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All contents copyright 2005 by C.J. Cherryh
Last update: 07/08/2005
One of those questions a writer gets asked (a lot) besides the one we all dread, "where do you get your ideas?" is "how long does it take to write a novel?" Well, I thought it might amuse my readers to know. First, how long is a novel? 80,000 words up to infinity. A book 3/4 of an inch thick is about 80,000 words. A book an inch and a half thick is about 120,000 words. How many words on a page of manuscript? About 325, doublespaced.
So---say that your target length is about 100,000 words or more.
And how much does a writer write a day? Bear in mind that sometimes you go backwards, and rip out 10,000 words. Sometimes you go forward, and gain 3. Words, that is.
Sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's slow. Sometimes you don't get anything done. Bear in mind I write full time. But I have to do other things, too. So I thought I'd just let you see for a while how progress goes.
I'm working on Fortress of Ice.
Date: 1/24/05. Monday. Haven't started the new outline yet---had a checkup appointment today, and had to run off to that, ascertaining that Jane was vertical and functioning, but not happy, oh, dear no. She swore she was going skating, and we'd agreed to meet at the rink if she'd take my skates---I hoped maybe to be done early enough to get a little skating in. And things went quite quickly at the clinic, so it was a tossup between trying to beat Jane out the door or wondering if her phone was on---I knew I could drive it in time, and if I stopped to phone I might miss her altogether, if she'd forgotten her phone. Well, I pulled up in our parking lot just as Jane reached the ground level, and she had, in fact, forgotten her phone. We took off for the rink, and by now she was sick enough to request I not accelerate or stop too fast. This is quite grim. Ordinarily I can't talk her into Gatorade, but it seems the logical thing to do: the moment we reached the rink I got her a bottle of the substance and a bottle of water, and after a sip or two she revived enough to go out on the ice, and had downed about half the bottle in a couple of hours, but is pretty tired---as she says, she probably stayed on the ice about a quarter hour longer than she ought, and is quite shaky, again, probably the electrolyte balance: when you're on Atkins, it's not a good thing to get the electrolytes thrown that badly, and I know we shouldn't have splurged on that creme brulee dessert---way too much sugar on top of the other problem. She's taken to her room with the notion of sleeping it off, and I think this is a good idea. Light supper this evening, assuming she's looking at food by then, and a quiet evening recovering.
Date: 1/25/05. Tuesday. Well, Jane's still under the weather, supper last night wasn't a good thing, and I'm not feeling too spiff myself. I tried to get the format for the next book set up, but I'd no sooner brought up a file and gotten a page format launched than Jane came in to say she was too sick to skate---that's sick. She wanted more Gatorade and chicken soup. Emergency grocery run. We had a lesson scheduled, and I decided I'd better get organized and go, and then come back and pick Jane up because she did want to keep the chiropractic appointment. So off I went, and had a very good lesson. I'm still not as flexible as I'd like---and I think Joan despairs of my inside edge 3-turn, but I'll get it. It's a question of balance. Meanwhile I'm getting pretty reliable on the outside edge 3-turns, and Joan gave me an actual round-the-rink pattern to do, which consists of 3-turn to a back crossover, to the opposite foot back crossover, step out forward, then another 3-turn, in fairly random directions. This, if I can work up to speed, could look really rather nice. And I am gathering speed on the 3-turns. Besides that I'm working on the back outside edges, now that I've figured out what direction I'm supposed to be facing when I start the pattern. If I can avoid breaking something essential, I should be actually doing fairly good things come summer. Went dashing back to get Jane, and we went to Dr. Mike's, to get straightened out, which she said did help the nausea she's had for days. Neither of us felt up to our usual hamburger: she had the junior size, I left half my fish, and we just each had a crunchy peanut butter-blackberry shake, which is compensation for just about anything. No, it's not on our diets, but we get away with it every two weeks because we're scrupulously good most of the time.
Date: 1/26/05. Wednesday. I did get the file formed, and that staple of my work, the "tracking" file, which is where I jot down all the details that otherwise could slip my mind, names, dates, relatives, and map positions. But I'd gotten up late, and I only managed a few entries---it's always hard to pick up on a story you haven't dealt with for a while---before it was time to get to the rink---So we thought. The rink schedule had changed again, and we were half an hour early---plus there was a large class ahead of us and they didn't Zamboni. So we skated on deep powder---horrid surface to practice fine maneuvers on; some darling child had spat gum onto the ice, which besides fouling up good blades will bring you to a sudden 50% check in speed: I didn't fall. My legs felt like rubber. There was a hockey skater who wasn't as good as he thought he was, who nearly collided with me---and with every other skater on the ice. Couldn't get it through his head that you should look backward when going backward. And then my rubber legs just gave way for no particular reason and pitched me down as I was rounding a near-the-wall turn. I didn't hurt myself, but I was even more wobbly when I got up. Jane offered me her Gatorade (a new bottle) and it helped, but not longterm. I had to leave the ice, just too wobbly to cope. So I suppose I have a light case of whatever-it-is, and neither of us felt like supper. But I was feeling better later in the evening. We watched a dvd, Van Helsing, which we found a lot better than its reviews---we recommend it. It turns out it was done by the same chap who did The Mummy, and has the same bent sense of humor---a great deal of fun.
Date: 1/27/05. Thursday. Well, I got a paragraph done of notes...and some heavy thinking. Went skating in the morning, and got so wobbly I had to down a bottle of Gatorade, which I'm sure won't help my weight. We had a lesson with our younger instructor, who can't come until after her school hours, so this meant coming back, and skating-up again. We did have lunch at a new restaurant, a Thai place which had turned up in place of our old favorite, The Shack, and it was great. The ensuing lesson was pretty good, but I got dizzy practicing backward crossovers, which is not like me. Passed a 6-car pile-up on a tame city street on the way home. Amazing.
Date: 1/28/05. Friday. And the count begins at 939 words, on Fortress of Ice, which should be enjoyable and fast to write---she says at this point. This is counting notes, understand. At skating today, Jane had a lesson, to make up for the one she missed by being sick on Tuesday, but I had to leave the ice after thirty minutes, just dizzy...I have some symptoms of an ear infection, which may just be allergy. I won't mess around with it for long.
Date: 1/29/05. Saturday. 2128 words. Ripping right along---at least on notes. And the accounts are due to be figured, and poor Jane, who had other things on her agenda, is obliged to try to balance the accounts before I set to work and unbalance them again by paying the bills...we had a serious discussion on how to avoid waiting until the last moment to get this done, and I think we reached a consensus. I'm still feeling it from the ear, and of course it's a weekend, but I may have to go in to the clinic and get something done about it if this doesn't improve today.
Date: 1/30/05. Sunday. I got up with no relief from the ear situation---it bled, and this didn't seem a good thing: I've had a lifetime of ear infections, I've lost most pain sensation there, and the feeling of pressure and the dizziness says hie thee to the doctor. So off I go, on a Sunday morning, to the 24/7 medical clinic, to pay exorbitant prices, but I'm taking no chances now that nasty symptoms have manifested. I drove myself---Jane's fussing with a graphic design for the ice show spectacular, which silly her, she agreed to do---and I'm not that dizzy. So I get there. Seems I forgot my wallet, my insurance card, and my driver's licence, along with my checkbook and credit cards. I'd borrowed Jane's cell phone because mine wasn't charged; I couldn't get the thing to work properly---it insisted on being on voice command, but I finally tamed the beast and got a call through. She dropped everything and drove to the clinic with my wallet, then left. Shortly after I had a summons for my case: it turned out they want to take blood pressure in the public waiting room in the Urgent Care clinic, and I've worn a heavy sweater. The nurse decides to use the big cuff and do it over the sleeve---over my protestations. So after that and a lengthy wait for the doctor, I present my case: bleeding from the ear and pressure. I want my ear checked, and medication if appropriate. Oh, no, no, we have to attend my "low blood pressure" condition. I don't, I say, have low blood pressure. I'm here for what ought to be an earache. No, no, we have to take the blood pressure again. And the doctor proceeds the same way the nurse did, and confirms I have direly low blood pressure. Not for long, I think: I feel it building fairly high at the moment. My ear, I say, and she checks the ear. I say it had a bloody discharge, and ask if the eardrum is intact. She avows she can't see it too well, but we really need to look at the blood pressure and maybe take a test for anemia. But my ear, I say. Well, maybe she could prescribe some ear drops with Neomycin....I'm allergic, I point out, to Neomycin, and said so in the initial interview. Well, maybe not. But if you'll just put on the hospital gown and wait for the nurse we'll check the blood pressure. Of course, with no bulky sweater, it reads normal---in both arms, wonder to say. I wait some more. The doctor comes back and says maybe we should run a blood test. I'm thinking dark thoughts by now, and thought of retorting that I've not been exposed to Ebola, have only a question about my ear, thank you---but what I do recall is the blood test I took early in the week, and the results should be downstairs. The results are, they're normal, and now the doctor has to admit both bloodpressure and blood content are normal. Well, thank you. Can we just line through that "low blood pressure" on my chart? This doesn't happen. It's still on there. But they wrote the new result down. Now can we check my eardrum? Well, she blew some air at it, said it flexed "just a little" and didn't look ruptured. Oh, thank you. Perhaps, she adds brightly, she can prescribe the Neomycin ear drops. Allergic, I remind her. Well, she says, it's probably dry air. It is winter. Use saline nose drops. Goodbye. For this, we get extra charge for weekend office visits. Restraining further comment, I left and picked up some Similasan ear remedy at the grocery store, used it, and within two hours the afflicted ear began to discharge, considerably more fluid than went in, and stopped bleeding. I got a bit of work done, but Jane's still got the main computer on her project. We settled down to watch "Pompeii: The Last Day" on Discovery, and it is the first Discovery program to portray the Romans as they really were...quite, quite a nice program. It's the first one I can honestly recommend. Catch it on the re-runs if you missed it. It even did fair credit to Pliny the Elder, whose combined career as admiral and naturalist---he did not scruple to divert a warship to go watch a natural phenomenon, or turn aside in a rescue, either: the honorable original to the explorer-naturalists. A few details I'd quibble with: my own research turned up quite a bit of preliminary activity from Vesuvius observed by Romans, and it wasn't as if they didn't know it was a volcano: they'd just never seen one blow up in that unique type of explosive eruption combined with that phenomenon geologists have recently put a nasty name to: pyroclastic flow. I've been there, I've seen the body casts, and it was kind of a spooky program in a way, since I know these people, and watching them hit their marks and perish is...well, you may imagine. It was very, very well done. Nice to know I'm 300 miles downwind of another volcano with such a capacity...although Vesuvius' magma chamber I believe has Mount St. Helens considerably beaten for size. I've asked modern day Neopolitans if the volcano worries them, and the answer is pretty well what I imagine the Romans would have said in their day: the volcano erupts very infrequently, most generations never see an eruption, and if it comes, maybe it will come in the grandchildren's day... The overwhelming fact is, it's one of the prettiest coasts on the planet, and people love living there. So did the Romans. Pompeii was the Ft. Lauderdale of its era, a place for holidays.
Date: 1/31/05. Monday. 4012....counting what I got done yesterday. Well, the ear drained most of the night, and the pressure is gone. I got a bit of work done, but the mouse keys on my laptop started sticking, and finally wouldn't function, so I spent a while playing mechanic, before we went off to skate. I'm still a bit wobbly, but began to get my feet under me. It's spring break, and the kids are here---snowing up the ice, and generally underfoot left and right, bless them: it's how the rink maintains itself, and I'm happy to see them have the income. We decided to chase off after our friend Larry and get our skates sharpened, which took an hour at least---his workshop is quite a fascinating operation---and we decided to go have Thai food for lunch/supper in midafternoon. Unfortunately our order got mixed up, and one dish arrived heavy with onions, to which we're both allergic---myself a little less so than Jane. So I took that one, and picked the onion out, but not enough, clearly. By the time we got home, I just wanted to lie still and be miserable...though a few antacids and stomach remedies later, I'm feeling better. Did I mention the housenet went down and caused me to lose the above entry, which I had to reconstruct. But Jane is through with the art project and I got payroll done for the month, so we're not too far behind. Just need to play a little catchup for tomorrow---when I'm supposed to have a lesson. I think I will cede the lesson time all to Jane, because I haven't had enough good practice time on what I'm supposed to be doing: just a little wobbly yet.
