Mail Daze

Sparky! And a hawk!

2009-09-22T17:03:00.005-05:00

It is my great pleasure (and surprise!) to announce the addition of Sparky to our family. I really have no idea how we went from me looking at cute pictures of kitties at Petfinder.com to filling out an adoption form at the Animal Humane Society. It just happened (like some pregnancies -- LOL!) Doug and the 9-month-old Sparky took to each other right away, and I thought he was a nice kitty, so home he came. Sparky's been living mostly in my office until Bootsie gets used to the idea, and I adore him. Starting about Day 3, couldn't imagine life without him. Today is Day 8. He loves to sleep on my book or keyboard with his head on my hand. Or slung over my shoulder with my hand supporting his bottom. How can I possibly push him aside to work? Cuddling him is a much higher calling.

Need to give equal visibility to Bootsie. Here's a picture Doug shot a couple of years ago, I think. She loves the back windows in summer when the ivy grows over them, giving her a "jungle screen" to lurk behind as she watches the birds and furry critters that visit our backyard. She is sort of OK with Sparky as long as he doesn't try to play with her or enter her domain upstairs. Unfortunately, he wants to do both those things very much. So they're going to be separate for a while.

AJ is very interested in the new cat, and Cubby Bear is absolutely over the moon at having another kitty friend. Sparky was wary at first, but now he has discovered that Cubby's huge brush of a tail makes a great toy.

This summer, we were visited for about a week by a juvenile Cooper's hawk. He perched right outside my office window for hours! I've always joked that my utter lack of care of the backyard and its subsequent run to weeds was an effort to create an ecosystem. Well, I guess it worked! The hawk eventually caught a baby rabbit! Then s/he took off. They like to nest in Douglas firs, apparently, and our next-door neighbor has a beautiful one, so fingers crossed that s/he remembers that tasty bunny and the nice tree and maybe comes back someday to raise baby hawks. Photo below by Gerry Dewaghe.

Otherwise, life has been about working . . . and working . . . and working . . . and . . . Did I mention I've been working a lot? I'm guessing about 70-80 hours/week. So much housework and yardwork isn't getting done, it's not funny. But with the economy the way it is, and the way it's likely to be for a while, I'm not complaining. One of my clients sent me a chilled box of See's Candy for working on a series of challenging projects -- how sweet! Do you know that See's Candy comes with a nutritional leaflet? That's just wrong! It went into recycling unread.

Wrapped up my GRE class for Kaplan Test Prep. Enjoyed teaching very, very much. It definitely got me the interpersonal contact I needed and used the presentation skills that would otherwise atrophy. Plus I met remarkable people and got to know their dreams and goals and maybe help them a little toward them. I hope they all do great on the test!!! Now I am tutoring a wonderful guy, also on the GRE. I hope to teach a class again in November, but that will depend on enrollment. I'm looking forward to fine-tuning my teaching and continuing to improve in my next class.

It hasn't all been work. At the end of August, we did go on a sort of vacation to Kansas City, where we met Doug's parents for a couple of days. Visited some museums, ate some barbeque. I alternately worked and crashed, worked and crashed. Afraid I wasn't exactly the life of the party. I'd lost 5 pounds since May, but I gained 3 of it back over that vacation -- bleh. How discouraging.

Also carved out some time to watch the U.S. Open. Men's champion Juan del Potro seems like a really nice guy with a great game, so glad he won. And Kim Clijsters -- good grief, just her third tournament back from "maternity leave," and she wins a Grand Slam! I remember her as being mentally fragile, but she was incredibly focused here. And now Justine Henin is planning a return. Hurray for women's tennis!

Garden update: Bunny ate most of what would have been a great crop of broccoli, but tomatoes are producing like crazy, despite the drought. (We've had only 0.01 inch of rain so far in September!) Without time to cook, I've been just slicing them up on a plate and sprinkling salt over them.

Birds, Butterflies, and Books

2009-07-06T15:15:00.004-05:00

Stepped out onto my front porch yesterday and saw four gorgeous little yellow birds, two a bright, bright yellow, clinging to my Pincushion Flowers (Scabiosa) and delighting themselves with the seeds. American Goldfinches! Two males, two females. As I've been relandscaping, I've been trying to use a lot of bird- and butterfly-friendly plants -- how cool that it works!

Also, about a week ago, saw a beautiful little butterfly on my bed of native yarrow. The undersides/outsides of its wings were slate gray; the topsides/insides were an intense lilac blue. When it fluttered about, it looked like a flower in flight.

Am sick as a dog: Doug went to Origins in Columbus, Ohio, to sell games and brought back a virus with him. He's been sick, too. Bleh. That's really a pain because . . .

I'm currently working on six books with another arriving Monday and more in the pipeline after that. Not a good time to be sick! Just finished editing a book with a lot of organic chemistry in it. I don't know the first thing about organic chemistry, so it was very challenging, but I think that with the help of Google, I ended up doing a good job.

Sarah Palin is an utter flake. Here's just one of the analyses with which I agree; this one is by Ruth Marcus.

When not working, have been enjoying Wimbledon. Amazing women's semifinal between Serena Williams and Elena Dementieva. Amazing quarterfinal and semifinal between Andy Roddick and a resurgent Lleyton Hewitt and co-favorite Andy Roddick, respectively, and then yet another classic Wimbledon final, this time between Andy Roddick and Roger Federer. Being sick, I dozed off early in the fourth set. Woke up quite a while later, saw the score line, and went WTF!?!? and was wide awake. Federer finally won 16–14 in the fifth set. This is his 15th Grand Slam title, and he's now one of a handful of men who have won the French Open (on clay) and Wimbledon (a few weeks later on grass) in the same year.

Funny dog stuff: AJ is perfectly capable of pushing through the swinging kitchen door. She does it from the kitchen side all the time, and she'll do it from the dining room side if I'm standing right there with her. Nonetheless, when Doug is making a snack and she wants to follow him (or rather his food), she never fails to charge into my office, make it very clear that I am to follow her, and lead me to the door, which she makes very clear I am to open for her. Sometimes even when the door is propped wide open, she insists I escort her through it. Funny!

Fun:

You must view this slideshow at the public radio show Speaking of Faith Web site. A male polar bear encounters chained huskies in northern Canada. The animals proceed to play with each other. The bear came back every day for a week to play with the dogs. Other researchers have observed the same behavior between grizzly bears and wolves in the wild.
There is a World Worm Charming Championships. It is held each year in Willaston, Cheshire, England. The record now stands at 567 worms. Something to aspire to?
Therapy chickens! Like therapy dogs, but poultry. This brief article will make you say, "Awwww."
"Male hummingbirds, swooping in an effort to impress females, achieve speeds 'faster than fighter jets,' [as measured in body lengths] according to a study." Photo below by C. Clark.
Stickleback fish have been determined to use a "hill-climbing" learning strategy. Individual fish learn to find food faster from the failures and successes of their peers. Geez, I could have told them fish do this.

It rained! And I fixed the pipe! And the plants still live!

2009-06-13T14:22:00.007-05:00

Graduated from Kaplan teacher training! Really looking forward to teaching. It'll be fun.

Now working on a book to help high school students prepare for the Advanced Placement exam in U.S. government and politics. I follow policy and politics pretty intently, but it'll be fun to see how much of the formal knowledge I remember from high school.

The big news of the last few weeks has been my battle to keep my 100+ baby plants alive despite (a) no rain and (b) no working garden hose. We're somewhere between "moderate drought" and "severe drought." (The Drought Monitor map, as well as the other info at this University of Nebraska—Lincoln site, is pretty cool.) The threads for the hose to screw onto had corroded so badly, no amount of Plumber's Goop would keep it on, plus there were leaks from the spigot and another connection. Duct tape actually worked for one watering per wrapping before it fell off -- duct tape is awesome. I ended up hauling more water than I want to think about one 5-gallon bucket at a time. Have I mentioned I'm not big in the upper-body-strength department?

I read up on taking apart old pipes and flinched every time I encountered the words propane torch. Finally at the crack of dawn one morning, I ventured out with my midsized pipe wrench in hand to see what would happen. The bad section of pipe came right off! Doug dimly remembers, and I think I do too, that we had the same problem shortly after moving into the house and had our handyman at the time fix it. If the pipes had only been together 17 years instead of 71 years, that would explain why they didn't act as though welded together. A quick walk down to the corner hardware store for replacement parts and plumber's tape, and it was all fixed and worked great!

And it finally rained last weekend -- over an inch! Lovely, lovely, lovely steady soaking rain!!!!! I could feel the waves of relief coming from the plants -- I swear I could.

I don't think I lost a single plant to lack of water.

Now the big news is that I think I'm going to have over 30 tomato plants. Yikes. So here's what happened. I got 6 beautiful heirlooms from the Friends School Plant Sale. Then Jung Seeds offered a collection of 16 sweet pepper plants at a great end-of-season price, and they came with 16 tomato plants. (I think I didn't read the fine print very closely. I was just excited about the peppers.) Then, weeks ago, I tossed some old tomato plant seeds in the ground in case one might germinate. Well . . . a whole bunch just came up. Yikes. If they all grow and fruit and the rodents and dogs don't eat them, I'm going to be begging people to accept bags of tomatoes!

Seem to have a soil fungus -- verticillium -- afflicting my dogwood tree, causing all the leaves on one branch after another to wilt. Hopefully, I can prune it back and save it. Hopefully, it won't infect all the barberry that covers the hill starting 15 feet away. If it does that, I will cry!!!

The Emerald Ash Borer has come to Minnesota. Its larvae have started killing ash trees in St. Paul. Our block has lost quite a few elm trees in the last ten years, and the city forestry department chose . . . yup, green ash trees to replace them. I don't find the trees that attractive -- I could take them or leave them -- but I really don't want to lose the time it takes to get mature trees lining the street. The ashes are just starting to be a mature presence and offer a smidgen of shade. The critters are really pretty; it's a shame their larvae are so destructive.

Fun:

Well, it's not fun that she died, but it is fun that I learned about her: Koko Taylor, "Queen of the Blues." What a voice! What a career in the male-dominated world of blues. How cool that she performed shortly before her death at age 80. Must acquire her recordings.
Sharks in captivity can learn visual and audible signals to know when it's their turn to come to their trainer and eat. Some can even be picked up and cuddled after responding to the cue, knowing that food will be the reward. This article says the "brightest sharks" will be trained in three months. Based on what I've seen of my tropical fish, I doubt it will take that long; when it comes to food, fish can be pretty quick on the uptake.

The news is that fingerprints don't increase the surface area of our hands and don't increase friction when we grip things, so that's not what they're for. But what I found fascinating is that New World monkeys have "tailprints"; that is, ridged areas of skin on their prehensile tails.

I'd embed this, but you really have to watch tennis full-screen to follow the ball and get the full enjoyment. Here's a "greatest hits" compilation of French player Fabrice "the Magician" Santoro running his opponents around the court and hitting shots between his legs to win points. Roger Federer breaks into a grin at one point as he's being pulled from net to baseline to net . . . Fun stuff.

Cute Nike ad celebrating Roger Federer's 14th Grand Slam victory, which tied Pete Sampras's record. He won the 14th at the French Open, held on a clay (crushed brick) surface, which was the one major he'd never won; thus, he also achieved a career Grand Slam at the same time as tying the record.

