C. J. Cherryh - Progress Report
Blog, 1/31/06 to 7/25/06
Contents (c) 2006 by C.J. Cherryh
Date: 1/31/06. Tuesday. 51203. Still reading. The knitted legging fit, though a bit snug for my preference. Joan was very gracious about it and ignored the fact: she wants the other. And I ran through the whole pre-Bronze Adult test today: that's twice around the rink (on left lead and right lead, like a horse) on the long stroke-and-glide pattern), then forward inside edges on-the-line, then forward outside, then back inside, then back outside. Then forward crossovers, on the large 8, twice about the pattern. Joan didn't mention it if I'm also supposed to do those backward. I'm working on a finish to my patterns with a neat stop, so I don't fall on my nose or flounder to a bad stop in front of the judges. Stopping is just a pain for adults: it's the height. Then to the waltz-8, twice about the pattern. And finally what we call the 'funky pattern,' which is new to the test, instead of the 3's-on-the-line, which brought grief to many a Pre-bronze skater. The funky-pattern is: left foot inside 3, right foot outside 3, to a back left outside, a back right inside (am I remembering that right?) to a left step, then crossover, then step-off on the right foot, and back to the inside left 3-turn, repeat down the ice. Then come back on the other foot, which I didn't do, yet. I can say a couple of times through those patterns and I was getting tired. With luck, I'll pass pre-Bronze this spring, and then aim at Bronze. When we've qualified in Bronze level, we can compete in our area contests. We came straight home to get back to work; and the tank life count now includes (ugh) a five-inch long Pacific bristleworm, a centipede-like creature that I've only seen in the Caribbean form---the Caribbean variety stings, kills corals, and is generally quite small and very objectionable, besides prolific. This monster is, I'm assured, the Pacific variety, a harmless detritus scavenger, but I thought I'd better warn Jane before she found it and fainted. The glass is clouding with algae a bit, and we have now located 6 snails, and the mushrooms are still hanging tough. Snails are the lifeform we can add after 10 days of feeding imaginary fish: we have live snails prospering and motoring about (marine snails are fast) after four days, and if I weren't experienced, I would go bouncing down to the store telling them that we're just perfect and ready for more snails ahead of schedule. That may even be so, but I'm not betting anything on it: the nature of water-preparation for a tank involves biological cycles that run on a smooth, survivable curve day to dark, and then, bam! go catastrophic for a day for reasons difficult to discern without a chemistry set, before they settle down to steady state again. You can think you're so ready to add specimans, and get suckered into over-confidence, and end up killing undeserving creatures because you didn't know there was a crash building up in the system, ready to break loose the second you put a new bio-load on it: the specimen you thought you were ready for is the last straw for the camel, so to speak, and the water goes a nasty color and everything dies, if you've really insulted the chemistry. So we're going along just quite nicely: everything I started with is still alive except the weed---and seaweed can be funny: you have weed, the weed dies, you get algae, snails clear the algae, and then you get small starts of weed springing up as the algae goes away---not to mention some weed has phases that are more algae than not. The secret is the chemistry: algae snatches the nutrients and the weed goes; then snails eat up the algae and put the nutrients back into the system and here comes the weed again. Not to mention such lovely perils as the nitrite-nitrate spikes, and temperature instabilities (I still need a thermometer: you daren't trust the heater too far); and salinity buildups (I nearly had one, but knew to keep checking the sump water level, a thing a beginner might not remember to do.) So I'm perking along with 6 snails, 3 sponges, a monster bristleworm, a hundred tiny featherdusters and anemone-lets, and several really tough mushrooms, and not looking to change that bio-load until I'm sure the cycles have stopped bouncing around. So far, so good. Another thing you have to watch, in marine tanks, is that some of the creatures you can get are not nice to handle: I picked up a couple of snails getting them into the tank, when they'd been left behind in the rock container---and one of those snails has behaviors and movements a little like a cone shell...and cones are dangerous. That reminds me not to pick up things bare-handed that I haven't accurately identified. You can use gloves; you can use tongs; you can use nets. Bare hands rummaging about in unknown live rock---not a good thing.
Date: 2/1/06. Wednesday. 51203. Well, it's not a cone: we checked with Kevin at the fish shop, and it's a perfectly harmless snail, or at most a very baby conch. That would be actually a good thing. Cones are not. They eat your other snails and one of them at least has one of the most lethal stings known to nature. The tank is doing pretty well, except for requiring about half a gallon of fresh water every 12 hours. That can't be right. The evaporation rate is way high. I'm still reading, though making progress pretty fast. I stayed home from skating today---not feeling too well---much as I wanted to be on the ice.// I've been watching two programs on air, one of them, Skating with Celebrities. Quite remarkable, though if I had a free month and ice whenever I had rested enough to go back out, I'd progress much faster than I do. Here I'll get political. My hero of the program is Bruce Jenner, aged 55, never skated in his life, and to do a backward edge by the first show---that's very, very good. If you watch it, and want to know the finer points, consider how much physical contact there is between the partners, and note well: if the 'student' is holding on, they're receiving stability and direction through that hand-touch, however slight. Too, if they're being lifted, they're not actively skating, so I'm not too impressed by lifts. Edges are the trickiest, and the people who can edge (i.e., can lean and curve, especially backward) should get good marks for it in ways that have nothing to do with jumps, and do. But the playing field is far from equal. Jennifer Barbieri hid nothing: she'd skated growing up and was trying to nail an axel, the hardest jump, during her first practice. She took all her skill into the first show, and though some fans on the boards have been down on her for being able to skate, she did indeed say she had. A couple of the others have skated before and not quite managed to say so in ways the audience may pick up. Bruce Jenner and, I pretty well believe, Kurt Browning's partner, are complete novices. My vote remains for Jenner, who's doing edges and a real (waltz) jump synchronized with his partner, and who's getting better week by week. We're not so keen on "Ice Diaries." I'm not so sure having a camera following a teen around and a documentary wanting them to comment is productive of their best performance.
Date: 2/2/06. Thursday. 51203. Still reading. And I did get the salt refractometer, so I can tell the salinity of the aquarium, and I got the pipes hooked up properly. I swear I'm done with buying equipment. The rest of the job, chemistry test, etc, resides with Nathan. I'm interested to see if that lowers the daily evaporation rate---being as the original set up sent the tank water down a foot-deep well in freefall. On the rink, not so good a day...We had really great ice and only one instructor and a student on the ice, besides Sharon, her choreographer, Jane, and Joan. In all this emptiness, I decided to do my largest 'tight' pattern, a crossover figure 8 across the dots in mid-ice. I swear, with all that room to work in, I came around for my final pass through the pattern, and here's the instructor with kid nearly in my path. Do I keep going and complete my figure, or abort it and start it all over? She's stopped. I go ahead. But the kid decides to go anyway, gets right into my track, and I start to dodge. At this moment the instructor intervenes to save her student, as she is ethos-bound to do, and that cuts off my maneuvering room. All this in two blinks of the eye. The kid falls; I fall on the kid; the instructor falls on me, and the poor kid is getting sat on---I arch my back to get my weight off him, and threw something in my back. The kid's crying; the instructor is trying to figure if either of us is hurt, and I just want room to roll over and get up, which, as it all untangles, I'm able to do. The fall was nothing. The kid was more scared than hurt, even considering. But as I skated off I had a tightness in my side which began to be a muscle spasm traveling to my back. Darn, darn, darn. I got off the ice half an hour early, and we went to lunch with Sharon, who's almost out of her old job and is trying to do the mountain of paperwork to get all this accomplished. She came over, and that was when we got the refractometer, to admire the aquarium; and Jane, bless her, had hit the house before we got there and created neatness in what must have been a whirling storm of house-cleaning. The tree is down. The ornaments are ready to go back to storage. Hurrah!
Date: 2/3/06. Friday. 51203. The back continues to spasm, and I got very little sleep. I ran Jane to the rink, and then went and got a fish thermometer, because I've noticed the tank rock turning white where it had been pinkish purple with coralline algae. Coral bleaching is a temperature problem. So I got same, drove home, discovered the confounded heater had run amok and raised the tank temperature from the desired 80 F to 86 or higher. No wonder we're having trouble. So I promptly lowered it, then drove back to the rink to get Jane and Sharon and Joan: we're going to do a lunch to celebrate Sharon's change of jobs. We did. But the back was very sore, very, very sore, with, by evening, a cascading set of spasms that were just murder. Well, we got a prescription, and I got some relief. As of this writing, it's not perfect, and the combination of muscle relaxant and painkiller makes me stupider than dirt, and I can't complete my reading---knitting Joan's other leg-warmer is about the height of my ability right now, but at least it's not feeling like a red-hot poker hitting my back. I should be fine by Monday skate.
Date: 2/4/06. Saturday. 51203. I absolutely can't work. I'm on muscle relaxants and heavy duty Tylenol, and I just sit and stare at the fish tank when I'm vertical. I wouldn't dare try to work. The back spasms keep wanting to chain from one muscle to the next across my back, and all this from a silly move trying to shift my weight. Ah, well, they say some really bad back pains come from things like reaching for a corn flakes box. This is living proof. I've had some kinks in my back in my life, but this is the absolute worst, mostly because it doesn't stay put, and you can't figure out where it's going next.
Date: 2/5/06. Sunday. 51203. Again with the muscle relaxants. It's now stopped chain-reacting, and has settled down to the original spot it hurt. I'm still staring at the fish tank. I have one creative puzzle to solve: the confounded sump has started leaking, and the leak is mostly because the system accumulates huge bubbles that blurp up in the sump to blow the lid off and shoot water two inches into the air. This constitutes a leak. It most often happens just after I've fed the imaginary fish (see above: no, I'm not on too much painkiller) and I can't figure why. I got a heavy paperweight and fastened down the warped plastic lid on the north end of the sump, but it's still blowing water through the seam. I called the chap who's to take care of this and he's baffled. I said never mind coming over: I'll figure it, and I will, sooner or later. At least I'm convinced it's not the flanged gasket in the main line, which could have blown all the water out of the system.
Date: 2/6/06. Monday. 51203. Well, I took to the ice, if gingerly: I'm still feeling the effects of a weekend on slow-me-down type medications, and the whole arena wants to tilt a bit after a turn. Or maybe I'm leaning...who knows? We dropped by the fish place and I tried to find out what our problem is, which confirms what I thought: a certain black tray is restricting water flow and increasing bubbles, and that's coming out. We'll see. No Sharon this week. She's off at her new job. We have Dawn. I did get Joan's legwarmers done, and she professes that, yes, they're warm. I'm still not getting any work done, because I'm still woozy.
Date: 2/7/06. Tuesday. 50292. A little erasing, a little outlining. I'm starting to get my balance again in all senses. And I had a fairly good lesson today. Yes, we do have to do the back cross part of the figure eight pattern. I thought so. Piece of cake on the right foot, a nightmare on the left, which means work, work, work. I've developed the counter to my forward cross exercise, which is left foot cross to right foot cross, every other step, going backward. This helps me balance both sides equally, and it is helping. The tank bubbles have diminished to an occasional problem, but it's still leaking. The slight growth of hair algae has created a lawn on the white sand.
Date: 2/8/06. Wednesday. 51382. And still better. The back has stopped being sore. And I went down to the fish store with another question, and some water just in case; it tested clean of nitrates, so we acquired about 8 new snails, some fairly large, and about 4 tiny hermits. They've started munching away, and we've set the sewing-lights where, of all things, they diminish the bubbles, and ergo stop the leak in the system. Go figure. If there aren't huge airbubbles blurping up through the pipes, the water stays quiet and doesn't blow out through the lid seams. Here's hoping.
Date: 2/9/06. Thursday. 51382. Well, lucky me, a dental appointment. Half my mouth deadened and sensitive teeth when it wore off. So we had chili over spaghetti for supper, which was about the good point of the day. We both stayed home from skating, and I was just getting over the last wooziness. Re the tank: if there was one thing that could screw up---it had to be the temperature. Tank temp dropped to 75 last night: we keep the place really cold, and my tidying up the sump after all the furor moved the heater up in the water, so the reading was off. I brought it back up where it belongs, and hope that constitutes the last adventure for our poor reef residents: another reason for starting slowly---getting all the mistakes made before you have fragile life in there. Tried some new knitting, but I'm going to re-ball it: it's too thick for the gauge 6 needles. I need something heavier to make the knitting lighter and airier. I'm also disgusted that it's taking so much yarn for so little fabric. Airier should help that, too.
Date: 2/10/06. Friday. 52061. Up and at the rink early, and a decent skate: I practiced nothing but left to right and right to left switches, then lefthand three turns until I'm dizzy. But I was falling behind my skate, which is the source of the error. If I get up with it, lead with my chin, so to speak, it smooths out just marvelously. We watched the Olympic ceremonies, and we had a call from Sharon, who's home from her week of orientation. So it's a good week. But my teeth still ache, and I've put on a pound trying not to eat anything to exacerbate that problem. Couldn't be that spoonful of Dove ice cream Jane brought in, nah. It was just one spoonful. Now, the hungries it generated two hours later---well, that's another matter.
