll post answers to my trivia questions, so there's still time if you want to try answering them or (even better) post your own. Though the point was really not the answers but to share the nuggets of knowledge, or as Ruthie says, "Isn't it great how everyone has their own things they geek out about?"

What the ENT said

I finally got to an ENT specialist tonight. He opines that my "benign positional paroxysmal vertigo", or something like that, is caused by displacement of otoliths, crystals found in the ear. On looking up the website linked there, I'm surprised that he didn't do the Epley Repositioning Maneuver that seems to be mentioned in most of the websites. He did give me some exercises, though - maybe they do the same thing.

He also prescribed what may be one of my worst nightmares: the No-CATS diet. That is, no caffeine, alcohol, tobacco or salt until the dizziness goes away. So fine, I can avoid Cokes for a while. I can stay away from even my occasional beer. I don't smoke anyway. But no salt? No SALT???? How on earth is that supposed to work? And doesn't he know pretzels count as a major food group? I don't think we even have any food in the house that doesn't have salt in it, except maybe the container of pepper. For example, tomorrow is a rowing morning; that means today's typical meal choices would be a salad (salt in the dressing), soup (ever examined the label on a can of Campbell's?) or maybe a baked potato (salted butter). The potato or salad probably aren't too bad, especially if I made my own vinaigrette for the latte, but they aren't unsalted either. I ended up having tortellini instead, with cilantro pesto, which also had salt, but at least it was one of the last ingredients. (Incidentally, I would have thought cilantro pesto would be pesto made with cilantro, not pesto made from cilantro instead of basil. Not something I'll buy again.)

The theory behind the No-CATS diet is that it will keep me from adding more fluid to my ears, in case that exacerbates the effects. I don't see it listed on any of the websites as a typical therapy, but I can't suppose it would hurt, either. I'll do my best to at least cut down on the salt, and I'll do all my exercises. But I'd have to be much worse off than I am to get me to give up on pretzels.

the familiar rides along

In honor of Hallowe'en, I'm wearing a griffin on my shoulder today. (Or possibly a gryphon; we haven't discussed his preferred spelling.) My new coworkers seem to be amused by him, which is a good sign, I think.

What has surprised me, though, is not how many people don't recognize what he is -- it seems entirely reasonable to see a beak poking through feathery fur and not think "griffin", especially since his back legs are tucked into my shirt for stability -- but how many don't know what a griffin is. Maybe I should poll on unicorn recognition. Clearly, some people had misspent childhoods.

I always have trouble with a thing I know well, remembering when and why I learned it. That means I never know what to expect everyone else to know, and what things they may just not have come upon. Not having kids is probably a contributing factor, since I haven't gotten to watch someone else learning all the things there are to know to live in the world.

settling

I am unreasonably excited by the fact that I got to work with my hair wet this morning. It took me ten minutes or less to drive from the gym where I shower after rowing to work. If I decide to join the gym at work, it will be even a little faster - the other gym is in the wrong direction from the lake, though only by half a mile or so. There are a couple other incentives for joining the work gym. The weight equipment isn't bad, though not as nice as my regular gym, but it does have two ergs, rumor has it the hot water is more reliable, and they provide towels so I wouldn't have to have wet ones hanging in my car every day. If I do join, it will probably be in addition to my current gym, not instead. The two together cost less per month than a lot of the fancier gyms, and neither requires me to sign up to any long committment.

I did actually do one productive thing at work today, talked to someone about what else I'll be doing, and have got my exercise ball / office chair all set up and my badge converted, so I feel like I'm settling in a bit. I won't really be settled until I know what I'm doing without asking and my own computer instead of a borrowed one, so that's all a few weeks away.

I wonder if we'll know who will be President of the US by this time next week? Either way, for a better perspective on what's really important and how much impact we all have, go out and look at the Blood Moon tonight. Even better, if you can, do it with someone's arm around you.

it all evens out

I would just like to note that after steering a damn good course on one of the trickiest regatta courses in the world on Sunday, last night I managed to smack my head into a corner of my very own bedroom.

My left eyelid is still a little swollen and hurts, but at least it didn't develop into a full-blown black eye. That would have been a wonderful way to start a new job.

Here I am

Well, here I am in the new job. The boss is out of town this week, so there doesn't seem to be too much for me to do yet other than read documents and fight with IT over getting my account moved here. I'm sure a few weeks from now I'll be longing for calm again, but I expect this week to be on the slow side.

So that's two of the more nerve-wracking events of this fall over with and gone reasonably well so far: the big regatta and the job change. The next happening is company tomorrow night, which should be pleasant and not nerve-wracking at all. After that, there's only working on the IFR rating and the marathon regatta, both of which I get to take at my own pace.

One note: During my trip, the comments here got sledge-hammered with sp@m. In the process of trying to fix that from a hotel computer, I managed to delete some of the real ones, unfortunately. (Somehow, the character ";" got listed on my blacklist, so some comments containing it were deleted before I realized and stopped it.) So if you ever happen to notcie a comment of your missing, that's why - rest assured that I did read it and appreciate it when you posted, even if it's not there now.

a sad goodbye

All my work stuff is in boxes. My bag of Swedish fish is taped shut and the empty box of pretzels is in the trash. The exercise ball ball I use as a desk chair is deflated and boxed. All that's left is to send one more email, leave "Goodbye and Thank you" cards under my coworkers' doors, and go home.

*snif*

It's been a good job and a great bunch of people to work with.

Then again, what do you expect of a day that started with hearing of a dead body found in a lake ... right after we got off said lake?

Tomorrow it's off to Boston for the big regatta, so likely this is the last entry until after that. Regatta results can be seen at the Head of the CHarles website:
Rudder: Event 3M Men's Club Single bow #8 race @12:49 EST on October 23rd
Dichroic: Coxing a Rocky Mt. boat, Event 15W Women's Masters Four bow #16 @11:04 EST on October 24th
If this does not work enter the main web site at http://www.hocr.org and look around.

matchmaking

I did some of my favorite kind of matchmaking today. Not the romantic kind; I honestly don't quite know how to assess whether people will do well together and if it doesn't work there's apt to be a mess to clean up. What I like doing is introducing people with common interests: in this case one father who's just begun homeschooling his kindergartner to another who has three kids being homeschooled (and one in the larval stage) and who is passionate and committed about it. There are some people who homeschool because it's easier for parent or child (I doubt those kids learn much). There are some who homeschool because they're afraid of what the kids might learn in a (gasp) public school. And then there are some who do it because they're passionate about educating their kids the best they can, who are willing to seek out resources and study curricula and their children to see how the two can be best put together. I think both of these guys are that last sort - at least one is and one might be or become so. So this matchmaking may help not only the parents but the children. I feel like I've done a good deed.

Counting down to my last day - packing files, both the physical and the electronic sort. Yikes.

working

I'm not sure normal people (if such animals exist) have weekends quite like that, at least not routinely.

Two more days here. My office looks like a moving zone, comprising boxes and stuff waiting to be boxed or tossed.

Thanks to all who posted comments over the weekend. It was very, very nice to hear from real people, especially in view of the 60 sp@mbot comments I've had to delete today (MTBlacklist is a wonderful thing.)

Finally, the poetry meme, one of the better memes I've come across lately - I've seen this all over, and have come across several poems I hadn't seen before. So here are my contributions, though I'm afraid neither is very obscure: one from Stan Rogers, who, I'm pleased to see, did make it into the CBC's longer list of great Canadians, if not into the top ten; and one from Gerard Manley Hopkins, because as an imperfect and quirky thing myself, I've always liked it.

Giant

Cold wind on the harbour and rain on the road
Wet promise of winter brings recourse to coal
There's fire in the blood and a fog on Bras d'Or
The giant will rise with the moon.

'Twas the same ancient fever in the Isles of the Blest
That our fathers brought with them when they went West
It's the blood of the Druids that never will rest
The giant will rise with the moon.

So crash the glass down, move with the tide
Young friends and old whiskey are burning inside
Crash the glass down, Fingal will rise
With the moon

In inclement weather the people are fey
Three thousand year stories as the night slips away
Remembering Fingal feels not far away
The giant will rise with the moon

The wind's in the North, there'll be new moon tonight
But we have no circle to dance in its sight
So light a torch, bring the bottle, and build the fire bright
The giant will rise with the moon.
- Stan Rogers, 1976, on: Fogarty's Cove

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Gerard Manley Hopkins

show some love

Could somebody do me a big favor? Could somebody NOT a spammer please leave a comment?

Roughly the last fifty comments in here have been spam and I'm getting very sick of it. Does anyone really think this is a good way to get me to buy prescription drugs or gamble online? Because I'd have to say even if I'd been planning to do either I wouldn't give my business to a spammer.

As it turned out, I was flying today, not tomorrow. Between that nad the fact that the FBO (flight school / pilot shop) didn't have currnet maps, I didn't do the cross-country after all, just a regular flight. The row with Marathon D was this morning too, and we're loading Rudder's boat on a trailer or Boston late tonight 9that being when we expect the trailer in from LA) which means I have nothing scheduled for tomorrow (other than laundry, food shopping and such. I'm very much looking forward to it.

But please, the comments.

knit content and weekend plans

Wednesday on the way home there was a stop at Jessica Knits to pick up a gift certificate for our admin, who suddenly announced she was retiring. Of course I left without spending any additional money ..... OK, no, not really. There was some handpainted bulky wool in light blues and turquoise with which I hope to make a Moebius scarf for my mother-in-law for Christmas, and some light reddish mohair to make a lightweight scarf for me someday. This would all be after I complete the poncho, now about 3' long (you can see its beginnings here) and the scarf for Mom's early-December birthday, which is knitted with one strand each of purple cotton chenille, fine lilac GGH alpaca, and a novelty yarn with tufts of lilac or sage every few inches all held together. (I forget the names and don't have them here to look up.)

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the Berroco Medley scarf, and I gave it away today- just picture a small scarf garter-stitched in this yarn (the variegated one).

Today was the going-away luncheon for me, the aforementined retired admin, and another repatriating coworker who got her offer the same day I got mine. We gave the coworker a plant (with my Berroco scarf wrapped around the pot). To my great relief they did not doom any plantlife by giving it to me to kill but instead gave me a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble. Apparently my coworkers do know me well after these two years together.

Weekend plans:
1. A work dinner from Rudder's place tonight - the company's anniversary or something like that. 2. Row with D, dodging around the duathlon, sailing lessons, and milk carton boat derby all being held on our lake tomorrow. 3. Plan a cross-country flight. 4. Execute said cross country flight. 5. Throughout, review Head of the Charles course for the very next weekend!!!

solus

Meme kipped from Fairmer. I'm interpreting "friends list" as anybody likely to be reading this.

A book you own that no one on your friends list does:
Probably lots but the one I'm most sure of is Deafness and Cheerfulness. It's circa 1901 and the title is an accurate description of what it's about. Books others are at least unlikely to own:
Hmmm. Can't include the rowing books, if being in the Livejournal Boathouse and Ergfreaks communities count as having them on my friends list. I doubt anyone reading this collects the Polly of Pebbly Pit series from the 1920s. Or Flying Machines, a coffee-table book of bizarre aircraft. Or Cherry-Garrard's The Worst Journey in the World, about Scott's doomed Antarctic expedition. Or Antarctica: The Complete Story David McGonigal and Dr Lynn Woodworth, and inscribed to me by its authors. (Possibly some of you might have Diana Birchall's In Defense of Mrs. Elton, printed by the Jane Austen Society and also inscribed to me by its author.) Oh, and then there's Christopher Morley's Philadelphia, which if you're familiar with the city, you need to get. And anyway, I'd bet large sums of money no one else has any of those books in combination (except maybe the two Antarctic ones).

A CD you own that no one on your friends list does:
Not sure of the CD name but it's by Tribe Nunzio - it might be "How Long?" Z by Mary Zikos, but that's a cassette, not a CD. Rules of the Road by Alex Bevan. And So Shall We Yet, Bok, Muir, and Trickett.

A DVD/VHS tape you own that no one on your friends list does:
Rowing Through, unless any of the Boathouse people has that.

A place you've been that no one on your friends list has been:
I could say my parents' basement, but my brother sometimes reads this.
Antarctica. The bottom of a missile silo in Tucson. Osan, Korea. Buenos Aires? The Lower Caverns at Carlsbad. The South Rim at Big Bend. The top of Humphreys Peak, Arizona. Plush, Oregon. Lower Devil's Canyon, Arizona.

complications

Life is getting complicated again. The plan was to do a cross-country flight up to our high-country property this Sunday (it's on an airstrip) to get some more flying time and build up my cross-country hours, because I'll need a lot more than I have to get my IFR. The complications:

1. I didn't plan my flight last weekend so would have to do it Saturday.
2. I had forgotten that Rudder has to drive up to Flagstaff this weekend to get his boat on a trailer to Boston. He won't know exactly what time the guy will get there so it may be an overnight trip. He won't have to leave early Saturday but I'm rowing so can't do the planning in the morning. (Though I'm not rowing until 8:30. Hmmm...)
3. I like Flag and I like road trips with Rudder. I'd also like him in the plane with me because he's flown to the property before. He'll remember all the landmarks and be helpful at spotting them. I will have an instructor along, though.

Another complication is that I don't yet know how transitioning to another business division will affect my IFR training reimbursement. I've got a couple of calls in to find out. They only reimburse after you've reached certain milestones (15 hours, taking the written test) and I don't think I'll manage either of those in the next week. The worst that can happen is that I'll end up having to pay for it myself, which after all is what I did for my private pilot rating and what Rudder did for both his private and his IFR. At the very least, the reimbursement policy will have done some good in kicking me into flying again.

The next Presidential debate, which will be right near me, is going to be a bit inconvenient. Tempe is the next town over - it's where I row several days a week and I go through it every day. They've got our lake closed on Wednesday after 9 AM, well after I'm off the water, so that won't be a problem, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to take my scheduled flying lesson. They've got restrictions on the airspace within 60 nautical miles of the debate until 9AM or so Thursday morning, though we may possibly be able to go with an IFR clearance.

Too many things going on, but at least they're all good ones.

an unusual attitude

It was a productive weekend, I guess; I paid some bills, caught up on some sleep, spent too much money on new clothes and shoes (again - clothing is one of my temptations and Fall clothing is more so), rowed a double with D to make sure we won't hate rowing together in the marathon, reviewed the Head of the Charles course with Yosemite Sam, got to socialize with Rudder and D and Dr. Bosun and a crazy (former) Russian I asked because he was there and I didn't want to be rude (should have been rude. He's a jerk) and went flying, beginning to work on partial panel and unusual attitudes. Not a particularly busy weekend.

Note to nonaviators: Partial panel is when some of the flight instruments are covered to simulate instrument failure. Unusual attitudes are when the instructor has you close your eyes, jinks around a bit to get you disoriented (no trouble with me - still got that vertigo thing going, a bit), gets the plane pointed nose up or down and banked to one said, then says, "OK, open your eyes now. Your airplane," so you can get used to recovering to straight and level flight without getting into a spin or some dumb situation like that. Surprisingly, it was a little easier than I expected - but I'm not really looking forward to doing those with a partial panel.

Rudder and I also watched Rowing Through, a movie about the legendary rower Tiff Woods, the even more legendary coach Harry Parker, and the 1984 Olympic trials. It would have been a good movie to watch with the sound off. It had some of the most beautiful cinematography I've ever seen, with rowers swinging together in sweaty races or singles going out on eligiac fall Boston afternoons with the mist rising. On the other hand it was one of those sort of vague movies that kept skipping years of time with no explanation for why anything happened (why were all those young Olympic rower men knitting at the Olympic selection camp?) and dialogue I couldn't catch half the time. It was definitely worth watching .... listening to, I'm not so sure about.

This is my last full week working here at this site. I'm kind of sad, actually.

home silent home

The parents left for home this morning. We enjoy having company, but it's also nice to get our house back to ourselves. For one thing, everyone over the age of 8 goes to bed later than we do, but the guest bath is right outside our bedroom door and we have to keep the door open a crack or face the Wrath of Cats. Listen to the Wrath of Cats, rather. Between that and having to cook or go out for real balanced meals we've been a little sleep-deprived this week. I don't have to be up until 7:30 tomorrow and I am mightily looking forward to that.

Mom came out to rowing this morning; she was, impressively, all bright and chipper and ready to go by 4:20 or so. I think she enjoyed it. I told the guys in the eight I was coxing that all those photos she was taking had less to do with me than with the sight of all those men in spandex. (She insists she was focusing on me. I think I'll check with Dad when they download the photos.)

In other news, I passed my Biannual Flight Review yesterday morning so I am once again a current pilot. Yay!

a puzzle solved and a visit almost over

Got it! I think Toy Sub was a band. And it mattered to me because I met a guy who was in it (mmm, musician guys) and who, I think, lived in some basement apartment with the rest of the band. And this would have been back before I met Rudder, which makes it either Late Philadelphia or Very Early Houston, but well over a decade ago, and very brief, which would be why I couldn't remember it.

Phew. I feel better.

Otherwise, life is all meeting meeting meeting meeting >trytosqueezeinwork< meeting meeting, with all the usual work and getting ready to transition to the new job. The current plan goes: last day at old job, fly to Boston, compete in the Head of the Charles, fly home, first day at new job. Phew.

Then there are parents in the house when I get home. I fell unbelievably far behind in reading email even with all the spam filtered out and deleted about two pages unread this morning. Mostly it was all list stuff; I did check the subject line to make sure I kept any actual emails. I think my parents' visit went fairly well. It's been hard seeing how old my Dad's gotten (for someone not yet 70 and not retired) but Mom is doing great, working out and traveling and even taking some classes at her synagogue. I did have two days off to take them places and Mom was very brave and drove downtown to the Heard Museum all by herself yesterday (Dad was there but isn't wanting to drive any more than necessary). I'm not being snide; I know how hard it can be to drive in a strange city when you're nervous. The difference between us isn't lack of fearfulness but that I've never felt that was an excuse not to do something. I'm really happy that she's challenging herself more these days. She's going to come out for rowing and ride on the coaching launch; I wonder what she'll think of it.

dodging the 'rents

Major advantage to being on vacation today: getting to watch SpaceShipOne fly into space on live webcast to win the XPrize. Honestly, I thought it would take much longer than this; not for the first time, I am very glad that there is such a person as Burt Rutan in the world.

On the other hand, they have the a news anchor with the weirdest haircut I've ever seen broadcasting.

Don't expect much in the way of entries here today or tomorrow; my parents are visiting and they have an annoying habit of wandering by and looking over my shoulder when I'm on the computer. (Mom's in the shower at the moment and I don't know if Dad's up yet.)

Yesterday we showed them our airpark property; today I'm taking them to see Biosphere 2, tomorrow the zoo. After that they're on their own while I go back to work.

Two minutes later:

SpaceShipOne made it has released from its parent ship!!!!!!

One more minute: They made it!!!!!

Big news and a question

It's official. In a month or sooner, I will be transferring to another part of the same company - less than half the commute distance, a good salary increase (>10%), the word "manager" in the title (which seems to mean a lot here), and a chance to learn a new area while using what I'm beginning to think of as my core competencies: talking, writing, developing processes. I've officially accepted but my boss is out of town so the transfer date isn't set yet. For an internal transfer, it has to be negotiated between him and the new boss.

So yay!

Now, a question: why do I get the feeling that the words "toy sub" ought to mean something to me? I have a hazy association with college days and possibly Kurt Vonnegut's books, but can't remember any corroborating detail. Is it some sort of password or catchphrase? I did a web search but only turned up references to actual toy submarines.

It was a license plate on an SUV this morning, and was especially appropriate because the truck was decked out for serious off-roading, complete with snorkel.

obligatory psa

Yes, I watched the debate. I thought Kerry did a bit better, but then I would, wouldn't I? I don't think there was a clear enough winner to change the mind of anyone who had already picked a candidate.

Whoever your candidate is, please go out and vote, if you're a US citizen over 18 and not a felon. Whoever wins, it's going to be pretty acrimonious around here come November; the last thing we need is yet another President picked by a small minority or, worse, another one picked by the Supreme Court.

My parents are coming in tomorrow, paying me only their third visit since I moved away in 1989. I've been trying to figure out things to do that won't be too athletic for my dad. I don't think he likes doing a lot of walking these days. (Note to self: IMAX movie.) I've also been trying to figure out what to feed them, since she keeps semi-kosher and he's got health-related diet restrictions on things like salt and sugar. Breakfasts are especially hard for me, since our normal weekend brekkers range from a Power Bar to instant oatmeal to picking up bagels to going out to eat. (Other note to self: look up recipe for Dutch Apple Pancake before going food shopping.)

I'm still a little dizzy; I've made a doctor's appointment for early next week. I hate to go when my parents are here because I'm afraid they'll worry more than it deserves. I did survive coxing this morning, so that's good; I think the vertigo is fading a bit, though not yet entirely. I may go to the doctor even if it's gone, since this is the second time it's happened. At least yesterday's drive home was a lot better than Wednesday's; I don't figure dehydration is the main cause of all this but it certainly did make things worse.

And thanks to a Lunch 'n' Learn sort of meeting, to which I figured if I could take lunch I could take my knitting, I've nearly finished my scarf of Berocco Medley. It's the Berroco Mix colorway which looks like the main body of this when knitted up. It's just a short thin decorative scarf, made for ornament rather than warmth. All it needs now is binding off and fringe.

here we go again

My getting-out-of-bed line each morning is, more or less, "Here we go again". (Imagine a sardonically humorous tone here.) Of course it varies: the general gamut runs from "Oh, shit, here we go again," to "Here we go again - hey I get to do something fun today!" You wouldn't necessarily hear me say all that if you were actually in my bedroom (in fact, if you were actually in my bedroom when I woke up, my line would be anything from "Who the hell are you?" to "Uh-oh," depending how menacing you are). The usual soundtrack to my getting up is more like "Rrrrrr," or, if I'm particularly sore, "RrrrRRRrrR". You can take it from me, though, it more or less translates to "Here we go again."

What we also have here is a perfect illustration of how certain authors manage to establlish a foothold in my brain that lingers a while after I finish the book. The above can be blamed on my rereading a couple of Bill Bryson books in the last fwe days. Anyway.

I've often wondered what it would be like to have such a superlatively wonderfully Proper Job that I bounded out of bed each morning with a song on my lips. (Actually, it would probably still sound like "Rrrrr," at least until I had splashed water on my face and brushed my teeth.) I'm not really sure it's realistically possible. As I've said before, I do like my current job quite a lot, though I wouldn't call it my Proper Job in the Gaudy Night sense of the words. Anyhow, my bed is large and very comfy. Sheets are flannel. Pillows are feather and down. Comforter is down and flannel covered. (We've discovered that flannel, being soft and absorbent, is as comfortable in Arizona summer as in northern winter.) Most of all, Rudder is snuggly, and it's finally getting cool enough for me to begin appreciating his thermal properties. I'm not sure there's any kind of work in the world that would make me eager to leave that bed.

That said, I've been offered a new job (same company) so we'll see how my mornings go - I'm just hoping for a good ratio of "Oh, good" to "Oh shit" before the "Here we go again" part. At the very least, I'll be spared the part about "Here we go again with a forty mile drive to work."

conflicting causes

Baxk to work today - fortunately it's been a calm sort of day, relatively. Actually, driving in wasn't a problem and neither is sitting at a computer. Both are activities where you tend to keep your head fairly still. What's been more of a problem are "real-life" sorts of activities, like getting water or going to the bathroom, where I might happen to look up or down. Still, I think the dizziness has been less frequent than yesterday. I can't quite tell whether that's because I move my head less in an office setting or because it's really better.

I'd have to say I don't really understand the reasons for this. The doctor said it was most likely due to a combination of some fluid he saw behind my eardrums and low electrolytes. Considering it came on right after doing a marathon, the electrolytes seem far more likely.On the other hand, if that were the main cause, I'd think the dizziness would just be more or less constant, not only when I tilt my head. That seems more like an inner-ear thing.

