Hmmm... I need an event. I've got two scenes worked out, which make great sense on their own, but there's something missing in between. I'm not sure exactly what needs to go there, except that it needs to draw two characters closer together. *sighs* I'm probably going to need a few more of these right after the scene I'm working on as well. Otherwise the timing is going to be all screwy. *sighs* I have a few ideas for what sorts of events I can use. Basically, the one unifying theme for the section I'm currently on is a series of murders. So I can expand on that. Another option is to plant some seeds for future plotlines. Problem is, those plotlines don't involve the characters I need to bring together. Ah well. I'll figure it out.
Other writing-related news... James from my Saturday taiji class also writes. I found this out yesterday during push-hands (which means we were talking too much, but Don worked us both hard to make up for that). He acted a lot like I do when mentioning my writing to people I don't know very well (shy, a bit embarrassed, not sure he should be talking about it). So I immediately had to ask, "Do you get stories that stay stuck in your head until you write them down?" He does. We both agree it can be annoying at times.
If you've never experienced this, imagine that you have a series of events running through your head. When you're directly concentrating on something, they'll recede into the background for a while, but in every quiet, unoccupied moment they come creeping back into your awareness. Sometimes they're a complete story in and of themselves. Sometimes they're just a scenario, begginng to be completed. But until they get written down, they just stay there in your consciousness, and won't let you think about anything else without a great deal of effort. Don says that's the sign of a true writer: when you can't not write.
A side effect of this (for me at least) is an instant ability to come up with backstory for a character who only appeared in the story as a convenience to further an unrelated plot. Which sometimes means I have to start over, as the character's backstory doesn't mesh with anything else. It can be very strange, though, to leap from "Hmm... I need a female character in this scene" to "Ah, yes. She's one of the Brethren who came over with Valdren's father." Further details emerged from there, and somewhere along the way she named herself "Hannah." Fibonacci helped me work out some of the consequences of the backstory she came with.
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(1) Drinking yerba mate tea in the morning makes me less hungry, but then the lack of food also means I have less energy.
(2) The automatic sprinkler system at my Grandma/Mom's house has no useful control mechanisms to adjust how often it comes on.
(3) My mom is a lightswitch neat freak (insists that two switches controlling the same light must both be down when the light is off, thus negating the usefulness of having two switches)
(4) The people who wired my Grandma/Mom's house were lunatics (not new, but it keeps extending; this time, a dual switchbox upstairs was placed so that it was impossible to get a lightswitch cover on it)
(5) There are still some rough spots in Parsival's Test to be smoothed out (okay, somewhat useful, as I can now FIX them)
(6) I am also allergic to the bushes at the front of Granmda/Mom's house (we discovered a few years back that I'm allergic to the one in back; nothing major, just a nice crop of hives) - - SIDENOTE: If I'm not careful, Christmas wreaths generally give me a rash as well.
(7) My mom does not like it when I have no opinion on a question she asks, ever. Tonight it was "How do you think it would look if I put plastic strips in the chain link fence back there?"
Me: "It would look like there were plastic strips in it."
Mom: "But would it be an improvement?"
Me: "That depends on whether you like the look of plastic strips. I have no opinion on the matter."
Mom: *sighs*
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I usually try to wait until after school stuff is all done, but my hair was driving me nuts. So I got out my clippers and took a bunch off on Tuesday. I realized I'd missed a few spots, so I tidied it up (and made it even shorter) today. I got the clippers when money was tight, and I didn't feel like paying $10-$20 for a haircut. The clippers were $40, so with the price of the place I usually went to, they paid for themselves after three uses. I generally just use them in summer, because I can't get much finesse on my own. But this way I can keep my hair short and manageable without paying through the nose. I'm sort of tempted to dye it blond this summer. I've done black and red, but never blond. It will grow out pretty quickly if it looks horrible.
I had long hair once. It was a pain. I hate having dirty hair, but when it's long it takes forever to dry after washing. So I keep it short. That way I just wash, comb, and go. My mom keeps her hair short as well, though longer than mine, but she insists on perming it and teasing it and all sorts of other ruddy nonsense. She gets very irritated with me when she asks how it looks, because unless there's some obvious problem, I answer, "Huh? Oh, fine." You'd think she'd learn not to ask for my opinion, since I generally don't have one. (She also does this when picking music to play for church; I invariably tell her to play "One Last Shot" from Pirates of the Caribbean, or "Imperial March". Yet she continues to ask.)
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Four more lectures to go, one for each class. And, really, all that's left is review for all of them. In Math015, I had to quickly go over percentages on Monday (because somehow chapter 7 hadn't made it onto the syllabus), but I just presented them as another type of proportion problem. The book also goes through the more usual method of decimal multiplication, but as I was short on time, I wanted the material to have as little new stuff in it as possible. Hence, I showed them how to do everything as proportions. But today we can just review.
In Math025, we started reviewing Monday, and made it up to polynomial arithmetic. In Math123, we finished up the chapter on the normal distribution last night, and then I did a brief overview of that chapter. On Thursday we'll review the probability chapter. Since that class isn't a prerequisite for anything, I chose not to do a cumulative final, so their "final" exam is just over those chapters. Much to my surprise, I've enjoyed teaching that class. It's a fun mix of topics. My only frustration is that the students really don't have the math background to appreciate some of the topics.
I think between my grandma's death and everything else that's happened this semester, I'm just burned out. Especially on grading. I've been spending most of my extra time writing, and once again I'm getting plot elements to mesh (including one that I'd more or less discarded as extraneous; it turned out to be the key in making two other plotlines fuse together). This weekend, I plan to get the Math123 final written, but then I think I'll read through Parsival's Test again, and then see about getting Kinkos to print it for me on nice paper. I would like to get it submitted sometime soon. Fibonacci pointed out one place where the reasoning behind a character's actions is not clear. It wasn't supposed to be crystal clear, but it looks like I need to do a touch-up so that it's not completely obfuscated.
The differences between projects can be rather amusing at times. Parsival's Test is nearly all from the POV of only two characters. The sequel that I'm working on now does not have a primary POV character, or even characters. There are three intertwined plotlines that will soon collide, then there probably will be a more unified feel, since all but one of those will be resolved (for the purposes of this project) at the collision. Anyway, I need to get a Math015 test changed up enough for a student to take it this morning. So I've got a slightly different writing project to work on.
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Okay, this is just cool. They've found a way to channel the random molecular motion of water, so that it goes in the general direction they want.
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Over at Pharyngula, PZ has an excellent post up. I'll admit that PZ is sometimes a bit too militantly atheist for my tastes, but I agree with him on this one. He's discussing the difference between maintaining a secular government and forcing society to be secular.
He's reacting to an earlier article (linked to in the post) which defined secularism as, essentially, equivalent to atheism. It's sort of amusing, to me, to read articles of this nature, because they've got this black/white spectrum going, and I'm on the green axis instead. I don't care for the extremists on either side.
On a related note, Positive Liberty has one contributor who regularly posts about the beliefs of the founding fathers. The most recent post is less overtly secular, but is very critical of anyone who justifies theocratic tendency with the "Christian Nation" rhetoric.
What's my take? Sometimes secularism is taken to an extreme. I have never seen the point of removing, for instance, the ten commandments from public property. They are a historical example of a set of laws. Also, most of them are abrogated by our own Constitution's first amendment, so I find it pleasingly ironic to leave them where they are. Even during my brief stint as an atheist, I found the notion of removing them to be a bit silly. I have no problem with public Christmas displays so long as they do not deliberately marginalize non-Christians, and so long as public displays of non-Christian holidays are allowed.
I do have one major holiday pet peeve with the Christians. It happens every seven years or so (sometimes jolted off or on by a leap year). It's when Halloween falls on a Sunday. They make all sorts of lame excuses (it's a school day being favorite), but what it really boils down to is that they can't tolerate having a semi-pagan holiday celebrated on their holy day. If it was really about the next day being a school day, the same arguments would come up when it fell on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. But no. It's only Sunday that's the problem.
This may not seem like a large issue. And in some ways it's not. But one year when this happened, we gave out candy on the designated Saturday, and had the light on Sunday night as well (the true Halloween date). We got one ring at the doorbell. One little girl and her father. I gave out the candy, and the father gave me a pathetically grateful "Thank you." I don't know what had happened at other houses, but just based on his facial expression and gratitude, I am certain it was NOT pleasant. Ever since then, I've despised the paranoia that far too many Christians have about Halloween falling on Sunday.
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It was just Mark and I in Don's taiji class this morning. Which was quite good, actually, as it meant that Don focused on some more advanced stuff that he wouldn't have even mentioned if Joe or James had been there (Mark and I are his most advanced students at the moment). Also, I got him to use the marrow-washing/qi-pouring qigong as a warm-up. That's a favorite of mine.