Date: 2/11/06. Saturday. 52689. Still having some trouble regulating the temperature in the tank, but we're better than we were: we have such cold nights it has to cope with, and ordinary days, if a little cool. I'm sure anxious for our tank lid to get here. Every day I have to add half a gallon of water due to evaporation, and I hope that will get better when we get the system complete and the light kit on. A little work, a little Olympics-watching: I never tire of it, no matter the sport---the aesthetics of watching the best in the world do their thing, whatever it is, is a rare gift of the modern age. And sitting and remembering the big downhill race in the fog, with Killy and Klemmer, as best we can recall---I don't follow skiing in ordinary years, but that was something for the ages. I love watching the halfpipe. It's amazing. For skating, much as I support our team---I think this is Plushenko's year, if the flu doesn't get him, and probably Slutskaya's, and I have great hopes for Belbin and Agusto. Slutskaya has been such a survivor---to have been through what she has healthwise, and to compete as she does---amazing, amazing woman. And I'm rooting for Apolo Ohno and the luge contender who's in her fifties; and I secretly love watching curling, that most arcane of winter sports. (Ever seen Men with Brooms? It's a wonderful little film.) I support all the USA teams, but I love whoever does something marvelous and gutsy from the depth of what's human. And I hope for all the athletes that they just have the skate, race, jump or run of their lives. I love this season.
Date: 2/12/06. Sunday. 53921. Work in the morning, and watching the Olympics. I dropped by the fish store and got a few shells for the hermits, who are having shell fights---you may know the crabs live in the cast-off shells of snails and such, and must have larger shells as they grow, or they start doing in snails to get them. So I dropped some in, and one of the scarlet hermits immediately latched onto one 4 times the size of his current one. There's a creature with ambition. So far the temperature has remained my biggest problem. And Sharon came over and we were bad at the local Boston's.
Date: 2/13/06. Monday. 51428. Erasing. Ah, me. I wish this were going faster. But a lot of the erasure is not mistakes, it's peeling outline out of the text. Skating, well, The rink was very bad ice today: they're remodeling the gym to put in yet one more hockey locker room, and the carpenters are in and out of our dressing room (below), not to mention how the ice doesn't get the double pass it needs after the big guys have been playing hockey, because staff is busy with the carpenters. I did discover that there's a really good reason I took up skating instead of skiing: the chatter of bad ice just kills my knees, which start hurting after about twenty minutes of racketing over this stuff. The ice we normally skate on is smooth, and I almost never have knee fatigue. Jane's ankle is really hurting, and she just wasn't real happy. Sharon came over in the evening, and we had supper at Boston's (again). The temperatures have really plummeted, and are due to get worse. On the other hand, I've come up with a fair fix for the tank temperature flux: a pool blanket---otherwise known as floating bubble wrap. The lid won't fit on the sump because of the complex of hoses and the skimmer unit that have to come up out of the sump, and this means the water surface at its warmest is exposed to air. So the floating bubble wrap stops heat from escaping at least down there, and won't, I hope, cause any particular trouble with the cycles. And speaking of cycles, we now have hair algae, that horrid feathery green stuff that grows 2 inches a night. "It's sort of pretty," Sharon observes. This means Sharon has never had to pick it out of the filter teeth. I was horrid---I outright forgot to get Valentine's presents or cards for anyone, and Jane surprised me with this most wonderfully obnoxious singing monster in a box: it's red, it has hearts for ears, it waves its feet and plays a really mind-freaking little ditty over, and over, and over again. The cats are not impressed.
Date: 2/14/06. Tuesday. 51372. And more erasing. It's Valentine's. And the best I can give anyone is good wishes. Jane stayed home from the rink to let her ankle recover: it was all over-use that did it to her, no twist or sprain, but it's aggravated every time she takes the ice. //And I had the most marvelous surprise: a very kind reader sent me, c/o the rink, a copy of Kurt Browning's A is for Axel, a children's book, autographed and personalized, no less. It was the envy of the rink, and everyone had to have a look at it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It will be treasured. Kurt Browning is one of my very favorite skaters.// I still have no Valentine's gifts for anyone. Sharon visited, and had supper with us, but had to leave a little early. Her husband Steve was called out of town, so at least we could hang out and enjoy the evening and the Olympics. The cold has hit, along with a stiff wind. Really, really cold. But the tank temperature has stabilized.
Date: 2/15/06. Wednesday. 52495. Tax day: I had to make a run to the bank, which was just horrid: one person manning the drive up window, five lanes, and someone with a problem ahead of me. //We had a tank adventure: the hair algae blocked the teeth of the water reservoir, and water level showed low in the sump. I added water to the sump, thinking dry air had really sucked it up in evaporation, but nay! It was just higher in the tank reservoir than should have been. I noted that water had risen in the tank to overflow the brim of the black top border, ominous: we don't want the living room flooded. I saw the algae strands coating the intake teeth on the in-tank reservoir, and I decided to get the ladder, lean above both tank and light, stick my hand in and clean it off. We tried a broom handle, but it couldn't dislodge it. So I got a toothbrush, rinsed it really well, but you can't have chemicals of any sort in the tank; Jane suggested I use a new one, and we started to, but it turned out to have color-changing bristles to advise you when it's been used too long---read: chemicals of some sort, be it only dye. So we went back to the old one, used really hot water, and cleaned it before putting it in the tank---which, incidentally, I wouldn't do with corals in there, because just the oil off your hands can harm them. I got onto the ladder. To stop the water ripples on the surface so I could see what I was doing, Jane cut off the water pump, and the water level sank in the reservoir, but all of a sudden she let out a yell: the situation with the blockage had let water pile up in the reservoir, and when the pump went off it sank down to the sump and overflowed it. A frantic moving of the ladder, restart of the pump, and a scurry after towels. We sopped one huge bath towel with the saltwater overflow, I got a measuring cup and drew off 7 cups of water from the sump, using one of my casserole dishes as a dump, and then I got up on the ladder again, Jane stopped the pump, this time without overflow, and I toothbrushed the reservoir teeth clean. A restart proved the sump now excessively low, so in went more water (fresh) and this meant the salt balance could be off, so out with the salt meter and a water test. Miraculously, it was ok, but I tested it more than once to be sure. The system is now running cleanly. And I decided that we had to do something about the hair algae but I'm suspicious that I shouldn't pull it wholesale, as it may contain a chemical the system will need in its cycles. It being the day the fish store opens for the week, I had hopes today that the aquarium lid would have come in, but no go: they say it will be here on the 27th. But anent the hair algae I did add one new creature, a fighting conch. This sounds aggressive, but really it's a humble little sand-cleaner. The 'fighting' name comes from its mating behavior. It has taken after the hair algae with great vigor. I got a few more empty snail shells and two more hermits have laid claim to them and run off.
Date: 2/16/06. Thursday. 53822. Jane stayed home today to nurse the ankle, and I had a lesson with Joan, who pointed out a major flaw in my 3 turn, and put me to work fixing something I've been doing wrong for a year. Rats. But when I do get it fixed, it will prevent my falling off onto the other foot: I just need to heave my weight more toward the non-free foot, get the free foot tucked up tight against the other heel, and hold that position as I come out of the turn. It will fix so many things when I do get it nailed, but this is a bit hard. And I had to leave the ice early to get to my hair appointment. I skipped lunch in favor of picking up more yarn---I want to knit a ballet sweater for the ice. I love the yarn (Lion Moonlight Mohair, Rainbow Falls). The little potato shaped conch is scarfing up the roots of the algae, but it frees it to float, and to get into the teeth again: I had to clear it twice more, but this time I'm not being faked into adding water until I've cleared the algae off. The tank is looking better. I wish I had four of the little creatures, but they tell me they get much bigger fairly fast. Right now he's the size of the end of a woman's thumb, and can get several times that size. I did tell Jane that I wasn't cooking tonight, so we went to Boston's. And when we got to the apartment I decided to bring my skating bag up, that has the crash pads (which mustn't freeze) and my outfit in it, along with one expensive skein of the yarn. Well, the wind was blowing a gale and the windchill was -15 in the dark. We got out of the car on our return, and some fool drove past, flung a lit cigarette at us, which scattered sparks all over: I paused to stamp out the butt, cursing the jerk the while, and while I was thus distracted, the bag I hadn't properly gripped opened up and dumped all my gear into the darkened parking lot. Jane hadn't seen it: she was on her way up to get out of the wind. But my yarn literally blew away, a whole skein of expensive yarn, whisk, gone with the wind. I was too busy to get which car the fool had driven, or I swear I'd have gone to the manager. But a fool is always a fool and I'm sure he'll do something else. Then I'll be on his case. We got in, watched the Olympics, and caved: it was a day.
Date: 2/17/06. Friday. 53733. Jane decided to try to skate today, and actually things went pretty well, give or take that we had a new person on the concession stand and I don't think she got the lid on my latte down tight. The cup caved in when I picked it up and exploded hot latte all over me right as I was trying to leave the stand, so I got to skate in wet tights, I soaked the laces of my right boot in latte, and that will have to be washed and relaced; the tights and the outfit were wet when I went onto the ice---glug. It was pretty cold, let me tell you. The impending holiday had brought in a fair number of kids, but pleasant ones---a couple of no-helmet casualties: I wish parents would insist, and protect their kids. One more algae-cleaning in the tank, but it's pretty stable compared to what it was, and the temperature is rock-solid, and the green hair algae is beginning to decline while the pink hard-shell coralline algae is starting to repair the damage caused by the overheating a week ago: it's visibly increased. I decided the skimmer was about as foul as it ought to get, so I cleaned that, and indeed, it's running again. We weren't worth a whole lot today, but at least Jane's ankle is improving.
Date: 2/18/06. Saturday. 54239. Finally, finally, the novel is beginning to move again: I've been kind of stalled since Rustycon (this happens)---and I've finally caught my balance. We spent the whole day working and not doing much else. For brain-rest, I'm continuing with the knitting project. Rainbow Falls is double-thread yarn, which can be difficult in low light: I've made a few glitches, but knitting is forgiving: you can go in later and patch your mistakes. I'm also having to make up part of the pattern: the fact it goes over clothes means I have to be sure the arms fit---my arms are longer than average, and heavier than average, and if you're out there knitting your first sweater, measure your head and the circumference of your arms at the armpit as well as the length from your neckline to the desired hemline and from shoulder seam to cuff. This may require adding or subtracting rows and doing some fudging, but knitting is a matter of thinking as you go: if you suddenly suspect the dimensions aren't right, hold it up to your own body and check it. Your yarn tension or the gauge of your needles affects your garment size, and believe me, knitting a 4" test square (you can recycle it simply by unraveling and reballing the yarn) is mandatory if you want the garment to come out fitting. It actually looks pretty good, but is going to be 'softer' than I planned: my gauge is so large it stretches immensely, but then, this is an action garment, so that's not too bad, as long as it rebounds. Ysabel thinks it's wonderful: it's mohair, very warm, and she's decided the finished back is a great place for a nap.//The tank, meanwhile, continues to be a problem: I still have to climb up on a ladder and tooth-brush off the hair algae that's gotten where it doesn't belong. I've also id'ed those pretty little anemones as rock anemones, also known as aiptasia, a genuine reef pest that I may have to finesse before I can get corals in. The nudibranch (sea slug) berghia verrucicornis (a pretty little pale creature that's done up in ruffles) can be introduced to get rid of the things. I'm going to ask my local shop if they can get them: I don't like buying live creatures off the internet where I can't vet how they were produced or whether they're clean. They do breed in captivity, quite readily. But I'd want to try to get a sustainable level of who-eats-what. I don't mind having the little anemones around, but there has to be balance in the system---and the nudibranchs only eat aiptasia, that anyone has ever figured. Peppermint shrimp, once they've polished off the aiptasia, will go straight for the most similar creature it can find. I also think I may be feeding too much to the 'imaginary fish.' If the tank is running too 'hot' it can encourage blooms of certain species, and aiptasia will eat flake food quite happily. The tank is going on a diet.
