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June 21, 2009: Solstice

Kala is away for part of this weekend, so it's me and the boys.

This morning I woke up at dawn on my own, without an alarm clock.  It's Litha, the Summer Solstice.

I went out to the back yard and the altar.  The birds had just woken up and were singing at the tops of their tiny lungs.  I entered the altar area and lit candles on the stones at each of the four directions and lit a fifth brand new one for the Solstice itself as the sun came over the horizon.  I did a small ritual, blew out the candles, and walked back across the dewy grass to bed.

June 20, 2009: In Defense of Adverbs

Adverbs are terrible!  Awful!  Wimpy bits of junk!  Every writer workshop or class or lecture I've attended has said these words--or a paraphrased version, anyway.  It gets worse, if you hang around long enough.

Avoid adverbs!  They weaken your sentences!  Destroy your paragraphs!  Ruin your garden!  Wipe out your chances for a date!  Don't use more than two per novel!

Oh, calm down.

First of all, did you notice I used seven adverbs in the above three paragraphs?  Go find them.  I'll wait.  (In case you need a refresher, an adverb is a word that tells where, when, or to what extent.)

Got 'em?  Right!  We have anyway, out, than*, around, long, enough, and down.

When most frothy-mouthed workshoppers howl about adverbs, they're actually (oops--adverb!) talking about a specific kind of adverb used in a specific way.  They're talking about -ly adverbs, and they often (adverb!) mean the ones used in dialogue.  They're kind of right, I'll give them that much.  It's quite (adverb!) true that you want avoid dialogue like this:

"How could you cheat on me, and with my sister?" Bella said loudly.

"I did no such thing," Edward said languidly.

"Oh yeah?" Bella said nastily.  She waved a bit of paper accusingly under Edward's nose.  "I found the love letter you were writing."

Edward easily took the note from Bella's fingers.  "This?  I didn't write that to your sister."

Bella's face flushed angrily.  "Then who--?"

"I wrote this love note," Edward said smoothly, "to your brother."

##

Much as we might love to see the above example in a book, this dialogue reeks of -ly disease.  The main problem with -ly disease is that it gets reptitetive, and the writing calls attention to itself.  It also shows a formulaic writing style: BORING VERB + -LY ADVERB.  This is what the foaming workshoppers complain about.  Rather than use dull verbs and rely on -ly adverbs to jazz things up, the writer should instead use interesting verbs that can stand alone:

"How could you cheat on me, and with my sister?" Bella snapped.

Edward raised a languid eyebrow.  "I did no such thing."

"Oh yeah?" Bella snarled.  She flipped a bit of paper under Edward's nose.  "I found the love letter you were writing."

Edward plucked the note from Bella's fingers.  "This?  I didn't write that to your sister."

Anger washed Bella's face with scarlet.  "Then who--?"

"I wrote it," Edward interrupted, "to your brother."

##

A much stronger example.

However, this is not a case to eliminate adverbs altogether.  No one argues for dumping words like there, always, now, too, more, almost, or together.  These are adverbs, too.  Hell, the latest hit movie from Pixar uses an adverb as its title: Up.  These words are perfectly strong (oh, did I just use an adverb there?).  We'd have a hard time working without them.

Prepositional phrases also function as adverbs in a sentence, as in, "Bella shoved a stake through Edward's heart."  The phrase through Edward's heart is a prepositional phrase that functions as an adverb because it tells us where Bella shoved the stake.  Imagine writing sentences without such words!  Not likely.

So I'm making my statement here.  In defense of those poor adverbs.  Because someone has to speak up for them.

Bravely.


*Some may argue that than is a preposition or a particle which functions as an adverb and not an actual adverb.  These are the same kind of people who argue that Batman could defeat Spider-Man or who think sports statistics are in any way important to the real world.

June 20, 2009: Adjusting

I still can't quite get used to hearing, "I'm going to get some coffee," in a Ukrainian accent from my oldest son.

June 20, 2009: Fried

1200 new words and a bunch of rewritten words on the new project. Brain fried. Must go do something physical.

UPDATE
Attempts to do something physical outside thwarted by looming thunderstorm. Made supper with Maksim instead.

June 19, 2009: Hey, Look!

My father-in-law is in the Detroit News!  http://detnews.com/article/20090619/LIFESTYLE/906190392/Readers-share-Dad-s-best-advice

UPDATE

Oops--I should clarify.  He's Roger Warnock, in the first segment.

June 19, 2009: Writing

Today I'm writing, dangit!  Getting DREAMER on Kindle and getting the word out about it and then doing all the aforementioned appointments meant I got no writing done for nearly a week.  Writing now.

June 18, 2009: Isn't This Supposed To Be Summer Break?

Let's see . . . my brother had a heart attack, starting a Very Busy Weekend for everyone involved.  Monday was Aran's music lesson, manuscript reading, and writers group.  Tuesday various members of household had three--count 'em THREE--doctor/dental/counselor appointments.  Wednesday was another doctor appointment and a little league game.  Today was two appointments and a major errand to run.  There's supposed to be karate this evening, but I don't think it's going to happen.

And in the middle of all this, I was learning HTML and figuring out how to deal with Amazon Kindle bookstore.

Isn't this supposed to be summer break?

June 18, 2009: If I Ever Get Arrested In England



June 18, 2009: Hey!

MACKIE: Daddy, in the summer, you should get a job."

ME: I do have a job in the summer.  I write, remember?

MACKIE: That's not a real job.

June 13, 2009: Eep!

My brother was hospitalized yesterday for chest pains.  Yes, he was having a heart attack.  He turns 39 in two weeks.

Today was Angioplasty Day.  He's doing way better now, and not in danger.

We offered to take my niece and nephew for the day and tonight so my sister-in-law wouldn't have to worry about them while she was dealing with the hosptial and everything else.  My mother, father, sister, and cousin drove down to the hospital today, so quite the parade of people arrived at the cardiac unit!

Okay, now that the emergency is over, we can all freak out now.

June 13, 2009: Summer?

It doesn't quite feel like summer vacation.  Weird, but true.  Partly I think it's the weather.  We've had an Irish sort of spring.  It's been cool and rainy.  Usually in Michigan by now we've have several 80-degree days by now, but this year I think we've had two or three.  Also, this school year seemed more to trickle away than definitively end.  The majority of my classes were senior-heavy, and the seniors finished at Memorial Day, leaving me with much smaller classes which had already taken the exam.  I kept teaching--there was plenty more to cover--but it felt odd.  And I barely knew my freshmen, since R---- had taught them most of the year.

The last day of exams, I graded the final set of freshman essays.  Here I ground my teeth.  The vast majority of them were barely average because they didn't give enough examples to support their point.  No matter how many times you tell them that one example ISN'T ENOUGH, they insist on using only one example.

Also attended a final staff meeting at which we bid good-bye to two people who were retiring, one of whom was a wonderful, sweet person and one of whom was my mortal enemy.  I'll miss the first and be glad the second is gone.

Cleaned up my classroom, put everything into order for next year, and went home.  The next day, I came in for the annual checkout, then ran my spanking new certification over to the administration building, and came home.

Now it's the best part of summer break--the beginning!

June 12, 2009: Hummingbird Commados

Today I took the hummingbird feeders down to refill them.  While I was rinsing them out in the sink, the male hummingbird buzzed around the kitchen window where one feeder usually hangs.  "Hey!  Where's the food?  Bring it out or I'll buzz you silly!"

I finished with the feeders and brought them out to hang.  The hummingbird hovered a few yards away, supervising.  "That's right--get it on the hook.  Now back away, buddy.  Clear the eats!"

When I went back inside, he zipped straight over to the feeder and drank.

Hummingbirds, incidentally, are quite territorial.  I'm guessing the male and the female that hang around are a mated pair (and I'm looking forward to the babies that I'm sure are coming), but even they don't share feeders.  The male drinks out of the kitchen feeder and the female drinks from the living room feeder.  The feeder on the side of the house doesn't get much business, and I suspect they've declared detente on that one.

June 12, 2009: Official Vampires



June 11, 2009: Co-Housing

I have several friends who live in co-housing.  The New York Times is carrying an interesting article about them today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/garden/11cohousing.html

June 10, 2009: School's Out!

Yaaaay!

June 8, 2009: Swimming Deferred

The boys' school had scheduled an end-of-year trip to the local water park for today.  Unfortunately, a front of thunderstorms has moved itno the area, so the trip has been postponed to Wednesday, when the weather is supposed to be better.  The boys took it well.

June 8, 2009: Tree Trimming

The maple tree in the back yard has been expanding its territory of late.  The branches have poofed out and down, coming lower and lower.  It makes negotiating the back yard a little difficult, and there's no clear path to throw a baseball.  Time to trim.

I got out my tree saw and figured out which branches would be best to trim.  Zipped them off in fairy short order, though I had to saw the biggest one twice because it broke off roughly and the bottom peeled away badly, so I had to neaten it up.  The littler maple also needed one branch nipped off as well, and I noticed that near the fence, my nemesis the black walnut was sneaking back to life.  The black walnut that set up shop near the house finally gave up after being hacked to pieces four or five times, but the one by the fence keeps coming back.  I sawed that one down as well.  Recruited the boys into carrying the brush out front.

Next I got out the caulk gun and the rubber caulk cartridge.  I don't want any diseases sneaking into my trees!  I spread rubbery black gooeyness over the exposed raw wood like  giant band-aids and stepped back to check the effect.

Oh yeah!  The back yard looks much bigger now.  Way more lawn space without sacrificing shade.

June 6, 2009: GPS Ride

I have a new app for my iPhone that tracks movement in a variety of ways, lets you set waypoints, and do other calculations.  I took it on a bike ride this morning.  According to the computer, my speed was an average of 8.2 mph, I had a top speed of 19.3 mph, and I rode 9.31 miles.

June 3, 2009: David Eddings

I loved David Eddings's books when I was in my late teens and early twenties.  Until he came along, everyone who wrote fantasy seemed to avoid writing about protagonists who actually used magic.  Eddings's books were exactly the kind of fiction I craved.  The characters were so much fun to read about, and I loved the world he'd built.

I met my best friend in college because I sat near her on the first day of a history class and she noticed I was reading QUEEN OF SORCERY, which started a conversation between us.  Later, I met her roommate, the woman I eventually married.  If not for David Eddings . . .

In later years, my tastes changed and I found the books less enjoyable, but I still remember how much I loved THE BELGARIAD and THE MALLOREAN.  Thanks, Mr. Eddings!

May 31, 2009: Where To Start Writing

Writing.  Finished a synopsis for a new project, so now I'm putting together sample chapters. Trying to decide exactly where to start.

When writing students ask me where to start a novel, I usually tell them to pick a point in the main character's life when something goes badly wrong and then back up about five minutes.  It works for almost everything.  It gets a conflict going, hooks the reader quickly, and will probably give you a fair amount of dialogue, which many modern readers like.

There's still the challenge, though.  You have to sketch in the main characters well enough so the readers can see who they are and you have to let the readers know what the setting is.  Usually, though, less is more.  Give us just enough so we can follow your conflict and run with it.  Fill in details a little later, when we readers have said, "Okay, we're willing to stay with you."

In fact, in most cases, we don't need to see more than the viewpoint character's name, gender, and a BRIEF bit of physical description.  More information than that slows down the story and lets the reader set the book aside.

Another beginning technique is to have the viewpoint character do something interesting and conflict-filled but that doesn't deal with the book's main conflict--yet.  For example, IN THE COMPANY OF MIND, my first novel, starts with Lance uncovering a deadly trap while sneaking into a high-security compound.  We eventually learn that Lance is there not for nefarious purposes, but to test the compound's security.  The opener gave me the chance to establish Lance's character and his main job--security consultant--and the fact that he's worked his multiple personality disorder into his career. 

GHOST WHISPERER: PLAGUE ROOM starts with Melinda trying to handle a ghost in a dry cleaner's store.  She fails, and later in the book, the failure turns out the have major repercussions in the main plot, which at first seems unrelated to the first scene.

Now I'm trying to figure out the best way to start this new novel.  Five minutes before the main character's life blows up, or a bit of something interesting and conflict-y first?  Hmmmm . . . .

May 30, 2009: Fried Om Nom Nom

Today I saw we had some chicken breasts in the fridge, so I decided to try a new recipe.  Here it is:

Southern Fried Chicken
 
Ingredients:

Your favorite dry chicken rub or seasoning
4 pieces boneless chicken breast
1 1/2 cup self-rising flour
3/4 cup hot red pepper sauce
2   eggs

Directions

Heat the oil to 350 degrees F in a deep pot. Do not fill the pot more than 1/2 full with oil.

In a medium size bowl, beat the eggs. Add enough hot sauce so the egg mixture is bright orange (about 3/4 cup). Season the chicken with the rub or seasoning.  Dip the seasoned chicken in the egg, and then coat well in the flour. Place the chicken in the preheated oil and fry the chicken in the oil until brown and crisp.  Approximate cooking time is 10 to 12 minutes.

##

We accompanied it with corn on the cob and apple sauce.  It was so very, very good.  Mackie, who doesn't like meat much, ate every bite, and Aran, who has to be coaxed to eat, cleaned his plate and asked for more.  This one's a keeper, though we almost never deep fry, so we won't make it too often.

May 30, 2009: Too Cool For My Mom

We were coming back from a little family outing this morning, and we passed a kid riding his bike on the sidewalk.  He looked about fifteen.  His bike was too small for him (we're going through another "small bikes are cool" phase, apparently), and his clothes were so baggy, he looked a like a coatrack buried in a pile of laundry.  As we drove by him, he glanced back over his shoulder at his house, then stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it.

Kala and I laughed at the same moment.

Here he was, riding a child's bike and dressed in an adolescent's clothes, desperately trying to look older by smoking a cigarette.  He was so old and mature, in fact, that he checked to make sure his parents hadn't seen him light up.  The whole image was so incongruous and silly we had to laugh.

Here's a tip, kid.  The cigarette doesn't make you look older.  You look like a kid smoking a cigarette.  If you want to look older, try dressing in clothes that fit you, ride a bike built for someone your size and not a seven-year-old, and don't act like a guilty child when you do something.

May 30, 2009: More Hummingbirds!

This morning a female hummingbird hovered at the feeder outside the living room window, sipping at the syrup.  Way cool!  I ran to snatch up my camera, but Aran rushed up to the window and scared her away before I could get anything.  The birds clearly know the feeders are there, though.

May 29, 2009: This Way!

Hey look!

http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1439132747/1439132747.htm

Baen has posted samples of WITCH WAY TO THE MALL on their site.  It includes the first five stories, which happens to also include mine.  Go look!  If you like the stories, snag a copy.  You'll be laughing all the way home from the mall.

May 28, 2009: Hummingbirds

We have hummingbirds!  Or =a= hummingbird, anyway.  I was in my office when Mackie came running downstairs.  "Daddy!  There's a hummingbird upstairs!"  By the time I got up there, though, it was gone.  Kala and the boys had all seen it, though.  And now we know the feeders are working.  Neat!

May 25, 2009: Witch Way?

I have a story in the very funny anthology Witch Way To the Mall, edited by Esther Friesner.  It's just now hit the bookstore shelves.  My story is titled "Witch Warrior?"  The main character adopted two children from Ukraine, but it's sheer coincidence, I tell you, and the story bears absolutely no resemblance to my own life.




( Story segment behind the cut . . .  )

Go buy a copy now, while they're still hot!

May 25, 2009: Memorial Day

Maksim asked what Memorial Day was. I explained, and he drew this. Translated, it says, "Love Maksim. Soldiers I will miss you."



May 25, 2009: Back!

Went to southwest Michigan for a little getaway.  Much sleeping, reading, hiking, biking, and writing.

May 25, 2009: So Much Sorting

The back room of the basement has amassed many boxes of clothes the boys can't wear, and today they achieved critical mass.  It was time to sort.  Kala and I went through everything.  We kept only what the boys could wear now and what might fit them next year.  Everything else was donated.  This took considerable time.  ("Ohhhh, look--we bought this for Sasha in Ukraine!  Can Mackie wear it now?")  Then, in a "While I'm in here" mood, I sorted out several boxes of author copies.  I apparently have NO copies of my Star Trek: VOYAGER book left except the single one on my bookshelf, and I only have three copies of THE GHOST WHISPERER: THE PLAGUE ROOM left.  And only one copy of IN THE COMPANY OF MIND, my first novel.  Found a whole box of DREAMER I'd forgotten about, which is cool, since it's hard to find these days.  But only a handful of NIGHTMARE left.

Lots and lots and lots of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: UNITY copies, because it went through four editions--mass market, trade paper, hard cover, and an omnibus.  Got a huge box of those!  I'll have to figure out what to do with them.  I'm thinking a promotional at the next con I go to and a couple of on-line contests.

Anyway, resorted and reboxed them all, and set up a new shelf for them.

We had to pop up to Ikea to get a new dresser for Mackie, since his clothes are much bigger now than when we adopted him and there just isn't room for him to share with Aran anymore.  Fortunately, this is exactly what Ikea is for.  Kala, who is better at these things than I am, is assembling it now.

May 21, 2009: Driving Test

How well would you do on a standard written driving test?  Find out:

http://nationaldriverstest.com/national-drivers-test/ndt-test.php

I got 18 out of 20--a 90%.  Go me!

May 21, 2009: Done! (For Now)

What a week!  The classes with seniors in them had final exams this week because seniors finish by Memorial Day weekend.  And my freshmen finished THE ODYSSEY smack in the middle of it, meaning they were ready for the unit test.  Six sets of tests all within one week!  So much red ink--and the reason I haven't posted much lately.  But everything is at last finished, grades are entered, and my Doomsday List (of seniors who failed) has arrived at the office.

I now have a four day weekend.  Leaving soon for my own Undisclosed Location.

May 20, 2009: Lynda Hanke

I just got the news that Lynda Hanke recently passed away. I was so sad when I heard.  Lynda and her husband Richard ran Eagle Cave campground in Wisconsin where Pagan Spirit Gathering was held for many years.  I always remember her as smiling and laughing, bright and cheerful.  Running the campground wasn't easy, and Lynda and her family worked long hours during the vacation season.  She was open and broad-minded and everyone I knew liked her.

Like most people who attended Pagan Spirit Gathering, my fondest memory of Lynda is of her riding in the back of a truck that drove through the valley campground twice a day to sell ice.  When you heard Lynda's cheerful, "Ice!  Ice!" grow closer, you knew it was time to drop what you were doing and dash over for your daily supply.  (And how many campgrounds deliver ice to your site these days?)

Last night I went to my outdoor altar and lit all the candles on it, then lit a final one just for her.  Amid a blaze of yellow light I asked for blessings to speed her on her way.  May she spend time the eternal summerlands, where =she= can have fun during vacation season and where other people will forever bring =her= ice.

May 20, 2009: Maksim's First Game

Maksim's first baseball game is this afternoon at 6:00.  Just for fun, I'll post up-to-the-minute details on my Twitter page: http://twitter.com/StevenPiziks

May 20, 2009: Exams and Bike Rides

In addition to the regular madness of my life, it's exam week for seniors.  I have four sections of mostly seniors, so . . . yaaaaahh!

Monday was supposed to be karate test day and writers group, but Aran got sick with something, the details of which aren't fun to discuss and he had to stay home from school.  Fortunately he's twelve now and old enough to stay home on his own.  It effectively canceled karate testing for us, though.  I could have gone, but I didn't want to go myself and then go down again with Aran later--easier to do a single trip.

But it made for a slightly less hectic day with writers group that evening.

Tuesday two sections of seniors finished exams and I brought home two stacks of papers.  Some of my seniors are unfortunately on the border--their exams will determine whether they pass or fail the semester.  This means I have to grade the exams right away so I can alert the counseling office if someone fails.

Aran had his piano lesson after supper, so I got some grading done then.  After supper, I got to work on the rest of them.  I was about two-thirds done when Mackie came up to me.

"I want to do something fun with you, Daddy," he said.  "Can we go on a bike ride?"

I looked at the stack of papers I really, really needed to finish before I collected more tomorrow.  Then I looked at Mackie, who would only be seven years, four months, and three weeks old once in his life.

"Okay," I said.  "Let's go on a bike ride."

So we did.  It was a lovely, warm spring evening.  Mackie told me about his field trip to the nature learning center that day as we rode down to the park and back.

I was up much later than I wanted to be grading exams, but I'm good with that.

May 17, 2009: Spatz's Bread

When my mother came down from Saginaw, she brought me two loaves of Spatz's bread.  Yes!  I forgot to stop and get some when I went up there last weekend.

Spatz's (properly pronounced "spot's," though no one does) is the best bread in the whole wide world.  The bakery is a little, tiny place on State Street in Saginaw, a family-owned business that's been around for decades.  They only ship to the mid-Michigan area, places they can easily reach from Saginaw.  Their sales are brisk.  Everyone loves their bread.  It hasn't changed in living memory.  You can't get it outside the Saginaw area, and people like me who move beyond the Spatz range buy it in quantity for freezing when we visit.

Every year, the bakery closes for two weeks for vacation.  Just before that time, everyone buys the bread like crazy and freezes it so they don't get withdrawal symptoms.

It makes the absolute best toast and sandwiches.  A Spatz grilled cheese is matchless.  It always comes out crisp on the outside and tender on the inside.  But eat it quickly!  Spatz bread goes stale really, really fast because they don't put preservatives in it.  And it comes in a paper bag with a wax paper liner, just like in the old days.  A loaf still weighs a pound (no increasing the price by decreasing the weight here, thanks), and the wrapper's design hasn't changed one bit.

The Spatz family could easily expand their bakery--they have more than enough demand--but they never have because they're afraid that expanding the business will diminish the quality of the product.  So they continue puttering along, putting out the most wonderful bread ever, and it languishes in obscurity in this mid-sized city in Michigan.

And I say, thank heavens!  Our country has become so homogenous with chain stores and chain restaurants that there are almost no regional treats left.  Spatz's bread is one of them, and all the more delightful because of it.



May 17, 2009: Underwater

We keep dropping further and further under water with our house.  "Under water" is the current term for people who aren't in danger of foreclosure but whose houses are worth less than they owe.  The people one house down from us have just listed their place for $80,000 less than we paid for our house.

This is a huge problem.  Not only does it mean we're paying large amounts of money for something that is no longer worth the amount, we also effectively can't sell or refinance our house.  We aren't backed by Freddie or Fannie, so we aren't eligible for the federal bailout, either.

We're drowning in negative equity.  At least our payments never increase.

May 16, 2009: More Birthday

My mother and my in-laws came over today for a bit more of Aran's birthday celebration.  We went to Memphis Barbecue for Lunch In a Large Group.  It was very delicious.  And then we came back home for cake and presents.  Aran got a t-shirt and shorts with some folding money in the pockets from Granny and he got a DVD he'd been hankering for from Grandma Penny.  Last weekend from us he'd already gotten a video game and, of all things, a backscratcher.  (Yes, a backscratcher.  Aran had heard of them from somewhere and decided he really wanted one.)

We had cake and ice cream as well.  Yum!

May 15, 2009: Autism Acceleration Act

Please write to your Representative and tell him/her to support this bill.  Please!

Autism Treatment Acceleration Act Introduced in U.S. House

On May 14, the Co-Chairs of the Coalition on Autism Research and Education, Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), along with Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) introduced the Autism Treatment Acceleration Act of 2009 (ATAA). This is a companion to the bill of the same name introduced in the Senate in April. The Autism Society applauds this comprehensive autism legislation focused around enhancing the quality of life for individuals on the autism spectrum and their families.

The Autism Society especially applauds the inclusion of support services for adults on the autism spectrum in this bill. Currently, the federal government provides for educational services until age 21; however, autism is a lifelong disorder, and when the school bus stops coming, individuals and families are often left to fend for themselves. ATAA creates a demonstration project to provide an array of services to adults with autism spectrum disorders, including: postsecondary education; vocational and self-advocacy skills; employment; residential services, supports and housing; nutrition, health and wellness; recreational and social activities; and transportation and personal safety.

The legislation also would provide for the establishment of a national network in order to strengthen linkages between research and service initiatives at the federal, regional, state and local levels, and facilitate the translation of research on autism into services and treatments that will improve the quality of life for individuals with autism and their families. A national data repository would be created to share emerging data, findings and treatment models.

Other key aspects of the bill include:

the establishment of a national training initiative on autism and a technical assistance center to develop and expand interdisciplinary training and continuing education on autism spectrum disorders; and
a requirement that health insurers cover the diagnosis and treatment of autism spectrum disorders, including Applied Behavior Analysis therapy, assistive communication devices and other effective treatments.
The Autism Society needs your help in order to help pass this critical legislation. Please contact your U.S. Representative and ask him or her to co-sponsor the bill. We’ve composed an e-mail describing all the vital aspects of this bill but it will be especially effective if you add your own story describing how ATAA would help you and your family.

The time to act is now. Please support this important issue today, and urge your friends to take action as well. Together, we can improve the quality of live for individuals with autism across the lifespan.

May 14, 2009: First Draftage

Okay, we have a first draft of another synopsis.  Urban fantasy.  A romantic subplot.  Structured to be first in a series.  Fast and funny.  Murder and mayhem.  Indian food.

May 14, 2009: Freedom of Religion

A Wiccan student in Ohio succeeded in getting his school to follow a ruling  passed 17 years ago about prayer at graduation.
http://www.nbc4i.com/cmh/news/local/article/school_district_cancels_graduation_prayer/15707/

A really good follow-up here:

http://blog.au.org/2009/05/14/justice-in-chillicothe-school-officials-cancel-clergy-prayers-at-graduation/


May 14, 2009: Time Travel

This is why the vast majority of time travel stories don't really work:




May 13, 2009: Flooding the Agent

My agent is, in some ways, long-suffering when it comes to dealing with me.  This is because when I don't have a project under contract, I go into spaghetti mode.  By this, I mean I write a whole lot of stuff and throw it at the wall to see what sticks.  Unfortunately, as I mentioned in this post , I tend to write on several projects at the same time during this phase, and that means I tend to finish things at more or less the same time, rather than space things out over several months like a more sane person.

And THAT means I deluge my poor agent.

"I'm done!  Take a look at this, will you?"

"Hey, this is finished, too.  What do you think?"

"And when you get a minute, I finished this proposal, too."