Anyway, the advanced stuff. The first exercise was a "simple" one, in that we weren't trying to do anything specifically, just trying to maintain attention on the feet and the hands throughout the form. I'd done this paying attention to both hands before, but never with the feet at the same time. It was quite instructive. When I actually maintain attention on all of them, it's like being in stereo vs. mono. I can "hear" information coming in from all four places. Then Don added an extra piece on, and had us concentrate on filling the hands with qi as we got to a posture, then allowing them to empty again during the transitions. Whether you acknowledge the existence of qi or not, you can't fight effectively if you're attention is not in what you are doing, and where attention goes, qi goes. That was a good exercise.
Oh, and in push hands, I actually pushed Don out once. Once. Since this is a very rare occurence, I was quite pleased.
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Weird dream last night. Very weird. My dad and I were going to go fishing. For some reason, we were renting a canoe to do this. We got to the dock late, and I had to go get the canoe from where it had been tied. Either the water had risen a lot, or this place was insane. I went down a concrete boatramp with a rail at the side (like the one used at Littlewood to move the dock as the water level fluctuates), and had to get past a rather large ship that was sitting on the bottom, into the water, until I found the canoe. I was untying it when it occurred to me that I was underwater and therefore couldn't breathe. Usually in dreams, I can breathe underwater no problem. In this one I couldn't. I got the canoe untied and dragged it past the large boat (which was slowly sliding down the ramp towards me) and finally made it out of the water and took a gasping breath.
So then my dad and I got into the canoe and we were paddling along (I had forgotten to pick up the paddle next to the canoe, but Dad had an old wooden one that I think we lost years ago) ...eventually we got to a double set of glass doors that I had to hold open and try to give Dad steering directions on how to get by them. Yes, glass doors in the water. However, there were people standing on the other side, high and dry, yet we were still paddling in water. *shrugs* Anyway, the doors led to a restaurant, and I went to try and find a menu to discover if there was anything I could eat. Not sure what happened to Dad at this point. I got distracted from menu-hunting by some shiny beads, and the dream turned into a craft-show about taking those beads to make decorations (I've forgotten what kind; possibly beaded curtains). I think some more happened in the restaurant turned craft barn, but I can't remember it now. I have vague images of wooden tables and shiny bead trinkets.
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There's a taiji conference in East Stroudsberg, Pennsylvania, from June 1 to June 4. It's being led by a student of Master Jou (one of my teacher's teachers). I would love to go. The fee for the conference is actually low, comparatively: about $300, including hotel. The problem is getting there. Cheapest flight out of Salt Lake that I've found is $523. Most were closer to $650, and some were even higher. The other option would be to drive. It's over 2000 miles, and mapquest's estimated time was 30 hours. Not doable by myself, since I wouldn't be in any shape to enjoy or benefit from the conference by the time I got there. No one else from here seems interested in going, either. Hence, *sighs* (Well, Don's interested, but he's got a summer class to teach)
Incidentally, estimated gas cost for the trip (driving) is $210. That's using 30 mpg as an estimate for my car. My car has been getting 35 mpg lately, though, so the cost might be lower. I'll keep checking air-fares, but I'm thinking that I'll just save my money and go to Bataan's taiji camp at the end of July.
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Sausage is one of my favorite breakfast foods. It was what Grandma and Grandad ALWAYS had cooking for breakfast at their house. After Grandad died, Grandma primarily cooked it when I was visiting, though. However, it's been a bit of a pain figuring out how to get it to cook well as patties. Link sausage is...edible, but not very good. My problem with the patties is that they could be burned to a crisp on the outside yet still not completely cooked on the inside. The solution? Dihydrogen Monoxide! (aka "water"). Pour some good ol' H20 into the pan with the patties, and several things happen: (1) they don't burn until the water boils away; (2) the heat is more evenly distributed; (3) you can leave the burner on higher settings for longer. So you can get sausage that's actually DONE all the way through without charring it to powdery blackness. I am pleased.
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Not sure why this has been on my mind lately, but this feels like a good time to write a post about it. The stars are a major problem for any claims that the universe was created 6000 years ago. Why? Simple. There are many stars that are more than 6000 light years away. There simply hasn't been time for their light to reach us.
So, let's look at this. Supposing that the stars and everything else were made 6000 years ago, we have to assume that God created the light that comes from those stars in situ, en route. So the light was created at the same time as the stars. Problem: the light contains information about the elements that make up the stars. Thus God also created a false record of information and planted it within starlight. Conclusion: God is a liar. Thus the whole reason for thinking the stars were made 6000 years ago vanishes.
Aside: Is it preferable to think that God built lies into his Creation or that those who wrote down his words got a few things wrong?
Now, Answers in Genesis has an "explanation" which avoids the difficulty, at least so far as the stars go. They argue that there could have been a time dilation effect around the earth, so that the stars are the milliions and billions of years required, but the earth is not. More specifically, there may have been an "event horizon" around the earth (and presumably the whole solar system). Okay... Let's try to visualize this. The stars seem to have been visible to Adam and Eve. So several billion years must have been compressed into the space of a day or two.
Well, there are two ways for time dilation to occur. Gravitational time dilation is the result of being within any gravitational field. Gravity on earth is weak enough that this is a fairly minor effect. The equation for time dilation is T = t * sqrt(1-R/r), where T is the observed time, t is the time outside the system, R is the Schwarzschild radius for the amount of mass involved and r is (basically) the distance from the center of the mass (see wikipedia's article). Setting T to one day (or 1/365 of a year), and t to 12 billion years, we find that R/r = 0.9999999999999999999999999 That is, our position would be barely outside the Schwarzschild radius of the mass. So supposing that SOMEHOW the mass of the earth were increased enough to have this effect, and assuming that the radius of the earth itself was the effective Schwarzschild radius, the earth would need to be roughly 4.3 * 10^33 kg (about 2000 times more massive than the sun). This should REALLY have wreaked havoc with the orbits of the other planets, and we ought to be able to observe perturbations even today. We don't.
Right then. The other way for time dilation to occur is to move at a speed very close to the speed of light. Here, the equation is t = T * 1/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2), where t and T are as above, v is the speed of the system, and c is the speed of light. Solving, we find that the earth would have to be moving at 0.999999999999999999999999997*c, while the rest of the universe stayed, more or less, stationary. Okay, not buying this one either.
I can't think of any other known mechanisms that would result in time dilation. There may be some that I haven't heard of, but the primary problem is that this is an ad hoc hypothesis. It is not proposed on the basis of evidence, but to explain away evidence. Any supposed explanation that spends most of its time explaining why massive amounts of evidence are not valid/useful/meaningful is automatically suspect.
Oh yes. I did promise other ancient creatures. Two links from Pharyngula. The first is about a Snake with legs. Here is where evolutionary theory shines. It predicts that an intermediary between legged lizards and legless snakes should exist, and here one is. It predicts we should see a steady parade of gradual changes in the fossil record, and we do (see talkorigins, search for fossil record). Going by Creation "theory", we ought to see a random assortment of jumbled parts (ever been in ANY inventor's lab?).
The other link is Pharyngula's examination of AiG's response to said snake fossil.
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Yesterday, I spent most of the day helping my mom with various projects, including a trip to Idaho Falls. She had gotten her fireboxes from Dad's house, and just carrying them to her car had made her chest hurt. So I got the job of carrying them into her basement. The original plan had been to pick up Mom's new lawnmower before 10:00 am, then head for IF, but Dad threw a snag into our plans. He'd picked today to get the snow tires off of the pickup. So we got the lawnmower closer to 10:30 am (it was NOT in a box as we'd been led to believe, which made it MUCH easier to get out of the pickup again). Then we had to clear some empty boxes out of Mom's garage for a place to put it, which meant that we stopped at K-Mart to recycle said boxes before actually getting underway.
Next stop: The Canton Restaurant in IF. I talked Mom into sharing some of their sesame chicken, with a side of stir-fried vegetables. They made it with cornstarch batter, per my request. It was MUCH better with the stir-fried vegetables to go with it.
We went to Best Buy (total bust, and lousy service), and Linens and Things next. Mom got another size of the bowls I'd gotten her for easter. Incidentally, we got much better service at Circuit City than we did at Best Buy, and Mom wound up buying a new DVD player. Grandma's will no longer play. I may take it and disassemble it. I doubt I can fix it, but it would be fun to see what all's inside.
Then we went over to furniture row. No queensize bookcase headboard (Mom would like one), but she did find some kitchen chairs she liked. They are nice. Solid oak construction. Wheeled base. Rather blah cushions, but they're the kind you can pull off and replace. So I took Mom/Grandma's old chairs (all but one; we haven't connected the base to the seat on the new ones yet), and I plan to spruce them up a bit. Or a lot. The old ones have a brass frame with a cushioned cloth seat and back. I may find some pewter metallic paint to cover up the brass. Then I figure I'll deconstruct the seats and backs. If the woodboard and cushioning is okay, I'll keep those. I would definitely like a different upholstery. One more thing: the back will be held on by more than a single screw. Those things broke on a regular basis, simply because one screw was not enough.
Last Stops: Target and Barnes and Noble. The only place I bought anything was Target. Two necessities, and a "painting". It's that new style, where it looks like you've got a genuine canvas, but it's really just printed onto a fancier material. It's a picture of red plum blossoms on a white background in a black frame. I've got one room painted entirely red, and I think the white background on this picture will look awesome in there.