Date: 2/19/06. Sunday. 56427. More progress, hurrah. Watched the ice dancing---never have I seen so many people go down in ice dance, of all things, where no one falls. The theory runs that the new judging system is causing people to load their programs with more elements and move fast to get them in, ergo getting tired, careless, or just running out of steam. At least, and thank goodness, no one was seriously hurt. It also looked as if the same costume was making the rounds of the women, in all sorts of colors, but a very similar cut. I heard one news guy get all bothered about how much 'skin' shows, but that's mostly bogus, since this is generally nylon liner you're seeing, and the skaters are generally as covered as an NFL player, at least in terms of fabric; but I do agree some of the bare-back items were pushing it---if one of those plastic straps goes, it could get interesting---besides that I don't think it's that attractive a line. Now, if I had the figure to wear it, sure, I'd think about it, but then I think I'd go for something glittery instead: I love sparklies. I also think the men using color in their costumes is a good thing, and I detest the baggy-pants look, particularly when the fabric flutters as they go down the ice. I don't think costumes should be more noticeable than the skater is, male or female.//One more late-night (I'm not going to bed with the chance the tank could clog up) algae scrape, and I think we're gaining on it. Hilda the Fighting Conch is making a lot of headway, and is showing dark at the edge of her shell as if she might already have started growing, who knows? So far we're seeing white sand and coralline-crusted rocks. Give or take the pesky anemones, which have multiplied and grown unwelcomely large, the xenia is growing and the minature bubble coral and mushrooms are still perking along.
Date: 2/20/06. Monday. 56382. Presidents' Day, and we opted to stay home from the rink...and to cancel our chiropractic appointment, as Jane is absolutely in the throes of finishing this book. Sharon had to go, since she's in the throes of practice before the upcoming competition, but it must have been a wild old time: the ice was apparently packed. The Olympics bring out the youngsters who suddenly have visions of leaping onto the ice and doing triples for starters, and that entrains the parents who haven't skated in, oh, a number of years, and who are more concentrating on not falling down than they are where they're going. So we met up with Sharon after, and had supper, and watched the competitions.
Date: 2/21/06. Tuesday. 56228. It's just one of those set-up sections, in which there's about as much erasure of outline as there is forward progress. Sigh. But I did get the contracts in-house for some more Foreigner books, so readers who like that series may rejoice. Those will get signed and rushed back. And my work on the 3-turn is producing results. Joan is very busy getting Sharon put together for competition, and this time, thanks to the Skating Channel (available online, as a streaming broadcast) we'll get to see her compete. We had lunch at Tomato Street, and Jane discovered a salad (cranberries, strawberries, raspberry dressing, with lettuce and feta) she adores. I can't imagine. But then my favorite salad is Greek: bell peppers, cucumber, tomatoes, feta, and Kalamata olives, with oil and balsamic vinegar and a little salt, no lettuce at all, and that's pretty well a compendium of tastes she doesn't like. We really do not have similar tastes in vegetation.//The tank is doing well, but it's getting time to do a 20 percent water change, which replenishes the minerals. I could do it, but that's what we hire maintenance for: lugging all that water upstairs. We had an adventure with the RODI filter, an unlikely combination of cannisters and plastic tubing (about the size of a canvas tote) that we set on the washing machine and connect on to the plumbing to produce highly filtered water for topping off the evaporation in the tank. Well, it runs slowly, a mere trickle, due to the level of filtration, and I set the kitchen timer for an hour, and went back to work. All of a sudden I heard a loud whack-whack from the hall where the washing closet is, and shut down and ran to see what had happened. Tubes were flying everywhere, spraying water. I looked immediately at the pressure gauge: no pressure at all. I'm mystified. I start replacing tubes into receptacles, but hadn't realized the yellow tube that goes into the washing machine drain had been dislodged and was draining the filter cylinders onto the floor. I grab a towel out of storage to get that advancing tide stopped short of the carpet, and work with the cutoff valve. All of a sudden the pressure shoots up, the tubes again fly about and the pipes themselves shake: aha! there was a water cutoff to the apartment. Now it's back on. But more water has now escaped. I mop and reconnect tubes and try to clean things up as best I can when comes a knock at the door. It's the landlord asking to check us for leaks. I fessed right up, showed him the mess, and he said water was running down the washing closet wall in the apartment downstairs. Rats! But it wasn't quite my fault...the thing had been running fine until they played with water pressure. The landlord was just happy it wasn't a burst pipe, and understood the situation, which was good. It was just bad timing that had me running the filter when the landlord cut the water for a moment. That's not likely to happen again, but at least I'll know what's happening if it does.
Date: 2/22/06. Wednesday. 56892. I hate it when a character falls silent in a scene and you start writing it without him/her/it. You then have to go all the way back through the sequence and make sure that presence is carried throughout. Yes, dear readers, sometimes Homer nods.//Back to the rink again, and Jane has begun to figure that part of her troubles---Sharon identified it as bursitis in the ankle---just might have to do with the unprecedented consumption of milk on the South Beach Diet---milk being a known problem with bursitis. She's going to cut out the milk, and has real hopes that the condition will rapidly better itself. That was cheerful news. We're going to persist with South Beach, but unfortunately Jane seems to be one of those adults that doesn't tolerate milk well at all. I drink a prodigious amount of it with no ill effects, but I'm probably courting the same. I think I'll moderate my own consumption. Two lattes a day, two milk-based diet shakes---that's a quart a day.//I mailed the contracts off, and stopped by the fish store on the way back. The aiptasia (rock anemone) problem is accelerating, and the best solution seemed to be a little nudibranch that eats them exclusively. But the fish store owner says they get lost in the filtering, and he recommended the peppermint shrimp---which have one bad habit: eating a few decorative relatives of aiptasia. But there we are---keeping an ecosystem balanced means introducing a reasonable amount of predation that keeps certain problem species in check, and managing a 52 gallon world is harder than managing a 1000 gallon one in certain ways. You don't want predation to wipe out a segment of the system and then starve---or have it take out something entirely that's good in moderation. And the decorative relative in question (yellow polyps) is almost as bad an aquarium pest as aiptasia anemones: we can forego having it. So shrimp it is. They're entertaining creatures---give or take that one seized a perfectly harmless little Astraea snail, whirled it about in its forelegs, before dashing it four inches off the rock onto the sand floor for the simple reason it wanted the rock it was on. The bewildered snail came out unscathed and crawled up another rock, so I forgive the shrimp. But the largest blackleg hermit ran headon into the (much larger) shrimp, took fright, and spent the next while attacking Hilda the Fighting Conch in hopes of getting her out of her shell, which it hoped to steal in an attempt to present a larger profile to the tank world. Hilda pulled in her eyestalks and mostly ignored the pest, but finally heaved him off with that bucking motion a conch can use, and he wandered off to readjust to a world in which he's not the largest. There are two perfectly good shells the little pest could take, lying empty on the floor, but no, he wants Hilda's. All this on the acquisition of 3 crazed peppermint shrimp.
Date: 2/23/06. Thursday. 58402 My computer is getting worse---the left button on the touchpoint is getting so weak it hardly reacts. This is a major annoyance. I'm trying to ignore it and keep up the pace, but it's difficult. Skating has been kind of iffy---I'm losing weight on this soy shake, but it's pretty hard on the gut, and it's affecting my balance, of all things. And today, after a good skate, I managed to take a fall---grace 'n charm---while trying to get the inside edge 3-turn 'off the wall'. It seemed feasible. Nope. Meanwhile the shrimp aren't eating the confounded aiptasia---but they are annoying them.
Date: 2/24/06. Friday. 58881. I'm trying to relearn the touchpad. I really don't like it. I don't like mice even more. I absolutely can't control a mouse: I've always had a slight tremor in my hands on certain kinds of jobs, and mice just resist fine control: funny thing, that when, say, fencing, I could put my foil tip through a swinging ring with fair accuracy, but I can't hold steady on one of those little X's to close out a program with a mouse. The touchpoint function right now is marginal. I'm just really annoyed at this. But we did have our first lesson with our 'old' coach (she's still in college) Lindsey, who is going to kill me yet. Lindsey is working on her gold level, and her casual stroke is fast, which means when I'm holding onto Lindsey's hand, skating to keep up with her, and approaching a 3-turn, we're moving. But I didn't fall down, and I learned how to connect various elements to approach the waltz jump: forward stroke to a 3-turn to a back crossover, to a step-off, to a waltz-jump. If I could do it totally free in mid-ice, it would look pretty neat.// On the aquarium front, we still haven't lost any aiptasia, either. Humphf.
Date: 2/25/06. Saturday. 58881. One of those days. We gussied up the place, cleared room around the tank, and the chap came to 'clean the tank'. This involved putting an inch-wide pump hose into our small and fragile reef, and sucking out 20 gallons of water, then---and this was the kicker---the chap put said hose with the inflow bang-on down atop the only inhabited rock we own, blew our tiny hammerhead coral away and took a small mushroom with it. I let out a yell. It was too late. Our tank is cloudy from the kicked-up sand, but that will settle. We found the hammerhead, but it could only be floated in a depression in the rock: it detached, and may not attach before it's swept into the filter. I'm just livid. Of all the rocks to set the hose on--- Oh, and then the computer: the left touchpoint key finally died, totally dead. I put in a message to Dell, and really don't look forward to having to mail my computer (and the novel) crosscountry to a repair shop.
Date: 2/26/06. Sunday. 59297. Using the touchpad is just driving me crazy. It's much too close to the edge to use conveniently, and I'm clumsy with it. I've tried working jigsaws online to improve my 'hand', but it's pretty bad, all these same. (Think.com has free online jigsaws for any of you who are thus addicted.) And the hammerhead has utterly disappeared. The tank is still not optimum, and not only that, the temperature of the water the chap put in must be about 60, which jolted my poor tank down ten degrees. I went boiling down to the local fish store, who had recommended the fellow, and fairly well blew off steam, but the owner did inform me I'm running the tank too hot. Well, it is what the fellow said to put the temp at and I've been struggling to get it back up there: 80 degrees. So I cooled down a little---literally---and reduced it to 76. Which I hope will help with the evaporation rate: it's been requiring half a gallon a day topoff. I did get one coral to give me something to watch in lieu of our poor murdered hammerhead---a pale green zooanthid: button polyp. You can go to reefcentral.com and see what they're like, if you're curious. Monday, hopefully, we will get our tank lid in-shop, but we can't pick it up until Wednesday: the shop is closed Monday and Tuesday. I'm nearly done with my sweater---I'm going to have to buy one more skein of yarn.
Date: 2/27/06. Monday. 59297. Back to the rink, and I'm still dizzy in the mornings after that soy shake. It's horrid. I had a pretty wretched skate. But! Good news! I got a call from Dell's local service person and they're going to replace the part tomorrow on-site, no charge. I'm delighted. I'll get my computer back and Bren's story will advance. The aiptasia are two fewer. This is good. And we are really hoping our lid is in so we can run the main metal halide light---our creatures have been surviving under actinic (blue light) and two sewing lamps that are supposed to be full spectrum but don't have near the intensity we need. The metal halide is up there, but we daren't turn it on until we can get it 9 inches above the water, and the lid is essential to doing that.
Date: 2/28/06. Tuesday. 59297. Well, I couldn't skate: I'd bolted a shake right before we left, and here we were, all kitted up in two layers of tights, crash pads, and tutus, and I had to tell Jane I just couldn't: my balance was shot. She's suffering from bursitis from the milk in the aforesaid shakes, which she has quit, and so we both just went grocery shopping instead and went home to wait for the repairman. Unhappily, however, when he did arrive, he discovered Dell had sent him the wrong part: I don't need the keyboard replaced: I need the palm rest replaced. I knew that. I'd tried to make that clear in my note to Dell. But he's getting the correct part for tomorrow. I'm impressed. I'm finishing the last bit on my sweater. It feels awfully heavy. It was supposed to cost 60 dollars worth of yarn. I fear it's run closer to 90. And I'm having misgivings now that I'm stitching parts together.
Date: 3/1/06. Wednesday. 60003. Today I had the shake early in the morning, but it still made me dizzy. I took a Sudafed, and that helped---it helped, and I managed to take another fall. I was trying out 3-turns on the line, and caught a toe-pick trying to do the stepoff with my free foot in a bad position. Jane didn't even notice: she was down the ice doing her on-the-line workout, and off in her Japanese rock music, so I had no sympathy at all. Joan arrived to give us a lesson, and I told her what had happened. She gave me actual instruction in that maneuver, and found what I'd done: seems I need to get the free-foot up behind the heel of the skating foot, park it there, toe facing outward, until I complete the arc, then step off, which means your foot is angled right for the step. No toe-pick. Beautiful. We then got to practicing other things that require a backward edge, and all of a sudden, once I'd gotten the feeling of doing it right, I was finding that feeling more and more often, on the runout for the outside 3-turn, on the runout for the inside 3, on the backward edges themselves, and on the waltz 8: it was helping absolutely everything, and has improved the inside 3 so much that I'm beginning to do it with ease---still on-the-wall, but flowing free of the wall on the runout, which is what I need to do it free. Joan also repaid my leg-warmers with a couple of knitted scarves, very pretty, which we wore on the rink. And we dashed home to wait for the Dell repairman. In the meanwhile Jane finished her book---this is quite a day! And the repairman fixed my computer in short order, and we went down to the fish store, via a stop at the storeroom to dump off the Christmas tree (I also picked up my knitting machine) to find our tank lid was in, and won't require any modification to accept the light. We went home, via a celebratory dinner, and turned on the light, and it was beautiful, streaming brilliance down into the tank and shooting those wonderful ripples of light that water gets...just lovely. We had also gotten an emerald crab, a nice little creature that will eat the grape caulerpa that is inching its way along the rock. Our snails may have reproduced: there are what look like small snails here and there. We can only run the metal halide light 2 hours a day at first, until our corals 'suntan' and are capable of sustaining 4, then 8 hours of it. Four more hours will be under the purplish actinic, under which the parts of the corals that contain symbiotic algaes glow phosphorescent green in an otherwise dim tank. And while watching tv, I got my sweater fully put together, tried it on---and it was, unlike the rest of the day, a disaster. It's way, way too large. So...there's nothing for it but to unravel the whole sweater, recover the yarn---I'm going to run a similar pattern up on the knitting machine, which is a lot more precise, and where I have some skill at controlling the fit. But I'm not that out of sorts. The knitting is a hobby, something to exercise my hands and brain, and picking it apart is exercise too.
