The writing of Cyteen II.

Date: 7/26/06. Wednesday. 91311. Well, the morning post came, and Jane got her billfold. This was a vast relief---missing all the money, but it had all the cards. We're going to check our accounts particularly closely for a while. And back to the rink. I just wasn't feeling well---particularly after last night. I'm too heavy, I feel awful, and I skated in jeans. This was a strange experience after skating in the gear for so long---it hampered my moves, was cold, and generally contributed to bad [read dangerous] posture. Next time I go to the effort of the full rig. The ice was crappy: they're doing what they can, but it's just too hot to get a good freeze without lumps. Reports from the fire say that a guesthouse burned, and a work shed. And that it was arson---we've got a crazy person running around Spokane: we've had fires where they shouldn't have happened. It doesn't show much from our vantage, not unless you know where to look, and most of what burned was meadow, which comes back much faster than forest, but I hope they get that guy.

Date: 7/27/06. Thursday. 91020. Rest again. Trying to clean up. Heat, heat, heat. It's just gross. There's a pall of smoke and my eyes and nose are just pouring. It's hard even to stay awake. But I've started trying to work. I'm not getting very far. We're still eating in bad places. Pretty soon it's on the straight and narrow.

Date: 7/28/06. Friday. 91129. I stayed home from skating to wait for the fish delivery, which got here in good order. They didn't ship me an urchin. They shipped me an elephant. I can't believe...a hairy pincushion urchin that's as large as a magnum-sized doorknob. At least he's avoiding the corals.

Date: 7/29/06. Saturday. 91402. Lazing about. Seeing to the tank. We got to see Sharon, did I mention, had a belated b'day. We'd picked up all these marvelous knicknacks on our trip, remembering that we had this event to see to. We've eaten out again, this time a rib dinner. Bad us!

Date: 7/30/06. Sunday. 91402. Just not being good at all. We're just exhausted. At least the heat is better, but not that much. I can't wait for snow. And we still have fires, and smoke, and allergy. I can't even think. I'm on the verge of being sick from this. I am so sick of being sick!

Date: 7/31/06. Monday. 91217. Back on the ice. And the ice was halfway decent, give or take. I'm trying to get my poor heat-swollen feet laced down into the unforgiving boots and it ain't pretty. But at least I was able to do a few moves, in between trying to keep my feet under me. If you wonder why the numbers have been bouncing around on the work, it's because I'm editing again, inputting all the changes I made while reading on the trip, and editing, editing, editing. This means I erase and write forward.

Date: 8/1/06. Tuesday. 91010. Lazy. I just want to sleep half the day. I've been on antibiotic again, and I've discovered it makes me sleepy, not to mention I'm not resting well at night due to the heat. I think no matter what it says I'm going to take this stuff later in the day and see if I can stay awake. I'm losing work time to this, and that's making me depressed.

Date: 8/2/06. Wednesday. 90284. The diet plan arrived---at least my half of it. Forty-two pounds of food in a big box. Plus the cell charger I'd left at my brother's place. We set to work trying to shift our pantry about to put the Nutrisystem stuff on the shelves, and it's arrived all in a jumble. We sorted it into Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, and Dessert. We really hope this stuff is edible, and that the weight plan isn't to disgust the subject so much you won't eat...We went off to the rink, skated as long as we could stand the crowd, and decided to have one last fling at Scotty's before starting The Diet. Jane's made a separate order, so we'll eat up mine, which pretty well jams the pantry, and when mine runs out, we'll open her box---when it arrives. They give you 15.00 off for recommending a friend, and give a friend 15.00 off for ordering, so in our household, that runs to 30.00. Jane's---obviously---my buddy. But her box, ordered as soon as we could get the discount through, won't arrive until later.

Date: 8/3/06. Thursday. 91682. Got up early, got dressed, all sorts of good plans for the day, since we have a chiropractic appointment which we really long to have---Jane's back is suffering from the drive. And it turned out Dr. Mike is on vacation and won't be back for a week. Sigh. Here we were planning on supper at Cougar Country as our final fling. So we started the diet instead. We were quite surprised to find that the food is actually edible. Even good. And I'm fussy. They want you having their cereal and your fruit and milk for breakfast, an omelet or cottage cheese at midmorning, their soup and a nice salad for lunch, [these are all examples: there are many other choices] an bowl of berries for tea, and an entree, salad, and veggies for supper, followed by a dessert and cup of milk or a no-sugar chai or the like.

Date: 8/4/06. Friday. 91707. I'm down 2 pounds. Jane's down a bit. This is promising. We went skating, and did sin slightly, me having my latte, and going to Tomato Street for drinks with Joan and Terry, but we held ourselves to one, and got home to our diet.

Date: 8/5/06. Saturday. 91876. Down two more pounds. I'm happy. Did some work with the tank, and mostly sat and worked. We were going to go see Pirates of the Caribbean, but the smoke is so bad outside [you can't see the hills that usually stand distinct and green] we opted to keep the doors and windows shut. The body is starting to feel much better, and being off the antibiotic and getting the weight off is a good thing. The diet isn't hard to manage: I just have to have my little check-booklet that tells me I have to have a dairy, a fruit, and an entree for breakfast, or I'd grow confused.

Date: 8/6/06. Sunday. 92142. Down a single pound this time, but now we're getting to the hardcore weight, and losing 7 pounds in 3 days is pushing a bit fast. Jane's weight loss is a bit more modest. I got the plan for women over 60 and so did Jane [though she's not, quite], because this was what they recommended, and I did warn them we skate. I don't think they quite appreciate that our skating is not a sedate turn about the rink. I think we are burning it off a little faster than may be good, but I don't want to cheat on the diet, more than my single latte---which really isn't a cheat: I'm allowed a cup of milk at midmorning...maybe I'll have to have two [poor me!]. We'll see. My weight loss has begun to slow down, and Jane's has never been at the catastrophically fast level. But once you build up the muscle a couple of years of skating have put on us, the muscle will have its own demands, and hopefully make losing the fat a little easier. Meanwhile I've got to get to the accounts. I'm starting that mental trap of procrastinating the accounts, and that only makes me depressed when I get to them. It's so bloody hot in that room I just hate going in there, and working in there is gruesome.

Date: 8/7/06. Monday. 92721. Still stuck on the diet...no joy. The heat continues. Trying to work. I hate summer, I hate summer, I hate summer. The ice is wretched and full of little surprises, and the condition of it I can only describe as 'soft', meaning it snows up easily...way easily when kids insist on scraping at it. When you hit that stuff, you slow down. When you hit a clear patch it's like skating on oil. The contrast is interesting. I'm trying to make headway on the book, and can't believe it's taken this long.

Date: 8/8/06. Tuesday. 92732. Not skating on alternate days is even grimmer than the ice quality—but the rink is down to one rink, and we have to share with the hockey camp people who chew up the ice something fierce. The rest of the time I spend feeding us [every 2 hours, it seems] and trying to get something done in this wretched heat. And I'm still not losing weight.
Date: 8/9/06. Wednesday. 92918. Back to the ice, but it's just pretty bad, and all the kids show up. Most are sweet. A few are idiots. You try to prevent them from killing themselves or from killing somebody else. We have a guy out there after hip replacement surgery: he's well over 70. And somebody's darlings are rushing about like lunatics, thinking it's just great fun to weave among the slower skaters. Where are the parents? Have they a clue?

Date: 8/10/06. Thursday. 93280.Another off day. We went down for chiropractic. I think we actually did some good this time—I talked to Dr. Mike about our lower back and hip problems and how we have to rotate a foot sideways to step off [or fall]. And he gave us an exercise which amounts to lying flat, doubling one knee up aimed at your shoulder, and having a friend lean on it, hard. When Dr. Mike does it, let me tell you, that smarts. But it also does wonders for straightening out the complex of tendons around the hip and [ahem!] rear that tend to get shorter and stiff. I was walking without pain afterward. Hurray! But don't talk to me about the diet. Not budging an inch.

Date: 8/11/06. Friday. 93877. Ended up not skating. We were warned. There was going to be a 64 person birthday party. We can take a hint. We hope everyone got out alive. All the adult skaters were getting the word. And this being the last day but one that we can skate this next week, we've taken the decision to go visit Jane's brother in Seattle—there's a rink near his place. I only have to get the taxes done—the quarterlies, and the annuals, since we've got to refile our personals due to an omission. Sigh. At least we caught it. And the weather's getting cooler. Down into the 80's. I may be able to stand to go in the office soon.

Date: 8/12/06. Saturday. 93281. Getting some progress on the book, regardless of the word count. I decided that we can do the taxes tomorrow. I've got to collect all this diet stuff to take with us. But at least we were here yesterday when Jane's half of the diet supplies showed up. I don't plan to take much for this next week, figuring I'm going to be writing and skating, period. Cool, smokeless air, and a relief from the heat---but the kicker is, the heat here is supposed to be less now.

Date: 8/13/06. Sunday. 93281. Well, at least it's ok to go into the office, the heat having abated, and I started in at the crack of dawn, just the slow, plodding detail of entering items and arranging and grouping papers...I am not a numbers person. I am so bad in math. I have to double-check everything. Any competent office person could be through this so fast, and I just am not. Thank goodness Jane does the actual bank balance, or we'd always be off. But I can do the finance part, and do the taxes, so that's what I do. And I had a moment of panic when I thought I'd found tax reports prepared that hadn't been mailed, but that was a false alarm: those were the copies. Just a matter of filing. And the Feds have finally refunded the check that I sent to them for the second time and the insurance company has done the same...can't blame them too much: I was late, and confused. But I did get through the paperwork. Hurrah for me. The cool air helps so much. If only we could get the fires out. The forest service may have this let-it-burn policy for certain fires, but it's really bad when the smoke goes over a city and people with respiratory problems are checking into hospitals.

Date: 8/14/06. Monday. 93678. Last skate, prior to rink being down for a week. Not too bad, but I declined a lesson. I just wasn't feeling well. The diet and I are not getting along totally, but I think I can figure out what to eat to keep my stomach happy. And I finally lost the pound. I did it! Outside of that triumph, we have to pack. We went out to eat with Sharon, but the local Outback is closed for lunch now, so we had to go to Shari's, not as nice, but good food. And I stayed by my diet.

Date: 8/15/06. Tuesday. 93678. Scramble to bank and PO. Off to Seattle, and I'd hoped to get my novel printed out to read, but it was just too hectic. Jane's doing the website for the Figure Skating Club, and they're having a major hassle, so the one computer that has a printer was tied up down to the wire. So we read some research on the trip. Had supper with Jane's brother, and settled in.

Date: 8/16/06. Wednesday. 93678. Well, up and about and onto the ice, which really shows the worth of the GPS unit. We found it. The only problem was—their Zamboni had been down. The ice was about half an inch under snow—in spots. And rough enough to jar your teeth out. It gave our legs a workout, for sure. But after a while of this, and practicing 3-turns, I let my feet hit a slick spot on a turn, and since I was braced for resistence from the ice, not glide, I fell behind my balance-point: worse, I was near the wall. If I'd just fallen, I wouldn't have gotten hurt, but I went down, hit the wall, bounced forward, hit on my right palm, skidded to my right elbow, and flipped, bouncing my helmet off the ice about three times. I still wasn't hurt, so much as annoyed, and immediately got up and redid the maneuver correctly, but I blew a bloodvessel in my wrist, and realized by the time I got home that ice was going to be a good thing. I left off icing to go out to dinner, but kept it wrapped, which kept it from swelling. Drat!

Date: 8/17/06. Thursday. 93678. Well, the wrist is purple up to half the palm. But it doesn't hurt half as much as the triceps of the same arm, which stood the strain and kept the arm safe. It hurts to raise that arm. And Seattle is smogged-in, with ozone that will fry the brain. We were hopeless. We opted to stay and try to work, which didn't work either. I just couldn't get anything done. A banged-up wrist yesterday and no brain today. Some working trip.

Date: 8/18/06. Friday. 93678. We took back to the ice. And they'd fixed the Zamboni, so it was only half wretched. This rink has no rules about letting people out with skating aids, which means kids playing the fool out across the ice with various props and buckets which become missiles. We decided we'd had enough fun, and I hadn't had the basic sense to wrap the wrist, so I didn't want to go down again. Got a little work done this afternoon, at least in outlining, which doesn't show in word count. And then we went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which we enormously enjoyed. There'd better be another movie, is all I can say.

Date: 8/19/06. Saturday. 93678. We're not about to go brave that rink when they have high traffic. Relying on the GPS, we took off with Jane's brother to go see the blooming of the Corpse Lily, which was in Volunteer Park: we arrived too late for the full bloom, but it was still impressive. And odorous as advertised: you could catch just a whiff of it. Jane's brother treated us to the Boeing Air Museum, at Boeing Field, which, let me tell you is an all-day proposition. They have a Blackbird, various space memorabilia, a Concorde [we didn't get to that one], and a WWII exhibit, including my favorite plane, the P-38; and a WWI exhibit, which has some absolutely unique items. Then we went out to eat, and got next to the restaurant's patented Bad Child. We got moved out onto the terrace with the flies and a barking dog, but it was much better, except my steak, which was tougher than shoe leather. They're lower down my list than they were...Sharon, if you want to go with us, we'll go again, no trouble at all!