This isn't an exaggeration.  At one time, I really did have three different proposals on her desk at the same time, all within six weeks.  Feast or famine, drought or flood.  (sheepish grin)

I sent her samples of one project, and now I'm nearly done with the first draft of another.  Don't tell her!


May 12, 2009: Angry, Just Angry

Blue Cross plans to cover autism therapies for children 2-5. http://bit.ly/pylfs.

I am SO angry.

Angry because they refused to cover Aran's therapy when he needed it, and now they STILL won't cover it because he's too old. Shitheads.

Aaaaand BCBS is spinning it to make it sound like covering therapy for auties is some wonderful idea they came up with.

As if no one had ever pushed them to cover it or as of they'd never refused to cover it previously. Like for us. Fuckheads.

I wrote two books in one year to keep up with Aran's therapy bills because BC refused to cover them. So what's changed in 5 years, I ask?

Sorry about all the swearing, everyone. I'm very upset. Though I suppose I should be glad for families who're now covered, it's hard to be.

May 11, 2009: Still Writing

I'm working on a number of new projects, all at once.  Since I'm not under contract at the moment, I feel unfocused and scattered.  It's hard to settle on a single one and push it hard, since none of them =have= to be done.  I wish there were a way to know off the bat which one would be most viable, but that's not how it works in this business.  An idea or concept can be intriguing but be bad in the execution.  An idea can sound dreadful but turn out wonderful once it's written.

Pile that on with a full-time teaching job and family responsibilities, and you can see why I'm not my usual prolific self.

Anyway.  I've been working on a mid-grade fantasy novel.  The original concept had three POV characters, a set of three cousins, and the chapters alternated POVs between them.  I liked it, but wasn't sure if worked entirely because one of the cousins overshadowed the other two quite a bit.  The reason for it is that he interested me the most, and the other two didn't grab me quite as much.  They got short shrift, and I think the writing showed it.

I thought about telling it solely from the first cousin's POV.  But that would =really= short out the other two characters, and I realized the only way to do it would be to cut the other two cousins entirely.  It would call for a major restructuring of the plot, but it would also simplify it--a good thing.

My main worry was that the book wouldn't be very marketable.  I ran the three cousins concept past Ye Agente, but also told her I was considering doing it from a single POV.  She thought the single POV might be intriguing.

Okay, then.  That settled it.

I reworked the first couple of chapters, making the voice more powerful and distinctive.  (I'd avoided doing that in the original concept because I wanted the same narrator voice for all three cousins.)  It made for a very different narrative, but I think it's way more interesting to read.  It was certainly more interesting to write.

I think the lesson here is go with the more powerful voice and the more intriguing character, even if it means sacrificing your original concept.

May 11, 2009: Maksim and Baseball

Maksim and I were playing catch one day and a baseball smacked him in the face.  Today he refused to go to baseball practice because he was scared of getting hit.  He was in tears over it.  We finally persuaded him to go by saying Kala would talk to the coach and find out what they could do to make sure he would stay safe.  Mackie was highly dubious about the whole thing but finally went.  At practice, the coach had him use a tennis ball, which made Mackie feel safer.  He went through the rest of practice just fine.

His first game is next week on Wednesday.

May 9, 2009: Staaaaar Treeeeek!

First part of the day was spent taking the boys to a laser tag session.  Got home in time to make the 3:00 Star Trek show.  Yes!

Let me say that THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT STAR TREK NEEDED.  Abrams and the scriptwriters did a little handwaving to ensure that everything they did in this and in future movies would be kosher with the ST universe no matter what to keep the canon fans happy, okay fine, but I would've been happy even without it.

See, Star Trek has had a problem lately.  I'm in my 40s, and I'm a YOUNG Trek fan.  Among my (teenage) students, Trek is something for parents and grandparents.  It's old and sedate and boring.  It's filled with old people doing old people things.  And the actors aren't particularly attractive.  (Sorry, but it's true.  Patrick Stewart and Nichelle Nichols ain't going to get the blood moving of anyone under 50.)

So Abrams did the right thing.  He got young, attractive actors to attract young viewers.  And he put in lots and lots of action.  The story never, ever stops moving.  I mean NEVER.  (This was a weakness in the other movies--the story would come to a screeching halt while the show pandered to True Fans who wanted to see something that only they would get.)

The actors took over their roles and improved them.  I was never a Shatner fan, and I loved Chris Pine as Kirk.  He brought a coolness factor to the role that Shatner lacked.

The universe was also a little more banged up.  Star Trek always had an unrealistically clean look to it, like a house in a magazine.  It didn't look lived in.  This Trek looked used.  Engineering has pipes and conduits.  An outpost has rust and half-built computers.  There's actual DIRT in places.

I caught the waterboarding reference.  It was . . . nasty.

And aliens everywhere.  Lots of aliens.  And even a couple of monsters that didn't quite make sense in retrospect but were cool while I was watching.

I want to see it again.  I want to own the DVD.  I want them to do another one with the same cast.

May 7, 2009: New Trek

OMG! The new Star Trek movie is down to 93% at Rottentomatoes.com! Who DARES diss the new Trek?

May 6, 2009: Aran 12

On nicer side, Aran's birthday is today. He's 12! He wanted to go to Applebee's for supper.

May 6, 2009: Sick Day With Term Papers

Mackie's sick again today. Spent the entire day at home with him, grading research papers while he watches THE FAIRLY ODDPARENTS. Home for a sick day but still working--what the heck is wrong with me?

May 5, 2009: You've GOT To Be Kidding

Michael Savage on NPR, of all places:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103819122

He's reacting to the fact that the UK banned him from entering over there because he's a promoter of hate speech.  He attacks host Neal Conant, then howls about the First Amendment (which has no jurisdiction in the UK, as Neal Conant eventually gently reminds him), then goes on a screed about a writer in the UK.  In the middle of all that, he screams about people needing to be "polite" about free speech even as he insults everyone around him.

Neal takes a caller, who barely gets half a sentence out before Savage calls the guy a "foaming lunatic" and "a nobody."  "I have more important things to do than talk to a person in pajamas somewhere in Iowa," he says.

"Then go do them," said Neal Conant.

Click.  Savage hung up.

This, you may remember, is the same guy who called autistic children brats.  Remember?  "In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent?  They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.' "

There's no other way to interpret this.  Anyone who believes a word Savage says is a brainless idiot, a drooling hick, intolerant, stupid, idiotic, and more brain-dead than a dried worm on an August sidewalk

May 4, 2009: School Closings

A dozen schools in Michigan have closed over swine--excuse me, H1N1--flu.  We've had a probable case in Washtenaw County, where I live, and I'm wondering how long before we get a case or three in Oakland County, where I work.  A school in Washtenaw County closed for five days. (!)  That would be disaster for me at this point--so much to do and so little time to do it in.

I'm wondering if the boys' school will get canceled.

I sleep with the phone these nights, just in case.

May 3, 2009: In Contrast

In contrast to the photo I just posted, here's a photo we took of Sasha and Maksim the day we picked them up from the orphanage to take them them home.



May 3, 2009: Awwwww . . .


Mackie's on a little league team.  This has to be the sweetest picture ever:




May 3, 2009: Paper Stack

This evening I graded papers.  More and more and more papers.  And more and more.  Then I recorded them.  This is the stack I did:



I'm done for the evening, but only halfway done overall.

A handful of my freshmen didn't turn in their research papers.  I can't understand this sort of thing.  We worked on them for two weeks, so it's not like they were unaware of the deadline.  A 200-point hole in their grade . . . that's all but impossible to recover from.  And it means I have phone calls to make.

May 3, 2009: Weird Beltaine

It's been a weird Beltaine this year.  Mackie and Sasha have been sick, which throws a wrench into things.  Activities for it were spread over two days.  Yesterday was a fair amount of prep.  It also included a trip to the doctor for Mackie, whose temperature had come roaring back.  The doctor prescribed a stronger antibiotic.  Mackie hates the taste, and he throws a tantrum whenever it's time to take it.

I mowed the lawn--Sasha'd been too sick to do it, and then it was rainy.  Then I spent a fair amount of time getting the outdoor altar area all set up.  Then there was food to make.

Today we colored and hid eggs (Mackie wants me to make deviled eggs out of them later) and put the Goddess statue in the outdoor grotto and reset all the candles outside and had spring picnic food for supper.

Spring is giving way to summer!

May 1, 2009: Probably Unpopular View of Copyright

Who cares if the book can't be read?

I'm not joking.

The publishing industry--publishers, authors, agents, Google, various author/editor/agent guilds--are alternately praising or howling about the Google settlement.  But no one is looking at a serious flaw in the underlying premise: "Oh. My. God! There are books that are unavailable to the public because we can't find the copyright owner to ask permission to republish them. That's, like, so awful!"

No, it isn't.

=Why= do we have to make all books available to all people?  Since when has that ever been essential to human existence?  Or even vaguely desirable to it?  What intrinsic value does this concept contain?

Books are property.  They belong to the authors who created them.  If the original author or the heirs can't be located, why is it so damned necessary that the book automatically be made available?

Google seems to operate on the assumption that all written material is or should be available for free, since they want to make everything available on-line.  The settlement with the Author's Guild indicates that the AG and the court apparently mostly agrees with them, since the settlement hands Google rights to e-publish just about all books UNLESS the author opts out.  In other words, they get the rights for basically nothing unless the owner alerts them otherwise, and even then Google has some power over the property. 

Again, I ask WHY?

If Great-Aunt Penelope wrote a book of ghost stories in 1935, and no one can find her heirs, why MUST the book be scanned and put on Google?  If Marvin Wexford, PhD, wrote a history of wolfhound breeding in Ireland, then moved to Dublin and no can get hold of him, why does his book HAVE to go into Google's database?  What is the pressing, all-powerful need for this?  Are thousands of people suddenly going to become enthralled by Penelope's ghosts?  Or by Marvin's dogs?  Doesn't seem likely, or even possible.  So why the drive?

Sure, it can help a few scholars with their research.  Um . . . I think that's it.  It certainly doesn't justify trespassing on copyrights and copyright law.  Books have been passing into obscurity for a very long time.  It's the nature of literature and writing.

April 29, 2009: Animals and Term Papers

Started grading freshman term papers this evening.  My brain melted after two and a half hours, so I had to stop.  Sirius the Cat then meowed for attention, so I flipped him over in my arms.    "Who wants some snuggles?  You do!  Yes, you do!  Yes, you do!"

"Officially, I am horrified and indignant.  But I will allow it."

Meanwhile, Sam the Dog looked ready to explode with bouncy energy.  I took him out for a walk to detonate him safely.  What's with the animals tonight?

April 28, 2009: More Power Problems

Now several Ann Arbor elementary schools along the Washtenaw Avenue corridor are without power.  (Power was restored to Nameless High yesterday, apparently.)  And it's only April!  Y'know, this seriously argues for updating our aging power grid.

April 28, 2009: Home

Today I'm home with one and a half sick kids.  Mackie's home because he threw up at school yesterday, but today he seems perfectly fine.  No sign of fever, not even a hint of illness now.  He probably could have gone to school today.  Sigh.

Sasha, on the other hand, woke up with a fever of 102.  He's worse than he was yesterday.

After Kala took Aran to work, I got the other two breakfast and banished Sasha to the couch.  He's forbidden to use the computer when he has a fever because, as I've said before, he won't rest.  He'll stupidly drive himself into the ground with PC games because he figures if he's home and supposed to be sitting down, it means lots of game time.  Then he complains bitterly when I force him to rest.  I swear he spends more energy complaining than anything else.

I put bean soup into the crock pot and cleaned the kitchen after that.  It's raining and yucky out.  Good day for soup.

April 27, 2009: Google

After much thought and research, I came to the conclusion that the "settlement" the Author's Guild negotiated with Google grants Google far too many rights and is way too far reaching. (And I never gave the Author's Guild the power to negotiate on my behalf--I'm certainly not a member.) Google says it's motto is "Don't be evil," but they're certainly doing a fair job of it with this little trick. And how the hell they got the power to claim power over ALL printed work without author permission, I don't know. The usual way the law works is that all rights not explicitly signed away by the author remain with the author. I never gave Google permission to do anything with my work. Why do they have power over my property? And why do I have to opt OUT? It should be opt IN? The whole thing is so suspicious and dreadful.

There are many analyses and discussions out there. This one's short and easy to understand:

http://graysonagency.com/blog/publishing

It's easy to opt out if you're an author. Click here and fill out the form:

http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/r/enter_opt_out

Do it NOW. If you don't do it by May 5, the law says you're in, whether you want to be or not.

April 27, 2009: Powerless

This morning I got a phone call--Nameless High has no power due to last night's storm.  Teachers still report.

Mystified, I drove up to school.  What were we going to do all day?  No power means no computer and no phones, and the school is heavily reliant on both to do much of anything.

Arrived in 65-degree sunshine.  Meeting scheduled for 10:00.  Okay.  I had my laptop with me.  The IT person said, "There's no WiFi, you know."  I flashed my iPhone and said, "Please!"

Because I'd already used the weekend to catch up on paperwork, I only had a single class set of papers to grade.  I did those.  Then I did very little until the meeting.  Said meeting was to discuss a small curriculum change for next year.  Okay.  We did this.  At about 12:30, everything petered out, but the upper levels of administration said we had to stay until the end of the school day because that was our contract.

I think a lot of people took naps.  And we played "Bloody Murder" in A-hall, which was almost pitch black.  And we played kickball in the teachers lounge and sailed paper airplanes at the vice-principal's head and gave Dexter Dershowitz swirlies in the bathroom and . . .

Wait, where was I?

Oh, right--that was when I called home to check on Sasha.  "A lady from school just called," he said.  "She wanted to know your cell phone number."

Uh oh.  My cell phone had no messages.  I called AALC and identified myself to the secretary.  "We have no power, so my work phone doesn't ring," I said.

"Maksim threw up in class," she said.  "I think he needs to go home."

Oh, great.  I ran down to the office.  "I know you're not going to believe this," I said, "but my son is sick and I have to leave early."

And I left.

A flurry of activity followed.  I finally managed to get hold of Kala at work.  Between the two of us, we got Mackie picked up early, made him a doctor's appointment, got him there, picked up Aran from school at the regular time, and got Mackie's antibiotics from the pharmacist.

Then Aran and I had karate class, and then I discovered Aran had been deliberately ignoring half his piano lesson because "These songs are too hard," so I had to sit down and go through them with him.  And then I had to write lesson plans for tomorrow, since I have to stay home with Mackie.

Sheesh.

April 26, 2009: Sasha and Strep

Yesterday Sasha said he had a fever, had apparently had one for quite some time before he deigned to tell either of his parents.  "It goes up and down, up and down," he said.

I checked.  A degree's worth.  I banished him to the couch, where he spent considerable time in protest.

Sasha is currently in an "I never get sick" phase of development.  When we first adopted him, he denied every flu and fever, even as he was shivered and sweated.  We think this is because in Ukraine, being sick meant a great deal of boring downtime and awful medicine, including his mother's patented goat hair chest plaster.  Anything to avoid that! 

Eventually, Sasha learned that being sick means you get to sleep in, eat what you like, and stay home from school, so he started faking illness.  Now, however, he's back to denying it because I won't let him play on the computer when he's sick.  This is because Sasha will happily play until he collapses at the keyboard (I have to enforce a time limit).  Computer games simply aren't restful.  You're sitting up, you're concentrating, you're worked up.  So no video or computer games when you're sick.  Now Sasha would rather run his feet through a meat grinder than admit he's ill.

At any rate, this morning Sasha was still running a fever and he had no voice.  We couldn't see signs of strep in his throat, but Kala took him to an urgent care clinic anyway.

Strep!

So he's staying home from school tomorrow, and I'll be disconnecting the modem.

April 26, 2009: Office Cleaning


April 25, 2009: Rush, Rush, ZOOM

Saturday morning was karate class--an intense workout with much combat.  Then I ran down to the post office to get the exchange application into overnight mail, then to the store, then to an appointment, then to a late lunch/supper with Kala, then supper for the boys, then cleaning the hummingbird feeders, then cleaning the kitchen.

April 23, 2009: Thursday From Heck


April 22, 2009: Michigan Smoking Ban

The Michigan Legislature might put an across-the-board workplace smoking ban on the ballot next year:

http://www.detnews.com/article/20090422/POLITICS02/904220443/Michigan+bill+would+put+smoking+ban+on+ballot

I hope they do and I hope it passes.  The bill would ban smoking from ALL places where people work, including bars, restaurants, and casinos.  I loathe smoking, and I don't see why there should be exceptions for bars and casinos.  Less than a quarter of the population smokes.  Why should the 75% of us that don't smoke have to put up with their exhalations?  They don't need it to live.  It's not a handicap, nor is it a special circumstance.  They can smoke outside or on their own property, not in a place where someone has to work eight or ten hours a day.

April 21, 2009: Hamburger Eek


I'd heard rumors  of this, but I didn't think it actually existed:

http://laughlines.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/the-krispy-kreme-burger/

A half-pound hamburger.  With an egg fried in butter on top.  And bacon on top of that.  Sandwiched between two Krispy Kreme donuts.  Over 1,000 calories and a bazillion grams of fat.

The frightening thing is, I want to try one.

April 21, 2009: Abby Autism

http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/?uc_full_date=20090421

Today's Dear Abby column mentions autism from the point of view of non-autistic sibling.  Worth checking out.

April 21, 2009: Autistic Triumph

This one isn't mine, but it's shareable:

http://community.livejournal.com/autism/445050.html

These are the triumphs parents of autistic children live for.

April 18, 2009: Ants That Clone

Ants that clone themselves:
April 18, 2009: #$@% Dog

Speaking of Sam the Dog, last night he somehow got out of the house.  When I found him, he smelled like manure.  He had clearly rolled in it.  The stench was horrible.  I banished him to the back yard until I could give him a bath.  Sam hates baths.  You'd think he'd learn not to roll in horrible-smelling stuff because it earns him one every time, but he can't seem to help himself.  After said bath, he was banished to the back yard again until the impulse to shake had stopped.  Then he huddled in the foyer, looking bedraggled and miserable.

No sympathy.

April 18, 2009: Two-Thirds Boy Free

Sasha and Aran have a school trip this weekend, so they're gone.  Originally we'd arranged for Mackie to spend one night at a friend's, but the friend came down sick, so that was nixed.  =This= close to kid freedom for a night!  Ah, well.  It's weirdly quiet around here, though.  Mackie was a little unnverved last night, especially at bedtime.

This morning we took him out to breakfast, since he didn't get to go on a trip.  He wanted to wear his Batman cape and mask:



At the restaurant, he ordered tea to drink.  He always eats the lemon, even though he knows what it tastes like:



But breakfast was delicious--pancakes and waffles all around!

After we got home, the weather was so nice, the three of us took Sam the Dog out to the meadow and tried some kite flying.  (I thought I had my camera, but I didn't, so no pictures.)  It was moderately successul--the breeze wasn't =quite= strong enough for good flying.  Sam the Dog thought it a very successful outing, however.

April 18, 2009: CAPRICA Review

A friend of mine is a Hollywood/entertainment reporter, which means he gets previews of a lot of stuff for free.  This includes the DVD of CAPRICA, the prequel to BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.  He came over last night and we watched it.

Meh.

MINOR SPOILERS.  YOU ARE WARNED.

The story is set on Caprica 58 years before the Cylon uprising.  Technology looks about forty or so years ahead of what we have now.  The Graystone family built its fortune on robots and computers, but Daniel Graystone can't quite make the leap into combining artificial intelligence with robots.  It turns out his sixteen-year-old daughter Zoe, however, has been secretly experimenting with AI computer programs in virtual reality with great success.  She and a few friends have created a hedonistic, extremely violent, drug-laden virtual reality club where Zoe made a computer copy of herself.

Unfortunately, Zoe doesn't get along with her parents.  She cuts school a lot, uses her virtual reality stuff illegally at school, and is generally obnoxious.  She and some like-minded friends plan to run away to Gemenon, another colony world.  On the day they do, however, a terrorist blows up the train they're travelling on, killing everyone on board. Her father Daniel becomes obssessed with finding a way to use artificial intelligence to bring Zoe back to "life."

Again, I say, "Meh."

First, the strengths of the show.  The skiffy stuff is kind of cool.  The computer paper and the household robots come across as pretty neat.  The acting is strong, the characters believable.

Um . . . that's about it.

There are many, many problems.  The show starts off in the teenager virtual reality club, where teens and young adults do drugs, group sex, fight to the death, and engage in human sacrifice to Hecate.  (No one really dies, since it's VR.)  Zoe and her friends are there, making plans, but they get caught--they're actually in school.  Then we pop to a scene with Zoe arguing with her parents about what just happened.  Zoe, Mom, and Dad (Daniel) are all blatantly unlikeable.  I mean, =seriously=.  Daniel is a dishrag.  Mom is a bitch.  Zoe is an obnoxious shit.  I wanted to slap all three of them, and I certainly didn't want to spend an entire TV show with them.

Fortunately, we quickly jump to Joseph Adams, another major player in the series.  He's an Italian-looking lawyer with ties to the mob--sorry, the Ha'Al'Tha.  (We're not stereotyping here.  Really.  We aren't.  Nope.)  He's in a courtroom where--oh, never mind.  It's even more boring to write about than to watch.

The story moves slo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ly.  The pilot is 90 minutes long, and it should have been 60.

There are major plot holes.  I couldn't buy Zoe's computer genius.  After Zoe's death, Daniel claims he had absolutely no idea his daughter could outstrip him in the computer department.  Huh?  Granted, they're estranged now, but they didn't start out that way.  And genius like Zoe's would have showed up very early.  You expect me to believe that Daniel never noticed his little eight-year-old daughter was writing her own code?  Or that she was creating her own holograms at age ten?  That she would never have run to him when she was little and said, "Daddy!  Look what I did!"  Come on!

And of course, Moore is expecting us to get engrossed in a society that we know will ultimately be destroyed.  In characters we know will be slaughtered.  We know what will happen with the Cylons.  We know what will happen to young Billy.  We know what will happen to AI programming.  And oh--it's all happening because of angels, don't forget.  Didn't Moore learn anything from George Lucas?

The writing is decent.  It would have been better served on an entirely different concept and show.

April 14, 2009: Mackie's Bedtime

When Mackie goes to bed, he always wants big brother Sasha to tuck him in.  Sasha sighs and grumbles about this as he trudges upstairs from the family room to take care of this nightly chore.

"One day," I told him tonight, "Maksim won't want you to do this anymore, and on that day, you'll be sad."

"No, I won't," Sasha mumbled.

I just gave him a small smile and shooed him toward Mackie's room.

April 14, 2009: Karate and Papers

Staff meeting after school today, which means I got home late. It was almost immediately time for karate. We worked on fine-tuning kick technique. I'm left-footed, which means I always suck whenever we do something at first--the instructors always start on the right foot.  I have a really hard time doing whatever it is, and then the instructor shouts, "Switch feet!"  Bam!  I can do the technique perfectly.  Aran, another lefty, goes through much the same thing.

Read on my Kindle while Mackie had his class, then went home for supper, after which it was much paper grading.  I didn't grade any papers over spring break, and tonight I had to get caught up.  Many, many, many assignments to grade and record.  Yeesh.

But that's done now.

April 13, 2009: Whoa!

If you're part of the reading and writing and Internet community, you've heard about the Amazon.com problem.  If you haven't, short version is that Amazon removed the Sales Rank feature from almost all books that contain Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender content.  At first they claimed it was because of the "adult content" of such books (except they also excluded HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES, a children's picture book), and then they claimed it was a glitch (terrbily specific glitch, if you ask me), and now they're claiming they're working on fixing it, whatever "it" is.  The trouble with this is that the books became excluded from Amazon's search function, making it almost impossible to find (and buy) them.

Various people are howling conspiracy, prejudice, and homphobia.

Me, I think they seriously fucked up.  I think it was meant to be a bit of code that filtered out erotic or other adult content so people could search for books on, say, vampires without getting erotic vampire stories (of which there are a large number).  I think whoever programmed the filter made an enormous error, released the new filter into Amazon's little search engine last February (when some people started noticing their books were excluded), and the filter grew more and more aggressive, excluding more and more books until it finally Got Noticed.

I watched the whole thing explode on Twitter.  It was like watching a few snowflakes turn into a blizzard.

See, I can't imagine Amazon doing this on purpose.  They exist to sell books.  Why would they deliberately exclude an entire section of their catalog just now, especially since they've sold such books for years and years and years?  And especially when they would have to know it would create a PR fiasco?

And since it came to a head over Easter, when no one in real authority was on duty over at Amazon, it was handled stupidly and poorly by people who didn't know what was going on once customers, writers, and activists started to complain.

Was Amazon at fault?  Yes.  Was Amazon stupid?  Yes.  Do they deserve the bad Internet press?  Absolutely.  The situation should never have been allowed to happen in the first place, and the dumb-asses have earned every shred of approbation. 

Do they deserve the chance to fix it?  Yes.  And they better move fast.

At least my books haven't been affected.  Yet.

April 11, 2009: Loathing Times


TEACHER BOOKED IN CHILD'S DEATH

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/04/11/us/AP-Girl-in-Suitcase.html

This is one of the things I hate about the news media. This is a terrible thing to happen: an adult kidnaps and kills an eight-year-old girl. And what appears in the headline? Not that it's a murder, but that a TEACHER is involved. Except IT WASN'T A TEACHER. It was a SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER. Sunday school teachers are NOT classroom teachers. They are volunteers from within the church. The headline should more accurately read CHURCH VOLUNTEER BOOKED IN CHILD'S DEATH. But, of course, hinting that a classroom teacher has murdered a child is a far more horrifying idea and will grab more eyes for the page.  Never mind that it's pandering, that it's inaccurate, that it's yellow journalism, that a fair number of people will read only the headline and think somewhere out there, a teacher is a murderer.  No, no.  Let's horrify and scare readers instead.

I thought the TIMES was supposed to be better than this.

April 10, 2009: Waterpark Addendum

In the morning part of our water park adventure, Kala took the boys down to the water area while I took the luggage and stuff out to the van.  I was transferring everything from the cart to the vehicle when I smelled pot smoke.  It was seriously strong.  Bro-ther.  I glanced around, but didn't see anyone.  Obviously someone was lighting up in a car or something.  Whatever.