Date: 3/2/06. Thursday. 60003. I'd so hoped to make some progress today, now that the touchpoint is back. But I'm not feeling too well. I've got a cough---I fear I'm coming down with something nasty. I did lay off the shake, and went on the ice with a clear head, but Sharon had been there early---she's off for Sectionals today, and practicing like crazy: she's doing an interpretive routine, and she'd been skating quite a lot before we got there, on pretty marginal ice. They had the lights up full, but for some reason, finding 'death cookies' on that ice before your skate does was just impossible this morning. There were hockey trenches, death cookies galore, and unexplained little ice-ridges that just made life too interesting. Jane hurt her ankle again crashing through a trench or a cookie, I don't know which, and finding a patch of ice that wasn't in Sharon's practice path that didn't have a cookie on it was kind of hunt and peck. Sharon had to leave: we hope to catch her on the Skating Channel---they'll web-stream the competition: she's skating Friday night at about 6:30 Pacific, for those of you who subscribe to that service. But Jane and I called it quits early: we were getting sore from the lumps and bumps, and the good practice I'd hoped to have today just didn't happen. We went home, then decided to go to the fish store and get some corals: we had several spoken for. I'll have to write down the names of them, but they're about an inch to two inches in size, except a Capricornis fragment (green with fluorescent purple edges) that is about 3 inches: that grows like cabbage leaves; there's a small pink thing that will grow like a bush, rounded; and one green candy cane coral that has three heads---kind of like your aunt's satin pillow, in triplicate; and two staghorn types, a lime green one and a deep purple one. That, with the mint green zooanthid that lives in a scallop shell. All of these are raised in tanks, not taken from the ocean, and our lime green and the Cap both come from our shop-owner's tank: the corals have to be trimmed to keep them tank-sized, and the clippings are sold as 'frags' to other tank-keepers, so the colony creatures do achieve the size they do in the ocean: they just do it in multiple tanks scattered across the country. I'm told our lime-green staghorn type, which will have a tree shape, will be at the growing-to-the-surface must-trim stage sooner than the rest, growing about an inch a month. Neat. We saw the new Pride and Prejudice, and regret to report it doesn't touch the BBC version. If you didn't know the story, you'd have a hard time figuring what's going on, or at least getting the right idea about what's going on: I can't imagine what someone thinks who's not seen more expanded versions. Say that the BBC version takes hours and hours to do what this movie jams into a chaotic two hours, and the BBC version is richer, much richer. It also has a sense of humor this only rarely touches. Sigh. We'd had such hopes.
Date: 3/3/06. Friday. 60003. Sicker than the proverbial dog. Horrid, rib-cracking cough and a headache that won't quit. This is nasty stuff. I don't remember too much from Friday or Saturday, except I stayed in bed most of the day. We were going to watch Sharon on tv, but the Skating Channel put Pacific Sectionals on delay for a few days. The good news is, she won her section!
Date: 3/4/06. Saturday. 60003. Ditto Friday. I'm not a happy camper. I'd so wanted to get work done, and here I am falling further behind. Sigh.
Date: 3/5/06. Sunday. 60003. And ditto Friday again, except that I did haul myself out and down to the fish store, figuring that if we have corals, we'd better have test kits. So I hauled out my old chem lab skills and managed to get the magnesium test wrong by, oh, about 1400 points. Fortunately I didn't act on it: I went back to the store and asked was it possible. Turned out I was missing a reducing tube from the test kit and the test was off. Possibly I was holding it upside down. As weird as my head is, it's possible. But everything is in parameters, once I retested, so all's well there. I'm not touching the manuscript. I don't know what planet I'm on.
Date: 3/6/06. Monday. 60003. Still sick. Jane's showing signs of it. This is not good. We both stayed home to try to clean up the house since I'm too stupid to write and too dizzy to skate, and Jane just flagged about midway. So did I. Climbing stairs with boxes was about all I could do. I started coughing again.
Date: 3/7/06. Tuesday. 60003. I stare at the screen. I try. Nothing happens. If you try to write when the brain doesn't work, you'll only make a mess. I'll go faster later. I'm just zoned. Staring at the fish tank is about the level my brain is capable of. Corals, you know, move very slowly.
Date: 3/8/06. Wednesday. 60003. I can't work. Can't think. Anything I try seems to be mired down deep in no-energy and no-brains. I tried to skate for about 10 minutes before concluding I was going to kill myself if I kept going. Went home and went to bed.
Date: 3/9/06. Thursday. 60298. Had a lesson with Lindsey---which was a good thing, because without Lindsey holding me upright, I think I'd have fallen down. We went out to lunch and called that food for the day: I can't cook when I'm like this, because I can't taste anything or smell anything, and it won't be worth eating.
Date: 3/10/06. Friday. 61293. A little progress, but Jane is definite down with it. She did get the accounts into balance, or at least enough to realize the bank hadn't been sending us our statements for months. We're getting that fixed. We're just neither one of us too bright. We skated, and left way early, and mostly have spent the afternoons comatose.
Date: 3/11/06. Saturday. 62572. Sharon came over...haven't had a chance to hang out in a while. But she's risking the crud in associating with us...never mind she deals with sick people all day long. She says there's nothing to be done for this particular bug, just ride it out. Glug.
Date: 3/12/06. Sunday. 62572. Cough, cough, cough. I can't sleep. I'm just disgusted. And I'm still futzing with the tank---you have to change chemistry slowly, and this is being slow, for sure.
Date: 3/13/06. Monday. 62838. I'm getting really tired of this stuff. Nothing seems to touch it. Everyone at the rink has caught it. I can't think, I can't work, I'm taking too much medication to be worth much. I'm working hard on the tank chemistry, about all I can do, and meanwhile we had a hermit crab spawn. She'd been sitting still for days, tucked under a coral head, and when I checked things out with the flashlight at night (a good habit, to be sure what creeps out of the rocks that you never see by day) she lifted up her shell and released about 50 little crablets into the night. Most will disappear down the sump, but some might make it.
Date: 3/14/06. Tuesday. 63029. I'm just not worth shooting. Cough is wretched. I can't sleep. I just sit and stare at the screen. We went to skate and had not-so-good ice. Between Jane's condition and mine, we just packed it in after 45 minutes and went home. Jane caved in and I just sat and stared, trying to work, but getting very little done.
Date: 3/15/06. Wednesday. 63029. Finally. The Bengay patch is getting the congestion, and I can breathe again. I slept late---but at least I slept, without the horrid cough. I got up, got the water tests run, and for the first time in days, I don't have to add anything, just let the chemistry go on settling. I was still not at my best: writing didn't happen; and when we got to the rink today I discovered I'd left the bag that holds a lot of our stuff. We improvised: Jane had on her #2 outfit and enough sweaters she looked like an independent grunge fashion statement. I had worn my outfit from home, but had left the leg warmers, which I missed for a while, then heated up. Skating, for a change, went super well: I found my balance again, and I'm able to do the waltz jump just a little way from the wall, and the 3-turn is getting so effortless. Sharon is in the ghastly stage of this stuff and skated bravely on: we headed over to Tomato Street after, and went home. Jane is now on the upswing from the crud, and we have so much to catch up on it feels as if the ceiling will fall next.
Date: 3/16/06. Thursday. 61208. Cough, cough and cough. We didn't go skating. Both of us had the headache that killed the dinosaurs, and we just stayed in and tried to work. I tossed outline and Jane edited, and then we both admitted we had headaches and became totally useless. I think we watched anime on telly. That's how bad it was.
Date: 3/17/06. Friday. 63382. St. Patrick's Day. Well, skating went a bit better today. But Jane has done something to her ankle. And this being St. Patrick's Day, in my reputedly Irish grandmother's honor, we went to an Irish pub. I have one thing I insist on: corned beef and cabbage, which they had, and pretty good, too. They also had pipers, and, well, if there's piping, Jane can't keep from dancing. She killed her ankle. This is just what she needs. We went home and watched anime again.
Date: 3/18/06. Saturday. 64582. I'm trying to attack the outline, dumping a bit, writing a bit. I still feel horrid, and Jane feels worse. Her ankle is bruised on both sides. She's icing it and taking painkillers, which don't touch it. This doesn't look good. Sharon's back. We'd like her to take a look at this.
Date: 3/19/06. Sunday. 63291. Sharon thinks Jane's ankle probably blew out a blood vessel: ice and elevation and compression is good. I'm trying to get a little done. And I don't know whether the image may work or not: we'll see. But our tank is starting to look like a tank. It takes a lot of futzing at this stage of its life. Constant water testing. I learned my lab techniques on an actually serious project: the original planarian-flipping DNA study; I find I can at least read a test tube and avoid contaminating my kit. I'm working on accounts and trying to catch up. I feel as if the sky is falling, in that department: I just can't get the things in order...ah. I just got the tank picture to display. You can see what frags are: they're little fragments of larger corals, like clippings, that are ways of sharing one single coral across the whole world, and letting it grow in a thousand tanks unto multiple generations. The reason for the purple rocks: that's not illusion: that's coralline algae, which encrusts the rocks. It's a pretty rotten picture: I'll do better as I learn to handle the camera with these intense lights. It's a 52 gallon. You can't see either of our fish: they're hiding back in the cave. But trust me, there are 2 fish.
Oh, and we watched installment one of the new disaster series on Discovery. Appalling. No Texan or Oklahoman would be as stupid as the family that's portrayed. What mistakes do they make? Oh, getting out of the car during a grapefruit-sized hailstorm. Driving off in the car to escape a tornado, when a church steeple has clearly just impaled the roof...it's not a time for a Sunday drive. The hero, who is assistant emergency preparedness director for Dallas supposedly, deserts his post to run off in the car to pick up his family who are sitting under a highway overpass, and instead of taking his family to cover in any nearby public building, this assistant director of emergency preparedness doesn't pick up any of the other people who are stranded, just drives home in the tornado, oh---and their cellphones work perfectly while the heart of Dallas is being flattened. This is beyond bad science: it's a compendium of ways to get yourself killed. I don't think I've ever seen a public information program so absolutely dangerous. Do not, if you are caught in any size tornado, do any of these things. Take cover in a church, school, or office building basement. Go down a manhole. Lie flat in a ditch. Get into your bathtub and cover up. Do not get under an underpass, do not drive a car, and do not stand at the windows to watch it.
Date: 3/21/06. Tuesday. 65837. Trying to get my outline fixed up---and make forward progress. Ah, me. The accounts may get done for January just in time to need the end-of-fiscal-year stuff for February, and April 15th is coming. I have got to get Jane to tackle this: I'm not the hand with numbers that she is, the math-physics major, bless her. Skating actually went pretty well---I did get the waltz jump to behave, and began to get my feet under me again. Jane's ankle has improved. At least I'm no longer dizzy. But the cedars must have come in bloom, that or they're spraying fields down in the Palouse again, because neither one of us can wake up. Today Sharon wanted to go to lunch, but we had to get on to the chiropractic appointment we put off yesterday, and had lunch/supper down there, then headed home through rain. We're still muzzy. I'm going to have to go straight from this horrid cough to the allergy prevention sprays---then maybe I can operate with a whole brain. That would be nice. Tomorrow, firm, we're going to lunch with Sharon, who has to go to work afterward. Sharon's practicing hard for adult Nationals. We'd wanted to go, but there's no way we're ready to compete, and we're just too snowed with work at the moment to be able to take the time off. We've got Westercon coming up: we have to be there---our publisher is going to be there, and it's a rare chance to sit and chat. So that's a must-do. We're just scrambling constantly to make up for time lost.