Baby Bunny! Pain Free?!

2009-05-23T15:18:00.003-05:00

Looked out my office window yesterday and saw a baby bunny under the birdfeeder. Yes, feed them and they will come . . . and make more of them. This bunny was about one-third grown, so the adults got busy a while ago. I'm sure this baby, in gratitude for the yummy birdseed I supplied, will never eat my Asian lilies, my Dutch tulips, or my veggies. Never! (Hah.)

But s/he's so cute!

Am currently working on an ambitious, and lengthy, book for school leaders. I've encountered the underlying theory -- Kegan's model of psychological development that posits the potential for growth throughout adulthood through six stages -- before, in a leadership class for women that was quite cool. So it's fun to read its detailed treatment and application to real-life situations here. Next week, I'm expecting three Advanced Placement test-prep books to come in. One will be on macro- and microeconomics, a subject with which I had no end of trouble in college because of all the pesky acronyms; we'll see if I can finally get a handle on it!

Due to some rescheduling, my final training class for Kaplan Test Prep was Thursday night, and my graduation will be this coming Thursday. I taught-back what I knew would be the toughest section for me, the math that involves drawing three-dimensional figures on the board without (a) making such a mess of them that they're more confusing than enlightening and (b) boring the class to death while I sketch. It didn't go great, but that was kind of the point -- and I learned what I need to do to make sure it does go well next time. I also did a second teach-back, this time with a two-dimensional figure, and it did go great, so I feel that I've got it. Another shout-out to our awesome teacher, Kristin Anderson, future immunologist extraordinaire, who holds so much intellect, beauty, and positive energy in one body, it's just not fair. :) Between now and the end of the month, I'm going to try to go in when the classrooms are empty and teach a couple entire two-and-a-half-hour sections to make sure I've got any wrinkles ironed out. I want to make sure I don't disappoint my students.

Got all the Friends School Plant Sale plants in the ground, and I think everything's still alive. Fingers crossed it stays that way! My seeds in the veggie patch are starting to come up, too -- the soil's finally warm enough for them to germinate. Last Saturday night, we had a frost advisory, and I was putting buckets over everything tender; by Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon, we were breaking the record highs for the days with temps in the 90s. So as the saying goes: Don't like the weather? Wait five minutes!

What we really need now is rain -- we're 3.2" behind for the season, almost 2" behind for the month -- but the forecast doesn't look promising. I've got the plumbing problem with the garden hose fixed with duct tape -- yes, duct tape! Wonderful, glorious stuff. It's holding up really well. So no more watering a bucket at a time for now.

Politics: U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) rocks my world. She's so smart and so sensible. She was on MPR's Midday program the other day, and I just enjoy listening to her so much. I would love to see her be our first female president.

I may have licked my ankle-nerve-pain thingie!!! For the last . . . year? shorter? longer? . . . I've had -- on top of the chronic demons-with-flamng-pitchforks-are-stabbing-me-behind-the-ankle-bone thing, which I can basically manage (keep below the pain threshold) by not doing certain things -- severe pain in the left heel whenever I stand up. I put this down to being out of shape, getting older, being sore from a workout, blah, blah. Finally it got to the point where I thought, hey, maybe this is an actual thing. So I used the ever-friendly Google . . . and lo and behold! It's an actual thing. I have plantar fasciitis. And as long as I rest the foot on ice after exercise or prolonged standing, I have no pain whatsoever. And -- the chronic ankle-nerve-pain thingie seems much less active below the pain threshold. Yay for self-diagnosing via the Internet! Yay for ice! Yay for being pain-free! Yay for being able to work out every day without worrying about pain!

Doggies got their annual blood panels (we get full panels along with their heartworm tests), and they are both completely normal in every way. Nice to know.

So now it's a totally freaking awesome gorgeous day outside, and I'm going outside to be out in it.

Fun:

Why I'm reluctant to try repairing the old pipe that feeds the garden hose myself: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/us/17blunders.html?_r=1&th&emc=th .

Fascinating county-by-county electoral college map that lets you slice and dice the data many different ways.

I think I like the French: "The French spend more time sleeping and eating than most people and also live longer, a fresh study by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has shown."

A millefiori ("thousand flowers") bowl like the one in this picture was found in an ancient Roman cemetery in east London. It's the only surviving one known from the Western Roman Empire. The design "is a mosaic of hundreds of indented blue petals with white bordering." At one point, it had a car park built on top of it.

Friends School Plant Sale!

2009-05-16T21:48:00.004-05:00

Picture this: The huge maple tree in back is blooming, showering the yard with a steady dusting of yellow flowers. Cubby Bear goes outside and comes back in covered in flowers clinging to his fluffy coat. A total springtime doggie! I didn't have a camera in hand, so don't have an actual picture to post, but here's an old photo of Cubby in the backyard. You can fill in the flowers.

Next I want to whine about weather. I know . . . I live in MN and really shouldn't gripe, because once one starts, there's no end to it. But . . . this really sucked. We've had a dry spring, and the plants need rain. My new plants (see below) with their little bitty root systems really need rain. Massive storm system sweeps across the entire Upper Midwest. I watch it on radar. It gets closer, it gets closer -- and the little piece of the front that passes over our house fizzles out just as it reaches us, then reforms. We got 0.01 inch of rain. Bleh. So whine, whine, whine.

And the pipe that the garden hose hooks up to has finally lost all its threads to corrosion. I couldn't find my Amazing Goop, which I used on it last year, but I did find some outdoor adhesive compound. I used that, let it cure, and it worked long enough for me to give everything in back a good soaking. Now I've found the Amazing Goop, but it was too cold for it to cure today. The plants in front couldn't wait any longer, so I ended up hauling water to them by the five-gallon bucketload -- close to 20 buckets? It was worth it, though, so that (a) the plants would survive and (b) I would stop worrying about them.

Plants! OMG!!! Last year, I missed the Friends School Plant Sale because I'd been up working all night and been putting in 18- to 20-hour days before that and didn't grok how long the lines would be and just couldn't deal with it. This year, I was up all night working but was determined to do the sale . . . and I did . . . and I went crazy!!!!! Holy cats. I probably got 150 plants. Lots of natives -- their selection seems to get better every year -- and nonnative perennials/shrubs I've wanted forever to fill in my front yard and boulevard. The tear-out-the-lawn-and-replace-it-with-more-interesting-stuff-that-doesn't-need-to-be-mowed project may finally be nearing completion. It was never intended to take however many years it's taken! Much of the last week has been devoted to figuring out where everything should go and putting it in the ground. I'm nearly done. If everything survives, it's going to look so cool! As a side note, I had good survival over the winter, so that's got me feeling all optimistic and sunshiny. I also got some tomatoes, peppers (Cubby Bear better not eat them this year!), and peanuts (apparently you can grow them here) for the veggie patch and a couple dozen annuals for here and there.

The Friends School Plant Sale is worth a shout-out for its amazingness. It was organized 20 years ago to raise money for a local K-8 private school run by the local Quakers. The first year, it occupied a few tables on the school grounds, and two volunteers helped 100 customers. Today, it overflows the grandstand at the State Fairgrounds. Over 800 volunteers help up to 15,000 customers shop over 2,300 plant varieties. Over $200,000 is raised for scholarships. It's a good thing that gardeners are polite, patient people (you kind of have to be patient to deal with plants, which do everything on their own inscrutable schedule), because we were wall-to-wall with no room to take more than one free-swinging step before needing to stop or shuffle. While some customers are men, the vast majority are women, and the estrogen energy was palpable. While waiting in line to get wristbands, a bunch of us bonded and shared life stories. I have to give special acknowledgment to the Friends School kids who volunteered at the sale. They were amazing: hard working, polite, articulate, and possessed of initiative and intelligence and can-do spirit. Also, if you're at all interested in gardening, the sale catalog (PDF) is totally worth downloading and perusing -- it's an education in itself, and one can always plug a plant's name into Google to find out more about a particularly intriguing species.

Whew! Got that out of my system. It's pretty dang exciting, that plant sale. Doug just shakes his head in bafflement at all this. He looked at my five flats of plants and said, "Hmm, green things," and then later, "That cost $xxx?!" But he's very patient and supportive of my mania. Only other thing that happened gardeningwise is that the adorable bunnies whom I fed birdseed all winter ravaged my new tulips as they came up. I think most have enough leaves to gather strength and come back next year, but I sure got a lot less flowers than I was expecting. Feckin' bunnies.

Life is not all plants and more plants. Kaplan Test Prep training is going well. I have my last teachback session tomorrow evening, and then we graduate on Tuesday. Exciting! Of course, I knew the test content and the Kaplan methods from the work I've done on Kaplan's books the last few years. However, now I've been learning to teach it so that a class of students of various abilities and with diverse goals can maximize their scores. The amount of resources students get is terrific, and the Kaplan methods for each question type really do work great -- they even make the test easier for someone like me who already does well on it. I've really enjoyed the camaraderie with my fellow trainees and hope we'll continue to see each other after graduation. Our trainer is awesome -- she's getting her PhD in immunology and is a master teacher who knows all the tests. She has fabulous energy. I hope to emulate her at least a little bit.

Also, I attended an event put on by the Minnesota Book Publishers' Roundtable for the first time. Two editors discussed developmental editing. It was good to learn more about the publishing industry outside of the narrow slice I see from my freelancer's viewpoint, and I enjoyed chatting with the folks at my table. Lunch was tasty, too! And it was held at the Open Book, a cool renovated old building dedicated to books, publishing, writers, and book arts (making handcrafted books). I'll probably go to more of their events.

Life is not all about work, either. I've actually had time to read in the last month. Finished Loving Frank: A Novel by Nancy Horan, a fictional imagining of the life of Frank Lloyd Wright's common-law second wife. Horan does a great job of bringing the characters and the period to life. If things didn't actually happen the way they do in the book, they should have. It has that kind of "truth" to it. The part of the story set at Taliesin (south-central Wisconsin) was extra interesting because we toured there last summer; I could visualize everything that happened.

And I've started The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell, a deeply historically grounded retelling of the Arthurian legend. I'm only on about page 50, but so far, it's freaking awesome!!! I'd already read his Sharpe's novels (Napoleonic era) and his American Civil War novels, which were all good. But here he takes his craft, as a writer and as an historian, to a whole different level. We've got the pagan and Christian religions, a bunch of competing political interests, and ethnic strife, plus a cast of fascinating characters who are alien due to their separation from us by time yet very human. The level of detail with which the material and social culture is rendered is worth the read in and of itself, even if there weren't a plot.

Fun: The fun this time is all courtesy of NPR's Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!. How would I stay up-to-date on important news without that program?

"Weisure" time: "The line dividing work and leisure time is blurring right before our eyes, says one expert, and it's creating a phenomenon called 'weisure time.'" I completely agree with what sociologist Dalton Conley says, but does he have to call it weisure time? That's horrific! Of course, I thought blog was a horrible word, too, but it's here to stay and I've even gotten used to it. But weisure? Ughhh!!!
Louisiana Walmart employees adopted a stray nutria (and named it Norman). A shopper is suing for damages.
Be really, really, really careful if you decide to clean out the fridge at work lest a hazmat team descend on the scene, as it did at an AT&T office in San Jose, California. A number of people were hospitalized due to the combination of cleaning solutions and god-only-knows stuff-that-once-was-food.