Anyway, time to head for taiji.
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Well, not quite, but Pharyngula has an amusing take on some conservative inconsistencies. Some good comments there, too.
Random connection to tonight's 123 class. We're on probability and discussing dependent vs. independent events. So I asked them whether the events "person is Republican" and "person supports gun control" were independent. No one seemed to know this...which rather confused me. Apparently I have non-political students. They got the next one just fine: the events "leaving from home late" and "arriving at work on time" are definitely NOT independent.
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I'm currently watching the Stargate episodes that were shown on Sci-Fi last night. They run four episodes back to back on Monday night. I was watching Stargate semi-regularly last summer before I got sick of it. I seem to like it better when the weather is warmer. No clue why that might be. Right now they're in the season where they discover the Russians have been using the "other" Stargate to run their own missions. So naturally we're getting a lot of backbiting. But I find it amusing that certain plotlines show up that would be impossible if there weren't another gate (Tielk (sp?) is currently stuck in the "buffer" because the Stargate he went through was destroyed before his pattern could be re-established). Another gate is necessary because the buffer resets every time the wormhole opens, and they have several teams offworld who need a way home right now.
I've currently lost interest in the matrices class. It's interesting, but I'm in writing mode at the moment. I'll keep doing presentations, but I'm currently grateful that I'm only auditing the class. I've recently realized that I have...how to put this? There is mental energy within me that, if it is not directed, causes problems. I can focus it on writing, and channel it into my characters and stories. I can focus it on a project or a goal. I can focus it on math. It is difficult to focus it on two things at once. But if it is NOT focused, I start getting...erratic. I get mild delusions, feelings of paranoia, near-hallucinations. This can also happen if I am TOO focused on a single thing (preparing for my Master's Exams comes to mind). As schizophrenia as a heritable component, I am not pleased by this realization.
And now I must grade Math 123 exams, which may be painful. The test ran long. The sudents who consistently do well finished. The rest did not, to the point that I told them to pick one problem not to do. Hopefully that was enough. We shall see.
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Not my usual style of post, but reading Anne Bishop's latest book got me thinking about this topic today. Now, it's inevitable that sex is going to play some role in many stories. It's more a question of how it's dealt with, for me. So I'm going to compare some authors that I read:
Robert Jordan: His is my favorite approach (and the one I take in my own writing whenever possible). That is, make it clear what's going to happen, then discreetly "close the door" and move away. No excess details.
Laurell K. Hamilton: Rather the opposite of Robert Jordan's. Now, she is very inventive, and so graphic that her sex scenes are actually so clinical as to be boring. Seriously. Partially this is because she overuses them. At least, in every recent book I've read. From Guilty Pleasures to Obsidian Butterfly, she did a good job. All the Anita Blake books after that... The first two were roughly 90% sex scenes, with the other 10% a very thinly woven plot. The next one was better. An ACTUAL plot, but still intersperesed with far too many sex scenes. I'm not kidding when I say there were so many, they got BORING. Especially one scene that SHOULD have been a pivotal reconciliation. Instead of thinking how wonderful that was, I was just thinking, "Oh. Anita's having sex. Again." My suggestion to Ms. Hamilton would be to save the excessive details for those sexual situation that are actually pivotal to the plot, and dump the rest.
Anne Bishop: Somewhere in the middle. She often describes sex scenes in more detail than I think is necesary, but they are ALWAYS pivotal to the plot. Also, she doesn't use them so much that I start dreading turning the page. They always fit, and she uses them appropriately.
Now, my take on sex scenes when I write them is that they should have just enough detail to get the point across. In most cases, I do not need very much detail, and take the Robert Jordan approach of quietly moving away to give the characters their privacy. Occasionally, I need more than that. But I still take a minimalist approach. Especially after reading Laurell K. Hamilton's recent Anita Blake books, I consider excessive detail a turn-OFF.
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From Daily KoS, a thoughtful Easter discussion. I agree with just about everything said in this article. When a religion that claims to serve the God of Love begets hatred, something is clearly wrong.
So what did I do for Easter? I began my yoga practice again, washed dishes, and had some buckwheat cereal. Yesterday I took my mom a basket of goodies (four CD's, two pyrex bowls with lids, two pretty towels, and a carved wooden cat curled up like it's taking a nap. Oh, and a weird plush flower thing, with a wire in the stem that can be bent into just about any position. She got me a bouquet of carnations last Sunday (mainly because she figured she'd forget if she waited).
I think of Easter largely in pagan terms. It's a time of renewal for the Earth. A time when the yin of winter begins turning to yang in its progression to summer. For anyone who hasn't researched it, there are countless "dying and rising gods" throughout pagan traditions. But only AFTER the introduction of agriculture. The dying and rising god was a symbol of the grain that "died" and produced seed that would "rise" come the next planting season. Note also that such a seed had to "enter the earth" before it could rise.
I always love it when Christians show off their pagan spirit. ;^D That's one of my favorite things about Christmas, too.
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I got my snow tires taken off of my car yesterday. So naturally today one of my regular tires decided to have a blow out while I was driving to IF for taiji. First, I felt this strange wobbly vibration in the car and the steering wheel. I wasn't sure what it was, though it occurred to me it could be a tire. I figured I'd pull off at the nearest exit to check it out. It had other ideas, and popped right after I'd passed a pickup. So I pulled off to the side and had to dig out my spare tire and jack. Luckily, it was on the passenger side, so I had my car between me and the 75 mph traffic. I actually enjoyed changing the tire (nice, simple, physical activity), but it did make me twenty minutes late for taiji. And this afternoon I had to replace said tire. The blowout was rather impressive, actually. The entire outer section of rubber (the surfaces which contacts the road) had been torn from the inner support section, but was still in one piece. This meant that I had to get the car up higher to get the tire to come off, but such is life. Strangely, the hardest part of the process was getting the rim off so that I could get to the bolts. The rim did NOT want to part company from the tire.
And James made it to taiji today, for the first time in over a month (unless he was there last week when I missed). I got to push hands with him. I really like pushing hands with him, because he has an excellent root. Which means that when I get something to WORK on him, I had to have used my own root and my waist. Nothing else will move him. There was one point where I just busted up laughing at him. He was trying to push me out, and pushed on my forward (left) thigh from one side. Then he pushed on the other side of the thigh. Then he actually reached under my leg and tried to bodily lift it up from the ground. He couldn't do it. I was too well-rooted. Well, up until I busted up laughing I was. It was a classic cartoon moment, I swear. Big huge guy (compared to me, anyway) grunting and groaning to try and lift my leg and foot off the ground. I was also pleased that my root WAS that good. *grins*
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I started looking up manuscript submission guidelines (in the hopes of getting something published). From Daw Books' submission guidelines: "Very important: Please type your name, address and phone number in the upper right hand corner of the first page of your manuscript. Right under this, please put the length of your manuscript in number of words."
They also request a cover letter, so I looked for some tips on writing one. Here's part of what one page had to say: "Never, never, never list the word count. Not even on short stories. It's says, HACK, in bold letters. It is a lie perpetuated by Writer's Digest Books. No one cares about the exact word count. Editors and agents can see that a 300 page manuscript is, well, a 300 page manuscript."
:^) I think I'll go with the actual publisher's guidelines if I submit... (And if that publisher won't take it, and another publisher requests something else, I'll go with that publisher's guidelines).
On the bright side, all the cover letter info agrees on the basic format:
Paragraph 1: Brief introduction to the manuscript, including title and and a very very short description.
Paragraph 2: Publication credentials / Personal history (ideally relevant to the manuscript you've sent)
Paragraph 3: Contact info and closing remarks. Should also contain preferences about what to do with your manuscript when the publisher is done looking at it. (Same place that said NEVER include the word count says NEVER ask for the manuscript to be returned; *shrugs*)
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There's a billboard advertisement for Cable internet in Idaho Falls. Nice BIG letters proclaim: "$29.95 per month!*" The * is clear at the bottom, and is completely illegible from the road. It seems like this ought to be illegal. Having seen their ad elsewhere, I know it's something like "*for the first 6 months."
Other news: my sword form is definitely improving. Don's corrections are getting pickier. For the non-practitioner, that means I've got the "choreography" down (mostly), but not all the fine nuances. Sort of like when you're sanding: you start off with a large grain to get off the roughest stuff, then progress to finer and finer grains. Well, I'm onto a finer grain sheet of sandpaper now. (I wonder if Don would appreciate being compared to sandpaper...? *shrugs*)
Not much else happening this week. We're looking at rational expressions in 025 (polynomials in fractions, basically), and ratios and rates in 015, and we're having a test over Fibonacci numbers and exponential/linear growth in 123. I decided to cover the growth stuff rather than Fractals mainly because there's more stuff there that they will actually use (interest calculations come to mind). We did take a tiny look at fractals, in the form of the Koch Snowflake and the Sierpinski Gasket. With the Koch Snowflake, you draw a triangle, then put another triangle in the center of each edge (should trisect the edge). Now you have 6 triangular points, and put a triangle on each of their edges. Now you have 12 points.... and keep going. The end result does look somewhat like a Snowflake.