Date: 3/22/06. Wednesday. 65837. Back to the ice. I keep trying to use that to gig myself into motion---the sheer joy of skating is an adrenaline rush, usually, but even that's become a chore. Just getting out of bed is. I'm officially in the dumps. We've got to get this place back in order, and Jane, bless her, knocked off her work and went into the office and started moving things around. It's looking good in there. I'm feeling better already.
Date: 3/23/06. Thursday. 63121. We're still cleaning and shelving and straightening things up. We've decided officially that we have to get this place in order before it depresses both of us.
Date: 3/24/06. Friday. 64382. Outline problems continue. And taxes. And the need for getting things to the bank and the post office. I'm so tired. The crud I've had is really weighing on my creativity and my energy level. I wish I had something more cheerful to write. The positive news is that we're cleaning things up. This is motion. This is progress, of the sort we can do when other things aren't working. And we'll feel better for it when it's done.
Date: 3/25/06. Saturday. 65127. A sterling day. I had a minor inspiration. I got half a new sentence written. I can't believe how hard it's been. I went to the fish store, got a few corals---this is commiseratory shopping, not a good thing, but the corals are nice. I can say at least the tank is going well. And all of a sudden I know why that next sentence won't come. I know what my problem is. The outline was wrong, and I have to fix it.
Date: 3/26/06. Sunday. 65123. Outline, outline, outline. I hate having outline problems. But that's where you fix things before you have worse problems. We hung out with Sharon, who's putting things together, lastminute costuming changes---she's skating a comedy routine to Green Acres...and we surprised her with Lisa the Green Acres bear. This has been a secret even from these pages, because Sharon reads them, but we went to Molly, who makes the costumes for the Lilac City skaters, and got scraps of Sharon's costume fabric from her. We got a little bear. We got a straw hat. We made a costume just like hers for the bear and gave her to Sharon at her good-luck dinner. This has been an ongoing secret for weeks. Sharon was duly astonished, and of course our fabric was completely authentic!
Date: 3/27/06. Monday. 65841. Went to skate, took Sharon to the airport---wish we were going to compete, but maybe next year. We're going to be taking care of Kate and Emily, two worthy kitties. Actually it was more complicated than that this morning---the gory details: The tank's given me a little trouble. I decided maybe it wasn't skimming enough to take care of the red algae that's beginning a small patch in the midst of my white sand. So, dressed in tutu and all, and in the energetic spirit of getting the place cleaned up, I think---hey, I'll just clean the skimmer, just a quick brushout. Now I've never cleaned the skimmer before. This is new technology, but if you've ever handled an aquarium filter, you get the picture. This requires removing the collection cup and undoing a small nylon screw and running the cleaning brush down the tube. How hard could this be? I have ten minutes before we have to leave the house to reach the rink. So I get down under the cabinet, get the screwdriver, pull the cup, unscrew the screw---have I turned off the tank switch? No. The pump is still running. There are two pumps, the main, which has to keep going, and the skimmer pump. The latter fountains like Vesuvius. I battle back past the curved cabinet door to reach the off switch. I haven't turned off the autotop switch, either, and yet a third pump has cut on, pumping fresh water into my sump. Here I am dripping in fishy sewage, trying to figure out which pump to grab first, and the phone rings. I yank plugs, grab the phone, and it's Larry, who sharpens everyone's skates, and who was going to skate today, too, but his car broke down. At this point Jane walked in to find out if I was ready to go, and I just shoved the phone at her and dived back into my undertank sewer. In skating tutu. You've got to get the full picture. The nylon screw had gone down into the works of the skimmer. It's unique and would probably have to be special ordered and the fish can't live without the skimmer. I bounce up and grab a bowl from the kitchen and start shoving at hoses and cords to get enough room to tip the skimmer over and dump contents into the bowl. My screw! I brush out the skimmer, get the screw back in, get the skimmer back in the sump and get everything running again, except for the fresh water that's now made it to the salt tank. So I have to test that. We're now running late, and the call from Larry was asking us to bring some sharpened skates to the rink for one of the youngsters, since his car had blown up. So I scrub off, and we head for Larry's, get the skates, get to the rink, do our thing, and get Sharon to the plane in one piece...whew! Getting home, via a stop at Petco to get a salinity tester, the low tech version, I test everything, and my tank salinity is dubious: my hightech refractometer, the accuracy of which I'd doubted before the accident, now doesn't agree with the float meter, and both are alarming. I start adding salt, hoping I'm not killing the shrimp, which hate salinity changes. But if they're not dead already, this isn't worse. The tank finally reads ok by one meter, but not the other. And it's Monday and the fish store won't open until Wednesday. Only thing you can do at this juncture is watch your corals' behavior.
Date: 3/28/06. Tuesday. 65841. Lesson with Joan. I really don't feel like doing much of anything: my head is deep in story, which isn't there yet, and has to be thought through, and skating today was just so depressing: Joan scored me hard on my strike-off, which requires correction, but I'm not sure I can do it with that hip problem I've had since last Bloomsday race. Nothing for it, however. It's the old fencing posture, essentially. (I used to be a competitive fencer.) I tell myself I can still do this, but it hurts like blazes, and the hip threatens to short out from under me and dump me hard at the very moment I step down on that foot from that angle. I must have practiced that skate-off fifty times or more after the lesson. I didn't fall. I didn't hurt as much as I thought I would. The tank is at least still marginally ok. We're gaining ground. And Jane got my music transferred from my [legitimate] CD to mp3, so I can skate to it, if I remember to bring the player home and load it.
Date: 3/29/06. Wednesday. 65841. Let's face it. I'm depressed for reasons which have nothing to do with the skating reverse, and everything to do with my outline not working. That's why the work hasn't happening. That's why it's taken weeks to get a few sentences. It's also tax time and accounting and the house is still a mess---we're working on that, however. And these are the times when the pro in professional writer has to take over and you get your rear in gear, locate the reasons for your depression, and do something about it. I attacked the skating problem over and over and over today while I mulled over the fix for the writing---and you know, that hip pulled into line and quit hurting and quit shorting out. That's worth celebrating. I'm actually doing this thing. I'm actually in line. I can actually step on my right foot and be sure it's going to be there. That's excellent. I celebrated by us going to the fish store and getting things tested: the refractometer was .001 off. This is actually a significant amount. But it was off in an acceptable direction, so we got ourselves a beautiful little female mandarin dragonette and a blue chromis. These are words you can search online and find pictures of. The mandarin eats copepods, and we hope we have enough crawling about the tank. If not, we'll have to supplement. I love mandarins. They're our favorite fish, and they're not easy to keep because of their diet. I got my new tunes loaded on the player: Pirates of the Caribbean. That ought to inject a little energy into my skating.b
Date: 3/30/06. Thursday. 65837. All of a sudden I see what I need to do with the book. A flash of light. A crystal clear moment. A next sentence. You cannot imagine how it is to be essentially on the same sentence for a week and more, when all you can do is erase, and try again. It's such a relief. And I had a pretty good skating lesson today: I'm beginning to get the hang of this step-off, and my hip is still improved. I'm very happy about that---Joan was very happy with the progress I'd made. I think we were both down Tuesday, because if it was a physical disability I was up against, it might not be quick to fix---or might be an eternally limiting thing. But the simple exercise of skating in good body alignment pulled my back into order and there we are, a miracle fix. Yes, it still aches sometimes, but it doesn't short out on me. I tested out the new music today, and I have to be careful: that's really way energetic. But it's fun. After skating, Jane went over to see to Emily and Kate and I went to the beauty parlor to get my hair done, which takes a while. The fish are doing well, and eating. The tank is behaving. Sharon called: Texas air is sometimes not kind to people with allergies, and she was hardly able to talk. This is entirely ominous for tomorrow.
Date: 3/31/06. Friday. 66372. Raining a lot. And I'm just making a little bit of headway. I now have half a scene. We're still taking care of Emily and Kate...I got a brief glimpse of Emily today. She shot past like a multicolored streak---a lovely kitty, but not inclined to trust strangers. Defender of the house. We skated early, but it's coming up on spring break and the rink is filling up with youngsters. Those of us who want to skate in more complex patterns than circles around the rink are now looking for hours other than main public skate. We watched some of the Adult Nationals on the Figure Skating Channel (an online service) and Sharon called us to say she was sicker than a dog and due to skate tonight--- She was telling herself she just had to hold together for a minute and 43 seconds, but it wasn't going to be easy. Well, we got a call later---all things aside, she'd won bronze in her division, Lisa the bear made it to the platform, and Sharon had done it, bless her. Cheers for Sharon! She was going back to the hotel to fall over.
Date: 4/01/06. Saturday. 68636. Finally, finally making some progress. I'm still not feeling totally spiff...it's the accounting. It's the housecleaning. It's the fact I need to change out 10% of the tank water. Like the scarecrow, I wish I had a brain. Things are starting into bloom, and that doesn't help at all. But things are slowly improving. I wish I could work a miracle and be caught up, but it's slow slogging to do it right---and the good part is that I'm getting the energy it takes to do it.
Date: 4/02/06. Sunday. 68636. Well, I've been trying to get the accounting done. I wish the GEO would do a reckoning of how much US productivity is wasted trying to do the taxes---I try. I'm no mathematician. Even with a computer I can't balance my accounts. I keep meticulous records. I try to pay on schedule. But I can't read half the forms I'm sent by various entities to tell me how much of what is deductible. I hate this time of year. And all this trying to get it in shape to send to the accountant. Do you notice the word count increasing today? No. I've spent the whole day on it. Well, except for the fish tank fiasco. I very carefully got my salt level up where it ought to be---can't figure out why it's falling. It never should. It physically can't. Well, did I mention getting an auto topoff unit to maintain my water level by injecting fresh water into the mix? Well, I've been filling the bucket. Turns out the fill line on the bucket is higher than the top level in the sump where the water goes. Can you say siphon? It's been adding excess fresh water to my salt tank every time I add fresh water to the source bucket. It did it while I was watching it. Can you say stupid tank owner? And that's why my salt level has been off. I'd just gotten my water perfect---and it blew it. At least now I know.
Date:4/03/06. Monday. 68636. And speaking of taxes, we got back from the rink to find a slip for a certified letter from the IRS. This is never good news. I'm just so frazzled I can't see straight. And I can't get the letter until tomorrow. Having fought my way out of one funk into creativity, here goes another one. I'm just so disgusted. I hate April, I hate April, I hate April. On the positive side, we got Sharon back. Her plane was two hours late. But she's home. We had a card and some champagne and some strawberries in her fridge waiting for her, and her kitties were certainly glad to see her. We even got to pet the mysterious Emily, who is a doll.
Date: 4/04/06. Tuesday. 68828. Well, up at 8 to go get the dratted letter. And it's for a hundred dollar tax I swear I've already paid back in December. I'm going to have to get into records and see if I got it off. At least that's all it is. I tried to work. I'm not getting much of anywhere. We didn't even go skating. That's how snowed we both are. Sharon came over for supper and we went out to Boston's, which was a pleasant closer to the evening: Jane and I watched the second Mariners' game, and it was a good one, hard-fought to the last. We won.
Date: 4/05/06. Wednesday. 69513. Again, we opted not to go skating. The stuff is just piled too deep around here. The tank is now stable again. We're expecting a shipment from Fedex, of special food for our mandarin. And I've just got to make some progress on this book. My other editor emailed me: they want an epilogue on Fortress, which is going to be possible, but it's just one more thing on my mind at a time when I haven't got much mind to spare. I just need about three other me's to keep up with it all---one to do accounting, one to write this book, one to write the other one...
Date: 4/06/06. Thursday. 69513. They've lost the mandarin food. I've been back and forth with the company that sells it, and UPS can't find our apartment. It's only one of the more conspicuous installations in the Valley...down the street from their offices. Sigh. They swear it will be there tomorrow.
Date: 4/07/06. Friday. 69513. Well, the stuff got here, and it was still viable. That's a wonder. We made a compact, Jane and I, that we are going to do some cleanup, and Jane has been really good—she can't lift and carry things with her ankle the way it is, but it's just piling deeper. I don't want to cook: my kitchen is a wreck, and a lot of it is my fishy stuff. I've got to jerk my head around and get out of this funk. At least Jane has agreed to go with the company accountant this year for the taxes: neither one of us can see straight up, and this is a good thing. We got all of that in the mail. We still haven't mailed our Christmas letter. But my agent tells me the check will be here soon---getting paid every three years makes some interesting times when the thing is late.
Date: 4/08/06. Saturday. 69513. Cleaning. Trying to do the accounts. And more cleaning. Jane has reorganized the office. All my drawers are where I have to get up and walk around an island to get at them for pens, for stamps and return labels (I can't find those), for checks (I accidentally ran a raft of them through the printer as printout), and other items, but d' you know, I don't care. The office is clean and neat, and all I have to do is get a file box to put the 2005 stuff into.