I'm not dwelling on this because I'm a hypochondriac - it's just that I'm an engineer and I'm frustrated because the proximate and ultimate causes don't seem to be matching up in a logical way. At any rate, there's no queasiness so the whole experience is just a little strange, not particularly unpleasant. I do expect to row tomorrow (but a light workout, in case the low-electrolyte thing is true).

On the positive side, there may be some good things about to happen at work. More tomorrow or so on that.

vertiginous

Oig. I think I was a little behind on my hydration Saturday (though Egret's excellent matzo ball soup certainly helped) and was feeling just a wee touch unbalanced going into the erg marathon. After it and ever since, that "wee touch" has become the sort of dizziness that necessitates holding on to a handy sofa cushion, railing or husband when tilting my head - not every time, oddly enough, but frequently.

On the plus side, it made me feel much more jusitified in calling in a post-marathon sick day. Rudder took one too (after rowing in the morning, the masochist) so he was nice and handy when I needed to hold on to him.

I did go see a doctor just in case it was something to worry about; after hearing the whole story and checking me out he concluded it was probably just a combination of a bit of (allergy-induced) fluid behind the eardrums and low electrolytes. He prescribed taking it easy for a few days and trying to drink a lot and eat fruits rich in potassium. I will say it's an entertaining sort of malady, sort of like having a roller coaster in my head.

I canceled my flying lesson tomorrow, though, just because it didn't seem like a great idea to fly dizzy. I hated to, because I hadn't flown over the weekend, but better rusty than risky.

family at holidays

As ways for resetting your moral compass, there's solitude and reflection and then there are friends. Maybe there's a reason that, though the High Holy Days are a time for introspection, they begin and end with big services that are held in community, usually with big crowds showing up.

My family has never been that observant. We went to holiday services and some Shabbat services, lit Shabbat and Chanukah candles (though not Havdalah candles) and my brother and I went to Hebrew school, but we didn't keep kosher, recite the Shema when we woke up and other blessings through the day, or go to daily services. For holidays, we'd have a big family dinner, but without doing a full-blown Seder at Passover or all the blessing of bread and wine before and thanksgiving prayers after other meals.

Now that I'm a few thousand miles away without too many other Jews around, I like to celebrate major holidays with a big dinner of my own. We usually invite friends over (even though I generally have to explain what the holidays are) and have had T2 and Egret several times.

I didn't get to do much for Rosh Hashanah this year: too much going on and it happened midweek. But Egret decided we'd had them over too many times and she needed to reciprocate, so she invited us over for dinner for Yom Kippur.

I will wait while you all go "Awww...." and then "Uh-oh."

No, I didn't have the heart to point out that it's traditionally a fasting holiday. I don't fast these days anyway, so it didn't seem terribly relevant. But what a gesture of friendship. She's not Jewish, mind you (actually, I think she has about 1/4 or 1/8 Jewish blood, but was brought up Catholic). I did have to laugh the other day when she asked she needed to put out salt water and parsley or if that was another holiday. Then I had to sniffle today when she told me her menu: Chicken soup. Matzo balls. An apricot chicken recipe she found at a Jewish site. Again: not Jewish. Just trying to make a friend feel loved. (Oh, and also homemade bread and chocolate cake. Mmm.)

Now you can go "Awwwww...*snif*" without the "Uh-oh" afterward.

mighty big car (not!)

It was actually in the high 60s this morning as I drove to work. Driving in with the top down and the heater on just a touch to warm my feet.... ahhhh. And Fred Eaglesmith playing to set the driving mood.

At least half of Fred's songs are about car sin one way or another. It was funny, the only time I drove Rudder's Hummer, the Orange Crush, in to work, listening to the Eaglesmith CD for the first time, when his song "Mighty Big Car" came on. It was even funnier today, hearing it as I drove the Mozzie, my tiny convertible. I felt like a mosquito with delusions of elephancy.

----
The KnittingNovices discussion group has been having a thread lately on things to do while knitting, like watching old movies or listening to books on tape. One woman mentioned using a cookbook stand to read while she knits. (An idea I should try.) I replied with the following, which I suspect may not be a popular view on that particular list:

I've used books on tape while driving and for long pieces on the rowing machine (Harry Potter V will take you through quite a few 10-20 km pieces :-) but if I'm downstairs in my house, as I usually am while knitting, there are *all those* books around and I can't resist their siren song. In fact, one of the reasons I took up knitting was to having something to do with my hands while reading. (I can't do beadwork and read.) I tend to sit sideways in a big comfy chair, so my book rests on my knees and my knitting basket is on the floor beside me. It can't be more than a few inches from the chair or the trailing yarn is long enough to fascinate the cats.

I won't say it's always easy doing both at the same time; this is why I don't anticipate doing any complex lace patterns any time soon. But if I had to give up one or the other, it would be no contest - the knitting would have to go. I read about like I breathe - constantly and by necessity. Incidentally, one tip that may be useful is that magazines are a bit easier to combine with knitting than books. They stay open flat and tend to require a bit less focus.

I can just see people reading that and thinking, "Rowing machine? People actually use those? Lots of books in a house? Why would you do that? And giving up knitting for reading? Is she mad?"

On the other hand, someone else remarked about knitting while listening to audiobooks, "Don't they get in the way of the conversations you have with yourself?" That struck me for a moment, until I realized that my first reaction had been, "You need silence to have conversations with yourself?" I don't even need quiet to have conversations with other people. I know people who require an uninterrupted block of time in which to read, or who can't talk when there are interruptions; I can participate in one conversation while casting asides into another (at a party, for example) and will always rather read than not even if I only have time for half a page. I think it may be easier for me to multitask than not to. Born that way, I guess. It's just as well, because I think my life would drive me insane otherwise.

I may also try to scale back keep only my hands busy this Saturday, Yom Kippur, when I would like to pay a little more attention to the "conversations I have with myself." Or Whoever.

nope, didn't win

Bummer. Didn't win a contest I entered. I didn't really expect to, both on the logical premise that loads of other people were bound to be entering, some of them more talented, and on the less-logical grounds that I had a strong hunch I owuld win and my strong hunches are so invariably wrong as almost to constitute real psychic powers, just in the backwards direction.

I can console myself on two grounds. First, I honestly thought my own essay was better-written than most of the several winning ones I read, much of the credit for which should go to my proof-readers. It was just a different sort of thing, less personal than any of the winning ones. (Except perhaps the one about mushrooms. How you can give a "power of purpose" award to an essay on mushrooms with only a small and inconclusive digression on an unnamed person's story defeats me and my logical brain.) I mean here "better written" mostly in terms of style, I should say; several of the winners had excellent substance, delivering more emotional impact than my essay.

Second, I entered because Mer told me to. She thought my writing would suit the contest and was good enough, and I take that as a huge compliment.

So now I have an essay on the common theme of a driving purpose and its power to unite people to a common and difficult goal, and no idea what to do with it. It's sort of an exhortatory thing. I can't think of anyone who does much with that except motivational organizations like Franklin Covey, and they seem to lean more towards epigrams than essays. Oh, well. I suppose honing a skill can never be entirely a waste, and I probably got enough fun to be repaid for my work just in thinking what I'd do with $100,000.

a yarn-store yarn, or a real-life parable

Rudder has spent the last hour watching a TV show about making the world's biggest slice of toast. For a man who is so hyperactive, he has a surprisingly high tolerance for TV inanity between his spurts of activity.

Yesterday I went to check out a local yarn store I hadn't been in befor. I meant to get two sets of needles (metal for some boucle yarn that wasn't sliding over bamboo ones, wood for another project I want to take on a plane next month), needle gauge, and some better stitch markers. I got talked into trying a Denise set (only about $15 more than the individual needles would have been) and also ended up buying the markers and gauge, a book (Treasury of Magical Knitting by Cat Bordhi on knitting Moebius-strip scarves) and of course some yarn. Oops. After that splurge I'm attempting to talk myself out of a visit to the shoe store today.

On the more virtuous side, I set a new PR for a half-marathon erg yesterday (21097 meters, 13.1 miles) and took my 3rd IFR flying lesson today.

While I was in the yarn store, a woman bustled in talking on a cell phone and briefly interuppted her conversation to say that she was a teacher directing a group of children making masks, and could the store donate any yarn? Some of the girls wanted it for hair. The store employee referred her to the owner, who was at a worktable in back of the store. The teacher said, "Oh, I'm really in a hurry, could you just ask her for me?"

It gets worse. The employee patiently explained that the teacher would do better asking for herself. She ungraciously told the person on the other end of the cell phone she'd call back, turned off the phone, walked to the back of the store and explained her mission again. The store owner explained that they had several charities to whom they already donated scrap wool. The teacher said, "But I'm a teacher! And I don't have much money for these things. Well, could I at least be put on your list for next year?" The store owner explained that there was a waiting list. At that point a customer working at the back table offered to donate her own scraps for the students. The teacher spent at least five or ten minutes bustling back and forth kooing for her cards, not finding them, and making a production of giving the woman her phone number. Then she said something like, "I used to do all this stuff (gesturing around the store) but I'm way too busy to just sit around a yarn store knitting these days."

To her credit, the other customer did not immediately withdraw her offer to donate yarn. Instead, she told the teacher, "Actually, I work taking care of homeless back home in Puerto Rico," and then listed several other things she does, all both noble and time-consuming. I wanted to go over and cheer for her after the teacher had left (reminding the other woman several more times to call her about the yarn) but I settled for talking to her while I was trying some sample needles to see if I liked them. She was very interesting. I think still another customer did say something about her being a "good person", because I heard her respond, "No, I am not a good person. But I try to be one. That is all you can do, to try."

Pity she couldn't send herself along with her scrap yarn to those kids making the masks, I think they might have learned more of value from her than from their own teacher.

the good and the ugly

They're forecasting us a high of 98 Saturday, 91 Sunday, and 88 Monday. Yay!!!! Finally down out of the 100s. With luck, and given the way our seasons tend to change all at once, it will stay out.

Tomorrow I have meetings from 10-11:30, 11-12:30, 12:30-1:30. Even aside from the not-unusual overlap, this is a problem, given that the cafeteria is open 11-1 and that I am Not Functional if I go too long without food.

yet another no-free-time rant

How not to portray a professional image or impress people: arrive 15 minutes late for an 8AM meeting. I allowed 40 minutes for a drive that should take 25 even during rush hour, and it ended up taking me an hour or a little more. Which is pretty scary when you consider it takes 40-60 minutes to drive tomy current office, more than twice as far away. This is not a good way to get away from having to make that commute.

Meanwhile my job is busy enough that I won't be able to work from home Friday, as I had hoped. Actually, if I had been smarter I would have gone home and telecommuted after my morning meeting today, since that was on my side of town and I only have one other meeting today which I could have called into. Drat. (No, wait, I did have one more. It just got canceled. So I'm not colluding in my own lack of time.)

I notice this particularly in reading other knitters, in blogs or newsgroups. People are always writing about finishing a sweater in five days or a poncho in a week or whatever. Me, I'm lucky if I get to knit more than one row in a day. O course, it would be faster if I weren't trying to read at the same time, but I'd be far more likely to keep reading and quit knitting than the other way around. Books are my sine qua non.

booking it

Some people just shouldn't be allowed into a bookstore when they're even mildly ticked off. I decided to spend my luch hour spending on my favorite vice. Fifty dollars later...
...I remembered why I don't generally go into bookstores on my lunch hour.

The ticked off part was just because of the way work's been going; the boss has been edgy and I've had meetings starting at 8AM, meetings ending at 5PM, and everywhere in between. At least the boss seems a little calmer today, though my schedule's not.

Also, I had a pleasant moment of self-realization when I was asking someone at work if she knew just where this bookstore is (it's in a very confusing shopping center). I happened to mention that I could as easily go to DSW (discount shoes) in the same center, and she said, "Oh, shoes! That would be much better than books!" My visceral reaction was, "Not even close," much as I do like shoes. So yes, I'm still me. I may have to act all professional sometimes and even (gasp) pretend to be tactful, but it's kind of nice to know basics don't change.

One of the things I bought was Maggie Righetti's Knitting in Plain English. Paging through it, I think I've figured out how to make my poncho project much less of a pain in the ass. The problem is, it's only a 3-stitch repeating pattern but when I make a mistake I can't see it on this openwork pattern so it tends to be much later when I notice it and this pattern is hard to unknit. I'm spending way too much time recounting to make sure I still have 45 stitches in each row. I think the solution may be to place markers every 6 or 9 stitches, so I can see where I am more easily. (This is probably a "Duh" moment for experienced knitters, of whom I am emphatically not one.)

avgas WHERE?

I feel like an undercover superhero today. Mostly it's just the clothes, though.

It actually took me some time to decide what to wear today, since I had a flying lesson before work. I needed something I could climb around an airplane in (which lets out tight short skirts). A bigger problem was that it's hard not to get dirty - it's even worse with the newer Cessna 172s (which this was) because instead of having to check the fuel at a sump point (to make sure it's avgas and to look for water or grit in the fuel) on each wing, you now have to check it in 13 places. Thirteen! There are five on each wing and three on the underside of the belly, which necessitates getting down on the ground. For obvious reasons, the ground at an airport is often not a miracle of cleanliness. That is probably my least favorite engineering decision on the new Cessnas. Also, since I was flying at 5AM, I'd be doing all that in the dark.

I didn't want to be too hot, knowing I'd be sweating anyway by the end of the lesson. (Instrument flying is hard!) I didn't want to have to change for work because I knew I'd be in a hurry, since it's forty miles and I had an 8AM meeting. And of course, there's that annoying professionalism thing.

What I came up with was a black camisole, black jeans, and a long loose plum-colored shirt to be left in the car during the lesson and worn over the outfit for work. I got a glimpse of myself in a mirror after the lesson and realized I looked like an extra for Charlie's Angels in the camisole and black stretch jeans. (Maybe an extra who would need a bit of digital touchup, but still.) If I could do a spinning kick at all, I could do one in this getup. Moreover, the tunic on top is closed with snaps, not buttons, so if the need arose I could rip it off dramatically without even needing a phone booth.

I did manage to keep relatively clean, except for a spritz of avgas down my cleavage. Think Rudder would consider that sexy?

wine, flying, ponchos, elves...yeah, I'm rambling again

I'm just going to have to give up drinking red wine on the evenings before rowing. It just unsettles my stomach too much, drat it. This morning I got all the way out to the lake and then decided it wasn't going to work and came back home, which of course is a serious waste of potential sleeping time. I tought about erging but decided not to by virtue of yesterday's half-marathon in two parts (12.2 km in the boat, 9 km on the erg). Unfortunately I'm also going to miss tomorrow's workout because I've got a flying lesson. I've really got to ping D about that marathon. This would all be a bit easier to manage if I knew I weren't doing it, and it would at least have a point if I am.

After all that fuss about having the erg marathon on Yom Kippur, it turns out I have an (internal) interview on Rosh Hashanah. I'm not sure whether to regard that as a Bad Thing or an appropriate augur of new beginnings.

On the clothing front, I'm wearing the poncho I bought yesterday, and it seems to be working; I've gotten three compliments, one effusive, and no cries of "What the hell are you wearing?" It's a dressy, indoors one, lightweight in a delicte lacy knit, waist-length and with slits at the side that come up to my elbows, so it's not in the way for writing or typing, and is in shades of green and brown. More elf/sprite clothing. (Do elves wear ponchos?) . I like elf clothing, actually, and have a distressing paucity of it in my wardrobe these days. It's hard to be both corporate and elvish - good thing I don't actually have to be terribly corporate, engineers as a group not being known for their fashion senses. Or for being elven, I suppose.

my sports: flying, rowing, shopping

I shouldn't be here. I should be over on my bank site paying bills, or over on Excel preparing some stuff I have to do later in the week or possible somewhere else productive.

Yeah, right. I like to think of it not so much as "procrastinating" but as "getting warmed up to work". That would be more convincing if it didn't take as long as the actual work.

Yesterday morning I went flying, piloting a Cessna 172 for the first time in a couple of years - we did both some under-the-hood instrument work and some basic landing practice. I actually was less rusty than expected, and got compliments from both the instructor and, by far the harder to impress, from Rudder, who was riding along in the back seat. After that I went for a massage, having been sore as a consequence of making some changes to my rowing stroke, and then completed my financial ruin with a binge at the mall.

J.Jill was especially productive; I came away with a skirt and microsuede shirt that when combined, need only soft boots and pointed ears to make a perfect elven costume (it's my hippie side coming out) as well as a pair of pants that, unusually for that store, actually fit. Well, almost; I had to order the petite size. Petite Sophisticate was nearly as forthcoming, with a plain but perfectly fitting black blazer and Oxford shirt that I can rationalize as being classics I can wear forever or until they self-destruct. There was also a poncho because I like them and am hoping they'll be more than a one-season fad, and the phone charger than was one of my reasons for being in the mall lin the first place.

Today I rowed a double this morning - I was hoping to get in some distance but the woman I was rowing with hasn't sculled (two oars) for a while. All her calluses are from sweep rowing (one oar) which means they're in the wrong place and so she was getting blisters halfway through our first lap. She taped them up and we did finish two laps (12.2 km) and then I came home and (this is where I prove what a virtuous and diligent rower I am) pulled another 9km on the erg just to finish out a half-marathon distance. And now I really need to go do real work.

good news and luck

I guess it's not too bad to get a little teary at work (lunchtime, if you're wondering) over a good cause: Jen has finally heard back. She gets to be a mommy to a lucky girl named Li.

I've known Jen via electrons since before she was even married, and it's been clear for most of that time that she's one of those people for whom one of the highest callings is to be a mom. It's also been clear from reading about her stepson that she's very very good at it, and I can't say how glad I am that she gets to have a baby (toddler) of her very own. I'm hoping hard that everything goes smoothly from here out.

dumbassery

As I wrote in the previous entry, yesterday Rudder called to ask me to meet him at the garage. Apparently when he went home for lunch, in a moment of brainfade he drove into the garage with the boat rack on the Hummer. The garage roof is only about 4" above the Hummer roof rack sans boat cradle.

Damage to the boat cradle was nil and to the garage roof was minimal, but the Hummer rack to which the boat cradle was attached is not not quite connected at right angles. When I left work I went to pick him up in the Mozzie, my teeny teeny car already full with my gym back and the small tote I carry in to work. I put my gym back behind my seat, a maneuver that is only possible because I'm in about the 10th percentile for height, and then somehow got him and his briefcase stuffed into the passenger seat. We then compounded the problem by deciding to stop for dinner.

I had to laugh a bit at Rudder's goof, but avoided rubbing it in too much for karmic reasons, a wise move in restrospect.

While waiting for food at a local Pan-Asian place we grabbed a table. I had taken my purse out of its usual spot in the work tote and taken it in with me, so slung it over the back of my chair. I may or may not have taken it with me when I went outside to call my parents and wish them a happy 41st anniversary (Rudder stayed at the table.) We somehow got the food into the car with us and all our stuff, drove home, and unpacked: me, Rudder, gym bag, tote, briefcase, food......

No purse. Looked around: car floor behind the seat, passenger footwell, tote, gym bag, even in the food bag incase it somehow jumped in there. Then Rudder drove me back to the restaurant (in my pickup) because I dislike driving without a driver's license, which of course was in my purse. I spoke to the servers, the manager and the busboy and loooked at the seat where I'd been sitting to no avail. No purse. The manager took my number and promised to call if it turned up, which I thought unlikely if it hadn't turned up already. Then it was another ten minutes' drive back home, during which I was resigning myself to replacing credit cards and license trying to figure out how I'd replace all the little things like AAA and health insurance cards.

Just to be sure I checked around one more time ....

and found the purse on the tiny and hard-to-see-onto shelf under the back window, where it must have landed because there was so much other stuff behind my seat. Sigh.

At least it paid back all of the effort of not being obnoxious about Rudder's blunder, and at least my goof only took half an hour to fix and didn't cost several hundred dollars.

the Yom Kippurathon

Egret brought a slight problem to my notice Sunday. She had kindly invited us to dinner for Yom Kippur - since I like to celebrate the Jewish holidays as my family always did, with a big dinner, we've had her and T2 over for that a few times, and she kindly decided it was her turn. I thought that was so sweet, since it's not their holiday, that I didn't quite have the heart to point out that this is a fasting holiday. It's not as if I would have been fasting anyway. But that's not the problem.

The problem is that, after asking what day the holiday was, Rudder pointed out that it was the same day he'd invited people over for his annual marathon erg seesion. (It's a BYOE - Bring Your Own Erg - deal). I would rather like to do the marathon this year, at least if I end up competing,but more than that, it's a solemn holiday and even if I'm not participating I don't even want to be around a raucous event like that.

If I were frum (observant), fasting and all that, I'd have no compunction about telling him to reschedule it. (On the other hand, if I were observant I'd be in shul all morning, so it owuld be a nonissue.) However, I don't fast. I do like to observe the holiday season, Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, in my own way, paying respect to its tradition of reflection and contemplation of the past year. A couple of years ago, I did a "media fast" on Yom Kippur, avoiding TV, radio, and computer on that day and I was thinking of doing that again because it worked well for me. I felt refreshed afterward.

I've asked Rudder to see about rescheduling. He only knows of two other people who plan to do the ergathon this year, so it shouldn't be impossible. If he can't manage it, I may just need to find somewhere quiet to go - the library maybe. I don't feel right asking him not to do something in his own house when I don't have what feels like a real reason, but I don't feel right having it there either.

On the other hand, while I was writing this Rudder called to tell me he'd done a really stupid thing that would have been much more characteristic of me - he accidentally drove into the garage with the boat rack on the Hummer, and the garage roof is only about 4" above the Hummer roof sans rack. Oops. Apparently the boats rack survived nicely but it tore the Hummer's rack track apart. He wants me to meet him at the mechanic's this evening, so this may be a good time to put in a request.

Yikes!

I had a feeling this was going to be feast or famine, and it's starting to look like feast. I may not survive this fall :-) I've talked about most of these things here before, but I think some explanation is needed to give the full picture.

Some of you will remember I have a pilot's license (VFR - visual flight rules), though I haven't really flown that much since qualifying for it. A couple of months ago, someone pointed out to me that my company has a program where you can apply to get reimbursed for the costs of getting either the initial pilot's rating or an instrument flight rating (IFR - this would be the one that could have saved JFK Jr.'s life). I try not to miss opportunities like that so I applied to get the IFR. Since I'd probably want to do this in the evenings after work, in the dark so I get something resembling actual instrument conditions, I figured I could just cut way back on rowing for the fall.

Last November, Rudder rowed a marathon in Natchitoches, Louisiana (he'd done it once before, aboout ten years ago). He and his partner She-Hulk set the course record for mixed doubles, a bit over 3 hours. Another guy from our lake, D, also rowed it last year, only he took about two hours longer, stopping to talk to people on the way and even to use their bathrooms. I figured that's my speed, so in a weak (masochistic) moment, I asked D if he wanted to row it in a double with me this year. He's considering it - he's got some other stuff going on, with a daughter getting married in October and another due to have his first grandchild. On the other hand, he was pretty excited to win a medal next year, and I think he likes the idea of our being, in his words, "the only Jew boat in Lousiana" (yes, he is too).

On our way back from Masters Nationals a couple of weeks ago, we got to talking to a woman across the airplane aisle, who's from a rowing club in Colorado where we have some other contacts. (In fact, one guy from there often rows a double with Rudder at races.) In the course of discussion, she asked me to cox her boat at the Head of the Charles in October in Boston. I didn't know how seriously to take her, but then when it turned out she couldn't go, she passed my name on to someone else at their club (who knows me) and she asked me to cox their four. For perspective, you need to know that the HotC is the biggest rowing event in the world, with 7000 participants this year, and that it's on a very winding river with several bridges to go under. In other words, it's one of the biggest challenges there is for a coxswain. So many people apply that they hold a drawing to see which crews get to participate.

Also, my job is supposed to be an 18-24 month posting, and I'm supposed to "repatriate" by December. I want to transfer to another division that's a lot closer to home, but have no idea whether or how this will affect the IFR reimbursement.

To recap, there are four opportunities:
A) get a company-reimbursed IFR rating (company picks from applicants)
B) row a marathon in November (potential partner is considering)
C) cox the Head of the Charles (depends on draw)
D) change jobs within my company (requires applications and interviews, just like changing companies)

Notice that the flight training would be best done in the evenings, the marathon requires rowing practice which as long as it's hot out is better done in the mornings, the HoTC requires I get some coxing practice in since it's been a while, and the job thing just adds general stress.