The Sierpinski Gasket is similar, but opposite in the sense that you remove things rather than add them. Start with a shaded triangle. Find the midpoint of each edge and draw another triangle connecting those points. Erase the shading inside the "new" triangle. Now you have three shaded triangles inside your original. Find the midpoints of each side, connect them into triangles, and erase the shading. Now you have nine shaded triangles... Repeat ad infinitum.
There's a cool variation of the Sierpinski Gasket that gets to the same end shape through random processes. We didn't get to that in class, but I thought it was fascinating.
But now I suppose I ought to write said test, so that they can take it tomorrow night.
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Yesterday I got to play electrician again. My mom got a lamp with three separate controls for each of the three lights, and she wanted a way to turn it all on/off at once. So I put a switch in the power cord. Made a rookie mistake, as I'd never done it before. I just cut right through the cord, and later realized I'd only needed to cut through the live wire, not the ground. Which meant I had to reconnect the ground and put some electrical tape on for good measure. Once I got that sorted out, however, it went smoothly, and didn't blow up when I plugged it back in and turned it on.
The other project was to put in a lighted lightswitch in my mom's bedroom. This is the same bedroom with the wood paneling. Wood paneling that previous renovators had cut too small to extract the former plug-in. They did the same thing with the lightswitch. *grumbles* So that's going to wait until I have time to take a hacksaw to it.
We also got Mom's new filing cabinet on a wheeled base. It would be much simpler if they'd just make filing cabinets come with wheels, or even holes for attaching wheels. Hmmm... might be fun to try doing it that way, and I'll bet the wheels would be more stable, too! (I doubt Mom would let me experiment on HER filing cabinet, though.)
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I've added a few links to the left, and removed one comic. It was a decent comic, but it's rather pointless to link to it when it seems to update once a month or so. I added Evil Comics, Inc, both because it is enjoyable, and because any mistyping of the address invariably takes you to a rather scary place. I also added Aikida, which I've been reading for a while. Warning: while the current storyline is quite well-done, I don't recommend going further back in the archives than that. I went back to the beginning and read all the way through...and wondered how such utter garbage had turned into the currently excellent storyline. Very good artwork as well, though a bit obsessed with the female form.
I've also linked to several blogs that I read regularly. I'll probably expand this later, and possibly divide off the science-oriented blogs into their own category. But this is enough for now.
Oh yes. I've got a bit of a sore throat at the moment, and didn't feel up to driving to IF for taiji this morning. The taiji would make me feel better, but I think it would be irresponsible of me to drive up there given the way I feel at the moment. Yes, Virginia, there IS a difference between a caffeine withdrawal headache and a sinus pressure headache. *sighs*
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My mom needed someone at her house to accept the filing cabinet she'd ordered; as it was Friday, and I have Fridays off, this duty fell on me. She also needed someone there for when the plumber came to fix the downstairs toilet. It wasn't sealing properly, so it would fill up and then the water would seep through the seal and we'd hear it start running again to fill up. We had tried to replace the parts ourselves, but whatever parts the last plumber used, we couldn't find anything compatible (American Standard is apparently the brand name). So the plumber came, found that the rubber seal was shredded (literally; it fell apart as soon as he pulled it off). He had one that was the right size to replace it. Painless from my end. I wonder what Mom's bill will be, though.
Anyway, it wasn't too long after the plumber left that Fed Ex got there with the filing cabinet. Mom had wanted them to put it in the basement, but apparently Fed Ex has insane policies in that regard (if he so much as brought the handtruck into the house, he was required to send out a carpet cleaning team), so that didn't happen. So, naturally, I took it upon myself to get it down the stairs. *grins* I like a challenge. Honestly, with two people, this would have been cake. It wasn't that heavy. It was a bit awkward for one person alone. The hardest thing was getting it off of the kitchen floor and onto the landing at the top of the stairs. It was only one step down, but the box was nearly as wide as the landing. Eventually I turned it at enough of an angle to get it onto the landing. The rest was easy. I gradually angled it down, and stayed in front of it to avoid another calamity at the bottom. Then I just let the weight rest on my back and walked down the stairs. No problem. I also claimed the ten dollars Mom had left as tip money in case the delivery guy took it down.
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I never mentioned yet, because there was no external sign of it, but I actually have an officemate this semester. Technically. We've been in the office at the same time exactly once. For the first half of the semester, I don't think he'd been in here at all. Recently there have been signs of habitation: a pile of scratch paper, a rubber duckie with a police hat and whistle, and a squishy foam lightbulb.
I had my first sword lesson since before break today. Not as bad as I expected. The first week back, I was too behind to go. The second week, I was having caffeine withdrawal headaches. By a strange coincidence, Don was having bad days then as well, and was just as happy NOT to give me a lesson. Today, we worked on some refinements. You know you're making progress when the instructor stops saying "No, facing THAT corner," and starts saying, "Fair Maiden's Wrist" or "Turn the waist!"
And yesterday one of the beginning taiji students asked me if I was an Aquarius. I blinked for a moment and said, "No. I'm a cancer; I'm the hideous disfiguring disease of the zodiac." Then he told me that I acted just like an Aquarius (which apparently means very extroverted). It isn't often that I get told I'm extroverted... :^) I'm definitely less of an introvert than I used to be, I admit, but I'm hardly an extrovert. Anyway, this guy was disappointed. He said it was the first time in a year and a half he'd guessed someone's sign wrong.
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Question from the most recent Math 015 exam: "It takes 3 1/4 hours to make a single beaded vest. There are 52 working hours. How many vests can be made in this time?"
Correct answer is to divide 52 by 3 1/4 --> 52/(13/4) = 52*(4/13) = 16 vests.
Many got this answer or something close to it. Several came up with 169 vests (by multiplying rather than dividing). One person came up with a number over 700. Let's see, it takes more than 3 hours to make a vest, and you're going to make 700 of them in 52 hours? I'd like to see your time machine!
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Got a call tonight. It went something like this:
Me: "Hello."
Line: "Hello." (before I'd finished my hello, so I said hello again)
Line: "Okay! Could I talk to the Lady of the House!" (overly cheerful male voice)
Me: "Who are you looking for?"
Line: "Okay! Could I talk to the Lady of the House!"
Me: "WHO are you looking for?"
Line: Repeats again, and I realize even the intonation is identical.
Me: HANGUP
The least they could do is give the thing more than one xnone. *sighs*
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I had a few dreams last night. One of them turned lucid for a brief span of time. I was walking down a corridor, and suddenly knew that I was dreaming. There was some situation I was trying to deal with (details are gone now), and I began wondering how much the "rules" of the dream itself would limit my actions. For some reason, there were lots of outdoor rugs in this corridor (the green spiky ones that are supposed to trap dirt). As soon as I stepped through a door, the luidity was gone.
The next bit I remember may be a separate dream entirely. There was a woman (Russian, I think) who had been confined to her penthouse. I'm not sure if she was going to be put on trial or if she was a witness. Judging by her actions, she was probably the one on trial. The cops had thoroughly searched her apartment, and taken away anything that might be obviously helpful. Good thing she'd put the dust jacket for a romance novel over that book on picking locks... I'm not sure how she planned to get out, though, since the locks were all on doors leading down to the lower levels of the building, which were certainly guarded. Which meant she needed a way OFF of the building. But I woke up before I could see what she was planning.
And I've decided that headache probably was caffeine withdrawal. I recently switched to decaffeinated tea in the mornings (but was still getting caffeine from other sources), and apparently my body didn't like it. Well, I showed it. I cut out ALL caffeine entirely. So there. Wednesday the headache was a bit better. It was almost gone yesterday. Today, there are small twinging remnants, but otherwise it's gone. I've been needing more sleep than usual, but I think once I get the last of it out of my system, that should go back to normal. *sighs* Two weird things in this: On the trip to Colorado, I got very little caffeine with no side effects; and when I've gotten addicted to caffeine in the past, I've woken up craving, say, chocolate or other food items containing caffeine. No such signal this time. And I really didn't think I'd been getting very much caffeine, anyway. But I could ramble on and on and on and on and on—*slaps wrist*—so I'll stop.
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I'm not quite as incoherent as that title sounds, but I've had a screaming headache nearly all day. Taiji helped some. I'm wondering if it's caffeine withdrawal, actually...except that I don't think I've gotten myself addicted to caffeine again. It's that kind of headache, though. So if it's not a withdrawal headache, I must have one heckuva cold coming on. *sighs*
I'd be in bed by now, except I promised my 015 classes I'd bring their current averages tomorrow when they take their test. Which meant I had to get grades entered in and averaged out. It's easier with my Pocatello classes, since grades get entered in as soon as I get the grading done. My IF classes, I tend to grade in the half hour before class and I just write them in my notebook. But they're in, now.