I rolled the cart back toward the hotel doors just as a couple I'd seen before emerged from their car.  They were the people staying in the room across the hall from us, and they had two girls a bit older than Mackie.  They caught up with me at the hotel doorway, and they both reeked of pot.

I shoved the cart into the cart storage area and into the elevator.  Unfortunately, Pot Dad and Pot Mom joined me.  Oh, yay.

"Boy," Pot Dad said, a little too loudly, "being around all those kids . . . must've picked something up.  Making me cough."

It was so close.  The words were in my mouth.  I almost, ALMOST turned to him and said, "You think you're fooling anyone?  Just what've you been smoking?  Oh, right!  Pot!"  But I didn't.  I just ignored both of them, exited the elevator on our floor, and went into our room for a final check.

These two were a real piece of work.  They send their small children down to the waterpark and leave them there with no parental supervision, then sneak out to their car to get illegally high (and, I might add, they clearly planned to do this, since they brought the shit with them and had it in the hotel room with their little girls).  Not only that, did they think their kids WOULDN'T NOTICE?  They sat inside their car and smoked at least one joint.  Little Girl 1 and Little Girl 2 are going to smell it for days afterward.

People who smoke anything--pot, tobacco, you name it--always think that as long as they don't actually have smoke streaming from an orifice, no one notices.  They've grown so used to the smell, it doesn't register, so they figure no one else smells it.  I've got news for them--we notice.  I noticed from fifteen feet away that these two were smoking something more than Camels.

I don't actually have a major problem with pot.  I put it on the same level as alcohol--you want to do something that stupid and damaging to your body, that's up to you.  Just don't get behind the wheel of a car, or use the stuff around me.  I don't want to be with people who are drunk or high because they're always full of shit, and I don't want to get spattered.  But these people put their pothead thing ahead of their kids.  And one day, they'll catch Little Girl 1 or Little Girl 2 with dime bags of their own and wonder how the hell =that happened.

April 10. 2009: Waterpark, Morning

In the morning, we ate breakfast in the hotel (part of the room rental).  It was a hot-and-cold buffet and decent enough.  Then we packed everything into the van, took a change of clothes into the waterpark, and let the boys swim again.  Kala and I didn't really want to, so we stay dressed and dry.

One observation: the stone/tile floor in there is slippery.  Mackie fell.  I fell.  Aran fell and hurt his wrist.  I saw three other people fall while I was there.  It seems like the whole thing is a lawsuit waiting to happen, and I don't quite understand why they haven't put in better flooring.

At about 10:30, Sasha said he wanted to change, so we decided to head home.  Aran and Maksim didn't protest when we told them it was time to leave, so we knew they were tired, too.  I managed to get everyone into dry clothes in the extremely limited boys' changing area, and we headed home.

The boys had a fine time.  So did Kala and I, really, though we aren't eager to do it again.  So much noise!

April 10, 2009: Waterpark, Evening


Freshly dried and smelling of chlorine, we went in search of supper.  We thought about heading out, but decided to eat at the hotel restaurant.  Weirdly, the restaurant only had tables for four, and they had to push two tables together to seat us.  This struck me as weird.  Didn't this place ever get parties larger than four?  I found that hard to believe.

We also considered looking for a movie theater or something for after supper, but there isn't one in Dundee.  The closest one was a twenty-five-minute drive away in Adrian, and we weren't up for that.  However, Cabela's was across the street.  Cabela's is one of the country's biggest shopping places for outdoor stuff--camping, hunting, boating, you name it.  We walked over for a look, though Sasha's stomach was feeling odd and he elected to stay behind in the hotel room.

Mackie and Aran were alternately fascinated and bored by Cabela's.  They loved the kayaks, canoes, power boats. fishing boats, compound bows, crossbows, and toy guns.  The rest of the stuff . . . not so much.  We need to replace our big tent, so I browsed some, though not intending to buy.  We maneuvered Mackie around the rifle and shotgun room.

Back in the room, we got out snacks and put KUNG FU PANDA in the DVD player.  The boys piled on the big bed to watch, and everyone liked it.  This was actually my favorite part of the trip.

April 10. 2009: Waterpark, Afternoon

Kala had to work on Thursday and wouldn't get home until after 4:00, so we decided I would take the boys down to the water park hotel earlier and she would come down from work.  I spent a big chunk of the morning getting everything ready.  We were only going away overnight, but there was so much to get together!  Swimming stuff, toiletries, various medications for various family members, and food.  Our room would have a mini-fridge in it, so I decided to bring lots of snack foods, all of which had to be packed in bags or the cooler.  The boys helped, but they were as helpful as you might expect from kids who have never spent the night at a hotel before.  (The last time we did any hotel time was when we adopted Sasha and Maksim and spent a night in Amsterdam on the way home.  Only Sasha remembers it, and just barely.)

Loaded everything into the van and headed off.  Dundee isn't that far away, and we arrived easily.  Got us checked in, a process that fascinated the boys, and then drove around to a door close to ours to unload.  The boys seemed impressed that I knew we could get a cart for our stuff.  Found our room easily enough.  It was a family suite--king bed and two bunk beds.  Huh.  I thought it would have four bunks.  I called down for a rollaway, and one eventually arrived.  Whew!

Got everything unpacked.  By now the boys were dancing with the need to hit the water park.  We suited up and headed down.

The park was NOISY.  Seriously.  The loudness of it hit like a physical wall.  And it was extremely crowded.  The lazy river was packed so fully, you could barely wedge yourself in.  Floaty tubes were at such a premium that any time someone abandoned one, it was snatched up almost before it hit the ground.

The boys loved it.  They rushed around from attraction to attraction (though Aran had to be extracted from the lazy river, where he seemed bent on spending the entire time).  The two slides had long lines, but they went quickly.

I started getting a migraine headache, unfortunately.  The noise of the place didn't help.  I took Mackie up to the room for a snack and I downed some meds, which blunted it, at least.

The crowd thinned out around 4:00, though all the chairs and benches were still draped with towels and beach bags.  I absolutely love it when people put their towels on public chairs and walk away.  It means I always have a place to sit.

Kala arrived, and there was more swimming and sliding and splashing.  At last it was time for supper, and we dashed through the now-chilly corridors to our room.

April 9, 2009: Water Resort

Tomorrow we're taking the boys off to a hotel with an indoor water park.  We're spending one night, just to get away for a while.  It's this place in Dundee:

http://riverrun.splashuniverse.com/attractions.php

Sasha is laconic.  Aran and Mackie are excited.

April 8, 2009: And Now Vermont

And now Vermont has legalized same-sex marriage.  (!)  This one is important because it's the first one that happened because the legislature voted it through (overriding a gubernatorial veto) and not because the courts ruled it so.  It's a kick in the teeth to the Nazi, intolerant conservatives who like to howl that the judiciary has hijacked the legislative process.

April 7, 2009: The Kindle Has Landed



April 7, 2009: Spring Cleaning 2

Finished with the kitchen today.  Hooked the boys into most of it.  Cleaned out the rest of the cupboards, went through all the food cans to make sure nothing had expired.  Cleaned the refrigerator and freezer.  Mopped the floor.  It took all morning and most of the afternoon!  Man.

April 7, 2009: Vampire Night at the UWG

So a few days after I posted my observations on writing vampires (and dragons), I sat down to read the round of manuscripts for the upcoming Untitled Writers Group meeting.  Guess what kind of stories showed up?

It was weird.  I scribbled my own thoughts on writing vampire stories because I was working on one and it made me remember what Marion Bradley told me about them.  And then we got two vampire stories, one from Cindy and one from Sarah.  Ironically, the one person in the UWG who is working on a vampire book hadn't submitted a piece of it this time around.

But wait--there's more.  My vampire story is told from the point of view of a mortal woman who runs her own business and whose younger brother was turned into a vampire.  Sarah's piece, the one we critiqued tonight, is told from the point of view of a mortal woman who runs her own business and whose younger brother was turned into a vampire.  Sarah and I did not talk to each other about our vampire writing--I didn't even know she was writing about vampires, and she hadn't read my story yet--but there it was!  The similarities do end there; our stories are wildly different.  But the verisimilitude within the group is seriously spooky.


April 7, 2009: Hummingbird Feeders 2


After supper, I went out in search of hummingbird feeders.  First stop: PetSmart.  Their web site had several models, and I figured their store would carry them too.

They carried exactly two models.  Both were completely plastic.  $10 and $15.  Chintzy, ugly--nothing I wanted around my house.  I left them on the shelf.

I knew that Meijer has a fairly extensive pet section and figured they might have feeders, so I drove down that way.  This took me past Home Depot and Lowe's.  Of course!  I zipped in there right quick.  Found several models of feeder, ranging from $3 to $30.  For the price I would have paid for plastic at PetSmart, I got glass and brushed copper at Home Depot.  Sheesh!

I also noted the many, many cartons of hummingbird nectar I could buy.  "No boiling necessary!" says the copy.  Oh, brother.  So they're saying I can buy this in case I don't know HOW TO BOIL WATER??

I like the feeders I found.  They look cool, and I want the weather to clear up so I can put them out.

April 6, 2009: Turkey!

An entire turkey breast sat in the fridge, awaiting a meal.  Kala was going to make it yesterday, but I had her hold off because I wanted to try an experiment--brining.  I'd heard of brining turkeys but never done it.

First thing in the morning, I thoroughly washed out a cooler and poured in a gallon and a half of water, a cup of salt, some rosemary, and some oregano.  I washed the turkey breast, submerged it in the brine, and set the whole thing outside, where it would stay cool all day.  After the spring cleaning was done for the day, I patted the turkey dry with paper towels and put it, covered, in the oven for three hours.

It came out enormously tender and juicy.  Extremely good.  We'll do this again.

April 6, 2009: Spring Cleaning Begins

I decided to try a different method of spring cleaning this year: pick one room per day and do it thoroughly.  It sort of worked.

The kitchen, I knew, would be hardest because it has the most ways to become dirty and the most stuff that needed sorting out.  So I went to work on it.  I made the boys help, too.

First we took down the curtains for washing, and I decided to get all the ones in the house at once.  Then it was wash all the surfaces and pull the dishes from the cupboards for washing inside.  I also pulled anything we hadn't used in a year and put it in the garage sale box.  This freed up a lot of cupboard space, and I rearranged some stuff to make things more accessible.  I also put some countertop appliances into the cupboards, freeing up more counter space.

The curtains were finished, and we put them back up, a laborious process.  The boys washed cupboard doors, though I had to keep pointing out spots they missed.  I attacked the stove and got it all clean.  Walls and windows and windowsill were also done.

But by 2:00, the food cupboards and the refrigerator were still not even touched, and I declared an end to it all.  Tomorrow!

April 9, 2009: Snow 2

Kala's phone rang early this morning--Ann Arbor schools were closed.  Outside we had a lovely coating of slippery snow on the ground.  A fine way to start spring break for me and the boys.

April 6, 2009: Hummingbirds

This week I'm going to get some hummingbird feeders.

Early last fall, I was looking out the kitchen window and I saw a ruby-throated hummingbird hovering just beyond the glass.  I just had time to blink before it darted away.  I didn't know we got hummingbirds around here, but now that I do, I want to bring them around.

On-line research was, once again, my friend.  I learned how to make hummingbird feeder syrup (1 part sugar to 4 parts water).  I uncovered the Great Red Dye Debate, which reminds me of the Great Autism Vaccine Debate.  Red, you see, attracts hummingbirds, since that's the color of some of their favorite flowers, and people often color the syrup in their feeders to encourage the birds.  Hummingbird enthusiasts warn that red food coloring doesn't harm humans but there's no evidence that it doesn't harm hummingbirds, and most of the web sites order you not to put red food coloring into hummingbird syrup.  "The feeders are usually painted red where the syrups comes out," they say.  "Or you can tie a red ribbon around your feeder."

Interestingly, there's absolutely no evidence that red food coloring DOES harm hummingbirds, either.

I probably won't color the syrup simply because it'll be cheaper.

I also learned that it's a good idea to place a couple-three feeders around the yard, but not in view of each other.  Put one in the front yard and one in the back, or two feeders around the corner from each other, and so on.  Hummingbirds are territorial and one bird will try to drive other birds away from multiple feeders if it can see them at the same time.

Hummingbirds arrive in this area in mid- to late April, and it's a good idea to put feeders out a couple weeks before then to establish early that your yard is the place to go for free eats.  Weather allowing, I'll head out tomorrow and see what I can find.

April 6, 2009: Snow!

One of the reasons I did the yard work when I did is that we were under a winter weather watch.  Much snow potentially on the way.  Partway through the day, it turned into a winter weather warning.  Six inches of snow expected overnight, more in the morning, et cetera, et ceter-fucking-a.  Spring break and we get the crud.  Kala, who doesn't have spring break right now, is sleeping with the phone in case they cancel school tomorrow.

It's currently snowing like hell out there.  I'm hoping it'll be six inches of snow that won't stick, since the ground is so warm.  We're supposed to hit 50 by Wednesday, so I definitely ain't shoveling.

April 5, 2009: Boys, Restaurants, and Manga Waiters

During the Cascade Effect episode, Kala was running errands in downtown Ann Arbor.  She wasn't back yet, it was time for supper, and there was no way I was going to cook.  Sasha had been agitating to go out to eat anyway, so I told the boys to get their coats.  They were thrilled--dinner with Daddy!

I didn't want to go far, and I had it in mind to go someplace like Big Boy or something on Washtenaw Avenue, but we came up on the Tower Inn Cafe on Cross Street, and there was a parking space only a little ways down the street, I decided that would be perfect.

The Tower Inn serves Italian food, and is homier and more Italian than Olive Garden can ever hope to be.  I like the place, but keep forgetting about it, for some reason, and it was nice to eat there again.

The hostess seated us and I started the process of helping the boys navigate their menus.  At this point, our waiter arrived, and I had to blink.  He looked like he had stepped out of a bishonen manga.  He was about 6'3" and he looked a lot like this:



His name was Kyle.  (But of course.)  annesible would have loved him!

At any rate, we were in an Italian restaurant, which meant Aran and Sasha both ordered hamburgers.  Sigh.  Mackie got spaghetti, at least, and I got shrimp and chicken Alfredo.  Oh, it was good!  The older boys' hamburgers were a half pound each, and Aran ate the entire thing, along with all the fries on his plate. (!)

There was much hilarity and laughing around the table, though Dad was careful to reign things in when they got beyond the boundaries of acceptable restaurant behavior.



Aran doesn't know Sasha is behind him.  Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of the aftermath.

When we finally left the restaurant, it was raining out, and we were glad that the parking spot was close!

April 5, 2009: Cascade Effect 2

Back in the house, the new shelves I'd bought to put under the sink were taking up precious cupboard space, and the only way to deal with it was to put them to use.

I got my harp stool to sit on and pulled out all the stuff from under the kitchen sink.  Sorted through it, tossed some stuff, combined some others.  Then I cleaned the surfaces.  And--cascade!--since I had a wet cleaning rag in my hand and I was eye-level with the lower cupboards, and since I could see various dirty bits, I cleaned all the lower cabinet doors as well.  And then I got all the corners of the floor that the mop doesn't reach well but which I could now see from my new vantage point.

Put all the supplies on their new shelves in their new, clean environment and turned to the catch-all counter.  You know the spot I mean--it's that place you toss stuff you don't know what to do with right now but will get to later.  And it piles up.  It's actually been slowly driving me crazy over the last week or so, and the Cascade Effect pulled right into sorting it all out.  Now the cupboard is cleared out and everything sorted.

Here I ran out of steam, and the Cascade Effect lost its power over me.  Tossed the cleaning rags in the laundry and declared that I was Done For the Day.

April 5, 2009: Cascade Effect

The weather was in the fifties, and I'd spent a lot of time inside at the computer using my mind lately.  I needed to do something physical and brainless and outside.  So I went out to the back yard, snagged a rake from the garden shed, and raked all the winter debris from the bush-and-flower border near the privacy fence.   I don't normally like yard work, but now it felt nice to be outside doing something mindless with my hands to give my brain a break.

It clouded up while I was working and spat a little rain at me, but I kept going.  Raked the debris out and stuffed it into lawn bags left over from last fall.  Then I caught sight of the altar area.  While I had the rake out, I decided, I may as well keep going.  Raked all that clean, and also trimmed back the bush that was invading the goddess grotto.  The bush in question had already burst into bright yellow flowers (no leaves yet), so I kept the trimmings and later put them in a vase on the dining room table.

The back corner of the fence tugged at my eye.  That spot needed clearing, too.  By now I was fully caught up in the Cascade Effect.  Maybe it catches you, too.  You do one small job, which uncovers another small job, which uncovers yet another small job, and each time you say, "Well, I may as well do this, too," and before you know it, you've spent the entire day doing what was supposed to be one small job.  This happens to me all the time.

Raked the back corner clean and scooped all the junk up.  I was hauling the bags to the curb when I passed by the basement windows at the side of the house.  They were clogged up.  The cascade continued!  I cleared the windows out.  The bushes in the front yard had collected leaves, too, and the bushes that grew beneath the living room windows were threatening to block the view once their leaves grew in, so I raked and trimmed there.  And then I looked around the other side of the house.  More dead debris, more cascade.  I kept raking.

During some stage in this, I realized I was getting blisters from the rake, so I went in search of garden gloves.  I know I have at least two pairs around here somewhere, but the only ones I could find were Kala's pink ones.  They were snug, but usable.  A sign of maturity--you don't give a shit about the color of the work gloves if they'll stop the blisters from getting worse.

At this point, Maksim came outside.  "I want to help you, Daddy."   I said that was very nice of him, and said he could scoop up leaves while I raked.

At last it was all done.  The bags were at the curb, and Mackie helped me put the tools away.  But wait!  The Cascade Effect wasn't done with me yet . . .

April 5, 2009: Vampire Update

Okay, the vampire story is done.  Going to wait until writers group tomorrow in case anyone has comments on it there, and then send it out.

I want to re-emphasize that in my earlier entry I wasn't trying to claim that new writers--or anyone--shouldn't ever try vampire or dragon stories.  Truly!  I'm just saying that editors get a LOT of vampire stories and dragon stories, which means the competition to sell one is a lot stiffer than for other fantasy-type characters.

Me, I'm cheating.  I'm submitting mine to an anthology of vampire stories.

April 5, 2009: Where Do You Throw Out a Wastebasket?

When Kala and I got married, we got a large kitchen wastebasket.  The cats liked to tip it over, so we put two bricks in the bottom.  Problem solved.  We still have it.  We later got one with a flip top on it and put the old one in the laundry room.  By then, it was seriously cracked and falling apart because we'd dragged it around with the bricks in the bottom, straining the plastic.  In fact, it was so badly cracked and torn that it barely held a trash bag.  But for a laundry room wastebasket, it was fine.

Along came Mackie.

One day several weeks ago while Kala and I were out, Mackie set fire to the kitchen wastebasket.  Sasha was supposed to be watching him, but, we later discovered, his version of "watching Maksim" was for Sasha to play on the computer in my office while Maksim did what he pleased.  Mackie got hold of some matches I didn't even know we had, lit them one by one, and tossed them in the wastebasket.  Eventually, the contents caught fire.

Mackie had the presence of mind to fill a glass with water and pour it onto the fire, which put it out.  He didn't say anything to Sasha, who was so engrossed on the computer that he didn't even notice the house was filling with smoke.  (We still don't know why the smoke detector didn't go off.  It was on, and even now it goes off if you burn toast, but the wastebasket fire left it silent.)

When Kala and I got home, we found the house all smoky.  We thought one of the boys had made macaroni and cheese and spilled something on a stove burner.  Then I saw the flip top of the wastebasket was melted and looked inside.  The tale became clear.  I summoned both Sasha and Maksim and got the story out of them.  Sasha was totally amazed--he still had no idea that anything had happened.

A scene of unimaginable parentlal displeasure followed.  Sasha lost many privileges and several weeks' allowance.  He also now has to be in the same room with Maksim if he's babysitting, and we ask Aran, who won't lie, if he follows through on this.

At any rate, this all meant that we really needed to replace the kitchen wastebasket.  So I headed off to the store.

Found a new wastebasket.  And some new shelving for under the kitchen sink.  (The old stuff was a bunch of falling-apart crap.)  And a new lunch bag for me.  And some cleaning supplies.  It was nice having the van to put the tall basket into.

Got it all home and switched the wastebaskets around.  It seemed weird to put a wastebasket into a trash container, though.

April 5, 2009: Sunday Pancakes

This morning Aran asked if I would make pancakes.  I asked if he wanted regular or chocolate pancakes.  Silly question.

SUNDAY CHOCOLATE PANCAKES

2 eggs
1 3/4 cups milk
2 cups flour
1 t salt
2 T baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1 t vanilla
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup cocoa (Dutch process is best)

Beat eggs until fluffy.  Add milk and flour and mix well with a whisk or beater.  Add remaining ingredients and mix well.  Pour onto hot, greased griddle (though the non-stick coating on my electric griddle lets me do this without greasing).  Brown, then flip once.  Best if served with strawberry syrup, but are still really good with regular pancake syrup.  Makes about 14 pancakes.

April 5, 2009: Rally of Writers

Today I drove up to Lansing to give a pair of seminars at the Rally of Writers conference, an annual set of workshops geared for new writers.  The Rally brings in various Michigan authors who give a whole bunch of hour-long workshops (in addition to keynote speeches and stuff from a guest of honor).  This year, I offered to hold workshops on manuscript format and submission and on the role of emotion in writing.

My first workshop was scheduled for 10 a.m., and I thought about going up the night before and staying in a hotel, but I was just too tired from a very long week, so I got up at 6:30 on the first day of spring break to drive up this morning.  Of course, 6:30 is sleeping in for an hour to me.

Negotiated some unexpected construction that closed off a vital off-ramp thanks to my iPhone's GPS and arrived at the Lansing Community College location safely.  I brought in my roller suitcase full of books and supplies with half an hour to spare, which is how I like it.  In the main hallway at the college was a row of tables for the workshop presenters to set up books for display or sale, and I had plenty of time to set mine up.

I had about forty or fifty people at my first session, The Mechanics of Writing--the room was full.  I handed around packets of sample manuscript pages and sample cover letters and sample novel synopses, then went through them with the aid of an overhead.  The workshop also includes how to avoid getting scammed, an important part of any new author orientation!

The workshop was very well received.  Several people stopped me afterward to ask further questions and to tell me how useful the information was, which is why I run the workshop.  Manuscript format and submission is one of those things so often left out of creative writing programs, and while the Internet is handy for such things, you can get conflicting information, and the Internet can't answer questions.

Apparently word spread fast about the workshop.  During the break, I was at my table autographing books and several people stopped by to ask if I had extra handouts, which I readily gave over.

A very nice buffet lunch followed, and I had a break during a set of workshops I wasn't presenting in.  Then it was time for my second workshop: Emotional Filters.

I'd run a longer version of this particular workshop at Seton Hill once, so I knew what I was about..  When I entered the conference room a few minutes before the workshop began, I found the place packed with people!  All the tables were occupied, and people were crowding to the walls.  Some of the workshoppers were swiping chairs from other rooms.  I blinked, then trotted off to find the organizers and beg for more chairs.  They brought in a stack and we quickly set them around the room.

More and more people kept arriving.  And more and more.  We shoehorned them in.  Just when I was about to start, two more people arrived, and that was exactly how many chairs we had left on the chair cart.  There was no more floor space after that.

I stood up there, ready to begin, with probably close to a hundred pairs of eyes on me, and realized I should have been terrified.  But of course, I'm perfectly at home in a teaching situation, and that's what this was.  I did feel a little overwhelmed at the unexpected volume of people, though!  The pressure to be worthy of the crowd mounted.

I started off the workshop by showing a scene from the movie FRIED GREEN TOMATOES.  It's the bit where Evelyn smashes the hell out of the car belonging to those two mean girls.  I point out that we cheer because we've all been in Evelyn's shoes, but Evelyn does what we've fantasized about, and we're there with her.  The reason the scene works is that it's filled with emotion.  Then I have the group watch it again and write down all the emotions they see Evelyn go through.  We usually get ten or twelve.

Then I give specific ways to put emotion into a scene with specific examples, ranging from okay to excellent.  I wind it up with a short writing excercise in which volunteers can share what they wrote.

This workshop also went over extremely well.  Again, several people came up to me to tell me they liked it and to get follow-up information.  "This is exactly what I needed," one person told me.  "It gave me clear and specific writing tips and how-tos instead of nebulous stuff about 'finding my voice.' "

So go me!

This is, of course, the advantage of hiring someone who's a teacher as well as a writer to do these.  I bloody well =better= know how to give good workshop.  It's my field, after all.

I sold a bunch of books at my table afterward, including a drive-by.  The college holds Saturday classes, and one of the students, a high school sophomore or junior, wandered by to see what we were about.  He stopped at my table because he's a Ghost Whisperer fan and my book caught his eye.  I explained to him how I came to write it.

"I need something for the silent reading parts of my English class," he said.  "My teacher said I can't bring car magazines anymore."

So he bought a copy and I signed it for him.  Neat!

There was also much chatting with some of the other authors and the Rally coordinators.  We compared eDevices and such.  At last I packed up and headed home.  A great day!

April 3, 2009: Car Ha!




April 3, 2009: Vampires and Dragons

Donning my Grand High Inquisitor of Writing Hat for a moment:

If you want to write fantasy, don't start off with vampires or dragons.  Seriously.  It's hard as hell.

It seems to be a rite of passage that writers of fantasy have to do at least one dragon or vampire story.  You aren't =really= a fantasy writer until you've sold one.  Why?  Because they're freakin' hard to sell, and those of us who =have= sold one can look down our noses at everyone who hasn't.

This is why you probably shouldn't start with either one.

Dragons and vampires, two staples of fantasy, have been done.  And done.  And done.  And DONE.  Readers--and editors--aren't looking for a carbon copy of TWILIGHT or yet another set of DRAGONLANCE books.  There are many carbons of them out there already, for one thing, and they don't sell half as well as the originals, so editors aren't looking to acquire more.

This means that if you want to tell a story with a dragon or a vampire in it, you have to do something NEW.  Since people have been telling dragon and vampire stories for a few thousand years now, you can probably guess how often that happens.  Even if you think your take on vampires is fresh and original, chances are someone else already did it and you're writing in blissful ignorance of their work.