Yesterday afternoon, I heard back on the IFR reimbursement. I'm in.

The HoTC application deadline was September 1. They said they'd have draw results posted by September 5. This morning, the results were up. We're in.

Now my potential partner just has to decide on the marathon and I need to work on the repatriation. If those all happen in the next few months (plus all the normal stuff with work and life's other minutiae) this could be an *extremely* full Fall. I may not get to sleep until December.

nothing consequential

For some reason, switching my gym workout really seems to have kicked my butt. I was feeling bad enough this morning to consider staying home sick for at least a few hours - not queasy-sick but tired and out of it. It might still be whatever was bothering me earlier in the week too; I felt OK until I bent backward over a ball to stretch my back and got a rush of vertigo. Other than that the dizziness has mostly abated. The other odd thing is that my weight's gone down a little. It's only about two pounds but if that persists and if there's any remaining dizziness I will call the doctor.

The weight loss could also be an artifact of the time at the races or of the days I missed workign out afterward. The problem is that I don't really understand how weightloss works, in terms of time. That is, if you burn more calories than you ingest one day, do you instantly lose weight or does the effect take a little while to show up?

Whatever. I really could use a day off just to rest. Good thing it's a long weekend - I may have to have a Talk with Rudder, my local whirling dervish, about this.

And speaking of Rudder, yesterday I got home from work a little late, having called to say when I was leaving, and walked in five minutes before dinner was ready: grilled salmon and asparagus, couscous with sundried tomatoes, and a bottle of Chardonnay opened.

I may keep him.

changing of the guards (forwards, goalies....)

Olympic moment of the day: the expression on Rulan Gardner's face as he unlaced his wrestling boots for the last time and left them by the mat for someone else to fill.

I just figured out who he reminds me of: whatshisname who played Ruby's poor cheated palooka of a husband in the movie Chicago. Maybe that's why I'm so glad Rulan got to go out with an Olympic medal.

Similarly, in the women's soccer I don't know whether to root for the US so Hamm, Chastain, et al. can go out on a winning note or Brazil so they can prove to their country that soccer isn't only a men's sport. On second thought, considering the relative status of women's sports vs men's even in the US, maybe I will root for the US. Though I'm not sure a medal will help with that issue. After all, our women's basketball team has been doing far better than the "dream team" but I don't suppose that will do anything to bring parity between NBA and WNBA salaries. If I got to choose, actually, I'd lower the men's salaries to match the women's rather than the other way around.

Note to row2k: the Olympics coverage has been very nice, thank you, but now that rowing in the Olympics is over, how about some reporting on events some of your readers actually participate in, like say Canadian Masters Nationals and US Masters Nationals, both last weekend? It might be a nice change from worrying about why Sally Robbins laid down in the boat and whether her teammates are still ticked.

Minor soccer spoiler below:

NB: Apparently Zeus, the god honored by the Olympic games, is as ambivalent as I am. Just at the moment the soccer game is tied.

Autumn, Alcott, and memories of Columbia days

Coming home yesterday, I realized Fall had started for me. I had earworms of wistful old James Taylor songs (Carolina on My Mind, Sweet Baby James) and a jones for the big Fall LL Bean catalog. I understand the valid astronomic reasons for having seasons officially start when they do, but as far as I'm concerned they really start at the beginning of a month - to me, Winter runs from December through February, Spring is March, April and May, Summer is the three months I got off from school despite the undeniable truth that we only actually got about the last five days of June off (with a child's perception of time, I thought for years that July 4 came in the middle of summer vacation), and Fall is September through November.

I get so sick of summer that I'm in the mood for Fall well before it starts -- this year my annual mood swing is actually late because I've been so focused on last week's races. Last year I think I began wanting to wear Fall colors by about the middle of August. This year the weather has gifted me with a noticeable cooldown to complement my mood; it's hitting barely over 100 and our low temps are back to 80 or so. I do hope this lasts.

I've always enjoyed the first feeling of crispness on a breeze, but in the last decade and a half I've come to love Fall because it promises an end to summer heat that's overstayed a welcome I never gave it in the first place. Fortunately I have things like sleeveless sweaters or lightweight items in Fall colors so that I can compromise between a Fall mood and temperatures that would spell S-u-m-m-e-r anywhere else. And fortunately I can listen to elegiac Fall music and read cozy books that feel like nesting to me without any regard for weather or calendar.

The word "middle-class" must not have been common in Alcott's time; the Marches are certainly not poor except by contrast to former glories; they have enough to eat and some to give away, a roof that doesn't leak, and even household help. Meg and Jo work because they begged to, and though the money they bring in does seem to help, there's no implication that necessity absolutely force the choice. But why does an Army chaplain's stipend not support his family? And what does Mr. March do after getting back from the War? There's never a mention that he's affiliated with any church, but he's too saintly to live off of his daughters' labor. (Bronson Alcott probably wasn't, but Mr. March seems to be a greatly idealized version of Louisa's father the flaky idealist.)

Also, it seems odd that the Marches' modest house would be immediately next door to the Laurence's mansion. I don't suppose there were zoning laws, but what about neighborhoods?

flinging myself into it

Richard Bach is best known for his mystical new-agey stuff like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Illusions: Confessions of a Reluctant Messiah, and One. As mystical new-agey stuff goes, they're not bad, which is to say I enjoyed them on first reading but don't reread them much now. His aviation writings are definitely worth rereading, however. They are a bit more grounded, if you'll excuse the expression, and are suffused, shot through, totally saturated in the love of flying and airplanes.

In one essay (probably collected in A Gift of Wings) Bach tells of talking to a seatmate on a commercial airplane. The man spends most of the flight talking about his WWII military experience in loving detail, then winds up the rest of his life in one sentence :"And so I came home, got married, got a job with the company, and here I am." In contrast, Bach asks a recreational pilot what he remembers about his life and gets, "What do I remember? WHat don't I remember! Just yesterday I was out at the airport and ...." and he's off, spinning stories, hanger flying, living and reliving his life.

That's what pilots are like. That's what rowers are like. That's what people who compete (at any level) in any of those sports now going on in Greece and people who read SF and go to cons and people who knit and people who do just about anything they really, really care about are like. It's true that college was a seminal time for me, and that my wedding day had wonderful memories and so on, but if I thought those were the very best times and it was all downhill from there I think I'd have to shoot myself. My goal is never to be able to summarize my most recent decades as "and so I settled down and here I am". I don't want to settle down, if that ever means not caring.

And so I'm off to Masters Nationals tomorrow, and even though I'm not terribly fast I'm going to row each race knowing that I have at least a chance to do well in it. I'm going to fling myself into this weekend without worrying about how I'll get out of it (well, I do have airfare home!) and I'm going to suck the marrow out of it.

I don't know why I thought of Bach today. I haven't read him in a while. Maybe this is my brain's way of reminding me of what I need to remember now.

Olympic coverage

Olympic opening ceremony: Beautiful. A bit odd in some of the symbolism but that's typical and it was all worth staying up past our bedtimes for. The parade of Greek history was especially cool, and whatshername the Games' organizer deserved to be every bit as proud and glad as she looked.

Athletes' parade: a quick lesson on what countries have good dentistry and cutting edge electronics, because of all the big smiles and videocams the athletes had. The two are surprisingly uncorrelated.

Sucks: All those athletes who are competing today and had to miss the Ceremonies. If I were one of them I'd hate that.

Proud: Of Alan Iverson, one of the few NBA stars who was there and looked excited about it. There were others, like Yao Min, but most of those were competing for their home countries rather than the US. For $ome rea$on US-native sports stars don't apear to properly appreciate the Olympics.

Complaints: It's not his fault, but I can tell I'm going to be very tired of hearing about Michael Phelps in a very short time. And where were the cameras when the Zew Zealand women's sculling pair flipped? All I saw (on our videotape, because it was broadcast at 2AM) was a quick shot of them getting back into the boat.

Perks: Thanks to all that time in front of the TV, the purse I was working on is done and is now drying after blocking. I'll post a picture later.

among the Darwinians...

Hey, check it out. I'm included in Tangled Bank #9. (It's a showcase of science-related weblog writing.) So are a lot of people who actually know what they're talking about. Go check it out, because you might learn something from one of them.

sleep, yarn and fat

Dammit. I did start an entry yesterday before I got pulled into an emergency. I know I hit Save but it's vanished. On the other hand, it wasn't exactly deathless prose.

Due to aforementioned emergency I didn't get home until nearly 7 last night but that was OK because we are tapering before next week's big race. That means that not only was I not planning to go to the gym, but neither was Rudder and so we got to set the alarm for a lovely late 6AM. Of course, I still woke up before it went off, but not much before. And this also meant I got to shower at home nad not have to pack clothes for getting dressed in the gym.

Having finished my flock on bunnies, all two of them, I've gone back to my very first piece of knitting. I don't have enough yarn to make a swatch and can't find more (it's Shetland wool from Scotland. I didn't know enough to save the label but did talk to the owner of the store where I bought it.) so on advice from the local yarn store I'm making it into a purse. The original wool is a dull teal with flecks of brick and cream. I had trouble finding something to go with it, but settled on a brick red with strands of other colors, in a very soft wool with a little acrylic and nylon. I'll be using that as a crochet edging (nearly done!) and for a handle. Yesterday my coworker the crochet expert verified that I'm doing the edging right, showed me how to slipstitch the sides together, and came up with some ideas for a lining. She likes it, which relieves my mind a bit; I couldn't decide whether I liked the color combination enough to finish it or if I should just rip the whole thing out and do something else with the pretty yarns. Current plans are to give the finished purse to my mother, and I think my coworker's tastes are closer to hers than mine are, so her opinion was very reassuring.

I should post a picture. Should have done some of the bunnies, too, but they're probably all chewed on by now. If I have enough of the brick yarn next, I may make a small openwork scark to drape around my denim jacket. After that and my Gryffindor scarf, if I'm not sick of the whole thing, I think I may take the plunge into clothing and try this sleeveless sweater. I wear that sort of top a lot to work. Small as I am, even I don't have a 32" chest, but it's a simple pattern and should be easy enough to either add a few stitches or use a slightly bigger gauge. Knitting I'm new at; basic math I can do. This tank top is also a possibility that looks like it's within my capability (both skill and patience).

Since I'm in trim for the big races, on Monday I went and got dunked to have my body fat measured. The result was 21.7%, which was less than I remembered it being last time (2 years ago) but a point more than it actually was. At my weight, though, a pound one way or the other makes that much difference and the test itself has an error margin of +/- 1%, so essentially it's about the same. I guess that's good. It's interesting, though: I've been measured with calipers quite a few times, by a variety of trained people, and we have a Tanita scale at home. Both methods are consistent, but both always come out much higher (6-7%) than the immersion weighing which is supposed to be more accurate. I know the different equations on the calipers make a big difference, but the people doing the measuring keep telling me they know about all that and are usign the right one -- and as I've said, I've had it done by different people, both gym trainers and health professionals. Odd. Maybe I just have a strange fat distribution in my body?

because we care

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devastating intimacy

In writing to a friend who is in a period of thinking things through about her life, I quoted Jan Struther's Mrs. Miniver:

"A certain degree of un-understanding (not mis-, but un-) is the only possible sanctuary which one human being can offer to another in the midst of the devastating intimacy of a happy marriage."

It got me thinking. I believe in honesty and try not ever to lie to anyone, though there are some truths I just don't tell. I don't hide anything from Rudder, but there are some things I just don't tell him, some it wouldn't even occur to me to tell him because we just don't have the common vocabulary or common experiences that he would need to understand them. There aren't entire subjects I avoid, but I don't go into some of them (women's clothing, knitting, menstruating, books for four) in as much detail as I might with someone who participated in one of those areas more directly. I talk about what clothes I like but not exactly why, what I'm knitting but not how, whether I like a book but not why, or at least not in detail. At that, he probably hears more about some of my interests than he'd ideally like. And of course, this all applies in reverse too; I'm sure there are things he doesn't tell me just as there are topics I listen too out of love and courtest rather than great interest. Yet we have a lot more common interests and pursuits than most couples I know. I think it may not be possible for one person ever to connect with every facet of another. A good marriage connects a lot of the important ones, but even there I think Jan Struther may be right. Maybe we all just need a shelter in the back of our mind, a place where we can duck back to be alone -- but it may be different places depending whom we're dealing with.

minor peeve

You know what I really hate? What I really hate is days when I'm so busy I don't even have time to update here at luch and when I feel guilty about going home after 9.5 hours because there's still stuff to do.

Part of the reason for that is that I'll be offsite tomorrow. Not sure if I can update then either.

still singing. also reading.

Come to think of it, why are there so many people who have that group of interests - F&SF, folk music, musicals? I understand the link between the first two; there are any number of fantasy plots based on folk ballads or folk tales or folk tales told in ballads, and as an outgrowth of that, even quite a few novels in which the characters like or sing or quote folk music, from War for the Oaks to Picking the Ballad's Bones to Tam Lin to Silverlock (hmm. need to reread that one) to Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John stories.

But why musicals? Is it just that after all those ballads we get used to music that tells a story and has a singable melody?

Also, why don't I run into people who sing or play music anymore? In college, people brought guitars to parties and even those who couldn't play might sing to them. When I did the Rocky Horror Show (I was Columbia for a year or two at the Theatre of the Living Arts on South St. in Philadelphia, back when it showed movies) we'd sing show tunes as we walked home at 3AM. (We did try to be a little quieter on the residential streets.) Even when I volunteered at the Armand Bayou Nature Center in Houston we'd occasionally get to singing and playing at some of the group's gatherings. I don't play guitar much any more (and haven't really gotten to try the mandolin) but I'm still singing and whistling and I have no plans to stop any time soon. The rest of my world is bloody well going to have to give up and join in.

Resistance is futile.

On a different topic, I've sent an email, but will also wish my college bf a happy birthday here. If I'm not mistaken, he's turning 40. It's now been about 14 years since I've seen him in person, though we've emailed occasionally. I was 17 we first met. How oddly age telescopes time.

another twin?

I have a coworker whose Myers-Briggs personality type matches mine: ENTP. On Firday we were talking about one of our mutual favorite musicals, 1776. He prefers the original cast with William Dnaiels, whereas I think Brent Spiner was absolutely brilliant. However, he's never heard the latter and appanretly didn't see enough episodes of Star Trek: TNG to catch Spiner playing Lor or Cmdr. Data with an emotion chip and thus hasn't really seen his range.

After that we discussed songs about UK history and debated whether Steeleye Span's or Ewan MacColl's cover of the traditional "Cam' Ye O'er Frae France" came first. (I suspect Steeleye learned it from MacColl, though they could as likely have gotten it from the usual folk process.)

We also both are F/SF people though it's somewhat reassuring that we tend to gravitate toward different ends of the field - I read more fantasy than hard SF these days while he prefers more military SF novels.

Fortunately we don't look much alike. He's got a closer resemblance to the snowman/narrator from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but thinner. And his favorite sport is scuba diving, whereas I mostly stay on top of the water. Still, I'm beginning to wonder just how accurate those personality tests actually are.

Or it could be his office, the previous denizen of which shared my birth date, month, and year, gender, coloring, and commitment to a sport. We did occasionally get mistake for each other. She had better biceps and much greater flexibility, though.

spam, spam, eggs, and spam

I feel so studly now. Or alpha-geekly, anyway. Of course, this just goes to show how rusty my software skills really are.

My comments have been getting lots of spam in the last few days, and deleting them one at a time was getting annoying. I have now installed the MT-Blacklist plugin. Before I tried that I got to explore the wilds of MySql. During installation there was tar-ing and attempted untar-ing (not necessary, as it turned out; my Mac handled it). There was Fugu-ing and telneting, cd-ing and ls -l ing left and right. I was especially pleased that I hardly had to think at all before chmods started flowing from my fingertips like the Unix hack I used to be. Best of all, though not to my credit, the installation worked perfectly the first time and my comments are now despammed and protected from 500 or so known spammers. Very productive for a Friday night.

photos back

I picked up our photos yesterday - two rolls, including our trip to Oregon and the regatta in May (we didn't end up taking pictures at the most recent regatta). Unfortunately I only have slides, not digital photos, so I can't post any here. We used to have all of our slides put on PhotoCD but that got expensive. One of these years I'll get a slide scanner, but as the one I want costs about $900 it may not be soon. Ditto a better digital camera. I do need to get at least some of these shots and some of the Antarctica ones scanned onto CD, though, because I'm finding it annoying not to have them.

Neither of us will ever be hired as portrait photographers, but oddly enough this time it was the people photos that were most interesting. We'll have to look at the photos more carefully before we decide (I've only gotten a quick look on the light table at the shop) but I got some shots of the grandRudders in characteristic poses (him working on a gun barrel in his shop, her sitting by the house) that we may enlarge and frame for Rudder's parents and/or brother this year.

One thing I can do is get photos where people are sculptural elements rather than the main subject; I have a few of Rudder on the beach that I like, a few where he's running and seen only in silhouette and one where he's walking away from me with his sneakers slung back over his shoulder. There are also a few with Rudder and his dad, from a distance, standing at the bottom of the grandparents' driveway with a rural mailbox at one side, trees framing the scene and hills in the background. In at least some of them Rudder and his father are in identical poses - it's a classic father and son shot. I'd like to get the best of those printed for Rudder's mother.

We've also got a dramatic picture of She-Hulk in her blue, red, and yellow uni, carrying her yellow boat on her shoulder, with its shadow streaming down in front of her, and another of Rudder in a bright red shirt with yellow stripes down his sleeves getting into his boat. There are also a few beach landscapes that look better than I expected and some flower shots from the parents' garden that, if they're crisp enough, I may enter in a contest for garden photos the Oregonian newspaper is having.

There is one shot, one Rudder took, that I'm not sure I want to see again. It is of me, and is the reverse of flattering; in it I look middle-aged and decidedly grumpy. I think, though, that if it were of someone else I might like the image quite a bit. It's full-face, on the beach with sunset light coming onto my face from one side. The picture is stark and unsparing. I'm not smiling. It's a revealing sort of photo, which may be one reason I don't like it, but there seems to be a lot of information in the face's lines and expression, which is why I might call it art if it were someone else.

Of course, once I get a chance to look at it more closely it may also be hopelessly fuzzy and not good art at all. I can't wait to get home and really look at the pictures.

Actually, I can't wait to get home, period. It's been a hard week.

what now?

Possibly not so accurate:

Quidnunc:
quid·nunc , NOUN: A nosy person; a busybody. ETYMOLOGY: Latin quid nunc?, what now? : quid, what; see kwo- in Appendix I + nunc, now

I don't think that's quite what the person who made the quiz meant to say, unless I just misunderstood it.

posted on July 11101

Seen on a cubicle wall: "There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who know binary, and those who don't."

I'm a what?

Reasonably accurate, I think.... I got this from Mer

Category XI - The
Quidnunc

Though you don't fit in, and your social graces are
sometimes lacking, people like you because you
have all the information. Now, who won the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1952?


What Type of Social Entity are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I'm a what?

Reasonably accurate, I think.... I got this from Mer

Category XI - The
Quidnunc

Though you don't fit in, and your social graces are
sometimes lacking, people like you because you
have all the information. Now, who won the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1952?


What Type of Social Entity are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

bunny 1 done

I finished making my first bunny last night (along with accomplishing a gazillion other things I needed to do this weekend). I'll try to put up a picture later. That 6" square took a bit long than I expected, because not only does sportweight yarn knit up smaller (than worsted weight), it's harder to work with. That might also be because partly this is acrylic, instead of the wool or cotton I'd worked with before. Now all I need to do is make another one - this is an occupational hazard of having friends with twin babies.

I get very proud of myself when I've finished a project, whether it's making a necklace or knitting a dishrag, finishing a race or a long workout piece, or something bigger like finishing my pilot's license or my MS. I still think of myself as a bit of a fuckup, good at starting things but not so good at finishing them, so every finish is a victory. I do have the tenacity to dig in and finish when it really matters - I don't think anyone has ever earned an engineering degree without that - but I'm not very patient and it's hard for me to finish something that goes slowly. Knitting is probably character-building for me.

I don't particularly mind quitting something when I've decided there's no good reason to continue, like the time a few years ago when I was thinking about getting an MA in Linguistics and stopped because I'd changed jobs, didn't have the free time anymore, and couldn't figure out what I'd do with that degree if I did get it. On the other hand, I do mind when I quit something our of sheer inertia or laziness, even if the quitting doesn't actually hurt me, as with the book idea I had a few years back. This is why when I'm working on projects just for fun, I choose small ones that I know I can finish.

I may not ever make a sweater, but I will someday get an IFR rating. Whenever I start that I know I can finish. It has the criteria for success: a finite scope (required number of hours and body of knowledge) and it is something that will benefit me. (It will benefit Rudder, too, because then he'll have a better safety pilot available for his own flying. The biggest obstacle to my finishing may be my own tendency to not want to do something I'm being pushed to do. See "pig, instructions for driving".)

Rudder is actually a good influence on me in this matter. He's much more methodical and patient than I am and has a driving work ethic that won't let him quit anything once he's started, but tends to start fewer things on the spur of the moment. He started both his MS and his VFR pilot training before I did, but thought both out more thoroughly before starting.

It's a fact, for me at least, than each thing I finish makes it easier to finish the next similar one. I used to be a lot more scared of racing; now I know that a thousand-meter race, or even a 5000-meter one won't kill me, because it's already tried to, and failed. I know I can finish a pilot rating or a masters degree, or even a little knitted bunny rabbit.

On a related note, can anyone out there recommend websites with nice, easy (and preferably small and quick) knitting patterns? After I finish the next bunny, I'll be making my first swatch into a purse, suggestion thanks to the people at the store I visited Saturday. I don't have enough yarn to make it into a scarf and can't find more matching yarn. (It was my first thing, and I didn't know enough to save the label.) After that, a Harry Potter scarf that I hope will knit up quickly because I'm using bigger needles. Mine won't be exactly like the one in the movie - someone has published a replica pattern but it starts with "Cast on 84 stitches on circular or double-pointed needles." No thanks. Anyhow, I figure that one is just a costume designer's interpretation and who's to say mine isn't just as good? I'll have to decide between garter, stockinette, or ribbed stitch, and am leaning toward the last, but will keep it as simple as possible. So, what should I do next?

TMI

An irritable gut and a long drive home are a bad combination. When the one is acting up, the other may not be quite practicable. Therefore my current mood is somewhere between Dammit! and *whimper*. I did take something for it, so hopefully that'll help.

Never a dull moment

This morning we unloaded, washed and re-rigged the boats after Sunday's race. Everything was going fine until I got to work, went to get out of the car and realized I didn't have my purse. It wasn't in the small tote I take to work, so it's still laying on a counter at home. This means no money and no driver's license, not a good thing to find out when you've just driven 40 miles and will have to drive 40 more to get to your license.

This is why it's good to hoard; my coworkers offered to loan me money if needed, but a quick check through my office revealed $3 in change and a cup of ramen noodles I can have for lunch, not to mention the ever-present pretzels (the primary food of Dichroics) two kinds of tea bags, sunflower seeds, Swedish fish, and a few Luna bars. I might be driving without a license but I won't be doing it on an empty stomach.

Then I raised my hand to check the time and realized I wasn't wearing a watch. Because we weren't actually working out this morning, I wore my regular watch instead of my workout watch. (It's waterproof, so hosing down boats wouldn't hurt it.) Standard procedure for me in the locker room is to put on my watch with my other jewelry and put the workout watch in my gym bag. I did the second part of that (I think) just not the first .... and I don't feel like taking a ten-minute walk to the car to rectify my mistake.

And then, not wanting to cut into my $3 in case I wanted it for later, I made myself a cup of tea instead of buying coffee and promptly spilled the entire thing. It's a lidded cup but the lid came off. I can report that the carpet in my office is uncannily absorbent - the entire cupful stayed in about a square foot.