We didn't do much in Math 123 tonight. I had hoped to let them go waaaay early, but they had lots of questions about two sections of homework (they REALLY don't like the golden mean or the quadratic formula: which means they definitely need to spend more time with them ;^). Then I realized that we still had a bit of Chapter 9 to go, so we looked at gnomons and similar shapes. We'd done rectangles already, but not triangles or rings. But there was nothing really new tonight; just a chance to recoup and review. I haven't decided if I'll do any of Chapters 10 or 11 yet, or if I'll just move on to 12... Chapter 10 has linear and exponential growth, which is important. Chapter 11 doesn't really interest me that much, so far (symmetries...the tiling stuff is cool, but I would like to understand it better before teaching it). Chapter 12 is Mandelbrot stuff.
Okay. Sleep now.
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I finally cleaned a bunch of images out of my camera, many from the blizzard. I'll share the ones I like the most.
Triple Candelabra
When Flash Meets Snow
Same View, Sans Flash
Jean Luc in the Snow
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Power's back on. It's been on since about 9:00 this morning, judging by the elapsed time on some reset clocks. Still haven't gotten pictures off of my camera, so no blizzard pics. I find it incredibly amusing that there were three inches of snow on the ground this morning...and now it's all gone!
I find that I'm prioritizing tasks by whichever seems the least annoying. Today, Matrix homework was less annoying than grading math homework. So I worked on Matrix homework (I'm a week behind, as I didn't do anything at all with it over break; I THINK I can catch up this week, though). I've been doing a bit of cleaning and rearranging as well. I finally took apart my defunct shoe chest that had been by the door. It would no longer open without Herculean effort...I'm considering making a cupboard/hideaway desk out of it.
Anyway, when I got sick of matrix homework (and decided that I needed some reference books from my office for one problem), I started writing more for my Devil Falls story. For some reason, this one is breaking down into sections. Prologue, Diaspora (referring to magic, not people), Interlude, Fanning the Flames. The Diaspora section is already nearly as long as the entire Parsival story was. And needs to be extended a bit, but that will wait.
And the most important bit of news: Kim and Spence have a new baby! Congratulations to them! (Incidentally, I really hope this is Kim's last kid; pregnancy does NOT agree with her. I fear for her safety if she has another. Unfortunately, she told me once she was planning on 3. *sighs*).
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I stayed at my mom's house last night, and as of an hour ago, the power was still out at my place. I was expecting it to be back on this morning, so I did a bit of hunting and found a local news site with this article on it. Basically, power's out all over the place between here and IF. I've got some nice pictures of the blizzard from last night, but I forgot to grab my connector to get them off of the camera, so those will wait.
At my place, the wind didn't do very much damage (aside from the power outage). A few branches from my neighbor's tree are in my yard, and that's about it. In fact, I think I heard those branches fall shortly before the power went out. I heard some enormous gusts of wind at that time. The power did flicker a few times at Mom's place, but that was about it. So I'm hanging out here, and hoping it's back on by tonight. If not, Mom's going to have a houseguest for a few days. :^)
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Just as I noticed an "Extreme Thunderstorm Warning" on the Weather Channel, poof! Out goes the power. Still out, in fact. Lap-tops with batteries are a wonderful thing. Phonelines are still working (obviously) and my mom said SHE still has power... I'll give it another hour, but be prepared to go over there. Mainly for the heat. I don't mind the lack of lights. I finally found a practical use for my triple candelabra!
Anyway, I don't want to stay on too long with a thunderstorm nearby, so Gute Nacht.
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Chicago (the musical) is currently on. Possibly a coincidence, but Clews has linked to an article about the true stories that inspired it. Sounds like the beginnings are close, but the Hollywood ending is much...prettier and flamboyant.
Would you believe me if I told you that the two murderesses featured in the recent hit movie Chicago were just the twin tips of the iceberg, and that in Chicago, in the 1920s, it was literally impossible for any prosecutor to win a murder conviction against a woman, especially a pretty woman, as no male juries were willing to pronounce a female guilty of murder? Would you believe that dozens and dozens of women were acquitted of murder charges despite overwhelming evidence that they'd shot and killed their lovers and husbands?
I love this movie... "So I fired two warning shots...into his head."
"Some guys just can't hold their arsenic."
From the song
He had it Comin'.
Oh, and CSI was pre-empted for basketball. I find this quite irritating, as fake dead bodies are much more interesting than bouncy balls.
And reality is the ultimate tapdance:
I would just post the link, but you have to pay to access the archives, and I haven't bothered. Oh, I should probably explain: Dave (the one hiding under the desk) used to work for a mad scientist intent on taking over the world. He felt much safer there.
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These are the bowls I found at TJ Maxx. I finally got new batteries for my camera to take a picture of them. Yeah, they're silly. But they make me smile.
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My jump drive has been sputtering lately. Last night it almost wouldn't connect to my primary computer, so I backed up all its files. This morning I checked it on the laptop, and it did the same thing. So I wandered over to Office-Max and lucked into a sale on travel drives. My old one held 128 MB, and never got filled up, but it was only $25 for one that held 512 MB, so I got it. I figure I'll dismantle the now-defunct one sometime and see what made it tick.
I also wandered over to TJ Maxx, and found some very strange dessert-size bowls. They have a stylized Asian style cat inside and out. I found them rather cute, and cheering, so I got two of them. (Not much has been cheering to me lately, so I consider this a justified expense)
After I got to my office, I realized that both my math 123 book and the tests were at home... Not good, since I normally don't go home until AFTER Math 123. So I skipped Matrix analysis to go home and get them, and just stayed to grade the tests. It is extremely sad that grading tests sounded much better than going to class.
We'll spend part of class going over the tests, then we're starting on Fibonacci sequences. I haven't decided how much I'll add to what's in the book. I guess I'll head back up to my office and start thinking about that now.
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I recently discovered that Neil Gaiman keeps a web-journal. He has written some excellent books, including American Gods and Neverwhere, and he was the writer for the Sandman comic book series (highly recommended both for artwork and story). This recent entry was wonderfully entertaining, though I'm sure it was a bit worrisome when the letter first arrived. Basically, a law firm requesting removal of a link that does not exist on Neil's site.
Okay, I'll try not to post anything else today. I'm sort of in hyperactive avoidance mode, which means I'm trying to do useful things that do not involve grading papers. There will be massive grading sessions later to haunt me, but I don't care at this particular moment. I've got plenty of other things that need doing. Like, making blog entries. And cooking dinner. And rearranging the living room. And cleaning the living room. And washing dishes. And rambling on aimlessly...
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For once, an amusing forward from my mom. There were images for each one, but they don't want to load into blogger so if you want a picture, look up each breed of dog on Google. ;^)
How many dogs does it take to change a light bulb?
1. Golden Retriever: The sun is shining, the day is young, we've got our
whole lives ahead of us, and you're inside worrying about a stupid
burned out bulb?
2. Border Collie: Just one. And then I'll replace any wiring that's not
up to code.
3. Dachshund: You know I can't reach that stupid lamp!
4. Rottweiler: Make me.
5. Boxer: Who cares? I can still play with my squeaky toys in the dark.
6. Lab: Oh, me, me!!!!! Pleeeeeeeeeze let me change the light bulb! Can
I? Can I? Huh? Huh? Huh? Can I? Pleeeeeeeeeze, please, please, please!
7. German Shepherd: I'll change it as soon as I've led these people from
the dark, check to make sure I haven't missed any, and make just one
more perimeter patrol to see that no one has tried to take advantage of
the situation.
8. Jack Russell Terrier: I'll just pop it in while I'm bouncing off the
walls and furniture.
9. Old English Sheep Dog: Light bulb? I'm sorry, but I don't see a light
bulb!
10. Cocker Spaniel: Why change it? I can still pee on the carpet in the
dark.
11. Chihuahua: Yo quiero Taco Bulb. Or "We don't need no stinking light
bulb."
12. Greyhound: It isn't moving. Who cares?
13. Australian Shepherd: First, I'll put all the light bulbs in a little
circle...
14. Poodle: I'll just blow in the Border Collie's ear and he'll do it.
By the time he finishes rewiring the house, my nails will be dry.
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How many cats does it take to change a light bulb?
Cats do not change light bulbs. People change light bulbs. So, the real
question is:
"How long will it be before I can expect some light, some dinner, and a
massage?"
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A very odd dream last night, probably partially inspired by Fibonacci's Borg-dream (if he doesn't post it, ask him about it sometime; it's quite fascinating).
I'm not sure if it was a post-apocalyptic future or an attempt to colonize an alien world. Could have been either, really. My POV character was Morgan Dye (a character in my Devil Falls stories). She had wound up leading an isolated segment of the colony that had undergone some massive trauma. Details are sketchy, but all the leaders were killed, as were many of the colonists. Others were missing.
Morgan finds an old monorail system, inhabited by a strange giant centipede, that at first I thought was the monorail car. She gets part of the monorail line working again, and discovers that the centipede avoids those parts of the rail she's managed to hook up to electricity again. She also finds a stash of supplies, but it's nothing particularly useful (100 'O's, some other type of food, and several thousand shoes; I think an 'O' was an Oreo cookie). Anyway, eventually she and the remaining colonists use the monorail hook up with a larger group, led by Spencer (good friend of mine; not sure how he wound up leader of an alien colony ;^). He's not happy with Morgan for holding out on him about the supplies, though he calms down when he finds out there wasn't much of use. It turns out that many of Morgan's missing colonists had preceded them, and had tried to start a revolution, casting out all who were "impure." They had been driven off before they could do much damage.