Not to say you can't do something that hasn't been done.  It's just a freak-load HARDER to sell it.  An old take will have to be way better written than a fresh take in order for it to interest an editor.   This is extremely difficult for veteran writers to do, and nearly impossible for new ones.  The late Marion Bradley, who bought many of my early short stories, lamented that new writers so often sent her competent stories about old subjects like vampires and dragons.  "They're good stories.  If they were about magic cows or something, I could use them," she told me.  "But I can't use good stories about vampires.  I can only use fantastic stories about vampires, and I almost never get those from new writers."

New writers are therefore better off looking for something more out-of-the-way to write about.  Magic cows, to use Marion's example.  The field is wide open.

So, to bring this all the way around to the original topic, fantasy writers often see it as a challenge and a rite of passage to actually sell a dragon or a vampire story (or book), just because it's so difficult to do so.

I've actually sold three dragon stories.  The first one was about a dragon that actually collected books instead of gold and had shapeshifted into a human being and disguised her horde as a giant, non-lending library to keep it safe.  Marion bought it for SWORD AND SORCERESS IX.  I thought no one else had come up with this idea until I saw a painting at an SF convention.  It was of a dragon curled protectively around a horde of books, and it was dated a year earlier than my story.  So much for originality!

My second dragon story was a rather better one.  It was set in a world where everyone, not just witches and wizards, took small animals as familiars.  But it turned out that dragons took familiars too.  They took humans, which they saw as small animals.  In this story, you never actually saw the dragon, though--only the hapless human it had taken as a familiar.

My third dragon story was a prequel to my first one, and it explained how the dragon became a librarian.  I stole from myself, but by now I was more comfortable with what I was doing and was on safer ground.  The story was later reprinted and used by the state of New Jersey on a standardized English test for eighth graders.

Now I'm actually working on a vampire story.  And it has to be funny.  Humor is bloody difficult.  Ask my agent varkat , whose book about a teenage fashionista vampire just came out.  I don't know if the story will sell or not.  My take on vampires?  You'll have to wait and see . . .

April 3, 2009: Break!

I'm on spring break now.  So why does that mean the weather has turned crappy?

April 3, 2009: Draftage

We have first draft of the vampire story!  Now I have to rewrite it.

March 31, 2009: Absence

Sorry for the lack of postings.  I'm caught between losing my grandmother's death, losing my intern teacher, and realizing I had mistimed a deadline, so I suddenly have no time to do more than post this tiny missive.

March 28, 2009: Monsters vs. Aliens

The boys wanted to see it, so I took them.

Meh.

Dreamworks does this a lot with their animation.  They take an idea with a lot of cool visuals in it and they barf it up on the screen without remembering that story and character actually make a good movie.

MvA starts when Susan gets smacked by a glowing meteor on her wedding day and grows to fifty feet tall.  The government whisks her away to a special prison for other mutated monsters, including cockroach-y mad scientist, a blob without a brain, the missing link between fish and humans, and a godzilla-sized fuzzy bug which also doesn't have a brain.  The trouble is, none of them have heart, either.  A squiddy alien invades the earth, so the army offers the monsters their freedom if they repel the invasion.

The performances are decent, especially Reese Witherspoon as Susan, but the script is so poor, the movie dies.  The plot wanders all over the place and never has a chance to build.  There's absolutely, positively no suspense.  I mean NONE.  The bad guy is a buffoon villain, and not once is there a moment when it seems possible he might win.

Each character is supposed to have a talent and a flaw.  I think.  Blob dissolves everything but is really stupid.  Missing link can swim really good but he scares people.  Dr. Cockroach can build machines out of nothing but is insane.  Insectosaurus is huge and strong but has no brain (oops, we did that one) and he's attracted to bright lights.  I think each one is supposed to overcome his flaw throughout the course of the movie and use his talent, but it doesn't quite work out that way.  They never really overcome their flaws and never fully use their talents.  And oh yes--the "surprise" ending with Insectosaurus ain't a surprise.  Not only did I see it coming, a little kid in the audience shouted it out long, long before it happened.

The dialogue is never very funny.  Once in a great while it earns a chuckle.  Usually it's just okay.  Often it's embarrassingly bad.  You could tell they were trying to be funny and failing.

Give this one a miss, folks.  Especially since they charge extra for the 3D glasses.

March 27, 2009: Peep!

From the backyard I heard spring peepers this evening. It's the first true sign of spring.

March 27, 2009: Mystery Writing--Not Mine

Sasha got an 80% on his "write your own murder mystery" assignment, and Aran got a 100%!

March 27, 2009: 28 Things

Catherine tagged me on this one:

Answer these 28 Things You Wouldn't Think To Ask. Then tag me so I can come and have a look.

1. Have you ever been searched by the cops? No

2. Do you close your eyes on roller coasters? No

3. When's the last time you've been sledding? February

4. Would you rather sleep with someone else, or alone? Depends on who the other person is . . .

5. Favorite place to go? Camping, woods, lakeside (but not a beach)

6. Do you consider yourself creative? Yes.  Yes, I do.

7. Do you think O.J. killed his wife? Yes.  Yes, I do.

8. Jennifer Aniston or Angelina Jolie? How about Jennifer Jolie?  Angelina Anniston?

9. Can you honestly say you know ANYTHING about politics? Yes. I've been a political activist.

10. Do you know how to play poker?  Po-ker? Nope.  Not a bit. In fact, I need someone to teach me because I don't know the rules.  I hear there's money involved or something.  Maybe we should get together and you can show me how it works.

11. Have you ever been awake for 48 hrs? Yes.  Yes, I have.

12. What's your favorite commercial? The ones with the MUTE button on.

13. Who was your first love? Tina Last.  We were five.

14. If you're driving in the middle of the night, and no one is around you, do you run a red light? Yes.  Yes, I do.

15. Do you have a secret that no one knows but you? If you mean only one, the answer is no.

16. Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees? You know you misspelled "socks," right?

17. Have you ever been Ice Skating? Yes.

18. How often do you remember your dreams? Usually.

19. What's the one thing on your mind now? The fact that my desk is too cluttered.

20. Do you always wear your seat belt? Yes.

21. What talent do you wish you had? Gymnastics.

22. Do you like Sushi? Yes.  Yes, I do.

23. What do you wear to bed?  In winter?  Flannel pajamas.

24. Do you truly hate anyone? Yes.  Yes, I do.

25. If you could sleep with one famous person who would it be? Why, that would be #$%^&*(@#$ . . . signal breaking up . . . #$*@$&^%^$%

26. What kind of socks do you like?  White ones.  (Oh! You =can= spell it!)

27. What food do you find disgusting? Anything with the eyes still in it.

28. Favorite Pizza Place? Cottage Inn!

March 24, 2009: Car 2.0

We decided to get the Cobalt.  By chance we'd made an appointment for today with the dealer to get more pricing information, and this was the only day I'd be in town until Friday.  I was also just not up for more car shopping any more.  And we got the family pricing, which Ford wouldn't give us.  So after school, Kala picked up the boys and I met them at the dealership.

It was the usual mess of signing and waiting around and more signing.  We refused the extra, over-priced warranties.  (I interrupted the finance guy in mid-pitch: "You can stop.  We don't want them.  We're done."  I tend toward brusque and impatient with sales techniques, I'm afraid, especially once the haggling is over--I just want to get the hell out.)  And then we =finally= got the keys.  The boys, of course, wanted to ride home with me in the new car.

The Cobalt is the first car I've ever driven that has a driver's seat which goes too far back for me to drive comfortably.  I actually have to pull it a little forward. (!)  I love being able to plug my iPhone into the stereo system.  Cruise control!  Remote start!

Weirdly, the battery is in the trunk.

And I'll be driving it up to Saginaw tomorrow morning.

March 24, 2009: Teaching Through

Everything happens at once, doesn' t it?

Another teacher in the English department at Nameless will be out on medical leave for a month, possibly longer, and she asked that R----, my intern teacher, be her long-term substitute.  This would be a great opportunity for R----, of course, both in terms of experience, building her resume, and getting her foot in the door at Wherever schools.  R--- also only had two weeks left of intern teaching anyway, so when the other teacher called me to ask if it would be all right, I agreed.

Then Grandma passed away.  Suddenly having all my classes back held less appeal (though I wouldn't have changed my answer even if the order of events had been reversed).

I taught all day today, dealt with a horde of minor issues on my prep, and after school put together lesson plans for the two days I'd be out, which included major revisions to what I'd already had planned.  I have no freaking idea what my mythology class is going to do on Friday, but I'll just have to deal with that when I get back.

It was very tiring, not because of the schedule, but because of previous events.  I kept stumbling across hidden pockets of grief during the day.  I'm also learning that there's a hidden fatigue that comes with death, and it wears at you constantly.

March 23, 2009: Arrangements


March 23, 2009: Ella B. Karow (1917-2009)

My grandmother died last night.  She was 92.  I was there with my mother, my cousin, my uncle,  and his wife.

Winter ended, too,.

March 22, 2009: The Fun Stage

Mackie is well into the Fun Stage.  This is, supposedly, the point at which children are at their best, the age between about six and twelve.  It's when they have enough independence to release you from the chore of constant care but are dependent enough to still need you.  They still think parents are cool.  They say and do cute things.  They're big enough to be fun to play with, but they still want to cuddle or be read to.

This is a first for me.

Aran didn't have a Fun Stage.  This isn't to say I don't enjoy being with Aran or playing with him or talking to him, but all interaction with him is filtered through his autism.  It's the elephant in the room, except we don't ignore it so much as deal with the fact that it takes up so much damn space it's hard to get to the Wii.  And I still tend to think, "How can I get Aran to _______ more?  What if I ask him about ______?  Or to ______?  Maybe I should challenge him by asking him some more abstract questions."  Even a game of Lazer Tag turns into play therapy because I don't dare miss an opportunity to help him develop.  So while Aran's Fun Stage . . . isn't.  Quite.

Sasha, of course, was just coming out of his Fun Stage when we adopted him.  We didn't even get the usual "honeymoon phase" that most adopted kids give their parents.  Sasha challenged us on the first day we took him out of the orphanage.  Six months later, he became a teenager, and six months after that, he entered adolescence.

Mackie was three when we adopted him, but was developmentally closer to two.  He regressed a little when we got him, too, probably in an attempt to be a baby again and make up for the fourteen months of his baby- and toddlerhood when he didn't have parents and his care came from a series of only semi-personal orphanage workers.  He "forgot" his potty training, he hoarded food, he wouldn't sleep by himself, he became a terror in school, and so on.

All of this completely skewed my expectations of childhood development.  I never expected my children to be nice, or simple, or fun.  I loved (love) them, yes, but it always came with a "What crisis is coming next?" question at the back of my head.

Now Mackie is settling into this Fun Stage I've heard about but never expected to experience myself.  He's incredibly cute.  He likes hugs and still wants to be tucked in at night, but insists on independence in the morning.  He runs around the neighborhood with the pack of local children, but he still thinks Daddy is pretty cool.  He wants me to go on bike rides with him, watch TV with him, play video games with him.  I don't have to think about how to phrase my questions for abstract content or wonder if he'll suddenly shift moods with adolescent suddenness.

So I'm going to enjoy it.

March 21, 2009: No BONES



March 21, 2009: More Car Shopping

I love my Cavalier.  Wonderful car.  But it has 180,000 miles on it.  It also needs about $2,500 worth of work (including new struts and a new compressor for the AC).  Therefore, it must be replaced.  I'd love to get a new Cavelier.  Unfortunately, Cavalier was a best-selling, reliable, reasonably-priced car, so Chevrolet stopped making them.  Ford did the same thing with the Escort.  (I don't know why car companies do this.  They get a successful, solid model, then they deliberately toss it aside and wail that their customers buy Japanese.)

Anyway, we got a powerful tax refund, and we went car shopping.  Again.

This time we're going brand new, partly because there are more incentives and partly because this car will get more miles put on it.

We'd already done a fair amount of on-line research and had narrowed it down to a Honda Fit, a Chevrolet Aveo, or a Chevrolet Cobalt.  We'd also looked at Ford Focus, but Ford wasn't offering very good dealer incentives with credit unions, so we set that aside.

First, Kala and I headed down to the Honda dealership on Michigan in Ypsilanti.  We met a Very Nice Salesman (they're always nice, aren't they?) named Mike, and we examined a Fit:



The Fit is a compact.  It has no face and no butt.  It handles well, and I liked the stuff it comes with.  It gets good mileage and, of course, has a sterling reputation for reliability, my top two priorities.  However, driver leg room is a problem.  I'm 6' in shoes, and my legs are long.  When the Fit's front seat is all the way back, my accelerator leg is still bent quite a bit, and my knee rests against the front panel.  The Fit has cruise control, which would obviate the problem for long rides, but for short ones or for highway drives with a lot of traffic (such as my commute), it might prove to be uncomfortable.  Also, there are absolutely NO dealer incentives.  I mean, NONE!  Not even 0% APR financing.  "We barely make $600 per car," Mike said, which annoyed me.  Not only do I not care how little the dealer supposedly makes on a car, I also caught it as a sales technique.

Next, we drove to a Chevrolet Dealer in Dexter.  First we looked at an Aveo:



It was pretty muich the same thing as a Fit.  It handles like one and has the same stuff, though it's way less expensive.  However, I found it even less comfortable to drive.  And autojim has since told me that the Aveo actually only pretends to be a Chevy; it's actually made in Korea and isn't very reliable.

Finally, we looked at a Cobalt:



It's a step larger than an Aveo.  =Way= more driver leg room--I could fully straighten my knee when I reached for the accelerator.  The highway mileage is the same as the Aveo and Fit, though the city mileage is a little lower.  Same accessories.  Weirdly, it has less head room; if I make an effort, I can knock my head on the roof.  Unfortunately, it comes with power windows and cruise control or no power windows and no cruise control (unless we want to give up certain incentives).  I don't like power windows and power locks; if something breaks on them, you're screwed until you can get them fixed.  Not much goes wrong with a hand crank or a push lock.  I don't want to live without cruise control, so I'd be forced into power windows and locks.

I was surprised to learn some models of Cobalt come without ABS brakes.  What fool would want to live in Michigan, land of snow and ice, without anti-lock brakes?  I refuse to own a car without them.

"What kind of incentives do you have?" I asked Randy, another Very Nice Salesman.

He sat down and looked it up.  0% APR financing or $2,500 off the price or 1.9% financing for 72 months.  In addition, they were knocking $1,000 off the sticker price of the Cobalt we were looking at.  Plus, Kala's brother works for Delphi, which would give us the S-Plan.

At this point, we had to leave for another appointment.  Ah, so cruel to dangle a potential sale before the Very Nice Salesman, only to cruelly yank it away.  But we're going back on Tuesday to get more details.

And we might still check out a Ford Focus.


March 21, 2009: More WATCHMEN

Headed out for another viewing of WATCHMEN this evening.  It was very long.  :)  I still liked it, but I needed a snack break partway through. And you have to be in the right mood for the relentless cynicism.

March 18, 2009: Fast Cookies

Breaking speed records today with making a batch of chocolate chip cookes for the boys' lunches so I can write this evening.

March 16, 2009: Twitter

Okay, I'm on Twitter now: http://twitter.com/StevenPiziks . If you've over there, let me know so I can follow you!

March 15, 2009: Adventures with iPhone

Okay, here's how it happened.

I bought my iPhone yesterday.  I felt I was ready to step into the world of hand-held Internet, and my old phone was eligible for upgrading.

Buying it meant first signing a contract (which I hate, but we're not planning on switching cell carriers anytime soon anyway) and then getting the phone switched on for me.  The very nice clerk transferred many files and much information, shook my hand, and said, "Welcome to the world of time wasting."

I got it home and did what you have to do in order to learn a new techno-gadget--I played with it.  I did have to struggle a bit to get it to connect to our WiFi (finally figured out I was giving it the wrong password, of which there are three to choose from) and download my e-mail (the iPhone automatically generated POP server information that was incorrect and I had to correct it manually), but once that was all straighted out, we were off to the world of tapping.

The screen is way fast and responsive.  It springs instantly to life and does what you tell it to without hesitation.  When you push a button or flick to the next menu, there is no load time.  I like that a lot.  And the special effects are cool.  Aran loves the way you page through photos by tossing them around with your thumbs.

I'm in love with the GPS and Google Map function.  No more getting lost, no more paper directions.

I also downloaded several apps to it--NPR, Pandora, Tic Tac Toe (Mackie's favorite restaurant game), New York Times, Facebook.

I'm getting better and better at using a touchpad typewriter.  Give me a couple of days and I'll be able to write stories on it.  :)

March 15, 2009: Castle

Kala and I watched CASTLE because we're Nathan Fillion fans from FIREFLY and wanted to see what he was up to.  The show is a male version of MURDER, SHE WROTE--a mystery writer gets caught up solving real-world murders.  In this case, though, the writer is a smart-mouthed, hard-drinking womanizer.

The show was decent.  A little uneven.  The poker game scene with the other (real) myster writers was priceless.  It got a bit tiresome when ever single male character on the show turned out to be a smart ass.  I mean EVERY SINGLE ONE.  (I kept track because I noticed the tendency early on.)  But the show is fast and snappy and worth staying with.'

March 14, 2009: Uh Oh . . .

Me have iPhone 3G now.  Me spend entire day playing wif it.  Me have no brain.  Me thumbs wore down to nubs.

March 13, 2009: Bones Trope

I'm reading BARE BONES, one of the books in the series that the TV show BONES is based on. The book is decent, and makes rather better reading than the Kay Scarpetta books. (I stopped reading the Scarpetta books because all the main characters are always angry at each other, and it really grinds you down.)
However, this particular BONES book makes use of a trope that I hate: the Interrupted Vacation.

This trope is always the same. Main character hasn't had a vacation in years.  MC makes Wonderful Vacation Plans. At the last moment (often when MC is heading for the door, suitcase in hand), the phone rings. It's the office. Some terrible event has taken place and MC must deal with it. In some variations, the terrible
event happens just before the MC is going to leave, and the MC tries to deal with the event in time to catch his/her vacation flight, almost always without success.

This trope shows sloppy writing. It's a poor attempt by the author to create conflict where none really exists. And the MC comes across as spineless. Anyone with a backbone would either 1) not answer the phone when she sees work is calling, or 2) say, "I'm on vacation. You'll have to find someone else."

In this particular novel, Temperence, the MC, is on a family picnic when the dog finds a bunch of half-buried bones. Temperence, who autopsies bones, whimpers--she's supposed to leave on vacation the next day. She has to identify these in time to catch her plane. And . . . bingo! They're bear bones, not human. But then
SHE STAYS TO DO MORE X-RAYS AND PAPERWORK. And, of course, an hour later (when she should have been long gone), she gets the news that a small plane went down in a fireball and they'll need her expertise to ID the victims. She'll have to put off the vacation further.

WTF? No, no, and no again. The moment she realizes the bones aren't human, she should say, "This isn't a murder case. Put these in the fridge and I'll get to them when I get back. Seeya!" And even if she were around for the plane wreck, she should be saying, "I'm on freaking vacation--OFF THE CLOCK. You'll have to find someone else."

On top of it all, Temperence's boyfriend Ryan is so totally understanding. Although they've already paid for the flight and the rental on a beach house, he seems completely content to fly down to her house instead and spend the week on her couch, watching TV and eating junk food and making fond love to her in the evenings. Never a single word of complaint or regret over a vacation it took them three years to arrange.

Any of you buying this? 'Cause I'm not. The conflict of the Interrupted Vacation invariably comes across as completely artificial, manufactured for the sake of having conflict. The case Temperence investigates is quite interesting in its own right and holds enough mystery to keep the reader's attention. Dump the vacation subplot! Ryan can simply appear on Temperence's doorstep for a surprise week-long visit. Since the main
subplot of the book seems to be Temperence trying to figure out the nature of her relationship with Ryan, there'd be plenty of conflict to work with there.

That's the main problem with the Interrupted Vacation trope, incidentally. It's artificial, clearly dropped in to create some fake conflict because the writer was too lazy or sloppy to come up with any =real= conflict. The Interrupted Vacation is not believable because it's so easy to solve, and it ruins an otherwise fun read.

March 10, 2009: Shakespeare Trash

I'm a Shakespeare trashaholic.   If there were a PEOPLE MAGAZINE and NATIONAL ENQUIRER for Shakespeare's time, I'd have every issue.  I don't care how many sonnets he wrote or that he delighted in puns or used lots of light and dark imagry in ROMEO AND JULIET.  I'm dying to know the trashy stuff.  Did he sleep with Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, or were they just really close friends?  Did he leave only his second-best bed to his wife Anne out of spite or because he knew she was otherwise taken care of?  Who was the Dark Lady and was his love for her more than poetic?  Where did they meet for their little trysts?  Did Anne know about them?  How well did Will =know= the Queen, if you get my drift?  Did Henry really give Will 1,000 pounds to build a house?  If so, were there . . . strings?  Why did Henry pose in drag for that portrait?  What kind relationship did Will have Kit Christopher Marlowe?  Did Kit and Will and Henry ever share a bed?  Did Will and Henry really help a friend sneak out of town after the friend killed a rival in a family feud?  Did Will help Kit Marlowe with his international spying?

C'mon, history!  We're dying to know here!  Everyone involved is long dead now, so why keep quiet?

We have a teeny tiny piece of this puzzle revealed today:

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1883770,00.html

At least now we know what Will looked like before he died, and that he was indeed a gentleman, at least by social stature.

March 9, 2009: Peace

This is cool:

http://positivepause.com/

March 7, 2009: Out of the Bathroom, Please!

DOLLHOUSE shows a man usiing a urinal when a secret agent sneaks up on him and grabs his shoulder.  Later, the agent tells the guy to wipe his shoes.

The same episode of DOLLHOUSE shows several men and women together in a community shower, completely unconcerned about the locker room atmosphere.  (We're supposed to think it's cool even as we're titillated.  We're not, thanks.)

A rerun of FRIENDS shows Joey wander into a restaurant bathroom, step up to the urinal, unzip, and hum to himself.

The latest BATTLESTAR GALACTICA shows Baltar shaving at the sink and holding a conversation with Starbuck, who is pooping on a nearby toilet.

Another episode of GALACTICA gives us Admiral Adama in his quarters, brushing his teeth with the foam gooshing around his mouth and dripping into the sink.

I've never seen an episode of ALLIE MCBEAL, but I've heard all about the shared mixed-gender restroom and the conversations held therein.

Can we get out of the bathroom, please?

I'm truly tired of scenes in TV shows and movies that show people peeing, pooping, and plastered with water in the bathroom.  It's not "cutting edge."  It's gross.  Do they think we viewers figure no one uses a bathroom in the future--or the present, for the matter--and we need to be reminded that the characters do?

I especially don't think science fiction shows that have shared-gender restroom facility are particularly "oooooo! futuristic."  I think they're adolescent.  And I think not trying hard enough.  There are many other areas of potential future culture to explore besides the bathroom facilities.

March 7, 2009: Watchmen

We saw WATCHMEN at the IMAX theater in Dearborn.  The 7:40 showing was totally sold out, but we'd bought advance tickets on-line.  The movie has been extensively reviewed in many places, so I won't give a full review here.  Instead I have comments:

--I liked it a lot.

--I wish it could have been done several years ago.  WATCHMEN is a period piece that becomes rather less relevant as time passes.

--Boy, they really made sure Doctor Manhatten was a . . . big boy, didn't they?  I'm trying to imagine the CGI team who worked on that.  Interesting, though, that it's taken a CGI-animated character (with an admittedly human base) to break the full-frontal nudity taboo for males.  (I don't count the short flashes that have shown up here and there.)  Women have been shown wandering across the silver screen in full-frontal for decades now, but WATCHMEN gave audiences the first real use of male nudity.

--Several of the reviews I read complained that the movie remained so close to the original source material that the movie was practically frozen or even embalmed.  Except these same reviewers howled that the movie 300 (by the same director) wandered from history and/or the original graphic novel and thereby made it less enjoyable.  Certain reviewers clearly want to use their platforms to do nothing but complain.

--The cameos of 80s personas were great!

--Rorschach was well done.  The prison scene was really good, and I like the way the parts with the prison psychologist were re-written.

March 7, 2009: Kala's Birthday

Kala turned 42 this week.  She calls it her second 21st birthday.  Also this week, WATCHMEN opened.  Kala's original 21st birthday came around the time she first read the graphic novel version of THE WATCHMEN, so she saw this as a divine confluence.  The cake I made reflected this:



I also got vanilla ice cream with chocolate topping that hardens into a shell when it gets cold, so we had Rorschach mask ice cream to go with.  Kala like it very much:






Why does this look so gruesome?


March 7, 2009: 25 Meme

My sister tagged me on this one:

TWENTY-FIVE THINGS ABOUT ME

1.    I grew up out in the country, and I was sixteen before I lived in a place where you could order delivery pizza.  The first time we did it, the whole process fascinated my brother and sister and me.

2.    A lot of my friends become surprised when they hear me talk about butchering chickens or shoveling the horse barn or bringing in hay because I talk like an English teacher instead of a cowboy.

3.    I have to write.  Characters and stories and opening lines come to me, and the only way I can get rid of them is to use them.

4.    I have a son who is autistic.  It’s had an enormous impact on my life.  I used to look for a reason for it, for someone or something to blame,  even if it were myself.  Now I accept is as just something that happens.

5.    I always use the phrase “a son who is autistic” instead of “autistic son” so that the first thing someone hears is “son” instead of “autistic.”

6.    It’s been over four years since I adopted Sasha and Maksim from Ukraine, but I can still remember with absolute clarity the moment I first laid eyes on both of them.

7.    I’m always a teacher.  I’m always looking for new and better ways to explain things or get a point across to people who don’t understand something.  I rehearse lectures and other lessons while I’m driving to work in the morning.

8.    I really get annoyed when people tell me teaching is an easy job because teachers get summers off and they get breaks at Christmas and Easter.  The vacations are indeed nice, but I don’t get paid for them, which makes things rather less easy.

9.    I sold my first piece of writing to THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS when I was fourteen.  It was an article about raising rabbits.

10.    I sold my second piece of writing to SWORD AND SORCERESS when I was twenty-four.  It was a fantasy short story.

11.    I play the harp, piano, and recorder.  I can puzzle out a fair number of other instruments and get some basic tunes out of them, given time.  It’s fun!