Never a dull moment.

knitting plans

Well, my first dishrag, the one I finished at Rudder's grandparents, isn't exactly a work of art (blue). On the other hand, it's a dishrag and it will work, so who cares, really. After getting home, I consulted the Stitch and Bitch book (thanks for the recommendation to both Natalie and Baf) and I think I have now figured out how to make yarn-over holes (yellow).

My project plans seem to be multiplying. I expect to finish the yellow one the drive to this weekend's regatta. (If I were Rudder's grandmother, this would be about a two-dishrag drive each way, or maybe a little more -- she "would get more done but she likes to stop and rest sometimes"). After that I plan to do two bunnies like this for my twin honorary niece and nephew. They look incredibly easy - knit a 6" square and two little bits for the ears, sew a couple of seams, and stiff. Even I can finish that. (I'm clever enough with my fingers but short on patience.) After that I may venture into actual clothing and do a hat or two for premature babies. I'm a little leary of anything that involves babyweight yarn, tiny needles, and begins with "cast on 84 stitches", but preemies have this one great characteristic in common: they're small. So are their heads. I only have to knit about 5" then decrease over 11 rows. I think I can do that.

And after that, who knows? Maybe some not-soon day I'll be able to make myself a sweater. A sleeveless one!

the walls have eyes

Today I went to lunch with a couple of coworkers, to a place where the walls were staring back at me. Fortunately, they'd warned me about the trophies beforehand.

We're not just talking about a deer or two, either. This place had deer, antelope, elk, fish, an entire fox with a duck in its mouth, geese and ducks flying by on the walls and ceiling, a coatimudi fer gossakes, a warthog, mountain goat, something I think was a wild boar (not a javelina, way too big) and even a wolf. I didn't think you could hunt those legally. Maybe it was an antique. They also had a jackalope and one wall plaque with what looks like a deer's butt.

Since I'm not a vegetarian, I don't have a problem with hunting for meat. I'd far rather be a deer, free in a forest, that ends up getting shot than a cow on a factory farm. However, I think putting trophies on walls is a bit twisted. First, if it's the whole animal, then you've killed something purely for decoration. Second, if you've butchered the carcass and taken the meat, do you really want its former owner staring down reproachfully as you eat it?

Though I disapprove, trophies don't spoil my appatite or I wouldn't have gone. And it was interesting identifying all of the animals -- some had signs explaining what they were. Still, I stuck to ordering the battered shrimp. At least there weren't any shellfish watching me eat.

rain

Last night we had real rain, not just a few drops on a windshield - according to this morning's news it was .35" where I live, up to 1.93 in some parts of Phoenix. (For contrast, my mother tells me Philadelphia got 6" of rain in one of their bad recent storms, and parts of New Jersey got up to 13". ) It was an intense monsoon storm, though, complete with winds that have left bits of tree all over, some hail, an opaque dust storm before the rain, and lightning and thunder that sounded like cannons outside our bedroom window. The lightning was right there, with no gap between it and the thunder, making it one of those times when I wasn't too happy that our bed is right under the window.

If we get a lot of these monsoon rains it will be some help, along with the long-lasting drizzles we got back in February. What we really need here, though, are winter snowstorms in the high country where our water supply comes from, to let the snow melt and soak in. These quick storms just cause damage and evaporate. Also, it's a bad fire season, so the lightning is a real hazard; fortunately last night it came with enough rain to (probably) prevent it starting any new fires.

To answer LA's question in the last entry, the Sonoran is fairly lush as deserts go. We only get 12" or so of rain a year but that's more than a lot of deserts, and we get it mostly in the form of winter rains and summer monsoons. In good years we have incredible displays of spring flowers. The high country gets a bit more rain and snow, which fill up the reservoirs like Roosevelt Lake and Lake Powell, which are way below where they should be after these nine years of drought. It's especially hard on the cattle industry when there are drought years - thoughout the west, not just here. At least, though we haven't had enough rain to end the drought, we have seen some this year, which makes us better off than parts of Australia.

unconnected thoughts

Hey, it actually rained yesterday! I saw at least 10 or 20 drops on the windshield when we went out to pick up dinner. (After 9 years of drought, you take what you can get.) More usefully, we had a whopping .12 inches of rain at our airpark property. I'm hoping hard for enough wet this monsoon season to keep any more of our trees from dying.

Back to the gym this morning -- I did get to do one weight workout, one yoga class, and a little erging in my in-laws' gym but I still wouldn't be surprised if I'm a little sore later today.

Someone should inform Tom Ridge that no federal agencies have the authority to postpone elections because no federal authorities are aupposed to have that authority. The Founders were a lot more worried about what the government could do to its citizens than about preserving the government itself. (See Mechaieh for links to the articles that prompted this.)

More later if time and meetings permit.

feline-induced sleep deprivation

Well, no, I didn't manage to get up and row today. I think the cats were confused because I was home and Rudder wasn't and so they tried to help by bringing the fact to my attention half the night and early in the morning. Either that or they just wanted affection. This is why I sleep better in hotels.

back from the Oregon desert and coast

I am home from the Oregon trip. (Rudder won't be until tomorrow, having stopped off on the way for a meetig in San Francisco. As usual, I don't have time or energy to write a detailed trip report, especially as I haven't finished my paper trip journal (the only paper journal I keep, exclusively on travel).

Freeform impressions are about all I want to manage now, especially as I'm still tentatively planning to row tomorrow. And so:

Gloriously cool, especially in Lakeview (Oregon high desert) and then again in Newport, on the coast .... lots of sleeping in, by our standards .... time with the grandparents, who are now in their eighties. Grandpa P. especially is a treasured local characters, who grew up on a homestead and now is the guru for all the local gunsmiths ... long, long views over the desert, green views over the mountains, and then even longer views over the ocean ... my first completed knitting project, a dishrag of the sort Grandma P. likes to make on car trips (she's so much faster that she counts the distance to one town and a discloth and a half, to others as two or three -- it took me the whole weekend to make one uneven one) .... incredible dancers in front of the Globe Theatre in Ashland, and an even better singer behind them .... followed by a rendition of Much Ado About Nothing that has me calling Rudder Benedick on occasion ... a total lack of questions about when we'll be producing great-grandkids, either because I'm in my late thirties and they've given up or because one of Rudder's cousins has a child so Grandma P. has someone to knit tiny sweaters for (Rudder's parents have never pressured us, having not enjoyed that sort of thing when they were on the receiving end) ... a wonderful table d'hote (is that the right term? We picked one of four entrees and were served a bunch of other things as well) at Tables of Content in the Sylvia Beach Hotel. Both hotel and restaurant ave a book theme, so that the dinner courses are called "chapters" ... joining the Rogue Nation over some excellent gumbo at the Brewery by the Bay ... wind tangling my hair on a jetboat riding through Hellgate Canyon ... seeing elk, deer, beaver, seals, sea anemones, starfish, osprey, and two bald eagles....

If I'm lucky the relaxation will last through tomorrow's row until I get to work. I don't see it holding much past that, and possibly not that long. While I was away the monsoon season started, so the humidity is up and tomorrow's lows are expected to b 87 degrees or so. This doesn't help the rowing experience - I'd take time off after next weekend's regatta, but I can't if I don't want to look too pitiful at Nationals.

bitten

Arggh. Off to the doctor this afternoon, thereby missing three meetings I really didn't want to miss. (Yeah, I know. Don't tell Rudder. I get enoughpointy hair jokes from him as it is.) The worst of it is, I just know I'll get there and wait forty-five minutes just to have a nurse practitioner spend five minutes with me and say "Oh, that's nothing. You're fine. Go home." By then it will be 3:30 and way too late to get back to work in time to do anything useful, though I will at least check email from home.

However, I've had both the nurse on the handy consulting line my health insurance provides (it really is a nice benefit) and the NP at my doctor's office tell me I really should go in, so go I will.

What it is, is a bump. Two, actually -- well, technically three. Yesterday morning, I noticed what I thought were two mosquito bites, a big one on my hip and a little one below my butt. Right now my state is leading the nation in cases of West Nile Virus, all within this country, so that's already something to monitor. Lat night I noticed the big bite was bigger, about an inch and a half across, red, and a little itchy. Then I noticed that the lymph gland in my right groin, a few inches over from the big bite, was swollen and a little painful to touch. This morning it was the same, except the big bite was flattened, red, hot to touch, and has a little red dot in the middle. So I called the nurse on the phone service and told her all about it, plus the fact that I'm leaving to go out of state tomorrow night. She told me to call my doctor and if they couldn't have an actual nurse talk to me, to go to an urgent care facility. Good girl that I am, I did as directed. And of course they didn't have an appointment open tomorrow when I'm free, so I have to go this afternoon.

That leg feels cold now, so maybe it's just as well.

My theory is that it's a spider bite and the gland is just working at filtering whatever toxins make spider bites swell up in the first place. I somehow doubt a doctor can do anything.

Later note: the NP guessed that it was probably a mosquito bite originally (spider bites show two holes) but said it looked like it was starting to become cellulitis[1] so he said it was a good thing I'd come in, put me on an antibiotic, and told me to use heat pads a few times a day. Sometimes it is good to vist the doctor.

[1]Not that kind of cellulitis. "Inflammation of the skin related to infection (cellulitis) commonly occurs as a result of abrasions of the skin. When abrasions or puncture wounds occur, bacteria on the surface of the skin can invade the deeper layers of the skin. This causes inflamed skin characterized by heat, redness, warmth, and swelling. The most common bacteria that cause cellulitis include Staphylococcus and Streptococcus. Patients can have an associated low-grade fever. Cellulitis generally requires antibiotic treatment, either orally or intravenously. Heat application can help in the healing process. " from the U of Miami's Med School Glossary.

packing

Two pair jeans (one black, one blue), four pair shorts, two pair capris (one I will wear on the plane), one short skirt. One pair of shoes (lace-up, usable for gym or hiking), two pair sandals (one brown and I can walk miles in them, one black and slightly dressier). Assorted T-shirts, one sweater, one fleece pullover, one cotton pullover, one sleeveless turtleneck. Fleece jacket. Goretex jacket. Nine days, Oregon in summer, visiting both sides of the Cascades (the rainy side and the high desert side).

Yup, I overpacked again. And the worst of it is, I still can't figure what to wear to go see Much Ado About Nothing, outdoors at the replica Globe Theater at night - it needs to be slightly dressy, I think, and warm but not winter-warm. Hence the sleeveless T-Neck, which may be all right with either the short skirt or the black jeans and a jacket. I think.

dishrags and connections

I've had a bit of a dehydration thing going on, which is why I haven't been writing here much. After doing some errands Sunday that involved walking between stores I was feeling a bit off so went and drank lots and laid down a while. (When you live in a desert, you learn to recognize the feeling of dehydration quickly.) I was feeling a bit better by Sunday night.

Yesterday, I was not quite 100% so decided to erg instead of rowing; the difference is that you can work out just as hard on an erg but if you start feeling awful you can stop and get off, which is harder to do in a boat if you're a couple of kilometers from the beach at the time. And also, no bathrooms in rowing shells. That turned out to be a mistake - not the erging, but the working out at all. I was feeling progressively more disengaged on the way into work, which is not a good feeling to have while driving at 75 per. I gave it an hour or so at work and still didn't feel better so I did the drive back home and spent the rest of the day resting and drinking water and Gatorade. In this climate, the latter is as necessary as sunscreen. Given the amount of Gatorade we go through in my house, I ought to look up who makes it and go buy stock. This morning I made the intelligent decision to skip going to the gym and am now feeling all right except for a lingering headache.

While I was resting yesterday I also learned to crochet, more or less, and made one small square in single crochet and one in double. There's no doubt crochet goes faster, and it's much easier to unravel when you'e made a mistake, or rather knitting and crochet are equally easy to unravel but with crochet it's much easier to get the loop on the hook and start up again. With knitting it's too easy to lose one of your loops and then you've slipped a stitch. I think I like knitting better, because it's easier to do on automatic and to read a book while you're doing it, and because I like the texture of the finished piece better, but I can imagine doing crochet for small things like trim or for dishrags. We currently use hand-knitted or crocheted dishrags given to us by Rudder's grandmother. They work well because of the texturing and they make me happy because of the connection. So now when they fall apart if I don't have any more from her I can make my own, and the connection will still count even if the physical piece comes from my hands instead of hers. We're going to be seeing the grandparents as well as the parents next week, so I'll get her to show me how to knit better and then I can even make the same pattern of dishrag she does.

my life in Movable Type

The archives are up! Not all of them are visible yet - I imported them with Draft status and I have to convert to Publish status individually (just a matter of selecting from a pull-down menu -- there's a "bulk edit" widow, so at least I don't have to open each entry.

I did use a script to get the entries off Diaryland and set up in the right format, but the dates didn't come across right in most cases so I've had to go back and fix that by hand, hence the lack of yesterday's entries. It was interesting, though because in the process I got to watch the last three years of my life unfolding. I note that in 2001 I was leg-pressing only about 50 lbs less than I am now, which is a little depressing. On the other hand, there have been times in that period when I've been working with (slightly) lower weights and lighter reps, so that partly explains it. A more gratifying fact is that at that time I was writing about how my fingers were numb "but deserved to be, because I had rowed just under 10 km that morning in the single." Yesterday I rowed 14 km -- could have gone farther but I was out of time. I also got to read about unemployment, re-emplyment, travels, and lots of books. Oe thing that surprised me was how high a percentage of my titles were quotes from books or songs. I spotted at least three cribbed from Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now, which makes sense since I'm writing about the vagaries of my own life. I also found a lot more typos than expected. I tried spellchecking but gave up less than halfway through because there was just too much of it.

The line-wrapping is a bt screwed up, but I won't bother fixing that. Unfortunately one result of that is that a lot of the links are messed up, and I will fix those over time. I suppose I will also have to change all those links referring back to my Diaryland site, but that will be a slow process.

Meanwhile, Rudder's just come home, so I have more important things to go do.

more import woes

I spent some time today trying the clayrhino script to import my ahives from Diaryland, again. This time I was able to get the script to run all the way through, and it seemed to work except that more than half of the dates didn't come through. They were listed as 12/31/1969. Being stupidly trustul, I spent hours, literally, correcting those dates by hand. I finally decided just now that it might be smarter to try importing a small subset of entries before going any farther. That woud have been a very good thing to try several hours ago, as it turned out; once again, Moveable Type wasn't able to read my file, even though it seemed to conform with what their Help file told me to do. It understood the boundaries of each entry, but tried to cram an entire entry in the Title field.

My next theory is that maybe the carriage returns are funny on the Mac or something. I'm going to try mailing my sample file to a PC, editing the plain text in Notepad, and importing that. Tomorrow, not today.

periodic update

I've been told that if I don't update here every couple of months, my journal
access might go away, followed by the journal itself. So until I figure out how to
transfer archives, or have time to do it the manual way, I will be writing here
every so often. It probably won't be anything exciting, though.

And
yes, I do know about Markus at Clayrhino's script to import from Dland - I just
couldnÕt get it to work. It kept dying on me; I suspect the 36 archive files
containing over 1200 entries just plain overloaded it.

two pieces of good news

I just catalogued my 1001st book! I still haven't gotten to the ones upstairs, which include textbooks and SF paperbacks.

And there's a dust storm outside! If we're lucky, we mght even get a spot of rain - the last time we saw any of that was about February. (Literally.) I do hope we're in for a very rainy rainy season.

driving in, dammit

Dammit! It looks like I won't be able to telecommute tomorrow after all; there's a meeting I really ought to be here in person for. Somehow a day spent at home, no matter how much I get done, has much less of the oh-no-here-we-go-again factor than a day in the office. I considered just coming in for the afternoon, but that rather defeats the whole not-driving point.

I thought new knitters were supposed to drop stitches all the time. Why do I keep getting more stitches on the needle than I'm supposed to have? And is it true that crocheting goes faster but uses more yarn? I can afford more yarn if it saves me time.

some kudos

A bit of unpaid advertising here, because I think it's deserved. Kudos to Real Simple magazine, which in its current issue's article on dresses actually has a short woman in the "best for petites" style, a plump one in the "best for plus sizes" style, a chesty one in the "best for large bust" style, and so on. They don't look like professional models, and they're not all white, either. Also to Whirlpool, who (according to Reba McEntire in their own ads, admittedly) donates a fridge and a range to every house Habitat for Humanity builds (I love Habitat's "sweat equity" model). And to the guys at Armordeck who did our backyard redo includig a propane grill for a reasonable rpice and who thus made tonight's extremely tasty dinner (grilled shrimp and asparagus, 5 min of prep time nad about 8 to cook) possible. The other advantage to the grill is that Rudder now cooks about twice as much as he used to -- or at least more of his cooking is real cooking, not just packaged stuff.

Disclaimer: I have no connection to any entity mentioned in this entry except Rudder. Oh, and the shrimp and asparagus I ate for dinner.

Where the copper shines like Arizona gold

Today I learned to knit. Well, if you take those words very literally I did. I do not yet know how to purl, for example, much less make yarn into anything you'd want to own or wear. I am the proud creatrix of a swatch of knitted Shetland wool about 20 stitches long by 4 stitches deep. It's a start, especially given the instructions I was dealing with.

To back up, I have been a very *very* good girl since Rudder left. Last night after work instead of vegetating, I did the food shopping so I wouldn't have to do it later in the weekend and so I would have snacks for today. This morning I went to the gym to make up for skipping Thursday. Afterward I came home, showered, and drove up to Jerome, a old copper mining town, then a ghost town, now full of galleries, hippies, bikers, and some wonderful glass and other art. The town ins hung on the side of a mountain; there are stairs from one street to another and some of the older buildings have literally slid downhill. My favorite gallery was Raku, not only because I loved their art but because the upper floor has a floor to ceiling window with a mind-blowing view straight out over the Verde Vallley to the Mogollon Rim and Sedona's red rocks. I came home with a lot of jewelry (dichroic glass, of course), a silver barrette, an 8" high wooden cat that is also a puzzle, a tiny cat made of feathers sleeping on a pillow (because it was only $2 and one of my coworkers will love it), and knitting needles (bamboo, circular), Shetland wool, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Knitting and Crocheting. Also a Dar Williams CD, The Green World, and a bottle of rose from the local winery. Despite the weighty haul, though, I think my favorite part of the trip beside the cool wind was the music in each store. Hardly any of it was anything I can hear on the radio; I heard Johnny Cash, Dar Williams, Patsy Cline, Willy Nelson, some of the Beatles' more obscure songs, and a band in a bar covering Lyle Lovett's "She's No Lady, She's My Wife". That was almost more fresh air for me than the actual desert mountain air. (The title of this entry, by the way, is from Kate Wolf's song "Old Jerome", which is about the town, though I didn't hear it today.)

The knitting, you will have surmised, was begun courtesy of the implements of construction and book I bought in Jerome. I do not recommend the Idiot's Guide - I bought it because I liked the idea of a book that describes how to knit and crochet both, but this is one of the instances when that series' name is unfortunately apt for one of its books. The book would have benefited greatly from an editor who knew left from right; I never did figure out how to do double casting on at least partly because of one illustration where the caption said to hold one strand of yarn in the left hand and the other in the right hand -- while the picture showed both in the same hand. Fortunately, there were instructions for two other ways to cast on, but that leads into another complaint. This book is a bit too theoretical; it has three ways to cast on and two or three ways to do everything else. It's a bit confusing for someone who's just learning -- better to show one way and just mention the existance of others, introducing themlater or in an appendix. Also, there are only general instructions, no patterns to actually make something. The guy at he shop where I bought it was extrmely helpful though; apparently his wife is the real stitching guru (I suspect some of the scarves I saw in a few galleries are made by her) but he was able to give me some advice, like using circular needles even for flat pieces (easier to put it down and not have anything slip off). He also played me samples of several songs on The Green World because I was trying to decide whether to buy that or Dar's live album, and he insisted on giving me his wife's card so I could email her with any questions. I will send them feedback about my issues with the book, if I can figure out how to make it not sound like a reflection on their shop.

I was especially proud of myself because a lot of this all was outside my comfort zone: doing stuff instead of collapsing after work, going to the gym when I knew I'd be walking around hills are day are minor things, but doing a 2 hour drive solo always makes me a bit nervous even though I've done longer ones. Pushing myself to do things that make me uncomfortable but that expand or reinforce my capabillities feels like a virtue, somehow.

Friday's linguistic commentary

As I type this I'm wearing a bathing suit, rafting shorts, and a Cool-max shirt I use for rowing, hiking or the gym because it's so lightweight. That wouldn't be at all strange except that I'm in my office. I was going to change until I realized that changing *out* of shorts and *in* to more proper clothing at 3 o'clock on a Friday was just wrong. I did put the shirt back on as a nod to professionalism.

The wettable duds are, of course, because of the company carwash, which for the record did not involved coercion either to wash or to wear skimpy clothing (it wasn't that kind of carwash because it's not that kind of company) but did involved much spraying of hoses, not always directed at cars. I'm still damp and very glad I wore the bathing suit.

I'm also noticing I still write bathing suit, the word I grew up using, which is odd because these days I generally seem to say swimsuit. The latter makes more sense, that being what I call what I do in said suit. It confused the hell out of me when I first came across references to bathing and bathing machines in Alice in Wonderland and other English books. (Actually, the whole idea of bathing machines still confuses the hell out of me. Victorians were weird.) I think, though, that I've changed the word I use mostly due to the influence of news anchors and advertisers, who always (in the USA) use the term "swimsuit".

When I was younger, the two other locutions I noticed them saying differently than people around me did were matters of pronunciation; route pronounced as "rout" (we said "root") and coupon pronounced as "koopon" (we said "kyoopon"). I think I flicker between root and rout depending how I feel, what road I'm actually talking about, and who I'm talking to. Koopon still sounds weird to me, though. Otherwise I don't have much of a Philadelphia accent these days; I don't say wooder for water, keeyan for can, or ayout for out. Hardly ever, anyway.

new mantra

It'll be calmer next week. It'll be calmer next week.....

I keep telling myself. Anyone want to bet?

At least tomorrow I get a free lunch (recognition for the people who were in yesterday's Big Company Event) and I get to hang around in my bathing suit all afternoon (Management Car Wash, for charity). Question: how high up the chain does a manager or director have to be before turning the hose on him or her becomes a Bad Career Move? Does it make any difference if it's 105 degrees out? And if I'm wearing shorts do I have to keep a T-shirt over my bathing suit? (See previous reference to 105 degrees.) (It's a one-piece, cut for swimming laps rather than showing off. I'm being conservative.)

anticipating quiet

The good thing about next week is that it ought to be a lot quieter, with our big event at work over and the boss out all week, and then at home with Rudder away. The bad part, of course, is that "Rudder away" part. Also, he's going to Rotterdam. Excitement for me is getting to go to another part of Phoenix.

Except that we're going to Oregon on vacation in about two weeks. And there was that little matter of Antarctica six months ago. OK, I'll stop complaining now. Good night.

who is painted in Grant's portrait?

Apparently today they're unveiling the official portrait of President Clinton that will hang in the White House next to all his predecessors. NPR was interviewing the artist who painted the portrait, and the interviewer asked, "Can you describe what the portrait looks like?"

I was really waiting for the artist to respond, "Er, Bill Clinton."

airpark visit

We went up to ur property on the Mogollon Rim yesterday, for the first time since about January. The death toll, from bark beetles and drought is two large pines and three of four small ones. I hate cutting down trees. Even when they're thoroughly dead, it's like going to a funeral. And these were thoroughly dead and very dry, so they were easy to cut and jam into my pickup.

In the past we've had to cut some that were only dying (because it was inevitable -- there's no cure for bark beetles and we don't like to leave dry tinder up there between our visits. That feels like pulling life support.

Still, it was nice to get up there where the air smells like pine and there's always wind, where we can watch airplanes taking off, where the neighbors stop to talk to us and the temperature is comfortable for sitting outside. I wish we could figure out how to have careers that would allow us to live up there, that would be lucrative enough so we could build the house we want, with lots of balconies and a cupola to watch the trees blowing and the planes landing.

avoiding the cross-town flurry

What a concept -- doing things on the side of town where I spend my waking weekday hours. Instead of rushing across town to drop my car off at the dealers (20,000 oil change and various-stuff checkup) and having Rudder come get me, then rushing to have him drop me off to pick it up tomorrow, I took it at lunch to a dealer 2 miles from my office. I was prepared to wait for it, courtest of Terry Pratchett and the local library, but as it turned out they have a shuttle service and were able to drop me back at work.