Date: 2/1/05. Tuesday. 6892. Good progress...still all outline, in the crazed way I do outlines, which is not your A,B,C method...I just write disjointed paragraphs as they occur to me and then move them (I love the computer age---this used to entail scissors and tape) into a logical sequence, filling out details as a third step, and then conflating the thing further and further. Try it, if you have to do an outline for something: add the numbers and paragraphing later. Makes a whole lot more sense to the way the human brain works.//Went to the rink for a lesson---was still quite a bit wobbly, but Joan was able to get some good moves out of me, all the same. I swear she must weigh half what I do, and she can keep me from pitching on my nose just by a little judicious pressure on the fingers. I'm beginning to get off the wall entirely with the 3-turns, and am beginning to get the hang of the inside-edge 3-turn. The newly sharpened skate blades produce a few surprises where I've gotten used to slopping about a turn and skidding a little: no, indeed: skates that are sharp don't go sideways easily, which can be startling if you expect they will give you a half a foot or so of slip. But they really grip on the crossovers, which is a whole lot more secure. I've also been helping one of the other adult skaters who has some very talented youngsters on the ice: she's never learned her edges, and she's beginning to get the inside edge down: I hope this will give her a lot more fun on the ice.//We came back in the evening to show the club Jane's presentation about the web page and the ice show poster, and the officers were very positive. I'll post the url when we get the page up and running.//And Jane, wicked person, persuaded me to give up my 20 cup a day coffee habit: this, understand, is major---but there is some indication that it throws blood sugar and cortisol levels high: not the caffeine, but the other chemicals in, specifically, coffee. I'm the sort of person who doesn't function until morning coffee; I love the flavor, as well as the effect. So I've cut myself back to one cup in the morning and my two double lattes at the rink. That's five ordinary cups, and that's a big cut. If it makes a difference in weight loss, I suppose I'll go with it---at least until I've dropped that other 40 pounds. Stay tuned.
Date: 2/2/05. Wednesday. 6892. The whole day started in a scramble as Jane reported my clock was wrong. I wasn't sure I wanted to go to skate today, because the home-school program brought a lot of kids to public ice last Wednesday, and just made the ice wretched, but they had had the lesson on one rink and had rink 2 Zambonied and clean for us at least until the kids hit, and it wasn't at all bad, nor that chewed up. I actually got some good time in and made a major breakthrough on that pesky falloff on the righthand 3-turn---I'm not pulling the back arm back far enough, which has the effect of not winding the rubber band tight enough before the release that spins whatever-it-is around. A little more tension there, getting the free foot turned out and positioned near the other ankle, and snap~! it worked. That was Jane's observation that handed me that fix.//Then I had to go off to the clinic for the rest of the tests connected to the physical last week: mammogram and dxascan (bone density). They're down the hall from each other. And the dxascan apparatus wouldn't work right: they had to run it multiple times...then I had to change outfits and cart my belongings off to go get the mammogram, and that machine malfunctioned. By this time the dxascan people showed up saying I had to come back---they needed to re-run one of the scans, so back I go, change clothes again, and redo that scan, which involves a lengthy time lying still uncomfortably. When they finally pronounced themselves satisfied, I went back to get dressed, and my necklace was missing from the bundle of clothes. This involved searches everywhere I had had the clothes, which included the dxascan lab, 2 dressing rooms, and the hall between, none of which turned up the necklace, which is a nice silver one given me as a gift, and I prize it. Well, we checked all the desks, asked everyone, and the clinic ground to a halt while all the people searched. I finally gave up and went home, and just as I got in the door, the phone rang and they'd found it. So at this point I asked Jane (it being past 5) "Want to have Thai?" and we went back after the necklace and back to the Thai restaurant. Now, mind, all this grief on a person who's giving up coffee, which is about like giving up cigarettes. I'm holding up remarkably well---no pyrotechnics, no jitters. I'm drinking a lot of tea instead, and waiting to see this weight loss manifest itself.
Date: 2/3/05. Thursday. 7288. Well, a long, long day. We decided to go skate about 11, and to take along the computer and the camera to do some photography for the club website during the afternoon, while waiting for our lesson at 4:15. My feet were amazingly sore after the morning skate; and after that, I took pictures and generallly helped Jane, who was doing the scanning and cleanup---after which I made the mistake of skating-up a little early and sat for maybe twenty minutes waiting for ice time. I'd hoped this would let my feet settle into the boots: wrong. It only let them swell a bit, and this made the lesson really painful. I was glad enough to have the skates off again, and by then I was just generally sore all over. I attribute it to the tests yesterday, but it's quite unpleasant.
Date: 02/04/05. Friday. 7288. No progress: I overslept, and I'm so sore and stiff I can hardly move...back to the ice again, and I had to quit twenty minutes early, after spending most of my skate trying to help a mother with a very young girl who wanted very badly to skate, but who was terrified of the slick ice. She wanted to hold on for multiple rounds of the rink, and I figure saving a kid from being afraid of something that's so much fun is a worthy cause. I helped out, her mum on one side, and me on the other, with the youngster trying to skate on one foot and frequently sliding off it. She did improve, however, and began to use the tyke-support bars that glide on the ice, enough that I could retire from the job of second support. I hope she enjoyed her day: it actually helped when she did fall down on her backside---a gentle plump! at her height---and discovered she wouldn't die of it. If she persists, I think she might have a good chance of doing it on her own in a few sessions. But I was just done in, by this point, aching so badly that if I did sit down, getting up again hurt so much I'd rather sit. Finally Jane pointed out the likely truth: we live in the midst of evergreens, it's been 50 degrees today, the wind has been blowing, and it's just very likely a case of cedar fever. Anyone from Oklahoma and northern Texas knows what I mean by 'cedar fever'. It's an allergy to cedar pollen (even people who don't have other allergies may suffer from this one) and when the cedars pollinate, it makes human beings feel incredibly, nastily achy and a little dim-witted. Time to start the Flonase prescription. We're forecast maybe to pick up a bit of snow this weekend, which should slow the cedars down, and it can't come soon enough for me. It's probably why I didn't get anything done this morning: cedar pollen doesn't help your intellect at all, and makes you feel as if you'd rather sit staring into space rather than react to a fire alarm. I did check the national pollen site this evening, and sure enough, the birches and cedars are doing their best to reproduce. We did get something done this afternoon, lacking all will to do anything complex: I got the set of colored folders I wanted to start the shift to 2005 in the filing system: green was the color for 2004. And we stopped and got several sacks of "poofy balls" from JoAnn's Fabrics---they're still in Christmas colors, but the cats don't care. If you have a cat, try them: they're cheap little balls of spiky fiber ordinarily used for sewing onto sweaters or making doll-buttons and other embellishment in craft projects. The best puff-balls are about a half inch in diameter and have sparkly filaments in the mix. Seems we sent a sack of them to Jane's sister for Christmas, and her cats, having disposed of all of them (they end up under heavy appliances, since tiled kitchens are the favorite place to bat these about) are in mourning. They're just the right size for a cat to carry, spit, and bat, and they're such a favored toy that His Blackness spent very little time locating the new sacks and wondering if they were all for him. Sorry, Efanor. You have your own, right beside the couch.... We maintain a small out-of-reach bowl of them wherein we can deposit the ones we find about the place, and toss them down as if they were brand new, to the delight of the feline twosome. Ysabel occasionally talks to hers as she carries it about, producing a kind of warbly "wow-ow-ow."
Date: 02/05/05. Saturday. 7838. A bit of work, and then, facing the inevitable accounts, I decided to accompany Jane to the rink, not to skate, today, but to get some candids of the folk at the rink and the Learn to Skate program, to get that pesky web page updated. Then I came back and hit the accounts, which are finally yielding sensible information and making my blood pressure ever so much better. Cutting out on coffee and upping the tea consumption has been less painful than I thought, but I'm having a cup now, having just battled some of the records to a standstill and trying to catch up on terribly late e-mail. I've had multiple letters from people wanting more about Chanur, Morgaine, and the Cloud's Rider world, and all I can say is if you want these older series continued, you have to write to the appropriate publisher and promise to read them if they publish another. They're nice folk, and really do listen, and their address is in the back of any recent title page. And I had a request from a reader who wants greater legibility in the blog, so I'm trying this---no, don't adjust your set: I'm increasing font size and moderating the extreme contrast, and perhaps this will help.
Date: 02/06/05. Sunday. 10322. A good day for work---ever since we've identified cedar pollen as the culprit, and started medicating for it, I've felt quite fine, and I didn't do a thing but work and watch the Europeans (skating championship) on the telly. I risk entering a combat zone when I say that I like the new judging system, and I didn't at any time during the competition disagree with the outcome. It rewards finesse moves, which is hard on skaters whose strength is jumps, but I think it will end up rewarding fine edges and good footwork, which has been, in my own opinion, underrated under the 6 point system. We stayed in all day, didn't even put our noses out of doors.
Date: 02/07/05. Monday. 11781. Another nice day, cold and pleasant. Bear in mind that what I'm building now is outline, which is the fastest part of the writing, sort of stream of consciousness records of my concepts of the story, and it will form the framework on which I build the work itself. What I do is write forward until the endmost item has fairly well passed out of focus---i.e., I'm not that sure what happens next, and the bridges between things that happen have grown vague...and then I pop back to the beginning and begin to inflate the outline with details, so that all the things that were sparse before now acquire descriptions, relationships, sometimes even critical dialog between two people; or reasons, or things that have to be set up here. I fly on toward the last written section of the outline, off into that dreaded white space of unwritten text, keep going as far as I can, and then cycle back to the beginning or anywhere else that interests me to inflate the outline a bit more. By the time I get the whole outline done, it's even possible a lot of the book will be fully realized, if sparsely told---The Paladin happened that way. I finally just added dialog to the text, and almost had it done. Of course it had to be finessed and refined, which is the last of all stages. But I've been very happy with this book thus far. I still haven't 'read' the Bren book yet---sort of waiting for a car trip in which this will make sense to do, and I'm also letting it 'cool off' a bit, so that I'm more apt to spot errata and glitches when I do re-read it. After I've done that and become happy with it, then I'll print off a fair copy and fire it off to my agent, who'll get it over to the publisher. Soon, now, soon. There's already a Bren book in queue at DAW, so I'm sure I'm not putting anyone's schedule off.//And we went off for a skate today, and to take the last few candids for the website. I've been troubled by a very sore side of my left foot, and tried one fix last Friday, which nearly killed me; today I simply wrapped one of those Dr. Scholl's forefoot gel pads around the afflicted edge of my foot, and that was like skating on a cloud---the only problem being that it dumped me back on my heel a third of an inch, and that pitch aft nearly threw me on my backside. I went back and slipped another pad into the boot heel, bringing the foot level, and lo! perfection! Now the right foot is jealous. I got some more of the things to slip in the other boot, and if it works the way this one does, I may have solved the problem which dogged me Thursday---the sore feet that hampered me when I had to skate-up a second time in one day. Now, this may sound minor, but in a competition or testing, you may have some down-time in the day, and if your feet kill you the second time you put the skates on, you're not going to score well. So it's an important thing, and it feels as if it's going to work well enough that I can glue the things into my boots.
Date: 02/08/05. Tuesday. 11781. A scramble from beginning to end...we got out of the house late, ran to the rink for our Tuesday lesson from Joan, and I made the choice to pad up both boots with unfamiliar orthotics before a lesson---which could have been disastrous, but was only a little excessive: the pads are made to come down by half, and I'll do that tomorrow. On the good side, we both had good sessions: I got a sequence that, if I can do it well, will actually represent a small, ice-covering routine, not unlike a slice of a competition program. It's a 3-turn sequence, involving a crossover, shift of weight, and repeat. I can actually look like a figure skater instead of a person doing bits and pieces. I'm very happy with it. Jane is tracking along with similar moves. You'd think we'd end up having pretty much the same lesson, but she does certain moves better than I do and vice versa: different bodies, different skills. She says I have a good foot turnout, which surprises me greatly: I had ballet when I was 6, briefly and unsuccessfully. But I fenced, and went into that sport with two knees with weak ligaments, so I used to do the ballet exercises as well as the fencing warm-ups to keep the knees intact. Must've worked. Now Joan will be on me about turning out my feet as I ought---really useful when going backward: it's the craziest thing. Turn the free toe outward as you're gliding backward on one foot and you'll go on an outside edge curve, just inevitably. It sets up the muscles and shifts the weight, and over onto the edge you go.//Then Jane had to get the CD ready for the skating club, which is going to print its poster, stationery, t-shirt design, and such from it. That was done at the rink lunch counter, because we still couldn't find the club president, Rita, who needed it.//From there we dashed off to our chiropractic appointment, and back again.//And when we hit the city, we ran off to a Thai restaurant and bar where one of our other skating buddies, Dawn, was part of a Middle Eastern dance troupe doing a benefit for tsunami relief. We had a great time, ran into some of our science fiction friends into the bargain, and the troupe was good.