12.    I’m a caffeine addict.  I titrate diet soda until late afternoon to get it.

13.    I used to get frequent, crippling migraine headaches.  Now I take daily anti-seizure medication and lots of caffeine.  The two things keep them under control, and I rarely get the headaches anymore.

14.    I’ve been studying karate for a year and a half now, and I hold a second degree green belt.

15.    When I’m practicing karate or the harp, my mind stays completely focused on what I’m doing.  It doesn’t wander to other topics.  These are the only two activities in my life where this is true.

16.    I’ve never gone hunting, not because I’m opposed to it (as long as the kill is clean), but because I’ve just never been interested.

17.    I still remember the moment I wanted to be a teacher.  I was in fifth grade, sitting in Mrs. Deanna Pavlik’s classroom.  She was teaching fractions, and I realized I wanted to be a teacher.

18.    I did want to be an archaeologist from the time I was very small, and I almost went back to that dream when I was a sophomore in college.  I took a class called “primitive life” to satisfy a science requirement, and the professor saw my interest.  He offered to include me on a dinosaur dig that summer.  I almost went, then decided against it.  I think it was the right choice--I’m not meticulous enough for that kind of work.

19.    During the summer, I try to go for a bike ride every day.  I ride for miles down country roads, enjoying the green trees and farmlands.

20.    I have a wide anti-social streak which makes it difficult for me to make new friends and gives me the tendency to pounce on people who I seem to click with.

21.    When I was little, I hated macaroni and cheese.  I can tolerate now, more or less.

22.    I have a B.S German and speech/communication, a B.A. in English and health, and an MA in English.

23.    I’ve taught middle school, high school, and college graduate school.

24.    I think it’s important to exercise, but it’s equally important to do it in a way that you enjoy.  If you don’t like it, you won’t do it.  There’s always =something= movement-related that you like to do.

25.    I’m a night person.  I love summer nights especially and will walk or ride my bike for hours and hours after the sun goes down.

March 6, 2009: Get Fuzzy


Today's GET FUZZY struck me as particularly funny:



Snarf!

March 5, 2009: Cold

I stayed home yesterday.  This cold is kicking my ass.  I watched TV and napped all day.

March 2, 2009: Consumption


March 1, 2009: Today's Best Typo

"The starfish popped back into its plover shape, peeing like a tiny cheerleader."

February 28, 2009: Spam

The Wherever School e-mail server was flooded with virus spam yesterday.  Spam, spam, spam!  It came in the form of an e-greeting card supposedly from Hallmark.  I didn't even open it; I marked it Spam and blocked the incoming address.

Incidentally, if you've ever sent me an electronic greeting card, I never got it--I always delete them unread because so many of them are spam, viruses, or both.

And then another one showed up.  And another, and another, and another.  I spam-marked them all and deleted them unopened, more than a little annoyed.

We all later got a warning e-mail from IT that said, "Don't open the attachment!  It's a virus."

A couple of people in the building did open them and discovered to their horror that the thing hijacked their web browser and turned it into popup city.  Bleah!

February 27, 2009: The Kindle

The Smart Bitches blog did a rant against authors who have a problem with the Kindle 2's new audio feature.  I weighed in.  This is what I wrote:

I'm not sure if it's worth it to wade in here, but here goes.

I've written a dozen novels.  I'm not a big name.  I'm a struggling mid-lister.  I see the new Kindle's audio feature as a problem.

I love my readers.  I love that they buy my books.  I worked hard on them.  They're mine.  And I rented my publisher the temporary right to print them in certain formats.  My agreement with them didn't include audio rights.  Those rights belong to me.  I created the material, and I get to decide what happens to it, just like someone who built a house gets to decide what happens to it.

If I want to let the audio rights go for nothing, that's my choice.  If I want to keep them and do nothing with them, that's also my choice.  If I want to sell them (assuming somene is interested), that's my choice, too.

People who read my books aloud to their children aren't infringing on the ownership of my words because they aren't creating a mechanical reproduction of them.  A recording is a mechanical reproduction.  A machine that says my words aloud is a mechanical reproduction.  Mechanical reproduction rights are still mine.  I didn't agree to let Amazon have them.  They never asked it was okay with me.  It's as if I built that house, and Jeff Bezos decided to move in for a couple of weeks without calling first.

I don't worry about recordings for the blind or the otherwise handicapped as infringement.  I don't think anyone seriously believes I or my fellow authors do worry about it.  My middle son is autistic, and I know what it's like to deal with a handicap.

I really feel awful when people call me money-grubbing for saying I'd like to be paid for what I created.  I have a house payment, and my car has 178,000 miles on it.  I have three sons in middle and elementary school.  I adopted two of those sons from Ukraine, and it was really hard, and it was really expensive, and I had to go into debt to do it.  I'm very glad I did it because I love them, and I tell all three of my sons this every day.  But if I say I want to be paid for the hard work I put into my writing, I'm greedy or cruel or uncaring.  That hurts a lot.

February 26, 2009: Sasha and PTSD

We've been trying to find another counselor for Sasha for a while.  He saw one for about a year quite a while ago, but she went on maternity leave and never came back.  Over the last few months, he's been showing more and more signs of stress and difficulty, and we decided he had to see someone again.

We found one guy who didn't work out.  His version of counseling was to give lectures in psychology.  Some of what he said was useful, but it wasn't what Sasha needed, especially since he spent only about 10% of the time letting Sasha talk.  The other 90% of the time he talked to me or Kala.  He never saw Sasha alone.  So we ended it with him.

Wednesday Kala took him to another counselor, who seemed to work out rather better.  Kala said he responded well to her.

"Was he ever diagnosed with PTSD?" she asked at one point.

"Not formally," Kala said.  "But we kind of suspected, and so did his other counselor."

"Huh," she said.  I'll diagnose him right now.  He has PTSD."

I knew that insomnia, sleepwalking, audio hallucinations, and difficulty concentrating are symptoms of PTSD, and Sasha experiences all of these.   But Sasha has another habit, has since I've met him: he asks me to speak for him. 

One of the most common things I hear from him is, "Dad, tell Mom about that thing that happened," or "Ask Mom if I can use her computer," when Kala is sitting right there.  He'll ask me to tell his teachers things for him as well, usually when they're standing next to us.  I put this down to a strange version of shyness or low self-esteem, but it turns out this is a common symptom of PTSD in young people.

So now we have to see how best to treat it.

February 26, 2009: Book List

The BBC Book List meme is a little erroneous.  I found the original BBC post, and they didn't say anywhere on their site that I could find that the average person has read six of the hundred books.  And some books appear twice.  HAMLET is part of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE and THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE is part of THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, so you get double credit of you've read them.

But it's still kind of fun.  I've read 33 of the books all the way through and six of them partway through.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien PARTIALLY
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible PARTIALLY
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare PARTIALLY
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger PARTIALLY (It was stupid, so I put it down)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zifon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon X (Autistic son--I’m kind of required to)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X (I teach this every year)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding PARTIALLY (It was stupid, so I put it down)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville PARTIALLY
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson X
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X (several versions thereof)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert X
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factoy - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

February 26, 2009: Fever

Aran's Monday sickness continued to drag out.  Upset stomach, fever.  Bad fever.  104.  We gave him liquid fever meds and that brought it down to a more reasonable level.  Tuesday morning he was still miserable.  I called in for Wednesday so Kala could keep certain appointments on Wednesday because we knew Aran would still be ill.  (The boys are home on break, but although Sasha can keep an eye on his brothers for a short time, he can't do it when one of them is sick.)

He was sick all day Wednesday.  His fever broke early Thursday morning.

Now we're watching the other boys to see if they catch it.  And we're wondering if the food poisoning I had was really food poisoning or just a version of the flu.  I had no fever at all, though.  Hmmmmm . . .

February 24, 2009: Wikipedia

Someone wrote a Wikipedia entry about me.  And I think they're from England--the person wrote "novelisation" instead of "novelization."  Huh!

February 23, 2009: Ruh Roh

Aran developed a fever today, and this afternoon it shot up to over 101.  We checked his throat.  Hard to tell.  Kala finally took him to our doctor's after-hours clinic.  He's there now.  There've been cases of strep at his school, so we're wondering . . .

UPDATE

The quick test for strep came back negative, and Aran is feeling better after many infusions of ibuprofin and root beer.

February 20, 2009: Stir-Fryness

We have some avocados left over from the last batch of sushi, and I was wondering what to do with them.  I decided to throw everything together and see what happened.  This was the result:

WEIRD STIR FRY
1 lb chicken meat, cubed
1 pepper
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
pea pods
and any other stir-fry vegetables you might want
1 ripe avocado
1 T lime juice
A bunch of hoisin sauce

Peel avocado.  Cut in half, remove pit.  Mash.  Mix in lime juice.  Set aside.  Cut up vegetables.  Set aside.  Stir-fry the chicken and garlic together in your favorite cooking oil.  (I used sesame.)  Add enough hoisin sauce to cover meat and the upcoming vegetables.  Add vegetables and stir fry for 30 seconds.  Add avocado mixture.  Stir fry until vegetables are hot through but still crisp.  Serve over rice.

It was really, really good.

February 20, 2009: ROLCats

You know LOLcats, right?  Well, here we have the Russian and Ukrainian version.  The captions were run through a translator.  Sort of.

http://rolcats.com/

Extreeeeeemely funny!

February 19, 2009: Vaccines vs. Autism


February 19, 2009: Bumper Sticker

Kala took Aran to his piano lesson today (since I'm still not feeling great). When they got home, she announced she had a new favorite bumper sticker. It read: WHEN CHICKENS ARE OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE CHICKENS.

Aran didn't understand why she was laughing, and she tried to explain to him about the NRA and guns.

He said, "So the outlaws can shoot the chickens?"

February 18, 2009

I've been on mid-winter break this week, but haven't been able to really enjoy it because I've been sick.  It seems to be food poisoning of some sort, and it sucks.  It's also why it's been so quiet around here lately.

February 15, 2009: Funny!

I win!  I have the funniest

Jim Hines held a funniest joke contest: http://jimhines.livejournal.com/426598.html?view=6680166#t6680166 , and for the hell of it, I posted my favorite joke.  It won the readers poll.  (!)  So I get a free copy of THE STEPSISTER SCHEME, Jim's latest book.

I'm going to donate it to the school library where I teach to convert more Jim Hines readers.

And, for the record, here's the hilarious joke that won:

Four men were out golfing. They were having a pretty good time of it until one man hit a bad slice way off into the rough. While he was off looking for his ball, the other three men fell to talking.

"My son," the first man, "is an amazing guy. He's so rich and so generous, he bought a friend of his a car and didn't ask for one cent in repayment."

"Yeah?" said the second man. "Well =my= son is so rich and generous, he bought a friend of his a boat and didn't ask for one cent in repayment."

"Oh REALLY?" said the third man. "Well =MY= son is SO rich and SO generous, he bought a friend of his a HOUSE and didn't ask for one cent in repayment."

The three men bickered on about who had the best son until the fourth man showed up with his ball.

"What are you three arguing about?" he demanded. "I could hear you yelling all the down in the rough."

"We were just talking about how wonderful our sons are," one of the others said.

"Ah," said the fourth man. "Well, our son is gay."

"That's awful!" said the other men. "Terrible! Dreadful! You must be so ashamed!"

"Yeah, well, it's not as bad as you might think," said the fourth man. "He's had some nice boyfriends. One bought him a car, one bought him a boat, and one bought him a house."

February 14, 2009: Winter Food

After I got back from the radio interview, I put bean soup in the crock pot.  It simmered up deliciously and filled the house with smells of broth and ham.  Later in the day, I made cornbread muffins and Jello with bananas.  While the muffins were baking, I put together a batch of brownies.  Slid the muffins out and the brownies in just as we sat down for dinner.

Everything was so delicious.  The bean soup came out thick and rich.  The cornbread muffins were hot and tender and perfect with honey.  And afterward, we had hot brownies topped with a scoop of ice cream.  Here are the recipes:

STEVEN'S BEAN SOUP

(Note: if you use turkey ham, this is a really low-fat dish.  You can also omit the ham entirely, but the taste will be different.)

1 lb white navy beans
8 cups of beef bouillon (or 8 cups of water and 8 beef bouillon cubes)
1 1/2 cups diced ham or turkey ham (I always use turkey ham)
1 ham bone (optional)
3 fresh carrots, sliced into rounds
1 tsp fresh or dried parsley
1 tsp fresh or dried bay (crushed)
2 cloves garlic, crushed and diced
1 medium onion, diced
1 1/2 tb cornstarch
1/2 c hot water

Rinse navy beans well.  Put all ingredients except last two into crock pot.  Put on lid, turn on high, let cook for until beans are soft and soup is bubbling (four to five hours).  Once the soup is bubbling, add cornstarch to hot water and mix well.  Stir mixture into soup and replace lid.  Let cook for another hour or so to thicken.  Remove bone, if added.  Serves six.

GRANDMA FAYE'S CORNBREAD MUFFINS

2 eggs
3 tb flour
1 tb baking powder
1-1/2 c buttermilk
1-1/2 c corn meal
1 t salt

Mix all ingredients until just combined.  Divide evenly among 12 muffins in well-greased or paper-lined muffin tin or pour into greased 9x12" baking pan.  Bake at 350 until a toothpick comes out clean (about 15 minutes for muffins, slightly longer for a baking pan).  Serve hot with butter and/or honey.

SCOUT'S BROWNIES
(This I got from one of Diane Mott Davidson's books)

1 cup unsalted butter
 3 1/2 ounces best quality unsweetened chocolate
 3 tablespoons European style unsweetened cocoa powder (also called Dutch process cocoa)
 1 1/2 cups flour
 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
 1 teaspoon salt
  4 eggs
  2 cups sugar
  1 teaspoon vanilla
  1 cup good quality chocolate chips (though I often use two so I don't have half a bag of chocolate chips hanging around)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter with unsweetened chocolate in a double boiler. Set aside to cool. Sift together cocoa, flour, baking powder and salt. Beat eggs until creamy, and slowly add the sugar, beating constantly. Add vanilla and cooled chocolate/butter mixture. Stir in dry ingredients until just combined. Spread batter in buttered 9x13 pan. Sprinkle chocolate chips over surface.  Bake for 30-35 minutes or until center is set.  Let cool before cutting.  Serve with vanilla ice cream!

February 13, 2009: Interview, With Snow

When I woke up this morning, a fresh, slippery coat of snow covered everything.  Wahhhh!  I was hoping the snow-less conditions would last at least a little longer.  Sniff.

Drove on down to the radio station and hooked up with Comrade Sarah and radio host Marjorie Bolgos.  We headed into the little studio, which had four puffy mics poking out from a round table and a producer sitting at a sound board.  I was a little nervous--I've only done radio once before, and that was several years ago--but it was a lot easier with Sarah there.

The producer cued Marj and we were off!  Marj focused on me first, and we talked about THE PLAGUE ROOM, my GHOST WHISPERER book (on sale now!), and media book writing in general.  Then things shifted over to Sarah and bookviewcafe.com (visit the site today!), and then we talked about publishing and writing in general, ending with a bit on autism.  Everything went very smoothly.

A very good interview session.

February 13, 2009: Free Dental

My sister gave out free dental care at her practice a while ago:

http://www.9and10news.com/category/story/?id=148379

Go her!

February 12, 2009: Radio Interview

Sarah Zettel and I will be interviewed on Ann Arbor AM station 1290 AM WLBY this Saturday at 10:00 a.m. on their Lifestyles program.  We'll be talking about science fiction, writing, fandom, and anything else that comes up.  It'll be a call-in show, so people can also help give us something to talk about!  Give a listen!  You know it'll be anything but boring . . .

February 11, 2009: Car Problem?

The Cavalier seems . . . different.  I can't put my finger on it.  When it steers, it feels a little off, somehow.  It doesn't drag, exactly.  It doesn't pull in a particular direction, exactly.  It doesn't float, exactly.  But as someone who spends many, many hours a week in the thing, it feels different lately, like I'm being gently pushed around the highway lanes, just a little.

Have to get it checked out.

Also, the freakin' breaks are pulsing, and we JUST GOT THEM DONE.  Argh!

February 8, 2009: T&J

The boys love TOM AND JERRY.  The cartoon is =funny=.  Even taking into the occasional racist and sexist bits, it's very funny.  I think Sasha especially likes it because there's no dialogue to worry about.  The cartoon has aged extremely well.  Mackie has tracked it on the DVR and watches it whenever he can.

February 8, 2009: 24 Snarkage

This season of 24 is . . . bad.  It's so bad, it's funny.  It's not the slightest, tiniest bit believable.  I mean, you always had to suspend a certain amount of disbelief to watch the show, but this season, you really have to hang your disbelief by the neck over a lava pit with weights on its feet.  I mean, really!

--I'm willing to give them the magic computer widget that lets the terrorists of the month hack into the FAA system so they can crash planes at will.  But claiming that the same widget will also hack into the safety system of a chemical plant?  Right!

--So the First Gentlemen is able to sneak away from the White House with a single Secret Service agent.  He carries no tracking devices, no communication devices, no nothing.  No security camera sees him on the way out.  No security guard sees him, either.  And then he's able to meet in a public park and talk extensively with his widowed daughter-in-law at great length, and NOT ONE PERSON NOTICES?  To take this further, no one notices he's gone from the White House?  Not his personal assistant?  Not his secretary?  Not his staff?  Not one passing jogger, bicyclist, or dog-walker in the park sees and recognizes him?  The mind boggles with disbelief.

--The traitor Secret Service agent (whose treachery is never explained) paralyzes the First Gentleman with a drug, then stabs the daughter-in-law and puts the knife blade in the FG's paralyzed hand to put his fingerprints on it.  Next, he intends to string up the FG to make it look like a murder-suicide.  All this completely ignores that once the bodies are discovered, the entire building would be subjected to a forensic scrutiny so intense, it would make the CSI teams drool.  The investigators would instantly notices that the FG's clothes are completely clean of blood spatter.  His blood tests would come back with enormous amounts of drugs on them.  And the fact that the Secret Service agent was now missing would be a major point of scrutiny.  There's no way anyone would think it was a murder-suicide for even a moment.

--Fox's conservative bent is showing.  They cast a woman president, and when they picked out her husband, they cast a short, thin, balding, guy with the charisma of a small housefly.  I couldn't imagine him giving election speeches and whipping up support from a stadium full of people.  Fox apparently thinks that if a woman gets into the White House, her husband will be a whipped wimp.

--And further in this vein, Fox was supposedly going to go be responding to the wide-spread criticism about the amount of torture used in the previous season.  So they began the season with Jack Bauer testifying before Congress about all the thumbscrews he used on suspects.  (Why Congress, by the way, and not a judicial court?)  Okay, great!  He's been called on the carpet.  Except from the beginning, Fox makes it clear that Bauer's torture isn't meant to be a bad thing.  The Senator doing the questioning was deliberately shown as a pompous, officious ass.  An FBI agent spent considerable time telling Bauer that he thinks Bauer did nothing wrong.  And then, within three episodes, the FBI agent Jack is teamed with ends up TORTURES A SUSPECT.  What the hell?  This is how Fox says that torturing suspects is a bad thing?

--Tony's resurrection doesn't fly.  They did some very bad handwaving to bring him back.  It was basically, "He's alive because we said he is."

--Chloe doesn't work in this season.  Her character is the most interesting when her personality conflicts with whatever team she's forced to work with.  This season, she isn't working with anyone she conflicts with, and her character isn't as fun to watch.

Sigh.

February 7, 2009: Still Proposin'

Got the first draft of the middle-grade proposal done last night.  Go me!

February 3, 2009: Just Proposin'

These days I'm working on novel proposals--synopses, really.  I'm experimenting with a couple of new things.  I want to see if I can pull of a YA fantasy and a mid-grade (age 9-11) fantasy.  It's a different sort of writing in some ways.  The pacing is way faster, and I'm "allowed" to be more creative in some ways.

The YA synopsis is roughly done and is awaiting beta-reader commentary. 

The mid-grade synopsis is about halfway done.  It seriously stalled out for a while, though.  The story is about three cousins--two girls and a boy--whose families spend every summer together Lake Michigan.  And then one summer, things turn strange.  It's the book with the opening line "Ryan November woke up on his eleventh birthday and knew he'd be able to foresee the future by breakfast."

I knew exactly why Ryan would be able to see the future, and I knew what his two cousins would be able to do, too.  But the story wouldn't gel, and I knew it was because the characters weren't quite right.  I had backgrounds and biographies for them.  I had personalities and preferences.  But they didn't grab me or make me say, "Neat!  I want to know more about them."

And then Ryan flipped on me.  His ability to see the future had to come out of something to do with him.  He sees the future (as opposed to, say, the past) because he wants to.  He needs to.  And reason he needs to is because he's autistic.  Seeing the future would help make sense out of an impossibly chaotic world.  And obviously, I know quite a lot about it.  So Ryan became an autist who can see the future.  It's both a power and a crutch.

This, of course, had major repercussions on his two cousins.  They both love Ryan, but Allison is fiercely protective of him while Gwen wishes he wouldn't be so weird all the time.  This in addition to their own character quirks.

The moment I came up with this, the story started moving again.  Almost instantly I saw where the story would have to go, what the climax would have to be, and how it would have to end.  Now I just have to figure out a few details about how things will get there, and I'm good.

We'll see if this works.  I'm enthusiastic about this project, and about the YA synopsis, too.

February 2, 2009: The Mess

You'd think an autistic kid would insist on a tidy room.  Nope:



This is Aran and Mackie's room.

And then there's Sasha's place:



Note the manga draped over the lower corner of the bed.

I think there will be a Day of Cleaning soon.

February 2, 2009: Comic Column

My agent Lucienne Diver is running a series of blogs about comic publishing, including this one about writing comics:

http://varkat.livejournal.com/63374.html

Go look!

February 2, 2009: Today's Illusion

I like these Lego Escher thingies:



The web site for them, complete with explanations as to how they did them, is here: http://www.andrewlipson.com/escher/ascending.html .

February 1, 2009: Groceries

Kala hurt her foot yesterday, so today I had to do the grocery shopping.  I hate grocery shopping, which is why Kala usually does it.  And since we both work, it has to be done on the weekend, when the store is the most crowded.

But today I went in and discovered the store was almost deserted.  Ah!  Everyone did their shopping yesterday so they could get ready for the big game today.  We're not a football family, so it didn't matter to us.

They also had their "Buy 10 specially marked prodctus and get $5 off your bill today."  But this time around I noticed the products advertised usually had a competing product that was at least a dollar cheaper.  I would have spent more than $10 to save $5.  So I avoided that.

And now I'm home.

February 1, 2009: Comfy Sweats

For Christmas my mother gave me a set of matching sweats.  I like them a lot.  They're very comfortable and they look nice, so I wear them when they come out of the laundry, and then they get dirty and they go right back in.

February 1, 2009: The Presents

My in-laws came down fo rthe play and afterward they took us all out for supper and belated birthday presents.  Granny and Popa gave Sasha a yellow fleece.  ("Check the pockets," Granny whispered, and Sasha found money in them.)  I was informed my present was "too heavy" to bring inside, so after dinner, we went out to their car.  In the trunk was a box of . . . baking stuff!  It was a continuation of the Christmas theme.  There was flour, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, chocolate chips, brickle, peanut butter chips, and more!  Cool!
Sasha wears his fleece all the time.  He says it's extremely warm.  And I have cookies to make.

February 1, 2009: The Play

Aran's sixth grade drama class wrote, cast, and produced their own play, and Friday they performed it.  It was called YOU THINK YOUR PAYCHECK IS SMALL?

The story was . . . let's see . . . It takes place on the set of a TV sitcom called YTYPIS?  The show is running into problems because everyone hates the director and the show is running over budget.  When the director turns up dead, the problems only get worse.  Aran played the camera man, who was struggling with both laryngitis and antiquated camera equipment.

The play was WONDERFUL! Marvelous!  Worthy of a Tony!

(Is Aran looking?  No?  Okay.)  It was about what you'd expect when a group of sixth graders wrote and acted in their own play.  It alternated between cute and painful.  And there were some funny moments.

Aran never missed a line or an entrance and did very well.  We maintain the main flaw in the play was that Aran didn't have enough lines.  :)

February 1, 2009: Weather Wow

It's 40 degrees out!  I shut off the furnace and opened all the windows to air out the house for the first time in weeks and weeks.  I'm going to take Sam the Dog for a walk in the abandoned meadow, too.  And the sun is shining.

Amazing how nice 40 degrees feels after weeks of sub-zero weather, innit?

January 29, 2009: That Didn't Take Long

The same day we connected our new VOIP landline, we started getting sales calls.  THE SAME DAY.  I registered with donotcall.gov before the phone was even turned on, but it takes them a while to get the number on the lists.

January 29, 2009: First Line

This first line won't go away:

"Ryan November woke up on his eleventh birthday and knew he'd be able to foresee the future by breakfast."

So now I'm using it.

January 25, 2009: Education

This article exactly describes Sasha's position:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/education/25ellis.html

(Requires free registration, but I've never been spammed because of them.)

New York City classrooms have long been filled with children from all over the world, and the education challenges they bring with them. But hidden among the nearly 150,000 students across the city still struggling to learn English are an estimated 15,100 who, like Fanta, have had little or no formal schooling and are often illiterate in their native languages.

More than half of these arrive as older teenagers and land in the city’s high schools, where they must learn how to learn even as their peers prepare for state subject exams required for a diploma.

“They don’t always have a notion of what it means to be a student,” said Stephanie Grasso, an English teacher at Ellis Prep, which opened this fall and is New York’s first school devoted to this hard-to-educate population. “Certain ideas are completely foreign to them. They have to learn how to ask questions and understand things for themselves.”

Sasha will graduate high school at age 21, though in my more scared moments, I wonder if he'll graduate at all.  There's so much he doesn't know that other seventh-graders take for granted.  Sasha came to us not knowing that the earth revolves around the sun instead of the other way around.  He still can't add or subtract in his head.  He can't tell time and doesn't know how long a month is.

In high school, he'll be expected to complete four years of English, three years of math, and three years of science, among other requirements.  I don't know how he's going to do it.  It frightens me quite a lot.