Date: 8/20/06. Sunday. 93678. A breakfast—in which the waitress turned the syrup over on my sausage and eggs: they replaced that. But my score with restaurants continues overnight, apparently. Still, a good breakfast, and onto the road, after extracting Efanor from under the bed. And for the first time in over 70,000 miles of traveling, one of our kitties [mine] had a moment of sanitary...inconvenience. I was the lucky recipient. We had to stop and scrub the place. And me. Sigh. What a day. We reached home and decided to just finish frying the diet by going to Scotty's. Which we did.

Date: 8/21/06. Monday.94449. Back at work, and remember that pound I'd so laboriously lost? Gained it back, and 5 of its friends. But I'll get it off again. We're back on the straight and narrow again. And I think I've finally got a handle on this book. I'm surviving the heat and smoke better than Jane is. She's just falling asleep left and right...and skating? We went to our own rink, and it was absolutely a zoo: the owner was off premises for a day and the rink collected about ten kids in hockey gear who decided to race top to bottom of the rink as if they owned the whole surface, nearly hit me twice, nearly hit Jane, while going backward without looking, and when she told the kid to watch it, a mom in the stands started screaming at Jane, who left the ice to talk to this person. I was unaware of the fracas, having my MP3 going, but when I found out I went to the lobby, and when I heard the whole story, my adrenaline got up. It's got to be the smoke in the air: half the world is fuzzy-headed. We headed home and spent the evening watching "Laughing in the Wind," which is great for a lengthy evening.

Date: 8/22/06. Tuesday. 95162. We spent a tranquil day at home, no ice today. The weight is coming off quickly with the resumption of the diet [one of the nice things about Nutrisystem is that you don't alter your body chemistry to lose weight: you just eat measured portions often.] I'm down a pound. The copepods [live fish fleas] I ordered to feed the mandarin dragonet arrived, and Fedex just left it on the porch...without ringing the bell. Lucky they survived. Then our evening was disturbed by magazine salesmen trying "to win a trip to Hawaii" as a "youth program." Well, Jane didn't know better, and she said maybe, but come back: this of course brought the brigand leader to our door to try to clinch a sale. This time he got me and got packed off---this outfit is a known scam, the mags don't come, and they're long gone. In Oklahoma, there was a scandal as a van full of these kids they con into this dream [and don't pay] wrecked, with fatalities, and people began to realize what they're up to. Never buy from these people. They freight kids all about the country with only room and board, and collect the money and run. The latest twist is that you may not want a subscription for yourself, but you can buy one "for a children's hospital." Who will never see magazines, you'll never know it, and can you imagine how neck-deep in magazines a "children's hospital" would be if they really did as promised? We got shut of them, and then some guy started ringing the phone, over and over, and over. He was foreign, and seemed incapable of believing he had a wrong number. I finally [well, after about once] lost all patience and began just leaving the phone on so he could hear the Mariners' game, and then, after repeated more calls, just flicking Endit the moment it rang. Quel pest! It must be the pall of smoke that hangs thick over the sky, from the Tinpan Fire, the Tripod-Spur Fire, the Flick Creek Fire, 2 in-town fires, and now the Columbia Complex Fire. They've been fighting Tripod-Spur for nearly 2 months and hope to get it contained by October. October! We need rain in the worst way. We bought HEPA filters for the bedrooms and that helps, but this is gruesome. And the Forest Service has declared they're going to let Tinpan and Flick burn as a salutary measure, to take out underbrush. Isn't that lovely? We can't see where we're going and the idiot quotient in town has risen sharply as oxygen-deprived people go at each other's throats, and they're doing a salutary burn. Well, do it in a year that isn't a drought, why don't they? And now your Forest Service wants to do a logging operation [with professional loggers] inside California's Redwood National Park to 'thin out the trees'? First of all, we haven't had a civilization long enough to study how these trees support each other, they reproduce by fire, so there's no benefit to preventing that, and it smells to high heaven, this time not of smoke. FEMA gave us New Orleans crisis management, and right now somebody's political appointee in the Forest Service thinks we should cut down the redwoods and do "prevention" burns in a drought year? Lovely.

Date: 8/23/06. Wednesday. 96173. Well, when your day begins with a hairball on the hall carpet, you know it's going to be one of those. At least the smoke is less today: the wind must have shifted; but I'm sneezing non-stop and I'm not at my best. We're going skating this afternoon in high hopes the rink will be saner..../Considerably saner, as it turned out, and I got a bit of a lesson. I'm starting the 5-step Mohawk and trying not to confuse myself, but exercise and stretching has improved the turnout on my left foot. I'm also working on the start of the spin---got to do a 3 rev spin for one of the tests, and I'm still way too slow for a pull-in to accelerate much if at all. We gave up and went to Scotty's for R and R and a Scotch, and the ball game this evening was a mess.

 Date: 8/24/06. Thursday. 96572. I got up this morning with the headache I'd earned, and decided it was a good day to change out the return pump on the aquarium: it's been a little slower than I like. So up to my elbows in fishy water and hauling electrical cords, but I think the change was a good idea. We tested the cylinders in our fancy ro/di water filter yesterday---took it to the fish store for them to run the Total Dissolved Solids; those are ok. So I've now got to get a water change in order, and managed not to hear the fill alarm, thanks to all the fans we have going, and had the water tub run over...not badly, I sincerely hope. The people downstairs once got our overflow: there's not a real good seal in the utility cabinet between floors: what overflows in ours can run right down the wall in the apartment below. But I've got to do that water change weekly, and we also put dibs on a male mandarin dragonet, who's just too pretty for his own good. He's going to cost us having copepods shipped in, but he'll be a real beauty in the tank. Meanwhile the air is awful. The fires are multiplying across the state, and until the jet stream shifts and we get some moisture in here, it's just going to be like that.

Date: 8/25/06. Friday. 96572 The fires are awful. It's hard even to think when the air is that bad. But I did get over and pick up the mandarin. The female found him, swam right over and did a little 'he's mine' dance. They're so pretty. I spent the day trying to work.

Date: 8/26/06. Saturday. 96572 Trying to get a little clean-up in the apartment in case someone comes over, but no one did. A valiant try at getting some work done. I hate summers. I hate summers. Down in the plains you got the wheat smut, the fungus that grows on dead wheat stalks, and I'm deathly allergic to it, and up here we live in the wheat belt and downflow from the forest fires that plague the state in the summer.

Date: 8/27/06. Sunday. 96572 Mostly work. A little relief from the heat. I tell you I am so tired of fans going constantly I could scream. When I taught, we had no airconditioning [in Oklahoma, in 98 degree heat and 40 percent humidity] and we had to rely on fans, and years of trying to talk above the fans and keep my sanity have not improved my tolerance for them. If there's anything that annoys me, it's fan-racket day and night, day and night.

Date: 8/28/06. Monday. 96563 A quiet day. Looking forward to my birthday, and I'm trying not to blow the diet too badly. We're on that Nutrisystem diet, remember, and you're not supposed to be eating out. I've lost 8 pounds. This is good. And Joan promises us that tomorrow we're going to get actual good ice, without the highspeed hockey kids churning up ruts and going backwards and blind through our patterns. Good ice will let us practice the sustained balance moves that we need to in order to get test-ready this fall. We can't wait.

Date: 8/29/06. Tuesday. 94128 Finally, a really good lesson. I'm finally working on the 5-step Mohawk, the chasse, and a number of other moves I need to learn. We had lunch with Joan, did NOT respect the diet, and I'll be sorry tomorrow, but not today. Joan found a new Mexican restaurant with a chef, not just a cook, and it's really good food. Tecate is the name, not the beer, the restaurant. And Joan and I found out we have the same hair appointment the same day: we agreed I'll take it, since it was coming at a bad time for Joan.

Date: 8/30/06. Wednesday. 95821. Sat out the session today. It's just not worth it for crap ice and overcrowding. I've had it with trying on that stuff. There's something you can gain---practice keeping your feet over ruts and snow---but past a certain point, I'm just not willing to break a leg coping with badly behaved hockey-lets.

Date: 8/31/06. Thursday. 95821 No time today for anything. Hair appointment, chiropractic. Jane got to skate on the good ice, but I had that appointment to keep, and Joan and Jane got to skate. So I sat there in a chair for hours, then dived off to go get Jane about 3 miles away. She came in her skates and gear and changed in the car---right on Ash Avenue---well, a matter of de-skating and shinnying out of the tights and into the workout pants. So off we went for a chiropractic appointment which Jane sorely needed, and our usual burger and shake at Cougar Country. Not on the diet, but so-o-o good. Tomorrow's my birthday, and there's no hope of diet.

Date: 9/1/06. Friday. 95821. My birthday, which is getting up there in too many candles for a cake. Spent kind of a slow morning, not getting any work done, wishing there were something a little birthday-ish to do---which didn't include getting my foot run into by a shopping cart at Costco, as happened when we made a must-have run. I was getting a little down by then. I resist getting older. But Jane suggested we go over to the winery that sits, oh, about half a mile from our apartment: we've never been there. We ended up getting a mixed case of some pretty good stuff. It's the Latah Creek Winery, and the Chardonnay and Merlot are good. The huckleberry wine is a novelty, but fresh and nice. And we packed that in the car and went off to dinner at Scotty's...Jane's getting to where she doesn't like Chardonnay, prefers Scotch, and Scotty's is one of the few places in this end of town where you can get decent Scotch, as in, Single Malt. Well, guess: Scotty's had run out of her Scotch. So the birthday party consisted of a plate of jalapeno poppers, a plate of chili nachos [we've taught them to make these], Chardonnay and Captain Morgan's and Coke. Not quite what we'd hoped, but hey, we still had a good time. And thank you so much, you folk of Shejidan, who sent me all the cards and well-wishes and the very nice gifts. Ever so much appreciated!

Date: 9/2/06. Saturday. 96721 Well, the weight is naturally up a bit---like a pound. Time to behave and get back on the diet for sure. And get some work done. Party's over for a while. The mandarin is flourishing. I had one emergency, where the finger-coral fell out of its niche onto the blueberry staghorn coral and whitened a tip that's been all summer growing: I could just spit. I was up before full light on a ladder, up to my armpits in salt water getting that straightened out. I'm so irritated about that coral tip. Naturally I broke a few arms of the finger-coral, but they'll grow. For the most of the day I just settled down and tried to work. After a brief flirtation with cool temperatures for my birthday, we're heading back into the 90's again. Sigh. And the fires are still not out, and the smoke is still staining the sky, so the windows go shut and the fans go back on.

Date: 9/3/06. Sunday. 97102 Dieting and working. The good news is, the book is flowing again. I'm making great progress. I'm happy.

Date: 9/4/06. Monday. Labor Day. 97912. Got the news that Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, died---stingray barb, just swimming by it. The creature apparently zigged to dodge a cameraman and Steve caught it---really big ray, and a flip of the tail that's instinctive, no attack at all, just a twitch. I feel so badly. He was one of those people that just made you smile. All that flap about him and the baby---witnesses who were on site say there were precautions and safety people all around, and what just makes me furious is that at a time like this CNN had to go raking that up again. What do they think their pious flap is going to do to that kid, who is going to grow up with all that in the background? They and all the people-with-an-agenda have done more harm to Terri and that child and the little girl with their selfrighteous 'concern' than anyone but that kid will ever know, and their bringing it up right in the moment just makes me sick.

Date: 9/5/06. Tuesday. 97102 I am just so glum. At least the media have now stuck a finger into the wind and figured out that a lot of people are really upset about this, so they've changed their tone. I was really going on the book and this has me just way depressed. I went skating. That's at least guaranteed to lift my spirits. But I'm stiff and sore, to boot, so it was kind of an iffy skate. On the positive side, I've lost another pound.

Date: 9/6/06. Wednesday. 97102 Still having trouble concentrating. I'm trying to get my rhythm back. I stayed home from skating to try to get my head straight and get some work done. Got a shipment of live copepods to feed the mandarins.

Date: 9/7/06. Thursday. 97102 Work. That's all I can say. Work. I've got to get going again. Back on the ice, and back at the keyboard.

Date: 9/8/06. Friday. 98281 Lost the male mandarin. I have not a clue what happened to him. Bummer. The female seems fine. There is a kind of period of hazard after putting a new fish into the tank, so I suppose that's what happened, but that's that for mandarins. If the female continues to thrive, great, but two may be too many for the tank, and I'm not going to push it.