Date: 02/09/05. Wednesday. 14048. Last night we had Thai food, involving the deadly-good peanut sauce, and this morning Jane looked like death warmed over, flushed face---says she spent a horrid night, stomach pains, etc. Well, perhaps there's been just too much Thai peanut sauce lately. She's sworn off peanuts for a while, may have a slight allergy and doesn't want to throw it into a full-blown problem. So we decided going to skate today wouldn't be good. I ought to have finished up the accounts, but didn't. I settled in and worked, until both of us had a hair appointment, which takes a good couple of hours...and Rita called from Kinko's to say the stationery file wouldn't show. Well, that proved a problem. Jane took her computer to the salon, called up a new file, transferred the images over, and had a working copy, which, when we got home again, we emailed over to Kinko's/Fedex, which is set up to receive the item...so we trust the club got its stationery and we didn't have to drive across town---isn't the e-age wonderful? We decided to have pan-fried salmon and broccoli for the next several nights and not to have any more dietary experiments for a while.
Date: 02/10/05. Thursday: 18021. Well, up and at it early. And then to the rink. We're back on the ice today, though Jane is still suffering: we had a pretty good skate, all told. We had brought the computers to the rink, because we had a lesson in a couple of hours---I played Solitaire, about all I was mentally worth at this point---my current passion is Vegas-style 3-card, by which I remind myself why playing cards for actual money is not a good idea, and sipped latte (with low carb milk), while Jane did actual work on the club website, but after a bit I skated-up out of boredom, then decided my feet were going to suffer if I didn't get them working. I decided to go back onto 'club' ice, meaning we pay extra for it. I wanted get another hour in of warmup before our 'club ice' lesson with our younger instructor, remembering that last week I couldn't feel my feet. I warmed up sufficiently, and had a really good lesson, really good---until I added up that I'd been on the ice for four hours during the course of the day, and no wonder that by 5:15 my feet are a little over-used. I'll be lucky if I can walk tomorrow.
Date: 02/11/05. Friday. 19293. A spate of freeflowing work---this is being quite fun: this is a book I've had in planning since I turned in the last one, which has been a couple of years, and it is going rapidly, as I had hoped. Still bear in mind we're talking outline word count, but there is some finished writing in it, too. We went to skate---I just couldn't get my feet to work after the extreme workout of yesterday, but I survived. I'm practicing the back outside edge, meaning throwing a curve to the outside, not the midline of your body, while going backward. I can say I'm steady enough to have survived running my skate into a nasty 'death cookie', or Zamboni-drip, while going backward like this, but it was a bad moment. I finally decided I'm just not steady enough on that edge and launched into a backward two-foot slalom that really has one foot on the ground and the other fairly well ghosting alone and useless for all but balance. Sure enough, when I tried the move next, my steadiness had improved, so I kept at that for about half an hour, enough to exhaust my legs and turn up a real weakness in my backward righthand gear: got to steady that down, which may be one of my key problems in doing the exercise. The adult kaffeklatch went out to lunch---me, Jane, Sharon, and Joan, and we went to Antony's, which has the spectacular view of the falls, beautiful, beautiful. After that, and being as tired as I was, I completely collapsed for an evening of "Children of the Nile," the game I'm playing---a sim game which lets you get up-close with the Egyptians. I'm not in a goblin-bashing mood this last few months: the tinkering and futzing of a meticulous city-sim just sort of fills the bill.
Date: 02/12/05. Saturday. 21023. A lengthy morning of work...then a dash over to the rink to take some photos of instructors and coaches for the rink itself, a favor for friends. It took all of five minutes once I got everyone lined up: I always figure if you're shooting portraits, you just can't keep people standing about: they get out of sorts and it shows. We ran through pretty fast and I got what I hope are some good posed shots---I prefer candids, for showing people as they really are. Honestly, I'd far rather someone windblown with the spark of life in their look than someone combed and perfect and somber. I think it's a much fairer record of the person. After that it was---fill the car with gas before I'm left on the street, get home, get back to work, today being one of those perfectly wonderful productive ones; then cook supper and collapse. You'll notice I've finally gotten the dates straightened out: one of the problems of this larger type face in a wizzy-wig program is that I can't see too far backward to doublecheck my dates without (ahem!) actually looking at it, and I got careless.
Date: 02/13/05. Sunday. 26377. I'm writing outline in a peculiar font, which I sometimes do, just to relieve the same-old, same-old of Times Roman, my usual fallback. I'm using Viner Hand, which is large, and which means I have 72 pages of outline---it makes me feel as if I'm getting somewhere. Typesetters nowadays keep using fonts that lose punctuation: or kern (snug) them up against the last letter of the word, which I think contributes to why-Junior-can't-read. Punctuation should have punch, substance, visibility...because (I will tell you a secret of the English language) you can say absolutely anything any way you like, if you can just punctuate it correctly---which I say to anyone who laments that he just can't write coherently: the problem is---how do you punctuate it so that a reader can figure your meaning? Punctuation is less rules than tools....ah, well. But I drift. Considerably. Back to the question of font: Viner Hand is sort of piratical, sort of Blackadder style. Try your business reports in Viner Hand and see if they don't have a refreshing air of mystery...well, better convert them before you turn them in to the committee. But you can have the private satisfaction.//Just saw one of those commercials (yes, I write with the telly on, at all times) for a Low-Carb pill that makes you more efficiently digest all the high fat and protein you eat---I swear, I'm very efficient at absorbing anything I eat. That's my trouble. That's why I have another 40 pounds to lose. Seems to me the more you digest, the more food value you get, and food value is another word for putting-on-weight. So is "full of nutrients"---I don't need more nutrients. I'm trying to cut down on them, thank you. Anyone who has reason to worry about real deficiency, like a growing child, go for the nutrients---but I don't think I fall in that category. Reminds me of that famous ad for a wonder food that had: "fifty percent of the nutrition and only half the calories." As Jane's favorite character would say, thinkaboutit...//I did sit down and get the personal accounts ready to send to my accountant, a relatively simple job, and one that needed to be sent off a month ago.//Oh, and any of you who happen to like cats, search up "Hallmarks of Felinity" on the internet. I swear, it's Ysabel, perfectly Ysabel. I want that collection hardbound---and you can get it from Amazon.//On the "changes to the blog" front, so far I have four votes for and one against the teal blue background as opposed to black. I know whatever I do isn't going to be universally acceptable, but the object is readability. I could take this to black on white, but I kind of like the color, myself. I did some tweaks today, then wiped them all out as illegible, and I'm out of time alloted for tinkering...I wrote, "thinkering..." Hmm. Maybe that should be a word.
Date: 02/14/05. Monday, Valentine's Day. 29637. Well, more tinkering. This color seems awfully pale to me, but we'll run this one up the flagpole and see if it draws fire. Had a pretty good skate today---I'm still working on the backward outside edges, and I've had some interesting moments keeping my balance once I get away from the vertical cues of the wall: I don't need to touch it, but when you get out into the middle, that's a lot of featureless white all around you with no real up or down and nothing to reach out to if you bobble. Not to mention a near miss from another skater who, rounding the end of the rink at high speed, hit one of the patented 'death cookies' the Zamboni sometimes leaves in its wake (I found two the size of your fist, and eliminated them---I've gotten steady enough on my feet to be able to chip them off the surface) and I can say she did a miraculous job not taking me out as she skidded past at ankle level. Her speed was really startling, especially as I usually track every skater on the ice (when we're free-skating, we habitually cross the ice at all angles and directions, dictated by the known pattern-exercises we do, which are predictible if you just know who's out there) and I hadn't even seen her enter. She had hit hard, but she seemed undamaged, and I certainly was, but it was indeed a moment.//Afterward Jane and I went off to Tomato Street for a little splurge for Valentine's Day, since we'd both been so harried this last couple of weeks that we hadn't gotten our usual cards to exchange. We were bad. We split a dessert. The news from the scales tomorrow will not be good for either of us---and the sugar hit was pretty hard on my stomach. We're now vowing we're going to redo ketosis, which means a week of very high protein and no cheating of any kind. This, we hope may get us off the current plateau---not a bad plateau, since it's far below where I was, but a plateau that's lasted for two months and we're thinking it's time to get down to business and lose another five pounds or so before spring.//Weather's been dry and productive of cedar pollen---which means body aches, stuffy ears, runny noses, eyes, and the IQ of a potato, even for people who aren't usually allergic to things. I'm keeping up my Flonase prescription, thank you, and hoping for cold weather. The Weather Service promised us snow flurries today and the clouds only dropped moisture on the mountains---we need the water, as is, particularly the ski resorts need it, and it's going to be the weekend before we have another chance at any rain or snow. It's also been too warm for winter. I hope this doesn't foretell a nasty summer, but it certainly looks as if it could be one of those hot ones. Winter sports have generally taken a beating hereabouts this winter, a hockey strike and no snow on the nearer mountains. Our rink is the sole refuge for us cold-lovers, amateur hockey, dropin hockey, and, of course, us.//And Jane's rearranging her room again---we have a lot of furniture, and any rearrangement involves higher math, sort of like a Rubik's Cube, trying to figure out what we can do differently with the pieces. She's been shoving things about in there with a great deal of energy, also a sign of impending spring.
Date: 02/15/05. Tuesday. 31238. A little snow fell in the night, about enough to show up here and there along the creek, but not enough to give real relief. I started the day aching in all my joints and a lesson and a hard skate weren't too helpful. On the other hand, if Joan's providing me stability, I can do some actually complex things now, and I got across the width of the rink (again with help) doing the backward edges pattern---I'd have sworn last week that it would take me two months to get that far. But I've been practicing those edges, and practicing, and I just plain ache. I'm pretty sure cedar pollen is somewhere in the equation, but I'm writing this late at night because the Advil hasn't kicked in enough to let me sleep. Ysabel, who thought we were going to bed, is disgusted. We made a major grocery run today to set up for this re-ketosis business, which means lots of meat, eggs and cheese, and salmon is the easy thing up here in the northwest. But Eggo now makes a low-carb waffle---good news. Sometimes you just want something that crunches. I don't know how long it will take us to break out of this plateau, but we'll see. I'm ready to lose 5 to 10 pounds. I've already lost 40 plus, and have kept it off for a year, which indicates we're winning the battle. So, well, it's virtue for at least a couple of weeks.//Got to watching a movie this evening---kids having fun with sparklers triggered memories of doing the same...those and those wonderful cinder-snakes that grew out of a little black tablet. You know, I figured when I got to a certain age, the youngers would all be rebels as in most generations and more reckless than I liked---but most kids don't get sparklers at all any more: parents are scared of the hot wires inside. And programs like Clean Sweep try to help parents reorganize their houses after a deluge of monster-sized kids' toys has taken over every room in the house and displaced everyone from their beds. My toys, when I was a kid, mostly fit inside a shoe box, under my bed, thank you, and none of them would have passed today's safety standards. The ones that were plastic were brittle, with sharp edges. The ones that were metal had peeling paint and wheels that would come off, if I'd tried. I certainly didn't have any inclination to swallow any of them, however: they were precious, and few, and some, like my little ships, were made out of walnut shells and toothpicks, which definitely aren't edible. I also knew that if toys were gone, they were gone, and there wouldn't be more at the next trip to the store. Three-legged horses got a toothpick taped on for a leg and continued in service. We simply could not be feckless. We had floor furnaces for heating the house: we learned early that if you walked onto the grid barefoot you ended up looking like a waffle, because the grid would melt crepe-soled shoes to stickiness after a minute of standing, not to mention branding your bare feet if you didn't watch where you were walking--the things, completely flush with the floor, and about three feet by two and a half, always seemed to be near a doorway. But they were indescribably wonderful to stand on on a winter's day, a toasty blast of air---until your shoe soles heated up and common sense advised you it was time to move off. If there were babies in the house, you just put a kind of fence around the grating and hoped for the best, and yes, some kids did learn the hard way. It did discourage juvenile roughhousing anywhere near the grate. Transportation? No car pools. You walked. When I got my first bike, at age seven, I met a steep learning curve...literally. I went off over the handlebars repeatedly on a gravel patch that lay in an intersection between me and school, and after about two weeks of being a fool on a two block downhill, I learned to slow down before I got to the aforesaid loose gravel, and stopped falling on my elbows. Helmets were unheard of---fortunately I never landed on my head, but the elbows and knees were a real mess before I figured out how to brake. Training wheels? There wasn't any such thing. You just took your chances and planned to fall down a few times. Painfree medication? Heck, no. And no sympathy. You got it scrubbed, the rocks picked out, and a good dose of poisonous merthiolate dumped on it with great expediency, because you were certainly going to howl and postponing the inevitable with protestations of sympathy only prolonged the misery. By the time I was fourteen, my cousins, my brother and I were routinely handed a lit punk and a grocery bag full of medium-sized firecrackers on July 4th and turned loose on my grandmother's farm for most of the day unsupervised in forty acres of dry grass, which we never did set alight. We had the basic sense to use the creek bottom for our detonations and fires, we never startled the cattle, and we never did have an accident with fairly potent little fireworks...well, except when my brother zigged away from one detonation into another, but he was only singed. I never handled the big stuff until I was eighteen, and then the very first Roman candle I let off fired at both ends---but I'd been taught to hold them well to the side and not have anyone behind me: no damage done. (Every firework in that lot did the same.) The only thing we didn't trust was bottle rockets, after the time we had one head for the barn. That wayward rocket took an hour to hunt down, during which time the barn did not take fire, but a cow took serious exception to the after-hours intrusion, and ran my dad quite nastily into a fence. So bottle rockets went off our shopping list, but we graduated to more potent firecrackers. Our roller skates, that other summer recreation, were quad-wheel, not inline: metal, with a slide and a screw to adjust for shoe-length, and they clipped onto street shoes with very dubious little clamps you screwed up tight over the edges of your leather soles with a skate key, a little item which was very easy to lose and hard to replace. The side clamps came off way too easily---a real startlement, when a heavy metal skate came unclipped while still buckled around your ankle. I took one heck of a dive when I hit gravel at the bottom of a neighbor's drive on a steep descent and catapulted clear to the centerline of our residential street. And I loosened every one of my permanent front teeth one spring by trying to vault a metal railing in the middle of a dry public park wading pool---my toe caught the top rail---and we just applied ice, called the doctor (who said the teeth would probably tighten up again) and never once thought of suing the city park department just because I couldn't correctly gauge a jump. I ate soup for a week. The teeth did tighten up again. And I didn't stop vaulting things, but I did learn not to do it over concrete---a lot faster than I learned about the gravel, I must say. That one hurt. ---You know, I'm glad to have survived growing up. But I think I'm going to have to get myself a handful of sparklers for next July.