I sort of regret that, actually, not just for Hogfather's sake but because it turns out to be a really nice dealership with lots of new magazines, plenty of toys in their parts store (I want a miniature of my Mozzie-car) and even a customer Internet lounge. Instead I got to be doing productive work. (But I still may buy a toy car when I go back to pick mine up.)

not sick

The only problem with that is that I'm just barely on track to have done 500 miles by the end of this month, which would be half of my thousand mile goal, halfway through the year, iff* I don't miss any rowing workouts this month. Or, I suppose, if I miss one and do a weekend 10K or half-marathon, but I'd just as soon not. It's hard to justify a sick day off of work if I work out that morning.

*iff: Math term, meaning "if and only of"

PS: I guess the spirit has moved after all. I wrote this while falling asleep last night, but it was better before I forgot half of it and had to reconstruct:

Lips sample skin
Sweet and salt
Smooth and sculpted
In a space of time stolen from sleep.

more on Azkaban

I forgot to say that one thing I liked about PoA is that is was as funny as the books -- though of course the jokes all have to be visual in the movie.

My favorite thing was in the Start of Term Feast, when the choir was singing. I chuckled at the toads reedeeping on cue with the choir, but I was guffawing when I realized just what the choir was singing: the Witches' Chorus from Macbeth. ("Double, double, toil and trouble...")

Other comments I'd forgotten: I don't quite understand why Dumbledore would periodically spout odd new-agey sentences that weren't in the book and didn't make much sense. Unless it was to pave the way for his scene with Harry and Hermione in the infirmary, where he spouted odd new-agey things that did make sense in context.

I do wish Lupin nad Sirius had been a wee bit better looking, but it's probably more realistic this way. Though Sirius almost had a moment there in his last talk with Harry when I could imagine he'd been handsome once. I'm just as glad there was less Snape, as (apparently unlike the rest of the female population) I have never found either deliberate cruelty or greasy hair particularly appealing. It may just be because I haven't seen Rickman in anything else, though.

The hippogriff was well done. I still hate the werewolf, though .... and I still wish Ron could have been a bit less sniveling. Save that for Draco.

Azkaban

Well, we were going to wait until next weekend but did end up seeing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban today. I liked it.... but as a dyed-in-the-ink fan of the books I do have to pick a few nits.

First of all, as irritated as I get with long movies, even I thought the movie was too rushed, especially in the beginning. I do understand why they had to cut a lot and I actually agree with all but on thing, but honestly I don't think I'd have understood anything before about the Hogwarts train if I hadn't read the books. It's fair to assume anyone seeing with will have the first two movies for background, so will recognize the Dursleys, but I'm not too sure about Aunt Marge. Maybe so, though; I'm notirously dense about movies and while I can imagine not knowing the plot at all, it's hard for me to figure what I'd know having only seen the movies.

The one omission I really minded was the explanation of Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs. Without that there are so many unanswered questions: why is Sirius Harry's godfather? How does Lupin know how to use the Marauder's Map? Who made the Map and why did Filch have it? Why are Sirius and Pettigrew Animagi and how did they get that way? Why are Lupin and Sirius such friends in the Shrieking Shack? Why is Harry's Patronus a stag? Most crucial, how did Pettigrew betray James and Lily?

If you assume everyone's read the book, you can omit that, but that's not really a fair assumption, especially for the sort of people who don't read children's books (that would be, the sort of people I feel sorry for) but who do take their kids to the movies. It would have been worth adding another few minutes.

I did think it was a good addition having Hermione explain the difference btween werewolves and Animagi, so we know why Sirius is attacking Lupin. Speaking of Lupin as werewolf, though... yuck! He's just supposed to be a wolf, not something out of Mordor. I'd have liked seeing Sirius a more normal dog, too. There were a few other changes I didn't mind: I don't really miss the subplot with Ron's and Hermione's big argument. Given the time constraints, cutting that subplot made sense to me. The kids seemed much older to me than they do in the books, bu that's not a bad change either and it makes more sense of their general competence.

Loved the Whomping Willow. As always, I left wanting to move into Hogwarts. I didn't mind the new darker palette except that it made it a bit harder to convey the sheer joy in the wizarding world, I thought. The one place that did come across was in Harry's flight on Buckbeak. The whole ting felt very British to me, partly because of those grayer colors and partly because of the looks of the characters. There are some types, lilke Ron and the twins, you see a lot more rarely in the US, but an even more British thing to me was the looks of som eof the adults, particularly Messrs. Moony, Wormstail, and Padfoot. In a movie made in the US, they'd have been much prettier, with good teeth and clear skin, rather than looking like people who'd been through what they'd been through. (Though I would have liked to have seen the picture Harry had of Sirius all dressed up and cleaned up at his parents' wedding.)

I don't mnid Draco being a bit of a coward because I think he is, and I'm glad he ditched the weird vinyl haircut. I do mind Ron being so fearful, though. That's not how I see him in the books and I kept wondering what Harry would have wanted with the movie Ron who's afraid f everything. Or for that matter, what Hermione would have wanted, and she clearly did want. I liked the clarified Hermione/Ron subtext, especially knowing that JKR vets the movie plots. (I don't suppose this will put a damper on any committed Harry/Hermione shippers, especially since, as has been pointed out, they're only thirteen at this opint and only seventeen when they leave school. Who stays with their 13-year-old boyfriend, anyway?)

In general, I liked it a lot, and may even see it again. My only serious beef is the omitted M/W/P/P explanation.

party

The party actually went fairly well. We even had five people from my company show up -- there were a lot more from Rudder's place but mine were the first to show up and the last to leave. (Normally, they steer clear of our parties for the same reason I compain about my commute: it's a long way to drive.) This was actually our annual Mardi Gras party, postponed because it Feruary and March the backyard was under construction, so the food was Cajun and I scattered beads and doubloons around. We served beer, soda, water, Cajun-style brisket and Cajun deep-fried turkey, a vegetarian Jambalaya (not exactly authentic, but not everyone likes meat - and I did add trinity), as well as a couple of my party staples, a Mexican layer dip and a tomato-bread salad, chips, veggie nibbles, and cheeses and crackers. Other people brought coleslaw, Thai rice, crudites, bean dip, brownies, some cake squares with cherries on top that I need to get the recipe for, bean dip, a couple of bottles of wine, a key lime pie that never did get eaten, Golden Oreos (not half bad) and Italian ice -- prepackaged but very authentic and we Philly girls know our Italian ice. Also a case of Bud Lite, which we rediscovered just as we were congratulating ourselves on not having much light beer left. It's always hard to know what to do with that and the diet soda, since neither of us likes those. We can take the sodas to work, at least.

There was only one contretemp, when someone's little kid took a dump wthout bothering to get out of the pool first. I'd have to say his parents handled that about as well as an awkward situation could be handled, except for the obvious omission of putting a diaper on the kid in the first place. It was funny, though, as the father was attempting to be discreet about cleaning up both kid nad pool and the kid was hollering out, "I made poo-poo!" Discretion, apparently, is not a word taught on Sesame Street.

Other than that, I think I had a better time than at any of our previous parties in this house. Someone was even playing y guitar at one point. That was a bit odd, though: why would anyone memorize all of "Alice's Restaurant"? I'd bet even Arlo just improvises it each time.

party prep

There, see? I telecommuted today and didn't even write an entry here unti lI was off the clock (which is not to say I was totally dedicated every second... but I did get a lot done). Next on the agenda is the last-minute straightening for our party tomorrow. I'm trying to figure out how to get a cloth on the dining room table given that Rudder's piled it high with plastic plates, forks and cups.

I do hope enough people show up for it to be fun, and also so that we're not left with vast amounts of light beer and diet soda. The latter can be pawned off on coworkers later, at least, but I think my company would frown on my bringing in beer. In fact, I'm damn sure they would frown. Company policy says you can't even have alcohol in a car in the parking lot in a sealed container. However, given that shortly after I first hired on I ran into someone working there who had been more or less let go from my previous company for being abusive to me, I've had reason to be glad for their strict rules. (And at this place he was unfailingly civil. Apparently the rules work. Though even here he never did seem to bathe or change clothes.)

Once again I have been completely unable to rein Rudder in to what I'd consider a reasonable level of food, which explains why there are three turkeys and a brisket now defrosting in my refrigerator. It would have been two turkeys, but we couldn't find any over 13 lbs. He wants one to cut up and freeze for later, but still I hope our guest show up hungry. This is actually our annual Mardi Gras arty, more or less - in March when we'd noramlly have held it, our backyard was under construction, then when it was finally done regattas and work travel interfered. It will be a bit hotter than I'd have liked for the party, but maybe that means people will actually use the now-pretty pool. Generally what happens is that fewer people come than I'd hoped and no one goes swimming, but we all manage to have a good time anyway.

ad astra

The entry I was going to make can wait. I have a new project. Because on Monday, June 21, Burt Rutan (with more than a little help from PaulAllen) is launching the first private spaceship and the launch is open to the public.

I'm not entirely sure why I am so excited about this. Rutan's not stupid enough to let the world in to see the very first flight of an untested rocket; the craft has been on previous test flights, as high as 40 miles up. This flight will be suborbital, not orbital. It will go 62 miles up, well inside the (arbitrarily defined) 100-mile boundary of space. Still, this is outside the atmosphere. If Rutan's people can do this flight twice inside two weeks, they win the X Prize. It's not John Glenn's flight, but it is Alan Shepard's. And it's launching on June 21 at about 6:30 AM from Mojave, California, which is not all that far from here.

Rudder will be out of town and it's a bit further than I really want to drive solo, so I'm trying to get someone (or several someones) to go with me. If enough people want to go, we could even rent a bus. My ideal plan would be to leave at midnight, watch the launch, come home, and work half a day. Other people I've mentioned it to keep bringnig up the idea of spending the second half of the day at Disneyland. (These would be the people who either have more vacation time or who have fewer demands on what they do have.) I do hope htis works, though, whether it's me and a friend in a car or a whole busload of geekitude.

Anybody out there want to go watch history?

Shakespeare and needlework

Squeee! I just bought tickets to see Much Ado About Nothing at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival on July 7! The Rudder 'Rents live in a nearby town but somehow we've just never been there at the right time to see one of the plays. They do have modern plays as weel but I wanted to see on of Will's, and Rudder cleverly reminded me to be sure to pick a night showing so we can see it in their Globe replica theater. The choices were Henry VI (part I or II&III), Much Ado or Twelfth Night. If it had been Henry V I'd have chosen that like a shot but Henry 6 isn't one of my favorite kings and I figured Rudder and the 'Rents might enjoy a comedy more anyway. Picking between Twelfth Night and Much Ado was easy, at least -- I chose the one available on the day we wanted to go. Between the play, a trip to the Oregon Coast, visiting with relatives, and getting to spend the Fourth of July in a town small enough that we can see fireworks and not get caught in a traffic jam afterwards, it's going to be a fun trip.

We'll also get to spend a couple of days with Rudder's grandparents. I may get his grandmother to teach me to knit; I've been thinking it would be a good thing to do on all those long drives to regattas. I can't read for long in a car and cross-stitch would be even worse. Knitting and crocheting look like activities I could do in a car seat without having to stare at them constantly. (I don't suppose they allow knitting needles or even crochet hooks on airplanes these days.) It might not be a bad idea to learn some basics on my own first, though. Can anyone out there recommend a good book for an absolute beginner? If I'm wrong about being able to do it as a passenger (that is, if I'd have to stare at it the whole time) I need to know that too.

assorted grumbling, and not

For obvious reasons of self-protection, I do not usually complain about work on these pages. However, I would like to say that whoever at this company decided switching to even cheaper toilet paper was a good idea was grievously mistaken. And was probably also male. I don't think this stuff is recycled newspaper, even. It bears a much stronger resemblance to UNrecycled newspaper.

Also, who told all these people they could take extended vacations? Rudder and I decided to finally throw a party (the one we'd have had for Mardi Gras is our back yeard hadn't been under construction at the time) on the weekend after Memorial Day, on the theory that everyone would be out of town on Memorial weekend itself. But no, apparently that wasn't a long enough vacation, so I've been getting nothing but replies on the lines of, "I've love to come, but I'll be in another time zone then." (This is somewhat exacerbated by the fact that my house practically is in another time zone from work.) Silly people. Don't they know they're supposed to plan around my parties?

I'd ask if anyone out there is coming *to* this town on that weekend, but given our June weather, that's not likely.

One thing to point out that's not grumbling at all: Gramarye has a new (new to me, at least) Dark is Rising fic up, Redeemed From Time.

Also in the realm of not-grumbling: three day weekend! Yay! Having just traveled last weekend, I don't think we're doing anything exciting for it, but not working is exciting enough in itself.

race report

We're back. Rudder medalled in every race: Men's single, Men's Double, Mixed Double, Men's Lightweight Single, Men's Lightweight Double. In the non-lightweight single, they had heats as well as finals so he rowed 5 races. As if that didn't prove what a glutton for punishment he is, yesterday he drove all 12 hours back, though She-Hulk and I kept offering to take over. (He insists it's not because he doesn't trust our driving.

I didn't get any medals, dammit. I was Not Happy with my singles race, coming in last with open water between me and the next boat, but the other two races were better. She-Hulk and I were reasonably happy with our doubles race, despite not having rowed together since a race last summer. We were fifth of six, but we were only two seconds from a medal -- fourth place was only a second behind third and we were a second behind that. In the 300m dash, the good news is that I was second, after having finished third each of the last two years. The bad news is that this year for some reason (maybe because the dash is last and it was a long day of racing) very few people entered, only three men and two women, so I was second of two. After the race, though, we went out to eat with a few California rowers and I found the woman who had beat me in the dash won Masters' Nationals a couple of years ago. I don't feel too bad for having her beat me!

Otherwise, the Arizona contingent did well; She-Hulk won a couple of medals, as did two of the other guys rowing with us. As always, the drive up and back was fun; I always like the chance to talk to Rudder when we're both awake and She-Hulk rode with us so we got to talk with her too. (Maybe I need a more flattering name for her, especially given that she may be twice my size, but one other woman who was there with our group is twice hers. Possibly literally.)

The dinner with the Californian rowers was good too, because they'd gone head to head with Rudder and She-Hulk for quite a few races now. In Sunday's races Rudder lost to them by less than one second in both the single and doubles race. It's always good to know other rowers, not only to know who your competitors are, but to be able to find people to put boats together with. Two of them may do a quad at Nationals with Rudder and SH, for instance.

So it was a good weekend, and I'm glad to have a short work week and then another one coming up for Memorial Day. Next challenge: deciding if we're throwing a party the first weekend in June.

Is there such a thing as a vs?

One of my discussion lists is talking about dating versus courtship. They seem to think there is a difference between the two. I can only conclude that either none of them is familiar with basic anthropoloy vocabulary (I did try pointing out that almost every human ever alive does, has, or will engage in courting behavior of some sort) or that I really don't understand people who think either/or categories apply to human behavior.

I think they're talking about modern dates as opposed to an older, more public and presumably more romantic model -- but even if I believed the former didn't fall well within human courtship patterns, I don't see why it would be assumed to exclude the latter.

Other than that I'm trying to do three work things at once and prepare for this weekend, so this entry ends here. Wish me luck in my races!

Broadway wisdom

I don't think I listen to musicals for the same reason most people do -- that is, those people who do listen to them, and who admit to it. I can do irony when required (and sarcasm at any opportunity, and can sometimes appreciate camp and kitsch, but I think my natural mode of appreciation is fairly uncritical (to a point - I have put down books for being too badly written) and even a little sentimental. This would explain why I enjoyed Miss Clare Remembers, re eample, though it was panned by the Mrissa.

I can like musicals that do kitsch well (Rocky Horror) and be at least mildly entertained by those that contain nothing but entertainment and a decent song or two (the latter condition is why I enjoyed My One and Only far more than The Boyfriend or The Pajama Game). The ones that I keep coming back to, though, are the ones with something real riding on the music. South Pacific, where love can't grow until prejudice is rooted out. Oklahoma!, with the hopes of building a country. Fiddler on the Roof, which I suspect is not a far cry from my ancestors' lives. (Minus some but not all of the singing.) Even Godspell, whose message really isn't for me.

And 1776. Maybe because it's about men gathering together to do a job, the first thing it makes me think about is work-related; it reminds me that when you're trying to make a big change, it takes a while, and a lot of work. That even the biggest and most seemingly inevitable enterprises can be touch-and-go at their inception. And that if you agree there's a problem, even when you don't agree on the exact dimensions of the problem, you can still find a solution that will work for a while, at least -- buying you time to fix it later. And on the converse, it reminds me that if your initial fix has major problems, the latter correction can work but still be immensely painful.

(I can't read about the Revolution or the Federalist debates without being reminded of how they ended us up in a Civil War a hundred years after. But that still doesn't mean the Revolution wasn't the right choice and at that time and in that place, it could only be done by agreeing to ignore the elephant in the room, slavery, for a time.)

Another thing it reminds me of is my ideal of marriage. John and Abigail Adams' was one of the great ones, though it was tested by long separations, wrong-headed decisions, and failures and death of some of their offspring. LA posted something the other day that struck me because her definition is so far off for me:

Because you know what? I am a VERY GOOD WIFE. I do not nag. I do not overspend. I do not ever serve a meal he’s not crazy about. He gets laid or blown every day. I am coping with a serious dent in my mobility with as much grace as I can manage. He never hears me complain nor do I dun him with household chores when I’m having a rough time. He keeps exactly the hours he wants to keep and we all follow his schedule. I am starting the steepest descent into menopause and since that spin-out a few months ago the Hobbit House has been free of tirades and tears. My tongue is lumpy from biting it so often.

Adams
Oh, Abigail, what am I going to do?

Abigail
Do, John?

Adams
You must tell me what it is! I've always been dissatisfied, I know that; but lately, I find that I reek of discontentment! It fills my throat and floods my brain and, sometimes--sometimes I fear there is no longer a dream, but only the discontentment.

Abigail
Oh, John, can you really know so little about yourself? And can you think so little of me that you'd believe I married the man you've described? Have you forgotten what you used to say to me? I haven't. "Commitment, Abby--commitment! There are only two creatures of value on the face of this earth: those with a commitment and those who require the commitment of others." Do you remember, John?

Adams
I remember.

On a subject related only in that there are numbers involved, I'll be telecommuting tomorrow because we're leaving at noon for our regatta and it lets me get more work time in. I've just calculated that I'll save about $10 in gas and lunch costs by staying home -- though of course that pales in comparison to the value of the time saved by not driving the 2-hour roundtrip.

dentistry by trial and error

What did the people in the dentist's office say when I told them of their mistake? All together now, "That's why you need an appointment!"

Or maybe that's why items for individuals should be labeled with their names? It makes me wonder whether, if I'd actually had an appointment, it would have consisted iof them shoving random trays in my mouth until they found the one that fit. At least this person did apologize for my 'having been given the wrong information'

I feel compelled to mention this is the Southwest Dental Group, in the East Valley of the Greater Phoenix area, specifically their branch at Dobson and Chandler.

I've been teaching all morning and will go for about another two hours this afternoon. I'm feeling much less wiped than yesterday when I conducted a quickie refresher training in two hours, even though for that one I was sitting down in a conference room, whereas this time I'm standing and moving around a class room. It's just amazing how much difference the attitude of the students makes. Yesterday's weren't even hostile or especially hard to deal with. It's just that the purpose of this class, as I tell them, is to figure out how to apply my techniques to their work, so it needs to be a partnership. Yesterday they weren't getting their shoulders behind it and helping me to push.

ordeal by bleach

A month or so ago, I went and got my teeth zoom-bleached, where they use the high intensity light to bleach teeth in a couple of hours. (If you saw me in person, you wouldn't notice. They're not freakishly white-white, just the shade teeth are supposed to be instead of rather yellowish.) Part of the deal was that they give you bleaching trays so you can re-whiten every six months or a year to take care of new stains.

For some reason I never understood, the tech wanted me to make an appointment to come back to get the trays made, instead of doing it there. Then there would be yet another appointment to pick them up. I had an appointment coming up with my regular dentist, another branch of the same office, and they do bleaching trays, just not the zoom bleaching, so I asked if I could get the trays made there. After a little discussion, they agreed.

Since I live far across town from where I work, and I prefer to keep all my doctors close to home (on the theory that that's where I'll be if I'm ever actually sick) it's not easy for me to get to appointments. Not only do I have to take off the time of the appointment, but I also have to take an additional hour to get there. I went to the dentist, hoping he could fix a chipped tooth as well as make the trays. No luck on the chip (too small) but they did take the mold. I made an appointment to visit again in a week or so to pick up the trays and spent 20 minutes explaining that I had already paid for the trays, at the other office.

When the week was up I went back. For those wanting to keep score at home, this makes five dentist appointments in a short period of time: one for a cleaning and to get a referral for the bleaching; one to consult with the bleaching tech; one to do the bleaching; one to get the trays made; and one to pick up the trays. They informed me that the trays had not come out and would need to be remade. They took my mold again (the tech was obviously not experienced with this, which didn't raise my confidence) but this time told me I could just stop in to pick them up and get the fit checked when I was in the area, no appointment needed.

Yesterday, I had my annual poke and prod scheduled at my OB-Gyn, who's in the same building. I called the dentist two days ahead of time to verify I wouldn't need an appointment and was assured this was the case. I left work an extra half hour earlier to have time to deal with the dentiat before going to my checkup. No extraordinary clairvoyance will be required for the astute reader to figure out what I was told when I walked into the dentst office and asked for my trays.

I discussed the matter with the receptionist, who spoke to the office manager. The receptionist said she was very sorry but I would still need an appointment. I explained further and in more aggrieved (but still polite) tones and offered to speak to the manager myself. She went off, spoke to the manager at length, and finally came back with my trays, which they had decided to give me "because I was so upset". Presumably, med school is no longer required; now you merely need to be associated with a health-related practice to be entitled to patronize patients. She also made it clear I'd have to come back iwith a proper appointment if the trays didn't fit.

At least the OB-Gyn appointment was as pleasant as these things can get -- a half hour wait, but they had decent magazines, and my NP is intelligent and personable. Also, I have been grateful for the past few years that they've retired those cell-sampling, innard-yanking wire brushes that replaced the old cotton swabs, in favor of softer plastic scrapers. Other women will know what I mean.

Again, no clairvoyance will be required to predict what happened when I tried on the bleach trays later that evening. Sure enough, they didn't fit. I spent some time monkeying with the trays in front of a mirror, wondering how good they had to be and whether I could make them fit well enough by cutting off some of the back teeth, which don't need to be bleached anyway. It was then that I realized the unusual part.

I've had my wisdom teeth removed. I've also had the foremost molars pulled when I got my braces, because they didn't think my mouth would have room for them. (They were right. I don't know where I'd fit four more.) As a result, I have only 24 teeth, 12 upper and 12 lower, rather than the standard-issue 32 or even the common 28. I counted. The trays had 14 teeth on the upper left, 14 on the upper right, 14 teeth on the lower left, 14 on the lower right.

They gave me someone else's teeth.

Once this debacle is done, I will certainly be calling my health insurance company for a recommendation to another dentist.

plotting

Sometimes it's hard to tell a writing exercise from a case of insomnia (which may actually explain a lot about my brother, come to think of it). Last night I couldn't get to sleep, so I set myself the challenge to come up with 5 sketchy plot ideas, quality not required. This is clearly not going to be a good getting-to-sleep strategy for me*, since I only got as far as one plot and still didn't really get solidly to sleep until 2AM or so. That's much worse than it sounds, if you recall that on our rowing days (which Monday is) the alarm is set to 4:00 AM. Yeah, not especially enjoying today, but anyway.