January 23, 2009: Much-Belated Birthday

Sasha has turned 16.  This is very strange.  It doesn't feel like he's 16 to me, mostly because he's still in seventh grade and he doesn't really act like a 16-year-old, and this is fine.  If he needs to slow down his childhood, we're happy to let him.  While it had good parts, his childhood in Ukraine was harsh in many ways.  We can let him slow down and rebuild.

No, he isn't getting his license anytime soon.  He isn't ready, and he doesn't want it, in any case.

Biologically, however, Sasha is 16, and there are flashes of the mid-teenager that show up.  He hasn't been my son for even five years, and he's moving past childhood.  It's like I've leased him or something.

At any rate, Sasha said that for his birthday present, he wanted to have a party with his friends at the bowling alley.  I called the bowling alley, and it turns out they do have a party package that includes two hours of bowling, shoes, a large pizza, and a pitcher of pop.  We asked for two lanes (which included two pizzas, etc.) and ordered an additional pizza and pitcher.  Sasha invited six friends, the max I said he could bring.

The weather on the morning of the party was dreadful.  Much snow, much cold, much wind.  We got a call from one parent asking if the party was still on, and we said it was.  By early afternoon, the bad weather had cleared out and the roads became rather more driveable.  We all piled into the new van and drove to the bowling alley.  Four of the invitees showed up--pretty good, considering the roads and cold.

The boys (including Aran and Maksim) bowled and played around.  The pizza came, and there was much munching.  We lit the cake (home-made carrot), and there was more munching.  More bowling followed.  It was a very good afternoon, really--a good way to get people out of the house after being confined for so long due to bad weather.  Sasha had a really good time.

January 22, 2009: Irrational

I've become a major fan of these people:

http://www.irrationalpublicradio.com/

They spoof NPR (and a whole lot of other stuff) in a style reminiscent of Monty Python.  Extremely funny!  Their podcasts are available free through iTunes, too.  Give 'em a listen!  Hilarious!

January 21, 2009: Winners!

Thanks for sharing, everyone!  This made for compelling reading.  Maybe there's a book here.  :)

I have to say this contest really took me back to the various dangerous things I did as a kid, some condoned and some not.  And it's incredible that anyone manages to reach adulthood!  :)  Or maybe it's incredible how frightened we've become as a society.  Are merry-go-rounds and teeter-totters really so dangerous?  How many neighborhoods really are so unsafe that kids can't be allowed to roam?  Is it possible, or even desirable, to eliminate all danger from kids' lives?

At any rate, it was impossible to choose a single winner out of the fifty-odd responses, so I was forced to choose the top three.  (Even that was difficult.)  Winners were based on 1) how closely it came to the requirements of the original question (the dangerous activity had to be condoned by society Back Then but outlawed now) and 2) how hair-raising the activity was in purely my opinion.

I did sort-of disqualify people who I see FTF, since they can have a copy of one of my books anytime they like.  :)

TOP THREE (IN THE ORDER THEY WERE POSTED)

(Anonymous) (205.188.117.134) wrote:
Jan. 17th, 2009 03:02 pm (UTC)
The summer camp I attended from ages 12 - 14 specialized in outdoorsmanship, and we went hiking all over the Adirondacks. To get from the camp to the trailheads, we'd ride in ex-Army deuce-and-half trucks, the classic "canvas-top" kind with two longitudinal benches down each side. We'd cram onto the benches, with all our packs heaped in the center space (no seat-belts, and the gear not strapped down) and go bouncing over mountain roads, around hairpin turns with sheer drops. The only thing keeping anyone from falling out the back was a low tailgate and a chain (the counselors sat on the end seats for "safety.").

My response: Yikes!  Made my stomach lurch just reading about it.  An accident, a sudden stop, or even a huge bump, and you'd have camper stew.

(Anonymous) (141.157.75.146) wrote:
Jan. 17th, 2009 03:11 pm (UTC)
Danger...

I once caught some scorpions that were on my parents bedroom wall, put them in a glass jelly jar and took them to school. I got in trouble--not for bringing the scorpions--but because they were in a GLASS jar and kids might get cut if it broke.

annycook67@yahoo.com

My response: Of course it was the jar that was the problem.  This is a SCHOOL, after all  . . .

[info]sartorias (75.80.116.146) wrote:
Jan. 17th, 2009 04:47 pm (UTC)
Kids used to put quarters into the x-ray machines at Innes Shoes to see their own bones. (We didn't because my mom wouldn't let us--not with three kids, which meant almost an entire dollar wasted. I remember how bitterly we whined, especially when we saw other kids getting their school shoes who got to put in quarter after quarter.)

My response: And today the x-ray tech dives behind a lead-lined wall before dosing a patient with any type of x-ray.  Who knew radiation could cause so much trouble?

Anonymous, Anny, and Sartorias, please drop me a note either here at LiveJournal or at spiziks-atsign-sff-dot-net .  Let me know which book you'd like, who to sign it to, and where to send it.

This was fun, everyone!

--Steven

January 16, 2009: Contest!

Danger!  It's a part of life.  Are we going too far in trying to rid ourselves of it?  Without danger or risk, what kind of stories would we have?  Does Melinda care about danger when she tries to help a spirit cross over?  Does Starbuck worry about risk when she hurls her ship after Cylon raiders?

So the question is:

Back in the Old Days, what did you routinely do, or were you allowed to do, that would be outlawed today as Totally Unsafe?

Post your answers here.  Whichever one I judge the most hair-raising by Wednesday, January 21 will win an autographed copy of GHOST WHISPERER: PLAGUE ROOM or BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: UNITY or STAR TREK VOYAGER: THE NANOTECH WAR.

The post must be true, and it must be something that our society used to think was fine but now finds unsafe.  (Jumping off the garage roof into a patch of poison ivy was still frowned on fifty years ago, even though kids may have tried it.)

For example, when I was a kid, my parents owned a pickup truck with a single bench seat.  There wasn't quite enough room for everyone to sit, so I usually stood in the little gap behind the seat and the rear wall of the cab.  An accident would have sent me straight through the glass.  And none of us wore seatbelts anyway, so my family would probably have joined me.

What did you do?

Enter at my LiveJournal here: http://spiziks.livejournal.com/110522.html







January 16, 2009: Presenting . . .

I made a short presentation during today's staff development.  Nothing calms the nerves like making a speech to professional public speakers!

See, recently the district decided to add a public speaking component to the core English curriculum, meaning all year-long English classes have to have a formal speech in the third marking period.  English 9's is a demonstration speech.  English 10's is informative.  English 11's is persuasive.   In order to track student improvement, all speeches would be graded on the same rubric and the scores entered into a computer program designed to track such things.

The problem was with the rubric we got from the district.  It was more for an essay, not a speech.  After I went through some back-and-forth with the Person In Charge at the district level, I finally sat down and redesigned the rubric from top to bottom and side to side.  (This is what happens when you open your big mouth, see.)  It was well received by some, opposed by others, and that was the last I heard of it.

All this happened last year.

On Tuesday, I learned that my rubric was being adopted district-wide, and would I please do a presentation on it to all the English teachers in the district on Friday?  Oh!  Uh, sure.

So I had to give a speech to professional public speakers about giving speeches.

I kicked ass.  :)

January 16, 2009: Deep Freeze

The deep freeze continues.  It's been below zero, into double digits below with wind chill.  Yesterday (Thursday) was absolutely horrible outside, and I think the only reason school wasn't canceled at Wherever is that we're in final exam week.  Kala said rumor had it in Ann Arbor that the superintendent there regretted not canceling school.  "You try explaining to eight cognitively impaired students for the third day in a row that they can't go outside to play," she growled.

Thursday was the last day of finals, and Friday (today) was a staff development day at Wherever.  Ann Arbor was scheduled to have school, but they did cancel it for cold, and when AA cancels school, AALC (the boys' school) cancels.  This meant that I had to get up and go to school in the bone-cracking cold while everyone else in my family slept in and stayed home.

It's awful outside.  Just dreadful.  It's been like this for days now, and it's very wearing and difficult on everyone.

January 16, 2009: Illusion

Here we have Escher--re-imagined:



Ow.


January 15, 2009:  New Van

Once the vet declared Sam good to go, Kala and I piled him back into the car and we drove straight to the car dealership.  There, we signed form after form after form.  The Friendly Salesman offered us an extended (and rather expensive) warranty.  We gave it brief thought, then declined.  In my experience, extended warranties aren't worth the money.   Sam waited patiently next to our chairs the entire time.

At last, the Friendly Salesman gave us the keys.  We put Sam in the back of the new van, Kala got in, and off she went.  I met her at home.  We had a new van!

Mackie was utterly thrilled.  For the last six months, the boy has talked about a van as if it were the Holy Grail.  He would just go on and on.  "Will we ever get a van?  When will we get a van?  I hope we get a van.  It would be so cool to have a van!"  I have no idea why this should be, but it is.  He examined the thing from every angle and with enormous enthusiasm.  When I announced I needed to get canned food for Sam and did anyone want to go with, Mackie scorched a trail to the door.  Aran and Sasha followed a little more slowly.

Mackie climbed into a little piece of heaven.  His choice between a captain's chair in the middle, or a bench chair in the back!  So much room!  A ceiling compass that tells you which direction you're going!  Sliding doors on both sides!  Just incredible!  I think he'd've moved in if I'd let him.

January 14, 2009: Sam's Mouth

Last night, I tossed Sam the Dog a bite of food, and when he caught it, he screamed.  It was a horrible, high-pitched yelp of pure pain.  Startled, I called him over and tried to open his mouth to see what was wrong.  The moment I laid hands on his muzzle, he did it again.  I pulled back, not wanting to hurt him more.  This morning, he refused all food.  He's in obvious pain.

We're suspecting a bad tooth, which will mean sedation and pulling.  Kala made a vet appointment for him, and the only slot they had was for 5:00.  She thought this would be plenty of time to deal with car stuff.  Little did we know.

Poor Sam!

UPDATE

The vet was able to see Sam early, and he determined that Sam just had a very painful chancre sore.  It would heal on its own.  We just needed to give him soft food for a few days.  That was a relief!  No expensive vet bill, and Sam wouldn't have the pain of a pulled tooth.

January 14, 2009: Car Shopping 3

Okay, we made an offer on the Freestar for $1,000 below asking, figuring they'd counter with $500 below asking, which is what they did.  The taxes and fees ate up everything that was lopped off, though.

Then came the snag.  Our credit union refuses to accept faxed signatures on the final loan form and they won't transfer funds electronically.  This meant that Kala and I would both have to drive to the CU to finish the paperwork and get the check.  Our CU is up in Wherever, about 40 minutes away.  Normally this would've been an inconvenience or annoyance.  However . . .

Our wonderful Michigan winter, so great for skiers, was making things dangerous for drivers.  Blowing snow, falling snow, slick roads.  Kala and I got on the highway, and straighaway hit stopped traffic.  An accident had completely halted all movement.  Fortunately for us, we "only" sat there for about fifteen minutes before the towtruck pulled the cars in question aside, opening up one lane.  I drove with extreme caution and slowness.  About a mile further north, we saw the remains of another accident (one car, two ambulances).  We switched to the second highway of our journey, and a couple miles further down, we got into =another= traffic stop due to an accident.  This one involved a pair of firetrucks, two towtrucks, three police cars, and three civilian vehicles.

Our enthusiasm for driving farther dropped sharply.  C---, the Friendly Salesman, had told us about other places we could apply for auto loans, but we had elected not to run them, since we already had approval from out CU.  I exited the highway while Kala called him to ask if we could still go through someplace more local.  He said we could, and he took the info over the phone.  And we drove carefully home.

Kala is now picking up the boys.  However . . .

C--- just called to say the car will be ready at five.  Except Sam the Dog has a vet appointment at five, and he =has= to go.  (See the next post.)  The dealership closes at 6:00.  We want the van tonight.

Why does everything happen all at once?

January 13, 2009: Car Shopping 2

More car shopping.  We can't find any used Odysseys =anywhere= (except for one that was way outside our price range).  People apparently don't want to give them up.  We found a 2004 Kia Sedona with 58,000 miles on it, and they're asking $8,900 for it.  It's decent, but the price must come down for us to get it.

We also found a 2004 Ford Freestar with 65,000 miles on it, and they're asking $7,900 for it.  MINUSES: I don't know this model.  Ford's minivans don't have the greatest reputation, and they seem to have phased them out.  PLUSSES: We've bought two cars from this dealership before, including the current used Escort, and both cars lasted until they simply fell apart; this place's cars seem to be trustworthy.  The Freestar is quite a lot less expensive than the Kia.  The dealer may take a little for the Escort for trade.

A friend of Kala's who's good with cars says the Freestar is a good second choice.  (He also said he wouldn't touch the Kia.)  I've done some on-line research, which, as always, turns up a mixed bag.

January 12, 2009: Sleddin'

Once the blizzard cleared out, I elected to take the boys out sledding.  The sled hill at the park we favor has two choices--a tall, steep hill which attracts older sledders, and a lower, gentler hill favored by small children.

Every year, Aran freaks at the sled hill and won't go down unless I'm on the sled with him, which rather defeats the idea of taking him sledding, especially since Mackie also wants me to sled with him.  Quite often Aran will go down once with me, then flatly refuse to do it again.  He wigs out if snow blows into his face or if the sled shows signs of spinning out or turning over--chaos is the most dreaded thing of all to an autie.  Each year, I keep hoping he'll have matured a bit and outgrown this, and every year it never happens.

Same this year.  Aran went down the hill once with me and absolutely refused to do it again, even though nothing went wrong.  Mackie also didn't like going down the hill unless Sasha or I was in the sled with him.  I like sledding, but it's difficult to sled and keep an eye on three kids all at the same time.

Finally, I announced that we were going to go over to the little kid hill.  Aran showed signs of stubbornness, which I circumvented thanks to several years of experience at it.  Mackie was fine with it, and Sasha was old enough to sled at whichever hill he liked.  At the lower hill, Mackie was happy to go down on his own just behind the sled Aran and I shared. 

And after that one trip, Aran was fine.  He sledded the rest of the time perfectly well on his own, zipping down the hill and running back up, towing the sled behind him.

It was then that I worked out what the real problem was.  Aran wasn't afraid of the height.  He was afraid of the bumps.

Every year, the older kids (meaning teenagers) shovel ramps and bumps into the snow on the larger hill.  Since these kids never think of anyone but themselves, they always put them smack in the middle of the main sled runs instead of off to the side.  It's extremely easy to blunder into them, even when you don't to go anywhere near them--especially if your sled control is poor (like Aran's).  Aran was mostly freaking at the idea of hitting the bumps.  The lower hill didn't have any, so Aran was perfectly fine and had great fun.

Mackie also loved it.  He tried a few runs on the saucer, and even wanted me to put a spin on it when I pushed him down the hill.  Sasha alternated between the two hills, sometimes going down with Mackie.

Eventually they all got tired out and it was time for home and hot chocolate.

January 12, 2009: Car Shopping, Take 1

The snowstorm was a major problem because we'd been planning to do some serious car shopping on Saturday.  We braved the storm and creeped out to a nearby Kia dealer for a test drive on a 2004 Sedona with 65K miles on it.  It handled very well despite the bad roads and we liked it, but it was outside out price range.  I love to bargain, though.

The storm was just too nasty for us to consider looking at anything else or at any other dealerships, so at this point we went home.  Sigh.

January 12, 2009: Quit It!

Friday evening it snowed and snowed.  Then it stopped.  Saturday morning it started again.  It snowed and snowed and snowed.  And snowed.  Many, many inches fell.  We shoveled the driveway three times.

Up north, where snow in Michigan traditionally falls, they got not a flake.

January 9, 2009: The Hierarchy

Okay, this is funny:





January 9, 2009: So Much Cuteness

On one side of me sat the cat, on the other sat Maksim.  Kala lay on the loveseat.  Mackie hiccupped, and hiccupped, and hiccupped again.  I suddenly grabbed his leg and said, "Boo!"

The cat freaked.  Kala levitated several inches off the loveseat.  Mackie went, "Eeep!" then laughed.

"Are your hiccups gone?" I asked.

"No, but mine are!" Kala said.

And Mackie hiccupped again.

"I need to drink something that doesn't have hiccups in it," he said seriously.

Kala was trying not to laugh.

"What should you drink?"

"Maybe lemonade," he said.  "That doesn't have hiccups in it."

He ran off to get some and once he was out of earshot, we both had to laugh.  How can so much cuteness get compressed into one little person?

January 9, 2009: Good Teaching

I recently revamped a whole lot of material in media literacy.  I put together a wonderful new unit on shopping and consumerism: how stores get people to buy, the shortcuts packagers and advertisers use to tell customers what the product is for (dark colors = rich flavors; light colors = low calorie; water = cleansing/refreshing, etc.), how people shop, etc.  The whole thing required enormous amounts of research, and I was able to pull it off because R----, my intern teacher, has my two English 9 classes.  (Contrary to popular belief, I don't nap or play video games or eat bonbons during my "off" time; I do all the research and revamping I've been dying to do but don't usually have time for.)

As a whole, the unit went extremely well.  The class responded to the material with interest, and there was quite a lot of, "Oh yeah--totally true!" when I pointed out various aspects of human nature when it comes to shopping.  One fact I came across, for example, is that women tend to demand bargains more than men do, something the formal dress industry depends on.  If a high school female brings Mom along to shop for a prom dress, she'll end up with something less expensive.  If she wants an expensive dress, she needs to bring Dad, who's more likely to be willing to pay a higher price (because being able to pay lots reaffirms his manliness and/or because he doesn't want to spend time bargain-hunting).  I asked the seniors females in the class if this was true.  Nods all around.

"Completely," they said.  "Same is true when you're shopping for school clothes.  Bring Dad, not Mom."

Which also informed the males in the room about their own subconscious buying habits.

For another activity, we watched a video I'd just acquired about the aforementioned shortcuts.  The next day, I had them go through magazines.  Each student had to find an ad that used one of the shortcuts, mount it on construction paper, and write the prinicple across the bottom.  However, I realized fairly quickly that I had allotted way too much time for this, so I added to it.  I set up a document camera that could project a paper image like an overhead can project a transparency, then had the students come up by rows, show each picture, and explain which principle the ad used.  Then they hung their findings on the walls around the room, creating a classroom-sized collage.

The whole thing went really well.  The students learned the shortcuts well enough to find them in ads, were able to see them in their native environment instead of just in a lecture or video, and see exposed to the ones their classmates found.

The other activities in the unit went equally well, and I created all of them from scratch.  The advantage of several years' experience.  :)  The unit's a definite keeper.

January 9, 2009: More Snow

The weather service predicted a storm for today.  At first it was supposed to start in the evening.  Then it was in the late afternoon, then early afternoon.  At twelve sharp, the snow began.  It snowed and snowed and snowed.

The roads were getting iffy by the time I left school.  Usually I stop at home for a while before picking the boys up from school, but the highway was so slow, I had to go straight to their school.  On the way, I passed two accidents.  The second one was a Total Destruction.  The pickup truck involved was smashed up so badly, the driver's side of the truck bed was folded down and the cab was thoroughly crushed.  Two fire trucks, three cop cars, two ambulances.

Got the boys, and then we edged slowly back home.  I left school at 2:20 and arrived home at 4:15.  But everyone arrived safely.

January 6, 2009: Back to Piano

After a holiday hiatus, Aran has returned to piano lessons.  I took him over today.  It went very well.  Aran played some of his previous songs as if there'd been no gap.  I told his teacher about his ability to call out the key of songs he hadn't heard since before he learned to read music, and she both laughed and cheered.  Now he has =three= new songs to learn.

And he's working on a SPONGBOB SQUAREPANTS script.

January 4, 2009: Mackie Conversation


January 3, 2009: Attempts at Sushi


January 1, 2009: Today's Illusions

I haven't done one of these in a while.  These two are actually advertisements:





This is sometimes also called "environmental art."  Neat.

January 1, 2009: New Year, 2009

We spent a good chunk of the day getting ready for the party--cleaning the house, resetting furniture, hiding breakables, prepping food, etc.  And there was the usual set of Host Worries: Would anyone show up?  Would people have a good time?  Would the furnace explode?

At 7:15 the first set of guests arrived, a bit early because they'd gotten the times mixed up.  That was fine--we put them to work with last-minute prepping.  :)  We munched on Irish Nachos:

IRISH NACHOS
kettle corn style potato chips
grated cheddar cheese (or bleu cheese, if you want to go fancy)
bacon bits (crumbled real bacon is best, if it can be arranged)
sour cream
scallions, chopped

Arrange chips on microwavable platter.  Top with cheese and bacon bits.  Microwave until cheese is melted.  Top with sour cream and scallions.  Serve.

A bit later, I put The Clogger in the oven.

THE CLOGGER
2 c mayonnaise
2 cans Mexican-style corn (with peppers in it)
1 small can chilis
2 c shredded pepper jack cheese
1/2 c parmesan cheese

Mix all ingredients.  Back at 350 d. until heated through and bubbly.  Remove and serve hot with corn chips for dipping.

Downstairs in the kid area, I put bowls of Oreos, Doritos, dip, crackers, and Chocolate Fondue for Cheaters

CHOCOLATE FONDUE FOR CHEATERS
1 box graham cracker sticks
1 can chocolate frosting

Dip the first into the second.  Eat!

Other guests began to arrive.  One member of the UWG showed up with a complete fondue set with chocolate!  They swiftly chopped up an entire set of treats for dipping and filled two pots.

CHOCOLATE FONDUE
16 oz. (1 pckg) semi-sweet chocolate
1 can condensed milk (or 1 1/2 c cream)
1 t vanilla
Granny Smith (green) apples
pound cake
peanut butter cookies
marshmallows
Oreo cookies
fresh pears
stick pretzels

Melt first three ingredients together slowly in microwave or on stove.  Pour into fondue pot and light to keep warm.  Chop up rest of ingredients and arrange on platter.  Dip each with fondue fork into melted chocolate and eat.

Delicious!

The party got into full swing fairly quickly.  The basement was full of children rushing around, playing computer games, playing hide-and-seek, and doing other things.  The only mishap of the evening was a stubbed toe.

The grownup party ranged from large group conversation to small group conversation to board games to karaoke.  And of course we watched the ball drop and drank champagne at midnight.  The party broke up at about 1:30--we's gettin' old, and the kids were gettin' cranky.  (Interestingly, none of the children conked out except Aran, who went to bed at midnight.)

We did minimal cleanup and fell into bed ourselves, then finished up this morning.  It was a fine, fine New Year's party!

Happy New Year!

December 29, 2008: Board Games

We've been playing a lot of board games around here.  I got Talisman for Yule.  Aran got a chess set.  Mackie got Battleship.  And all of them must be played.

I won at Talisman, but it was a close thing--Aran nearly beat me.  Not bad, considering he'd never played before!

December 29, 2008: Outtages

The high winds caused strange outages for us.  We didn't lose power, amazingly.  I mean, we always lose power around here, but this time we didn't.  Instead, we lost cell phone coverage.  Our cell phones wouldn't connect with anyone or anything.  Then they came back on for a few minutes, then they went out again.  Still are.  Weirdly, my phone is reading a time that's exactly one hour and six minutes behind.

Our Internet is spotty, too.  Cable's good; Internet's bad.  What's up with that?

At least we have power.  Thank heavens for that!

December 26, 2008: The Second Black Friday



December 26, 2008: Practical Christmas

Later that afternoon, we went to Kala's grandmother's house.  We'd brought just a couple presents.  Everyone was doing the same thing--cutting back. Partly it's economics and partly it's a "How much stuff do we really need?" thing.

And then my mother- and father-in-law showed up.  The back seat, passenger seat, and trunk of their car were =crammed= with presents!  Filled! Stuffed!  It took many, many trips to bring it all in!  We were laughing, half in shock and half in "What the heck is going on?"  Some phrases included:

"This is cutting back?"

"Trying to jumpstart the economy all by yourself, are you?"

"I definitely married into the right family!"

The presents took up most of the living room floor space, and we used up considerable time handing them all out.  There were boxes and bags and packages everywhere.  You could have built a respectable fort out of them all.

Finally, they were all handed out and we started opening.  And then we got what was going on.  Here's a partial list of the gifts we got from my in-laws this year:

--Six extra-large jars of peanut butter
--Three cases of Capri Sun drink packs
--Three cases of macaroni and cheese packages
--A case of 100 packs of cheese and cracker sandwich snacks
--1 large bag of dog food
--Three bags of pens, construction paper, colored pencils, pencils, and other school supplies
--A case of bar soap
--A case of Kleenex travel packets
--Several cans of shaving cream and packages of razors
--Two economy-size containers of shampoo and conditioner
--Two economy-size containers of hand lotion

There was more, but you get the idea.  Everything would get used or used up or eaten.  It was the practical Christmas!  What a lovely idea!

The boys also got a few other gifts.  Aran and Sasha both got teenager cologne sets.  (Eep!)  Mackie got a toy shaving set, complete with shaving cream can that dispenses real shaving cream.  He was dying to use it, and when we got home, he begged me to show him how, and the bathroom was filled with extreme cuteness.

Then it was more eating and socializing and a very easy drive home.  The hard part was figuring out where to store all the stuff!  (Such hardships we have . . . )

December 26, 2008: Home Christmas

This morning Mackie came into our room at 7:30.  "Daddy, it's Christmas!"

I was surprised.  We'd told the boys they could get us up at 7:00.

At any rate, we dove into the presents.  Aran was most captivated by his SONIC THE HEDGEHOG video, though I'm hoping the teaching chess set I got him will interest him once I show him how it works.  Sasha devoured his World of Warcraft manga.  Mackie got Battleship, since he likes board games quite a lot.

I got the game Talisman, some much-needed pajamas, and more equipment for making sushi.  Kala got the next season of Simpsons videos, some skin care products she asked for, a Hello, Kitty! wall calendar, and a Simpsons desk calendar.

The weather was cold and crisp and clear, for a wonder!  Sam the Dog could actually go outside for more than a few seconds.

December 26, 2008: Spiritual Christmas

The gathering at my mother's was quite festive.  Lots of food and family, including my cousins Mark (who lives in Grand Rapids now) and Dave (who lives in San Diego).  After a great deal of eating and socializing, we opened presents.