Got Refinanced -- Training Going OK I Think -- Two by Two -- Mini Vacation Soon?

2009-04-27T14:56:00.005-05:00

The value of our home has certainly taken a beating in this market, but (a) it had gotten ridiculously high during the bubble and so is now merely reasonable and (b) was enough for us to refinance and get our bills more organized and less expensive interestwise. Plus this interest is tax-deductible. So there is great rejoicing. And the place is mostly clean—wowza!

Had my first "real" training session for Kaplan yesterday, where we spent the whole time doing "teachbacks" -- we teach a section of the test and get feedback. It went so much better than I thought it would. (When I told Doug that, he just rolled his eyes. Then I said, to be funny, "I don't think I flunked," because that's what I said all the way through grad school every time I had a test . . . then got 100 percent. He doesn't understand my insecurities, which is very sweet of him—not to understand why I wouldn't feel confident about my abilities.)

I'm also working on a GRE book for Kaplan Publishing right now, so I'm getting a GRE immersion experience!

Two by two: I saw two bunnies under the birdfeeder at the same time the other evening. That means baby bunnies! Also, last summer we had a small reddish squirrel join the big gray ones we're used to seeing, and the other day, I saw two red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus; see also the U of Mich site here) chasing each other along the fence. That means baby red squirrels! Still not seeing many birds, just the ubiquitous house sparrows, a pair of house finches, a male cardinal, and the odd robin looking for bugs.

Photos © Patriot Plaistow John
I desperately need a change of scenery, and although Doug travels for work, he'd like to get away without working for once. I think we're going to go on a little jaunt to Madison, WI, for a couple of days. Enjoy the restaurants on State Street, cruise the art galleries, walk around the lakes, visit the Oldrich Botanical Gardens . . . As long as we can work our schedules so we can both get away when the weather is good there—it all needs to come together . . .

Haven't updated about the fish for a while. Maybe it's about time for another long, geeky tropical fish update?

New Job (in addition to, not instead of)! Entire Main Floor Clean!

2009-04-21T09:29:00.003-05:00

I think I'm the anti-Twitter. I save up my blogging for weeks until I've got a bunch to say, and even then it's not likely to set anyone atwitter (pun fully intended).

New job: On February 2, I posted that I was exploring an opportunity that would build on both my copyediting and human resources experience. Well, I got the gig! At least, I qualified for training for the gig, and if after all the public speaking experience I've had I can't figure out a way to get through training, I'll be really disappointed with myself. So I finally feel comfortable talking about this thing. (Geez, Paula, just out with it already!)

I've been hired by Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions to teach (to train to teach, at this point) the GRE test. I've worked on quite a few test-prep books for Kaplan Publishing, and of course I did tons of training of a variety of material for a range of audiences when working in HR. I genuinely enjoy standardized tests (yes, I am a geek!), and I find teaching very energizing. I figure doing this will get me more contact with people—freelancing at home all the time can be pretty isolating—and let me flex different skill muscles. Although I don't need the money, there's nothing wrong with extra cash flow, either, and there's probably a benefit to having an income stream apart from the ups and downs of the book publishing industry.

The hiring process was elaborate. They clearly take the selection process seriously and won't scoop up just anyone with high test scores. First I applied online at the website. They invited me to come in to audition, but I was also informed that since my test scores were over five years old, I needed to take a practice exam at the local office to show that I still had the stuff (stuff being defined as "top 90th percentile"). I scheduled the audition and took the practice test—my scores were fine. For the audition, I gave a five-minute presentation on how to plan a garden; I had fun with it. Then I was invited to come in for an interview. And then I was invited to train. I think they audition pretty much continuously, and there were eight people at my audition, but there are only four of us in my training cohort. This makes me think the process is pretty selective.

Now I'm going to get scored on a detailed array of performance areas at each training session, and I have to score at a certain level by midpoint in the training or I wash out. It's a bit daunting! I need to get used to working from the Kaplan teacher's manual. It's actually an awesome tool, but as with any tool, one needs to learn how to use it well.

So hopefully sometime in May I'll have news that I've passed training and I'll get to help aspiring grad students do their best on the test.

Clean house! Yes, we buckled down and got the entire main floor plus most of Doug's office upstairs cleaned up. Doug even brought up hundreds of books from the basement and put them on the beautifully custom-finished shelves in our living room. Who knew bookshelves could be used for books instead of assorted junk? He also brought up our framed art and hung it on the walls. Books! Art! The place looks like the residence of civilized, settled beings rather than squatters and various beasts.

What brought on this burst of domestic activity? Our local bank contacted us about refinancing our debt. This involved having a property assessor come to our home. This meant getting the place presentable. One end of the upstairs and the basement are still royal messes. We have to come up with some compelling deadline to get us to tackle those. The cool thing, though, is that as messy as the place was, cleaning it up only took a few days of intermittent work. (At the same time, I was working on copyediting projects, and Doug was getting things done for Avalanche.) So it can be done! Yes we can!

Funny thing: So much dust and hair and fur were covering every surface that picking up and even dusting and vacuuming stirred a lot of it into the air. A few hours later or the next day, after the air had settled, there would be a coat of dust over everything again. I'm just continuing to vacuum—we've filled a lot of vacuum cleaner bags!—and I'll probably dust thoroughly again in a week or so. Eventually maybe we can triumph, even over the Cubby Bear hair. The beautiful boy makes our blue and green carpets a nice tan. He also adorns our walls with his lovely slobber when he shakes his head.

My eyesight: Great news! After getting my retinal dystrophy checked out, I went ahead and got new lenses for my glasses with my new prescription, and I see great now! Hopefully my eyes have finished changing with regard to close-up vision for a while.

The hard part: I didn't need new frames, so I just sent them in to get the new lenses fitted, figuring I'd get by on an old pair of glasses for distance vision and take them off and move my eyes close to things for close-up reading. Ugh. Bad decision. For one thing, my distance vision has changed more than I realized. For another, the take-'em-off-to-read approach works great for, say, curling up on the sofa with a book for fun. But for copyediting, where I might be going from hard-copy manuscript to computer screen to style guide in rapid succession, it was horrible. After a week of that, I was so stressed out! But now I really-really-really appreciate my up-to-date progressive lenses that make everything sparkly clear at all distances without effort.

More good news! British researchers have had very promising results treating macular degeneration by "replacing a layer of degenerated cells with new ones created from embryonic stem cells." It works well in rats, and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is now funding the clinical trials in humans. If all goes well, the treatment will be ready as a one-hour outpatient procedure in six to seven years. Go stem cell research!

Fun:

The Pearl Carpet of Baroda is just so freaking gorgeous! If I were still running a role-playing game set in a world I created that was a kind of Renaissance-Italy-meets-Ancient-Egypt, this would so be there.

I love the idea of having chickens, for the home-grown eggs and just because they're cute, and urban chickens are a thriving trend. But we don't have a heated garage, a necessity for our winters, and the dogs would probably stress out the chickens (chase games are so much fun!!!) This video provides a good education on the pleasures and responsibilities of urban chicken keeping.

She's Trouble with a Capital "C"!!!

2009-03-09T03:03:00.006-05:00

Cat Bootsie, that is. I'm getting ready to stuff her in a box and ship her off somewhere. Kidding, of course. I adore her. But she's a total pain in the ass. I've been working mostly on hard copy for the last couple of weeks, including two massive test-prep books for the GMAT (business school exam), and she seems to view manuscripts as her natural prey. She's relentless too. No matter how many times I pick her up and put her on the floor, where she has a fleecy thing to lie on and a heating vent she likes, she jumps right back up and insists on being front and center. She attacks the manuscripts, my pen, and my arms. Then when she senses my frustration, she starts purring and rolls over to show me her tummy. I have to shut her out of my office, but then she claws at the door. So I have to shut her out of that section of the house, putting two doors between us, to have peace. And then I feel guilty for being so mean to the adorable kitty.

I was searching on Petfinder.com to find her a little kitty friend to play with, but I think she needs to remain an only kitty. We just can't risk the litter box politics that plagued us with our previous two cats. Also, Bootsie's so intense, I'm afraid a lot of other cats would be intimidated by her. Plus, if they ganged up on me, I'd be totally out-kittied!

I haven't blogged for a while because life has been mostly quiet. I've been working up a storm, despite having a cold that lingered for weeks. Bleh. (Like the last cold, which I got after Christmas, this one was a result of close proximity to little bundles of ~~germs~~ joy.)

I also had a scare when I went for a routine eye exam to get my prescription updated (close-up, detail vision is pretty blurry) and couldn't focus my right eye. Then the doctor found some odd pigmentation on my right macula. I followed up by going to a retina specialist who diagnosed me with pigment dystrophy, which means I have funny macular pigment. He said some doctors would diagnose me as having macular degeneration and prescribe vitamins, but I was too young to be worried about that yet. From all this, I gather I have the very beginnings of macular degeneration but won't need to worry about my functional eyesight for a long time. By then, I hope they'll have a cure more definitive than "large amounts of antioxidents might have a preventive effect in some people."

Bunny (or maybe more than one bunny) continues to visit nightly for the smattering of birdseed I toss under the feeder. A few weeks ago, the snow cover had retreated quite a bit due to sublimation (it was bitter cold, but the snow evaporated because the air was just so dry), and I saw another bunny a few blocks from home who had come out to try to find something to eat. That bunny was skinny and scruffy. The bunny(ies) in my yard is fat and sleek. When Bunny strips the leaves from my Asiatic lilies in the spring, I know I will not find Bunny so cute.

I'm getting impatient with all the talking heads in the media claiming that the Obama presidency is hosed. The guy's been in office two months. He's got four years. No, he hasn't turned around the recession yet; no matter what anyone does, the economy will start perking up next year. No, he hasn't brought bipartisanship to Washington yet; you don't change a deeply entrenched culture by flipping a switch. It's taking longer than anyone would like to fill positions; it always does. (Though I don't understand (a) why these people don't pay their freakin' taxes and (b) why it's vetting for a government position, not an IRS audit, that catches them.) Yes, he's talking about health care and global warming and Afghanistan in addition to the economy; yes, he can multitask, even if the media has trouble doing so. Everybody: Lighten up!

Fun:

Histiophryne psychedelica is a recently discovered tropical fish that uses legs to "hop" around coral reefs, a behavior never previously seen in any other fish with legs. Check out the University of Washington article here, which includes video. Photo below ©David Hall/seaphotos.com.
In a study in contrasts, here's another recently discovered fish, this one from a depth of 2.8 miles near Anarctica.
According to a supercomputer named ThamesBlue, the oldest words in the English language may be I and who. The word dirty may die out fairly soon.

Ghost in the Machine, Pain in My Arm, and Bunnies in the Yard

2009-02-09T15:03:00.007-06:00

So one day, the TV starts displaying closed captioning. There's a button on the universal remote with both words and symbols indicating that it's for closed captioning, so we try pushing it. Nothing happens. We try lots and lots and lots of things. Nothing. So how did it get turned on in the first place? Presumbly one of the dogs had something to do with it, but damned if we can figure out what they did. Both cable TV and DVDs give us printed words as well as sound, and neither of us is hard of hearing. During Australian Open tennis, the printing covered up the score line. This is apparently not a unique problem: when I searched for an answer, I found this person.