Fragmented bit here, where we turn to a book (either left by the insane colonists, or that Morgan had found with the supplies). The pages are black with white writing and it details the coming of one who will drive out all impurities. Morgan is convinced this...being...is haunting the cave/tunnel system where the monorail runs, and she has an image of a cloaked figure with glowing eyes.
And there the dream ends. I think they were planning to hunt the creature down, and preparing for battle against his converts.
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I haven't done this in a while, mostly because nothing's sufficiently caught my interest at a time when I had time to put it up in a timely manner, but here are some science-oriented links.
From Pharyngula, a plan for Cyborg Insects. It's worth skimming through the comments. I think the point is well-taken that, whether it works or not, the attempt will produce useful results. Though I'll be the first to admit that the idea is a bit far-fetched.
Also, from Good Math, Bad Math, an argument that Irreducible Complexity is unfalisifiable. It is quite elegant. In a nutshell, it is impossible in general to prove that any system is "minimal," because the ability to decide that something is "minimal" produces a contradiction. Much like Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. Good Math, Bad Math is a relatively new blog that I encountered via Pharyngula, and it is quite a refreshing addition. He's also got several discussions about bad probability arguments that are well worth reading.
A bit late, here's an awesome astronomy picture of the day, with cool (er, hot) science to go with it.
From UTI, an article discussing possible reasons we haven't had radio contact with any extra-solar intelligences yet. Pure speculation, but a lot of fun (check out the archives for some similar discussions a week or so ago).
Next, a discussion warmer sea temperatures and hurricanes. Whether you believe warmer temperatures are human-caused or not, it is no longer defensible to deny that the world is warming. (On the same site a while back, there was a discussion that, depending on the measure, it was impossible to say which of the previous ten years was the warmest on record, but the warmest year was ALWAYS within those ten) My take on this is that, maybe there's not enough data to conclude humans are responsible, but as we've found nothing else in the geologic record remotely like this and we have caused some MAJOR changes, it would be idiotic, irresponsible and insane not to consider that a likely possibility and take action accordingly. On a related note, CO2 levels continue to rise.
And from the external to the internal, sleep aid drugs may have some bizarre side effects. Choices make people less happy. And happiness makes ofr less accurate memories, while depression tends to induce more accurate ones. Seeing the world through rose-colored glasses, perhaps?
Anyway, that's enough for a while. Enjoy.
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We got back last night, much to my surprise. Mom has never wanted to drive the whole way in one day before. Usually I suggest we might go further and she vetoes it instantaneously. So I was expecting we'd stop in Rock Springs. We were due to get there at 16:30. Then my mom asked how I was doing for driving, as she would like to make it further. I quickly switched my mental gears around, and said that I was okay to drive some more. So we got gas in Rock Springs and continued on. My mom drove after we got off the interstate and turned north towards Kemmerer, where we stopped and ate. I still had a "back-up" meal left from Fort Collins, and found a microwave in a gas station to heat it up in; my parents ate at the Subway in the same gas station. My mom drove to Cokeville, then we switched.
I was nearly wide awake at this point, and the fog woke me up further. It was thick enough that I had to slow down. I seemed to automatically choose a speed that gave me at least three seconds of road visibility in front of us. It continued off and on most of the way to Montpelier, petered out for a bit, then was back again either right before or right after Soda Springs. In Montpelier, Mom asked if I wanted to stop. "No, I'm good."
"Isn't the fog driving you crazy?"
"No, actually I'm enjoying it. It's helping keep me awake, too."
So we made it back into Pocatello around 19:30 make that 21:30... (3 hours would be very a impressive time, especially considering the stop for food, and the slow-down for fog). Judging by the snow on the ground this morning, it was probably just as well.
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No yellow dragons at Grandma’s funeral, I am sad to report. Mom decided that she would buy me something, anything else to wear. So on Tuesday morning we went on a mad hunt through Foley’s and Sears, looking for something that she would consider “appropriate.” I considered the taiji jacket eminently appropriate, as it is my uniform. Mom had voices in her head whispering “Did you hear what Hazel’s granddaughter wore to her funeral?” Telling me this actually amused me, so that I was even more determined to wear my yellow dragons. If I’d had a real taiji sword, instead of my wooden practice one, I would have strapped that to my back as well. At any rate, we found nothing at all that was even worth trying on, and finally I told her that she might as well just get me a plain black taiji tunic. So we went back to the Asian Store, and they did have a plain black tunic in my size, but they also had a black shirt that wasn’t quite a taiji tunic, with a black dragon embroidered onto it. I told my mom I would wear either, and she/we went with the black on black dragon. I still think Grandma would have loved it if I’d worn the yellow dragons, but Mom was getting close to apoplexy, so I gave in.
The funeral was this morning. Methodist. Lots of old hymns. Just the way Grandma would have wanted it. I’m sure others found it comforting, but I stopped finding hymns or bible verses comforting as soon as I started actually listening to what they said. I think most people just hear what they want to hear and ignore the rest. I gave that up a long time ago. The casket was open before the funeral began, and Grandma did not look remotely like herself. She had nearly wasted away to nothing over the past few months, and the spark that made her her had gone. Mom saw it too. No one else commented on it.
Strangely, Akron feels more like home to me than Pocatello does, yet I’ve never stayed in Akron for more than two weeks at a time. I can feel…deep roots, here, connecting me to this place. My roots aren’t so strong in Pocatello. I’ve often had the feeling that it’s time to move on, but it feels stronger this time. At the very least, I think I’ll go on walk-about (or drive-about) this summer, and stay away for long periods of time. I don’t feel like anything’s holding me there any more. Maybe nothing ever was.
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Well, we left at 8:45 this morning and got to Fort Collins about 17:45... *sighs* 9 hours. On my own, it would have been 8 hours. I don't stop unless absolutely necessary, at least not when I have some place to get to.
Highlights: We saw two bald eagles. One was eating some (presumed) roadkill on the side of the highway. It was rather amusing to watch the smaller birds furtively sneaking in and trying to avoid the eagle's notice. The second was in flight.
More snow than usual for this time of year, and a few mildly "bad" spots between Rawlins and Laramie. Nothing major.
That was about it, except I realized I forgot to stick in any "nicer" clothes to wear for the funeral. So after dinner, I wandered over to Fort Collins's mall, expecting a long, painful, annoying, and arduous hunt. I walked in the door; looked to my left; saw a store FILLED with Asian goods. Including clothing.
Normally, I HATE to shop for clothing, but suddenly I was perfectly happy to look through and try on tons of stuff. I got a taiji uniform (black silk, gold dragon embroidery). The pants don't fit, but $40 was a steal just for the jacket. I also got a red linen shirt with frog-buttons, imperial collar, and dragons along the bottom. And I found a nice silk robe with a seafoam pattern of cranes and clouds. *sighs* Take me to an upscale dress store and I'll be bored to death. Take me to a lingerie store and I'll stare at you and ask why. Take me to an Asian import store that actually has clothing in my size...I suggest you stay out of my way, especially since they had a decent selection of knives and swords as well.
They also had some very nice embroidery paintings (they look like paintings from a distance, but when you get close you can see it's embroidery), lots of "lucky bamboo" (which is not, technically, bamboo), plenty of dragon/Buddha/Guan Yin statues, chopsticks, etc. I almost got a set of Foo Dogs/Lions... Dirt cheap compared to most places I've seen them, but they weren't quite the style I wanted. So I bought only clothing.
My mom was too tired to come with me, so I played show and tell when I got back. She liked the red shirt...and made a face when I showed her the taiji jacket. When I told her that was what I thought I would wear to the funeral (it's black, after all), she REALLY made a face. She said she would have gone with something more...conservative... (I think it's the yellow dragons she doesn't like). I just blinked at her. I think Grandma would approve, actually. I can see her looking at the dragons, looking at me, and just busting up laughing. So I'm going with it.
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We leave tomorrow morning. I haven't packed yet, but I can do that before bedtime. I've got bread rising at the moment. I hope it turns out, as I don't really have time to try again tonight. I guess I could get up waaay early in the morning.
I was in experimentation mode tonight, which is why I don't know if it will turn out. I used Bette Hagman's Featherlight recipe, basically, but only the half the flour is her featherlight mix. The rest is a mixture of sorghum flour, my 4-flour white bean mix, and chopped buckwheat groats (allowed to soak for a while). Why? Because it sounded good.
A note on baking GF bread: the most important thing seems to be the water temperature. I can mix and match the flours, so long as about half of it is a base known to work well, and so long as I get enough liquid in it, the determining factor for how well it turns out seems to be water temperature. Here, Bette Hagman is no help. Her recipes all say "lukewarm - about 105 degrees Fahrenheit." This does NOT work well when you add the yeast with the dry ingredients. On the jar of yeast, it suggests 130 degrees when yeast is mixed with the dry ingredients. However, there is a further complication. More than half of the liquid in GF bread is NOT from water. There's eggs, oil, honey, lemon juice... All sitting nicely at room temperature waiting to mix with the warm water you pour in. I experimented with different temperatures for a while, and found that 160 degrees works nicely. Now, I think Bette Hagman tends not to have quite so much non-water (uses egg whites, not whole eggs; only 1 t of vinegar, not 1 T lemonjuice), and maybe it's less of an issue at sea level, but I find that I really need the higher temperature.