Date: 4/09/06. Sunday. 69513. I think I must have played Solitaire all day. I don't know where the time went. To my credit, I'm thinking—I'm thinking a lot about the ending. I want this to be right.
Date: 4/10/06. Monday. 69513. Neither one of us is as organized as we'd like. We're just fried, both of us. Toast. Jane's still limping. I'm in over my head with cleanup and trying to write. I'm looking, I'm reading, but words aren't happening. We're back and forth to New York with phone calls, stuff that needs doing.
Date: 4/11/06. Tuesday. 69513. We skated—Jane's trying to get her ankle back in shape. And I'm trying to get going on the outline, but nothing's happening. I think I'm just tired, really tired. But I think we've got everything in order for the upcoming trip—the whole office staff of DAW is going to be at the convention and we're setting up meetings and such.
Date: 4/12/06. Wednesday. 69513. Packing, packing. We didn't skate today: we're just too snowed. I've been running around trying to stock the tank, but at least we have put in copepods for the mandarin and firefish and goby, and a big wad of caulerpa for the rabbit. Jane wants me to print off a copy of the manuscript to read, but I'm not sure I'm ready: I'm working on the outline of the ending, and outlining and editing (reading) are two different mental baskets. I'm not sure I can do it. But DAW got us one of our due checks on their own initiative, bless them: things are a little less squeaky.
Date: 4/13/06. Thursday. 69513. Well, we're packed; I did a little last moment testing of the fish tank, tried to put a c-clamp on to absolutely hold the topoff hose on the pump, but it was the wrong size. I carefully seated it, dried off, and we hit the door, cats and all. I really hope that hose holds. We picked up Sharon at her place, up in Mead, and then took out on the road, arriving at the convention locale, at least: we're staying with Chip. We went on over to the convention, picked up papers, got our schedules. I've brought the pirate outfit, augmented by Sharon, who got me a parrot and other gear...I'll wear that Sunday.
Date: 4/14/06. Friday. 69513. A couple of panels—we did a little panel-trading, but they weren't bad panels at all. We had supper with Betsy Wollheim of DAW, in the hotel restaurant, and generally a good day. We're so much occupied by business at this con that Sharon has had to entertain herself, but she's been a trouper about it. We got a call in to our accountant; our tax papers didn't get there until the very last moment—so we're going to have to have an extension, for sure.
Date: 4/15/06. Saturday. 69513. I had not too much to do today. We did have a very nice business session with Betsy Wollheim, and then we went looking for Sharon, who had gone to the Radcon blog party (nothing to do with newsletters, dear friends: fannish blog is a fruit punch with absolutely every spare bottle of alcohol in the bar dumped into it, and you do not want to drink a second glass of it, or let anyone keep filling yours up.) We feared the worst, but found her upright and sober—some weren't—and headed out. But just as we passed the pirates, Jane heard the strains of Rasputin—and ran in to dance. I sent Sharon in after her, figuring I didn't want to do a public argument; but Sharon fell into the circle, having had, one supposes, just enough blog—and thank goodness it was near the end. Jane wrenched her ankle, after all that rehab.
Date: 4/16/06. Easter Sunday. 69513. And since we have to be off-campus so to say, no pirate gear. I have to look businesslike. We arranged to be the transport for a visit to the Science Fiction Museum, with Betsy Wollheim, Peter Stampfel, Sheila and Marcia Gilbert, and Michael and Audrey Whelan, among others, after one adventure with a dead car battery (not ours.) We were cramped but we made it to the museum, which is right near the Space Needle. I had rather mixed feelings about it. I stood in front of the wall of hall of famers, and I must confessed got a little misty and glum and had to leave the group for a while—so many of my early friends in this business are gone. I miss them, I really do. And seeing a couple of my own things in there—well, I'm not ready to be in a museum, I think. I had the same reaction I did when I visited the Cape, and saw so much gathering dust in a museum—I felt ever so much better when we got to areas which are alive with research. And I was with a group of very live friends this time, which is good. We went to a house owned by a chap inspired by Seattle's Old Curiosity Shop, which is a must-see on the waterfront. The ultimate collector, I'll tell you. Afterward I suggested we go to my favorite restaurant, Ivar's, on the wharf, since we were close, and I had some hope Ivar's might be open. It was, and they came through really well—we might as well have bought the whole dessert tray. We're stuffed, needless to say.
Date: 4/17/06. Monday. 69513. The long drive home, the three of us, after a nice breakfast with Jane's brother Chip. We're just exhausted. I drove. I was supposed to be reading, but I'm just not mentally ready for that. And when we got it, of course the first thing I checked was the tank. Remember how I'd made a last moment attempt to get the hose c-clamped, and I'd unplugged the autotopoff? Well, I'd forgotten to plug it back in. The tank had lost 3 gallons to evaporation, but the good news is—it didn't kill anything. The rabbit had eaten all the caulerpa, the little 'grapes' had gathered on the skimmer pump intake, and blocked the skimmer, which had to be restarted—so for a tank gaining salinity by the hour and with no protein skimming to remove the waste, it wasn't too bad.
Date: 4/18/06. Tuesday. 72171. I just sat around, too exhausted to work much. And trying to get the tank back in shape. The check was supposed to arrive—it didn't. A call to my agent proved it was just after Easter and the mail hadn't gone. Sigh. But it's now in the mail. I tried feeding the corals—and the darned rabbit attacked them to get the shrimp. I'm not pleased.
Date: 4/19/06. Wednesday. 72171. The check arrived. Our lives are saved. This represents a contract for 3 more Foreigner novels, if you're curious, and the on-signing advance. Now we can pay off all the credit cards and quit wincing. I hate paying interest. I hate it extremely. This means I'm going to have to get the accounts up to date. Meanwhile the rabbit's bad behavior continues. This fish is on thin ice with me. I'm suspecting him of all sorts of things. Jane is still laid up with her ankle.
Date: 4/20/06. Thursday. 72282. I went skating solo today---it's hard to go without Jane, just not as much fun. But I had a pretty good session with Joan, and Joan has decided it's time for me to start on the toe loop—which is sort of two waltz jumps pasted together: this will be my first full-revolution jump: for those of you who watch skating but who can't recognize one jump from another, this is the bouncy one, which involves two pick-ins. I'm also improving my posture on the edges—getting way back on the heel where appropriate. This would have been terrifying a few months ago, but with the new boots and blades, it's much easier, and Joan actually is pleased with the improvement. It requires a really deep knee bend. On the financial front, I wanted to get to the bank and get the checks in, but I was too disorganized. I just skated and got home, and Jane very nicely suggested we go to Scotty's so I don't have to cook. I liked that idea. Meanwhile I have had it with the rabbitfish. He just attacked a coral. Twice. I have now gotten very suspicious as to why certain of my corals are only extending polyps after dark (when he's asleep) and why our shrimp are hiding, and the aiptasia (rock anemones) they're supposed to eat are growing, and why our yellow watchman is in hiding. I think Elmer the Rabbit has to go. Several attempts with the baited net have proven futile. He is of course poisonous, so it's dangerous to put your hand in the tank to lift out rocks, because if you get jabbed, well, it's not good. Worse than a fiddleback. About equivalent to a lionfish. With tissue necrosis. Say I'm not anxious to get jabbed in a finger. And the house net went down. I spent forever on the phone with Dell, but I got through to a guy who knows housenets. We're informed our router is probably too old for my modem, and since we have another router that we just hadn't hooked up yet, Jane says this will be no problem. I hope it fixes it. This machine has dropped out of the net over and over again.
Date: 4/21/06. Friday. 72282. Well, I got to the rink, got to Sharon's to take care of the cats (Emily actually let me scratch her ear), got to the bank to deposit the checks, got to the fish store to get material for catching that rabbitfish, whom I now suspect of snailicide as well as other crimes. This consists of over-the-elbow gloves to move a rock safely (with leather gloves underneath) and enough grape caulerpa to tempt him. I don't know if I can wait until Monday, when our ordered fish-trap arrives. But our house net is now fixed. Jane got the router replaced. And she shoveled through a lot of the post-trip and post-Christmas debris while I was gone. This is good.
Date: 4/22/06. Saturday. 72749. What a day—already. First of all, Jane signed Sharon and me up to go to Nordstrom's for some kind of makeover event. I let myself be talked into it. We were supposed to be there at 8 AM. On Saturday. In the downtown mall. We paid for this privilege, 10.00 a head. Sharon called, and fell back into bed. Jane opted not to go until afternoon. I decided it would be more fun to try to fill up the topoff water for the tank (hooking up the water ro/di filter on the washing machine) and went to try to pay off the bills that have been stacking up. On a whim, I decided I'd better go back and set the timer in case I was distracted. Good thing. When Jane moved the ro/di unit over to get it out of her way, the waste line had come out of the chute, and we had a quarter inch of water in our washing machine closet. I got so mad I slammed my fist at a door (it's turning black and the door isn't working right) and we worked together to move the washer and dryer into the hall—at this point it got funny, because we found several of the previous occupant's sweaters sopped underneath the machine. Now we're curious what size she was and whether we can wash them up into any usefulness. Then Jane had to climb out of a 2 1/2 by 2 foot pit behind the dryer by going over the top and under the overhead shelf. Without figure skating, I don't think she could have done it. And I hope she hasn't hurt her ankle again. We'll go to that d----d makeover thing this afternoon but nobody is touching my face, or I'll go homicidal. I don't like being made up by somebody else anyway and I'm certainly not in the mood today. Jane thinks she'll talk me into it. Ha! The only thing she's talking me into is lunch at the Sawtooth Grill, in the mall. Later: I didn't get made-up. I bought a little cosmetic---helping Jane get one of those so-called "freebies" Lancome gives out. (They're not really free if you could live without the makeup.)The fish trap arrived, moreover, ahead of schedule, and I went rabbit-fishing, as if I haven't had enough water today.
Date: 4/23/06. Sunday. 72749 Well, the fish trap caught one hermit and a nassarius snail. We moved rock to go after that fish. This totally destroyed our cave and archway. We'll rebuild that. We took the rabbit back to the store and came back with---Lord help us!---more corals and a small rainfordi goby, who is very cute, very tiny. I also got some peppermint shrimp and some snails to replace the ones the rabbit ate...about a hundred dollars worth. We spent no little while rebuilding. But all the fish are much happier with the rabbit out of the tank. We're seeing the yellow watchman for the first time since the rabbit arrived. I've decided I'm going to build a refugium, and then I saw a perfect one online, and ordered it.
Date: 4/24/06. Monday. 72749 Jane's still nursing the ankle, but I opted to go skating anyway. I'm working on my edges, which is a lot of meticulous toing and froing down the line. Sharon and I went out to lunch---turns out Jane had been trying to call me to get me to come get her for lunch, so my name is mud, sort of. We apologized. I did bring her something, but it turned out they put mushrooms on it, so that was a bust: she doesn't go for mushrooms on pizza. And I just fell over. I'm not getting writing done. I've got to get my head straightened out and get this problem solved with the book. All this messing-about is because I'm at a stuck spot and not making progress.
Date: 4/25/06. Tuesday. 72749. Again, I went skating and Jane stayed home with her ankle propped up. She did make me promise if Sharon and I went to lunch we'd come and get her, and we did---but there was no time to party, really. Sharon's as time-short as we are. I tried to straighten things up and get basic cleaning done. I know when I'm in a funk like this I can only make matters worse with the book, so I'm not even trying on that front today, just trying to keep my head above water.
Date: 4/26/06. Wednesday. 72749. I went skating solo again, and worked on edges. Although I'm beginning to get the 'feel' of the back outside edge. I actually did a few on my own, with no help from Joan. Sharon was too busy for lunch. And when I got home, the refugium came, and I plunged (pardon pun) right into trying to set it up. Sigh. It's huge. It obstructs the light. It could fall on the corals. It has to go. Meanwhile the arch fell, and dinged one of my corals. I'm so irritated. I did get it back without having to bother Jane with it, but what a pain, and it won't go back the way she had it. And I still have the refugium problem, and a mandarin that needs the copepods I want to grow in it, so I went out and bought a little Topfin 1 1/2 gallon tank to use as an adjunct to the sump, connected by siphons. And in the meanwhile I spotted a deeply discounted aquarium stand that can double as a credenza, that will hide the ugly topoff bucket and look like furniture. It's light oak and can sit beside the tank and be a windowseat for the cats, plus holding our tv electronics. Not bad. But when I tried to get my homebuilt refugium to work, due to the cramped quarters, I couldn't get the large requisite siphon to take. I managed to swallow some tank water---not good. Disgusting. I decided to apply the remedy of a legendary lab student in Oklahoma who pipetted a serious biotoxin and inhaled---she chased it with Scotch and lived. Well, I had the remedy in the cabinet, so I swilled Scotch, which did not improve my attempts to get the d---ned siphon to work. It went on until dinner time, and we went out to eat---I wasn't about to cook.