Date: 9/9/06. Saturday. 99017 I can see the end of this book, now. I know where we are. I know what's going to happen down to the finest detail. I can all but taste it. I want time off to work on it, and I have to get the taxes done and the accounts figured out.

Date: 9/10/06. Sunday. 99531 Working hard. I mean, I always work hard, but a lot of time that's headwork. This time the fingers are working too, and I'm making headway. I'm really getting excited.

Date: 9/11/06. Monday. 100286 Up early to get some work in. I did skate, and came back and hit the keyboard again.

Date: 9/12/06. Tuesday. 101022 It's flowing, in the way things haven't in months. I feel good about this. I'm anxious to get to the keyboard, and my weight has dropped another 2 pounds. That's all good.

Date: 9/13/06. Wednesday. 100712. Erase a bit, write a bit. Work, work, work and more work. Words are happening. I'm not doing much else, except getting to the rink so that I can work the kinks out and get the brain to relax. And things are going well there, too. I'm starting to really get my feet under me—though I need the skates sharpened: I'm starting to skid a bit on the turns.

Date: 9/14/06. Thursday. 101285 Good day. I'm really closing in on the end of this book. Got up early to get at it. Jane's going to help me with taxes this month—I usually handle the operational end of it and she does the accounting, but she's going to learn the forms and the reports, and that will be a heck of a lot of help. I get so emotionally upset when I have to do the forms and make the payments—it's a great distraction when I have to buckle down and do math, which is a real headache for me.

Date: 9/15/06. Friday. 102711 Had the most wonderful skate. I really got the knee bend thing down low, and at the end of the session decided the real secret to the backward edges was “squat and scrape”, very deep kneebend and a heck of a push with the other foot's sideward edge, knees knocked for a split second. It's something Joan has been trying to teach me. It's a finesse, that squiggle-push on the edges, and it looks very polished, and is harder, but once I realized it puts more power in the shove, I became all for it and asked Joan to teach me to do it. One of my big nightmares in contemplating testing is getting out there with a weak push and having to do a secondary shove to get myself on through the loop. This method shoves you along with power enough to really get into balance, and no matter it slows me down learning it, I want it. As I told Joan: I'm no 110 pound wisp, and anything that gets me into motion, I'm for. In the same vein, Joan has also decided I should learn to stop by some recognized maneuver, like a snowplow. This is not easy, for someone who is not a 110 pound wisp, but I think I've got the notion of it. It's going to take some time before I can stop in a shower of ice-flakes, but I can manage a small scrape on the ice at a modest speed. Jane got the accounts settled and we got the taxes in and I'm not frazzled and out of sorts: that feels so good. I don't know why I feel so emotional about numbers: sometimes it throws me back to the second grade, when our [overdue for retirement] teacher, a remarkable woman with purple hair, used to prowl the aisles as we did our math exercises, whack the back of our chairs with a yardstick if we were going too slow for her taste, and bring it down on our heads or shoulders if she spotted a wrong answer...no, couldn't have a thing to do with that. I hate math with deadlines, and taxes are math with deadlines...

Date: 9/16/06. Saturday. 103198 Finished with the book! I got through about noon, and decided to do nothing but play video games for the rest of the afternoon. I think I'm happy with the book.

Date: 9/17/06. Sunday. Cyteen 2:Outline: 23829. Just taking it easy, starting back to work on the Cyteen follower. I decided the celebratory dinner should be at Scotty's, rather than the [higher calorie] Tecate's, and today rather than Monday. So we went out, had nachos, and drank too much. Really relaxing felt good.

Date: 9/18/06. Monday. 23829. Pretty good skate, but the ice was rough and I couldn't quite get the balance I had Friday...couldn't be a thing to do with the wine last night, no, surely not. I had a short lesson with Joan, who says my back edges have improved enormously since last week—she's delighted with that, and my back runout was really doing well. The stop is also improving. I often refer to myself after a mistake in lessons as “bear of little brain”, but as I said to Joan today, “the bear can be taught!” We also caught Larry, who does the skate sharpening, and everybody loaded Larry down with skates to be sharpened. Since we live near him, we got ours and got Colleen's to bring back to her the next morning.

Date: 9/19/06. Tuesday. 23829. Had a lesson with Joan, which went pretty well, but the right leg started giving me fits, muscle tear and knee spasms. I kept having to stop to get the knee settled down, and I left the ice early. Jane had a molar break, and had to go to the dentist, so I attended the fish tank, called my mum in Texas, talked to my brother, and printed off the outline so I can hand-mark it. Thank goodness I had a well-written outline before I broke the project off last year about this time, due to a misunderstanding between my publisher and my agent---who told me my publisher wanted me to change books; and I did. It's a very detailed outline, though it doesn't go all the way to the ending. I'm going to have to boot this book up and continue the train of thought interrupted last September---remember? The project that was only going to take 3 months? Meanwhile the skimmer on the fish tank has stopped working, and I'm going to have to go elbow-deep in sump muck tomorrow and see if I can get that going. If I can't, I'm going to have to plumb in a new one. Just what I love: fishy sewer detail.

Date: 9/20/06. Wednesday. 23829. The skimmer turned to need a new pump, or the old one cleaned, which means vinegar. You can clean any pump or such by running it in vinegar water, and if you leave a little vinegar in, it won't hurt a salt water tank at all, just give a minor bump to the ph. I was really glad to save the funds---it's 300 for a skimmer. Meanwhile I have great plans to read the current book on the coming trip to Seattle for Foolscap, an sf literary convention, so that I can get the changes input and get this book off for deadline. So I'm packing, printing, packing, fixing the fish tank—so, so glad not to have to leave that to chance and a new system. And I am making ro/di water—a highly filtered sort of water that comes through a membrane in a pricey filter: you can get it at your local Walmart or general store, in those machines that stand in the lobby or the kiosks, etc, but I wouldn't drink it: it's been stripped of all nutrients. Good for salt water: we put all the minerals [and salt] back in before putting it in the tank. So I've got that set up, got the autotopoff to handle evaporation [about a gallon a day] which cools the tank, with all those pumps running, and that will keep the salinity proper while I'm gone and keep the ph regulated by adding buffer [glorified baking soda] to the topoff water. If you've never thought about it, you don't top off evaporation with salt water on a salt water tank, or you'd end up like the Dead Sea, with very high salinity [salt doesn't evaporate.] I don't run a filter on my tank, but I do have the protein skimmer, and that's still not working up to snuff. I don't know quite what to do about it. But that's going to have to wait. We're also bringing the two-ton camera, because Jane needs to take some notes for a story, and we're going to go on an old-Seattle photo binge.

Date: 9/21/06. Thursday. 23829. Sharon came blazing over early and we got off to a start, but Sharon's had a family health crisis, the seriousness of which multiplied as we got started—she decided to go ahead anyway, there being no help she could be at the moment except to coordinate things and people by phone, but that meant she had to do a lot of phone calling to try to get everyone where they need to be. Sharon was already exhausted when we started, and this didn't help her at all. So we got on toward Seattle and used the gps to find our hotel up in Bellevue. We set up the cats at Jane's brother's place. And we went out to dinner at a private house, guests of the convention, after a signing at the University Book Store. That went way late, and poor Sharon is meanwhile still calling family and trying for updates on a situation which is now both more serious and better than it was when it started. When we did get checked into the hotel, it turned out they'd booked us onto the 7th floor of the Sheraton as requested, but into a very small room. We were able to get Sharon shoehorned into it by setting the chairs atop the dresser, but it didn't seem a night on which Sharon needed to be by herself, the way things were going. During the check-in, while I had been trying to signal Sharon and Jane in the car that there was a crisis in the room situation, they'd rented the one room that was Sharon's option. Her room doesn't come due until tomorrow. So there we are. I haven't mentioned—the horrid smell in the lobby. They call it a 'scent machine.' It smelled as if there was something large and dead buried under the floorboards and covered up with bad incense.

Date: 9/22/06. Friday. 23829. By morning Jane and I awoke both suffering from the 'aromatherapy.' We left Sharon to the start of the con and sleep, which she badly needed, and more phone calls, and Jane and I went off to the hill and the Arboretum—which turned out to be closed for the hours we could possibly be there. So we went to the Conservatory, and up to the Asian Museum, and the old reservoir and water tower, which pertains to Old Seattle. If you're ever in Seattle, don't miss the Seattle Underground Tour, which has to do with the Great Fire of Seattle, and the fact they knocked the cliffs down to level the streets and covered up some of the early rebuilding efforts: it became opium dens, basements, and just general color of a sort you won't believe. I can recommend a book: “The Sons of the Profits,” which is available in the shop at the end of the Underground Tour, and it is absolutely one of the funniest books I have read in years. It's about the founding of Seattle. Well, Arthur Denny, who stars in the book, is buried in the Old Cemetary at the top of that hill: we visited Mr. Denny, just to see if we could find one of the Founders, and also happened across the burial sites of Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee, who are not far away—those being covered in flowers and frequently visited by pilgrims. We got back to the convention after a satisfactory morning, and I started to work and earn my keep. We did get to see our old friends Betty and Maelyn, in the weekend, and that was great. Jane has to go to her brother's place, this evening not only because of her throat, but because she has to take her brother to the airport to get to Hawaii, poor dear. I had a great time—a lot of book readers at this con, congenial people, and if it hadn't been that I was about to lose my voice to the aromatherapy, and the fact that everything on the menu seemed to involve onions [I'm allergic and so is Jane] things would have been great. Seems as if every time we turned around, there were onions—the restaurant attached to the hotel is an Azteca, so you may imagine. I can stand them just occasionally and very little, Jane not at all, and so the news that this was where we had to eat most of our meals was a problem. And by now Jane had a raging sore throat, and by the time she went back to her brother's place: she was really suffering from the aromatherapy, and had to leave the convention and the hotel for as long as possible. I was nearly with her, re the throat. Sharon was just exhausted, but impervious to the scent in the air, at least as regarded her throat.

Date: 9/23/06. Saturday. 23829. The convention complained, and the hotel said they could 'dial the scent down' but not turn it off. Lovely. But we soldiered on. Jane appeared after noon. By Saturday night, I was sick—major stomach cramps from the onions I'd had, so I took to my bed and missed my last panel and the parties, including the Scotch tasting. Sigh. And nobody asked Jane to that party [though she'd been standing right beside me when the invite was issued], so she didn't get to go either, and I wouldn't have gone without her. Bummer. The convention panels were good, but I just couldn't manage the last one. I think I went into this too tired, and Sharon, who ended up rooming with me, with the furniture still on the bureau-top, was spending all her spare time on the phone...what a weekend. And one poor convention-goer got something—onions, I think—included as a surprise in a food item and the con had to call 911, with EMTs and IVs and the whole nine yards, poor fellow, as they carried him up from the lower section of the hotel. I was at least having a better evening than that.

Date: 9/24/06. Sunday. 23829. The hotel, pointedly asked by the convention not to use onions in every dish in the banquet, created some dishes without—and bedded the items on, you guessed it, onions. They even put onions in the rice. Meanwhile they were having a beauticians' convention in the rest of the space, complete with models who looked odder than anyone in our costume contest---sort of like racoons, in red and white plaid miniskirts, with a walk like GI's going through deep swamp. And now that the the convention was a lame duck and outbound, the hotel cranked the scent up, this time smelling like something dead on the beach—I think it was supposed to be 'sea air.' But we over all had a great time. The convention folk were great. The hotel was, well, the agency of my problems. Sheraton is not my favorite hotel chain. We didn't go to the last eat-out dinner: I had just had all the food misadventures I could manage, and the name of the proposed restaurant sounded like more Mexican food—which I generally only eat when I'm home and near my medicine cabinet. So we went on back to Jane's brother's place and apologized to the cats for our desertion. Ysabel was so glad to see me she didn't even bite my fingers...her usual comment on my absences.

Date: 9/25/06. Monday. 23829. On the road again. We're quite the carful: Jane is still sick, has a horrid sore throat: she's driving. Sharon's still mopping up phone calls and schedules, which are now, indeed, looking much better; and I'm finally reading my manuscript and taking furious notes, which are many—a truck becomes a bus, and various changes. I liked it being a bus much better. Plus I had some time coordination to watch, and had to fix that. We were so tired by the time we got home that Sharon just took off to her place and left her laundry by mistake. We were too tired to get in the car and take it to her.

Date: 9/26/06. Tuesday. 23829. I slept. I slept a lot. And then hit the keyboard and started inputting changes. I read the rest of the Deliverer manuscript to Jane, and input some more, late into the night. And decided, the tank having survived, to do a little fixing in the sump. Well, of all things, a little red and white wiggle showed in the flashlight underneath the sponge that protects the major pump intake. We'd lost the original Teacake, back in, what was it, June? And replaced her. Well, I shut down the pump, got the net, hauled the pump out, and netted all the bottom debris. And there was Teacake! The vigorous wiggle said she was alive and fighting. I returned her to the main display tank and she shot for the bottom, nestling in with Teacake 2, which I think we should call Poundcake: she's that much bigger; while Raspberry, the male, hovered above. I fed: and Teacake came out and ate, voraciously—talk about will to live! Stuck in a 2 inch crawlspace in the dark for 6 months, and here she is. So long live Raspberry, Teacake, and Poundcake. I have three highfin red-striped gobies.