For me, the situation has an additional wrinkle, in that I tend to mentally copyedit everything I read and the captions have an awful lot of typos. Aargh!

I've been working out for a couple of months now, gradually building up the intensity. I've tried this many times over the past few years. Usually an injury or illness stops me, and then I don't get going again. But this time it's going pretty well. I started on the exercise bike in front of the TV. Then when I could do five days in a row at a decent intensity without feeling much soreness, I moved up to step aerobics. I've been gradually increasing the length and intensity of those workouts, and just last week I added my homebaked version of BodyPump (a weightlifting routine set to music, with ~5-minute sets for each muscle group). I think I had a mild hamstring pull in December, and then I got the stupid ankle-nerve thingie last week (see last post), but I've kept it up. It feels really good.

Then yesterday, I guess I overdid it on the tricep extensions, because I woke up to agonizing pain in those muscles. I couldly hardly push myself to a seated position to get out of bed. (The Rottweiler snuggled up against me like glue didn't help.) It took a few hours, but I finally sorted out the pain enough to figure out that, instead of being muscle soreness (of which I have none, I'm happy to say), it was injury. The left arm has pretty much cleared up, but the right tricep doesn't want to extend. It contracts just fine, which makes me think the problem is a tendon/ligament thingie rather than a muscle thingie. Yes, I'm right-handed. Dressing myself and feeding myself present real challenges. Fortunately, there's no problem working at the keyboard. Unfortunately, I was going to do housework today and really can't. So I'm writing this.

I won't be doing upper body weights again for a while, but I should be able to do step as long as I'm careful to keep my arms straight-ish as I move them.

Rabbits have always been attracted to the spilled seed under the birdfeeder (birds are messy). After we put up the privacy fence around the backyard about five years ago, we got a lot fewer rabbits in the backyard. One night this winter, though, we spotted a bunny under the feeder. I started filling the feeder at dusk every day and intentionally spilling a tablespoon or two of seed on the ground. Bunny came back, started coming back more often, and now comes every night. In fact, there may be more than one bunny -- I think I'm seeing at least two, one larger than the other, but only one shows up at a time so it's hard to tell. I've never had a steady "relationship" with a bunny before, so this is fun. I'm looking forward to baby bunnies in the spring.

Fun:

I haven't yet acquired this book, but I must: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. This novel "features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. . . . [It is] a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead."
This new study published in the journal Science may explain why copy editors and proofreaders (and many English teachers) use red pens (or the electronic equivalent). Apparently, the color red may help people focus on detail, while the color blue may help us be more creative. Although I can't help wonder, given the tasks the study used, if the connection has more to do with red = verbal and blue = spatial. Anyway, interesting stuff. I had my office walls painted peach (a mild red tone) and the ceiling an intense blue-green, so I think I've got some inspiration for whatever kind of thinking I want to do, depending on where I look. :-)
If the zombies invading Regency England don't give you nightmares, this might: Titanoboa cerrejonensis was probably about 45 feet long, snacked on crocodiles, and was the biggest land animal on earth for about 10 million years. It was named for its size (genus) and the Cerrejón coal mine (species) in northern Colombia where at least 28 skeletons were found.

I was on fire last week!

2009-02-02T10:40:00.005-06:00

In addition to having two new clients (see my last post), I'm excited about a prospective new direction that will combine some of the knowledge I've gained from freelance editing work and certain skills I honed in the human resources field. And that's all I'll say for now. I'll know a little more at the end of March.

In the meantime, I just wrapped up work on a fascinating book that's a series of true-life stories by pediatricians about their work, some of them deeply meaningful and moving. Plus, I'm working on a couple of books for educators that address diversity of brains and cultures, respectively, in the classroom -- a topic I always love to read more about. Last week, I finished a test-prep book for the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test). So lots of variety, as always.

Now about that fire . . . I set the tea kettle to boil on the gas stove and reached up to grab a tea bag from the shelf over the stove. I felt the heat of the stove against my hip. I dropped the tea bag into my cup and relaxed, prepared to wait until the water got hot. But I noticed that the warmth, instead of fading, was becoming downright intense. I looked down and saw flames on the hem of my T-shirt. I quickly moved to the kitchen sink and shoved the cloth under cold water. The T-shirt had a 3" square hole in it. It was my Caesar's Palace shirt from last year's Vegas trip -- not a favorite shirt, but not a shirt I wanted to burn a hole in, either. The pajama bottoms underneath were only slightly singed, and my skin was untouched. This seems like the kind of thing that happens to elderly people -- setting oneself on fire. I'm not elderly, even if I do feel creaky some days.

Speaking of creaky, my ankle-nerve thingie flared up again for a couple of days last week. Not sure why. It was probably due to using the exercise bike, but I've been using it without the ankle acting up. Maybe I had the tension set a notch higher? Anyway, I clumped around in my big plastic "boot" (cast) for a couple of days, and it got all better. Having this thing, I totally get why people who don't know about nerves would think invisible demons or a pin in a voodoo doll was attacking them. That's what it feels like.

Been reading Tony Horwitz's A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World -- great stuff about the first Europeans who came to this hemisphere (hint: they weren't the Pilgrims). He structures his narrative such that it's part history, part travelogue, and part contemporary sociology, simultaneously exploring the past and its impact on our present. By the way, every American and everyone who wants to understand America should read Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic. It's a brilliant exploration of the American Civil War and its continuing reverberations in the national psyche.

Been watching figure skating at the U.S. National Championships and tennis at the Australian Open. Regarding the former, I am thrilled that Alissa Czisny won the Senior Ladies event (click here for photos of this beautiful skater). Regarding the latter, I am grateful that Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer are giving us so many great matches, desolated that Federer did not win, and grateful that I can come back to U.S. Central Time after partially transitioning to Melbourne time. Ah what the heck: What do time zones mean when the earth spins continuously on its axis?

Fun:

Local metereorologists were getting pretty excited a couple of weeks ago about snow rollers nearby. When the snow is sticky and the winds are strong, the wind can "roll" the snow into shapes like bales of hay. Here's a picture of some snow rollers.
You can Obamicon a photo of your choosing. The website, put together by Paste Magazine, lets you apply the style of the famous Shepard Fairey Obama poster to any photo you want. I used it to great effect on a photo of Angel (the late Rottweiler). Then the site stalled out and I wasn't able to save it, but I'll definitely give it another try. She looked . . . presidential!
After a few years away, I've gotten hooked on the Washington Post's Crickler puzzles again. Fun!

It's a bird! It's . . . a bird? It's really a bird!

2009-01-14T06:24:00.004-06:00

New clients: I'm happy to add LID Editorial of Madrid, Spain, and Barron's Educational Series of Hauppauge, New York, to my client roster. I'm looking forward to working on a test-prep title for Barron's next month and titles in English for LID Editorial when the firm moves in that direction.

Now about that bird . . .

Doug and I came home from running errands and smelled something bad. "Did one of the dogs throw up?" Doug asked. "No," I said, seeing the source on the floor, "someone made a big doo-doo."

Both dogs are 100 percent housetrained, so if someone doo-doos, it's because of a crisis of some kind, not a breach of discipline. Therefore, we didn't punish but simply grabbed both dogs and got them outside so they couldn't step in it and start tracking it around the house. As I moved through the kitchen toward the back door with the second dog, I heard -- and felt -- the rapid beating of wings.

"What the . . . ?" I yelled.

"Hey, there's something . . . ! Doug yelled.

A sparrow had somehow gotten into the house and was battering itself against the windows in the kitchen and dining room. Fortunately, as soon as I opened the door to push the dog out, the bird beelined (birdlined?) for it and let itself out. So that was simple. No chasing a terrified bird around and around the house trying to shoo it toward an opening.

The bird must have been so exciting -- or so terrifying (both dogs seemed pretty abashed, though that might have been shame over the bad doo-doo) -- that someone lost control. Too bad the cat was shut upstairs. She would have put a quick end to the fun. Bootsie has been a very effective huntress of mice, and I have no doubt she would have nailed the bird.

We've gotten birds in the house twice before, both times in the basement. (This time, the door to the basement was open, so the sparrow probably started there and then came upstairs.) I think we managed to shoo one out. We found the other just before we had to leave for work and didn't have time to deal with it. When we got home, we found a feather on the floor, and the late Gideon had a smile on his kitty face.

Did I mention that this occurred on the coldest day of the season so far? It was minus something Fahrenheit outside, and we had to open the windows to air the place out.

Speaking of weather, we had a beautifully fluffy snowfall that was light to shovel and makes everything pretty. But we're also having some truly frigid temperatures this week: the high today is forecast to be -6F with windchill readings down to -40F. A windchill warning is in effect for the next few days. This weekend, however, temperatures are supposed to get up to 30F, which will feel like T-shirt weather. Seriously! The body can get used to anything, and I'll certainly be taking out the garbage, etc. without bundling up at all when it climbs above 20F.

Fun:

I want to shout out to a few friends who are doing some pretty cool things:

Thru A Cat's Eyes is just starting up but is already a lovely place for cat lovers to get affirmation and practical advice. Host Catherine "Cat" Holms blogs the antics and travails of her own cats and has started a photo gallery of cute kitty pics. 2153 <== Those numbers are cat Bootsie's addition to this entry. I'm sure they have great significance.
Congratulations to my friend, the Reverend Lyle Schlundt, who was ordained last year. He is helping with Wonderful Wednesday services at Unity Christ Church in Golden Valley, Minnesota; officiating at weddings; and seeking a permanent ministry position with a congregation. As a certified shiatsu massage therapist, he also works a couple of days a week at The Aliveness Project in Minneapolis, serving the HIV/AIDS community.
What a pleasure it was to reconnect with high school classmate Everett Howe. We've been out of touch for over a quarter century (gleep!), but whadda-ya-know? In high school, we shared an interest in J. S. Bach and Monthy Python. Today, we share an interest in public radio, indie bookstores, recycling, and off-the-beaten-track music. In San Diego, California, Everett is a professional mathematician working for a think tank on secret cryptography staff, and his wife works for a public policy dialog consultancy. It's ever so cool when interesting people stay interesting!

Achoo!

2009-01-10T01:27:00.005-06:00

The weekend after Christmas, we went to a small gathering that included little bundles of ~~germs~~ joy. A few days later, I came down with a miserable sore throat the progressed to a cold. I can attest to the high degree of functionality of my snot glands; they did a great job. [bleh] Fortunately, I was able to work through it, and I had a couple of really interesting projects -- a book for teachers on how to grade students in a way that helps them learn and a book for health care practioners about how to avoid malpractice lawsuits. However, I tried to control the symptoms with over-the-counter cold medicine, and that stuff does strange things to my sleep patterns. Hoping to get back to normal soon. Also, I haven't felt like exercising, and I feel flabby. [double bleh]

Housework came to a screeching halt when I didn't feel good, but I should have some time this weekend to reclean the five rooms I got clean (it's very frustrating that things get dirty after being cleaned) and then tackle the living room. Check back for another exciting episode in this ongoing drama.

