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

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.
  

Four Rooms! And some fiction writing news!

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.

Maybe I Am a Workaholic?

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!