Date: 9/27/06. Wednesday. 23829. Or 111328 on Deliverer, at final count. I got up and input changes all morning. DAW Books has been nice enough to tell me the Real Deadline for this book, past which it will throw the production schedule, and I have sworn I'll make it, but it's going to be tight. And then what do I do? I decided to be sure Teacake continued to eat well, so while waiting on the coffee to brew [I'd drunk yesterday's] I got out the Cyclopeeze frozen stick and got the knife from yesterday, and tried to cut it. It resisted. I gave a harder push—and got a rather electric shock as the knife went through the 3rd finger of my left hand, hit bone, and stopped, probably hitting a nerve as well. Well, that hurt. It also bled like crazy. I went to the bathroom, put a waterproof bandage on it, and debated whether to call Jane, who was asleep in her room. I decided not, though I was dizzy and nauseated from the shock of a bone-hit and probably a small artery severed and maybe a nerve. So I went back to the kitchen, got a cup of water to fight the nausea and fed the fish the frozen food and got the Cyclopeeze stick safely back into the box. Then I pretty well had to sit down a bit. Jane waked, and came out to ask what was going on, and she got me some painkiller, trying to talk me into going to the doctor. I said no I'll be fine as soon as the dizziness passes. But opportunely at that moment, Sharon called about her laundry, and Jane having spilled the beans about my finger, Sharon told me in her best professional manner to get my rear down to the clinic and get a tetanus shot. So off I went. They worked me in at the doc's office, and it turned out to be 3 stitches, tetanus/diptheria [that's the way the shot comes], antibiotics, and painkiller, not to mention all the sterilized stuff they have to haul in. I can't wait for the bill. Which will come when they pull the stitches, I suppose. Jane got me, in order, to the pharmacy, to lunch, and home again, whereupon I had to hit the keyboard again and get the rest of the changes in...no choice, when you're on the Real True Deadline. Too many people depending on you. So I did it: I typed, sore finger and all. But Jane, meanwhile, started having her own problems, back troubles and numbness in the lower extremities that just wouldn't stop, whether connected to the sore throat, the aromatherapy, which had her sore tooth kicking up, via the sinuses---or what, we're not sure, and we nearly ended up taking *her* to the ER somewhere around 2am. Nobody got any sleep until 4am.

Date: 9/28/06. Thursday. 23829. I got on e-mail to NYC and got the manuscript in via e-mail, first time I've ever done that. I'll have to follow it with a printed version, but thank goodness for email. Then we had to drive down to Pullman to go to a chiropractor's appointment, Jane having discovered that the Codeine/Tylenol prescription her dentist had given her for the tooth had caused the back pain. Once it wore off, she was fine. So I drove, we got crunched, had our ritual breach of diet at Cougar Country, and drove home. I spent the evening doing absolutely nothing useful and watching Captain Harlock anime.

Date: 9/29/06. Friday. 23829. Jane went skating. I went along and spent my time at the concession stand having 3 lattes. Double. I just was too dizzy what with the antibiotic to be able to skate. Also if I were to hit that hand on the wall I think I'd pass out. So I sat it out. And I got back to work on the Cyteen outline, at least reading over the paper printout and taking notes, and playing Dungeon Seige II, which was about my level of available mental acuity.

Date: 9/30/06. Saturday. 23829. At home and trying to work. Finger's a lot healed, but still way sore, and I'm already tired of those antibiotics—but faithfully taking them. I've had way too much biology to scant that. And we've still got Sharon's laundry.

Date: 10/1/06. Sunday. 23829. My arm has swelled from the tetanus shot: I've got a plaque welt that covers the whole upper arm, and hotter than is remotely comfortable. Getting a little head-work done, at least. Reading and researching and getting my notes together.

Date: 10/2/06. Monday. 23829. The arm is still swollen. I had trouble sleeping last night. I took Benedryl and Advil, and that at least let me get some rest. No skating today, just trying to catch up with things.

Date: 10/3/06. Tuesday. 23829. Third day, the arm is still welted and hot to the touch, and really having trouble sleeping. Back on the ice, however, and doing way better. I'm making some breakthroughs in the backwards gear, being able to go backward on one foot with a nice sense of control about it. I'm still doing the headwork. The stitches are sore, but the finger is clearly healing. My stomach is a mess from the antibiotic. And meanwhile Jane is having crown trouble, and is having to deal with the dentist.

Date: 10/4/06. Wednesday. 23829. The swelling is finally going down. I talked to my mother, who informed me I did that as a child when given a tetanus shot. But at least the effect is diminishing and I won't have it again for years. We were supposed to have a lesson with our junior coach, but she's deep in finals. I still don't have the energy I wish I had, and I run out of steam before Jane does, on the ice. The work, however, is going well: I'm waking up thinking about the book, and this is always an excellent sign.

Date: 10/5/06. Thursday. 23829. The arm is nearly normal. The hand is healing. Still doing research and pulling notes together. Skating went well. Joan's got me doing straightline work, just getting on one skate and going as straight and true down one of the blue lines as you can manage, foot tucked, then swung forward. I can cross in 3 strokes. I'd like to do it in 2. The good news is, I can do it for about 20 feet going backwards, at least on the right foot. The left, well, falls off after about 5 feet. But I'm working on it.

Date: 10/6/06. Friday. 23382. A little cleanup. And a good skate. The arm, at last, looks normal and has stopped being hot to the touch. I'm sleeping at night. This is good. Rain has eluded us. Again. They keep promising. But it never comes. Needles are going brown on the big pine against our balcony.

Date: 10/7/06. Saturday. 23829. Trying to get some work done. Jane is taking over accounts, and this will help enormously: I get incredibly upset when trying to work with figures and balance the account. I wish I were better at arithmetic. Math doesn't bother me: I can read up on string theory and not glitch. I just can't add two and two and get the same result consistently. It goes way back. I missed most of the second semester of second grade sitting in the office in a spat with the teacher and the other part of the semester out with a broken arm—which I think won me enough sympathy to pass the year. This was where I should have picked up my basic math.

Date: 10/8/06. Sunday. 21038. Working in reverse. Really sick of taking medicine. Getting a bit done, however, and the ideas are starting to come. It's feeling good.

Date: 10/9/06. Monday. 22127. Spent the morning working, then went off to the clinic to get the stitches out. That hurt a bit, but not too bad. They'd had to rearrange my appointment, and I'm glad I didn't have to wait any longer: I heal fast, and that was why it hurt as much as it did. It looks pretty good. I told the medicos about the tetanus reaction and they got that onto my medical records.

Date: 10/10/06. Tuesday. 24283. Back on the ice. The finger is fine, minimal scar, except I did in fact cut a nerve, as I'd thought at the time. The side of my finger is numb below the cut. But it's still quite sensitive to pain at the cut, so there's nerve fiber there, no question. I'm trying not to expose the remaining stitch-spots to any bacteria, so I'm being hypercareful. I am now through with that wretched antibiotic.

Date: 10/11/06. Wednesday. 25128. Best day writing I've had in a while. Best day on the ice I've had in a while. Everything went well. I was brilliant, she says, taking a bow.

Date: 10/12/06. Thursday. 26112. Skating was pretty good but there were still a lot of people. I was able to get the waltz jump off the wall, just very cautiously and slowly. When you've got two interested kids watching you, you try not to fall on your behind.

Date: 10/13/06. Friday. 27821. Skating was way overcrowded. School was out for teacher day, and it was completely crazy out there. Sharon says my finger will recover feeling. This is a good thing. But it still hurts. We went with Sharon and Steve to a slideshow and lecture downtown by a chap who was with the Imax expedition to Everest, has done the world's highest peaks with no oxygen supplement, and has some beautiful photography...and, typical of a writer, I can't, while writing my book, remember either his name or the title of his book on his climbs of the various peaks, but it's just out, and ought to be a really good read: he's a good speaker. I'll ask Sharon. We went across the street to the Davenport Hotel, the landmark Spokane hotel, which is a tourist stop unto itself, and had drinks and late supper in the Peacock Room, the hotel bar. The ceiling itself is worth a visit. Not to mention going upstairs to the Doge's Hall—when they renovated, they had to lift that whole room out by crane to protect it, then reinstalled it. It's quite a place, and a real time-trip to visit.

Date: 10/14/06. Saturday. 28171. A good work session or two or three. And in the evening we gathered up Sharon and went to Sri Prasert Thai for an Eastern dance event—a guy whose other work is in Bollywood, the Indian film industry. He was funny and very good. We ate too much Thai food, while we were at it, introduced Jane and Sharon to Black Russians with Captain Morgan's---I avoided them, not wanting a headache.

Date: 10/15/06. Sunday. 29256. Rain! Waking up to rain is the most wonderful thing. It's been since June without it, and now we're getting a good soaking. A bit of work, some house cleanup...it's a good day.

Date: 10/16/06. Monday. 29371. Got the waltz jump off the wall and managed to center my toe loop [still on-the-wall for that one!] We went to lunch with Colleen and Sharon, then came home and blew the day. The Cards/Mets game was rained out, so we sat and watched old Dark Shadows episodes from Netflix.

Date: 10/17/06. Tuesday 29712. First scene complete. It's feeling good. And I really looked forward to skating today, since I'd gotten the waltz jump. Jane ended up asking to take her lesson first, because she was sore and didn't know how long she'd last, so I practiced, and practiced, and about the time I was about ready to leave the ice, Joan came over and asked if I wanted my lesson. Which let me show off my waltz jump and ask what the other jump was I'd been practicing. Toe Wally. And she confirmed I was doing just fine with the waltz jump and then, after watching me do the other jumps, invited me to take both the Toe Wally and Toe Loop off the wall, with her hand to steady me...She said I wasn't far from the Toe Loop...all right, all right: the motions are—for a waltz jump: swing one foot back as you skate forward. Swing-foot comes forward, and the instant it passes your skating foot, the skating-foot 'picks-in', ie, goes up on the toe and engages the teeth you have on the front of a figure blade. This, with the continued motion of the swing-foot, turns you backward on that pick as you straighten the skating-leg and jump: now the swing-foot picks-in as you land, you flatten that foot onto the blade and glide backward as your former skating-leg extends behind you. The Toe Wally goes: outside 3-turn and pick-in with the free foot as you come around, jump, pick-in on the other foot, flatten and glide. The Toe Loop is: inside-edge 3-turn, same motions. So since I'm better on the Toe Loop, looks as if I'm going to have to perfect my inside 3-turn and start working on that off the wall. I never in my life thought I'd be jumping, when I started this sport. I was absolutely exhausted by the time I got off the ice. Jane had a hair appointment, so we rushed to get a few necessary prescriptions, some food, and rushed home so she could take the car off to her salon. We watched the ball game, Cards vs Mets. I don't have a strong favorite between those teams, but it was a good game.

Date: 10/18/06. Wednesday 30044. Working along. Back to the rink. I'm beginning to get the 'feel' of the back outside edge—this is where you go backward on one foot, tilting toward the right or left hand and curving into an arc. You do this with a fierce shove, then free-foot held in front of you, then in back, as you look over your shoulder and move your upper body in the corresponding arc: it feels like balancing with a cliff constantly at your back, but if you just get a hint of the heel down (ordinarily you go backward more on your forefoot), and bend your knee extremely, you become much more stable. It's a graceful move: I don't ordinarily think of myself as a graceful person, but in this sport you become so in self-defense. We came home like good people and had our proper diet dinner, and folded early. Jane's knee is giving her fits: she injured it in the Bloomsday Race last year, and now and again we practice something that hurts. She's got it on ice, and is in some pain. We hope it will be better by tomorrow. We've been watching Project Runway [we liked the outcome on that], and Dancing with the Stars, and the tryouts for American Idol---both Jane and I do music, and we find it an interesting window into personalities under, admittedly, a bit of stress. Mostly of dramatic tv, we watch House, One Tree Hill, and Bones, and that's about it: we're trying to follow Vanished, but keep losing episodes. We tried Gray's Anatomy the other evening, and were aghast: the script must have been put together by committee, we won't even mention the acting, and this is the number one show this season? My own guilty pleasure is Hell's Kitchen. Hope that one comes back.

Date: 10/19/06. Thursday. 30044. Jane's knee is worse, and more than that, we needed to do some phone-calling to New York, not easy to match West Coast business hours and NYC—and get to the rink. So we did that, prudently, instead of going skating, thus solving two problems at once. We didn't do much: Jane had her knee on ice, was taking painkiller for her new dentalwork, and when I have to go into business mode it just fries creativity for the day. So we did some other things that needed doing. This weekend we're going to have to get at accounts again.