Date: 02/16/05. 31238...Wednesday. yep, no progress, because I was up until 3am, overslept, and had to scramble to get ready for the rink... And just to keep myself honest, I'm going to include the diet progress (or regress) in this daily report until I shed those cursed five pounds. I was pretty meticulously honest yesterday, didn't have any treats, exercised about 2 hours on the ice, and gained half a pound. How's that for reward of virtue? I think what's so wretchedlydifficult willpower-wise about trying to lose weight is that you don't pay for your sins all the next day: there's no correlation between what you ate yesterday and what your weight does today, because biochemical process is not on a 24 hour schedule. A misbehavior did it to me: that Valentine's dessert, I'm sure. I refuse to be miffed about this half pound, unfair as it seems at the moment. I'll see if I can get to the scales tomorrow. I usually don't weigh every day, but I'm curious how long it will take my newly-active virtue to make a difference. //I did discover a valuable bit on the rink: posture, posture, posture---in this case, remembering to rotate the trailing shoulder up and back during a turn, not letting it go rounded and casual. Funny how that makes footing and turn more secure./ I'd hoped to come home and have the energy to get some work done, but we had to go to the pharmacy on the way to pick up some prescriptions, and lucky me, I got in line behind a lady with a far worse problem than mine, and some sort of clerical mess to boot; and a gentleman who had no sense of body space and who kept backing up into the packages I was holding, while weaving and bobbing about with amazing vigor---and the whole line, just them and me, took half an hour to get to the counter. By the time I got home ready to work, the housenet had gone down again (we have a chancy plug on the modem, and probably the cats had gotten into the cords or brownies had been at work: you fix it by climbing on a ladder and sequentially turning things off and unplugging them and replugging them. Then it still didn't work.) By then I was absolutely chilled through and exhausted. All that missed sleep last night came down on me. So I caved in for what I thought would be a few minutes and discovered I'd lost the afternoon as well as the morning. The only thing I accomplished this evening was a second assault on the modem that finally worked: that plug is incredibly iffy, practically balanced in the socket. //I think last night must have been meterologically odd: I couldn't sleep, Jane said she couldn't sleep, and Sharon said the same thing, though the weather was fine and cold and ought to have been good sleeping weather. I plan to get up tomorrow with a good deal more energy, thank you, and get some real work done before we go anywhere. Postscriptum: the housenet has gone down again---just about the time the cats thundered through the living room on goblin patrol. I have a slight suspicion there is a feline cause for this fallout. I have now climbed back up to the system and fixed it, and I trust it will last until the next goblin sighting sends the cats on a rampage behind the computer cabinet...which I am relatively sure is what is going on.
Date: 02/17/05. 32473. Thursday. Up early and a bit of work. And the weight? Dead even, after 2 hours of exercise and good diet yesterday. Then off to the rink---I'm having boot trouble, meaning one boot is fine and the other is sore beyond belief. I had to leave the ice 20 minutes early just because it hurt, and I was supposed to do some photography for the rink, so I had my camera and my computer along, because we have a lesson with our younger instructor this evening, and I'm supposed to get the instructors and all captured for the bulletin board. I decided to turn the left boot in for stretching for a couple of hours, but it wasn't enough. I ended up with a very sore foot and was pretty miserable---but I decided then that I'd better turn the left boot in for the full treatment, overnight, and had the lesson---did pretty well---but was just absolutely in pain. So here I sit with one foot wrapped in Bengay pain patch, and lots of Advil, and I hope for a better time tomorrow. I did get some work done this afternoon while waiting, which brings me to the present word count. I really want to get some sleep tonight. We're watching "Sky Captain and the World of the Future", which is much better than expected---if you liked the old sf serials---not a touch missed, except a tribute to Emshwiller, Gaughan, Freas and others who created those images. I'm going to look for an acknowledgement in the end credits, and really hope to see some mention there.
Date: 02/18/04/ 32728. Friday. Didn't get too far today, but I also erased a bit and moved things, which takes time and doesn't greatly increase word count, but it is progress, all the same, as the story comes more into focus. //The weight? Up half a pound. Now, in all fairness I should confess four lattes (with Lo-Carb milk) at the rink yesterday, while working and waiting for a lesson and skating. Two diet bars, a bacon-cheese omelet with no sides, two glasses of wine, and then the piece de resistence, half a bag of jerky and half a bag of pork rinds, which disgusts me even to think about it, but sometimes you're just dying for something that crunches. All legal, except the wine, but way high salt. Today we went to the one store in Spokane where you can get really good meat, and we'll have salmon and a half a cup of cauliflower each...to try to forget yesterday's debauch.) I mentioned we'd rented one good movie yesterday: the second one, for which we had waited with great anticipation, A Shark Tale, we didn't watch all the way through. When we didn't like anyone in the film but the senior shark, and really activelydisliked the main characters, all of whom were extreme fools, we decided perhaps it was not going to be our cuppa, at all, and fast-forwarded and spot-checked it for redeemable scenes. Nope. Not even including the ending. It went back unloved.//Remember I was getting the skate boot stretched, and it really helped. I was afraid it would stretch too much and compromise the boot, but I skated today with a freedom from pain I haven't had in two weeks. And I'm improving on the backward edges---I had my MP3 player today, and let me tell you, the one to encourage you to get up on those outside edges is Leslie Fish's Hope Aeyrie. If you don't want to lift off and fly after that one, you need resuscitation. Other items on my player, for those of you at all interested in eclectic music: Son of Man (Tarzan: Disney); Temper of Revenge (Ecklar); Jezebel and Song of the Wild Goose (Frankie Laine); Kilgarry Mountain (The Chieftains); Greensleeves by Divisions (can't remember, but it's gorgeous); Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves: (Cher); Delilah (Tom Jones); Convoy (McCall); El Dorado (Elton John: The Road to Eldorado); He Never Came Back (Ventures in Outer Space); I Want to Talk about Me (Travis Tritt? [corrected later, 2/23/05); Ghost Riders in the Sky (can't recall, but it's the original); Charlie and the MTA and South Coast (Kingston Trio); Man of Constant Sorrows (Foggy Bottom Boys: Brother, Where Art Thou?) I've struggled to find a common thread in my collection: I believe it tends to be 'travel' in some mode or another, and largely minor key. I use the IRock MP3 player, which is incredibly tiny, for those of you into exercise, one of the less expensive of the players, and I download principally from RealPlayer Music Store, which requires no subscription, just bills you 99 cents a song, and once you've paid, you're on the list for that song and can download again if you lose your copy. I've never yet found an album I like all of---there's usually something on it that I really, really can't stand---so for me, it's a bargain: my favorites usually exist as one song on an album, in fact, so this absolutely the best way for me to build a music library. I can put it onto CD and save it, or onto the player, shift my playlist about, and take things on and off with a drag-drop menu via a USB cable and my computer, and personally, I think two hours play-time is enough. If it were longer, I'd never re-hear my favorites. Some people do keep their whole library on their player, but on the rink, I haven't got hands enough to manage a giant library. I just hit the button twice for "play" and hold it down for "stop", and that's all the controls I really need: finesse in fiddly little controls is not my habit.//Sharon and Joan didn't join us at the rink, both of them down with the flu---get well, you guys! You were missed!---but they had a major influx of newbie skaters. I personally helped a mom with two kids both new to the ice, one of them really small, and got the group to a safe base, helped another young lass learn to go backward, my good deeds for the day. And I'm home, kicked back, and relaxed...my only remaining chore tonight is to cook dinner.
Date: 02/19/05. Saturday. 34832. Well, the weight was up. Up 2 pounds. My rings are stuck on my fingers, which indicates I had way too much salt, but I'm beyond annoyed, since I was moderately good, well, except the bag of snacks. I'm going to have to get way serious, but I'm not going to burden the blog with my actual diet. However---for those of you who'd like to battle along with me on what we might call The Science Fiction Diet, for want of a better word, I'm going to create a special little pagelet, where I can track what's going on, along with recipes. Check the Menu Page for the link.//In the other half of the real world, we're battling a credit card company that can't understand they were cancelled 10 years ago and that doesn't answer its mail, and trying to figure out why we got a 10.00 late fee charge on a 2.00 amount owed another card. I swear, computers are a wonderful thing---but! And we'll fight an unjust charge rather than pay it, if it takes us mongths. I think these people count on you wearing out. Kudos to Nordstrom's for employing people bright enough to be handed the power to do their jobs without recourse to mysterious "supervisors," intelligent people who simply, on hearing the late fee business, even though we'd already sent the money, as we'd been incorrectly told the amount to pay, are refunding the late fee as a store credit---bright, bright people. What is a body naturally going to do, who has a small credit waiting at Nordie's? Go there, spend it, and a bit more besides. More companies should figure out that quality behavior like that gets happy, spending customers. We had no ice time today---it's crazy on weekends and the ice gets snowy, which means really bad for edge-maneuvers. And we need the days at home to catch up on accounts. By the way---all the complaints I've had about text size and legibility on the blog: read the new advisory I have at the top of this file. Jane pointed out that browser control feature, and it should help those of you who want some other size.//Jane also talked me into walking around the park---about a half mile in total. I'm still nursing a sensitive foot, but this walking thing tired me out so that I think it may be good for me. Jane's been talking about us signing up for the Bloomsday Run again. I can't remember whether it's 7 miles or 9, but we've got a way to go in conditioning. We have one set of "finishers" tee-shirts, and I suppose we could use another.
Date: 02/20/05. Sunday. 40781! Such a nice wordcount. And the weight is way down, and the rings slip easily! Can't provide you too much excitement here: I've done very little but work today, on my second roll-through of the outline, and my derriere is positively sore from sitting still for hours on hours. Not too thrilling a day otherwise, but I assure you, making real progress is a high that's beyond Godiva chocolate. There wasn't anything to provide me good background noise on my normal recourse, The Science Channel, that I liked (or hadn't seen); but The Midsommer Murders was on the Biography channel, in a strip, and these proved nice little mysteries: just where you thought they might turn cliche on you, they'd take a different turn, and they weren't difficult to follow in my off-again, on-again style of viewing.