*sighs* Dad's still planning on going with us to Colorado. Mom's not happy about it, but she's not up to telling him off, either. No clue if I'll have internet access for a while. Maybe in Fort Collins tomorrow night, but it's pretty unlikely in Akron.
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The funeral will most likely be on Thursday. We're planning on leaving for Colorado on Monday. Strangely, my dad has opted to come. Why strange? Because he normally avoids anything remotely resembling a family gathering. He didn't even come over on Friday when Mom called and gave him the news that Grandma was dead. My Aunt Sandra and Uncle George came over (Sandra is Dad's sister), but not Dad. Of course, it's possible he'll change his mind by Monday.
Knowing that Grandma had left me some money, I opted to buy a new laptop. My old one was, well, VERY old, and the connection that allows it to actually be plugged in and run was broken. I had been considering buying one for a while now, but the good ones were too pricey. I'd been hoping to find a decent refurbished one, actually, but I decided to use some of Grandma's money to get a top-of-the-line one. It has a wireless internet card. I've spent roughly the last two hours playing with it, and got it working about a half-hour ago. I had to (a) reconfigure my DSL modem for wireless, (b) choose an encryption key, and (c) put the laptop on automatic configuration to get it to work. When I asked the guy at Galaxy about setting it up, he said that the most important thing was to have it encrypted. Otherwise anyone and their evil cousin/twin/dog could piggyback a ride on your wireless network.
The rest of Grandma's money will go first into savings, and from there maybe into a CD or an IRA My mom tried to explain IRA's to me while we were both very exhausted; I eventually said, "Ok, I know you're speaking English, but..." Here's what I got out of it. There are two kinds of IRA's. On one, you get a tax deduction when you put the money in, and then you PAY taxes on it when you take the money out. On the other, you just put the money in and never pay taxes on it. I asked her why there were two kinds. She said it was because the second option was simpler. I blinked at her and asked why the first option was still around. The answer, essentially, was bureaucracy. I have no clue how interest, etc, works on IRA's. But if I can get a better rate that way, it might be worthwhile to start one with at least some of the money.
On a strange note, my shoulders were LESS tense in taiji this morning than they have been. I suspect I've been carrying my worries about Grandma in my shoulders, and now the worst is past, so the worry is gone. Now if I can just figure out what worries to let go of to get my hips to open up... *sighs*
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sprawled across the bed,
her skin so cold, eyes staring,
no pulse to be found
the smell of sausage
frying in the morning for
breakfast at her house
independence lost
by she who was always free:
free again, at last
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Grandma's gone. She passed away sometime between 3:30 and 6:30 this morning. I mourn for her, but my strongest emotion right now is relief. She's out of pain. My mom no longer has to struggle with trying to take care of Grandma, working, and practicing music for church. I had realized that we were on a deathbed vigil... I don't think it had sunk in for Mom yet, so she's pretty shaken up.
I have an image of Grandma's spirit flying through the house, yelling either "Whee!" or "Free!"
The timing is...well, strangely perfect. The funeral will almost certainly be late next week in Colorado, and since it's spring break I won't have to disrupt anything to attend. But I'm supposed to be looking up phone numbers for family members right now, so I better get on that.
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Grandma is as comfortable as she's likely to get, stuck in a bed and unable to move. Last night...was not fun. She rolled out of bed. I discovered that I could (barely) lift her off the floor unaided. It was in an awkward spot where another person would have been more hindrance than help. However, the hospice people brought a hospital bed with rails, so she's not going to roll out again. The Rahims also arranged for some anti-nausea medication, so maybe she'll be able to keep some food down. I guess she drank some Boost (senior multi-vitamin drink), but not very much.
Speaking of which, I haven't had a decent meal yet today. I cooked a good meal for lunch...only I guess the sausage had been in the freezer too long. It hadn't gone bad, it just tasted old, and I couldn't stand to eat much of it. However, I have leftovers from lunch yesterday (Canton Restaurant in IF), and rice will be done soon to go with it. Then I'm heading back over to Grandma's house. They couldn't find an overnight Nurse/Aide/Worker, some title like that, on such short notice, and Mom doesn't want to be alone. I don't blame her.
I didn't get much sleep last night. Mom needed help with Grandma several times, and after the second time I didn't do much more than doze. I did doze off long enough for one very weird dream: Granny Weatherwax (from Discworld) was on the rampage and killed me in the Fred Meyer electronics department; when I was killed, it was like my mind turned inside out and I was in a sort of trance/limbo state, waiting for her to bring me back (apparently, this was a story with a happy ending, though there's none like it in the actual Discworld universe). I woke up before that could be resolved, and my head still felt like it had been turned inside out. Caffeinated tea got me through the morning, but I've been slowly wilting since. Only the promise of food is keeping me going at the moment.
Something very strange happened last night, though it may have been nothing more than a delusion brought on by lack of sleep. I could have sworn I felt Death enter the house, and when I woke up in the morning, there was still this sense of...presence. Waiting. *sighs*
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Grandma has quit dialysis. She has no energy any more and is sick of the invalid existence. We all know that she's not going to get better. I think she's decided that she would rather die than get any worse. Only one day after quitting, the signs of kidney failure have begun. Vomiting. Diarrhea. Her blood sugar is low and she can't keep anything down. I'm not sure she'll last the night.
But Mom can't get her to and from the bathroom on her own, so I'm staying the night. A hospice worker will be there in the morning. Until then, adieu.
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While waiting for my window to be replaced this morning, I had time to finish reading Rudyard Kipling's Kim (Amazon). I've actually been close to done for two weeks now, but I kept misplacing the book. Unlike many books, though, I had no difficulty whatsoever remembering the plot threads, so I could just pick up again where I'd left off. And this was an awesome book.
My normal reading faire is scifi/fantasy. I find most other fiction (especially mysteries) too dry to read on a regular basis. Kim does have some mystical elements in it, so perhaps that was part of why I liked it, but the writing is absolutely brilliant. I was hooked from page 1.
It is about a boy named Kim, and a Tibetan lama who forever changes his destiny. It's set in India, late 1800's. All of the sites, sounds and descriptions feel absolutely real, likely because Kipling grew up in India. Because of the lama, Kim has a chance to "change his stars" (phrase from A Knight's Tale, not Kipling), or rather, rediscover his true stars, and find they need not change.
At its heart, it's the story of a young man torn between two paths. He can serve the lama as his faithful chela, or he can serve the British government as a spy and informant. He tries to do both, to reconcile the two paths, with mixed results. Meanwhile, the lama is on a quest for a river that sprouted from an arrow shot by the Buddha. Anyone who bathes in this water will wash away all past karma and be free of the Wheel of Birth and Rebirth forever. All through the book, Kim is torn between his duty to the imperialists, to the government, and his duty to the lama. It is beautifully done, and highly recommended.
(Ironic Note: I have a Barnes & Noble edition, and it strikes me as amusing that this same edition can be purchased through Amazon)
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Mom: "I assume you've covered up your car window by now."
Me: "No."
Mom: "What if it snows tonight?"
Me: "Then snow will get in the car."
Then Mom went on a big rant about how my car seat would never dry out again, and rot and mildew and smell like rotting corpses (she didn't say that, but she implied it), and only stopped when I agreed to take a blanket out to cover it when I got home. So there is now a blanket to keep the worst of the weather out. As it's getting fixed tomorrow, it really wasn't worth it to get out the clear plastic and duct tape.
Another conversation:
Mom: "Have you gotten all the glass out of your car yet?"
Me: "No."
Mom: *gives me a look*
Me: "Hey, I had to leave it on the street essentially unlocked for a few hours tonight. I figured if it was covered in glass, no one would want to steal it."
Mom: *sighs and nods*
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The front left window of my car is now in many many small pieces.
What I remember: Brownish tan pickup passing me, older style. Mostly past. Sudden noise, change in light. Window next to me is crinkling, crackling... Slowing down, pulling over. Glass falls in and out. Breathing.
I presume that the pickup kicked up a rock and it hit the window at exactly the wrong speed and angle. I wasn't hurt; just shaken up. Nothing like having a window shatter roughly a foot from your face to wake you up, I'll tell you. This was on the interstate, somewhere between Blackfoot and Fort Hall. After I determined that I was in one piece, and that the only car damage was the window, I called my mom. She had called me earlier in the drive, and I had ignored it because it was rather windy and I didn't want to be distracted by the phone. After I told her what had happened, she told me I could ignore her earlier calls...she'd wanted me to get Grandma's oxygen tanks filled. Not happening, at the moment.