Date: 10/20/06. Friday. 30044. Jane decided she could skate, gingerly. And we did, except that Lindsey showed up, and we both had a lesson—Jane, the longer one. I'm working on stability, which involves 3-turn in an arc, to a foot tuck, then push, to a back outside edge on the opposite foot, stepoff, foot-tuck, and repeat. And repeat, and do in both directions. That means sore muscles, but hey, it means burned calories, too. Jane's tooth is continuing to bother her. Real pain. And outside of that, we tried working, and organizing. At least we got the catfood. But I'm in a thinking stage, so work gets done in the head, not on paper.

Date: 10/21/06. Saturday. 30044. Today is the day accounts absolutely had to get done. And we got to them, with fair success. Tomorrow is sort of the start of Jane's birthday celebration: Sharon's coming over. Monday we'll probably get together with the gang at the rink; and Tuesday is Jane's actual birthday. So I got her an early present, a cat carrier for the Bowling Ball Cat, only it seems Ysabel may inherit it: the Beeb finds difficulty getting into it, though he's tried. So we go for another one. We did get a doggie toy carrier [foldable] that should help us get the dishes and other paraphernalia up the stairs when traveling. And I got her a black stuffed cat. She gets a Halloween cat every year. This one was rescued from being a dog toy, but it was black, and way cute, and I think this will suffice. I've searched the internet up and down and not found a good one. I think the manufacturers got burned last Halloween when they made those skanky motheaten scary-cats with the huge removeable eyes, and they didn't sell. So they wrote it down as “black cats don't sell” and didn't make a single one for Halloween this year. That's marketing for you. A mass attack of genius. I hope they'll do better next year.

Date: 10/22/06. Sunday. 30245. Outlining into the next section. Part 2 of the office accounts battle. Cleaning up the house so it's not a disgrace. Getting the dining area clear for p-a-r-t-y. Sharon came over loaded with wonderful things, a lot of beautiful cards from the Shejidan folk, some nice presents, too—Jane was quite overwhelmed and delighted. So much creativity and goodheartedness on the part of our readers: we're very grateful. And Sharon added presents of her own, oh, not to mention the piratical decorations which she brought over. Jane was still dressing, so Sharon and I had gussied up the decor with pirate banners and plates. We decided since we had no cake we would bring dessert home from the restaurant. Well, we went to Tony Roma's, which is a barbecue rib sort of place, and had a lovely dinner [thank you, Sharon] and ported dessert home, because we were stuffed beyond belief. We made thorough pigs of ourselves, and had a great time. I gave Jane one of her presents, a necklace she'd delayed buying at the Jo Williams Tournament: I'd gotten it, right behind her back, and the dealer helped us with a story about it being an out-of-stock item, unavailable, sorry, she'd check the catalog, etc. Everyone at the rink knew the secret but Jane. So now she knows, and it is a very pretty little sparkly.

Date: 10/23/06. Monday. 30382. Back on the ice, slightly hung over; but Jane achieved a milestone: she did her back-outside edges clear across the rink in beautiful form, and I'm so jealous! she said, laughing. I can do my inside-backs somewhat, but not the outsides. This is kind of an interval day between segments of Jane's birthday, but I sneakily got wrapping paper and bows, and we are now prepared for round two. You have to understand: we believe that a birthday shouldn't be just a day—it should be an onward rolling event, several days in which there are gifts and too much to eat and general happiness. Why waste a perfectly good excuse for indulgence?

Date: 10/24/06. Tuesday. 31490. Oh, we were ba-a-ad. I got up at 5am to be sure I got Jane's presents wrapped. I did. And I called literally all over town trying to find a blueberry bundt cake Jane had wanted from a particular grocery chain. No luck. I promised it for Christmas. We got organized, went to the rink—had a little bit of a lesson: Jane had one. She's still celebrating her backward outsides event...and Joan wanted to take us to Tecate's for a birthday lunch. Well, Tecate's waitress decided if this was a birthday, we needed a dessert to start lunch with, plus two highly loaded drinks, and then we had lunch. Way bad. We went home, and sat and digested for a while, opened prezzies, and then went to Scotty's for drinks and the nachos we'd intended. We were not worth much, for sure. Overfed, over-drinked, and just totally blown on the diet. So now we have one more October party: Halloween.

Date: 10/25/06. Wednesday. 31203. Well, after so much debauch, and the knowledge we've got the diet food [two 40 pound packages] and one of Jane's birthday presents coming in today, we decided to wait here for it and not go skating today. I slept past 7:30, which is late for me. And we've got to get that manuscript on Deliverer put together for my agent. And mail Lynn Abbey's birthday present—only a month late. A small trip out—I tell you, seeing this one guy on the roadside was just over the edge: I am so tired of guys [you guess they're guys, but can't be sure] that dress like unmade beds, in tees the size of bedsheets and pants that must be pinned to something, because there's no way they can hang that low without it. Ug-ly. Absolutely ug-ly. Shaved heads. Sacks for clothing, and a cultivated slackjawed look. Oversized tennies and ragged hems and tats placed at apparent random about the body, not to mention the mouth jewelry. I can't wait for this style to be done, stick a fork in it, enough already: it's tired, it's here for a decade already, and beyond boring. Supersize-me at McDonalds', oversized hand-me-downs, and feet the size of Marvin's. I'm for the eras when guys and gals indulged their peacock-factor to the max, wore clothes that fit, paid attention to their posture, and generally looked *good* in glitz even when they weren't built like Adonis. There's nothing wrong with eye candy. I think there should be a world-wide movement to fancy cloth and form-fit and personal hygiene. BTW, and totally apropos of nothing, here's a good website— www.africam.com/# , a livecam site that puts you at an African watering hole. Worth bookmarking, my friends.

Date: 10/26/06. Thursday. 31203. Galleys came in. Glug. This means work. This means sitting and reading and taking my mind completely out of the Cyteen environment and back into the Foreigner one. I wish there were a way to do a mechanical comparison of their script with mine, but it all has to be done by hand because they won't lend me their file. [Insert howl.] Thank you. I feel better now.

Date: 10/27/06. Friday. 31203. The usual routine: skating, work. Work. Work. Galleys. I hate galleys. I'm trying to get through these as quickly as possible. I was very careful proofing this manuscript [Deliverer] and have to trust that they went into type from my file, and didn't mess things up.

Date: 10/28/06. Saturday. 31203. Trying to get the place cleaned up...it's a zoo. I can't think in this kind of mess. Meanwhile I'm still working on galleys. Jane's not feeling too well. But she is attacking the accounts. Bravely done.

Date: 10/29/06. Sunday. 31203. Galleys are done! Working on stuff that has to get mailed tomorrow. Jane's taking over the accounts has really made my life a lot more tranquil, but the essential round-up of papers still has to be done.

Date: 10/30/06. Monday. 31738. We stayed home from skating to get some essential mailings done...getting some business things handled. And cleaning the place up.

Date: 10/31/06. Tuesday. 32192. Had a nice skate, over all, and really had a nice success or two; I'm working on the waltz jump. But then, back in the locker room, I went to put things up, came back, and Jane, bless her, had stretched the cord from the hairdrier she uses for her boots right across the narrow gap between chairs and lockers. I fell flatout forward, a real face plant, caught my upper lip, on the side, and my right knee, and, thank goodness, missed the next row of chairs with my chin. That was a jolt. I'm moving ok now, though. And Jane wasn't feeling real well. We were going to go out in costume for Halloween, the piratical stuff, but Jane just didn't feel like dressing. She's had a heck of a time with the crown she had done, is almost perpetually on painkillers, and between a stomach upset and whatnot, we decided just to go to our favorite bar and have supper. So we went to Scotty's and had fish and chips. And regretting not coming in costume. So Halloween this year was a bust. There's always next year.

Date: 11/1/06. Wednesday. 32562. Well, I'm not as sore as I thought I'd be. I had a very good lesson with Joan, some real improvement on my admittedly bad stance on forward crossovers. It's nice that Joan is getting critical: just ok won't pass with her, though it might with the judges for a simple pre-bronze test.

Date: 11/2/06. Thursday. 32836. I stayed off the ice today. The knee is swollen and iffy, and I just don't trust myself. Haven't been getting enough sleep, for one thing.

Date: 11/3/06. Friday. 33281. Still off the ice, and the knee is still catchy. I was supposed to have a lesson from Lindsey, and my first strokes across the ice proved that leg still isn't reliable---the whole foot just shaking back and forth, couldn't hold a flat or an edge. I got off the ice before I killed myself. I was just terribly shaky. So I used the time to give me mum the call I'd promised and get the news from Dallas, then...it turned out Jane and Sharon had plotted to go out to lunch at Tomato Street. That didn't take much persuasion. We're eating out way too much.

Date: 11/4/06. Saturday. 33281. Not that much got done today. I was going to do the fish tank up proper, take the frags that are ready for sale to the local fish store, and clean up the tank and move some specimens around, plus clean the skimmer...but Jane reminded me that on Saturdays is when Scotty's has bratwurst for the footballers, and I couldn't resist. Well, I had just about recovered from that when Sharon called saying she and Steve had a coupon for Outback, and there we were, out late and overfed. I feel like a Thanksgiving turkey...personally.

Date: 11/5/06. Sunday. 33698. Staying home and working. Being good. After last night, I really need to be. Jane's taking Theraflu. I hope she hasn't gotten a jaw infection from that tooth. She has a dental appointment tomorrow. I may go with her to be sure she's ok driving home. Meanwhile this place is a mess. Jane hasn't felt well, and I've just tried to stem the tide. I did clean up the living room, and have moved a room divider in, so it can serve as a quasi-arm for our two chaises—it's the dickens to try to find a chair that's both comfortable and that can serve as a workplace at need. So we finally came up with these two armless straight things with a pillow that collapses too much. The lighted divider gives us space to set cups and glasses [not to clutter, I swear] and something to prevent the associated pillows from collapsing. Jane approves [and helped me carry the divider]. So maybe we've arrived at a compromise on the living room furniture. It doesn't look particularly great, but it lets us both see the tv and keeps the pillows from squishing out onto the floor.

Nov 6, Monday. 34366. Rain. Lots of rain. Well, we went back to the ice today, finally. The knee is well, mostly. Jane's barely able to be here, has laryngitis, and I'm doomed: we crossed up cups at the rink, and I had a sip of her spiced tea. Glug, in the first place. And germs, in the second. The ice was completely frosted from the dew in the air, and that gives it a peculiar characteristic. It's frozen very hard, has a topcoat that cracks independently, and picking-in is an adventure: it shatters twice where the pick enters, and you'd better be 'on' or the pick won't take and you'll be on your rear. Edgework is iffy: it's hard to 'carve' the ice or to get a good edge. And where you've been heals over very fast from all the mist in the air. The glass walls are all misted. Very, very strange. Meanwhile, and later, Jane had an appointment with the dentist to try to figure why her jaw has never stopped aching for the last 2 weeks. The dentist said, well, sometimes it's like that, and gave her some exercises for her jaw...which was doing pretty well before the dentist visit, and now less so. By evening she's back on painkillers.

Nov 7, Tuesday. 35231. Election day. The rains continue, and western Washington is flooded, with the Skykomish and the Snowqualmie out of their banks. Jane is sick, really sick, her jaw is killing her, the laryngitis is worse, her ear hurts, her sinuses are misery, she's cross as a hibernating bear, and that's pretty well what she's done—Hibernate. So we didn't go skate, and I stayed and worked. Jane comes out now and again in a grim mood and dives back into the cave. We'd planned to go to one of the election watch parties and enjoy free Chinese dinner [and get hit for donations] and watch the outcome, but she just staggered out around five and pronounced she was feeling a bit better and offered to go out to eat. So we did, over at Scotty's. We watched the elections, and some segments of House first season that she'd gotten via mailorder, and the semifinals of So You Think You Can Dance—Jane's an avid dancer, and really knows what she's looking at. I've finally gotten the picture. It actually helps with skating, because one of the things we have to do is isolate parts of the body and make them behave without throwing everything else. I'm not likely ever to learn to dance, but the skating makes sense: it has to do with velocity and balance that I can feel. I'm absolutely deaf to musical rhythm, except on the ice. Then I have to restrain myself from doing things that I'm just not ready to do.