The plot bunny: girl and boy grow up together in small town way out on the outskirts of a loose-knit empire. (Going-to-sleep plots are excused from the niceties of world-building.) As they grow up they practice swordwork together and both become very good. They also fall in love with each other. Boy pleads with girl to marry him. She agrees but only to a contract marriage lasting a year and a day instead of a permanent one, because when she reaches her majority she wants to go out into the world to seek fame and glory. (She's young and idealistic.) The year and a day are very happy, but as it draws to an end and she prepares to leave, there are tears on both sides. She loves him but still feels the need to go. He understands, though he's more of a rooted type. Then tragedy strikes and honor calls her to stay at home. Possibly one parent dies and she must work the farm to preserve it until her younger sibs can inherit it. Instead, the boy decides he will go out into the world, performing deeds of glory in her name. (Why he doesn't just stay home with her, I have no idea. See "young and idealistic", above.) He does so, and achieves great reknown, always wearing her token and refusing to be swayed by other women; I'm thinking preaux chevalier in dirty leather, unshaven. (Which the other women don't mind because all men are like that. It's a Dark Ages sort of empire.) After five years or so he's on his way home to lay his glory at her feet and and ask her to marry him for good. Just as he begins to head home, though, an invasion force or a band of reivers descends on their village. She's kept up her sword skills all this time and has been studying battle tactics (possibly as a career move; she's afraid shen she finally gets out of the village she'll be too old to be an ordinary fighter -- she either finds the books at a local monastery or there's an old lord who has handed the reins of the estate to his son, who finds amusement in teaching her. Her skills and knowledge are well-enough respected int he village that they follow her lead and oust the invaders, who flee the country because they reason that if a small uncouth village is this ferocious, the actual army must be formidable. As the boy journeys home, all he hears are the bards singing of the girl's great victory; her glory has eclipsed his own. Not being a jealous sort, he arrives home and lays his glory at her feet anyway, commending her victory and telling her that she was the inspiration for all his, that he did all his glorious deeds in her name. She falls into his arms, saying, "Then we can trade -- because I fought my battle in your name." Possibly there is something about how she used a tactic they developed together as young students. Her sibs are old enough not to need her anymore, and the girl and boy marry and take off to travel the empire together. Having both sated their bloodlust, they take their swords along only for defense, and they go incognito to avoid being challenged by other young fighters eager for glory.

Phew. Long synopsis. Nope, don't think I could write the story. Actually, it sounds rather like something Barbara Hambly would do.

The second plot was going to begin like so many of my favorite stories, with a group of children finding a magic token and then ... The problem was that I got caught between their having magical work in their own world, à la E. Nesbit, or traveling to remote semi-magic climes where they'd meet totally facical pirates or savages, à la other Nesbit and Edward Eager, or going to a different country altogether, à la CS Lewis or Pamela Dean.

After that my mind drifted off and I think I slept for an hour or so, woke up, thought about work and rowing, realized I hadn't downloaded the data from my StrokeCoach (boat computer) which would get overwritten by Monday's row), decided I needed to give up on laying there trying to sleep, went downstairs, downloaded the data, went back to bed, and got a blissful two hours of sleep until I woke three minutes before the alarm went off. If my sentence structure is unspeakable, kindly blame it on lack of sleep.

* What usually works for me in trying to get to sleep is alphabet games, picking a topic like song titles or poem first lines or places or words of 5 or more syllables, and trying to come up with an example beginning with each letter of the alphabet in turn. I usually drop off by about 'j'.

what kind am I?

Nabbed from Chickafinty:

need import advice

TITLE: whatever the title is
DATE: mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm PM
AUTHOR: Dichroic

-----
BODY:

body of the entry

--------

for each entry. I've tried it with pointy brackets <> and with quotes and blank lines and none of the above. It seems to understand where each entry begins and ends, and I can get it to read in the title, but it doesn't seem to understand where the title stops. It wants to include the date line and everything else into the title. Suggestions?

daily dissonances and delights

Dissonances

• People who leave public toilet seats wet. (Ewww)


• People who don't care about spelling and grammar in professional documents. (I knew one woman who'd sit there and correct spelling and punctuation in every defect report when she ran the review meetings. I have a sneaking sympathy, but I'd have just fixed the darn things, rather than make 6-10 people sit in a meeting and watch me do it.)


• Wakes from coaching launches, when I'm rowing in a tippy single. It's even worse when they nearly run us over because they aren't looking where they're going.


• People and systems who try to shoehorn the infinite variety of humanity into a few labels.


• Anyone who holds meetings at 8AM Monday or 4PM Friday.


• People who joke with me then think I'm taking them literally when I respond with a straight face to continue the joke. (Apparently my straight face is *too* straight.)


• A certain occasional coworker who always seems to be implying I'm useless and incompetent. (I might be misjudging him but the phrase that keeps coming to mind is "Grrr, there, go. Water your flowerbeds, do."


• People who have long or frequent cellphone conversations while driving. I understand you might need to call and say "There's a horrible traffic jam here -- don't take this road," and that it's difficult to pull off for the call in said jam, but that's a 30-second conversation, with no hand-waving required, which is not what I'm seeing on the road.


• Extremely hot weather, especially when it lasts for months and months and months.


• Cats who sit on the mouse or walk over the keyboard when I'm on the computer.


• Sports bras whose designers didn't take the possibility of having to fit over & around actual muscles into account. Because really, who would think a woman might be doing sports in her athletic gear?

too busy to listen

I've had the worst music floating around my head lately. Yesterday it was "When Eddie Said He Didn't Like His Teddy" (maybe it's just called "Eddie"?) from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and today it's "Anything You Need (You Got It), from the 1970s or so. Now that I've typed this, it's a weird mishmosh of both.

On the other hand, it was a nice calm morning with only one coaching launch out on the lake, so at least I didn't start the day with the Gilligan theme on the mental radio.

Anyhow, work's been so busy I haven't really even had time to notice what's playing in my head, and I should now go finish about four things before I leave today.

so that's what it's like

It's amazing how much less a telecommuting day feels like work, no matter how productive I am. I feel almost as if I've had a three-day weekend. Rudder's back, so it's also been a snuggle sort of weekend. Add in few chores planned, lunch with a friend Friday, a trip to the library on Saturday, time to read at least a few of the ensuing books, AND to go to the gym Saturday morning to make up for skipping Thursday (since I had time I did about twice as many exercises) AND to do some embroidery and beadwork and I do believe this could fairly be called a relaxing weekend.

Even better, after next week I have two four-day weeks in a row, because first we have the race and I took off the following Monday to drive home, then there's Memorial Day weekend. Also, we just bought tickets to go see the in-laws in Oregon in July, so now that feels much closer. I love Oregon (and the in-laws, too). It's not that I really get to kick back much in summer, especially what with trying to be outside as little as possible (it was 90 degrees by about 8AM today) but I've definitely got that summer relaxing thing going today. Too bad about having to go to work tomorrow -- I'd better get back to enjoying it while it lasts!

under cover

So since I'm working from home today (yay!) I planned to meet Egret and the chicks for lunch at a cafe in a used-book store. Shortly before I left, a package was delivered with some clothes I'd ordered. They had that nasty new-packaged-clothes smell, so I tried them on quickly so I could throw them in the washer before I left. (Wouldn't want to wash something and then have to return it.) Afterwards, I put the dress I'd been wearing back on, a plain black t-shirt minidress with no fastenings or ornamentation, and headed out. About two miles from the house, I realized I'd put my dress on inside out.

I had three options: go back home and fix it and be late to lunch; go right to the bathroom in the store and fix it; or assume no one would notice. I decided to go with option 3, since my hair is just long enough to cover the tags and the only other was to tell was the seams. I've seen external seaming used on purpose for decoration before. I decided that if anyone commented, I'd just tell them I didn't want to be visible to the Unseilighe Fey, this bookstore being one of the few places in town where that might just get a laugh or even a serious nod instead of a blank stare.

As it happened, no one did comment and even Egret only noticed because I told her the story. It wouldn't have mattered what I'd worn anyway - I could have been naked, I think. I'd forgotten one important fact: when you're hanging out with nine-month-old twins, at the age where they're getting all alert, responsive and coordinated, no one looks at you anyway. There are better things to look at.

a review of the Diva Cup

The Diva Cup is used basically like a tampon. If you're male or squeamish (or both) I suggest not reading further.

The Diva Cup is a small soft rubber cup that collects menstrual flow and is inserted more or less like a tampon. It's reusable indefinitely -- the idea is that you take it out, empty it, wash it with hot water and put it back in. You can wear it up to twelve hours, according to the instructions. It comes in two sizes; the larger is only 1/8" bigger than the smaller, and they recommend the small size only if you're under 30 AND haven't had a child.

So that's the background. I'd heard of them before, but decided to get one a month or so ago after Natalie linked to the website, which has a list of where they're sold. Only three places in the state were listed, but one is fairly nearby, and I'd been wanting to check it out anyway (The Gentle Strength Co-op in Tempe). You can buy them from the Diva website, too. I used it one day las month and then through this whole cycle, three days. (I'm on the Pill.)

First problem: the Diva Cup is more expensive than I'd expected, just under $30. It's fairly easy to justify the cost -- what is that, half a year's worth of tampons? -- but only if it works for you. $30 seemed a bit much for a first trial, but I decided to buy it anyway.

The instructions that come with it are very good, and insertion wasn't too hard. I will say it works for me; I've been wearing it all day, removing it only at night. The caveat is that I'm on the Pill, so I have fairly light flow. I think it would work for heavy bleeding, but you might have to take it out and empty it once in the middle of the day -- though that's not a certainty. Diva says the cup holds one ounce and the entire menstrual flow is only 3-4 oz, so you might still be able to go 12 hours. I confess I've been wearing it more than that, from when I get up to bedtime. This is a big deal, because when it take it out to empty it you're supposed to wash it with hot soapy water, not something I particularly want to be doing in the bathroom sink area at work. (Diva does say if you're in a public washroom you can just wipe the cup out with tolet paper, put it back in, and wash it later.) I just leave it out at night -- haven't used tampons at night for years now, since being horizontal means I don't bleed enough to worry about.

I've had no leakage, and have never seen more than about 1/8" of blood in the cup. I don't think even a much heavier bleeder would have much trouble with leakage, because the cup gets such a tight seal (more on that later) when it's inserted right. Inserting it right mainly consists of wetting it, folding it as directed, putting it in, and not pushing it farther up the way to do a tampon. When I spoke to someone from Diva's excellent customer service (more on that later, too) she said to leave it riding as low as possible; I did that, with the little stem right inside the outer labia, but it does tend to move up a bit on its own during the day.

There's no question that the thing works for me, and it's at least as comfortable as a tampon. It has some major advantages over tampons: it only has to be purchased once, and you don't have to slip a spare into your pocket (assuming your work clothes have pockets!) or carry a purse to the ladies' room. (I once had one fall out of my laptop bag during a conference -- under the table, luckily, so I don't think anyone saw.) And speaking of the ladies' room, that's another major advantage over tampons: you don't have to worry about urinating on strings, and it doesn't pop out like tampons sometimes do when you defecate.

I've had two issues with the Cup. First, it's a bit harder to take a leak -- I have to bear down a bit. I think it's the same problem men with enlargeed prostates have, when there's a bit of compression of the urethra. It's not too bad, not nearly as bad as having a UTI for instance. Second and more serious, the thing is hard as hell for me to get out. Diva's instructions involve grabbing the bottom of the cup and pulling; never a devotee of fisting, I have to bear down hard to get it to where I can get two fingers on it. This should be much less of a problem for anyone who's been through childbirth or is just bigger to begin with. I don't know if either statistic is relevant, but remember I'm a very small person (size 4 pants, usually) and that I have such a small mouth that dentists generally go running for their child-sized implements of torture. However, even once you get a grip on it, the cup is hard to get out, because it seems to form a seal with all those moist tissues. (Oh, yeah -- Diva says another advantage is the cup doesn't dry out vaginal moisture like a tampon. They're right.) I called their extremely and impressively helpful customer service, and the woman I spoke to offered to exchange mine for the smaller size if necessary, but pointed out there's not that much difference between sizes really and offered a few other tips that help a bit -- cutting the stem to 1/4" so the cup can ride lower, twisting as you pull out. Even when I try to tilt it back as I pull, by the way, removal is only difficult; it's never been messy, the way Instead can be.

I've kept the cup I bought, though I'm still thinking about asking to trade down a size. (I'm impressed they even offer, since it's not like they can resell the old one.) I might call back for further tips first, to see if I'm twisting on the right axis. There does seem to be a knack to it. I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone too squeamish to use an o.b. tampon (the non-inserter type) or who isn't comfortable wearing a tampon. For me, it works, it's comfortable, and I don't have to worry about carrying tampons around. I'm keeping it.

a very bad idea

Well, this is about the worst idea ever. (OK, OK, not as bad as torturing prisoners, but anyway. There are big signs over the higway I take to and from work that are meant to show when there are accidents ahead, notify commuters when the roads will be closed for construction, and broadcast Amber Alerts. This week they've been showing

This is apparently a service provided by the AZ DoT; it uses voice recognition software and will let you know about road conditions on a particular road or for the region as a whole and something or other I missed about the Grand Canyon. It doesn't seem to understand me very well, but I'm sure if it did it would be useful.

Still, about the last thing we need is the state encouraging drivers to use their cell phones while on the road! What are they thinking?

Oh, and just to add insult to injury, I can't get it to work from my work phone, so I couldn't even call for info before I head home, just when I really need it. I hope my tax dollars aren't funding this.

muscle-headed but insured

I'm brewing a political rant and a product review for later in the day. Meanwhile, I'll just note a few random thoughts.

Rowers don't really like it when you yell, "Stroke...stroke...stroke" at them. If you're a large bunch of ROTC types about to start on a training run, complete with BDUs and backpacks, the rower in question is likely to be tempted to yell back, "What are you, practicing before you go off and torture some prisoners?" At least, if the rower is me. Fortunately I managed to restrain myself, as that didn't seem either prudent, safe or fair to them. I'd like to believe our military is not all tarred with the same brush.

Exercise-induced brain cell attition continues. Yesterday I manage to tell a coworker about it twice, convincing myself in the course of the second telling that I had forgotten to list the conference room for a meeting I'd called. I hadn't.) Meanwhile, the resources diverted from the brain are going to my muscles. My shoulders and arms are noticeably -- to me -- bigger and I think my abs are too. Unfortunately, the surface fat is still there, so they're not more defined or better-looking, just bigger. All this means is that armholes are tighter and when I row my arms rub against my sides, which gets old after a thousand strokes. Maybe the next thing is that the muscle will burn more calories and so I'll start to burn fat and show some definition. That's what they claim is supposed to happen, anyway.

I get a couple of long weekends in a row at the end of this month, because first we have the regatta, for which I had to take Monday off to drive home, and then it's Memorial Day. I get three weeks of vacation (two is standard in the US) as well as 11 holidays, but it's still not nearly enough. Five would be better, but I wouldn't want to pay European tax rates to get it. Some time, though, I really should do that math: add in my health insurance costs to my taxes and figure out the effective percentage. I do have decent insurance through my company, so even with reacent years' raises, I suspect it's still lower than in most of the countries with socialized medicine.

That's an interesting point, by the way. I keep hearing horror stories about health care or lack thereof in the US, and I'm not denigrating those stories, but I've always had good insurance through work. So has Rudder, and granted that we're college-educated engineers and all that, but then so have my parents, generally through Mom's job as an admin. In fact, even when I was in college I stayed on my parents' insurance because I was in the same city and theirs was cheaper than Student Health. So there are a lot of us for whom the system works -- but even for us, costs have gone up quite a lot in the last few years, and I've never been a believer in the "I've Got Mine" school of poltical thought.

un-scrooged?

Update on this incident: Apparently the same exact thing happened to someone else, which makes it considerably easier for the company to believe they were at fault. Furthermore, they have the tape of the original call, in which I did ask, "Are you sure there will be no negative effect to my account [if I withdraw the money]?" Smart me, for not specificially limiting the question to tax penalties.

I should clarify, by the way, that this is not the HR department of the company I work for, but a separate company retained to manage our 401(k) funds. Apparently my company is not very happy with them over this.

The two companies have worked out an offer: if I send in a check returning the money I withdrew, they will deposit the amount of matching funds I would have earned in those 90 days. I'm not thrilled about having to scratch up the cash (a few hundred dollars) but on the other hand I would be returning it to my own retirement account. Also, the amount to be gained is roughly twice the amount I withdrew. I told the rep I'd call him back tomorrow with my decision, and thanked him for following up.

Either way, this is good. Honestly, I expected that the rep would write down what happened on a piece of paper, it would get passed up the chain of command, some higher-up would laugh at it, and I'd never hear of the matter again. Score one for my company.

Flowers for Algernon, last half

I've been trying to work out harder lately in preparation for a race at the end of this month (the Gold Rush, in Sacramento) and sure enough, brain cells are ging on strike. I'm beginning to wonder if that stereotype about athletes being stupid has some basis in fact or if it's just me. Either way, with Rudder away, my nightly check has been extended to cover things that should be routine: check front door is locked, back door is locked, garage is closed, stove is off, both cats in, vitamin taken, alarm set, clothes packed for tomorrow. (The stove and garage door can be assumed in more highly functional times.) I left my PDA at work over the weekend so I couldn't address a card -- then when I got to work I started to write my name on the envelope instead of the recipient's.

And tonight -- I don't know if this is stupidity or loneliness, though Rudder's only been gone a day) I caught myself saying to the cat, "I'll let you out back, but only if you promise to come in at bedtime." I stopped myself by 'promise', realizing that may well be the stupidest sentence ever to emerge from my mouth. (Cat owners will realize that even if they could speak and understand English, a cat would never make a promise. Or maybe he just wouldn't keep it.)

Oh what the heck. I responded to this at Chez Mechaieh the other day -- I think that means I'm supposed to pass it on. And the way my brain cells are going right now, I'll probably believe anything I read: Invent a memory of me and post it in the comments. It can be anything you want, so long as it's something that's never happened. Then, of course, post this to your journal and see what people would like to remember of you, only the universe failed to cooperate in making it happen so they had to make it up instead.

retail therapy

I have got to figure out a better way to cheer myself up when Rudder goes away than retail therapy. I'd have been OK with the pedicure and the mall trip, mostly because I couldn't find anything I wanted in the mall anyway except a couple of hair ornaments, but then I resorted to catalogs and the Internet to find the things I was looking for in the first place -- a few books (I ended up getting used instead of new, so hardbacks cost the same as new papberbacks would have), a twin set, another cardigan and a sleeveless turtleneck (on sale), two dresses (one on sale) and another sleeveless sweater.

Whew. I was afraid it would look like more listed out like that. Still, Alibris, L.L. Bean, and The Territory Ahead are evil tempting places. No, they're not. It's all my own fault for seeking them out. It's not that I don't have the money, just that I'd be much better off saving or investing it. (Well, saving it, anyway. As soon as I invest in anything it immediately drops like a stone. At least when I fritter away cash on clothing I get something back for my money.)

Unfortunately, it's getting too hot here to go hiking instead, which is what I used to do. Maybe next time, I'll go bouldering at the climbing gym. And then I'll get a pedicure.

Busted!

I gave my uncle the URL to my old diary so he could look at some of the Antarctic photos there. Apparently he passed it on to my mother. Sigh.

Hi, Mom.

Hmmm.... don't think I've said anything incriminating.

busted

Hi, Mom.

general grumbling

Some guy in a refresher class I was teaching complained today because I interrupted him -- to ask him to speak louder so everyone could hear his question. How would that even work? Let him finish and then ask, at which point he'd have forgotten what he was saying and we'd all have to sit through either the same question twice or a long mumble and then a question? Bear in mind this is a class we've tried to tailor to go as quickly as possible.

There is a fine line between being entitled to expect good manners and being overly sensitive.

More grumbling...

Rudder and I spent yesterday in an email go-round with our former rowing club. Someone sent out a message chiding us for quitting the club because we got no benefits from it instead of working from within to improve it. I sent a message back explaining that we had done exactly that for years, but had now gotten tired of having our attempts rebuffed while our $200/year dues (each) were happily accepted. We row our own boats, don't use their equipment, and really had belonged all these years only to foster the cause of rowing in this area. Given the number of people and programs out on the lake each morning, though, it's fair to say it's firmly established now. Unfortunately, the guy had sent his accusations to quite a few people, so I felt it was necessary to reply to the same group, in our own defense.

He sent a nice note back, saying he was sorry he hadn't had all the information and that he still hopes to to make the club a better place and that we will rejoin, so I sent an even nicer reply saying we'd be happy to when our aims were all in accordance. We did get a nastygram from the club president (who had been cc'd) claiming we were evilly trying to lure his people away, which I thought was funny considering most of the others involved had decided to quit the club out of similar frustration or told us they planned to -- and that latter group includes his own wife. Hee.

OK, done grumbling now. Must remember to go buy a Mother's Day card.

I still feel dirty...

My week started with a bang yesterday morning. The early meeting that I thought
would be excruciating wasn't bad at all (except, of course, for being at 8AM on a
Monday). Also, I had to cut my row short for it. On the other hand, when I went to
rinse out my mug preparatory to making morning tea, I took the lid off and found
myself facing an enormous cockroach. I mean, like, with his own zip code. Or at
least his own address.

Anybody walking by the ladies' room just then
must have really wondered what was going on, if they heard me
squeal.

That cup's lid fits tightly. I still have no idea how that
thing got in through the small sipping hole; apparently he's Cockroach Houdini.
Fortunately I had a spare cup around. I took the other one home, soaked it in
diluted bleach for an hour (which, incidentally, did a very nice job of removing
the tea stains) and ran it through the dishwasher, contrary though that may
be to its washing instructions. I realize simple dishwashing would have been
sufficient for all sanitary purposes; it's just that finding a cockroach in your
cup requires extreme measures to cleanse all perception of ickiness before
drinking from it again.

I didn't step on the roach; I refuse to stomp
in anythign big enough to squish. Mr. Roach is no doubt very happy in the
lidded bathroom trashcan where I dumped him . Then again, anything that could get
through a hole three sizes smaller than his body probably wouldn't have found
escaping from that trash can much of a challenge.

From here on out, I
believe I will be rinsing out that cup promptly.

Mr. Cup, meet Mr. Roach

Well, this morning's been a toss-up. The early meeting that I thought would be excruciating wasn't bad at all (except, of course, for being at 8AM on a Monday). I had to cut my row short for it. On the other hand, when I went to rinse out my mug preparatory to making morning tea, I took the lid off and found myself facing an enormous cockroach.

Yes, I squeaked.

The lid fits tightly, too. I still have no idea how that thing got in through the small sipping hole. Fortunately I have a spare cup around, because I'm not drinking from the other one until it's gone through the dishwasher, contrary though that may be to its washing instructions. Mr. Roach is no doubt very happy in the lidded bathroom trashcan where I dumped him (not wanting to step on something big enough to squish. Or, given his Houdini-like skills, maybe not.

texas music

Over at the New Place: my reaction to Texas
Monthly's list of 100 top Texas songs.

I don't think I could have
compiled my list at all during the 7 years I lived in Texas; sometimes you need to
leave a place before you can recognize its essence.

a wedding!

I think I've figured out what I'm going to do here. I'll probably keep this site
just so I can go look at my Buddies list to see who's updated, but put most of my
own upates on the other site. I know lots of
people have multiple diaries/blogs, but I can't think of much I really need to
keep separated that way. I'll probably keep the archives here, though, even after
I figure out how to copy them over. I may keep noting workouts
here.

More importantly, go congratulate href="http://badsnake.diaryland.com">Badsnake and href="http://comfortfood.diaryland.com">Deb - they're now officially wed!
There's a glorious picture (two, actually, but one really is glorious because of
the looks on their faces) on Bad's site, courtesy of href="http://krapsnart.diaryland.com"a>Krapsnart.

Mockingbird

Rereading Sean Stewart's Mockingbird, I noticed the reviews on the front and back cover. Neal Stephenson says "Stephen King meets Ibsen. Trust me." The San Diego Union-Tribune begins theirs with "A gentle, funny, affirming novel..." They do go on to say "Like a poet with a cattle prod..." but still: gentle? I'm not sure they and Stephenson read the same book. I'm quite sure they and I didn't. Stephenson and I probably did, though I'd quibble with the choice of authors; I'd have said Stewart combines Stephenson himself with maybe Viginia Woolf, and I'm more sure about the Stephenson than the Woolf. And a dash of Connie Willis, too.