Anyway, I drove the last 12 or so miles home with no window. At 75 mph. In the summer, this would have been merely horrendously noisy. But with the wind and rain, it was also annoyingly frigid. Called insurance when enough of the adrenaline had worn off. I have a $250 deductible on glass-repair. The window-fix is about $150. So the insurance is useless to me at the moment. (I mentioned this to the guy at the glass shop and he suggested I try for the rear window next time; all the wires for the defroster jump the price up apparently) On the bright side, they will have the part tomorrow morning, so my car will only be ventilated for the next 17 hours or so.
A sidenote to all this: I did not make any conscious decision to pull my car over to the side of the road when this happened. I felt my foot on the brake, noticed that I was slowing down and going to the right, then noticed that the car had stopped. My old Stanza was hit in a parking lot once. Something very similar happened, but there I can't even remember the first few moments after impact.
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I haven't said much about my parents lately. Mom's been a lot happier since she moved in with Grandma (despite having to deal with Grandma's problems), and Dad's been rather improved as well. Mom and Dad get along a lot better when they don't see each other very much. Before Dad retired, he worked swingshift (16:00 to midnight), while Mom worked a regular 9:00 to 17:00 job. So they saw each other for very short periods of time. Then Dad retired. Now that they're back to seeing each other for very short periods of time again, they are getting along better. Note that Mom has not told my dad that she does not plan to move back, EVER. *sighs*
However, my dad is still insisting on separate bank accounts, and keeps strict track of who pays for meals when they eat out. I generally eat out with them once a week, on Sunday at noon. Today I was treated to an argument over whose turn it was, and had to listen to my dad's ludicrous posturing and scheming. Needless to say, I didn't eat much. I also didn't stick around for very long; as soon as I'd eaten all I could stand, I walked over to the nearest store (happened to be a Rite-Aid). Mostly, I've been trying to ignore it when they discuss whose "turn" it is...this is the first time it's turned into an argument, and I really hope it doesn't become a habit.
On a happier note, I've gotten most of the Math 123 homework graded. Haven't even looked at the Math015 tests, but as it's likely that someone will need to take it tomorrow morning, anyway, it's just as easy if they don't get them back until Wednesday.
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I finished the Season 3 DVD's yesterday, though not all the special features. Overall, very very well done (except for the first few episodes, which were rather rocky). One thing the I really like about Babylon 5 is that all of the glimpes of the future eventually come to pass (and often in a way entirely different from what we might have expected). This season contains my favorite (2-part) episode: War Without End. I love this line (as best I remember it): "Delenn, the disappearance of Babylon 4 is one of the greatest mysteries of our time. And now you're telling me that we stole it? Are going to steal it? Will have stolen it?"
The thing that I don't like about Star Trek is that, with a few exceptions, every episode is independent from every other episode. Yes, there are some story-arcs, but those are the exception in Star Trek. The advantage to that format is that you don't need a huge synopsis to figure out what's going on, but it feels...flat to me. Stale. After Buffy and Angel, where the entire season had its own story arc, I got rather sick of the independent episode format (and though I love to watch reruns of M*A*S*H, I think it could have been done much more effectively as a running story instead of a bunch of independent stories). I know B5 came before Buffy and Angel, but I didn't see it until it came on reruns on Sci-Fi. I think it was the first major series to use that format. If there was an earlier one, I'd like to hear about it and compare.
At any rate, back to Season 3. The best episodes (in order) are 4: Passing Through Gethsemane, 9: Point of No Return, 13: A Late Delivery from Avalon, 16&17:War Without End and essentially the rest of the season (Eps 18 through 22). Though I do have a question about Ep. 19 (Grey 17 is Missing): Why didn't anyone check on this when Babylon 5 first opened up for business? Yeah, sure, I can see a level getting cut off somehow, but that no one tried to check it out for three years? However, the rest of the episode was quite good, and the Grey 17 part felt sort of like the Zeppo episode on Buffy (a chance for a usually background character to shine). *shrugs*
So...now I'll be on the lookout for another sale before I can acquire Season 4. In the commentary for Season 2, J. Michael Straczynski (whoa, I spelled it right on the first try) mentioned that all the seasons end in cliffhangers because he was always afraid the network would try to cancel the show. So Season 2 ended with the pilot character recording a Shadow vessel before dying. Season 3 ends with Sheridan seemingly doomed on Z'Ha'Dum. I might be more strident about acquiring the next season if I hadn't already seen enough of Season 4 to know that Sheridan survives. :^D
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First, a comment about my previous post: Novocaine messes with my head. There's nothing that I actually disagree with down there, but it's not the sort of thing I would have posted in a more...less...whacked out frame of mind.
Second, I was writing before bedtime last night, and wound up dreaming that all the plot resolutions could be described by a complex mathematical algorithm. Certain events had to be repeated over and over and over again, with minor variations, until the limit was achieved. Needless to say, I have no plans of writing this way (except maybe for a short story), as it would get extremely boring.
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In Terry Pratchett's universe, a witch is someone who stands on the outside, who walks the edges between, without ever being part of either side. I feel like that sometimes. Most of the time. I am always on the outside, looking in, standing between the light and the shadow...the candle and the star. I watch and observe, but rarely participate.
I stand on the brink in each and every moment. The brink between future and past, action and inaction, despair and elation. I watch and wait, and rarely act. I am the leeway, the knife's edge, the one-in-between. There is no place where I fit. There never has been.
I am a Taoist in a society dominated by Christian ideals. I am a female in the fields of math and science, still dominated by males. I am an only child, and an only grandchild. I am a freethinker in a society dominated by obedience to the norm, and now becoming more fascist than ever before. I will not be coerced. I will not back down. This is who I am.
In taiji, we practice moving between extremes, between weighted and unweighted, between yin and yang. We avoid staying at the place-between, at the place where weight and power are evenly distributed. Taiji class is one of the few places where I have ever felt like I belonged, like I wasn't an outsider looking in. There, the form stands in the place-between, between thought and no-thought, between stillness and motion, and unites the disparate sides even as it separates them. There I am at home, at peace, at one. Everywhere else, I am the observer, the cataloguer, the one standing on the outside, between the shadow and the light.
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I had a Matrix test today. My version of studying was to work on the homework that is currently late (close to being done now) and look over the Polynomial Matrix division algorithm in the book (which I couldn't follow, but I figured out my own way that seems to work), since there hadn't been any problems over it. I concluded that such a problem was likely too long for the test, unless the polynomials were of degree two or less.
I had no clue how I'd do on the test, but I think I did all right. There were 10 problems, and we needed to work 8. I got seven of them done... One of the remaining three was about elementary forms of polynomial matrices, which I had essentially ignored. One was three canonical forms for one matrix... I could think of two (Row-Column equivalence and RREF)... Possibly Diagonalizing it would have counted, but I wasn't sure. The last one was to prove that an eigenvalue of (A+B) must be a sum of the eigenvalues of A & B. I tried many things, and kept getting stuck. Then I reread the instructions: Prove or Disprove. I picked two random matrices, tried it, and NOPE. Not true. So that got me up to 8 problems, and I was done.
The others were mostly straight forward, since I had mostly finished the homework.
Then I was starved and couldn't breathe (and it was after 16:00 so I was already late to help with Melissa's taiji class), so I made a run home for decongestant and food. While I was there, my mom called. Grandma's in the hospital again. She fell on Tuesday (and was stuck till Mom got home; I wonder if she'd accept an emergency notification device if I bought one for her...) and today when she went to Dialysis, they decided she'd probably injured something in the fall. So they sent her up to the hospital for something that sounded like "pistogram" or "pistulegram" or something like that. Mom thought they might be done by 19:00, but wasn't sure. To be honest, I think Grandma would be better off in the hospital at the moment. She's been off all week, and 'round the clock observation would be a very good thing. So I was more relieved than worried to hear she was in the hospital again. *sighs*
Last night I stopped over at Grandma's house after work, and Grandma was already in bed. Mom said Grandma wanted some support handles put in on one of the upstairs toilets, so I helped figure out how to put the thing together. We're not sure why she wanted handles on that toilet, since it's no closer to her room than the main bathroom, and it's smaller, so harder to get her walker in there, but the handles are on now.
No time for writing since Sunday, mainly because of writing and grading tests. One more to write for next week, and I have 015 tests to grade, but those tend to go quickly. I do need to get Math 123 homework graded this weekend, before their test, but that's doable. There are less than 20 people in that class.
Random connection: I've got the first draft of next fall's schedule now. It's a nice schedule, actually. I work MW evenings, two classes, and TTh from 9 am to 14:15 (with a break in the middle). Which leaves Fridays free (except for the new Math025 testing center, possibly), and most of MW free. I like this. I've got one section of Stats, so I'm hoping to restructure my teaching style there. I was getting so bogged down in HW grading last fall (partly because of Grandma being in and out of the hospital, but still, not good). I also have one that I haven't taught: 257, which is apparently a math class for elementary ed majors. Annik says it's fairly interesting (except she's done it 6 semesters in a row and is now sick of it).
Background Noise: Ahsan and Dina seem to be having a major fight in her office. It's quite distracting, and loud enough to be heard despite her door being shut. I'm not sure that shutting my door would help any.
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