The economy seems to be tanking in a big way. The official unemployment figure is 7.2 percent, and that doesn't count all the people who have jobs but fewer hours than they would like or less pay than their qualification would normally merit. I keep hoping the economists have no clue and the whole thing will blow over without being nearly the crisis that it's predicted to be, but I'm not really optimistic.

The book publishing industry has seen a slew of bad news recently: staff cuts, pay freezes, acquisition freezes, and plummeting book sales in sync with plummeting retail sales in general. I've been getting a steady stream of projects, but then a bunch of them have been delayed or even cancelled altogether. I used to think I didn't mind if publishing moved to more electronic formats -- the text will still need to be edited. However, I'm discovering that there are zillions of people in India who are fluent in (British) English and will work for $1/hour. I can't work for $1/hour.

The health care industry is still going strong. I've done some preliminary research into becoming a nurse practitioner (NP). I see an NP as my primary care provider. She's cool. Plus I like the role that NPs play in providing health care. I might enjoy being an NP with a psych specialty. There are increasing numbers of master's programs open to people who aren't already RNs, and coursework is increasingly being offered online for distance learners. I swore ages ago that I was never going back to school again, but maybe this would be a good profession for my "golden years" -- age 50+. (I plan to work until I'm 80.) It's just something to continue to keep an eye on. I've based my professional life on always having a Plan B. It's probably kept me from rising to the top of any one field, but it's also meant that I've never been unemployed and I've never been bored.

Fun: An orange tabby visits Rafael Nadal during a doubles match in Doha, Qatar (Jan. 9, 2009).

"George" the lobster is probably about 140 years old. He was captured and kept in a restaurant's tank as a mascot for 10 days, but now he's being released into a no-lobster-trapping zone off the coast of Maine.

Merry [Holiday of Your Choice]! Five Rooms Clean!

2008-12-25T20:01:00.004-06:00

We're utterly secular people, but we celebrate Christmas, a holiday celebrating family ties; generosity; and warmth, light, and love at the frigid yin of the year.

My Christmas present to myself: cleaning the bedroom. So we have the following clean rooms (and, yes, I have kept the others clean -- it's much easier, I've discovered, to clean a room when you last cleaned it a few weeks ago rather than a year ago):

Main floor bathroom
Kitchen
Dining room
Paula's office
Bedroom

That's five -- count 'em 5! -- rooms! I think that's a record since moving into this house ~16 years ago. Next up: the living room. It's the largest and hardest room to do, but then the whole main floor will be clean -- I may faint!

The bedroom doesn't actually have a bed in it. Around the time we got our current two dogs, who are bigger than any previous dogs, our mattress was also giving out. So we got a king-size bed to accommodate everyone. Then we got the main floor of the house remodeled, including having the hardwood floors refinished, and moved all the furniture downstairs to accommodate the work. Moving the king-size mattress down the stairs wasn't terribly hard. (You know what's coming.) Moving it back up? Haven't yet found a way to do it. We've have a bunch of friends over to apply brute force, but I'm afraid someone would throw out their back or slip on the basement steps. The mattress is not only large and heavy but also floppy, and the stairs are steep and narrow and have a low ceiling. So the box springs are stacked against one wall of the "bedroom," where they serve admirably as a shelf, and the mattress lies on the lower-level floor in front of the TV, where it's actually quite comfortable to sleep, especially in the summer when it stays nice and cool downstairs. Someday we'll buy a new mattress and have it delivered to the bedroom, from where we will never move it.

Bootsie the cat loves to "help" with all the cleaning. I swear she engages in parallel play. Whatever I'm doing, she likes to be right next to me doing something similar. When I was sorting clothes onto a shelf, for example, she sharpened her claws on the shelves and then jumped up, kneaded the clothes in a pile, and jumped down, echoing my motions. When I was picking up bits of paper and tissue from the floor, that's when she ran around batting at bits of paper. She also loves to plunge into small dark spaces, and dresser drawers are no exception. Leap! Dig-dig-dig through the clothes! Up over the back of the drawer! Into the great dark unknown of the dresser innards! Finally emerge with a wild look in one's eyes!

Fun:

A Very Scary Solstice "finally merges the wonderful tradition of merry holiday carolling with the cosmic horror of the Cthulhu Mythos. The result is a CD and sing-along songbook that features twenty[-]five holiday favorites infused with a liberal dose of madness, horror and otherworldly blasphemies." Three free MP3s are available. The juxtaposition of the tra-la-la melodies and Halloween lyrics works . . . unspeakably.
I haven't yet checked out Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog myself, but it's by Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, Firefly) and it made the top-ten TV show list (despite not being on TV) of some critic or other who was on NPR and sounded like he had good taste.
Finally, here's a posting at MightyGodKing's blog titled "MGK Versus His Adolescent Reading Habits." Check out the hilarious Photoshopped covers of fat-fantasy-novel classics (anticlassics). The comments by readers are interesting, too. (Thanks to Barbara Davies, who in turn got it from Ursula K. Le Guin's site).

Four Rooms! And some fiction writing news!

2008-12-20T11:18:00.005-06:00

Yes, I got four -- count 'em, four! -- rooms clean at the same time. My office is amazing without all that crap in it. Now I just need to get together with Doug and move my real desk -- my nice wooden desk with the credenza with the shelves and cubbyholes -- back upstairs (it's still in the basement from when we had the first floor remodeled -- almost two years ago), and I'll be in heaven.

Now in progress: The bedroom! It shouldn't take long. Cleaning it mostly involves picking up the clothes that are on the floor and then doing the broom-and-vacuum thing.

Fiction news: I recently got the check and contributor's copy for a story I sold ages ago. Felt nice to get things like that in the mail again! The anthology, titled Men on the Edge, is a collection of stories about gay men who participate in extreme BDSM. Oddly, I think this is one of the most emotionally sensitive and nuanced stories I've ever written. I reread it when the book came and had a marvelous moment of "Wow. I wrote that? That's really good." Felt nice. If you want to see the cover and find a link to the publisher, go to my erotica page.

Politics: I'm excited about most of Obama's cabinet and subcabinet team, but I am disappointed with his Secretary of Agriculture appointment, Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa. I'm worried that our agriculture policy will continue to be agribusiness as usual without thought to the many, many environmental and personal implications of what we grow.
Fun:

LogoDesignLove.com has a piece showing the evolution of the Barack Obama campaign logo. I actually don't care much for the logo. The colors feel all fake and "wrong" to me. And I've never seen an American flag in it except when someone else points it out. To me, it looks like a sunrise viewed over a plowed field, which is all very bucolic but also awfully traditionally Americana for a "change" campaign. Just shows what I know, or don't know, I guess.

Here are more of the challenged ballots from the Minnesota Senate race, in which votes are still being counted and recounted and re-recounted. We may be done by the end of the year . . . ?

MSNBC has a darling story up as video about service dogs for disabled veterans being trained by other disabled veterans. What really grabbed me was when the vet said he couldn't sleep at night -- until he got his dog-in-training. With the dog in bed with him, no more trouble sleeping. Awesome.

Here's a seasonal video about eggnog, the germs that live in it, and the utility of adding alcohol -- all in the interests of advancing science -- from Science Friday.

3.5 Rooms Clean, Bunny, and Near Tragedy

2008-12-15T08:05:00.004-06:00

We had a near-tragedy in our family. Jennie Cocco, a long-time family friend, was leaving Doug's parents' house when her vehicle's accelerator stuck. The house fronts on a canal, and her car went into the water. Fortunately, two men, one on either side of the canal, witnessed the accident, jumped into the near-freezing water, and helped pull her out of the car and to safety. She was treated for hypothermia and released later the same day. Needless to say, we're all quite shaken at the near miss. The accident happened very quickly on a road she's driven for 25 years. Here are the news stories here (no family members appear in them -- nobody in the family is a Joe the Plumber type, looking for 15 minutes of fame):

Newsday

WABC (New York Channel 7)

WCBS (New York Channel 2)

To continue the saga of my housecleaning efforts (yes, this feels trivial after the above, but life is made of tragedy, trivia, and hope -- no?), I made slow progress on my office, getting out most of the stuff that didn't belong in that room and sifting out the papers that needed shredding from the rest of the office paper recycling. Then I got a big copyediting project, and now the three rooms that were clean are dirty again (though not as dirty as before). So I'm giving myself credit for three and a half rooms. I may have a couple days of light to no work today and tomorrow, so my hope is to reclean the bathroom, kitchen, and dining room and perhaps finish the office. Maybe I'll get four rooms clean at once after all?

Last week, Doug pointed out a bunny who was visiting under the bird feeder, eating spilled seed. Our backyard used to be a regular thoroughfare for rabbits, but since we put up the privacy fence, they don't come in as often. They probably don't like coming into an enclosed area where they can't see around them for some distance. Anyway, I've been making a point of spilling some seed on the ground every evening, and bunny keeps coming back. The dogs go out a couple of times a night and give chase, but bunny doesn't seem to view this as a deterrent.

Yesterday morning, the elder of my two Colombian ramshorn snails decided to take a nap -- on his side in the middle of the tank. I thought he was dead, but he was still curled up tightly in the shell, and I've read that when they die, the curling-up-tightly muscle relaxes. And no one was eating him, including the loaches, whose natural food is snails. So I left him there. Sure enough, he's crawling around now like a healthy snail. ???

I should go out and shovel. It looks like we got 6 inches of snow last night, but it's –5°F. Perhaps the snow fairy will come and take it away. Or maybe I should get out there and shovel. Brrr.

I cleaned the dining room!

2008-11-25T16:59:00.003-06:00

And this blog continues to be boring -- LOL!

I now have three clean rooms at once: the bathroom, the kitchen, and the dining room. Next up: My office. Will Paula make it to four at a time? Check back later to find out!

I also reorganized my Web site. For one thing, I took the Market List down. I had a long run with it, from 1999 to 2007, but I'm obviously not maintaining it anymore. It was time to take it down. If I begin writing and submitting again, I'll probably do a market list in that same format, which I found easy to use, but I'll probably keep it just for me, leaving me the freedom to include only those markets at which my work might find a home rather than every paying market I hear of. But I left up a bunch of links to other market resources.

I also highlighted my full-time profession as a freelance editor/writer, giving it its own page with a link from the home page. As I've been casting about, seeking another client or two to buffer against the coming hard times, as well as to challenge myself, I realized that my Web site didn't reflect much of a professional presence. It was still set up to promote my fiction, and nothing's been happening on that front for a while. The overall effect was kind of dopey.

Every November, I go through a couple of weeks of finding the cold weather almost unendurable and not knowing how I'll survive when it gets even colder. And then, overnight it seems, I adapt. Today I was taking out trash and replacing outdoor floodlights in a T-shirt and feeling pretty comfortable. Yay!

I cleaned the kitchen!

2008-11-24T09:52:00.003-06:00

What did you think this post was going to be about? Last week, I cleaned the bathroom. Next up was the kitchen. This week, I cleaned the kitchen. Since the kitchen also functions as a mudroom for the dogs when they come in the the backyard, this is actually pretty exciting news. Especially having a clean floor. And clean walls next to the door, where they shake their jowls after eating grass and rooting around in the mud. Amazing what I scraped off those walls!

Next up: The dining room. This is the room where the mail piles up. We get an amazing amount of mail.