Date: 02/21/05. Monday. President's Day. 41838. A nice session into new territory, workwise. Then off to the rink. We hadn't remembered until the last moment it was a holiday, which means rapidly chewed-up ice, and lots of snow and lots of newbies. I just put on my MP3 music and tried to ignore the bubblepop and the scudding clouds of teens---at least they bunch up and give you clear intervals---until I saw a young teen down on the ice and clearly in distress. We ascertained a break was possible---she'd gone askew with the foot, probably hit a rut, a fairly new skater in fairly new boots, which is a difficult combination. Her young companion and I got her off the ice without putting the foot down, management got her a wheelchair, and we ascertained her mother was coming to pick the group up at 1, which was only fifteen minutes. So we got her to the lobby, got the lower knee iced---the pain seemed to be localizing there---and not, as I had initially feared, on the side of the leg. A broken bone is still possible, and I hope she goes to x-ray, but it could, I suppose, be a ligament tear: it continued quite painful by the time we packed her off with her mum. That took us an extra hour, by the time all was said and done---we didn't want to leave her alone, so we stayed until her mum came. And now I've got to dredge up a few photos for the textbook people, who want some historical shots. I'd a few I wanted in, but can't find---me on the camel, in Turkey, and me teaching, holding a skull like Hamlet...but alas, such treasures are buried too deep for me to find. We settled for me in Roman ruins in Britain, me teaching, holding a book, and me hamming it up with the MMU (manned maneuvering unit) at Huntsville, AL. First time I had a chance at one was one of the training mockups back when Columbia was going to launch: they'd planned it for emergency in-orbit tile replacement, and had decided maybe they didn't need it, so they didn't have it aboard, as I recall, when Columbia shed tiles all over the launch pad on her maiden launch (I was there, too, with a press pass, with Joe and Gay Haldeman, and the government never let the press so close again: seems the cloud had drifted over us and we allegedly got hydrazined (the fuel is poisonous). But human nature had taken care of us: the shuttle had lifted up into the sun, and when we'd lost her from visual sight, we all raced for the tent where the tv displays were, to continue tracking her---so at whatever time the hydrazine came drifting down, we were under canvas, glued to the sets---or headed for the restrooms, because we'd had a long wait out there by that big lighted countdown sign, every two-inch hummock prized as a camera vantage on that flat shore.) The particular day I was getting the special tour at Houston, with the original MMU, was the day President Reagan was shot. So here I am in this photo, at Huntsville, and what was the grand new item back then had become a historical exhibit. I think that's the thing that so hit me when I went back to Canaveral, that so much that was brand new when I'd last seen it was now a fading museum exhibit; I felt so very down, so depressed I couldn't stand it until we finally got to a lab where there was actual new testing going on: I felt as if I was breathing fresh air again, as if I'd surfaced back in the future where these things belong.
Date: 02/22/05. Tuesday. 42843. A little scene-moving. It's more complex than just writing outline, so it is actually a deal of work.// We didn't expect to have a lesson today, but Joan showed up, cold and all. And just the other day, since Jane and I started skating just about a year ago this month, we wondered what our goal for the year would be. We decided maybe a waltz jump by next fall, and I joked that I'd probably nail the waltz jump before I ever did the mohawk. Well...after the initial exercise on edges, Joan proposes I learn a minor two-foot spin and then, yes, the waltz jump. It's kind of fun: mind, I'm only doing this 'on the wall,' meaning with one hand on the barriers. What you do, for the waltz jump, is swing, say, the right foot forward, while you drop the left toepick (that jaggedy thing on the front of figure skates) onto the ice, whump! which throws you up onto that toe at a dead stop. Pivot and hop with full weight to the right toepick, then lower the right heel and glide backward on one foot. The swinging foot gives you loft and rotation as the pick goes down, the spin happens without much thinking about it (arms have to follow through) and the natural landing is on that opposite toepick---thus "toepick, spin, other-toepick, glide back." And the crazy thing is, I think I may actually be able to do this. It's the bunny hop (similar move, with no rotation, and a flat footed landing, one, two) that can kill you: land with your weight on the tail of your skate and you'd better hope you have a wall to grab, because that sort of misstep can launch your whole body horizontally into the air and land you on your back---or head. The bunny hop is the first jump they teach the kids, but it's harder than the waltz jump for adults, because our center of gravity is so high, the chance of missing your balance point while learning is pretty good; as for the waltz jump, easier for adults than kids: at least speaking for us, our leg swing is pretty strong, our skates are quite heavy (I haven't weighed them, but they're at least several pounds--each), and we carry quite a bit of casual centrifugal force on that initial move. I thought in order to do a jump I'd have to fling my 190 pounds straight upward from a standing start; but with leg-swing as the prelim move, you don't exert at all to do the toe to toe hop. I can begin to see how this swing and hop business might lead to more altitude than I'd have ever thought I could achieve...maybe enough that I can actually do a single something-or-other, eventually, and keep my feet. And you'd better believe we're wearing the helmets and the crash pads. Stay tuned. We plan to survive this. Our chiropractor, the redoubtable Dr. Mike, is standing by.
Date: 02/23/05. Wednesday. 44218. Not bad. Except those pictures I've been trying to send to the textbook publisher keep bouncing. I hope I've got that solved. The skate today was good---and I'm beginning to work into some fairly strenuous practice routines that's wearing me out a little early. Jane wants to go up to the upstairs gym to get a little stretch in; myself, I'm looking for a good ab machine. What they turned out to have was a good slant board. That'll do. Old-fashioned crunches, at an angle. I'm starting small and I'll work up.// You'll have noticed the font size is back down. What I've gotten as a consensus from e-mail (I can't acknowledge quite all of it, though I try) is that a majority favor the color changes, are equally divided between teal and baby blue, slightly more like the dark text, and slightly more want the text smaller again. Note the text-size fix at the top of the page, which should let everybody pick their own size, if I start with a font small enough to let you resize it to your own preference. This slick trick covers Internet Explorer, Firefox, and, I hope, Mozilla, requiring just a quick adjustment for those of you that need the large font. If there's a problem with that fix, we can try again. //And of all things, in the confusion at the rink today, in a generally confused day, I misplaced my MP3 player. Generally we've had very good luck with honesty in the locker room, which is where I know I left it. We'll see if this holds true for a desirable little MP3 player..//Oh! And thank all of you who corrected me: the artist for "I Want to Talk about Me" is Toby Keith, not Travis Tritt.
Date: 02/24/05. Thursday. 46073. Now I'm into the messy back end of this project, and won't be satisfied until it's non-messy....back ends of outlines are always shaggy with things that have to be dragged into the middle or left out altogether, as well as the good bits that have to stay. This is the sort of thinking end of the writing process that's best done in outlline, so the major decisions are all made.//I did find my MP3 player---I'd put it in my boot bag, of all places. And I ran it over to the store across the street because it seemed to be out of battery---but it turned out it has a funky 'hold' button that can get jammed by the leather case. When it doubt on such matters, ask the youngest clerk you can find---and indeed, she knew just what it was. We had a pretty good skate today---I'm starting to find some of the finesse troubles I'm having are due to not quite trusting the full length of the blade---mainly I'm skating too far forward on the blade in some maneuvers. This is where you can really kill yourself if you just step off onto the tail of your blade---you can take a bad backward fall. But if you link that move to a deep knee bend, the heel is secure and your posture is good. It's a little scary, but I'm interesting in what things it does improve. And I'm wearing the helmet. We had a lesson with our junior instructor today: it went well. And Jane is trying to ftp the club website. The URL will be lilaccityfsc.org. I'll put it in the links page once I'm sure it's working.//Weather continues disgusting, much too warm and clear for the good of the trees, and we're looking forward to the weekend where some of that moisture California would like to be missed by may come a little northward.
Date: 02/25/05. Friday. 47045. Another rainless day, and no chance until about Monday. And we expected to find Sharon and Joan today, but neither showed up--we hope they're ok. The ice was fairly well deserted, except for a regular or two. In all that quiet ice, I've been working on that getting-down-in-the-heel proposition, and finally, late in the skate, achieved it, however briefly. I can see why they don't encourage beginners to start with this, because if you forget and straighten up as you're, say, slopping into a lazy turn, boy, can you get into trouble! I did a brief Michael Weiss imitation, spreadeagle, leaning backwards at a near stop, and I swear it was only pulling my arms violently forward that kept me from doing a flatout backward flop. Quite a sensation, and I can't believe I recovered from that maneuver without falling down. But the heel-down business was just amazing---it requires a very deep knee-bend to balance against, or you go on your backside, but once you get it, with your tailbone tucked, your shoulders back, and the knees bent, it prevents that nasty forward lean that makes you hesitate and wobble, and looks awful besides; and the moment I got balanced with full command of the whole blade I could go over chancy ice in a pretty good crossover and then alternate crossover direction, which requires a hellish left to right balance shift, with no great problem---amazing what it did for general balance and solidity---and posture. Of course it was at the end of the session, so I couldn't keep after it---and we're coming up on a weekend, which we'll take off, so I won't get on the ice again until Monday. But Monday, Monday I'm going to work to get that sensation back.//I finally got the MP3 player straightened out---it got stuck on two bars of a Clannad song, but not the best two bars. I finally figured out the business about the leather case intruding on the 'hold' button, and got it figured, but Clannad is going out of the sequence for a while until my nerves recover. I replaced it with "Thunder Road" and "Hedwig's Theme," along with "Everybody Wants to Rule the World."//A reader wrote, re cat toys, that she's using silkworm cocoons, which have a natural rattle to them, and I'm going to get that URL---which is on the mail computer: this may take some doing, but I think this could be a lot of fun.//And after the pictures to the textbook publisher bounced yet again, we had to get those to the post, to express them up. Note: one silkworm cocoon URL is www.aurorasilk.com. There's also supposed to be one at www.aweaversyarn.com, but on that one I can't find anything but yarns: it is, however, a great site if you weave or stitch.
Date: 2/26/05 Saturday. 51329. The drought continues, with a light haze that probably means fire somewhere. I hate this kind of weather. Hardly worth opening the blinds until the jet stream moves and we get some moisture. It was one of those pj's mornings, and days. I just worked, quite happily, starting back at the beginning of the outline and filling in fine detail,. Why? Because when you reach a point where the outline is thin and you can't think exactly what goes in the gaps, it's time to start at the beginning again and add more texture. These things aren't thought up full blown and finished. They go down in layers. Late in the day, we heard from Sharon, and invited her over to watch On Edge, which is absolutely full of skater cameos and injokes, in the style of Best in Show. We had a great time, ate too much, drank too much, and broke it up at a decent hour.
Date: 2/27/05. Sunday. 53208. Good day, lot done. I'm beginning to fight the timeline. To make sure I don't have people in incompatible times and places, I often use a standard calendar and write in where everyone is and what they're doing, but I can't find a spare calendar, so I'm making this out on the computer, down to 15 minute periods. Didn't do much but work.
Date: 2/28/05. Monday. 53208. Not a good day. I had the whole timeline worked out in a meticulous, multicolor, 2 1/2 hour session on the computer starting at dawn, and my computer just collapsed under the complexity of it and the backup failed. Everything, every detail, plus revisions in the outline made to accommodate and tighten that timeline, and it all went. The skating rink---we had a pretty good time, though the ice wasn't quite smooth. And I came home to try to straighten out the fiscal year end accounts, and the printer (completely different system) screwed up on the credit card download, and wouldn't let me back into the site. After an hour of trying, I discovered it had to do with the default internet security settings on XP---and hence the glass of Scotch. I got the checks cut, but I made an executive decision not to do the credit card accounts until tomorrow. Jane says I'm due a new laptop---my old Dell 8000 ME machine is showing its age. And Dell is apparently phasing out the pointing stick, so if I don't get it soon, it's going to be a real pain. I'm not real happy with this notion, and whoever's running Dell should take note: a machine with a choice of mice-devices is always better than no choice, and there's always been a choice---until now. So I'm not pleased with anything at the moment. I printed out the entire outline and reinstalled the timeline from memory, by hand, but it's not what I wrote this morning, and I know I've dropped some stitches. They'll come back, but I don't know when or at what inconvenience.