Date: 4/27/06. Thursday. 73248. I did not die of the tank bacteria. I don't even have too bad a hangover, but that's after swilling water all night long, and I certainly deserved one. I opted not to skate today, hoping to get some meaningful writing done and above all else get the accounting, get the boxes carried downstairs---but Jane ambushed me with a request to go to the local fastfood Chinese restaurant, and after that my plan to ferry all those cursed boxes down to storage disappeared in well-fed torpor. The accounting got partially done. It awaits more work either tomorrow or Sunday. Some writing. I'm just at one of those pesky revising stages. And after yesterday's fiasco with the refugium I went to the fish store looking for plumbing that might help, and advice. Turns out my plan won't work, but they sold me a pre-made refugium that I could connect. I went home in great delight---and the darned stand won't accommodate it, the guy who assembled our sump put it in backwards, so the wrong pipes go in the right slots, and because we had to buy such an undersized sump because of our wedge cabinet, the waterlevel in the sump has to be low to accommodate the huge downflow box that exists in the tank above (if the power goes out, the whole downflow contents arrive in the sump). So, mournfully, I took the refugium back to the store, and went on with my plans to turn the Topfin flimsy into a copepod tank, on its own, and just dip copepods across---if they can live in there. I got a little writing done. I got the bills paid, or at least the cards paid off.
Date: 4/28/06. Friday. 74540. Again---no skating today. The ice has generally been bad on Fridays, and I have so much work to do...accounting, and the tank, and the cleaning... I'm still trying to get the salt balance right for a copepod farm tank, in that little Topfin 1 1/2 gallon. It's always amazing how much salt goes in. And I'm working toward a solution on the book. Things are looking better. I'm feeling better. Jane's ankle is still ice and heat and rest, and I'm trying to keep the apartment something like neat. We have gotten some of the boxes down. You might think it's a wonderful thing to receive free books in the mail, but when they come in boxes of the same title that (because you wrote it) you've already read, and they're every edition, and piling up---and you're on the third floor---it's a major navigation hazard.
Date: 4/29/06. Saturday. 75283. Painful progress, but progress. We did get the fish tank settled, however: Jane maintains she has a more sensitive touch for balancing things than I do, and I don't argue: she's the stitcher in the household: my thread skills extend mostly to weaving, which---well, never mind. Jane tried to balance the arch, and this took down my pretty little montipora forest: can't get that back the way it was---you never can get specimens where they were after a rock move---and the montipora we put up again fell over later and I still had to reconstitute them. But, the good news, I think she got it stable this time. We live in earthquake country, and that arch rock was so precariously balanced (over two fragile corals) that a passing snail could have tipped it. Jane works a kind of magic with her rock placements, and I have some hope this one will last. I'm working, working. I wish I would have one of those bursts of brilliance---they're not quite forthcoming this week. Went out to eat: this gives us food for tomorrow. I really want to get the household back on schedule. Jane hopes she may be able to skate by Monday. And I intend to be in a better frame of mine. This has been a long train of woe-is-me entries, and I really don't have any problems that I can't solve. Onward and upward! Here's to a better week!
Date: 4/30/06. Sunday. 75432. Well, but I did get some accounting done. And I'm attacking some of the round-tuits. The place is neater. The tank hasn't exploded. I'm trying to get my environment organized, and that means making some calls and cancelling subscriptions and finding out what the addresses are on others---I don't know why this takes an extraordinary amount of moral fortitude for me. I can face down armed bullies in a school hallway, but I absolutely cannot take things back to stores and ask for a refund. It just seems so impolite. And then...and then...Jane's computer glitched. The Qosmio, the Toshiba, the one they replaced her previous lemon with---just went blank-screen. Fortunately she's backed up, but this is not good with a capital NG. Nobody's getting any more work done while Jane tries to get that sorted out. And we're scrambling around trying to find disks, and I'm of the opinion we should just get a Dell and hang that cursed machine. To my utter astonishment Jane agreed with me, and we went online to Dell's "refurbished" emporium, and found a nice little Latitude D510 that has a big hard drive (80m), doesn't have the dvd rw she wanted, but has wireless card and all, and is a tough little business computer that weighs a pound less than mine. Plus there's some possibility our components may be cross-usable, from my D810. At any rate, I'm scrambling---once you've put a computer into your 'basket' it stays there for only 15 minutes while you make up your mind and 'examine' its specifics. It's genuine Intel Pentium, it's fast, it's got 512, and I'm online in 2 places, trying to look up that machine (which is still sold) and trying to decide if we want to pull the trigger on this deal. They offered a 3 year in-office repair guarantee (for a fee) and if they're willing to do that (and we've had experience with this service, which is good)---do it, we decided. So we bought it, and ordered it next-day. They promise to notify us, all this computers talking to computers, tomorrow.
Date: 5/01/06. Monday. 75283. Mayday. Jane decided to take the ice again, and that was good: it's more fun with both of us there. Sharon was there. And we had to scramble to get Jane's Toshi delivered to repair, and then hope we got a notification about that computer. Zip. Now I'm annoyed. We paid for next-day. We haven't even gotten a tracking number. But we get Jane's computer, the Toshi, to the shop, and back again, for her to try to pull stuff off of---naturally it started right up---in the shop. It failed soon after we got it home.
Date: 5/2/06. Tuesday. 75283. Crack of dawn, Jane's new Dell arrived. Hurray! It's here before we ever got the tracking number, it's light, it works, and it's guaranteed. Guess what? Qosmios of Jane's model are having so much trouble Toshiba has "extended" the warranty period. At least they're doing that much. We went skating. We were to have a lesson...and I'm doing some neat work---doing a runout backward with extension, trying to work up to foot-in-front backward on exit from the 3-turn. But it feels great. And then...and then... I was talking to Jane. Sharon was there. Gary (another rink friend) had shown up. Likewise a mother-daughter team. Conversations. I executed a 3-turn and headed for the wall, in mid conversation, thinking I'd just reach out and grab the wall. My crazy vision rarely betrays me. But I have no depth perception. And I misjudged it by at least 8 inches, maybe more. Jane says I made a Superman dive. I thought I must have hit a pick. In point of fact, what happened was that the wall wasn't where I saw it. I went down, did a face plant against the hockey penalty box rail, hit my cheekbone, hit my eyebrow, and then hit both knees on the ice. I pretty well folded up, not anxious to move until I'd assessed whether the cheekbone was fractured and whether my knees were. By this time I had a whole audience: Sharon, a Nurse Practitioner, Gary, a nurse, and several assorted spectators. Gary, Jane, and Sharon got me to my feet and over to the benches: I wasn't walking much, and I was a bit nauseated. Helmet and pads and all, I missed every one of them. Joan showed up about then to give us our lesson---well, that wasn't happening. Everyone kept fussing over my eye, which was swelling, and the eye had gone half a brilliant blood red, but the real pain was my knees. So after a while of lying there and absorbing ice bags, I decided it was time to get back to the locker room. I had an escort. And after I had gotten the skates off, it still hurt...mostly my knees hurt. I had ice for the eye. So we hied ourselves home after that, and I decided I probably won't skate tomorrow.
Date: 5/3/06. Wedneday. 75283. I'm not getting any writing done, and about this time, of course, the copyedits for Fortress of Ice show up. I can hardly read, let alone check punctuation. And I hurt. A lot. I did go to the rink with Jane, but I limped about the store across the street buying groceries, mostly, and that was that. I haven't done much but scarf down painkillers and ice things. The copyedits, fortunately, were done by one of the best copyeditors in New York, and while we don't always agree, he's a reasonable and educated c/e, that I respect. So that's not the headache it could be. Speaking of headaches...
Date: 5/04/06. Thursday. 75283. I'm making some progress on the copyedits. I did go to the rink again, but went up to run an errand, and back again, and finally just sat in the rink coffeebar, swilling latte and sympathy from passers-by. I hate not being on the ice, but if I fell on these knees again I think I'd pass out. The eye is suitably technicolor. Jane's making good progress with the new Dell: it has some quirks she's trying to learn; and the Qosmio still won't turn on. I made a small run to the fish store, deciding to surprise Jane with a Sea Swirl, an automated rotating pump nozzle that will send the current widely cycling over our tank, to make it more like the ocean. What I got with it to connect it wouldn't work, so I called the chap who put our tank together. Couldn't get him. I'd collected ten gallons of salt water for a water change, no mean feat to get all that balanced and just so, and what do I do but drop a test vial into one of the two buckets, containing chemical residue. And Jane then knocked a chef's knife off the counter and into the same bucket...nature must be trying to tell me something about that bucket. In the meanwhile I'd gotten onto the ladder, limp and all, and gotten a pliers and gotten the former nozzle off, and the new device on, but it blew off immediately. I tried calling the guy again, no soap. And then I remembered I had some hose left over from the Great Siphon Incident, in the trash. I fished it out, cut it to size, jammed it on the recalcitrant little fasteners, got the c-clamp out of the topoff bucket (it hadn't fit that hose, the day of the Big Topoff Failure, but it fit this) and in a gesture of triumph, I reattached that wretched Sea Swirl and it worked. The corals are already looking happy at being blown about randomly, not just always on one side. I'm brilliant.
Date:5/05/06. Friday. 75283. Still working. I didn't go to the rink today. I read copyedits. The hoses have all held. My knees at least are turning mildly technicolor and don't hurt as much. Jane went to take the Qosmio back to CompUSA, and came back reporting she needed the setup disks, which we absolutely couldn't find. Then did. I informed her it was Cinco de Mayo and there was a lovely Mexican restaurant down the highway. So we went, drank huge Margaritas (Don Julio is good tequila) and repaired home to watch a really bad baseball game. Meanwhile we'd had a scramble because FTD had delivered early the bouquet I'd ordered for my mum for Mother's Day, and set it on the porch where she couldn't get it. A great deal of calling back and forth got her advised it was out there, but there was no way on Earth she could lift it. She just, being my mum, collected a single blossom that had broken off, took her box of chocolates, and went inside to enjoy those, an attitude I ever so appreciate. I'm hoping my brother got those flowers inside for her.
Date: 5/06/06. Saturday. 75283. Still reading copyedits. And done. Now I have to write the ending bit that my editor wants: I think it's a great idea; and I'll do that. I'm experimenting with the crockpot I got a week ago, and am attempting corned beef and cabbage, with nutmeg, the recipe we like when we go to the Giant's Causeway in Renton. I finished off the water change myself, since there's still no word from the chap I called---with Jane's help controlling the hoses. It's getting too warm out. Temperatures hit the 70's and I'm already wishing for winter back. Sigh. Never content. Two of our neighbors are outside moving their bookcases into a pickup truck, noisily. Perhaps we're getting to the end of semester and we'll lose some of the young fellows from the neighboring technical school. Got to go see whether that corned beef is soup, yet.
Date: 5/07/06. Sunday. 75283. And now I'm working on that ending bit. Got a page done---well, two pages, counting I work in singlespace. It's working. It feels good. The corned beef wasn't bad last night. But this is Bloomsday, which, in Spokane, means the citywide race/festival. We didn't race this year, not after what Jane did to her knee last year, and the fact she pulled a muscle Friday and I'm still nursing two bruised knees, so badly dinged it still takes ice to get to sleep. So we went to pick Sharon up: she raced, and did well, too. Jane was a little out of sorts about missing the race this year---Lord! that woman is competitive: not that she wants to; it's that she can't, today. That just rankles. So we tried to get to Anthony's, but we were too late for that, so we went off to the Outback and had pretty good stuff. Fair dinkum meal and all that. I like the Outback. I don't think either of us is going to skate tomorrow. That right knee is particularly sore.
Date: 5/08/06 Monday. 75283. Still working on that scene. No count on that, but going along. We did stay home from skating---even Sharon did. She placed 75th in her age group (out of thousands, that's beyond good!) She used to run track, so she's got the stride. And she had to get her kitty Emily to the vet for a checkup, and we're at home being good and writing. It's an overcast, coolish day---I treasure those, and wish we'd get just one more little snow. I wish I'd had it in me to get to the rink today, but if I fell the way those knees feel today, I think I'd die of shock. It's the rest of the corned beef for supper. Nothing too inspirational.
Date: 5/09/06 Tuesday. 75283. Well, back to routine, as much as possible. I look like heck and the knee hurts, but not too badly. I got some shopping done, so I'm capable of cooking---not that I have the energy at the moment.
Date: 5/10/06 Wednesday. 75283. Working on the scene. Skating went fairly well, all things considered. We had lunch with Sharon, had no energy, particularly: allergies are awful. I'm not at my most mentally sharp. There have been fires here in the Valley: that never helps. Got to feel sorry for the people whose stuff it is.