I've been taking advantage of working at home today to spend my lunch break illing out the new bookshelves. Shelving books is such a subjective thing. For example, I separate hardbacks and paperbacks because they just don't sit well together -- but what about big trade-format paperbacks? Byatt's Possession, for example, is larger than most of my hardbacks. I decided to put them with the paperbacks for now, just because the space worked well that way. I did think of seprating them into their own space, but sometimes the line between mass-market PB ad other PB is a very thin one. I've also separated out Rudder's technothrillers (Tom Clancy, Steven Coonts, and so on) from my mystery PBs, with whom they had been interleaved, just because it let me fit the latter all in one case.

All of the fiction is now neatly shelved with some space for additions, but I still have a lot of crowding in the nonfiction bookcase, especially in the biographies, history, and opinion (those three categories sound redundant!). I may be able to move the PBs among them into the living room, especially because I have one shelf there that's set too short for anything but PBs, and leave the hardbacks where they are. Or I could get rid of some (we are talking about such literary gems as Robert Fulghum's essay collections, ...and more by Andy Rooney, Katherine Hepburn's Me, and On the Road with Charles Kuralt. Still as soon as I did that I'd nudoubtedly have a yen to reread one. Sometimes I'm just not up for literary gems.

I bet this all isn't nearly as much fun if you're a professional librarian and they're not your own books.

go see!

Oh, please, go look again! (You have
to imagine me bouncing up and down like a little kid here.) I've got new pretty
colors, and a blogroll (sorry if I missed anyone) and a way cool new href="http://riseagain.net">front page. And the email and comments all work,
so let me know if you want to be on the notify list.

(I bet there's a
way to automate that. Woder what it is?)

It does turn out there's a
way to automate moving the archives, but I've had enough excitement for one
weekend. Between the new site and new bookshelves whose little pegs simply did not
want to cooperate in holding up shelves, I've spent way too much of a gorgeous
weekend holed up indoors. On the plus side, I'm telecommuting tomorrow (yay!) and
the more I get done today, the fewer temptations to slack off.

construction

I feel like I should have had an "under construction" sign taped to my forehead today. This site's far from done but it's furnished enough to move into. My new bookshelves (the ones we ordered for my birthday) are finally here. It took me all of yesterday and this morning, on and off, and involved both hammers and petroleum jelly, but I've finally got all the little pegs in the holes, and the shelves set on them and am beginning to load them up with books. Yesterday, we decided to take my car to a party only to find out that a rear tire was very, very flat, so I got to take that off and get it fixed, too. (Notes to fellow car non-cognoscenti: Sears' car service place is open on Sunday, and they charged me all of $16 to fix the tire. $16! I can barely fill the tank on that car for that little cash -- in fact, I can't gas up my pickup for under $20.)

Meanwhile Rudder spent most of the morning digging out the narrow strip behind the pool, where some moron builder or former owner ran electrical wires through PVC pipe. This is not a great idea in an area where plant roots might grow into the pipe, or where later owners might want to dig out plants and put new ones in, or where a sprinkler system also runs. In this case, all three conditions are true. After he's got that fixed, next week we'll be putting new plants in. There are three palm trees there now, so we need something mid-sized to fill the gaps and then some ground cover in front. I'm thinking maybe candytuft for that, but we're also considering agave (native to this area) for the midsized, and it seems like a weird combination. Another possibliity is ivey or something drooping in large urns. I like the idea of candytuft around that. Maybe low desert grasses instead if we go with the agave.

It's up!

It's here! The new diary is up. Right now it's very plain vanilla; I've managed to
change the colors but not much else. My problem is as usual that I can figure out
the coding (eventually) but my graphic design skills are minimal. Some of this
stuff, like the archiving and the comments, appears to work well without any
commenting, but right now there are no links to email me or to other sites I read
or anything else. (Later note: figured out how to dolinks.) Still, it's there. If
you are some kind of internet anthopologist with an interest in how these things
evolve, you can see it href="http://riseagain.net/dichroic">here.

The separate photo
album isn't started yet, though I have figured out how to include images in the
diary itself.

There will be a notify list; this is one of the things
MovableType kindlly handles for me. If you'd like to join it before I figure out
how links work, email me or leave a comment there or in the guestbook here.

It's a bit pastel at the moment and I'm not really in a pastel mood.
On the other hand it's a color I use a lot, including on the walls in a couple
rooms here. It makes me think of skies and water. Anyway, suggestions are welcome.
I haven't yet decided whether to move all updates over there now or wait until
it's more customized, but I will certainly announce that here.

Meanwhile, it's pretty much what MT starts ou off with, except that it's blue.
This means it's serviceable but looks very much like everybody else's MT blog. I
will have to Do Something about that!

New Journal Site

I'm here! Creating this site was very slightly easier than I expected -- meaning I had it done just after noon on Saturday instead of late on Sunday -- partly because I have some experience in Unix and with using ftp and telnet, rusty though it is, but mostly because there are very helpful instructions for uploading MovableType to Dreamhost here.

Once I get this site fully set up, all new entries will be posted here instead of at Diaryland. Archives may or may not be moved over, depending how onerous that turns out to be. (Right now I think that may be unlikely, given that I have over 1200 entries in the old archives.)

what do I call me?

Meetings, meetings, meetings. Anyway.

I've gotten as far as buying my
very own domain for photos. This won't be the main journal one but a separate one
- that way I can link the journal to the pictures but not vice versa, which should
be convenient for showing pictures when I want the option not to spill out my
whole life story.

It looks like setting up Movable Type is basically
an exercise in Unix (or likely Linux) which means I might have trouble figuring
out what to do but I'll understand it when I do. This is an added benefit. I like
Unix and haven't gotten to touch it for some time. Likelihood I'll remember the
options for the tar command: approaching zero. Fortunately I don't have to since
someone has kindly written step-by-step instructions for dowloading MT to the host
I'm tentatively planning to use. I have no idea what to do after
downloading it, but I hope all will become clear at the proper
time.

The thing I haven't figured out, and the most fun decision to
make, is what to use for my primary domain name. www.dichroic.just about anything
is taken, not surprisingly. I worry that dichroicreflections is too unwieldy for
anyone to type. I like av8rx (aviatrix) but it feels like cheating, since my pilot
rating isn't exactly current at the moment. icantirow ("I can't, I row", a rowers'
T-shirt slogan) is tempting. riseagain fits well, since I live in Phoenix, I'm a
Stan Rogers fan, and I get up way too damned early most weekday mornings, but....
I don't know, it just makes me sad to get away from the Dichroic handle. It's been
good to me. I've come to identify with it. Of course the site could be
www.riseagain.net/dichroic, but I'm not sure that makes any sense.

I expect I'll be spending much of this weekend swearing at the
computer, but it should be fun. I will keeping updating here until / unless I have
everything working elsewhere, and maybe even after that.

And someday
I'll learn to make a decision without talking it through with everyone in the
world first. Or maybe not.

scrooged!

Molly Ivins would use the term "peckerwoods". My own word for the people who
manage my company's 401(k) is somewhat less flattering. Consider this a cautionary
tale in dealing with your own.

Toward the end of last year, I
realized something looked different on my check - the amount deposited in my
account went down a little. I investigated, of course. What has happened
everywhere else I've worked is that toward the end of the year if you hit the max
amount on your pre-tax 401(k) contributions, they just stop putting money in until
the end of the year and pay it out to you instead. It's a handy bit of extra year-
end. Here, instead, they keep putting the money in your account, only now it's put
in after tax, so you get a little less in your check because of the tax
bite.

What I decided to do was to withdraw the after-tax amount as a
lump sum, having had an expensive December (new roof, Antarctic trip). Since it is
after-tax money, you can do this without any sort of penalty.

A few
days ago, I got a note in the mail stating that company contributions to my 401(k)
had been reinstated. This was a surprise to me, since I hadn't had any idea they
had ever stopped. (Yes, my company contributes to our 401(k) accounts, just
another reason I like this place.) I called to see what was up. Apparently, if
you've worked here less than 5 years and make a withdrawal for any reason,
including after-tax monies, they stop the company contributions for 3 months.

This strikes me as nonintuitive, and the sort of thing their
personnel really ought to have told me when I talked to them about withdrawing the
money. Note that I did not call up asking to withdraw; I called to see why my
check was smaller and made the decision to withdraw in consultation with one of
their people.

The consultant I spoke to informed me this practice is
documented in the Summary Plan Description. No doubt it is, but that's a long
document in teeny-tiny type and even if I Had read it as carefully as I ought
(instead of skimming, as I did) I'm not sure I'd have caught that salient point,
much less remembered it months later when the document was at home and I was on
the phone to these people at work. Further, I can't see the point when it's a
matter of after-tax monies, which shouldn't be different than money in any other
savings acocunt.

I asked him to figure out how much money I didn't
get as a result of this, and it turns out to be substantial, $870 or so. Of
course, I can't say I lost the money because it's money I didn't have to begin
with, just a nice little extra benefit. Still, that's a large impact when you
remember that I'm only 37 and that's money that won't be compounding for me to
retire on in 20-30 years. He's going to escalate the matter, but I don't have much
hope of anything coming of it.

Moral: when they say there are no
drawbacks to taking out your own money, always ask a *lot* of questions and
remember taxes aren't the only possible penalties.

a thanks and a maybe

Not much to say at the moment and I have to run off to (yet another) meeting. I
just wanted to thank Alex for his gracious response and to say that if I do decide
to take this writing elsewhere, I'll keep y'all posted. Probably in VERY LARGE
flashing letters, and multiple times -- one of the big downsides to moving for me
would be the potential loss of readers. Yes, I am an attention whore and I admit
it freely.

On the plus side, Rudder does sound interested in
reconstituting the photo album he used to keep up, so that's another reason in
favor. (And a reason to read. They're good photos, honest.)

a slight correction

Whew. Waaaay too many meetings today. Not to mention yesterday, tomorrow, and the
rest of the week.

Thanks to all who sent advice about diary hosting.
Notes to Alex: a) Mac.com is not free even if you own one. b) If you click href="http://members.diaryland.com/edit/linkers.phtml?user=dichroic">here you
will see the list of people at Diaryland who have me listed as a favorite. That
means these people read this diary and often also my guestbook. In many or most
cases they have me listed partially because I have them listed, which naturally
implies I read their diaries as well. If I regularly read someone's online journal
regularly, enough to friend them, it is fair to assume said journal does *not*
consist of "masturbatory excreta", at least in my opinion. In fact, several of
said journalers are far better writers than I will ever be, in my opinion and
those of quite a few others. (In some cases, that would include their publishers.)
This also applies to several people who keep journals elsewhere, of course, but
the list is harder to point to.

I would not normally scold in
public, but the relevant guestbook entry is in public so I felt I needed
to.

There are certainly hundreds and thousands of online journals
that are crap, but that doesn't mean there's not plenty of excellent writing out
there. And just to thoroughly belabor the point (for which I am infamous in family
circles) I should point out the online journals of href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/pameladean/">Pamela Dean, href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/papersky/">Jo Walton, href="http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp">Neil Gaiman, href="http://www.dreamcafe.com/weblog.cgi">Steven Brust, href="http://shetterly.blogspot.com/">Will Shetterly, and href="http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/">Teresa Nielsen Hayden -- just
to name a few I happen to have bookmarked.

Where do I go from here?

Blah. I don't think I have Rudder's cold (he's still not over it -- nasty
cold!) but I have had a sore throat and a blah-ish feeling all weekend. It's been
nice having the real chicken soup around, anyway. I feel a bit better now, but my
throat hurts more, probably because I've been coughing more. It mostly seems to be
just in my throat, though, not in my head and only minorly in my lungs. Could be
worse.

In addition to feeling scratchy and constricted in the throat,
I've also been feeling a bit constricted here, at Diaryland, lately. I'm
reasonably happy with being able to create my page in raw HTML, and the server's
been mostly reliable lately, so it's mostly a matter of lack of space for photos -
- only 5 mB. The options seem to be as follows:

• Upgrade to
  SuperGold, 30 mB for $54/year, no new interface to
  learn
• Go to Typepad and learn a simple interface, 100 mB for
  $108/year, or get 200mB for $180/year and get to choose between simple I/F
  and HTML. Also, if I buy a domain name I can redirect it there. Also, if I want to
  register a domain name it's $4.95 and up -- but I think there are hidden
  costs
• Go to a hosting service and learn MovableType, which
  sounds like a pretty large hassle. Then again, I do have a programming background,
  which may or may not help. Cost: Approx $120/year for 200mB (varies). Some
  hosts will also throw in registration of a domain name.
• Stay at D-
  land and just buy space elsewhere to host photos -- don't know how much if any
  coding would be required.

I'd appreciate feedback from
people familiar with one or more of these options and any others I've missed, and
for hosts you'd recommend - or not. (Natalie, I did bookmark the one you
recommended.)

Thanks!

How else?

Funy thing: one of my dinner guests last night asked, "How long did all this take
you? All day??"

Well, yeah -- actually, in fact I'd made the
chocolate torte and mixed up the matzo balls and put the batter in the fridge the
day before. How else do you make a holiday dinner? Do other people just not make
holiday dinners as a regular thing?

On the other hand, I'm awed by
the people who can cook for 10 or 15 or 30 guests. The most I've fed is 11, and
that was just chili (and the mother of the two children asked if she could make
them bologna sandwiches instead). When we lived in Houston, a father and son we
rowed with had us over for wonderful Seder dinners, with three tables full of
people. Of course, usually when you're feeding a horde you have a lot of help
cooking, but still, that was an impressive spread. (My guests yesterday would have
been happy to bring food, but since they're not Jewish they wouldn't have known
what's Pasadic; Since I wanted a traditional dinner I gently discouraged them and
they brought flowers instead. Wouldn't want anyone to think my friends don't have
good manners.)

I've heard a few people comment that they don't know
how to make a big dinner at all. I know how to do this because this is what we did
for all our holidays as I was growing up. We'd have dinner with my grandparents
and uncle; my uncle would be staying with them and would help cook and we'd bring
a food over as well. Sometimes they came over to our house instead or we all went
to another relative's. This is normal to me, and happy, and traditional in the
best way. ("You do the same thing every year and you're not tired of it," as I
recently saw a small boy quoted.)

Luckily Rudder's family does the
same, except for Thanksgiving and Christmas instead of Passover and Rosh Hashanah.
These days when we haven't gotten together with one of our families, I invite
family-by-choice over instead, or people I'd like to know better. How better to
bring people together than over food?

how can I keep from singing?

NPR had an essay (what do you call it when it's viva voce instead of in print?)
yesterday from a woman who is feeling ground down by the tragedy in the news everyday: she sees a happy little girl crossing the street, with her dog and her dad, and thinks of how many little girls aren't able to cross the street safely,
or wear pretty dresses, or get enough to eat because their countries are
undergoing war, pestilence, or famine. Every day on the news she hears about more deaths in Iraq. She doesn't want to grow calloused but can't deal with all the world's sorrows either.

I don't want to grow calloused either. One of the things I love about NPR is that every week or so they go talk to the friends and family of a solider killed in action, which helps me remember that these are all people, with lives and personalities and dreams, not a faceless list of names. I start dripping tears much more often than I'd like on my daily commute, listening to reports of more hatred popping up in the West Bank or another powermonger getting away with something the average person would be imprisoned for or someone else dying just from being in the href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/ghostbanner.html">wrong place and time.

It's a dilemma built in to all the advantages that come with better news of the world, though it's not particularly new any more; the same thing must have happened to those who read the lists and lists of dead and wounded in the newspapers after Verdun as much as to those watching children burning in napalm at Khe Sanh.

I think the answer is in remembering the things that balance out the sorrows. Yes, there are little girls who can't have dogs because every one in their village is so hungry that all the dogs have long since been eaten. There are little girls who can't cross the street because there are land mines under the street. But there is also this little girl, right here, and she is giggling and chattering and skipping and she has every chance of getting to grow up safely and have little girls of her own, and there are many, many little girls like her. There are trees in bloom in Mechaieh's yard and there are trees in bud in Melissa's woods and there will be wildflowers along the road on my way home. There is spring in the world, and I get to be here to see and breathe it. There are happy babies in the world and two of them will be at my house for a late/early Seder this weekend. I may not like some of what's going on in my country just now but I also know we have a chance to change it all this year. There are people living the lives they want to live and loving the people they want to love and quite a lot of them talk about it online every day where I can read it and share a bit in their happiness.

Not that that's license to rest easy, because there are wars and tragedies and violence and hatred and any of that is too much -- but how can you keep going unless you see the beauty of it all too?

I like what Mechaieh says href="http://mechaieh.diaryland.com/040704.html">today about grace because her words seem to me to touch on the wild joy I have to believe is at the heart of the universe, and I hope she won't mind my
quoting:

Sometimes I find myself ridiculously near tears as I try to accept that I will not always be around to savor all this - and simultaneously wildly joyful and grateful, for I'm invariably and inevitably reminded that my being here at all seems to me such a tangle of accident, coincidence and deliberate design. Such sweetness each season - oh, abiding and abundant grace.

When friends rejoice both far and near / How can I keep from singing?

Special bonus today: when I went looking for this entry to link to
above, I found that it had somehow gotten in my private folder (where I never put anything). So there you have a Dichroic poem that is four months old, but has never been seen in public until now. I don't think it sucks, except for maybe a few awkward spots.

power clothes

As I was walking - no, striding -- into work this morning, I realized I was
wearing a Power Outfit. I had something of the feeling Clark Kent must get when he
puts on the cape and the big S, except of course that I still couldn't fly or see
through anything. The funny thing is, I'm not wearing href="http://members.diaryland.com/edit/displayedit.phtml">black and silver or
anything in the least edgy or dangerous-looking. I am, in fact, clothed in
Professional Edging on Girly. (Do other people have this category?) I have on a
sheath dress in a plum tweed with flecks of red, violet and pink that ends three
inches above my knee when I'm standing; the sweater that goes with the shell I was
wearing here (where I had
taken it off in the vain hope of having my arms look buff); silver earrings,
necklace, watch and rings plus my engagement ring; and high heeled open-toed
mules. It's actually a fairly comfortable outfit except for the heels, which put
all my weight on the balls of my feet with no padding.

I think the
heels are the secret of the power, though. I can't mince or plod in heels; I have
to stride. Or it may lie in the expanse of bare legs that (I fondly and foolishly
believe) shout, "I am in shape and I CAN KICK YOUR BUTT!". (Not because I'm in
such great shape, but the dress hides the parts that aren't and shows the parts
that are.) People have been glancing at me all day. Of course I have no way to
tell if they're thinking "She looks powerful!" or "Hey baby," or "Where does she
think she is, Sex and the City? Not professional outside a TV show," but that's
OK. I'll just stride on believing what I want to believe, other people can
silently snark at me, and we'll all be happy.

that should be godDESS, thank you

Second entry today:

src="http://images.quizilla.com/B/BaalObsidian/1080162080_cturesgod3.jpg"
border="0" alt="Grammar God!">
You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

If
your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should
be.
Congratulations and thank you!

href="http://quizilla.com/users/BaalObsidian/quizzes/How%20grammatically%20sound%2
0are%20you%3F/"> How grammatically sound are you?

brought to you by href="http://quizilla.com">Quizilla

no guilt required

Not much time to write; I have to get back to my all-day class. I do have two
things I wanted to record, though.

When I asked Rudder, "Why
orchids?" I was meaning to ask, "Why is this different than any other time: Why
flowers now and not other times? Are you apologizing and saying you were wrong or
just not wanting us to be mad at each other? Did you know they're my favorites?
Was this a really big thing to you and that's why these instead of
daisies?"

(It's Passover. There have to be four
questions.)

His answer: "They were easily available. The florist I
went to once before (like, half a decade ago!) has closed (wonder why!) so I went
to the supermarket. The only other thing they had were Easter lilies and I didn't
think you'd want those."

Very typical. Still, there's the going to
two whole places on purpose for flowers. Very untypical. Not to mention
sensitivity points for avoiding the lilies.

Also, I had the sort of
epiphany which makes you realize what a dumbass you've been. I always feel
slightly guilty for not keeping Passover and for not having a real Seder. I blame
the latter on my grocery store's and work cafeteria's selection: even getting
Kosher for Passover matzah was difficult. (I have never understood the raison
d'etre of any other kind. It's not like you can't eat Passover food the res tof
the year.)

But on the Seder issue, I don't even really know how to
run one, even if I had Jewish people to invite, and I realized this morning this
is because my family never had a real Seder, only a big family dinner. Moreover, I
don't think my mom's family ever had Seders growing up. (Dad's might have but they
were pretty fragmented otherwise.) We'd hide the Afikoment, and one of us might
ask the Feer Kashes, and ther'd be n extra glass for Elijah, but that's about it.
So when I just make a big dinner of traditional food and serve it to people I care
about, this is my family's religious tradition. No guilt required.

orchids

*Dichroic emits a high-pitched whining sound suggested of shock and overcome
emotions*

Orchids. There are orchidson my table.

Now I feel like a total heel.

You have to understand
the Rudder never buys me flowers. Well, that's not strictly true. He did
once soon after we met in 1990 and I think maybe one or two other times since. And
he once brought me an adorable tiny bouquet of sagebush flowers and oleander
flowers, in a shotglass, to cheer me up when I was unemployed. In general, the man
is not florally inclined.

Yesterday we had a bit of a spat - it's
enough to say that he did something I thought was inconsiderate and it escalated
from there. Matters weren't helped any by incipient hormones on my part and
lingering cold germs on his. In other words, I still think he was wrong, but there
may have been overreaction on both parts. There was stomping away and not speaking
for, oh, a good half-hour or so. Further complicating matters is that I've been
sleeping in the spare room for the last few nights at his strong suggestion, in an
attempt to avoid his cold and because it's the only way to get any sleep. (He's
got this barking cough and even two rooms away I've been using earplugs.)

However, before bedtime there was some more civilized conversation
and I did sneak in in the dark for a quick snuggle (carefully avoiding his hands
or face in case of lingering germfulness). Maybe that's why. Rudder does tend to
reflect back anything you throw at him, which is annoying in that he rarely will
apologize while you're sitll mad at him, but is at least predictable -- if you're
calm enough to work with it.

And now cattleyas, and they're even
carefully placed on a bt of paper towel so the vase won't scratch the wood table.
Somehow I feel guiltier than any angry words could have made me.

Wonder if that's what he was aiming for? Some things can definitely
be overanalyzed.

Orchids. *snif*

In other
ways, his day has been a joy so far. This was the best morning on the water *ever*
and I wish Rudder hadn't still been recuperating. Just enough breeze to feel good,
not enough to disturb the water's mirror reflections. Most of the local programs
raced in the San Diego Crew Classic and so weren't on the water today. (We didn't
go because it's for eights only.) So there were me, Hardcore, She-Hulk, and one
novice eight moving slowly enough that its accompanying launch didn't kick up any
wake. Perfect temperature. And as a bonus, we got to see a beautiful moonset and
sunrise, with just enough clouds to make each spectacular. Then there was the joy
that is telecommuting, a very nice lunch with friends and assorted offspring who'd
all grown since I saw them last (the offspring, not the friends), and a call to
say the comfy chairs we bought two months ago are in and ready to be picked up.
And then the shock of walking into this room and seeing orchids.

Oh,
and the weather's cool. And I get Friday off. My life is just full of
goodness right now.

These may be famous last words, but I don't think
even the dentist can mess up this day too badly.

Later note: he didn't.

How do you stop purveyers of hate? By denying the attention they want. href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/papersky/">Jo Walton writes:

put it to a vote

Yay! I don't have to pack for rowing tomorrow because I get to work at
home!

Boo! It's looking like the weather will be unpleasant to row in
but not bad enough to stay home!

Yay! I also don't have to brave 40
miles of idiots trying to drive while talking on cellphones or trying to drive
while half-awake! (That latter would include me.)

Boo! I have to go
to the dentist in the middle of the day!