Date: 11/8/06. Wednesday. 35231. Clear skies. Jane has come out of the den saying she's feeling better. This is good news. Her theory is that the dental visit aggravated the bruised nerve and it will improve. I'm less sure, but I'll get her to a md type doctor if this doesn't clear up soon. She is apparently doing much better, but it had better stay that way. We went to skate, but the ice was just leopardspotted with hard little domes made by drip falling down off the metal rafters. It rains, it snows, it warms, the humidity literally has us skating through fog inside the rink, isolated by fog on the rink glass: it's just weird. Teaches you to bend your knees, for sure. [The skate blade curves, and is fatter near the toe, where that nasty jagged pick-teeth arrangment waits to catch the ice. If you bend your knees, you make a scissor shape with your shoulders erect, and like any good scissor brace, you're more stabler, with your weight resting on your relatively flat heels and mid-foot. Do *not* go out and try this on the ice if you're a beginner, because you're liable to stand straight up if you make a mistake, and being on your heels with your legs straight is a guaranteed pitch backward onto your head! But as you get more experienced, you can 'walk' the blade, moving your center of balance up and down it, even to the point you can pivot on the heel, a maneuver guaranteed to be fatal for a beginner.] I had a session with Joan which kept me from breaking my neck, because I'm still building in that reflex to squat rather than stand when in trouble...Joan keeps me from tipping, just by serving as a vertical reference point at times, because when you're moving, centrifugal force can con you into believing you're straight when you're leaning—look at contestants jumping and leaning way sideways: their ear is probably telling them they're upright. If they do it too much, they go down.] But it's hard work catching yourself constantly or bumping your way over those little lumps. Some of them will pop off if you scrape your blade sideways, some won't. Pick in for a jump and the top layer shales off, leaving your pick unstuck. This is exciting. Sort of like jumping and missing the handhold on the trapeze.//Remember I told you about the www.africam.com site? Addictive. Much of their day is our night, but sometimes night at the waterhole can be interesting. I've seen a rhino that has been more rumor than sighting; I've seen the night shift move on and the day shift run like blazes, as a spotted hyaena strolls onto the scene and sends a last baboon running for safety in numbers. I've heard lions in the bush at night. I've seen a monitor lizard nearly as big as a Komodo dragon. I don't know where he lives, but he was like watching a small dino stroll onto the scene. Beware of getting hooked on this adventure. But if you want a window into another world, try it. And be patient. Visit their forum: you can see pictures of animals others have seen during the last 24 hours.

Nov 9, Thursday. 35829. I had to take Sharon to the airport. She's off for a vacation and an adventure—going to a con in Chicago, and then to have a few days skating with an old friend and fellow competitor. I hope she has a good time. By the time I got back to the rink, since it takes me at least 20 minutes to get into the outfit and get my skates on, there just wasn't enough time to skate much, so I just sat it out and picked Jane up when she was done. She got a lesson with Joan, which she hadn't been able to do yesterday. She says she's feeling way better. Work is going well, too. The story is taking hold and Justin is talking to me again...that's so good. Y'know, this is one of the only professions where you get paid for hearing voices in your head.

Nov 10, Friday. 36117. I'd intended to go skate, but when Jane got up, she'd gotten a deep blister or tissue tear on the side of her foot: the boots are so grippy inside and so laced up that this can actually happen, when you launch yourself with all your strength onto one foot at an angle: tissue parts with tissue, and what she's got is sorer than a boil. So I could have gone solo as Jane did yesterday, but Fridays at the rink have lots of occasional public skaters, meaning lots of small kids who need help, or who dart into your path---they wouldn't do that if they knew how chancy my stopping can be! Ordinarily our rink is a dream, uncrowded, perfect ice---you could pay hundreds of dollars for such ice in bigger cities in the east. And we get it routinely. So when there's a day with a large party coming in, it just doesn't seem worth fighting it, and neither of us is experienced enough to go racing around backwards like Sharon, while watching and predicting where each errant 5-year-old is going to be by the time she gets there. So we stay nearer the wall, do our practice when we have a momentarily clear patch of ice, and survive until the ice just gets too chewed up by all those little rental skates and hockey skaters, and I give up and just help the beginners find their feet. That's ordinarily what we do on Fridays. But I decided writing was going so well I could use a day just with that. When we shut down for the day, we held a reading session over a decent Scotch: Jane was reading from her new book, new characters. Now she has to get back at it so I can hear more of it.

Nov 11, Saturday. 37441. Another off-ice day. We hope to have supper with Joan but haven't been able to get hold of her by phone. So we went over to Scotty's and had the beer bratwurst they have as a football fan special—Jane detests the flavor, but I like it; Jane is quite happy with the chiliburger. And neither of us is into football. I used to be a member of a marching band: and the band and football players and particularly cheerleaders are natural enemies. The football team is why we're sitting in the stand with the trombones pouring antifreeze into their slides and hoping not to swallow any, with one thermos for the whole band [thank you, mum!] and someone covering my absence [1st chair flute] while I duck off the end of the stands and get the thermos filled with more coffee. Football is why I'm spending the next day restoring my white buck marching shoes to something like white, after wading up to my knees in the hogwallow on the 50 yard line [don't ask about the condition of my wool uniform]—when what we all really want to be playing is not “On Wisconsin” or “Boomer Sooner”, but the contest piece that is going to give *us* a little egoboo, thank you, if we can get time off marching drill to practice. Oh, football has memories. A coordinated wheeze from the woodwinds as they introduce the cheerleaders who had to be taken onto *our* bus because their bus broke down. Those gals outswore the trombone players, and that's going some. Football, football. Being formed up and ready to go on the track oval, when a end of clock blitz sends a play into our ranks. Marching in rain, snow, and deep mud. Forming up in ranks to get to our bus alive as some fool on our side antagonizes Penitentiary High's worst elements and death threats have been issued. We put some of our nicer fellow students into the heart of our formation and got them to their cars alive. Ah, football!

Nov 12, Sunday. 37038. Working, believe it or not by the word count. The place is a pit. We seriously need to do accounts, but haven't.

Nov 13, Monday. 37592. The book is going well, never mind the word count. I'm making outline and erasing things. And back to the ice. It ought to be snowing, but it's raining. I want snow. I've been robbed.

Nov 14, Tuesday. 37987. Work and work. The weather remains generally rainy and the rink is absolutely foggy. It's sleep-in weather, and I'd love to, but Ysabel has been a bear. I need to chase her down and get those claws clipped. She and Efanor got into a chase at 3am and the route ran across my bed, and ended up ripping heck out of my arm. I know which cat did that. And why was Efanor in my room instead of Jane's? I have no idea, but I think it involved the shortage of food in the cat feeder.

Nov 15, Wednesday. 37987. Didn't get much done this morning. Skating was so-so. And I had a signing at Auntie's, the local bookstore. It's been raining cats and dogs, so I didn't expect but a handful of people—which was pretty well true, but they were nice folk. Jane opted not to come: she's doing some work on a scene, and there was just no sense in her getting out in the wet. Plus she's not feeling totally spiff. Typically, the store didn't have the first ones of the book they'd asked me to come in and sign. Or the first of most sets of my books, for the new readers that showed up. My apologies to my would-be readers. Frustration for me. And a little embarrassment. But there's not much I can do about it.

Nov 16, Thursday. 38211. Back to the ice. And I actually had a pretty good skate. I've discovered something: I don't skate forward as well as I ought to, meaning that I can do turns and a jump and all of that, but plain skating is something that just doesn't get covered unless you take a stroking class. So I'm going to try to increase my speed and steadiness on that, given any kind of good ice.

Nov 17, Friday. 38821. A lesson with Lindsay, finally, after every attempt to have a lesson has ended in a re-schedule for the last couple of weeks, it seems. Lindsey did some correction on the fast-skating—some safety finesses, like lifting the middle of the blade first—figure skates have hazards at either end, from the picks in front, to the long flat tail that has to be kept out of the way of your other foot. You skate by shoving sideways with your heel, and I was lifting the heel first and just being careful not to let the pick trail and hit the ice [guaranteed arse over teakettle]. She said, in effect, level the blade as you lift, and you're safer. This is good. My speed is increasing. One of the things that happens in taking figure lessons—you go straight into edge-work, and learning to control that U shaped groove on the bottom of your skates, getting from the inner to the outer edge. The result is, you may not learn how to skate forward down the center as well as you ought, because all your ice time is practicing the finesses. So we're catching up on some missed elements, and I think this will be good.

Nov 18, Saturday. 39160. Jane's still under the weather. And we made our weekly pilgrimage to Scotty's for bratwurst. They do real potato chips, ie, slice a potato thin and deepfry. Can you believe I'm still keeping my weight down. That was good. And...I committed tang. I've been researching this particular type for a couple of weeks, because we've got a macroalgae problem in the salt tank, and the urchin hasn't been able to do it in singlehanded. I tried a saltwater molly—which turns out to eat only filamentous algae from up on the outflow tube. I've tried Phosban, an iron compound which absorbs what fertilizes the algae. I've started emptying the skimmer basket religiously. But we have an algae problem. So I decided I've got to get a fish that eats it, and something less rambunctious than that rabbitfish that gave us so much grief catching him. I decided a yellow tang would be small enough to survive in the tank, at least until our next move, and went down to the store with that in mind. I exited with, instead, a much pricier purple tang that has a history. He belonged to somebody who had him in a 75, he has some scars, but he's quiet and very similar to the yellow: has a purple body, a yellow tail, and yellow nostrils, and is very laid back for a tang—the species is armed with a sharp spike on the tail and can be aggressive. The purple is alleged to be aggressive, but so far so good.

Nov 19, Sunday. 40292. Progress. We've decided to do accounts during Thanksgiving break. The days continue rainy, and we'd like snow, thank you. The tang is doing very nicely, and is completely calm, eating like a pig. The urchin, feeling its job threatened, has dashed across the tank and through the rock maze to chow down on the largest clump of macro algae. The tang is much more leisurely about its attack on the problem, but that long nose can get where the urchin can't. This may be a good team. And while I'm all for quarantine, I didn't in this case: this fish has been in-store and local for years, and my tank has been through its bout with ich and it doesn't manifest, so yes, I took a risk, since all my other fish are ich-resistent and the tang is healthy as a horse. I could lose big. I'm gambling on my ability to spot it fast and deal with it before it becomes a real threat...while the threat to my corals posed by that wildly growing algae is real and imminent. Something's got to be done, and that's the fish to do it.

Nov 20, Monday. 41023. Had a lesson with Lindsey, and then Joan showed up, so I had two lessons—a full hour, while working on forward speed and backward edges. It's something, when you exit with a sore backside from sheer exertion. The weight is not doing badly, either, re the diet, but we've resolved to go back on Atkins. Nutrisystem is a good weight loss system, but for us, who have gotten down to pretty active muscle, Atkins seems better: our medical tests bear that out. We have phenomenally good semi-annual test numbers while on Atkins, and only so-so on the more 'balanced' and low-fat diet of Nutrisystem. It's just the way our metabolisms work. I think the two diets in alternation are a good 'take it off and keep it off' yin and yang. We'll go back to Nutrisystem after a few months, then back to Atkins, etc. And we plan to observe the portion-control philosophy we learned on Nutrisystem, when applied to Atkins. There is no free lunch when it comes to big portions...that wisdom has finally sunk in. You feed the person you wish to be, and for me, that means no helping of any one thing larger than my fist.

Nov 21, Tuesday. 41866. The ice was absolutely miserable today. We're at least steadier on bad ice than last year, but it hurts when you have to bounce your joints over really rough ice, like roller skating on graveled concrete. Just wretched. We left early, headed down for a chiropractic appointment through fairly steady rain, and stopped by the dance shop to pick up on their sale. I got a (shudder) black outfit I plan to improve with color. I'm going to get some red trim and see if I can get it to attach without tearing fabric. Up the arm is going to be a challenge, but I think I can do it. And then of course I found the blue number I knew I'd bought at the summer sale, but couldn't find. So I will have some alternatives. I'm beginning to lose weight where I've long wanted to, around the waist, so I may wear these without the jacket, and a little glitz will be a good thing.

11/22/06 Wednesday. 42122. The usual, but we're trying to revise our schedule to do a little more late afternoon work, and this should be good for both of us. The ice was better, but not much. And I'm getting Lindsey to work with me on speed, trying to get just a little steadier and more confident at high velocity. Lindsey's very fast, and she's given me some good pointers, like lifting the center of my skate, so there's no chance of hitting a pick, and general stuff about posture. This will help. I'm tired!

11/23/06 Thursday. 41023. Trying to get my rear in gear to do some cleanup around here. But snow is upon us, and I feel just like going into the cave and sleeping for a while. I love the snow. I truly, really love it. Sliced out a good section of outline, which is dead weight, once the novel is taking shape.

11/24/06 Friday. 41384. Erasing and going forward. This is actually progress.

11/25/06 Saturday. 41902. Sharon joined us for lunch, first time we've had time to get together in a while. Steve hit a deer, or rather the deer hit Steve, and the truck is pretty banged up. Luckily Steve and his passenger weren't: the deer, needless to say, fared badly. The hazards of travel up here in the north: you're driving through woods, between high banks, and even when you're watching, you can find yourself in trouble. We're glad Steve's ok. A collision like that, that goes through the windshield, can be lethal.

11/26/06 Sunday. 42081. We just hunkered down and worked, mostly. Very little else. We're watching old Dark Shadows episodes in the evening, combined occasionally with House, or Nero Wolfe. We own the disks. Love it.