The younger kids drew each others names for gifts, which basically meant our three boys got presents for and from their three cousins.  Sasha gave Jason a Yahtzee game, Aran gave Caleb a remote control robot, and Mackie gave Brie a dozen monster-size cookies he'd baked himself.

The adults also drew names among themselves.  In addition, we always have some sort of theme.  One year it was pictures.  Another year it was gifts from Michigan.  This year the theme was books.  (I promised not to give any of mine.)  And we had a weird convergence.

Almost every book had a religious or spiritual theme to it.  I gave my mother a book about angels, since she collects angels.  My father and= my brother gave books by Dipak Chopra, an Indian-American guru type.  My sister gave books about Mormon fundamentalism.  Kala gave LAMB by Christopher Moore.  Two of the books didn't follow this pattern--a vegan cookbook and THE GUINESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS--but enough of them did follow it to make us notice it.  It was very odd.

My mother, as ranking matriarch, regularly breaks the "no gifts besides those we draw" rule, and other presents made their appearance.  Aran got a season of NARUTO.  Mackie got a stuffed snake and a T. Rex puppet which he still refuses to be separated from.  Sasha got a furry hat that he really likes.

Somehow or other (I think by way of some cousins) my mother got hold of a DVD that had some ancient home movies put onto it.  Most of them seemed to be taken by people on my dad's side of the family back in the early and mid-sixties.  There were segments of my parents' wedding reception on it (strange seeing them younger than I am now), lots of shots of my older cousins as toddlers, and a Christmas gathering that included my grandparents (who both passed away years ago), among other things.  We had great fun figuring out who was who and where the various shots were taken.  I remembered some of the segments, though I hadn't seen them in probably thirty years or more.

Later, the family drifted toward the piano.  Aran and I played two duets we'd been rehearsing, and Aran played a few other songs as well.  Mom and I played some Christmas music, too.

And then we discovered it was snowing very, very hard.  We hustled everything and everyone into the car for the drive home.  I felt bad, because I'd been intending to stay longer to help my mother clean up, but the roads were clearly going to be awful, and I didn't want to risk staying.

The drive was indeed slow and nasty, though after about 45 minutes, it started to improve.  We passed two spin-outs, though.  Somewhere south of Flint, the snow stopped, and farther south than that, they dried up.  It took us 2 1/2 hours to get home instead of the usual 90 minutes.  But we made it safely.

December 26, 2008: A Bit of Travel

On Christmas Eve we drove up to my mother's house in Saginaw.  Or tried to.

The weather was awful, what the weather people love to call a "wintry mix." The farther north we went, the worse the highway got.  I drove at half
speed, coasting through slick spots, and being generally careful.

And then we hit a slowdown.  The slowdown became an even slowerdown, and that became a total stop.  We sat there on the highway for over half an hour, not moving at all.  We did see flashing lights somewhere way up ahead of us.

At last all lanes started moving again.  We past the spot where the accident must have been, but all signs of it were gone, so we had no idea exactly what had happened, though it must have been bad.  It was exasperating, but in the end, we were only inconvenienced while someone out there had a truly dreadful Christmas.

We arrived a bit late, but fine.

December 22, 2008: Yule, 2008


I spent most of the morning in the kitchen making a double batch of piragis (Latvian ham-stuffed rolls) and fudge.  For a wonder, the fudge came out this time.  So did the piragis.  These are extremely delicious but so labor-intensive that they remain a rare treat.

Once those were done, it was time for Kala to put the turkey breast in the oven.  I went out to try for a smidgen of shopping, but the stores were horrifyingly crowded--the line at the bookstore went all the way to the back, and the line at the Asian market was equally awful--that I went back home without buying anything.

We had a wonderful Yuletide feast of turkey, fresh piragis, vegetables, and mashed potatoes.  Then it was time for Yule proper.  We welcomed the God back to the altar and lit candles all over the house.  Then Mother Berchte arrived.

Mackie spent the entire day stating very firmly that he wasn't at all scared of Mother Berchte because he knew she was just a costume.  But when Berchte stormed into the house, he squeaked and shrank away, hiding behind Mommy.  Berchte handed out presents, reminded everyone that spring =is= coming, and left.

We opened the gifts.  Mackie was delighted with his little digital camera, and he loves taking pictures with it.  Aran and Sasha got MP3 players and gift certificates to iTunes.  (Today I spent considerable time loading a variety of music onto Aran's.)  Both boys love the gift, and Aran in particular now spends most of his day plugged into his.

It was a fine evening.

December 21, 2008: Cold!

There are wind chill warnings out all over the place.  The "normal" temperature is about 9 degrees, and with the wind, it's about -10 or -20.  This winter is really turning harsh!

So glad I can stay inside today.

December 20, 2008: The Best Hamburgers In the Whole Wide World



December 20, 2008: Newgrange Photo

I've been pointed toward a wonderful photo of the tomb at Newgrange, taken at sunrise today:


 
It even looks like there's a spirit there, though it's a ghost image caused when a researcher got in the way of the time-lapse camera.

December 19, 2008: Snow!

Phone rang at 5:10.  It was the school's new "call everyone at once" system with a recorded announcement that school was canceled for the day.  Just after I hung up, I got a call from the phone tree to tell me the same thing.  I called the next person on my list, and she =hadn't= gotten a robo-call (probably because her number wasn't in the computer or something).

I checked the early news.  Ypsilanti and Willow Run Schools: canceled.  But not Ann Arbor.  Huh.  I got on-line and checked there.  Yep--Ann Arbor and AALC both canceled.  I told the boys and Kala and went back to bed.  Just as I was falling asleep, my phone rang again.  It was a second robo-call from the school.  What the heck?

Went back to bed again, was just falling asleep, and RING!  This time I ignored it and went back to sleep.  When I finally got up some time later, I checked the caller ID.  The third call was the robo-caller.  They better fix that glitch!

By breakfast time, the snow was knee-deep in the back yard.  =So= not going anywhere!

December 18, 2008: Snow?

We're supposed to get just oodles and oodles of snow starting some time around 4 a.m.  "Oodles" meaning up to 12 inches at the rate of 1 to 2 inches per hour.

It was the main topic of conversation among both students and teachers at school all across Michigan.  Will winter break be extended by a day?  The principal at Kala's school came over the PA and warned the elementary kids to take home their boots and snow pants and anything else they might want over break just in case.

I'm remaining hopeful but not highly optimistic.  The last TWO times we had winter storm warnings and talk of canceling school, we got a measley inch or less of snow.  This forecast is more dire, but you know how it goes.

I do have to say that it's nice having a job that gets canceled for extremely bad weather (and in which I still get paid).  So many jobs require people to show up (or use a sick day) in such cases.  My mother was a nurse, for example, and the hospital =has= to be staffed, no matter what.  I remember times when she and other hospital staff got trapped at work by blizzards, and they pulled double shifts to replace people who couldn't come in, then slept on cots.  I'm glad in the extreme I don't have to do that.

Sleepin' with the phone again . . .

December 17, 2008: Flame On!

http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2008/12/burger-kings-new-meat-scented-spray-flame.html

Yes, you too can smell like you work in a burger joint.  On purpose.

They really, really need to change the name.

December 14, 2008: More of Aran's Music

While we were decorating, we played Christmas songs on the stereo.  Aran took to calling out what key the next song would be in, as in, "They're going to sing in E-flat."

Last year at this time, Aran didn't know key signatures.  What this means is that Aran's music memory is such that he can think of a song he's heard from before he learned how music works and name the key BEFORE he actually hears the key again.

Apparently somewhere in his head is stored every song he's ever heard.  He can access it and play it in his head so accurately that his perfect pitch kicks in and allows him to name the key properly, even though he hasn't listened to the song since he learned what a key actually is.

This is getting scary . . .

December 14, 2008: Yule Sunday

Today we got the Yule Tree.

This time around, it's a white pine, the state tree of Michigan.  By now, the boys know how to decorate for Yule.  They helped bring the big boxes upstairs and set everything up.  We discovered that white pines have wimpy branches, though, which can't support heavier ornaments, so a fair number of stuff didn't end up on the tree.  We also set up the Pagan creche and various Charlie Brown decorations around the house while listening to the muppets sing.  It went fairly quickly this year.  I was surprised.









The Ukrainian shelf.



 

December 14, 2008: Yule Saturday

My Yule shopping is finished except for one present, and I know where to get it, so it'll be easy enough.  Go me!

Saturday I started baking.  First up, a trip to the store.  Much chocolate to buy, and oh no!  Peppermint extract was one sale, but was all out.  Meant I had to make another stop on the way home.  This all took longer than I thought it would, so I didn't actually start doing anything in the kitchen until after 2:00.

First, I made up a batch of Cocoa Peppermint Thumbprint Cookies snurched from tammylc .  Every year I try to make one new recipe, and this was the one.  I could see that the recipe was for a small amount, so I doubled it.  They came out very well.

Also made some chocolate macaroons, since my sister-in-law can't eat wheat flour without getting sick.  Macaroons have none, so they're Kristi-safe.

I tried making fudge.  Aaaand, true to form, it came out as chocolate sauce instead.  Oh well.  We'll use it as dipping sauce with fruit at the New Years Party.

By then I was abruptly tired, so I stopped for the evening.

December 13, 2008: Car-Ness

Took the car back to the mechanic today.  They examined it and said that the light was loose in its socket.  The rattling around produced by this fault caused it to burn out.  They replaced it and fastened it down and said, "No charge," since the light bulb was under warantee.

It's such a nice thing when you hear that from a mechanic.

December 11, 2008: More Car WTF

So yesterday morning one of the car headlights went out again.  So is something in the wiring making the bulbs burn out?  Or did we get a faulty new bulb by coincidence?  The car will have to go back to the shop on Saturday to find out.

And today I got caught in a huge backup on 14 coming home.  It was awful, lasting miles and miles.  During the stupid thing, the guy behind me didn't pay attention at a critical moment when traffic was moving and when it stopped.  He rammed into me from behind.

Fortunately, I was in neutral and he wasn't going very fast, but it did jerk me around.  Oh, I was mad.  I saw him in my rearview mirror.  I made several "WTF are you doing?" gestures at him, and he made "I'm sorry!" gestures back.

When traffic paused again, I hopped out of the car and looked at the back.  The other driver, a guy in his 20s wearing a knit hat, got out of his car, too.  "Aw, man, I'm really sorry," he said.

I looked at the rear of my car.  "At least there doesn't seem to be any damage," I growled, and got back into my car.  The other guy drove a lot more contritely, keeping his distance the rest of the time.

The source of the backup turned out to be a single pair of surveyors who were blocking off one lane for about twenty feet.

I got home at 3:20 (instead of 3:00), starving  because my lunch is at 10:30, and I had no time to get a snack because I was already late for picking up the boys from school.

Trying not to have a bad end of the day here . . .

December 9, 2008: Brrrrrr!

Our local TV station's web site has this little tidbit on its weather section:

NORTH POLE WEATHER
Right Now   -31° Wind: NE at 29 MPH
Humidity: 70%
Dewpoint: -36° F
Heat Index: -31°
Wind Chill: -68°
Sunrise: 11:59 pm
Sunset: 12:01 am


A bit nippy out there.  And as you can see by the sunrise and sunset, we're close to Solstice.

UPDATE

A friend of mine asked how you can have anything except a southern wind at the North Pole.  Uh, hmmm . . .

December 8, 2008: Car WTF?


December 7, 2008: Snap Out Of It


December 6, 2008: Car Crap

This morning Aran and I went to karate class.  Kala would be taking Mackie to the later yellow belt class.  But when she got the Escort started, the blower for the heater/defroster abruptly cut out.  When I got back, I played with my limited knowledge, but couldn't get it to work, either.  Fortunately, one of the local mechanics that we've gone to before is open Saturdays and they had a light schedule today.  We took the Escort in and found out it was corrosion and crap in the wiring.  The Escort needs a resistor for the fan, a minor part that's only available from the dealer these days (unless you can go to a junkyard, find a 93 Escort, climb into the engine, and remove the part in question).  The mechanic couldn' can't get the part in for a few days, but was able to clean out the afflicted area and rewire it enough to get it working again until we can get a more permanent fix.

Okay, cool.

And then later Kala was going to head out to visit her sister.  She planned to take the Cavalier.  It was after dark, and when she turned the headlights on, she got nothing.  Not even the low-level always-on running lights.  The high-beams worked, but the lower levels didn't.  And the SERVICE dashboard light was on.  Shit!

She took the Escort instead, and I stood in the freezing garage to see what the deal was.  If it was burned out bulbs, I thought maybe I could replace them.  I Googled around on 2002 Cavaliers and on replacing bulbs.  However, Cavaliers don't have multiple bulbs.  They have one that seems to do the varying intensity thing.  This lead me to think it's yet another wiring problem.  I Googled around some more and found someone else who had a similar problem.  He reported corrosion in the headlight wiring that grounded out the lights, leaving the circuit permenantly open. 

The big problem here is that no mechanic is open on Sunday, and since we're in the dead of winter, I leave before it gets light out in the morning--I have to have a car with headlights.  I don't know if it's dark or not when Kala and the boys leave for school, and Kala isn't here to ask.

If I can figure out how to pry off the gigantic sneeze guard that the covers the area between the headlights and the radiator, find the corroded wires, and fix them (in a freezing garage), I might be able to do a repair tomorrow.

Gah.

December 6, 2008: Today's Illusion

A delightful Photoshop:



My brain hurts!

December 5, 2008: Aran and Classical Music

I'm writing and listening to music.  Aran wandered in and said, "Is that the Brandenburg Cancerto Number 5 in D?"

Why yes.  Yes, it is.

UPDATE

Kala was also rather amazed at this incident.  The follow-up conversation went something like this:

ME: Aran, where did you learn about the Brandenburg Concerto?

ARAN: In orchestra.  [A class he had last school year.]

KALA: How many times did you hear it in orchestra class?

ARAN: Once.

ME: Once?

ARAN: Yeah.  The teacher played it on the radio.

KALA. Just one time?  You're sure?

ARAN (getting a little annoyed): Yeah.

Okay, then.

December 5, 2008: My Mother Tells Me . . .

. . . that the article from the Ann Arbor News about me and The Ghost Whisperer was picked up by The Saginaw News.  Nice!  Every extra bit helps!  Ironically, the SN doesn't seem to realize that I'm a Saginaw native.  They were probably trolling for a feature with a Michigan slant to it, found that one, and ran with it.  Not complaining, though!  :)

December 4, 2008: Ghost Snippet

Just for fun, here's a snippet from PLAGUE ROOM:

    Melinda waved away his offer to show them out, and a few minutes later, she and Andrea were driving back to Grandview.
    “How many ghosts?” Andrea asked.  “Don’t deny it.  I can tell.”
    “Just the one,” Melinda sighed.  “So much for double and triple jinxes.”
    “Was it that Uncle Arthur guy Kevin mentioned?”
    “Maybe.  I couldn’t tell.  He didn’t want me hanging around.”  She shuddered.  “Let’s talk about something else.”
    “Okay.  But I should probably tell you that I took a picture of the ghost.”  Andrea brandished the electronic camera from her position in the passenger seat.
    “You did?” Melinda asked, startled.  “How?  When did you see it?”
    “When we were upstairs.  I took a picture, but it came out too dark.  So I asked the ghost to pose for another one, and it did.”
    “What?” Melinda tried to turn and stare at her, then remembered she was driving and faced her eyes firmly forward again.  “Are you serious?”
    “I’m completely serious.  I took another picture, but it still came out too dark.  Then I realized what the problem was.”
    Melinda was completely baffled.  “What?”
    “The spirit was willing, but the flash was weak.”
    A moment of long silence followed.  “You’re fired,” Melinda said.

##

Well, I liked it.

December 1, 2008: Graceful On Ice

It snowed icy, nasty snow just before my writers group meeting tonight.  The roads were unexpectedly slick and treacherous.  I arrived at group safely, as did everyone else, and we conducted business as usual.

When I left Sarah's house, I saw the snow was continuing.  Her road was iffy, but the main road was just wet.  Well, good!  Then I got a little further north and all that changed.  The main road leading to my suburb was extremely slippery.  A large pickup truck in front of me crawled along, and I went carefully as well.  There was a white car behind me.

And then the big truck, for no reason I could see, started to slide.  It went into a slow, graceful spin in front of me, turning sideways to block both lanes.  I didn't brake, but I immediately popped into neutral.  The truck continued the spin, sliding across the road like a dinosaur on roller skates.  It finally fetched up on the opposite shoulder, facing the way it had come.  It had done a perfect, slow-motion 180.  Fortunately for everyone involved, there was no oncoming traffic.

I coasted by on momentum, now afraid to do more than five or six miles an hour.  (The truck--and the rest of us--had been doing maybe 20.)  I felt perfectly calm.  I had been giving the truck quite a lot of room, and the whole thing happened so slowly, there was plenty of time to deal, even on ice.

But here's the weird thing--the white car behind me STARTED TAILGATING ME.  The idiot had just seen this huge truck do an icy 180, so he had to know the road was extremely dangerous, but that didn't put him off in the slightest.  He was so close that my rear bumper shielded his headlights.  I couldn't believe it!

I tapped my brake lights a couple of times to warn him.  He backed off, but only about five feet.  Incredible!  My turn was coming up, and I put my signal on way in advance: "WARNING!  I'M GOING TO TURN!  AND YOU KNOW THE ROAD IS SLIPPERY!  DON'T GET TOO CLOSE, YOU BOOB!"

He slowed with me, but continued to tailgate.  I turned.  The new road was even worse.  Unfortunately, Tailgater turned as well.  I crawled along with him on my bumper.  I tapped again to get him to back up, but he wouldn't.  If I started to spin or slide, we'd both get crunched, but this jerk didn't seem to get that.  I thought about pulling over and letting him pass me, but my next turn was only half a block ahead.

I made the next turn, and yet again, Tailgater followed.  I made one more turn, which he didn't make.  He gunned his motor once he was clear of me and immediately went into a skid.  He regained control before he hit anything and went on his way.

I drove the final block home and arrived safely.  Thank heavens for that!

And some people shouldn't be allowed to drive.

November 30, 2008: Pro Writer Meme

Professional Writer Meme

* Age when I decided I wanted to be a writer: 8, though I didn’t really think about it that way.  In my mind, I wasn’t a writer--I wrote.

* Age when I "wrote" my first story: 8.  It was science fiction and involved Atlantis.

* Age when I got my hands on a typewriter:  There was always one in the house--a green Olympia portable--but I didn’t officially learn to type until I was 13.

* Age when I wrote my first novel: 25, unless you count the various ones I started but didn’t complete.  I first started writing a novel when I was 8.

* Novels written between age 4 and age 34: 8 (this number seems to come up a lot)

* Age when I first submitted a short story to a magazine: 23, though it was to Sword and Sorceress IX, an anthology, not a magazine.

* Thickness of file of rejection slips prior to first story sale: 0”.  I made two short sales before I got my first rejection, though it was another two years before I sold another piece.  (Don't hate me!)

* Age when I sold my first short story: 23.

* Age when I first came close to selling a novel:  Probably about 30 or so.  I’m sure by then I had a couple of near-misses, but I couldn’t tell off-hand what they were.

* Age when I killed my first market: 40.  Didn’t even get notified!

* Age when I was first told I had no talent (by an editor): Hasn't happened.  Yet.  Though one editor told me I had a lot to learn.  (He's dead now.)  The story he rejected sold to another market a few months later.

* Age I was first told I had no talent (by a reader):  Hasn’t happened.  Yet.

* Age when I first sold a non-fiction book: I haven’t sold a non-fiction book, but I’ve contributed non-fiction essays to books.

* Age when I first sold a poem:  I haven’t yet.

* Age when I first wrote a saleable novel: 26.  It was In the Company of Mind, which you can get as a free download by clicking on the title.

* Age when that novel was published: 28.

* Age when the second saleable novel finally sold: Also 28, since I was contracted for a sequel: Corporate Mentality.

* Age when a work was first shortlisted for a Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Stoker, or Scribe award:  Ho, ho, ho!

* Age when the second saleable novel came out: 29: Corporate Mentality.

* Age when the third saleable novel came out: 31: Dreamer: a Novel of the Silent Empire

* Age when the fourth saleable novel came out: 32: Nightmare: a Novel of the Silent Empire

* Age when I first won an award:  I haven’t yet, though I've come close.

* Age when I finally shut down the day-job and became a full-time novelist: Hasn’t happened yet.

* Age when the money coming in matched/exceeded my previous employment: Hasn’t happened yet.

* Age when I returned to the day-job because of economic implosion: See above.

* Age now: 41.

* Number of books sold: 13, 14 if you count the one that was sold but never actually published because the publisher yanked the imprint.

* Number of titles in print: 3 or 4.  It’s sometimes hard to tell.  And some of my books are available in e-book format but haven’t been downloaded in a while.  Does that count as in print?

* Number of titles fallen out of print: 9 or 10.

November 29, 2008: The Sandwich of Terror

Maksim wanted to make his own sandwich for supper yesterday after we got home.  The recipe went like this:

MAKSIM'S SPECIAL SANDWICH

2 tb peanut butter
1 tb Miracle Whip
1 tsp yellow mustard
2 tb Asiago cheese

Spread peanut butter on one slice of bread.  Spread Miracle Whip on other side.  Drizzle mustard over Miracle Whip.  Sprinkle Asiago cheese on peanut butter.  Assemble sandwich, cut on diagonal, and eat.

Well, he liked it.

November 28, 2008: Thanksgiving 2008

My mother-in-law loaned us her SUV, which was very nice and allowed us to take Sam the Dog with us to my sister's for Thanksgiving.  Sam was actually not very appreciative--he doesn't like car rides.  I think he gets carsick, to tell the truth.  But it was that or sit outside for a day and a half while we were gone!

At any rate, we loaded up the car and drove the three hours to Cadillac without trouble.  The boys behaved very nicely during the trip up.

At Bethany's we met up with my parents (who arrived separately) and my brother and his family--fourteen of us in all.  There was the usual family socializing.  Bethany has a new dog, a mastiff (!), and Paul brought their cocker/dachshund mix, so we had the Small, Medium, and Large dogs.  They all got along well together, and Sam leaped around in the snow with his new friends.

And it snowed!  We got quite a lot of snow up there.  Fortunately, very little of it stuck to the main roads.  It was clearly winter, though!

We had the normal huge dinner, and everything was delicious.

Right after dinner, Aran was asking about pie.  We told him it was for after cleanup.  We got everything cleaned up, but by then the kids were outside.  There was horseback riding (which Sasha loved) and the dogs and a little bonfire in the metal firepit.  Eventually Aran came in.

"Is there pie yet?" he said.

We had pie--apple and pumpkin--with lots of whipped cream.

More socializing, some television, still more food.  And then to bed.

In the morning, we all went to a local restaurant called the Dog House for breakfast on the grounds that it would be easier than cooking another meal for fourteen.  The interior is done in a log cabin style with hunting trophies on the walls.  When we arrived, the big corner booth was occupied by a single man.  He was waiting for a group of people, had been waiting, for considerable time.  He decided to stop waiting and headed for a small table of his own.  Clearly, he'd been holding our table for us!

Breakfast was very good, and handled extremely well considering how large our group was.  Much snow fell during breakfast.

Back at Bethany's, we packed everything up.  Sam the Dog was very unhappy about getting back into the car, but he did it.  Said good-byes and drove home without incident, the best way.

It was a good Thanksgiving.

November 26, 2008: Delightful!

I don't usually take joy in others' misery, but upon hearing that Anne Coulter's jaw has been wired shut, I have to say I laughed and laughed and laughed.  The jokes write themselves.  Now her main problem will be that she has to keep all that venom and vitriol inside.

November 24, 2008: A Challenge

So how much US civics do you know?  Try this quiz. 

The quiz introduction says:

"The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. Can you do better? Questions were drawn from past ISI surveys, as well as other nationally recognized exams."

They make it sound like it's horrifying that Americans only score an average of 49%, and some of the questions are indeed basic, but others aren't.  To wit:

8)   In 1935 and 1936 the Supreme Court declared that important parts of the New Deal were unconstitutional. President Roosevelt responded by threatening to:

<input ... >A. impeach several Supreme Court justices

<input ... >B. eliminate the Supreme Court

<input ... >C. appoint additional Supreme Court justices who shared his views

<input ... >D. override the Supreme Court’s decisions by gaining three-quarter majorities in both houses of Congress

Now if you don't know the answer off-hand--and I'm willing to bet most people don't--you can figure it out if you know that C is the only one within the powers of the presidency.  But it's still a guess, because FDR could have threatened to do any of these, even if he didn't have the power to back it up.  It's not an easy question.  Or:

31)   International trade and specialization most often lead to which of the following?

<input ... >A. an increase in a nation’s productivity

<input ... >B. a decrease in a nation’s economic growth in the long term

<input ... >C. an increase in a nation’s import tariffs

<input ... >D. a decrease in a nation’s standard of living

Again, if you don't know the answer off-hand, you can figure out with some wrangling.  B, C, and D are all negatives (though you have to know what an import tariff is to understand this), and international trade is a positive, which leaves A as the logical answer.

My score:

You answered 30 out of 33 correctly — 90.91

November 24, 2008: Today's Illusion

This one's really bizarre!  Which image do you see first?



Did you see the old couple or the guitar player serenading the woman?

November 24, 2008: Sunday

Sunday morning, Kala woke with a deadly migraine headache that had her throwing up in the bathroom multiple times.  In the end, she had to go to the hospital.  When we arrived at around 8:00, the ER was slow, but they inexplicably put her in a large, multi-bed room. 

Not long after we arrived, they brought in in this older,  wheelchair-bound woman who had apparently taken a fall in her apartment.  Her speech was badly slurred, but you quickly got the sense it wasn't because of any blow to the head; it was just the way she was.  The woman had a propensity for drama.  She had cut her lip when she fell, and when the nurse asked her to rate her pain on a scale of one to ten, she promptly said, "Ten."  (Kala rated hers as an eight.)

Whenever the woman was left alone for more than a few minutes, she started groaning.  "Help me, Jesus.  Oh, help me, Jesus.  Save me, Jesus."  The groans would turn into howls, and then short bursts of scream.  "Ah ah ah AAAHH!  AH AH AH AH AH!"

Kala, highly sensitive to sound, couldn't take this.  At one point, I finally went over to her section of the room.  "Ma'am, you have to STOP SCREAMING."