Bootsie: I'm happy to report that Bootsie the Cat enjoys figure skating. She especially likes it when the skaters spin. They must look like fluttering moths. I watch skating on my computer (though Ice Network), and Bootsie sits beside and behind the monitor and cranes her neck and watches the skaters for minutes at a time. She also likes the cursor, though, so I can't say her interest is really in either sport or in culture.

Work: I've had over a week now with nothing to work on, and I'm going crazy. Yes, I realize that normal people take a week's vacation now and then. In the last year, I've had two long weekends and a few days off here and there. Otherwise, it's been seven-days-a-week busy. But I don't have a job from which I need a vacation! I love my work! Still, judging from how much I slept last week, I guess I did need some downtime. Doug keeps telling me, "It's okay, honey. It's okay." He's a sweetie.

My e-mail's been down all morning. Maybe some authors have returned files to me, or maybe I've got some new projects. Not having e-mail makes me a little crazy. I just invoked my ISP's online chat helpline, and they know about the problem and have no idea when it will be resolved. Bleh!

Fun:

The U.S. Senate race in Minnesota was so close -- only a couple hundred votes out of 3 million separated the two candidates -- that a manual recount was invoked automatically by law. So folks are counting ballots, and some are interesting. Apparently, filling in an oval next to a name is challenging for some folks. And then there's the Lizard People . . . See challenged ballots at the Minnesota Public Radio site, make your own decision, and see what other people think.
This is interesting: Nanowrimo. National Novel Writing Month is what I've always known as a "novel dare," in which a group of writers challenge each other to crank out a novel in a compressed time frame. They often blog about their daily word counts and blockages and e-mail each other to show support. Nanowrimo is like that but with global participation. The year 2007 saw 100,000 participants with 15,000 crossing the finish line with a 50k novel. Participants can write by themselves or find others in their local area to meet up with physically. There are forums and other ways to bond (and procrastinate). The point is quantity rather than quality, to break through any blockages and just write-write-write. Since November has been a slow freelancing month for me for the last couple of years, perhaps I should plan to do this in 2009?

I cleaned the bathroom!

2008-11-18T17:44:00.003-06:00

Hey, this is a boring blog. What can I say? Although if you knew what the bathroom looked like before I cleaned it, you might be more impressed. Fortunately, no photos exist.

I've started cleaning the kitchen. I can hear the news being twittered everywhere.

Mostly I've been sleeping a lot. I think that weeks and weeks of long hours have resulted in a cumulative exhaustion thingie. I'm not depressed! Doesn't feel like that at all. I'm just really tired, in a physical way.

Or maybe I'm hibernating? After a protracted, balmy fall, winter's set in. The other day, it was drizzling ice -- the ice pellets weren't large enough to be truly hail, and it wasn't wet enough to be sleet. Need a new word. Could use a little sun, too. It's been scarce. Five weeks before the days start getting longer again; five months before the first bulbs come up. Minnesota gardens tend to be a crazy hodgepodge of as many flowers as can possibly fit. That's because by the time spring gets here, we're crazy for color.

Well, if I make enough money the next few months, maybe we can spend a week in Santa Fe like we did a few years ago. That was really nice.

Why do cats insist on being in the way? I swear they have a gift for detecting just what you need to look at and placing themselves there.

Fun:

The Arbor Day Foundation has this cool map that shows how U.S. hardiness zones have changed from 1990 to 2006. Of particular interest to me is the finger of Zone 5 that has crept up the Mississippi River Valley as far as Minneapolis/St. Paul.
Have I posted this link before? The FreeRice site started as vocabulary SAT prep and is now available to anyone who wants to test and expand their vocabulary and donate rice to the U.N. World Food Program at the same time. For a word geek like me, it's a bit addictive! I see they've added a bunch of other subjects since I last visited -- must check them out!
Finally, want to put in a plug for my friend Harry LeBlanc's expressive arts therapy practice in Minneapolis: Arts of Passage. Harry has a master's degree in expressive arts therapy and is getting his doctorate. This form of therapy is a great approach for people who want to explore feelings and thoughts that may be blocking their fulfillment but don't want to "talk about their feelings" or have tried traditional talk therapy and found it unsatisfying. Harry's got a bunch of great resources up at his site -- I think it's worth reading his thoughts about the human condition even if you have no interest in seeking therapy at this time.

Maybe I Am a Workaholic?

2008-11-14T01:35:00.005-06:00

In the last few days, I copyedited a couple of books and sent them off to the authors for review, and I did a little more work on the American Library Association database . . . and I currently have nothing to work on. Total panic! What do I do with myself? With free time? It feels so . . . unfilled, unpressured, unstructured! This can't be normal.

I've got a new manuscript coming in early next week. The two books in author review will come back. More work will come in. I still feel odd.

Is this what it feels like to need a fix?

Not that I don't have work to do -- housework. Lots and lots of cleaning desperately needs to be done in this house. Last time I focused on housework, I managed to get three rooms clean: the kitchen, the main bathroom, and the dining room. Those rooms were really nice. Nice to look at. Nice to be in. Nice. Now they're a mess again. Maybe I'll get them clean again -- and a fourth room? Can I get four rooms at a time clean? Check back next week to find out!

Election: Needless to say, I'm thrilled that Barack Obama is the president-elect of the United States. I don't expect miracles. I'm not that hopeful, and I know that the more things change, the more they stay the same. I do expect things to get better: our moral standing in the world to improve, our socioeconomic structure to rebalance in favor of the middle class, the Supreme Court and other federal courts at least not to get any more conservative (yes, I'm very socially liberal, though fiscally not so much), increasing environmental protections and a regearing of industry to be more environmentally progressive (if we don't take the lead on this, some other country will, and they'll become the economic power of the 21st century). The national debt and annual budget deficit drive me crazy. For those, I don't see a solution coming any time soon. We had a major interstate bridge fall into the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis -- there's some investment that needs doing.

I can't quite wrap my head around the financial crisis. Do that many Americans buy houses, and that many home buyers get mortgages they can't pay, that the whole world is going into an economic tailspin because of foreclosures? And I can't understand most of what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says. Throw money at it. Don't throw money at it. Does it matter? I suspect we're like a snake that's just eaten a pig -- we're just going to have to stretch out somewhere until it passes through.

Fun:

Super-complicated cryptic acrostic puzzles from the Atlantic. OMG! Some of these are so hard! You have to be good at cryptic (British-style) crossword puzzles even to get started, and then these have an extra wrinkle to them.

And check out Japanese figure skater Mao Asada performing this layover camel spin. Yes, she is spinning in place, meaning she's balanced over about an inch of 1/4" skate blade that's in contact with the ice. She's also got an amazing triple axel, which she's landed numerous times in competition. She'll be competing in Paris today and Saturday, and we'll get a chance to see her Tatiana Tarasova-choreographed programs. Tarasova has the ability to bring out the best in her skaters -- should be exciting!

Fishies, Plants (Planties?), and Wine

2008-10-29T10:07:00.004-05:00

It's been a while since I've posted, mostly because there's just been nothing exciting to post -- and that's by the standards of this blog, which I realize is not very exciting. I've had lots of work -- just finished an interesting sociology textbook and today will work on a book about menopause (maybe I'll pick up some tips, heh!). Also recently worked on a study prep book for the medical boards (a test that prospective MDs have to take before practicing medicine) and a book aimed at Gen Y about marketing oneself. So lots of variety, as always. With the economy entering a rocky patch, I am looking to add another client or two to my "stable," just in case an existing client has to cut back sharply. As a freelancer, one can never take one's income stream for granted!

Plants: Made a trip to a local nursery to pick up a bag of potash. And I did pick up a bag of potash -- and about $150 worth of plants, bulbs, and tools. Whee! Doug waited for me in the car in the parking lot. I told him it was all his fault -- he didn't come in with me to hold me back, so I just kept putting plants in my cart until it couldn't hold any more. [shrug] I am helpless before the pretty plants! And they were on sale. Got several interesting Hostas to fill out the area by the house, a couple of Delphiniums to go with the one I have on the hill (which I grew from seed and is gorgeous! covered with intense blue flowers from midsummer to fall!), an Echinacea to go in my Echinacea/Daisy/Aster border, and a bunch of Heuchera (coral bells) of various kinds -- one of my favorite plants -- also to fill out and add color to the beds by the house. Plus brought home several bags of tulips in red, yellow, and white to feed the squirrels -- no! to come up in the spring! -- and an actual bulb planter, which I've wanted forever -- makes things so much easier. Overall, a very fun shopping trip.

I already have my list picked out for the spring Friend's School Plant Sale. I may pass on WisCon and Vegas (when Doug does GAMA) in 2009 to spend money on finishing my front yard instead. It's been a work in progress for years, and I'm getting kind of tired of having to superimpose "what it's going to look like" over my vision whenever I look at it.

Fishies: Decided that my male Betta splendens should have some friends. Some people feel they should be kept in isolation, but I did lots of research and figured that as long as it wasn't another Betta or something that looked like it might be another Betta, and it wasn't a fish that would nip his fins, then it would be okay. So I went to the fish store. Whee! Ended up getting more than I'd planned -- is there a theme here? -- and put some rocks and such back on the shelves to compensate (I have some self-control).

For the big tank, I got a couple more Botia almorhae ("yoyo" loaches) to break up the Botia kubotai ("polka-dot" or Burmese Border loach) chasing the yoyo dynamic; they were really young and small but are growing fast. If I stick my fingers in the water, they love to come up and nibble on them, which tickles! They also making a lot of clicking noises. (In the meantime, the mature yoyo has developed gorgeously elaborate, reticulated striping and has swelled once with eggs. She has taken over a "cave" under some driftwood for herself, and her whiskered snout as she peeks out is adorable.) I also got four glowlight tetras (Hemigrammus erythrozonus) to bring that shoal to nine. Then for the 20-gallon tank, and the Betta, I got three "leopard" cories, or Corydoras trilineatus (fat, wiggly little catfish that are adorable), and -- a surprise find -- three freshwater "bumblebee" gobies (Brachygobius; black and yellow striped one-inch fish with attitude -- the terriers of the fish world). Now I assumed that the gobies had to go in the big tank because the Betta would eat them -- Bettas have a reputation for eating small fish. The gobies are ambush eaters, however -- they wait for food to float within "darting" distance, then dart forward and grab it. In the big tank, however, they were clearly overwhelmed by all the much larger, much faster fish during the feeding frenzy. The Betta, on the other hand, after one big territorial display, which the Cories ignored, seemed to enjoy having tankmates, so I took a chance and moved them. No problem! They're clearly very happy little fish now, who enjoy basking on the plants and don't give a hoot about the Betta or the cories.

Then there's Mr. Flounder (I've assigned it a gender). When I was a kid, I had a flounder in my tank for a while, and I have fond memories of it. So when I saw "freshwater flounders" at the fish store, I said, "I'll have one of those!" About $3.50. Got it home, put it in the 20-gallon tank, and did some research. Turns out there's no such thing as "freshwater flounder." When they're very young, some flounders do live upstream in fresh water, but as they get older, they migrate downstream to brackish or even full marine water. For now, he's got a couple of tablespoons of aquarium salt in his water, which doesn't bother the other fish. I'm waiting to see if he survives a month -- that he's eating, doesn't have a disease, etc. That'll be up this weekend. Then I see a brackish tank entering my life. I'm researching the possibilities. Doug is resigned to the inevitability of it all. (What a good husband!)