Date: 3/1/05. Tuesday. 54039. Well, I sat up late last night and recovered the data, late, late, late. And this morning I had obligatory phone calls to make---two of them to Dell. Stand by for more computer mayhem. Seems last night I checked out the availability of the Inspiron---my current machine is an Inspiron 8000, which is a pretty tough, if aging machine. When I do replace my laptop, I want a big enough memory to let me move pieces of novels around wholesale (the naive salefolk say...oh, word processing? That's a light application. Well, my files exceed a meg, and I'm given to slicing and dicing them and keeping a lot of pieces floating---and yes, when I use word processing, it's a little different than your standard business letter.) I need good graphics, because I need to see if there's a little dot somewhere in that line. And I need my touchpoint (eraserhead) mouse, because when you type really, really fast, the last thing you need is a reach that takes your hands off the 'home' keys.//And what went wrong in this simple equation. I went up to the Dell site to look at Inspirons and discovered, after futzing for an hour with their graphics, that the only machine with a touchpoint is the original, not the first-gen, XPS Inspiron. Well, the XPS original comes with a choice of 3 snap-covers, a lava, a skull, and a pipes. The XPS Inspiron Next-gen turns out not to have a touchpoint mouse, and has snap-covers entitled lava spill, etc., etc. Trust me. This becomes germane....//Well, I started to purchase the XPS machine on the general sale page, decided it needed perhaps a little more thought, because it's way expensive; and then visited the factory refurbished page. 'Refurbished' had an XPS listed at 900.00 less than I'd expect to pay...but you buy these 'refurbished's as they're configured, no changes, and it had a lava-spill cover, a cover which doesn't come on the XPS original. So, think I, this sounds like not so good a deal---several hundred of that goes away if it's a next-gen XPS machine, which is cheaper in base price; and most importantly, doesn't have a touchpoint. While I was thinking about it, somebody else bought it. Well!//So I get up in the morning to reconsider the original-purchase XPS original, only to discover now it too has disappeared from the website. Last night, about midnight, they reconfigured the Inspiron site to reflect the new reality---none of the new Inspirons now have the touchpoint, and you can no longer buy the XPS original on the main page. Well, I was beyond annoyed. Livid is more the point. I started shopping around, decided I didn't like the other brands that have the touchpoint, so I went back to Dell and dealt with the second salesman of the day---the one from whom I got the prior information was not the best-trained I've ever dealt with. The second one was a nice fellow in the 'business' notebook line, not the 'home' notebook lot, who did considerable research while I waited and discovered the characteristics I need in the D800 or D810 Latitude, another variety of Dell which is pretty well a gray-flannel-suit machine, but it has the graphics to do the other things I need. So I'm not happy with Dell for screwing up the Inspiron, I'm not happy with salesman number one, but two was fine, and at least the Latitudes still have the touchpoint and the flexibility to do high-end animation computing and graphics...read: a Latitude D800 or D810 will also handle video games. So this is probably the direction I'll go, if I can't stabilize this old workhorse of mine: I love my machine---it's comfy, powerful, and generally does very well, except the keys stick, hang, and outright stick down, but I can fix that; and it crashes, which is a bit ghostier, and way more annoying when it happens, but probably the crashes are due to due to my cramming it with image-manipulation and piling files onto its poor little 40 gig drive and dumping them off, all of which requires frequent optimization or any drive is going to get cranky...not to mention I'm running with an older video driver because one of the games I have on prefers it. (Note: the 'new' video driver is on the machine: the 'new' driver has known bugs that aren't going to get fixed because the card is becoming an antique, which is why a lot of the games prefer the older driver.) The thing that convinces me it's about time to move is a) I most of all don't want to find they've phased out the touchpoint on the Latitudes and b) this current machine is running at the upper end of its video card and drive capacity on way too many programs I use regularly, c) it's still WinME, and can't be upgraded without potential trouble with my Dell-originated software and ME-based items, not to mention other hardware drivers, which is a can of snakes I don't want to mess with. So...it's probably about time I looked for an upgrade before these problems blow up one day right before a deadline and take a critical part of a manuscript to computer limbo.
Date: 3/02/05. 56938. Wednesday. More fun than I ever wanted. An optimization failed in midprocess (my fault: never do this with the machine on battery!) and Word Perfect 10, which has been shaky before, went amnesiac and would not close any file ever opened, no matter if you turned the machine off and rebooted. So after consultation with the house hardware expert, Jane, we decided the smart thing to do was uninstall WP10 and clean the registry (a button-push operation with System Mechanic), then install WP12, which we have. News flash! WP12 will not load on a WINMe machine. We've not been happy with WP10, and decided to reinstall WP8. To my great joy it reads the files and fonts created by 10, and we are back in business. That was entertaining. More later today, but at least I haven't lost 2 novels, one as yet unprinted. I think I'm going to print Pretender out, don't you think that's a swell idea? I've already printed Ice and its notes, but I think Pretender would be a good thing to commit to real paper. //Later: well, after some to-do, like no ink cartridge and a printer that wouldn't talk to the XP machine, we got Pretender printed safely. And backed up multiple times. This is, you will have surmised, the new Bren novel, of which I haven't done a read-edit yet. We're so much an electronic office that frequently I forget to print out on paper. Ice is Fortress of Ice, a new Fortress book...and the one under construction. So far the computer has only failed me a couple of times this evening. Thank you, all of you who wrote with comforting words and sensible advice.
Date: 3/03/05. 56938. Thursday. And I only thought yesterday was wild. I tried to get the accounts in order for the accountant, rushed off to the rink, and hadn't finished my skate when there was a bad fall and one of our adult skaters was down on the ice. We got help, got her to the lobby, where there happens to be a nurse, one of the other skaters---we fear the arm is broken---to find one of our regulars at the counter, and a really nice fellow, is in extreme distress of some kind and the ambulance is already coming. So in come the paramedics and the fire department---the paramedics went for the person they were called for, and the firemen start to leave, but I figure they have to have medical gear, so I ask, can you deal with a broken arm, and in they come, to splint the arm. Our adult skater's husband shows up, and by this time things are marginally under control. By this time I'm too stiff to skate---I've been walking on my blades ever since, and so I de-skate and head off to get the car oil changed, while we wait for our lesson at 4. By this time, Jane has a sore throat, I'm coughing, and our young instructor shows up with the strep case she's nursed since our last lesson. Sigh. So here we are trying to come down with strep after such a day, and we're just having a day. The good news is, I've begun to get my feet under me for the backward outside edge, and was doing some really nice moves---well, with Lindsey providing a steady hand on one side, but it really feels solid, with that little help. Solid and even graceful. Lord, it feels so good when you can do one of those swooping glides on one foot, and then just step off grandly in the other direction. Lindsey was also amused---she tried to teach me the bunny hop earlier in the year, and I'd just attempted to jump in place. But now I've got it---it's a dangerous move for adults, because of our height, but I'm getting it, and will, I think, ultimately be able to turn loose of the wall with it...in not too long. Probably a good idea to do before attempting to take the waltz jump off the wall.
Date: 03/04/05. 56938. Friday. A much quieter day. I've been doing the accounts preparatory to taxes---its our fiscal year-end---and I just want to get ahead of things. Spring is coming: the weather is too warm for my preference, about 56 degrees, and the croci are blooming, the birds are flitting, and we could do with some rain, if not snow. We did have a nice skate this morning, and Jane's throat (and mine) are duly medicated; we got through in grand shape. I'm just beginning to feel the possibility of the backward edges, and I'm getting dizzy doing series's of 3-turns to backward outside edge to step-out, repeat ad infinitum around the rim. I'm beginning to let go of the wall, and to step out without wobbling. We did some more rink photography, and we got that settled, then went out to lunch with Sharon. We had a great time. //I've patched the old Dell back together for the while: I hope it holds, at least for the while. So far, the WP8 is holding up nicely, and the machine isn't crashing, the keys aren't currently sticking, and I'm backing up meticulously---believe me, I'm backing up.//Meanwhile, I did get a clarification re the silkworm cocoons: the shop that displays only yarn is the source for the rattly cocoons: they don't have many, and prefer to pack them in with the yarn they sell, because otherwise packing them is a pain---the USPO can manage to crush them, given a chance. But that is the right URL. Turns out there is an entire do-it-yourself American silkworm industry, and the trick is getting enough mulberry leaves---the little critters are like pandas and koalas: finicky. Now, mind, they do in the little worms to create rattly cocoons. If you want cocoons that let the worms hatch and become moths, Aurora Silks is your site.//And another flash from the natural world, St. Helens is creating a nice regular steam plume in current weather. At breakfast, I like to access the pnsn site (search: keyword "webicorder") to view the animated picture of the sunrise over St. Helens, which is of course as the sun rises on the west coast. Go to PNSN, then to "NEWS" and to "ST HELENS" and to "LOOP." That will give it to you. It's still quite actively building a dome, and little rockfalls are frequent. It's just being a volcano at the moment, not too noisily, and repairing the cone.//Newsflash. The computer mess is still giving me fits---it just decided to crash with the word processing folder, and then when I got into files to locate what it wouldn't give me, the backup file I'd ordered it to create, it now believes this has to be an html file which can only be opened with the web editor, so it went berserk converting my .wpd file to .htm. Isn't that just special? This is exactly the kind of mess you create for yourself when you do things like optimize while on battery. The whole computer needs to be taken down, the disk reformatted, and everything including Windows will have to be reinstalled, which will solve a lot of my problems---so bear with me. I'll solve this mess one way or the other, either a fix or a replacement. Rest assured I've backed up all files and printed out, so nothing is in danger of loss...except all the nice little finesses I have in the present configuration. A word processing backup that thinks it's on the internet, however, is not at all nice, so we'll start by figuring out what all my data files think is their "open with" software and see if I can fix it at that level, or if it's just completely unstable.
3/05/05 Saturday 56927. Well, as a first step in fixing the mess I created, I reinstalled WinME over the top, i.e., without reformatting C. I did use the housenet to transfer data files over to the desktop, so that’s protected. The tax files are on the other computer, which is stable and intact. And this one has behaved better since, but...it was behaving better before it went down last night. I’ve of course lost all modem connection until I rework that, so we’re incommunicado and I’m doing this via the word processor to install in the blog later. And we’re in the throes of packing to make a run south, with a very shaky computer, which has way too much going on for its little 20 gig disk...can you believe I’m saying little 20 gig disk? But that is one of my main problems: it’s a bit cramped, given all I do. We were thinking of leaving today, but the computer mess has thrown us off: my room is a mess, I haven’t packed yet, and I was up last night until 2:30 trying to get that backup and reinstall done. So we’re thinking now of going down to the municipal rink to see their skating competition...we have a few young folk from LCFSC skating, and Sharon is judging. I neglected to mention Sharon’s run to do a house call the other night, in which she scaled our apartment complex fence—the perimeter gate had shut. Sharon, you see, is a skilled mountaineer, besides being a Nurse Practitioner and a figure skater. I wish I had photos of that moment. And I’m glad there was no passing patrol car.//Note: we did go down to the competition, which was, mind you, the only open air rink ice competition held west of the Rockies. Or the Mississippi—I can’t remember which. We went out to lunch with Sharon and went home to pack and fix computers. The cats know something is up...
3/06/05. Sunday. Nothing of writing done: we took out at 9 AM and hit the road for as far as we could get, on a sunny day. Jane read from Peters’ The Mummy Case. I read Pretender. Jane laughed in all the right places, and I have a little cleanup to do yet. We finally ran out of steam at Billings MT and decided to get a hotel in Sheridan WY, a hundred or so miles further on. So we covered about 700 miles today, and are turning in early. At least the computer seems to have stabilized, but of course I have no way to post this, nor will for a couple of weeks.
3/07/05. Monday. Up and on the road for Casper WY, where we have a room arranged—and over to inspect the local ice rink, which is a municipal rink in their sports center: various people there know various people in Spokane, and we’re going to go skating this afternoon, on the highly recommended (thank you, Sarah!) public ice, with supper at Banjo Bob’s Barbecue, which is fantastically good. I'm still deciding whether to kit up in tutus and all, but Jane points out we’re not used to skating our 3-turns and such in jeans, and could hook a blade if we’re not careful, so we may get into the complete rig—certainly we’ll wear crash pads and helmets.//Postskate: well, we did the full rig—I don’t think the Casper public skate folk, particularly the young ones, are used to seeing people in sequins on their ice. But it’s better than hooking a skate in a jeans hem and breaking something. Skating at altitude means slightly wobbly knees for a bit: took me quite a while to get my knees steady under me, not to mention the feet 'down into the boots.' And the ice was good, but there are dips in the rink, and ripples around the edge. This is where we have to remember to sit down on the blades and above all keep from riding the toe, which will of course catch the pick, nastily; but the converse, going back on your heel, is not good either. The ice is cold—not as simple a matter as you’d think: Spokane ice tends to ‘snow’ and flake, while this ice, at higher altitude, tends to chip finely and groove deeply, and to be very ‘fast’, meaning if you get onto a heel, your skate will squirt forward very, very fast for a nanosecond, a startling moment. So you have Hobb’s Choice, heel or toe.//We did go back to Banjo Bob’s for supper, bad us! The cats, who were left in their Kittywalk (a net tunnel) for a couple of hours, were quite glad to see us back for the evening, but have forgiven us. The Casper hotel is one of their favorites, particularly because Efanor can get under the bed and confound us in the morning for a nice little game.