Date: 5/11/06 Thursday. 75283. I finished the scene. Thank goodness. Now I can mail the whole c/e and scene back. I have until the 19th, and I'm never late on these things. But I want to think about it before I send the scene off. And I'm anxious to get back to Bren and make that word count rise, thank you. Jane had a lesson with Lindsey today, but I was just too fried: the knee is still sore and I'm having to compromise exercise patterns to keep from turning to that side. After that, we took out for a much-needed visit to Dr. Mike, our chiropractor, who is appalled: my face frightens small children right now, thanks to the black eye, which just looks lovely if you have dark hair and wear a dark sweater---most of my after skating stuff is black, because it gets thrown around on the locker room carpet and generally gets treated badly. It's an unhappy combination with the face at the moment. People had as well cross to the other side of the street. We came home and just fell over.
Date: 5/12/06 Friday. 75283. Well, we tried to get the day started. We ran up to feed Sharon and Steve's kitties, but Steve had made it home, so that was a U-turn back to the rink, and I just didn't have it. In this district, once the farmers set out in a period of rainless weather to spray the surrounding fields, most living things go stupid and lethargic. I got onto the ice, came within an ace of falling four times inside thirty minutes, and finally told Jane I had to get off before I killed myself. My ears are bubbling and stuffy, my balance is shot, and I just plain failed to pick-in on a waltz jump and nearly blitzed the knee I'd already hurt, so that was that...let me tell you, forget to pick, and your foot skids, but not just skids: it power-skids, and you have a split-second (literally) to save yourself from a nasty fall. That effort really hurt, and that was when I knew I'd better pack it in for the day. We went up to Sears to get a mattress for Jane---the Aerobed she's favored for several years sprang a leak, the replacement leaks, and she decided that was that: she's getting a real mattress. So that was the day. We had lunch at a wretched bar we don't intend to go back to, and came home and tried to do something creative. Tomorrow, we have resolved that we are doing spring cleaning: things are going to be pitched or stored, period, and I am going to get the corporate taxes done. Meanwhile Purina Mills has a granary fire going a few miles away, just what the over-charged air needs, my eyes are stinging---just lovely. They say it's a silo full of cornmeal that's just smouldering and the fire crew can't quite figure out what to do about it. I am, however, on the verge of reform. We're going to clean up the house, I'm going to update the blog directly, rather than saving up the post for a few days, and I'm going to improve my attitude, thank you. No more moping about, never mind the burning cornmeal.
Date: 5/13/06 Saturday. 75283. The big clean. I worked on the scene Harper wants, and the prologue Harper now wants (just got that e-mail), and the notes for what needs to go where on Fortress. I'm happy with it, but I want to let it perk a while. Meanwhile we launched into office-cleaning and house-cleaning, and now Jane's ankle is well enough she can carry things. I went in and did the corporate tax reports (we're on a fiscal year, and Monday is our deadline) and of course the Intuit program now swears it can't give me anything if I don't install the upgrade I bought last year---procrastination will always bite you when you least want it. So I installed the cursed program off the disk I had had in the file cabinet for a year, and we got that done. Mostly. I got all the credit cards paid off, and confirmed to be paid off, which meant a lot of phone calling and waiting in queue, my absolutely favorite thing, and talking to robots, which is not all we sf writers dreamed it could be, I'll tell you. When I walked out of the office, however, there was wonderful order in the living room, and things had been disappearing out of the hall. Jane and I practically did a Snoopy-dance.
Date: 5/14/06 Sunday. 75283. Still doing the prologue, and dithering around about the closing lines for the scene. But I'm going to make deadline. I'm trying still to get the rest of the tax stuff organized, and we brought up a bunch of sunsetted corporate files and started shredding---it's so liberating! I love shredding old records. And wincing at things I bought I didn't need. By evening I did at least a look at the Bren files, and thought I'd like to get started, but it's time to print the Fortress files out and get everything boxed.
Date: 5/15/06 Monday. 75481. A little work on the Bren file, trying to get that story booted back up in my head: it's so hard---the only thing I can do is start a rolling edit from the beginning, sort of like reading with my hands on the keys. And we went to the post office and got boxes mailed, as many as we could carry. I want to spend one more day looking at the Harper files before sending them. We went skating---I was hopeless. I kept blowing things I could do before the fall: my eye still looks awful, and for no reason at all, my feet start going out from under me. After about thirty minutes and three times nearly killing myself, I excused myself off the ice and went to go shopping across the street---got some necessaries I've been meaning to get, some things to eat, for one thing---ChiChi's has put out their taco stuffing in the meat department: that was a nice find. I went back, had a latte, collected Jane, and we have to come back later this evening to get some pictures of the new staff for the rink bulletin board, when we can catch the new instructors at a session.
Date: 5/16/06 Tuesday. 75832. Again, a little work. We hit the rink---I had my first lesson from Joan in a long time, and that kept me from falling over. I now know what I'm doing wrong---Jane noticed it: I'm not bending my knees as much as I should, and that means I'm doing advanced moves on a beginner stance, and that's why I'm tripping over my own feet. So I want to get back and get my knees bent properly, and recover my balance. I can't believe I can't do a decent 3-turn. Jane had a good skate. Skated so hard she had to bring her skates home to dry out on the back porch---which is possible, because the outside temperatures are a gruesome 90 degrees. I hate heat. I hates it I hates it I hates it. But we got to the post office, got the Harper materials mailed, so they'll get there in time, and then we went and had supper at Scotty's. We'd earned it.
Date: 5/17/06 Wednesday. 76203. And off and running on the Bren file. We got ourselves gathered up, kitted up, and got to the rink---and Jane had left her skates baking on the back deck. So we sighed and drove home. The cottonwood is in bloom and neither of us has a brain today. When we got in the car this morning, the windshield was covered with yellow dust: pollen; the car was covered with it; it ran in ripples as the car gathered speed. And cottonwood fluff stands in white clouds wherever one of those trees grows. I tell you, I based Cyteen's woolwood on that vegetable. I'm so entirely stupid from allergens and allergy medications I'm not making as much progress as I'd like. Oh, and when we were coming back? This black Ford is sitting in the main go-ahead lane of a huge 6-lane intersection. We're behind it. Trucks behind me. And the light changes. The black Ford sits. And sits. "Honk," says Jane. I honk. Loud, long, twice. No action. No movement from the driver. Behind us, trucks are pulling out and around. Finally we get our chance, just as the light, a long one, goes red again. We look over at the black Ford. The driver, a middle aged, thinnish man with a heavy mustache, is sitting there, head tilted back, mouth open, out cold. "This guy's in trouble," I say to Jane. "Call 911." She does. We get the officer on the line, give him the description of the car, the situation, the location, the license plate number (in Washington we have front plates as well as back). Just then the light (a very long one) changes, and to our wonderment, the driver lifts his head and drives on, as if nothing odd had happened, beating us through the intersection. We report same to the officer, who is still on the line. "Is he driving straight?" the officer asks. "Better than most," is our answer. So that's where we left it. The guy turned left a block later, where we did, but kept going. We have no idea, except it might have been a small health episode, or someone more allergic to cottonwood than we are, who just totally went out for several minutes. I tell you, when the pollen flies, strangeness comes out of the woodwork, even up here in the land of relatively few allergies.
Date: 5/18/06 Thursday. 76203. Well, some of you may have noted it was the 12th for a goshawful long time. Which may be why I haven't gotten much done. It's Groundhog Day. In point of fact, I often keep the blog going on my word processor, and transfer it over, just swiping in the date and using copy to fill it in. This is usually a good plan, because it means my notes are up to date and it keeps me working on the stuff I'm supposed to be working on. Unfortunately, sometimes I screw up trying to move things. This last post was one of them. I was watching a Mariners' game and bringing stuff across, and just posted before I looked at what I'd installed. Oops. And today, the Thursday, I wasn't fit for much. The accounting just has to get done, and it's an absolute mess. I don't think Jane understood exactly what I was talking about...now she does, and we've agreed on a system to keep posting from piling up like this. It's an absolute screaming mess. And now we've got a notice from our apartment manager that they've got a banker coming through about finance. Well, this is how the Big Move started this last year. I hope we're not going through that again. But when they're about to do that, we've got to have the kitties with us. Can't trust Ysabel not to run off the moment the door's opened if no one's here and strangers come through. Meanwhile Jane's bed has collapsed. The air keeps leaving her mattress, and her back is killing her. I'm worried what might happen if she takes a fall on the ice in this condition.
Date: 5/19/06 Friday. 76203. I just haven't got all the energy I'd like to have. I didn't go to the rink. Neither did Jane, who's in pain. And I'm telling myself now that I have to simply stop trying to do anything else and get the accounts in order. So I sit with a pile of papers, and punch in numbers, and more numbers, and more numbers....Jane, meanwhile is insomniac and plagued with allergies. She's not doing well. Her back is killing her. I did get to the hair salon, which is clear over by the rink. Drove home in blinding rain---most intense rain I've seen since we've been in the north---it was a downright tropical rain, only cold. Up here you worry about the big trees falling when it rains and blows at the same time, and the piney road I take home from there is pretty wild in a heavy storm.
Date: 5/20/06 Saturday. 76203. And more numbers, and more numbers...but the mattress, thank goodness, showed up. A driving rain, again, and our neighbors insist on parking in the fire lane, which meant Jane's mattress set, when it arrived, had to be ported way across the parking lot, and up three flights of stairs. I'm about ready to go complain about the illegal parking. Fortunately there was a plastic cover on the mattress. So Jane started setting up for an actual night's sleep. And after the heat, it's been cooler, again thank goodness, so maybe everybody will get some sleep. Meanwhile I've begun to figure out why the numbers won't balance. Two months of credit card charges from the months we were moving this summer, are flat missing, and I can't get them online. I'm going to have to get them mailed to us. I'm so disgusted. I thought I could get this put together and now part of the data is gone. The accounting program, meanwhile, is still giving me fits, now wanting its updates installed. I could spit.
Date: 5/21/06 Sunday. 76203. Jane slept in. She says the mattress is good, but hot---she's used to sleeping on that air mattress. But she says the jury is still out on her back. She's still in a lot of pain. But she did come in to help with the accounts, and we sat and tried to figure, and ordered the missing data. And I'm at least reconciled---the bank books aren't, but at least we're solvent, and the mail is out the door, and the books sort of balance. If we have those missing records, I think we're in business. Still cooler weather. I can get behind that.
Date: 5/22/06 Monday. 76203. We showed up to skate and get our lives back together. We went out on the ice, and it was absolutely terrible---like leopard spots all over the ice, only these are bumps. Some novice skaters were falling all over the place. It was jolting my knee and Jane's back. I suggested we get off. And then Joan, our coach, showed up, and Sharon did, and Joan officially said none of us should be skating on that mess: too dangerous. So we went off and had lunch with Sharon...Joan had already promised a friend to do lunch with her. So we had a chance to sit down. And Sharon gave me the most lovely calligraphic message case from my dear readers at Shejidan (the web site). I was entirely impressed. The messages and the case are lovely. I'm returning the case (as one should) and ever so much appreciate it. We got home, and pretty well collapsed, both of us being exhausted.
Date: 5/23/06 Tuesday. 76899. Actually had a good skate on good ice. So did Jane. Today is the day they're going to start inspecting our apartments, so we had to gather up two indignant cats and take them with us. I left the ice early to be sure they were ok, and sure enough the temperature which had been 65 had gotten up to 72, and they were getting too warm despite the shade I'd parked in, so I turned on the air conditioning and went to do necessary errands...trust me: we don't leave the kitzies in the car when the temperature's more than 68, and I'd seen the sunlight from the windows and headed right out to check: they hadn't heated up, but it was headed there, so they got airconditioned. And I picked up Jane and we went home and tried again to get some of the basic mess cleaned up and some writing done---I'm back to the beginning of the novel and editing forward to get my feet on the ground running. It's time to do it anyway. But Jane's still having back troubles. Even the new mattress hasn't totally helped. We've called Dr. Mike to ask to move our appointment to Wednesday morning instead of Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile I made a find in the tank...a starfish, a hitchhiker who came in on our live rock. I'd seen it in the waste water when we were setting up the tank, popped it into the tank, and THEN discovered it's an asterina, an irregularly shaped tiny starfish that eats---yes---corals. So it's turned up again, just before the lights went out, and now I can't get it. Drat!
Date: 5/24/06 Wednesday. 76899. Stayed home from the rink. Went to Pullman to the chiropractor...cats and all. They liked this trip better. We stopped by Cougar Country after the adjustment and got them chicken strips. They snoozed happily all the way home. But Jane's back kicked up after treatment. It's been bad. Now it's worse, and bruised. We're looking at the convention we're supposed to go to Friday, and I'm worried. Dr. Mike has finally got that bad spot in her back straightened out, but it's going to take ice and rest. We don't think