Wine: Speaking of the husband, we've decided to do a nice dinner together at home every Saturday night: Doug cleans up the kitchen and dining room, I cook, we eat together at the dining room table and share a bottle of wine. Romantic! I hardly ever drink. Last weekend, I guess I was thirsty -- I drank wine at a pretty good clip -- and I'd just taken my medication, which "enhances" the effect of alcohol. I was amazingly blotto. Skate America was on, so I was watching the skaters and posting to FSUniverse and my spelling -- well, let's just say that getting all those pesky letters in the right order didn't seem very important. (And I'm a copy editor!) Happily, my spelling improved over the course of the night (and I post there under another name). I think I'll do marinated chicken this Saturday, take my meds at a different time, and sip rather than gulp!

Fun:

Search the Old Bailey's records from 1690 to 1772. Maybe you'll find one of your ancestors? (I'm pretty sure a couple of my ancestors came over to the Colonies because they chose transport as an alternative to whatever punishment awaited them there.)
Search the WorldNames site to find out where people with a given surname live. I haven't fully explored this yet, but at least in the United States, you can zero in on the county level.
More fun with names (and other words): Plug your name into Wordsmith.org's Anagram generator and find a funny alias for yourself. And more fun with words: Check out other features at Wordsmith.org. A cool one is a Word of the Day, which you can get e-mailed to you if you want. Today's word is asperse. Yesterday's, continuance. Yes, I'm a language geek.
Interesting YA novel by Cory Doctorow is online free under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. I've just read the first few chapters, but Little Brother is really interesting so far. It seems to be about kids in a world where adults/institutions attempt to monitor their every move; of course, the kids get adept at doing what they want.

Diversicon, Drought, and Depression

2008-08-24T12:52:00.003-05:00

First things first: Jusqu’au Dernier Mot is translating a bunch of my Writing World articles into the French. They have five of them up now. And I wrote two haiku! Wowza!!! It felt ridiculously good. AJ the Rottie caught a baby bunny in the backyard and killed it a few feet away from me. First time in 15 years of big dogs chasing bunnies that anyone’s died. [shrug] That is the natural outcome for a baby bunny. Very few survive to adulthood and get to make more baby bunnies. If they did, we’d be overrun with bunnies. AJ seemed mystified as to why the bunny didn’t get back up and play. I gave it a burial and wrote a haiku about it. Then I wrote a haiku about my very dry garden soil. Which takes us to . . .

. . . the weather report: Not nearly enough rain. Doug went out and bought me a sprinkler. It’s not nearly as efficient as directing water at each plant’s roots with the hose -- you lose more to evaporation, and you water ground where no plants are -- but it sure is nice to set it up and be able to walk away. Effortless! Like magic! (Yes, I take pleasure in simple tool use. You should see me when I’m reading something in dim light and Doug turns on a lamp. Wow! The words leap from the page. Like magic!) One good thing about drought: hardly any mosquitoes!

Diversicon went well this year. We got mostly positive feedback from the attendees. Guest of Honor Anne Frasier’s suggestion of a Flash Fiction Contest attracted some great entries, and the awards ceremony was fun. The vibe was awesome: intelligent and thoughtful and warm and friendly. The location, with a variety of affordable, healthy eating options within five minutes’ walk, was great. One downside was that the hotel dropped the ball at numerous points (e.g., telling people the room block was closed when it wasn’t, not being able to direct people to the con when they showed -- indeed, not being aware the event was at the hotel, losing our catering order for the Auction, “checking out” our suite space a day early, charging our Guests’ rooms to their cards instead of mine, not having the expanded suite available that they said would be built in time for our event and then charging us the wrong amount for the space they did give us). Each individual hotel employee seemed dedicated to giving great customer service; however, the communication didn’t seem to be in place to allow them to do so. Another downside was that attendance dropped. It’s a real little gem of a convention, and we simply have to get better at attracting people to it.

Had a thoroughly icky major depressive episode for about eight days starting during the con. I guess technically eight days isn’t long enough for something to be classified as a major depressive episode, but I know one when I feel it. I’m worthless, never done anything right, everyone hates and despises me, want to slash myself all over to let the pain out, can’t see the point of doing anything, no appetite, crying for no reason, can’t focus on anything -- that last bit was really pronounced this time and made working hard. The good news: This lapse of brain chemistry had a specific trigger -- I knew I was being triggered as the triggering event happened -- I could literally feel the brain chemistry starting to cascade out of balance, like a chain of dominoes falling -- and I figured that if I gutted it out, my serotonin levels would climb back to normal eventually. And they did. I’m still kind of tired, but I’m feeling good about myself and hopeful about the future, and I’m enjoying my work and gardening, etc.

Politics: I’m delighted with Senator Obama’s choice of Senator Biden for vice president. Biden was my top choice when the Democratic primaries began, so I’m thrilled to see him on the ticket. On the other hand, I’m disgusted with our stance with regard to Russia -- we haven’t seen this coming for, like, at least six years? I’m sitting here in Minneapolis with no information except from TV and newspapers and MPR/NPR, and I could see that Putin, the former KGB head, is taking the country back to its imperialistic, autocratic past. Why couldn’t the Bush administration?

Workwise, I’ve got a bunch of live projects, but with all of them, I’m waiting for something from the editor or from the author. Which means there’s absolutely nothing I can work on this weekend! Whee!!! Although living without pressing deadlines takes a bit of getting used to. I have to structure my own day? I can do anything I want? How do I do that? LOL!

Very entertaining book: Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell. There’s lots of history in it, but it’s her asides and ramblings that bring it to life in a deliciously funny, ironic, truth-telling way.

Summer Olympics: I’m too wary of doping scandals to let myself get excited about most of the sports, and being decidedly not thrilled about China’s human rights record takes away a lot of the luster for me, too. I did enjoy the tennis, oddly enough. I used to think tennis shouldn't be an Olympic sport -- they've got pro tours and four Grand Slam tournaments each year, so what do they need the Olympics for? But a lot of the players clearly brought a lot of passion to it and it was really meaningful for them, and there were a lot of good matches. I loved that Roger Federer got a gold medal in doubles. I feel terrible for the female Chinese gymnasts -- I'm sure those girls had zero say in being put on the team despite being too young, and they've clearly worked like crazy and sacrificed a lot and are outstanding gymnasts. If they'd been allowed to wait until 2012, they could probably have won Olympic medals legitimately. As it is, even if the results are allowed to stand, they'll always have an "asterisk" next to them.

Fun:

Arienne Cohen writes in the NYTimes about a woman, with the stature of a superhero and the personality of a nice person, and a remaining barrier of difference in our society.

Check out the Cornell University Library Witchcraft Collection, “an online selecton of titles from the Cornell University Library's extensive collection of materials on Witchcraft. The Witchcraft Collection is a rich source for students and scholars of the history of superstition and witchcraft persecution in Europe. It documents the earliest and the latest manifestations of the belief in witchcraft as well as its geographical boundaries, and elaborates this history with works on canon law, the Inquisition, torture, demonology, trial testimony, and narratives. Most importantly, the collection focuses on witchcraft not as folklore or anthropology, but as theology and as religious heresy.”

For when you desperately need a way to procrastinate, there is the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. Try typing in your last name and finding out what sequences other people with your last name have discovered. Or type in a series of numbers and find out all the sequences they might be part of. It’s fascinating in a thoroughly geeky way.

A fishie pedicure sounds like fun! I love sticking my fingers in my tanks and feeling the fish nibble-nibble looking for food. It feels really good.

Whatever the NYTimes’s problems, its health reporting remains top-notch. I found this multimedia presentation on bipolar disorder, featuring the voices of people with the illness, gripping and helpful in understanding the effects that chemical imbalance in the brain can have.

Some R&R (Over Now)

2008-07-13T03:55:00.004-05:00

And I have now complained several times about how hot it’s been. Fortunately, the weather is gorgeous this week. I can stop worrying about my plants shriveling up.

Finally got my "spring break." Every year in the spring, copyediting work dries up for a while. This year, I got about two weeks off. Enough to recharge my batteries; not enough to get worried about my income. Just right.

Read a couple of really good books. One I can highly recommend is In the Woods by Tana French. It’s her first novel, and it won an Edgar Award, and it’s awesome. The characters are deeply flawed. One mystery is solved, but others remain unsolved and justice is not all that one would hope. The characters pay an enormous price for their involvement in the case. The friendship of the male and female homicide detective partners is one of the best male-female relationships I’ve seen rendered in fiction.

Watched a good bit of Wimbledon. The men’s final--Roger Federer versus Rafael Nadal--was one for the ages. Wow. I’ve been a Federer fan for years but only this year started appreciating Nadal’s game. All I wanted from their final was a five-set match of amazing tennis, and I got it. Someone had to win -- no ties in tennis. How long ‘til the U.S. Open?

Attended CONvergence. My five panels went well. Enjoyed the Art Show very much. Hung out at the Diversicon party for a while and watched The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, a fabulous spoof of 1950s SF B movies. It takes real talent to write dialogue that bad on purpose!

Also played in the dirt with my plants.

Now I’m back to being hard at work. Just finished editing a really good book about careers in nursing -- lots more options than when my mother became a registered nurse. Now working on a couple of books for teachers working with students of diverse abilities and a book on how to bring a specialty or gourmet food to market. Since I worked for two and a half years at the Wedge Co-op, the specialty food book is pretty interesting -- talks about a lot of the products we sold from the producers’ point of view. How does that organic honey-mustard get developed and made in large batches that all turn out the same and packaged and labeled and shipped anyway?

Fun:

NYTimes columnist Gail Collins writes about vampire chick lit. The whole column is worth reading, but I particularly enjoy the quotes from a Twilight Saga book: "He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare ... A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal." "Incandescent chest"? Really? "Scintillating arms"?

Also in the NYTimes, an article on a rural Albanian custom whereby women become the "men" of the family. They cut off their hair, wear pants, and foreswear marriage, and in return they get treated with all the respect and honor accorded men in their society. Really interesting!

DeadProgrammer's Café explores the genesis and evolution of the Starbuck's logo. Explains how a buxom mermaid could be of more use to a sailor than just as eye candy.

Fascinating history of photo tampering from the 1860s up to, as of this writing, July 2008: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/.

Great Moments in Procrastination offers, um, great moments in procrastination. Bored people in offices come up with fun games to avoid doing work and so forth. Lots of fun videos. Just viewed "Office Jousting," in which four office workers create a RenFest or Society for Creative Anachronism event using office supplies.

On a more serious note, David Frum offers a realistic view of our next White House in the Prospect magazine (U.K.).

And now on an outré note, here is Edward Gorey's fabulous ABCs book, showing one child after another meeting a grisly fate in a horribly hilarious way: The Gashlycrumb Tinies. And here is an Edward Gorey TrueType font available free under creative commons license.

I slept in Vegas. I worked at WisCon.

2008-06-02T06:07:00.000-05:00

It is spring—I’m happy to at least have that question answered so I can stop asking it. Soon I can begin complaining about how hot it is.