3/08/05. Tuesday. 58392. Late last night I began to recalculate mileage and schedules, and decided we’d better look at a map come morning. As best I figured, and Jane concurred, if we didn’t take out on the road today, we’d really be pushing it the day after. So we went to the Casper ice rink, skated a little over an hour, and, with cats and all packed, took out back to Banjo Bob’s for lunch—bought supper, too, and hit the road for Cheyenne WY. We didn’t take our usual route for Denver and points south, but veered off on I-80, hoping to get as far as possible on flat ground. We passed one of the planet’s most incredible sights—the Great American Flyway in full swing: the skies were full of migratory birds on their way north, skeins and skeins of geese and ducks and cormorants and such.. And of course there was the Audubon site, with public viewing areas. Were the birds on the public viewing ponds? Well...the largest aggregation I saw was a massive confluence near a service station beside I-80. A real ‘darken the skies’ moment, letting one see just for a moment what the skies might have been before Europeans showed up on this continent. And for our attempt to gain ground on this remarkable day, ‘as far as possible’ turned out to be a Sinclair gas station in the middle of agricultural territory, where an inquiry after a motel sign turned up, yes, the owners of said motel having coffee at a small table in the filling station. They assured us cats who were litter-trained were welcome in the motel. So off we went in the dark of night with dubious instructions, across numerous bridges and through houseless farmland to the little Nebraska town of Sutherland, where we were the only guests in the Park Motel—it’s a little town that has had the highway built off to the side of them, and they’re really fighting for survival—an old story with the American superhighway system. Highways no longer go down main streets. Fortunately we had our bought supper, the cats were happy, and the beds at least were the most comfortable we’ve had on the trip.
3/9/05. Wednesday. We took off early in quest of coffee, which we finally got back at the Sinclair station, and took out on the highway again, looking for the link to I-35. Due to, I’m sure, incredible politics and regulations, the locals can’t tell you that Hwy 81 is that link...but I’d done this route and connection from the other direction, just before the notorious moving-days mishap that separated Jane and me on the road, and I sort of recognized the truck stop at the junction. Turns out it was the very one, and what we had to do from there was drive straight south on 81, which became, after Salina, KS, I-135, and then, somewhere around Wichita, changed all its exit numbers and ran into I-35, which is the route we need for Oklahoma City. The Motel 6 hotel we’d intended turned out to be Exit 50 on I-35, or "exit on Kellogg and drive east." Ha! We got to our hotel, after an incredible passage through a construction zone enveloping all of downtown Wichita KS, as they’re building a major highway through, sunken below street level, and our hotel was separated off in construction fence. We attempted a legal U-turn to get to it, discovered no driveway on that side, and the road heading, without remedy, toward the turnpike entry to I-35. We were furious. We tried again at the K-15 exit, and found two disagreeable hotels, and got so mad at this point we headed for the state line. We looked up Motel 6's, and found one in Stillwater, OK, where OSU is sited. A college town usually assures good food, so we went 12 miles off I-35, found our hotel, and headed for food. It’s a nice place. We’re only a few miles north of Oklahoma City, we’ve made contact with our friends in Norman OK, where we’ll stay tomorrow night, and we got our steak dinner. We hope to find the rink in Edmond OK tomorrow and get a little recreation in.
3/10/05. Thursday. Another morning quest for coffee, since Motel 6 has gotten so protective of its tiny cups it doles out of mornings. We headed on down the road to Edmond OK, where I used to live, after and before I lived in Oklahoma City: it’s about 20 miles north of OKC. And after some little to’ing and fro’ing, we found the ice rink in Edmond. We ascertained the time of public ice, then went on a brief run to OKC to deliver some records to my accountant, then ran back again—again decided to kit up in full gear for the rink. And it was a very odd experience. The ice was very deep, so deep the hockey boards felt short and the markings hazed, I’d estimate about 4 inches of ice down. It was quite chewed up: a member of the Oklahoma City FSC is landing triples, and they take out quite a divot. We should have come onto club ice: we’d have been better off, but we were pretty late for that. So with high hopes and good feeling we got the public ice, and the chewed-up mess that (again the difference in altitude, humidity, and general air temperature) alternately generates thick snow with deep ruts and slick spots that feel oiled. Getting used to that took about half an hour—during which the musical selection was not the classical music or bubblegum rock our rink favors, but a whining country rendition of some offshoot of Christian rock, a whole lot about death, descriptions of dying, and a generally depressingly morbid take on most everything. A vandal in the women’s restroom had gouged "I (heart) Christ" in three inch high letters in the otherwise good enamel. We were appalled. We left early, demoting this rink to our desperation-choices. And we went to the old neighborhood in OKC to go to our old favorite restaurant: it’s changed hands and doesn’t look appetizing. A good number of the places we recall are gone. So we had a diet bar for lunch and headed for our friends down in Norman OK. We’ll stay with them tonight, then go to the hotel in OKC for two nights for the events—
03/11/05. Friday. Heading off to OKC proper, downtown, for events surrounding the fact I’m receiving the lifetime achievement award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book, on Saturday, and have a couple of days of appearances and speeches to give. It’s a very nice honor and nice of them to ask me back for it.//We stayed with friends last night, Bud and Lois, and had a good time, went out to eat, mostly caught up on old gossip. Of course we used to live in Oklahoma City, and we have a long list of people to catch up on.//We checked in to the Sheraton convention center hotel downtown in OKC, with a view of the Myriad Gardens, or Crystal Bridge. We hiked down the street in the afternoon and visited the koi ponds—mostly sunbathing turtles, with the pear trees only just blooming and the air a bit nippy—but the flash of one huge koi tail, orange, when we reached a shallow pond. Koi hibernate in their ponds, and won’t start eating until the water warms enough to let their digestion operate. And the koi here are huge. We walked through the botanical gardens, which are in a huge glass tube that crosses the koi ponds, with waterfalls you can walk under, and it’s a lovely place for a brief walk. We also walked over to the Bricktown Canal, which adjoins the convention center area, and went to a Native American jewelry shop: Jane did not escape unscathed. The canal isn’t too busy yet: it’s sort of a nighttime venue, and it’s still cool.//Then we went out to dinner with the board members of the Oklahoma Center for the Book, and had a very pleasant evening—dinner and an afterward at the hotel bar with Arlo Guthrie. Joyce Carol Thomas pleaded the need for a clear head on the morrow and sensibly retired. But we talked philosophy until late.
3/12/05. Saturday. The day of the event. We caught breakfast, and then I had to go to the library to speak, where we met up with Brad Sinor and Sue Truelove, and Bev Hale and Mike Moe, all friends from way back. We started out to the next venue, and caught lunch on the way at the Bella Vista Brew Pub, at 51 Penn Place. A signing at the Full Circle bookstore, and back again to the hotel to get ourselves together for the awards banquet in the evening, at the Petroleum Club, one of the nicest festive venues in OKC, with a glorious night view of the city all around. Annette Asprin arrived, with friends Bud and Lois, Elaine and Monty, and my mother and brother and niece arrived from Dallas, plus former students of mine, Tod and Mark, from my teaching days in OKC, now successful businessmen—and people who knew my mother’s family: Oklahoma small towns are like that: a hundred years, and people know someone who knew your great-great-uncle, with all pertinent details. Seems my grandfather sold grocery supplies to one lady’s father’s store the better part of a century ago, and yes, they remember.//The presentations were well-done. I won the lifetime achievement award, and Arlo Guthrie’s father Woody Guthrie was honored with the Ralph Ellison Award, the posthumous equivalent of the lifetime achievement award—with very pretty medals. We had a nice celebration in the bar—all but my family, who’d had to run on back home in Texas, through epic construction zones, in the dark: my mother detests hotels.
3/13/05. Sunday. We checked out and took out to Norman, where we resumed our room at Bud and Lois’ place—Xanadu, it’s called, and quite a place it is. Plenty of room for two wanderers with cats. The crowd gathered in the parlor, including Bev and Mike and Annette and Elaine, and we partied on all afternoon, then had a quiet supper at a local Red Lobster.
3/14/05. Monday. Up at an early hour, to pack the car: we were able to say goodbye to Lois, but Bud was still sleeping. Cats and all, we headed south, reading and driving, and made it to Dallas for a family visit. Sharon phoned us en route to inform us she medaled at Sectionals, and to lament that she’s bored, bored, bored. We promised mayhem and mischief on our return. Meanwhile my brother’s on crunch at his company, but we had a nice evening with my mother, took her out to dinner at the Texas Roadhouse, and turned in early.
3/15/05. Tuesday. A leisurely breakfast and we went to go check out the skating rink in Plano TX, which turns out to be a Dr. Pepper Stars rink, and a very posh sort of rink indeed, very reasonable in price and very reasonable in attitude: we’re out of towners with my mum in tow, hoping to watch us skate, so instead of holding us to rink 2, which has a cold viewing area, the staff put us out on club ice out on rink 1, so mum finally got to see us, and a good time was had by all. We’re coming back tomorrow. Max confusion trying to join up with my brother for supper, but we went back to the Texas Roadhouse, mum got her ribs, and we got well fed.
3/16/05. Wednesday. Our last day in Dallas, and a reprise at the rink, only this time we got in on the Adult skate, and had beautiful ice and a generally good time. We had to rush home, me to pick up mum for a doctor’s appointment, and here the comedy of errors ensued. My brother David had written and drawn such precise instructions for getting there...again, quite a distance. But he had drawn arrows to get me onto the North Dallas Tollroad...and I, not knowing the local symbols, saw something of a green sign with a circled D, and decided, well, that should be it, and I was to go north, right? Wrong. We ended up back on the road from which we had started, in Frisco TX, instead of down in Plano...and I’d been suspicious something was wrong, because the exit was to be on Parker. Well, I knew from going to the rink in Plano that Parker precedes the Plano Parkway and has nothing to do with Frisco TX—which, let me tell you, is totally under construction, with detours every which way. I began to be suspicious that the name of the road is "North Dallas Tollway," not ‘north’ on the ‘Dallas Tollway’, and we’d missed the tollway because of construction...so I U-turned in Frisco and chased back through the maze of local streets, gaining southerly ground at every chance (thank goodness I have an in-car compass) and finally found Stonebrook or Stonecreek or something that I recalled crossed the Tollway or the Parkway, which parallels the Tollway—. Meanwhile I couldn’t find my cellphone, finally located it, couldn’t figure the number of my brother’s office, and just chased north thinking we could still make the appointment, if I just didn’t stop to call for directions. We went back down the North Dallas Parkway (every entry onto the Tollroad being under construction) and found Parker, took it, and found the clinic....whereupon I called my brother to tell him that he should have written "go south on the North Dallas Tollway," which still would have done us no good because of the construction. I think we will take Parker back.//Note: we did, and it took absolutely forever, in evening rush. If there was a wrong lane to be in, I found it. But we got home, finally matched times with my brother and family, and were able to meet my former sister-in-law and a very nice young woman, a friend of hers, who’d dropped by to see us. A quiet evening, more or less, with lots of barbecue.
3/17/05. Thursday. We took out around 8am, and headed west for Whataburgers in Wichita Falls, TX—the cats were in mourning, knowing we were in Texas, knowing that Whatachicken had not come their way (our diet). But before leaving Texas, we nabbed (me) a Whataburger with bacon and cheese, (Jane) a junior version and a grilled Whatachicken, and (Efanor and Ysabel) 4 Whatachicken strips. Bad us! And the restaurant had a new chap on the register, who added a spare juniorburger to the sack, but we just figured, hey, we paid for it, so we took it against emergencies. And off we went for Amarillo, trying to figure out whether we were going on to California, or going north to Spokane. California turned out to be doable, confirmed with family by the time we got to Amarillo and we launched due west on I-40 for Tucumcari, where we hoped to get rooms at the old Palomino motel, which has been there since the 50's, and where I remembered a nice restaurant. Plus we’re hoping to score tickets or some such to the Mariners game in spring training in Peoria AZ. Well, repeated phone calls turned up no hotel rooms in Phoenix/Peoria, because it’s a weekend game and simultaneously a Nascar event in town. But we found the motel—most peculiar, the landscape since Amarillo, since it’s under melting snow at 55 degrees F. They’d had a bad snowstorm in the last week, and there are wrecked tractor-trailers and dead cattle on the roadside, not to mention blitzed railings and snow all across the landscape. Very unusual for this season, but never trust the Texas panhandle. And when we got to Tucumcari, the restaurant I remembered wasn’t there, though we got rooms at the Palomino for 35.00 for two people with cats. We went across the street to the recommended ‘family restaurant’, which served up something called a quesadilla which involved not a tortilla, but an Indian frybread pancake with some vague unspiced ground beeflike substance combined with hash browns inside. It was so bad we just left it lying, figuring that we had the makings of supper in our travel supplies, and we’d be sick if we ate that stuff. It was a very heavy carbohydrate hit, and we just can’t take that. Nothing’s more expensive than food you shouldn’t eat in the first place, and have to diet off. So we did just get up and walk off and leave it—paid for it, of course, and left a tip: they served it in good faith: we were the ones who couldn’t cope with the local notion of quesadillas, which, elsewhere, are within our diet definition. We returned to the room, and remember that extra hamburger? We split it, had some nuts and cheese and Scotch with diet bars. Then we set out to battle the ticket/room situation in Peoria AZ, via cell phone: turns out we can’t get tickets to the Saturday afternoon game, but we can come and watch morning practice, which will be nice, and we did get a confirmation number at a Motel 6 right in the area, where we’d already been told there were no rooms. This should be interesting. But we found out that the Peoria Sports Complex where the Mariners are practicing also has the local skating rink, so we’ll just bring our skates and helmets to the practice, and go over there for a skate. We’ve booked two nights there, and we’ll take out from there for San Francisco, maybe by way of Joshua Tree National Monument...who knows?