Yay! Before the dental visit
I get to go have lunch with Egret AND the babies AND Hardcore + youngest offspring
AND She-Hulk!!!

And I get to spend all day in my nice house instead
of the office!

And there it is - the Yay!s have it.

slow Saturday

That "be careful what you wish for" thing is visting me ths weekend, presumably
courtesy of Murphy and his Law.....

Remeber how I was talking last
weekend about needing some relaxing downtime? Oops. I knew it was going to be a
fairly boring weekend, given that the most exciting thing I had planned was food
shopping. Also, Rudder's had a cold for the past few days. What I didn't know
until I got home yesterday was that he was actually sick enough to stay home from
work all day, which for my workaholic husband is unusual. (I did try calling him
at home when I couldn't get him at work, just in case, but he's entirely capable
of sleeping through a ringing phone.) I knew it was pretty bad when he and She-
Hulk came in after only two laps Wednesday and then he actually skipped workouts
on both Thursday and Friday. (He would have anyway on Friday due to the rain, but
he'd actually plan to ski; in advance. And normally he'd have erged.) He was
apparently comatose for much of the day. We had about five minutes' conversation
in which he informed me I should sleep in the spare room, I brought him some
chicken soup, and that was about it. (Sleeping in the other room was definitely a
good decision. The rooms are not even contiguous, and I still had to wear
earplugs to sleep through his coughing.)

He's been a bit better
today, but not well enough to do more than shift between bed and sofa. At least
he was able to eat the chili I made for dinner and to help me unpack groceries.
Barely. So I am getting a hyperquiet weekend, having done nothing more than read,
stitch, and visit the supermarket. Now I remember why I don't do this much. I'm
sure I'll feel better for it during the week. I hope Rudder also feels better
soon. The weather is also cooperating by being wonderfully gray and cool -- with
luck it'll rain again. We'll take all the moisture we can get, out here.

teeth!

How to torture Dichroic: Tie her in a chair and don't let her talk or
read.

My teeth hurt. This is what last night entailed:

1) tech inserts ducklips in my mouth (you know, those things
orthodontists and so on use to force your mouth open and your lips wide).

2)
tech inserts various other bits of gauze, puts orange goggles on me, sunscreen on
my lower face, and aloe on my lips.

3) I begin thinking, "I know this is
going to hurt eventually, so I really wish she wouldn't use up ten minutes of my
pain-free time with the preparation."

4) tech begins telling about how she
gave her mother a dog for the latter's 83rd birthday, while adjusting bits of
gauze. I begin to appreciate having gear in place that prevents betrayal of what a
spectacularly bad idea this sounds like, given that tech never once mentions
conferring with mother to figure out if she actually wants and can take care of a
live dog.

5) tech finishs up with a bit of wet gauze on my nose and a big
gauze triangle over my lower face with a hole cut out for my mouth. She tapes this
and bits of gauze in place, then paints blue protective stuff on my gums and foamy
bleach stuff on my teeth. (I didn't know about the blue and foamy parts at the
time.)

6) tech (finally!) sets high energy UV light pointing at my
mouth.

7) I listen to Harry Potter IV on CD for the next twenty minutes,
having bought headphones on the way over for just this purpose -- fortunately
she'd warned me in advance that I wouldn't be able to read because the light is in
the way.

8) Tech turns light off, sucks away old bleach and paints new
bleach on.

9) I sit there as before for 10 minutes or so, not enjoying the
ducklips and trying to concentrate on Harry's facing the Dementors.

10) My
lower left gum begins to smart. I try to ignore that too.

11) The gum hurts
progressively worse. I make noises to attract someone's attention and they call
the tech over.

12) She hands me a mirror so we can isolate where it hurts
(this is where I see just how silly I look foaming at tahe mouth and with blue
gums) and inserts more gauze, which I didn't think would help at first, but it
eventually does. We agree (she agrees, I grunt with affirmative intention) that I
can last the remaining 8 minutes of this session.

13) I do. Toward the end,
a bit of the bleach edges toward my throat, smarting a bit and convincing me
that's what happened to the gum.

14) She sucks out bleach as before and we
look at the color of the teeth. We agree that since they're about as white as her
whitest little sample tooth we'll stop there, rather than doing the planned third
session and sending me off the charts into fakey-white-beauty-pageant-
land.

15) I look in mirror and am disappointed to see there are still little
brown stains between my teeth.

16) She digs at these a little and announces
that I have "defective" teeth, that these are not stains but missing enamel. I
think but do not say that my preliminary exam two weeks ago would have been a fine
time to make this discovery.

15) She sends me home with instructions to take
a Tylenol before going to bed and not to drink tea or coffee for 48
hours.

I didn't feel much from the teeth at first but they started to
annoy me more in the middle of the night and now it still feels as if I'm biting
down on something very cold. Ow. They are a lot whiter, though - the "defective"
parts don't show unless you're looking at them from two inches away. At least this
is a one time thing, or anyway it is unless I do a touchup with bleach and trays
(included) in a year or so. I gave up on over-the-counter whitestrips and such
because they bugged me almost this much every night.

My gums are
still sore too. I think a little bleach did get on them, or maybe it's sunburn
from the UV light. At least this isn't nearly as bad as having braces
tightened.

I couldn't go this whole morning without tea or coffee
though. Mornings are not a good time for breaking habits. On the other hand my
teeth are so sensitive that I wasn't letting the hot liquid anywhere near them.
I'm drinking iced tea for lunch too, because I figured it was better than Coke and
anyway I didn't want carbonation anywhere near my teeth, but I'm using a straw so
if it touches my teeth at all it's on the back sides. Or so my theory goes.

photoshopping

My neck hurts. My eyes hurt. Too much time staring at the monitor. On the other
hand we now have a brand-new spiffy up-to-date nicely Photoshopped group picture,
I learned still more about Photoshop (wouldn't say I'm actually productive
in it yet, but closer....) and I get paid for this.

An odd
perspective on this is that the hours I just spent on Photoshop did not earn me
quite enough money to pay for the spectacularly vain and stupid thing I'm doing
tonight. I finally caved in and am getting my teeth whitened. It's not that
they're stained, just that their natural color is yellower than I'd like. Anyday
now I'll finally decide to do LASIK nad who knows where it ends? Lipo? silicone?
Ew.

If this were posted any
other day of the year, I'd be applying for that job in a shot. That's one move I
wouldn't have trouble talking Rudder into, either.

people of the books

I don't think my stats trackers are working right -- at least I can't imagine any
other reason why I would look at one page here right after posting at about 11:30
and have the day's only tracker appearance from my company's site show up as
someone looking through 8 pages at 2 PM. On the other hand, if someone else from
there really is reading this, it's not that I mind (you will note the many
complimentary references to the company, after all) but I would still appreciate a
comment.

Otherwise.

Jews refer to themselves
as "am hamsefer", or "People of the Book". Actually, assuming that was transcribed
right (it was in Nicholas Basbanes' A Gentle Madness and he was quoting
Aaron Lansk, progenitor of the National Yiddish Book Center) a more exact
translation would be "People from the Book". I've been told that Muslims use a
similar term, "Peoples of the Book", to refer to the three religions which have
grown from the Torah: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. In the case of Jews,
though, we have always been a bookish, word-driven people and by extension the
term has come to mean more than solely the Torah. (I was going to write "just the
Torah" in the previous sentence and couldn't bring myself to do it.) I think I
need to co-opt the term and refer to the "amim hamseferot", "peoples of the
books", for all those who finding reading or discussing books among life's finest
pleasures.

various kinds of holiday

The decision to skip the gym this morning was more or less unanimous, which is a
bit pathetic since neither of us went at all last week. I've concluded I'm less
stressed and I row faster when I get Tuesday and Thursday off, but I suppose the
latter is only a temporary effect. All that weightlifting is supposed to build
strength, after all, which is why I do it.

This is clearly shaping up
as one of those weeks -- busy, I mean, not necessarily bad. It's been
productive so far, though, and I just keep looking forward to next week when I
will telecomute Monday, be in class all Tuesday, and have a holiday (for Good
Friday) to finish out the week. I never quite understand why a public company
gives us a religious holiday off, but at least it's better than my brother's case
where his employer, the US government, in contradiction of their own laws is
refusing to give anyone time off until mid-April despite the occurrance of Easter
and Passover in that period. He even had to bring in a letter from his rabbi,
which amused me though it ultimately proved ineffective. I don't plan to take
Passover off myself, but I'm pleased that, had I been more religious, my company's
own principles for force it to behave better.

Instead, since I have
the day off, there will probably be matzo ball soup materializing in my kitchen on
Good Friday. Typically we invite someone over for the holidays, but I'm not sure
what we'll do this year because of that other holiday. I don't imagine anyone
celebrating (in the religious sense, not the 'have a party' sense) Good Friday
wants to spend it at my excuse for a Seder ..... though then again, it occurs to
me that maybe that's exactly what they want to do. There is, after all, a
Precedent.

who are you?

Would the person from H0neywell who has been reading this diary in large chunks
would kindly leave a note in the guestbook? Thank you.

almost calming

I got Rudder back from Taiwan on Saturday, all in one piece and everything. Aside
from the fact that I was a bit worried after that assassination attempt the week
before, having him in the house is a good thing, for safety reasons. On Thursday
night, I noticed that the oven was on. Only problem was I hadn't used it since
Tuesday. I am not particularly looking forward to this electric
bill.

Yes, it was the relaxing weekend I wanted.....let me see. I
slept in a little, finished filling the pool, pulled out the army of weeds taking
over the back yard, raked weeds and leaves into three large piles, picked Rudder
up from the airport, got yelled at by a security guard for being on the wrong side
of a sign, transferred leaf piles to bags with Rudder's help once he got home,
went out for Tex-Mex food, embroidered, worked on an essay, chopped back and dug
up one large and one enormous hibiscus and a scraggly overgrown but dying jasmine,
put in a solar light, wrote letters, helped Rudder move an 800 pound 12 foot tall
(or maybe it just felt that way) stainless steel cabinet Rudder got from work that
he persists in thinking will be useful some day and *ahem* made sure Rudder felt
thoroughly welcomed home.

Does anybody ever get really calm weekends
anymore? That's the closest I get, and it was nice, but more time would help a
lot. I think it's time we all go on strike for three-day weekends. This 5-and-2
standard schedule isn't cutting it for me.

Whatever it was, it felt awfully good.

I'm so mad I could spit over the Unborn Victims of Violence act Congress
has passed. It's not even the fetus-rights part that bothers me, except in so far
as how stupid do anti-abortion types think people are? This isn't meant as a First
Step toward yet another privacy invasion? Yeah, right. It's probably a good thing
fetuses don't have library records or they'd be looking at those too. Other than
that, though, that part's not the focus of my ire; I really have nothing against
massive punishments for the low-life who hurts a pregnant woman badly enough to
cause a miscarriage.

What has me spitting mad is the implication that
violence toward a pregnant woman -- toward any woman, in fact toward any one at
all -- is not a serious enough event on its own, so that we need a special law
because it's the effect on the fetus that really matters in all this. Nonpregnant
women? Yeah, go ahead and beat on them. They're not breeding so who cares? I would
have been much happier if they had passed the version that simply made attacking a
pregnant woman a greater crime; it is fairly heinous to attack someone who is most
vulnerable, in addition to the risk of ending another incipient life. Even better
might be if violent federal crimes against anyone, woman or man, were simply
treated seriously enough in the first place to make additional charges
irrelevant.

On a happier note, this morning was the
best row I've had in I don't know how long. It was cooler last night, so I slept
better, which probably didn't hurt. It was cool enough this morning to need light
fleece while getting ready to row, warm enough to take the fleece off as I stepped
into the boat. For the first time in a week, the water was calm. She-Hulk must be
missing Rudder because she decided to stay with me. I'm not sure why because she's
considerably faster but it worked out well as we took turns critiquing each
other's racing starts. She hasn't done a ton of them and they can be a little
unstable and scary, so I think she felt more secure with someone watching. She was
able to give me some feedback that really helped me smooth things out, which
translated nicely into speed through the water. Even outside the starts during
regular rowing, for some reason I was much faster today than I have been. I don't
know whether it was because I slept better, because I skipped weights yesterday,
because of the extra walking I've been doing at lunch, because of the flat water,
or a combination of everything. Whatever it was, it felt awfully good.

I swam!

I know I complain about the heat here a lot, but sometimes, I admit (grudgingly)
it has its advantages. I just went swimming, outside in my own backyard.
And the odds are good you didn't.

They finished doing the new pool
surface yesterday, in a nice white pebbly finish (P*bblet*c, but under a different
brand name) and began filling it today. That means the water now in there went
through today's 89F high and hasn't sat through a cool night yet, and the deepest
part (where it will be 8' when all the water is in) is just up to my belly button.
Translation: nice warm water, still-warm air. And there were leaves already
in the water -- so clearly Something Had to be Done.

Of course, I
hadn't planned this in advance. I had changed into a light short dress though. I
held the dress up to my hips (our yard is quite private) but couldn't reach all of
the leaves. So what is a girl to do? Clearly there was no choice but to shuck off
the clothes and wade all the way in. (The watch is waterproof for just such
occasions.) Naturally, once in, I had to submerge test everything out, and swim a
few strokes. There's no chlorine in it yet, so that was especially
nice.

I can now report that the "new" pool works just perfectly.

smokin'

It's my day for an intolerant rant, I'm afraid. Be warned. Subject:
smokers.

While I'm not thrilled about higher insurance premiums, I
suspect those show more effect from corporate greed on the part of HMOs and drug
manufacturers anyway. Other than that, I don't much care what people do to their
own lungs -- unless they're people I care about, in which case I'd much rather
they took good care of themselves. Where I do mind is where other people's smoke
impinges on me.

I don't know if most smokers realize just how bad
they stink.

When I work with a smoker, or, worse, get trapped in an
elevator with one, I can instantly tell whether they smoke only at home (no odor
or almost none), smoke at work (some odor - not too bad) or have just come back in
from a smoke break (pfaugh!). (This is assuming they wash self and clothing
frequently, but that's another issue entirely and in that case the smoke smell
wasn't the revolting part.)

Back in my early days in an office,
smoking was just beginning to be restricted. For a while there, it was allowed in
private offices, just not in cubicle farms. (I don't know whether the strategy was
just to kill off the old guys and managers faster and preserve the workers, or
what.) I was assigned to a mentor, a senior engineer who had his own office, and I
spent a lot of time in there. It didn't take me long to quit wearing anything to
work that wasn't machine washable, because my clothes stunk by the end of the day.
Grosser yet, I had long hair at the time and could smell cigarette smoke in it
well after I left work.

My dad still smokes, though I think less than
he used to. I've won an argument on the subject exactly once, on my wedding day.
I'd stayed at their house the night before, instead of at the hotel across town
where Rudder was and where the wedding would be, mostly just to please my parents.
I told Dad flat out that if he was planning to smoke in the car on the way there,
then I would be riding with a neighbor, because I was not going to have my
wedding dress or hair smelling of smoke.

Worse, it doesn't just float
in the air, it clings to walls, furniture, and anything a smooker touches. My
parents have to paint periodically just because Dad smokes in the house. I'm
ranting now because yesterday, I had an IT guy from our Help-less Desk come in to
fix something minor on my computer. When he was done, I touched my mouse and had
my fingers come away smelling of smoke. Ewwww!

It's not a good smoke
smell, either, like the smell of a bonfire. It's a used smoke smell, more like
smog, except in the case of (tobacco) pipe smoke, which can be pleasant in small
doses. As I've said, I don't want to restrict other people's rights to enjoy
themselves, I just want to keep it off me. There's more and more pressure to
legislate that all bars and restaurants be smoke-free -- I think there's now a
bill at the state level here. My suggestio is that you don't ban smoking, you just
make it an economic decision. Require restaurants to be all smoking or all non-
smoking, clearly labeled outside. Restaurant owners would figure out quickly which
way attracted more business (I suspect there would be no one universal answer) and
nonsmokers would know where to go if they wanted to avoid fumes. Anyone wanting to
have both would be requireed to have separate rooms with separate ventilation
systems -- none of this crap where the two areas are separated by 3 feet and a
small partition that smoke floats over. I suspect setups like that are one of the
things driving the smoking ban in the first place. Let people choose what they
want and avoid what they don't and individual liberties will be
preserved.

And keep that smelly film off my mouse and keyboard,
dammit.

Addendum: As Natalie correctly points out,
and as I actually meant to say but forgot, the above applies to any reek that
clings to walls, furniture and other people. I have encountered cologne that's
almost as bad as smoke close up, though at least usually it only leaves a faint
trace.

need to slow down

I wish I hadn't done that shopping binge on Sunday. It's not that I don't like the
stuff I bought -- I can even justify (most of) it. (And did I mention href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/mwah.html">that skirt was on sale for
under $20? That's especially gratifying because I remember trying it on and
liking it last summer at full price, almost enough to buy it then. Score one for
me. But I digress.) It's just that I did too much of it, and it left me tired
going into the week. I did it partly because I feel cheated if I don't get some
fun into my weekend, and partly because Rudder was gone, but those aren't really
sufficient reasons, at least not for spending a whole day in the mall.

This is one way in which marriage has been bad for me, I think. I'm
used to having Rudder around. I do get a little antsy if I spend a whole day
without at least getting out of the house, but if I can satisfy that wish, we can
spend a day doing minor errands or nothing much and I count it as time together.
I've never been particularly afraid of my own company, but somehow it feels as if
to be having fun on my own I have to crank it up a notch. I'm feeling unrecharged
now just because on Sunday when I had the time I didn't spend more time reading,
creating, making music, or otherwise vegetating.

It's not really
entirely accurate to say I can spend a lot of time alone, though. I don't really
spend very much time without other people around; the only difference is that
sometimes they're made of flesh and they live in houses and sometimes they're made
of ideas and they live in books and sometimes they're made of electrons and they
live on computers :-)

I do enjoy the occasional hiking or shopping
solo, though those are fun with company in a different way.

My other
problem is that I've added that What i'm Reading field above and it's getting
downright embarassing having the same thing listed there day after. It's
not that anyone else cares, I know, just that I'm used to thinking of myself as a
book-a-day girl (or more) unless it's something unusually dense. Time is the
problem; last night I got home at 6:30, had to be in bed by 8 because of rowing
this morning, and had to sort mail, make dinner, eat, wash up, check emails, pack
clothes for today, take out the recyclables, pet the cats, pack clothing for
today, wash, brush, floss .... I should note that this is not made up for with
extra time in the morning; I get up, throw on workout gear, and go. You can see
why my reading time is less than I'd like, and why relaxation on weekends is so
necessary.

This weekend I go collect Rudder, but before that I'm
going to find something quiet and rejuvenating to do. I may even write a letter or
two on real paper to someone who would appreciate it.

(Caveat: Of
course, this in no way means I'm planning to cancel my plans for a massage and
some solo sushi tonight!)

my brief modelling stint

I almost hate to put up a new entry and cover up my href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/mwah.html">response to LA from last night.
It's very clear that I do *not* have a modeling background; naither am I naturally
photogenic. Rudder's brother, for example, almost never photographs badly (though
shaving his head didn't help). I on the other hand usually come out either with my
eyes looking like I'm on drugs or slouched so my gut sticks out. Or both. It took
me a kazillion shots to get a few I liked and it didn't help that since I was
using the flash I had to keep stopping to recharge the camera batteries at least
enough for the next few shots. Even with all that I didn't get it quite right; you
can see that my chest isn't sticking out perkily and my arms are tight against my
sides so they look squishy instead of buff. (Or maybe they just are....)

I've concluded that modeling is not for me, not that I didn't figure
that out for height-related reasons long ago. It has to be a little easier when
there's a photographer coaxing you through it, saying "Stand up straight....lower
your hands...purse your lips...straighten your back....that's it! instead of a
digicam on a tripod with a time delay setting. (Even if Rudder were around, he's
not great at peopple shots.) I would have done a few more shots, but it was
getting close to bedtime and I decided I was tired of it. (Because even a
temporary model gets to play prima-donna, right?)

Given the name of
this site, I've been playing the same few notes over and over for too long. So
please note the above entry contains nothing at all about rowing or books! (Except
for the appropriate background .... and if you could see the fine detail you'd
note the rowing books live on the top shelf of that particular bookcase.)

babbling in pink

I am Rudderless. As in floating and adrift, and also as in the boy's off on the
other side of the world. Often I sleep better when he's not there (but I wake
happier when he is) just because I'm a light sleeper and it's one less set of
noises and movements, but not last night. I couldn't get to sleep for a long time.
That was probably because it was annoyingly warm yesterday, so that open windows
in all the upstairs rooms and the three strategically placed fans didn't cut it.
In other words, it's been a short night and a long day, and I may not be entirely
coherent by now.

Once I did get to sleep I slept solidly, but
nonetheless was a good girl and got up early to row. It was annoyingly warm there
too, despite enough wind to make rowing a single interesting; I had to take off my
light fleece top before I even got in the boat.

I just want to shout
at the weather, "It's MARCH, hothead! What happened to blustery winds, chilly
weather and spring rain? I want my spring back!!"

At least I'm
dressed for spring, in an outfit that looks like a tribute to Legally
Blonde only without the blonde. Or the matching dog, for that matter. Lots of
pink and even high heels (not pink).

Must go. Too much work. More
later, maybe.

grumbling

Grumble grumble grumble Rudder off to Taiwan grumble. And I don't have any
especially fun plans for the weekend grumble. Today I got to go food-shoppping all
alone more grumbles. (Though that did mean I treated myself to outrageously un-
nutritious chocolate covered doughtnut-hole thingies and good soft cheese
and bagel chips to spread it on.

The mandolin is now restrung and
tuned (at least until it untunes itself and "Wildwood Flower" has been duly picked
out on it. I really don't understand when one (that is, an actual skilled
mandolin-playing one) would normally play chords versus single notes on this
thing. Guitar church licks don't really seem to work. I think maybe I'll stick to
single notes for a bit and attempt to master this flatpicking thing, since I
mostly learned to fingerpick on guitar. Also, the mandolin's steel strings are
much harder on my fretting fingers than the guitar's since I play a classical one
which uses nylon strings.

On the way back from buying springs I
stopped for the annual beginning of sandal season pedicure; my feet needed it
before being seen in public. It's been amusing reading about signs of spring on
my various discussion groups; everyone else is talking about daffodils or crocuses
or robins or late snowfalls and we're already into summer here. I think it's
supposed to hit 96 degrees tomorrow. Personally I'd prefer
daffodils.

I may just go hang out at the mall tomorrow and look for
floaty summer skirts, black sandals to replace my old ones, or combat-the-over-
air-conditioning jackets. Having paid off a credit card bill yesterday that
necessitated borrowing from savings (because it included the computer I'm typing
this on and came at the same time as insurance for both vehicles) I really
shouldn't. but I can't think of anything else fun to do and I've already done the
cross-stitching and mandolin-picking homebody stuff today. I should tackle some
writing stuff, too, and if I were a really really good girl I'd erg a half-
marathon or at least 10K, but we all know the answer to that, don't
we?

There definitely wll be sleeping in but it won't feature a kind
husband bringing me up tea in bed. More to the point, I'm not verry thrilled about
him being in a country where there's a possibility of riots in response to the
recent assassination attempt and election. Grumble grumble grumble. Off to bed.
Alone. Pooh.

stone soup vs caramel flan

Meetings, meetings everywhere and not a time to think.

I have a first
line for a song, or maybe it's from the chorus, floating in my head. So far I can
tell the song borrows from John Muir and Job, and I'm trying to keep anything else
out of it because I think I have a tendency to try to turn poems into fruitcakes,
and they're probably better as caramel flans. (That is, consistent all the way
through and soaked in a single strong flavor.) At least, that applies to the
length of thing I usually write. I suspect a good epic poem could be like stone
soup, with one central metaphor and then a bit of everything thrown in. At the
sonnet length, though, you need to focus. At any rate, it's a good line, but now
it needs more lines around it, not to mention a tune.

As of this
morning, I have covered over 43 km in a boat, on foot, or on a rowing machine,
this week, which is a record for me for this year, and pretty darn good for any
year, even when I was rowing in the bigger boats.