Wave Without A Shore

20 lbs down. 31% of weight goal achieved.

CJ — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:57:07 +0000

I have not seen me in Levi’s 14 slimcut jeans since the 1980′s. Jane is also making progress.

That is all.

My brother, niece, cousins, et al, all ok in OK.

CJ — Tue, 21 May 2013 23:41:43 +0000

Which is a relief. And fewer killed than they feared: people just kept turning in new paperwork, apparently, and they kept adding instead of realizing it was the same unfortunates.

Weather rolled in here while we were at the gym—turned right cold all of a sudden! And strong wind.

Tomorrow we get the kittehs to the vet for shots. This is going to be interesting. Ever since puberty, Shu has been a terror…we are going to give him kitteh vet-issued tranquilizer for tomorrow so he’s a bit more sedate…please God!

And meanwhile one or the other of us has to be here to receive—yes! my new computer!

My poor bewildered brother called me to ask why a mutual friend believes I live in South Africa, namely in Kwazulu Natal…

I change my residence weekly to interesting places on FB…I am so put out with their endless marketing of info, I just figure, hey, let them have something more colorful than Spokane…I think my current Location is Beijing. At one point it was Ulan Bator, which is an interesting city, capital of Mongolia…

It gets people to look up these interesting places and learn things!

Wishes for safety and recovery to Moore, OK and places thereabouts…

CJ — Mon, 20 May 2013 22:28:59 +0000

They’ve been hit again by a terrible, massive tornado.

Jane and I were in OKC for the 1999 outbreak, and this one followed almost the identical track, except that it missed Tinker. This is a terrible mess.

Thinking of you, friends and relations in OKlahoma.

The new book is coming along…

CJ — Sun, 19 May 2013 15:11:17 +0000

I don’t always outline quite as tightly as this, but seeing spring looming with conventions (Miscon in Montana, Soonercon in Oklahoma, plus a visit with: my brother, and Lynn, and seeing old friends–) there’s ample room for distraction. I also volunteered us to get my brother’s new koi pond into shape…

So I decided I’d better go that extra step; and I’m also using another technique which can be helpful in getting moving: since the Foreigner books are written with two viewpoints, I’m writing from only Bren’s view on the startup, and then on the edit, filling in Cajeiri’s. This means a re-edit to get the two pulled into harmony. But a re-edit is nothing, compared to struggling with a shifting mindset when you’re on the road a great deal.

And an outline is a good thing.

The iris are now blooming…and the peonies are out…

CJ — Sat, 18 May 2013 15:44:58 +0000

This is one of the prettiest seasons…the front yard is irises, lots of irises….we’re going to be digging up large yellow and purple clumps and setting them out on the roadside with Free on them so we have room to plant some of our other colors as they multiply.

And the red and white tree peonies have done their thing and are shedding petals, and now the pink tree peony is blooming, with the bush peonies coming close behind…

Azaleas and rhodies are in bloom: we have sunset colors, plus one red, and one pink… The magnolias have done their bloom, but the dogwood is out, such as it is: a very young tree.

Not forgetting the red hawthorne, which stand about 20 feet tall and arches over our fence: this is how it blooms.

Our spammers have branched out…

CJ — Sat, 18 May 2013 14:55:51 +0000

I now get quite a few from China.

Loving the software that now ties them in a bundle for me. Makes it so much easier. Every morning, from 5 to 15, just bundled up and waiting.

If you are a legitimate user who has found difficulty registering, do write to me. I can make mistakes, because this requires a glance-over; but generally someone whose screen name is appiaiuoqtoose is really, really suspect.

And they think there might be alien life on other planets…

CJ — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:32:08 +0000

Our own is doing right well.

Weird animals

Kepler satellite in trouble…lost an orientation instrument. They’re trying a fix.

CJ — Thu, 16 May 2013 03:23:49 +0000

kepler
This would be a sad thing…though they’ve already gained years of data.

Here’s hoping.

We need another, more potent Kepler. ASAP.

I committed new computer…

CJ — Thu, 16 May 2013 02:08:20 +0000

I don’t need quite the workhorse Jane does, because mine doesn’t do graphics so often, and words ARE mostly what I do. But the one thing I MUST have above any other consideration is my trackpoint mouse, that little button that sits between GH and B, and with which I can perform anything anybody can do with a mouse except scroll. It’s so automatic, so -keystroke- oriented that were I to lose it, I’d been months learning how to cope with a mouse or touchpad; and alas, since childhood I’ve had a tremor in my right hand that increases in measure as I attempt to fine down a point. Curiously enough I fence and do archery righthanded and have no trouble aiming; I can shoot righthanded or with both hands (shotgun). I do righthanded cursive. And I can model clay or any such thing. It’s purely targeting a mouse that drives me bananas.

I suspect its a neurological defect matched to the neurological problem with my right eye’s tracking—same side, same issue: my world curves like a space station when I look to the far edge, if I don’t struggle to control it. And the right hand does exactly the same thing: it goes where it thinks the target is, but my personal space warps visually, and the hand shakes. Ptui. It’s a bi-otch. I had one surgery, aged 10, trying to sort it out, but it didn’t correct the problem. I’m used to it. But no way in hades do I want to change pointing devices and cope with that problem every time I use a mouse, because the company decided to phase out the trackpoint.

Its usage has been getting sparser at Dell, and Dell and IBM are the only two that offer same. I’ve been with Dell over 15 years, and know how to get good service out of them if it comes to that.

So…I’ll have another Latitude, a machine that’s the son of the current model, only with twice the hard drive (500 gig: Jane calls that scarily small)—ha! not for me!, an Intel i5 instead of 2, and enough room for memory to exceed 4 gig if I someday need to; with the usual stuff, a decent 15.5 screen, a keyboard I’m way used to, in my sleep, plus an HDMI jack so Jane and I can both display on the big screen and discuss stuff. This can come in handy.

It’ll arrive end-of-May-ish. And then I’ll have to bite the bullet and install 10,000 programs. The good news is—we have Carbonite backup, so data movement is not going to be that bad. And this current machine is still working, which will let me take it where I don’t want to take the other. Won’t look any different…except I may splurge and get a ‘skin’ for it, something anime and outrageous.

Got the corporate taxes off and trying to get things settled to sanity here…

CJ — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:23:46 +0000

The April to mid-May bracket is always a zoo around here, and of course I dropped the new tank right in the middle of it.

But we are finally finished.

We hope to get caught up on stuff.

The front yard is awash in iris.

The back yard in peonies.

And we’re having another cold snap.