3/18/05. Friday. Well, after an all day drive through hills, then beautiful pine-covered mountains, from Flagstaff to Phoenix, last night we got the last hotel room in Phoenix...the traffic jam going into the city was epic, stretching back into other communities, and here we are, walking into the line at the Motel 6 on a weekend, with the harried clerk saying repeatedly, "If you don’t have a rez, we have no rooms." To our relief, our number was valid, and we got a nice room overlooking the pool, in a hotel on Bell Street, which is also the street for the Peoria Sports Complex. We thought last night we’d get supper at a Mexican restaurant and fracture our diet slightly, in this land near Mexico, but alas, it was all fresh-Mex, and we prefer Tex-Mex, thank you. So there turned out to be a little sports bar called Shenanigans just a little hike in the other direction down Bell, and we were happy. Good quesadillas and poppers, not the dinner we’d hoped for, but good, all the same.
3/19/05. Saturday. In the morning we nabbed a diet bar apiece, left the cats in their portable kitty condo, instructed we get no maid service, and went hunting baseball. It was delightful. You can park free, for the duration of the practice, there’s free admission to the practice, and you just try to be polite and not distract the players, but you can snap photos to your heart’s content. We walked from AAA to the majors, and watched the new Mariners take practice from a handful of feet away...access you don’t get, of course, during the season. After that, we went over to Polar Ice, which is immediately adjacent, had a pretty decent skate, with quite a showcase rink—they had about 15 kids’ birthday parties all going at once, and the crowd was pretty dense, but if only they’d Zambonied before public skate, they’d have been excellent: as it was, it was snow interspersed with a split-second of fast-skate. We went on to have lunch at a sports bar across from the Mariners’ complex—to our disgust, it was almost all basketball on the screens, but we had our baseball screen near our table. And we headed back to the hotel, tired, but happy, to sit for a little. We weren’t sure we’d want supper, but indeed, we did go back to Shenanigans and hiked back and fell asleep watching the World Figure Skating competions—such a nice day!
3/20/05. Sunday. We hit the road early and headed back to Flagstaff, through a rainy, cloudy mountain drive, which was beautiful, while I did a little reading of the manuscript. Now, what we should have done was take the route out of Phoenix toward Los Angeles, probably through Joshua Tree National Monument, but we didn’t: we got back on I-40, and headed west, through beautiful scenery, and through the Mojave Desert, which, thanks to the torrential rains, was in heavy bloom. I don’t think I’d want to take that route any later in the year, but from snow near Flagstaff to desert blooms near the town of Mojave, it was quite a varied drive. The only down spot was the huge delay while the supposed 4-lane California highway let a train across, and cross, and cross. There should be a bridge, thank you, but local politics and the train company probably preclude it, and inconvenience everyone for the better part of an hour to get that crossing made. We headed across the windmill-topped hills to the San Joaquin Valley, and up to Fresno in a rain. Fresno proved about as far as we had the energy to reach...and well we did put in: in an hour the skies opened and driving would have been very slow. We’d already passed one poor chap who’d spun out against the median. And in Fresno, at the Motel 6 at Olive Street, we discovered a nice little brew-pub by going over Hwy 99 and into old Fresno, as we guessed it to be.
3/21/05. Monday. Up at the crack of dawn in Fresno, and on to San Francisco to see Jane’s two new nephews. We were actually about to make our first wrong move on the way, failing to make the 880, when at that very moment we got a phone call from Jane’s brother, who set us right just in time to cross the painted-division line, so we lined up for the San Mateo Bridge and made it in, fine. The cats were put out about the cage being set up, and they were 'on' last night, into absolutely everything, in a room where everything is offlimits. Like small children, they think because they can have perfect freedom in a texture-poor hotel room, the same applies amid Jane’s brother’s collectibles, but we protected everything behind cupboard doors. And Efanor can open the upstairs doors---every one of them. Let’s hear it for clever cats. We had a nice lunch with Jane’s niece, and went to the rehearsal of Jane’s brother’s musical revue, which lasted until 10...then a stopover at a restaurant (everything in San Mateo folds at 10 pm, but we found one restaurant open until 11) for supper before heading home.
3/22/05. Tuesday. A day visiting with Jane’s family, and a pleasant boat ride to a local restaurant, where we really and properly blew the diet. An order for a margarita proved to be a tank of a margarita, and I also indulged in corn chips, but the food was great, and I skipped the beans and rice, at least. And while Jane went off to part 2 of visiting kin and attending play rehearsal, I stayed behind to do catch-up on the Pretender manuscript, all 170 pages of it, single-spaced, well, at least editing up to where I stopped reading—I’d gotten way behind on inputting notes, and I had to get that organized or lose all the benefit of our driving and reading. My notes, which often consist of a circle and squiggle in a margin, lose comprehensibility if not followed-up fairly soon. Scholars of my work may despair: even I don’t know what I meant by my squiggles after two weeks have elapsed: the most common interpretation to be attached is: "Something needs to be done here" or "this is where you need to go back and check a fact against another point in the manuscript which I’m too cramped for space at the moment to look up..." So I found all those needful spots, straightened out who’s related to whom in the story, and after I was done and run out of coffee, Jane and her brother came limping in—literally: an onstage fall, which fortunately doesn’t seem to have been serious, beyond a few bruises. We provided Bengay patches.
3/23/05. Wednesday. Last day of our visit here. I spent the morning playing Solitaire, having no more brain than that after the rush edit yesterday evening; and we’re going to go skating at the local mall and probably go to another rehearsal, but tonight I’m holding out for dinner instead of diet bars. We’re also going to hunt down some more diet bars, however. We’re running short.//The skate: the ice was very strange, like skating on plastic, snowy-surfaced, but very slick, in a seaside environment where it’s rained for weeks. The rink itself, the Ice Chalet, in a local mall, is hard-ceilinged, and even without music playing, it’s so echoey and loud that you can’t hear yourself think. I saw a young skater coming toward me backwards, took evasive action in two vectors, and her coach was shouting at her, but there was no hearing—her reaction to her coach didn’t involve a backward look until the very last moment, but her direction changes took her right into me, and at that point the safest thing to do is to grab the oncoming skater to make a cohesive lump as you go down and avoid blades and stray limbs. I think I could have withstood the impact on my feet, but she was a little skater, and I feared she’d rebound and hit the ice much harder, with no helmet, which I had. So down we went, neither hurt. Fortunately, though I was wearing street clothes, I was also wearing crash pads, and we landed with a little thump, no damage. I later bumped (though gently) a novice skater at the rail, myself, again because it’s impossible to hear anyone coming. It’s a safety issue, and I’d think it could be abated considerably just by tacking up some insulation or cloth in the overhead, to absorb some of the echoes. But we had a nice skate—I’d vote it best ice after Plano and our own rink, and probably if you’re used to skating deaf, it’s fine. We met Jane’s brother, had supper at Red Robin, across from the rink, and Jane and her brother went off to rehearsals, while I stayed in the house and watched television, trying to rest up for the drive tomorrow. I wanted my camera, to be sure it was charged for Crater Lake, and went out to the car in the dark (I couldn't find the porchlight switch) and just as I got back into the house, Ysabel turned up downstairs---and that meant someone had let her out. I went upstairs and discovered Efanor had opened every door to every room but the bath, and was missing...after I'd had the front door open, on a black, rainy night, with a black cat who's very good at darting doors. I searched the street. I called. The back yard connects to the Pacific Ocean, via San Francisco bay. I tried there. I went upstairs and closed all the doors, figuring if the wretch was there, his change of rooms would tell me where he was hiding. I took Ysabel on an Efanor-hunt, and she seemed to be interested in Jane's brother's room. Well, finally I went upstairs to the ahem, powder room, just before Jane and her brother should be home---and here comes Efanor, who can never resist anyone in a bathroom. And I can't catch him---until he plops down in front of our room's closed door, just sprawls smugly on the floor, far and wide, smiling at me and completely willing, if I'll just open the door for poor helpless him, to go inside, because he probably wants his litter pan. I do. Happy cats. Disgusted me. Jane and her brother got home, and of course everything is just as it was, as if nothing's gone on. Nice evening? Oh, quite.// Oh, and our plans for tomorrow? It’s snowed up in Oregon, where our next target is the long-postponed visit to Crater Lake. It should make it a pretty drive, but it casts doubt on our plans to take a direct cross-country to Spokane from here via Crater Lake. We’ll try it, but we hope it’s a good road.
3/24/05. Thursday. Well, the Crater Lake business seems to have fallen through yet again—my first attempt to get to this remarkable planetary feature was, recall, was in my teens, when a family vacation veered aside, and several times since, when a casual ‘we ought to’ was sidetracked. This time we were determined. But Jane called Oregon’s Department of Transportion and turned up chain-requirements in the passes and a severe avalanche warning around the rim drive. Now, I swear, if I were solo on this one, I might try it, but (sigh) responsible thinking, and the fact we have the cats aboard, who wouldn’t favor being stuck in a snowdrift, as Jane wouldn’t like to be swept down the mountain, dictates we just take out and truck north on I-5. Which we did, and by the time we got to Grant’s Pass OR, without the least sight of snow, need I tell you? we decided it was time to pull in. And do we then get the usual cheerful Motel 6 greeting and acceptance of pets? No. Out of all Motel 6's we’ve stayed at, in about every state where the chain exists, for 65,000 miles of travel based out of these motels, we’ve had no trouble at all—until the Grant’s Pass OR Motel 6, who inquired sharply if we had pets, how many, and told us we couldn’t have but one pet per room. Now—if we were willing to distress our pets and the neighbors, we’d have asked for adjacent rooms and let two separated pets take the doors down and howl all night. But we won’t inflict that emotional and physical stress on our pets. And, oh, no, no problem, the supercilious clerk says—the Super 8 Motel just across the street will take them both, no problems. We are very suspicious there is an arrangement here: the Super 8 is the pricier motel, and we wonder about ownership of both hotels and standing orders—nor was the desk clerk polite at all—defensive, in the way of a young person who knows she’s following orders that have often brought unpleasantness her way. Instead of the Super 8, we go to the Shilo Inn just across the street in the other direction, which also costs more, but no more, and gives us satisfaction, to fund the local competition. We’re also lodging a complaint with the national Motel 6 customer service. As was, we had an excellent room at the Shilo, a nice supper at the adjacent restaurant, and I happened to catch the World Figure Skating exhibition as a bonus, but Jane was fast asleep and didn’t respond when I told her it was on.
3/25/05. Friday. We trucked, skipping breakfast in favor of diet bars, and headed up I-5 to the junction with I-84, which leaves Portland and goes at river level up the Columbia River. Lunch at a local Mexican Restaurant in West Linn: the Ixtapa. Beyond that was a beautiful drive, and we ran up beside Multnomah Falls, which is one of the highest waterfalls in North America, and just right beside the highway—park, and take the handicap-accessible under-highway walkthrough, and there’s a nice giftshop/restaurant and accessible view of the falls besides higher hiking trails. It’s a gorgeous two-tiered falls. And need I say after all those warnings from the Oregon Department of Transportation, and after it was too late to change our route, there was still no snow in evidence, and I’m highly supicious about the accuracy of their warnings about Crater Lake and Highway 97, around Bend. (I’m going to check their webcams tomorrow, I promise you.) We made our northerly connection at the Tri-cities (Pasco, Richland, and Kennewick, which sit right together at the confluence of the Columbia, the Snake, and the Yakima rivers) and headed up 395 across the back of the Palouse toward home, while I finished reading and editing Pretender. We snagged a deli chicken at our local supermarket, had a glass of wine, and headed for our own beds in a pleasantly cold apartment. Jane, found wandering about later, protests the broiled spiced chicken we got did not sit easily on the stomach, and that I should be glad my general distaste for chicken kept me to the poppers. But bad chicken spice or not, we’re glad to be home, having had all the fun we could possibly stand over three weeks. Equally glad to be back are the cats, who, having slept half the day, have immediately gotten down to work and performed a tour of the house designed to rout out all encroaching gremlins. Now we find it’s coming up on Easter on Sunday. No fancy dinner for these two piggolettas! Diet bars, and probably a lot of sleep