11/27/06 Monday. 42386. Skating went pretty well today—until Jane took a backward fall. She really did it up proper. Thank goodness for helmets. When Sharon came into the locker room and said Jane'd had a bad one, I believed it, and went outside to check, but she was on her feet and talking with Joan [our coach] and it looked as if she was going to be all right. She came home and hit the bed and stayed there, and I'm keeping a careful eye on her. I think she may be a bit concussed. Certainly she's going to be sore.

11/28/06 Tuesday. 42638. Jane's still sleeping a lot. We didn't go skate today, just stayed in and worked. I've looked up concussion on WebMD, and this sleeping business is not optimum. Besides the sleeping, she's got whiplash on the front of her neck and gut, both: when you fall like that, your head literally bounces, and when you try to save yourself, you try to curl, and the gut muscles get torn. It was an airborne flat-out backward fall. I'm glad I didn't see it. The description is bad enough.

11/29/06 Wednesday. 43102 Again we stayed home, missing a lessson, and Jane's better---sore, still, but improving, but now says she thinks the jolt knocked loose a sinus condition, because she's just having a wretched time with that. She's at least not sleeping all day, and she's able to get some work done. I did take some frags in, and brought Jane a firefish, which she'd wanted, to replace the one the wrasse ate. The purple tang is thriving. And I got a couple of new pieces of rock to try to force the confounded mushrooms up and onto that, so I can take them in and trade them.

11/30/06 Thursday. 43576 Again, snowing, icy, and we just decided safer is better. Jane's not steady even yet. So here we are laying out practically a whole week of skating. We're determined to go tomorrow.

12/1/06 Friday. 44102. Well, we made it to the rink, and Lindsey came in, bless her. This gave me the chance for a few minutes while Jane was warming up, and then Linds could steady Jane to make sure she's solid on her edges. Now Jane admits she was having fuzzy vision as well. Ha. I knew she was concussed, and the sinus condition has now involved both upper sinuses...isn't that lovely? I was a little wobbly myself, but I've begun working on a new lacing that I think will let me settle my feet in my boots better. What isn't apparent if you only rent skates---the better boots have what's called a 'pocket', or depression, one for the ball of the foot, one for the heel. It's more illusion than substantial, in a certain sense, because if you reach your fingers in, you can't feel it. Just your feet know it's there, and if your feet settle into those two 'pockets' your steadiness is so amazingly much better it's hard to describe. It's like having been on a tightrope and discovering you have a socketed foothold that will give you leverage to exert pressure, or rock from one side to the other. Well, this lacing will help my feet settle, and it was so amazing that they did, so quickly. You'll see skaters walk around bowlegged, bouncing on the edges of their feet, etc, and that's all to get the feet settled. Jumpers often lace painfully tight, and can't wear their skates over a length of time, so they have to have tricks to get settled in. And Linds gave me an exceedingly valuable piece of information: exactly where on the foot [i.e, inside heel approaching an inside three-turn, to inside base of big toe during turn, outside base of pinky toe coming out, and the reverse, on an outside three-turn]. This is gold, pure gold. It makes sense to me in an anatomical way, so I can feel what I'm doing at foot level, not just aligning the body and hoping to get out alive. It's amazing how steady you can be going backward on one foot and on an edge, once that edge cuts in deeply. Now if I can just coordinate the rest of my body---

12/2/06 Saturday. 44474. Just lazing through work today. It's snowing mostly at night. Frozen solid and in the teens after dark, so you don't want to go driving after that happens. We went over to Scotty's for the usual Saturday bratwurst, didn't have their best cook on. Sigh. Otherwise, just working, mostly on the tank. I fragged the monster montipora foliosa, which meant taking it out to the kitchen counter and using brute force. It left a nicely shaped base attached to the rock, so it will heal and regrow, and about 4-5 other people will have a piece of my coral in their tanks. That's modern coral-keeping, much less about divers taking things off the reef and much more about propagating and trading. This stuff in particular is very fast-growing and within a year will probably be in 20 tanks. Then 80, by 2008. If we didn't have new reefers occasionally losing a piece, who knows where it would stop?

12/3/06. Sunday. 44474. Today I went Christmas shopping, from my chair, coffee in hand. I got my brother's birthday present, and ordered a number of things, then targeted what I want to get for several other people. It took a while, but I am not exhausted, and I did not use half a tank of gas and lose my temper doing it. Also, if one 'store' was out of stock, you can just move on to where it is. Hints for successful online holiday shopping: don't buy important gifts from little companies—they often run out and then fold their tents and go away forever, leaving you with no gift. If you have someone who's hard to get for, for whom the request is clothes, get their gift from a major online company that's got a brick-and-mortar store near the recipient so they can trade for size and fit. Get it wrapped. That way if the package accidentally gets into the wrong hands, it will keep its secret. And one of the best sources, if you haven't tried it, is overstock.com. Good prices, reliable delivery. Ever gone shoe-shopping at zappos.com? There's a trip. If it exists, they have it. I leave the malls at this season to those who enjoy physical combat. I just want to see it, get it, ship it, and that solves my problem of so much of my gift list being scattered across the country: I can buy, wrap, and ship it all at the same time.

12/04/06. Monday. 44311. Doing more trimming of the manuscript. And back to the rink for a lesson with Joan, and a really good day. I'm learning some things that would absolutely kill a beginner on rental skates...learning to really go over on my edges and make them grip. The stance is scarily back on your tail, and a good lean, but the secret is—and don't try this without a helmet on—you bend the knees deeply and step hard onto the inside or outside of your heel going forward, or inside or outside base of the outer toe going backward. This means sitting down while you skate, literally, and it was truly amazing. This is the first time Joan has really asked me to use that posture, after 2 years of instruction, [remember I'm tall, and no wisp] and I think it means she finally trusts me not to break my neck. It's just night and day, in terms of grip on the ice, but if you should lose your concentration and straighten up, you'd go arse over teakettle. I'm also doing a new lacing on the boot tops, which means a hard haul on the first hooks coming up from under, and lacing all the other hooks going down from overhead. This sets my foot much better into the 'pockets' these boots afford, and that means control of the fine muscles in my feet. Amazing. On the home front, we dropped by Scotty's for fish and chips, and I spent the rest of the day thinking on what to do next on the book...the sort of thing that doesn't produce word count. We were supposed to get a new snowstorm today, and didn't. I'm disgusted.

12/05/06. Tuesday. 44311. Still wretched air. I've done a printout of the book and outline, because there's just a point you need to be able to hold fingers in two or three places in the pages and flip back and forth—a function the computer just doesn't do well. Working on a long manuscript on a computer gives you tunnel vision and sometimes you need to spread out and see where you are and what information is potentially duplicated, and Search won't do it. One day somebody will invent a contextual search, one that can actually parse the sense of the information for duplications, but nobody's done it yet for a word processor. So you won't see the word count move, but I'm working. I'm not numerically gifted, and can't remember numbers easily—witness I had no trouble recalling Grant's alphabetic sequence, ALX, but could not for the life of me recall the 972. Grant, I will assure you, would have no trouble recalling it. Skating went fairly well. I stayed near the wall and just worked and worked on turns, trying to run out backwards and in balance. I keep falling off to the inside, and I've tried most everything to fix it, and can't figure what I'm doing wrong. Keeping the inside hip 'up' is essential, but even doing that isn't working: I should be able to take a step after, and the body just can't manage the step, no more than it can fly. I just couldn't figure out what I'm not doing.

12/06/06. Wednesday. 44311. More work with the printout. The air is just wretched. There's a big gray blot on the weather map over our entire region, and I'm taking decongestants and Benedryl, more than I ought, just to get to the rink able to function. I did get a chance to ask Joan what I'm doing wrong, and the answer is 'hand position.' I have a hand flying back when it ought to stay in place after the turn, and if it stays in place, it solidifies the shoulder position, and keeps your back muscles solid, which, in turn, enables you to keep the hip up, continue the glide, and then step off onto the opposite edge to do the whole thing going the other way. It is nearly impossible to restrain that hand from movement. But I have an idea. The air, meanwhile, was so bad I didn't stay on the ice a very long time, and we were bad coming home—stopped at Scotty's for fish and chips, which I morally needed in the worst way. Yeah.

12/07/06. Thursday. 44311. And still slow going with the printout. We got put together and headed down to the parking lot to go to the rink, and on the steeply sloping asphalt there was a patch of ice right behind the car. I had on my good stable boots with the bottom tread, and only skidded a foot or so, but that was a wakeup. I was careful on the hill down from our lot. The trees were all frosted, and so was the grass, off across snowy meadows. It was a pretty drive over to Eagles. And my idea worked. I wore a neck scarf onto the ice, and when practicing my turns, I took it off and held it stretched between my hands at the proper interval. I did my turns and maneuvers that way, and the balance stayed, and the arm is learning its necessary position. Had a session with Lindsey, which went pretty well, and then went out to lunch with Sharon and Lindsey. Sharon had to rush off for a dental appointment in the Valley, and we asked her over afterward. She came over all numbed up, but not numbed in the right places. She'd found a patch of ice of her own, and gone down on a knee and a hand—the hand being the more worrisome, with soreness in the wrist. We watched an episode of House, and her numbness wore off, while she iced the sore spots—she went off home, and we watched old episodes of Dark Shadows, being unaccountably exhausted: it's probably the air. Oh, for a good breeze to clear this stuff out!

12/08/06. Friday. 44311. Major breakthrough on the skating! I spent the whole two hours working with the scarf, and eliminating bad arm position as a source of problems with the backward runout from the 3-turn. And after I had gotten my posture corrected, I hit it with a very deep kneebend, and all of a sudden it was as if my back edge was 'locked' into stable position by my weight and the angle of my knee. I was so stable I could have been standing on flat ground, while going backward on an arc. And of course I made this discovery immediately before time was up. But I have to get back at this Monday! I'm excited! The backward runout is critical to all backward edges, the exit from jumps, from the mohawk, from just about everything, and after feeling like I'm balancing backward on a cliff, hitting that point of stability is huge...absolutely huge. Now watch—I'll probably fall over backward on Monday, but I have the best of intentions. We went to Scotty's for lunch, skipped supper—the air is just awful from lack of wind and air stagnation, and I'm having to take too much allergy medication. But I'm making progress on the book.

12/09/06. Saturday. 44311. Still working on the outline, but now I'm actually altering text, which is from hand-written notes and fussy as all getout. It's rainy—I want snow, and it's too warm by about 7 degrees. But I got so far into my work that I even turned down the Saturday bratwust and just kept going.

12/10/06. Sunday. 44311. Back to the outline a bit and then more change-entry. It's so slow. I wish I could wave a wand and have it all done, but sometimes I think best with a pen in hand, squeezing notes into the margins, and sometimes I think better during the slow process of adding in hand notes. The good news is, it's working. It's still raining. But we did finally take a mutual break and go to Scotty's for hamburgers.

12/11/06. Monday. 44311. I'm pretty sure someone downstairs is smoking something that's reaching our windows. I can't believe anyone can live in that atmosphere. I've rubber-matted our balcony so it doesn't get in the back windows...now I think it's reaching us via the front. We've never had problems like this before. I'm trying to work, but it's just really affecting me. I was glad it was time to get to the rink—also because I wanted to work some more with the scarf and my balance exiting the turns. As you could predict, it wasn't going to be as cut-and-dried as I'd hoped, but it was pretty good on the left foot—usually my weakest—but not the right. I finally started analyzing the difference, and what could make me fall inward; and I began to get the picture: my right knee is knocking in on the turn. I have to press it outward—and viola! Magic happened. I have it! It's not going to be the cure-all, but I'm getting there. We then scurried home to intercept a promised call from our agent, which came on schedule and was very encouraging. So all in all a good day. It's been clear, still too warm, but starting to spit rain again.

12/12/06. Tuesday. 44328. Well, I worked too hard on my turns and managed to hurt my leg—That right leg's been bothering me for a while, and is really, really sore, in that way limbs can be before they cut out unexpectedly and dump you on the ground. Or ice, in this case. So I left the ice early. On the domestic front, I spent a frustrating while online trying to order Christmas presents, and finally gave up. The idiocy of some major bricks-and-mortar stores who've hired the nephew of the owner as webmaster [only nepotism could account for the depth of ignorance I've just met] who wants to know what *county* you're in, as well as what city, and who puts the address-change blank on the same page as the credit card info, so it creates an endless loop: the credit card won't acknowledge the old addy, and the page won't install the new one until you complete your order, which can't be done because of the old addy. Then I tried to explain this to the woman you get with a phone call, and she kept saying it was clearly my credit card company's fault and I had to straighten it out with them. I tried to order again—she couldn't do it either. Then we tried a different card. Same story. Well, she insisted it was my cards, and I tried to explain to her that the company should take a serious look at the webmaster and website, and then she said that credit cards are often messed up and their company has this problem all the time. I'm having road rage on the information superhighway! And then—oh, then—I get a fraud call from my credit card questioning two identical purchases with this company, which now, since my order didn't go through, has nowhere to send them. I got online with the fraud people and explained the whole situation, but I'm going to have to watch my accounts closely. This is the same idiot company who lost my mother's Christmas gift last year, and I thought, well, they are one of her favorites, and no, they surely wouldn't screw up twice. Ha! I did turn my boots over to Larry, who does our sharpening and blade setting, and asked for several more screws. Having my blades slide around with only the slotted screws attached is not comfortable, and it's nervous-making when practicing jumps. So I got screws in two more holes, to be sure the blade stays put. My soles on these Graff boots are thicker than Larry's own, and it's taking forever to flatten the sole out [wear and tear] so I can get the toe screws in. Sometime before these boots wear out I'll get those last screws!