I accompanied Doug to Vegas while he attended GAMA. Stayed at Caesars Palace: we got used to the over-the-top décor in no time (the various Romanesque statues were helpful landmarks) and stopped finding it weird, and the service was absolutely first-class. Could not ask for friendlier, more helpful cleaning people, bellhops, front desk staff, cocktail servers, wagering attendants . . . Really nice. Unlike at Bally’s last year, there were lots of good channels on the TV. There was, however, no door on our room’s bathroom, and it was clearly designed to be that way. It was no big thing since it was just Doug and me, but it was unusual. We were there for about three days from arrival to departure, and I’d say I slept for about two days of it. I arrived nearly walking into walls after working I don’t know how long. Sleeping on the plane -- in the freaking 17” wide seats that recline only 3” and when the person in front of you reclines you get your tray table in your lap -- was nearly impossible, though I did sprawl across Doug and drool on his shoulder a bit. So then I slept, and slept, and slept. Sleeping in Vegas is the most expensive sleeping I’ve ever done, but it that’s what it took to go down for a nap and I needed it that badly, then it was worth it.

Weekend before this last one, I went to WisCon. I was probably at the con for all of ten hours all weekend. The rest of the time, I was in the hotel room either crashed out or working my butt off (except my butt never gets any smaller -- go figure). But I did have a good time whenever I was awake and not working. Most of the artwork I voted for won in the categories I thought it should win. Met any number of cool people and had cool conversations. Was on three panels, including two on class, which tends to bring out the ranting and raving in people, but they all went reasonably well. Someone whose opinion I value complimented me on how I did on panels, so that was a warm fuzzy. Another warm fuzzy: Someone came up and introduced herself and said she’d found my article online, “Finessing the Infodump,” and it had saved her writers’ group. Cool! Found the Land’s End outlet store on State Street and picked up the most comfortable jeans ever for $10, plus some other stuff. Plus a totebag to carry it all in, which Bootsie loves to use to sharpen her claws (it’s canvas, and I guess that’s good).

A while ago, I wrote about setting aside one day a week for writing fiction. Hmm. How about setting aside one day a week for sleep? I keep thinking I’ll hit a dry spot (and begin worrying about money, but what can you do) and then get my schedule organized with some set-aside times for exercise and writing and such. But I’ll probably just keep thinking that.

Now working on a travel guide for people who like antiques, a college guide, a book about Internet bullying, a book about writing teachers’ performance evaluations, a math book for parents so they can help their kids (great idea!), and database records. That seems like a lot, but I’m actually mostly done with most of them and just waiting for other people to do their bit before wrapping things up. I’m entering the week in pretty good shape! Go me! (And I love the variety and the cool books. I’m really very happy with my lot in life—it’s just getting a little out of hand, and I need to get the “success” part figured out.)

Cubby Bear developed some big lumps in his mouth that needed to be taken out. He needed his teeth cleaned badly anyway, so we just had everything done at once. They turned out to be benign, caused by the papilloma virus. Cubby recovered great from the surgery and is more beautiful than ever. AJ keeps injuring her hip with her whirling-dervish-I-need-to-kill-it routine at the front window. She’s either placid and sweet or 110 percent killing machine, and her anger management issue is going to cause her problems as she gets older if she doesn’t tone it down. Hard to believe she’s 7(?) now—6 or 7. New betta’s still alive. New loach is still alive. Yay!

I’m going to pass on putting in a veggie garden this year, because I probably won’t have time to keep it weeded and watered or cook what comes out of it. I did put in a couple of flats of annuals in the boulevard garden, and I added a whole bunch of day lilies and a handful of other perennials and shrubs to the front yard to fill in a few spots. Fingers crossed that everything lives.

The stomach problem turned out just to be a bad batch of eggs, so I can keep eating them. Yay!
And I just looked at my Things to Do List and realized . . . I’m waiting for things from other people on every single one of my projects. THERE IS NO WORK I CAN CURRENTLY DO!!! The sun has just come up (Bootsie is stalking the morning birds in one window after another), and I am going to clear some grass out of my flowerbeds. Go me!

Roland Garros, site of the French Open Grand Slam tennis event, has a pretty neat tennis video game up at the Web site: http://www.rolandgarros.com/en_FR/multimedia/index.html.

Some people really need to work out with less brio. (I’m reminded of a guy in an aerobics class who seemed to think we were slam-dancing.) And others need to learn to ignore those who grunt. CBC’s As It Happens: http://www.cbc.ca/radioshows/AS_IT_HAPPENS/20080529.shtml.

Spring Yet? (Redux)

2008-04-20T02:08:00.000-05:00

And the exciting news from my part of the world is (a) I continue to live under my Rock of Working and (b) I can't believe it's already been a month since I last wrote words to that effect.

I have been battling a recurrent stomach/intestinal bug. It seems to be related to eating eggs. Either I've developed some kind of sensitivity to them, which would suck, or I had a bad batch of eggs. I'd really enjoyed my winter meal of peas, potatoes (baked in the microwave), and eggs (pan-fried in a touch of olive oil). It was healthy and fast and cheap and used minimal dishes. A few extra peas always went into the fish tank for the veggie eaters. Now I can't have it anymore. Oh well, it's going to be salad time soon anyway.

Had a bunny in the backyard today. Haven't had many backyard bunnies since putting up the privacy fence. This one was hunkered beneath the birdfeeder amid a pile of spilled seed, eating as though there might be no tomorrow. That was one happy bunny. Saw a Fox Sparrow last week, a new bird for my "list." It must have been migrating through and just stopping to rest and fuel up for a few days. None of the pictures I've found do justice to this plump bird's beautiful gray-olive-brown back, streaked breast, and rusty-red tail feathers. Yesterday, Doug and I saw a woodpecker in downtown Minneapolis, of all places! It looked a little lost, poor thing. It was about 10" long and had a brown back and a distinctly red nape. We haven't been able to identify it, though -- frustrating!

On Monday, Doug leaves for Las Vegas for the GAMA trade show, and I'm going with him again this year. Vegas manages to be weird and boring at the same time, but I'll ensconce myself in a sportsbook area and play the horsies to my heart's content. I'll also be taking the laptop with me and . . . working!

I'm hoping that the trip breaks up my routine and gives me enough of a new perspective so that when I get back, I'll be able to tear myself away from the computer and clean up the house and yard, work on Diversicon publicity, answer e-mail, visit with people I'd like to spend time with, and do other life things. At least for a few days, before crawling back under my rock.

Just finished . . . a travel guide focusing on U.S. National Parks and a couple of professional development books for law enforcement officers. I also had the opportunity to edit the first draft of a creative nonfiction work by one of my favorite authors -- that was truly a special challenge and delight. Currently working on . . . a book about how teachers can use digital cameras in the classroom, another about being a school principal, and another about solving the problem of illiteracy. And there's a college guide on my desk. Coming soon are a travel guide for people who like to shop for antiques and a book for midwives. For the first quarter of 2007, my revenues ran about 22 percent above last year (when I was about as busy as I thought I could be); and so far this spring, things are bubbling right along, when last year they had already dropped off pretty abruptly. I'm just so relieved and excited and happy that I'm able to make a go of this!

Sebastian Mallaby wrote an interesting piece on the election decision-making process in the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/13/AR2008011302304.html . A bunch of people wrote this interesting article last fall about voters' brain scans when they were exposed to video, etc. of different candidates (Rudy Guiliani was still the leading Republican candidate at that point): http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/opinion/11freedman.html?th&emc=th .

Crawling Out From Under My Rock . . . Is It Spring Yet?

2008-03-23T15:11:00.000-05:00

I can only assume that no one is reading this any longer. But that's okay, cuz I've been pretty much chattering away to myself anyway, plus anyone who enjoys listening in. :)

BTW, U.S. presidential race: I support Barack Obama.

What have I been doing instead of blogging, updating the Market List, or much of anything else? I've been working! Working, working, working! And working some more! I'm really pleased that my clients are pleased with my performance and keep giving me more work. My next challenge will be to make sure I don't take on so much work that I can't edit to a high level of thoroughness and get assignments done on time. The last few months, I've been getting it done, but I've been pushing my limits, too. And, of course, I've had no time for writing fiction. Or exercise. Or housework. Or . . . However, it is good for my bank account.

BTW, health insurance: Our whole system is feckin' fecked up. I decided to drop my coverage from my former employer (COBRA) at year-end because it was going to cost way more than we would ever get out of it. I tried to find individual coverage that would cover our prescriptions (Doug and I happen to take the same medication to manage long-term conditions.) Could only find one plan that would cover this drug, and it would do so only with prodding. Applied there and were denied: too sick, too fat. Never mind that Doug works out intensely every single day and I had been working out regularly. Never mind that except for our known conditions -- and I know what those cost, and it's nowhere near what our premiums would have been -- we seem very healthy and take good care of ourselves to stay that way. So after much research, I decided we should just keep our fixed costs (premiums) as low as possible and count on paying out of pocket for everything -- that's actually cheaper than getting a policy that would be of any use. So with a super-high deductible and super-low premiums, we're just paying as we go. I'm just now fighting to fill a prescription: because my insurance doesn't cover it, no one wants to fill it -- even though I'm willing and able to pay!!! My doctor has said I should have this drug, and I can pay for it. Therefore, the insurance company should have nothing to do with it, right? Furthermore, I've seen an awful lot of my health care dollars at work -- without any good results for my health, all in bureaucracy.

BTW, is it spring yet? We've got a few inches of snow on the ground. The birds who come to the feeder aren't acting springlike yet. (Speaking of the birds: A few dark-eyed juncos stayed all winter. I just checked their range, and I guess they do winter here, but I've never seen them before except as through-migrants.)

I have set aside some time for fun. I had a break in my workload that synced perfectly with MarsCon first weekend of March. I was on a couple of panels, got a henna "tattoo," learned some bellydancing moves, entered a creative trance, enjoyed cucumber sandwiches and amazing cookies with tea in the Tardus Tearoom while watching Season 1 Dr. Who, and bought some great-looking books in the dealers' room. Best of all was hanging out with all the friends I only see at cons and feeling at one with the general geekdom. :-)

I've also set aside some time to play with my aquaria. Fishies!!! They say, "Bloop." That's what they say! New legless friends include an utterly adorable Burmese border loach (I got three, but two didn't make it. I'll get a couple more -- loaches like each other's company), a couple of very cute little Siamese algae eaters (they're growing!), and four more glowlight tetras (making a total of eight). I also got a male betta (red) to be a solo occupant of my 20-gallon tank, but he quickly got ich (an external parasite) and then a bacterial infection and fought hard but didn't survive the diseases and/or treatments. I'm definitely going to try bettas again, though, because when he was healthy, he was adorable -- I'd wiggle my finger in the water, and he'd come right up to it to get fed. I lost one of my two "mystery" tetras (I have no idea of genus/species.). I'm pretty sure someone bit off his tail and osmotic shock eventually got him, and I'm pretty sure it was Mr./Ms. Loach. Meanie loach! Not to be a nippy fish! My next project with the the 50-gallon tank will be to start changing out substrate from gravel, which can be hard on the loach's barbels as he roots for snails, to sand/soil. That's better for plant growth, too. (Oh yeah, I'd had a Malaysian trumpet snail problem -- they were everywhere -- but after a few days with the loach, couldn't find one anywhere!)