12/13/06. Wednesday. 44732. I'm home today. The leg is just too iffy, and I figured giving it a rest would be to the good. Meanwhile we've arranged to have Joan's birthday party Friday and I'm trying to get with my hairdresser and arrange a changed appointment. Of course this is right after [last month] I told my hairdresser I want a standing appointment on the fifteenth, forever. And here I am trying to change it one month later. My life is just too complicated for standing appointments. And now I can't get hold of her. The weather's messy—meaning the sun is shining and melted all our nice snow. We did get a call from Larry that we need to pick up skates for another of the adult skaters—and we aren't the only ones caught in a screwup. Her brand new boots aren't accepting the blades. There's something wrong with the angle of the sole. I know she's going to be disappointed.

12/14/06. Thursday. 44901. Definitely she was disappointed. What a pain! I skated for the first time with enough screws to hold my blades in place—this was good. And I've been trying daily and sometimes twice daily to call my hairdresser to say I need to move that appointment, but all I get is the answering machine. I don't know what's going on, but I'm still trying. The leg is still giving me grief. I have it doublewrapped around the upper thigh with two sets of bandages, and it helped, but it's still painful. We had a chiropractic appointment, and I complained about it to Dr. Mike, who said it was tendonitis—tendonitis involving just about every tendon that holds the leg on—so he did some adjustment, advised me to take it a bit easy, and I took some painkiller and muscle relaxant, and then got the bright idea to put an IcyHot Pain patch on it. It's actually working. It's also my brother's birthday, so I gave him a call, and the prezzies did get there, but he's saving them for Christmas: when your birthday falls that close to the holiday you can fight it or you can go with the flow.

12/15/06. Friday. 45012. Skated with the patch only today, and it is definitely helping. And Dr. Mike helped. And all in all I think this is the first time I've been this pain-free in this leg for, oh, two years. It just had to get bad enough to manifest, and now I think we're on the road to fixing it. I skipped the hair appointment. Sharon and Dawn and Jane and I threw Joan a small birthday party, at which we all ate too much and finished off with a scandalous huckleberry dessert. We've decided we're going to go back onto the Atkins diet—we think we've stabilized our weight very well with Nutrisystem, but we haven't lost anything to speak of. So back to the diet that works. Then we'll go back to Nutrisystem to stabilize. Steak is on the horizon! I can get behind that! I'm getting real tired of Cheerios. I want eggs! I want steak! I want bacon!

12/16/06. Saturday. 45937. A leisurely morning and hard at work. Things are starting to take shape in the book, and I'm happy. The leg is continuing to improve. The state is continuing to recover from this week's nasty windstorm—I slept through it on muscle relaxant and painkiller, and Jane, poor thing, kept awake for fear the power would go out and the fish tank would need emergency help. She gets the medal, for sure. But now it's all clear and blue out there, still windy, but that nasty pollution has gone away. I'm really glad of that. The book is making progress now, and I have a clearer vision where I'm going. You'll notice I've now done the archiving and this page will load faster. I always dread doing that: Frontpage has you working realtime [more or less] as WYSIWIG on the site [actually, with the FTP function live and loaded] which means you can actually make a mistake, like lose the whole blog, if you get really wrong headed. Reading the Jan 31 entry, in which we were freaked out about a 4" bristleworm, is funny: our tank turned out to have 4 10"ers that we simply named. Lately I'm told they're not ordinary bristleworms, but are the more fearsome Oenone Fulgida, which have been completely harmless in our tank, and rather useful. The tank has prospered, I've turned in quite a few frags for such things as food and salt, and we're really enjoying it.

12/17/06. Sunday. 46234. Progress on the book, real progress. Jane finally got onto antibiotics for that sinus condition that's been nasty for 3 weeks, ever since she hit her head on the ice, wearing her helmet, got herself mildly concussed, and knocked loose an impaction in the sinus. //And we decided today is the day we get the tree up, any tree, of the 3 [of varying sizes] we have in storage. We decided to go modest this year, and just get out the 3' tree and set it on the dining table. So we can't find the book that contains the access codes for the storage area. So we hope for the office to be open: it is. We confirm our identity and straighten out the mess that had had them calling us requesting an addy confirmation: this gets complicated here—but we kept one storeroom on the west side of the city when we moved to the east, and they keep reverting to the old addy and then complaining that they can't find us. This info-pollution has now spread to the storeroom on the east side [same company] who now wants us to correct our already-correct addy. We knew this was a problem, so we mentioned it and got it straightened out for the third time. Then we get the code and go over to our storeroom across the street and behind a chain link fence. Simple, eh? No. They've put a special red lock on our unit. This usually means non-payment of bill and impending auction. Whoa! And our key won't work on our own lock, either. So Jane heads back to the office by our usual foot route, but they've found that since our last visit and chained the gap in the fence. So we take the car over, past the code-box, the auto gate, etc, and ask the office what's going on. The gal on duty consults the computer, says we're paid up, [yes], and probably it's frozen, so she gets a blow torch and a pliers. Back we go, past the code-box, etc. And she takes the tag off, and blow-torches our lock, which still won't open. They want 20.00 to cut off the lock when the manager returns tomorrow. Sigh. So back we go to the office across the street. She consults records again, and gets into the record connected to the tag number. It turns out, no, it's not our lock: they cut our lock off a month ago [no charge!] to repair the roof from inside, and here are two new keys. So back we drive across the street, through the gate again, and this time we actually get into the unit, retrieve our tree and some ornaments, and there we are. Sigh. Nothing is ever simple.// Meanwhile we decided to go back onto Atkins and went to the store, got the different set of supplies, and a steak. A really nice steak. Which I cooked for supper and managed to do perfectly...pretty good for me starting cooking again after a 6 month gap.

12/18/06. Monday. 46392. Jane got the tree decorated, well, at least got the lights on it. And the last of the gifts arrived, so we're set. We have the box of our best ornaments sitting on a dining chair. Does that count? Jane's of course on antibiotics, and is trying not to let it get her down. Meanwhile the diet is having immediate benefit. I dropped a pound and so did Jane. A lot of people worry about Atkins, and it would be worrisome if you cheated, because of the potentially high fat levels. You just can't combine fat and carbs if you want to be healthy. And you can't short yourself entirely of either on either diet. But if you treat the two like fire and gasoline, and just be careful, Atkins, in my own experience, is a pretty healthy diet...witness losing the weight which is generally bad for you, witness that cholesterol readings go way down for us, particularly for Jane, when we're on Atkins. Both of us gained weight like crazy on other diets, and the low-fat craze was the worst of all—show us a carb and we'll find a way to apply it to our hips. But the strict version of Atkins works for us. Everybody's metabolism is different, and blood tests are de rigeur while you're dieting. We do that, for sure.

12/19/06. Tuesday. 46372. Still happy on the diet of eggs and steak, and full of energy. I'm making progress. The book shows signs of taking off. It's still a stage heavy in thinking. Weather is wintery. I love that. The more snow the better.

12/20/06. Wednesday. 46501. Back and forth to the rink all day: we needed to come back in the evening to take photos for the bulletin board, for the coaches and instructors, so it was multiple trips. But I have the camera and it's a favor we can do the rink. It meant eating out, so we tried the chicken piccata at Scotty's. Some of the best I've ever had, even in Italy.

12/21/06. Thursday. 47273. Unfortunately the chicken piccata found a way to embody carbs, and we are both regretting it. So that dish goes off the menu. All our losses have been regained—I think mostly water weight, but that's a bummer. Going right along with the writing. The rink has made special time available for its regulars, and we're glad of that. Kids getting out of school means a real wild time on the rink, dodging bodies lying on the ice, watching out for kids who don't themselves know where they're going next...

12/22/06. Friday. 47929. Working away. More characters have begun to talk, and that's good. I have a notebook I've got to get copied for safety's sake, which contains notes from all the books, and that's been very, very helpful with this. I'd forgotten it'd been so long since I last visited this world. We skated, got to the market to buy a ham, and it was absolutely crazy there---very glad to be out of the madding crowd! We've got most everything wrapped, and we did get the ornaments on, so it's an official tree now. On the ice, I made a breakthrough. I've been battling my lack of runout on the 3-turn for months, and finally began to realize that I need to press the knee outward and not let it knock in on that maneuver. Then I have runout. It's also useful information for edges, and most everything else I do. I'm an old fencer, and those muscles have come back, but the particular muscles that control the knee's outward tension don't develop as much as the fore-and-aft movements. So I have some muscle-building to do. I tell you, everything you do in this sport trims up your posture and your body's resting-muscles so that you just reform everything piece by piece. I'm excited to get back to the ice to work with this, and we'll be off several days for holiday.

12/23/06. Saturday. 48359. We're going to lose our white Christmas. The weather is warming up. Bummer! On the other hand, if it lets people get to their relatives safely, that's to the good. Us, we're sticking close to the house and watching the madding rush from a distance. I did make a trip out to the supermarket, which was insane, for a few items I still needed. Jane's going to make Russian teacakes, which are just deadly, but otherwise we're being good for the holidays. Nights are full of the sound of water dripping, our snow leaving us, but it's still pretty cold, and the snow is staying on the mountains.

12/24/06. Sunday. 49211. T'was the day before Christmas and we aren't stirring, no, indeed. I'm working, playing a little Caesar IV, working, doing crossword puzzles, working. I did bestir myself to get the last few presents wrapped. We watched “The Lion in Winter,” our favorite Christmas movie.

12/25/06. Monday. 49831. And a merry Christmas! We did the little-kid thing of opening our presents before breakfast, and had a delightful Christmas. Everything fit, that was clothing, and worked, that wasn't. I gave Jane a clock that brightens a light gradually to wake you up, and she gave me a big plaque with the da Vinci “infinite man” image that also happens to be Reseune's logo. It weighs a ton, and we're going to have to use special care mounting that! We had a lovely dinner, drank too much bubbly, and watched Christmas things on tv.

12/26/06. Tuesday. 50592. It's an off day for the rink, so we just stayed home and took a holiday, or rather, worked, and cleaned up, and worked. Had steak, instead of ham, for variety for the day, but hereafter until that ham is done, it's ham. And have we gained over the holidays? Yes, but not with a feeling of despair---we'll take it off again quickly: it's just those delicious teacakes, which are now gone.

12/27/06. Wednesday. 50881. Ditto yesterday: not much going on, and we just worked on our respective books. Watched Pirates of the Caribbean II, which was another thing Jane gave me for Christmas. We'd already seen it, but that doesn't matter. Love those movies.

12/28/06. Thursday. 51162 Back to the rink, and back to work on those turns. As with everything of this sort, the knee position is not an instant cure—there are a lot of factors, but it's coming. We were going to go down to Pullman for Dr. Mike, but we had to cancel: today is just too tight. We went on a lake cruise in the evening with Sharon and Steve, to look at the Christmas light displays, then went to Scotty's for drinks after, and to get Steve supper—he had to dash back from a mountain top where he'd been working on cell tower stuff, way far off. But he made it. I, however, had a bit of a disaster: my camera failed me on the cruise—dead battery, as it turned out. But I had worn thick clothing and gloves because of being on deck during freezing weather for an hour, and when I got home from Scotty's, I shouldered my camera strap and my purse, the purse started to slip off my shoulder. So I grabbed it, but thanks to the thick coat, the camera strap also slid, right past the hand holding the purse strap, and the weight of the camera carried it on, bang! right onto the pavement. I managed to pry the lens cap off, and found shattered glass—which fortunately is just the filter that screws on over the lens, and recharging the battery proved the camera and lens do work; but it's a sickening sight. I'm going to have to take it to a shop to get that filter off the lens. It's trashed, bent, and it won't let go. I'm figuring they'll know how to do this without torquing the long lens. Sigh.

12/29/06. Friday. 51162 Back on the ice, and working hard on that turn and runout, and making really encouraging progress. Working on the manuscript. Playing a little video game. Working again. We've got to get the end of year accounts in order.

12/30/06. Saturday. 51475 A work and clean-up day, mostly. We've got so much cleanup