She blubbered something unintelligible to me, something about wanting to see the doctor because her lip hurt, I think.

"I don't care," I snapped.  "Shut the hell up.  You're upsetting everyone else."

She shut up.  For a while, anyway.

A bit later, she pitched a fit to a nurse because her underwear was adjusted wrong.  And when the doctor came in to examine Kala, she started shouting for him to come over and examine her.  He ignored her, but that only made her shout the more.

Under most circumstances, I'd feel sorry for her.  But she was creating a scene--several scenes--and it was quite clear that she was aware of this fact--her exaggeration of her symptoms, her constant demands for stronger medication, her howling for a doctor even when one had just seen her.  If it was jut her in the room, fine.  Let her howl.  But Kala and another patient were there, too.  As a result, my sympathy for her was extremely limited.

The nurses tried to calm her down more than once, reason with her.  "There are other patients in the room.  You wouldn't want other people to scream when you were resting, would you?"  "No."  "So please try to stop screaming."

Eventually Kala got IV medication that got the pain under control.  Under normal circumstances we would have wanted her to stay a little longer, but with Shouty Lady five feet away, we couldn't wait to leave.  We were out the door the second the release papers were signed.

Later that afternoon it was leaf raking day.

For the first weekend in ages, it wasn't raining or just coming off a rain.  I refuse to rake wet leaves--it's ten times the work--and everything was finally dry enough to get moving.

Unfortunately, it turned out two of the rakes were broken and Kala had forgotten to buy leaf bags.  (We don't have curb service in our neighborhood.)  I went to the hardware store for both and stumbled into Christmas World.  It took considerable time to find rakes and bags because they'd been shoved into a far corner behind all the Christmas lawn junk.

Raking didn't take long, not with three kids helping.  What took the longest was putting the #$@% leaves into bags.  It would be so much easier to set them in a huge pile and burn them, but noooooo . . . that's illegal.  And as mentioned before, the township doesn't do curbside.  We had over 25 bags when all was completed.

I told the boys that once we were finished, they could either go to a movie or to a pizza/video game place.  They unanimously chose the pizza place.  Um . . . yay?  The pizza in those places always tastes like carboard and ketchup, and the games are beyond boring, but it wasn't my reward, so off we went.  Kala stayed home, fearing the place would set off her headache again.

The boys enjoyed the pretty lights and jingly games.  I discovered they had subs, so I got an edible meal.  I alternated between reading and playing the occasional game with Mackie.  They had much fun.


November 22, 2008: Spelling

Mackie came rushing up to me.  "I'm learning how to type!" he said.

"That's great," I said.

"And I can spell.  I know how to spell 'laugh.' "

"How do you spell 'laugh'?"

"L-O-L."

November 22, 2008: Me!

There's an article about me, complete with photo, in today's ANN ARBOR NEWS. 

On-line version at http://www.mlive.com/annarbornews/entertainment/index.ssf/2008/11/the_ghost_writer_ypsilantis_pi.html .

November 22, 2008: The Decider

Aran was getting his breakfast today and he turned to Kala.  "We're running out of Apple Jacks.  You need to go out and get some more."

November 19, 2008: GHOST WHISPERPER

Today I got my author copies of THE PLAGUE ROOM.  Wow!  Earliest I've ever gotten them.  Kewl.  Go buy a few copies for your friends!



November 18, 2008: PvP

I'm all about today's PvP:

http://www.pvponline.com/comics/pvp20081118.gif

Sing it, brother!

November 17, 2008: How Not To Write--Or Maybe How To

Aran is sick with a fever, and last night we decided I would stay home with him.  This meant that I could stay up a little later than usual for a Sunday.  However, I've also been having trouble sleeping lately, so about half an hour before I knew I'd be going to bed, I took a prescription sleeping aid.

I was furiously writing the WIP when the medication started to kick in.  But the scene was almost done, and I didn't want to stop quite yet.  The medication is powerful, and I was getting a little lightheaded, even dizzy.  I kept going, though.  Finally the scene was finished.  I shut off my laptop and staggered into bed.

Today I got up after Kala had taken the surviving boys to school.  I made Aran breakfast--he still has a fever--cleaned the kitchen, put some laundry in, and did other household stuff.  Then I opened up my laptop to do some work.  I pulled up the material I'd done yesterday evening and re-read it.

I didn't remember a word of it.  It was like all of it had been written by a stranger.  It was definitely my writing and my style, but I didn't remember doing any of it.

Ooookay.  At least it's good writing.

Weird.

November 16, 2008: Anniversary

My and Kala's 18th anniversary is Monday, but we celebrated on Saturday.

We'd planned a day in downtown Ann Arbor, and Kala announced she had "a surprise" planned.  The only clue she gave was that it was set for 5:00.  Hmmmm . . .

My mother-in-law agreed to drop by and stay with the boys, which was good.  Sasha's old enough to babysit, but we were planning to be gone for rather longer than usual, and this would make us less uneasy.

The weather was frankly awful.  It started out as rain and tried to turn into snow.  And a wet wind was blowing.  We headed downtown via Geddes instead of the highway, and ran straight into . . . football traffic!  This seemed wrong.  I'd checked the University of Michigan web site, and thought this week's game was away.  Apparently not.  But we got lucky--we were heading into town when the traffic was heading =out=.  And the weather apparently made people want to leave instead of wander around downtown.  So once we found a parking space (and as 20-year residents, we know where the hidden places are), we were good to go!

We had an early supper at a Chinese place.  I had curry chicken and shrimp with noodles while Kala decided for sweet and sour shrimp.  And lots of hot tea!  The walk was freaking =cold=!

After that, we did a little bit of shopping.  The holidays this year are going to be thin, and we're looking for inexpensive gifts.  In any case, the boys don't need many more toys.  We did, however, find two Manga based on World of Warcraft that Sasha would go crazy for, so I snagged them, and we got a couple other ideas. 

Just incidentally, I'm planning to buy Sasha and Aran a subcription to SHONEN JUMP for Yule as well.  Sasha likes action-based Manga, but it's hard to judge exactly which ones he'll like.  Aran likes Naruto, but he's so far avoided reading Manga about it, I think because sort of off his radar.  SHONEN JUMP is a Manga magazine that has a variety of action/adventure manga stories in it, a chapter a month for several different ones.  Sasha, I'm sure, will read it, and I'm hoping Aran will like it, too, because Naruto is one of the featured stories.

Anyway, next we headed for The Surprise.

I'm sorry to say I figured it out.  There isn't much that could be an appointment downtown that would also be =fun= (not at 5:00, anyway), and when Kala told me to head for the corner of First and Ann Streets, I knew what it was.  She had scheduled massages.

A few weeks ago, Kala had to attend a series of workshops on how to safely restrain freaked-out children.  She was paid overtime for this, and she used to money to book a double massage for us---two tables, two massagers.  So for 75 minutes, we were massaged in a softly-lit room with quiet music.  V. nice suprise.  :)

Once that was done, we were both hungry again, so we walked to Amer's, our favorite downtown deli, and split an emormous sandwich of turkey, bean sprouts, and cream cheese.  We also had chocolate cake--mine was with raspberry, and hers had no flour.  Delicious!

Lastly, we rounded out the evening by using a pair of complimentary tickets we'd won to attend the Comedy Showcase.  The comic was extremely funny and was a fine way to end the evening.

November 15, 2008: Ecard

To the person who sent me the e-card:

I got an e-greeting card that seemed to come from Hallmark in my e-mail today.  Unfortunately, the body of the (computer-generated) letter didn't say who had sent it, and the letter gave no other clues.  I didn't dare open the card itself for fear of hoaxes and viruses, and I deleted it unread.

So if you sent me an e-card lately, thank you!

November 14, 2008: Multiple Testing

Wednesday was karate testing again.  It was Mackie's first one!  He was very excited.  We arrived very early at the do-jang--traffic flowed far better than expected--and he spent the time running around and around and around.  All three of us ran through our forms as well.  Other students arrived and wamed up, too.

At 5:30 we had the white and yellow belt test.  Maksim was the youngest in the white belts.  I have a hard time watching my children do any kind of performing--I don't know why--and I didn't want to watch Maksim's test.  But I knew that wouldn't do at all.  When the test began, I took Aran by the elbow (he was muttering to himself in the area of the do-jang set aside for little kids) and brought him to the very front row of seats.

"We have to watch Maksim test," I said.  And we did.

Maksim did very well, including on his forms.  He did have a tendency to lose concentration and once the controller had to tell him to get back in line, but he's still very little and the testers gave him the leeway.

Once the test ended, Mackie came running over to give me a hug, and then it was time for the orange belt test.  This meant we had time for supper.  The do-jang had brought in pizza and stuff to sell for a charity fundraiser, so that's what we had.  Mackie ate two pieces of pizza, a piece of watermelon, a bag of chips, a juice box, and a cookie.  When he was done, he asked for more and got another piece of pizza, an orange, and another juice box.  Sheesh!

Then it was time for the green belts to test.  Aran and I were testing to advance to second degree greens.  Most everything went very well, as it should have--Aran and I skipped the last test, so we'd spent twice as long on this level's techniques.  I did mess up on one of the self-defense techniques, but that didn't seem to be a problem.

The next day I checked the do-jang's bulletin board.  Students who don't quite pass are listed (by number), along with the technique they need to re-test on before promotion.  None of us was on it.  We're good!  :)

November 12, 2008: Today's Illusion

Are the lines wavy or straight?



Check with a straightedge!

November 10, 2008: Scary Drive

Today I left for work at my normal time, 6:15.  The roads and highways were fine for a few miles, but once I got a ways north, things changed.  We got drizzly and icy and awful.  275 turned into a near parking lot.  When I reached the juncture of 96 and 5, it failed to improve.  On an overpass at 12 Mile I saw a mess of emergency vehicles and no other traffic.  I didn't see any actual accidents on 275, but there must have been multiple somethings somewhere.

The side roads in Oakland County were also quite poor.

I finally arrived at school over half an hour late.  It's a good thing I have first hour prep.  I later learned many, many teachers were late for school today.

A simple application of salt would have solved the problem, but the road commissioner apparently had his head up his ass.  This happened last year--the first icy dawned with no salt trucks on duty because apparently no one figured it was necessary to have any ready by NOVEMBER in MICHIGAN.  I'm assuming the dickhead in charge got a new one chewed for him a couple-three times today.

November 9, 2008: Bad Cartoons

My children love some seriously bad cartoons.  Right now as I post this, Aran is watching SONIC X.  Who can be in any way upset by a villain called Eggman?  I also want to grab that whiny little hovering bluebird and crush it in an iron grip.  The characters and world make no sense whatsoever, even making allowances for the Japanese origin.

POKEMON is awful, too.  BAKUGAN--gah!

The animation in all of these is painfully cheap.  Half the time, the only thing that moves is the character's mouth.  The dialogue is embarrassingly bad.  The use of newscasters as narrators shows up as a really stupid trope over and over again, as does the trope of characters talking to themselves.  ("I have to cut the red wire, then green one.  No wait!  I have to cut the green one first.  Whew!  The bomb would have gone off if I had done it wrong.")  It's supposed to build suspense, but it only comes across as clunky and stupid exposition.  The plots alternate between incomprehensible and stupidly predictable.

They're awful.  But at least they're harmless, as far as I can tell.

One show, however, I've forbidden the boys to watch outright.  JOHNNY TEST is an American show that's jerky, loud, and gets them all worked up.  The humor is crude (they've done several episodes based on farting as just one example), the animation is dreadful, and the characters shout all the time.  Every so often, one of the kids sneaks it into the "record" section of the DVR, and I delete it.

November 6, 2008: Tired

I've been snarfing food all day yesterday and today.  When I don't get much rest, I end up eating.  And eating and eating.  Got home from school today and ate half a sandwich, a bunch of nacho chips with salsa, and three Oreo cookies.

November 6, 2008: Conferences

Parent-Teacher Conferences this year went normally, except that I had R---, my intern teacher, with me.  She talked to the freshman parents.  However, with three sections of media lit and only two sections of freshmen, I got way fewer English 9 parents than I often do.  Lots and lots of media lit parents, though.  R--- enjoyed the process quite a lot, though we were both wiped by the end of the evening.

I really, really wanted to call in sick today, but there are important things my media lit class is doing that a sub simply can't handle.

V. tired.

November 4, 2008: Awooo!

I've received the lovely news that my story "Enforcement Claws" made the cut (and slash) for STRIP MAULED, Esther Friesner's humor suburban werewolf fantasy anthology.  (Now =there's= a subcategory for you!)  Yay!

November 4, 2008: Voting

Well, yeah--I voted.

One of my students asked me who I was going to vote for.  I raised an eyebrow and said, "You should M.Y. O. Bama."

Schools are closed all over Michigan.  The buildings are used as polling places, and they don't want crowds of adults wandering in and out of elementary schools all day long.  The teachers have staff development.  On my way in this morning, I saw a long line of people forming outside one of the elementary schools in Wherever.  An enormous crowd of them were also inside the cafeteria of Nameless High School, way more than I've ever seen before.

My own voting went painlessly because I was able to get there before the post-work rush.  I arrived at my own local elementary school and found two lines--a long one and a short one.  The long one was for Precinct 4, the short one for Precinct 2.  I didn't know which precinct I was in, so I did a line-jump into the gymnasium to ask an election worker.  Turned out I was in 2.  Yay!  Got in the short line, voted, and left.

Just for fun:

For President, I voted for Obama.
For Michigan Supreme Court, I voted Diane Hathaway (hoping to unseat conservative Clifford Taylor and tip the court back toward progressive)
On Proprosal One (to legalize use of medical marijuana) I voted yes.
On Proposal Two (to legalize government support of stem cell research) I voted yes.
On a proposal to keep the millage for county parks at its current level rather than let it expire, I voted yes.
On a proposal to fund a community college, I voted yes.

November 4, 2008: Delayed Halloween Report


November 1, 2008: Today's Illusion

Which sphere is bigger?




They're both the same size.

October 30, 2008: Costumes and Masks

Yesterday I took the boys costume shopping.

Thanks to years of gathering ritual finery, we already have piles of interesting clothes in the basement closet, so I told the boys that we wouldn't be buying entire costumes, but finding accessories to what we already had available.  Mackie wanted to go as the grim reaper, and we already had a child-sized black robe.  The skull masks we had were all wearing out (the boys use them to play with), but a new one wouldn't be expensive, and a plastic scythe would complete the picture.

Aran wanted to be a warlock, and all that required was another robe and a long hooded cloak of crushed velvet.  All we'd need to buy was another mask and maybe a magic wand.

Sasha found a Roman soldier costume I'd completely forgotten about, and he wanted to use that.  I was sure we could find a helmet and a sword.

I warned the boys that there was no mind-changing after this.  Absolutely none!  They all agreed to this.

So off we went!

At the Halloween costume store in Canton, we found a legionnaire's helmet and sword for Sasha easily enough.  Aran found a skull-headed wand he just loved, and Mackie came across the perfect scythe, and everything quite inexpensive.  But masks?  Nope!  All the masks were either ungodly expensive or just too big.  There were no simple skull masks or ugly-face masks that cost less than $25.

We bought the accessories and drove up the road to Target.  Surely they'd have cheap masks.  Silly me!  I'd forgotten that last Saturday was the big costume-buying day, and now the stores had all decided Halloween was long over.  Even as the boys and I arrived in the seasonal section of Target, we could see red-clad employees pulling down the Halloween costumes.  Bare shelves stretched everywhere.  And coming up behind were several new displays of . . . Christmas decorations.

There no hint of Thanksgiving, and Halloween wasn't for another two days, but Christmas was already underway.  I stopped in at the manager's desk.  "I will not be shopping here again," I said.  "I was unable to find what I wanted because you've ordered the clerks to strip the shelves out from under my very hands, and then replace the merchandise I wanted to buy with junk that I'm not even thinking about buying.  And I saw several other customers in the Halloween area who looked as disgusted as I am.  You should rethink your foolish policy."

And we left.

Next stop was Meijer, where exactly the same thing was going on.  Again, I stopped at the manager's desk, complained, and left.  We ended up finding another Halloween store, where Aran got a warlock mask he liked, but there were no skull masks to be found.  We eventually decided Mackie would have to make do with one of the ones we had.

On the way home, we passed a field where a farmer was selling pumpkins, so we stopped and picked out four of them.  Twelve dollars total for the set.  Yay!

Arrived home.  Kala was still at school--she's been in special training seminars every evening this week--and I made supper.  The boys tried on their costumes.  



And then it was time to carve pumpkins!

Last year Sasha claimed he didn't want to carve one, but I bought an "extra" pumpkin, which he ended up carving anyway.  This year, Sasha again maintained he didn't want to carve a pumpkin, and he stayed out of the room entirely when we started carving--to avoid temptation, I think.  (Funny how he isn't too old for trick-or-treat, though.)

I helped Mackie and Aran clean theirs.  Aran carved his own, and I helped Mackie with his.  Then I quickly carved the other two.  I've always wanted to make a barfing pumpkin, and this year I finally did.  I also noticed a plastic foot that had broken off a witch decoration, so I shoved that into the mouth of Mackie's pumpkin, which had a particularly vicious-looking mouth on it.  The boys were impressed!



October 28, 2008: Hospital Post

I'm posting from the hospital via free wifi.

On Sunday, Aran dropped a four-pound freeweight on Sasha's foot.  It hurt a lot.  His little toe swelled up and was tender.  Monday it was badly bruised, and by today (Tuesday), it was showing no signs of getting any better.  So I decided he needed to be seen.

At the ER, we waited for quite a while in peds because there was a big emergency ahead of us.  Sasha eventually was ushered in and examined, then taken to x-ray in a wheelchair, which he found slightly embarrassing.  Then he came back and the doctor called up the x-ray on the computer, to Sasha and Mackie's fascination.  His toe is indeed broken, though not badly.  The nurse taped it, and now we're awaiting discharge.

Total elapsed time: two hours.  Not too bad.

October 26, 2008: More Crappy Reporting


October 26, 2008: Today's Illusion

I love optical illusions. Here's today's.  Does this window open inward or outward?




October 24, 2008: More TWILIGHT

This is freakin' awesome!




October 23, 2008: No Mice or Men

Next week we (my intern teacher and I) start OF MICE AND MEN with the ninth graders.  And then we realized that, just a little ways into the unit, she's supposed to teach a three-week block, this time of BOTH my freshmen classes.  This means I won't get to teach much of the book, since it's pretty much a five-week unit.  And I love teaching OF MICE AND MEN.

Waaaaah!

October 23, 2008: More Autism

Got this via e-mail:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ColdandFluNews/story?id=6089162&page=1

It's an interesting story about myths of autism.  I agree with the story, but I find it interesting that it didn't list "Vaccinations cause autism" as a myth.  Apparently, ABC didn't want to deal with responses from the people who cling to this long-disproven idea.

October 19, 2008: Karate Tournament

Saturday was my first karate tournament.  Go me!

It was a very small one, which just included people from the three PKSA schools in the area.  I only signed up for sparring, though many events were available--breaking, forms, star throwing, loudest shout (for kids).

The event was divided up by belt rank, which meant I didn't have to be there until 11:00.  I drove down to Riverview and, after a little searching, found the do-jang.  Checked in and explored a little.

The red belt competitions were going on, so I watched them.  Several rings were laid out in the do-jang, and I saw the final bits of combat.

At last the green belts began.  Forms were first.  Then it was breaking.  I helped out by holding boards for other people.  And then the fighting began.

I wasn't nervous like I thought I'd be.  It was actually pretty fun.  I fought only twice in my belt rank and overall came in second place.  Yay!

I hung around a little bit afterward to see the other events.  The power breaking was pretty fun.  It's breaking stacks of patio bricks.  You call how many you think you can break, try to break them, and whoever gets the closest to what they call, wins, though the more you break in general, the more points you get.  The winner called eleven bricks and broke nine of them.

Grabbed some pizza at the refreshment stand in the lobby and headed home with my second place trophy.  I think I'll put it on my desk at school to strike terror into the hearts of my students.

October 17, 2008: Hands Across the Water, Continued

I've gotten so many e-mails from people who have written to tell me horror stories about Hands Across the Water, the adoption agency from hell, that I finally created a Yahoo! group for them so we can all stay in touch all at once.

There is at least one lawsuit going on now.

So if any Hands Across the Water alumni are reading this and you haven't gotten a Yahoo invite, contact me at spiziks-at-sff-dot-net!  I'll get you in.

October 16, 2008: Sarah Palin: Let's Get One Thing Straight

Sarah Palin's baby son has Down's Syndrom.  As a result, Sarah Palin touts herself as someone who understands what parents of special needs children are going through.  John McCain also touts her as someone who understands such.  Vote for them, and they'll ensure funding for research and programs to help special needs parents because, goldangit, Sarah Palin knows your fear and pain, and she'll fight for you.

It's bullshit.

Speaking as someone who's been raising a special needs kid (autistic) for eleven and a half years now, I can authoritatively say Sarah Palin knows only a tiny bit about raising a special needs kid. She's probably been told about and researched a great deal about Down's Syndrome, and she's no doubt done the usual "Why is this happening to me and my child?" wondering.

However, as a woman of wealth, Sarah Palin doesn't have anything like the normal parental worries and difficulties about raising a special needs child. She has the money to ensure her baby will have the absolute best care and schooling available. She has the money to ensure her baby will never have to worry about supporting himself when he grows up. She has the money to ensure his future, something the vast majority of parents of special needs children don't have. So Sarah Palin doesn't know, and never will know, exactly what it means to raise a special needs child.

October 13, 2008: This Is Journalism?



October 10, 2008: Tuned!

We finally got a piano tuner in.  We found one guy who wasn't available until the fifth Wednesday of a month with no "e" in it during a new moon.  We called another guy and arranged for him to come, pending a confirmation, which Kala left on his voice mail.  When he didn't show up, she called him and he said, "Oh!  I never listen to my messages."  Then we called a third guy who did arrive on time and who tuned the way out-of-tune piano very nicely.  At last!

The piano sounds so much better now that it's completely in tune.  Aran certainly enjoys playing it, and I can play Corey along with him.  I also play now and again.  I hadn't realized how much I'd been avoiding the piano myself because of its bad voice.

October 9, 2008: Under Three!

Gas around here has gone down to $2.999 per gallon!  It's actually under three bucks (technically, anyway).  Such a deal!

October 9, 2008: Student Loans

We still have well over $100,000 in student loans.  Can you believe that?  It's a result of having to spend so much time in college before getting a job, and although Kala finally has a job herself, she's still severely underemployed, earning less than half what she should be.  This has been the case in our household for several years, and it keeps getting worse.

If we continue making only the minimum payments, we'll end up paying around $240,000 back, total.

We have to do something severe.  It frightens me to see that figure.  We essentially have a second mortgage.  We've been managing this debt for a long time, and it's a terrible drain.

I told Kala today that we should see a financial advisor to see what we can do, and we meanwhile need to put every bit of my writing income into this thing.

I'm glad Kala has a job now.  We're now really hoping it leads to a teaching job next year.

October 5, 2008: How To Speak R2D2

This site is kind of fun:

http://www.r2d2translator.com/

You can type things into the translator and it'll translate it into R2-D2 sounds.  You can download them as MP3s as well.  I created a couple for download.  Now when a message arrives, R2 says, "You have mail."  And when my phone rings, R2 chirps, "Answer the damn phone!"

October 5, 2008: Twilight: Girly Girl Girl's Girl for Girly Girls

A lot of my students are reading Stephanie Meyer's TWILIGHT books, and I decided to take a look at the first one in the series, see what all the fuss was about.  The way everyone talks, they'd discovered the next Harry Potter.

Nnnnope.

Now I should say that Stephanie Meyer has certainly hit a nerve.  Go her!  I'm insanely jealous.  But I'm definitely not the audience for this book.  It's clearly a girly girl's girl girl girly girl book for girly girls.  The pages slosh with estrogen.  If that's what you want, you're all set, but the novel utterly lacks universal appeal.  I'm about two-thirds of the way through it, and I don't know if I'll finish.  I've only gotten this far out of a perverse desire to see what everyone else sees in the series.

Let's be clear here--this book is part of the vampire romance sub-genre, and it never manages to be more than that.  The book is completely standard, filled with tired old tropes.

Bella Swan ("beautiful swan"?--oh, brother!) moves from her mother's house in Arizona to her father's house in Seattle.  There, she meets Edward Cullen, with the looks of a god and the body of an olympic gymnast.  She develops a crush on him that, against all logic, turns into deep love, even after she discovers he's a 110-year-old vampire.

As a main character, Bella starts to lose me fairly early.  Much of her internal monologues are about how much she misses sunny Arizona and dislikes her rainy new home, where everything is "too green."  In one scene when the sun finally does come out, she complains that it's not a dry heat.  She comes to her new school expecting everyone to hate her like they did at her old high school and is surprised to discover that the students are actually nice to her (that was a good bit, I have to say), but then she spends considerable time brushing off their overatures at friendship.  All this does little to make her likeable.  The girl also has no hobbies, no talents, no interests.  I mean NOTHING.  She's as interesting as a dishtowel.

Edward, the vampire boyfriend, is the standard Bad Boy of romance.  He's the guy you're not supposed to love but do.  (Well, I don't.)  He's stand-offish to Bella, and even snarls at her, yet she still ends up with a massive crush on him.  Here's where I started rolling my eyes.  Why yes--someone says mean things to you, then snubs you, so you like him even more!  That makes perfect sense.

Meyer takes her time to get a story going.  Boy, does she.  It takes her over 250 pages for Stephanie to finally corner Edward and force some background out of him.  We get page after page after PAGE of Stephanie mooning over Edward's perfection.  (The word "perfection" shows up a lot, in fact.)  We also get page after page after page of Bella doing completely ordinary things that we could skip over.  At one point, Meyer spends two pages on Bella getting ready for bed and falling asleep.  Talk about the ultimate snore!

You'd think in a vampire book there'd be a fair amount of adventure or horror.  We actually have very little of the former and none of the latter.  In the first 260 pages, there's a car accident and a chase scene.  The rest of it is Stephanie's developing relationship with Edward.  The romance is the primary plot; everything else is a minor subplot.  If that's what you want, you're good.  But how many ways can you write about a teenager sighing over how wonderful her perfect-bad-boy boyfriend is?

I watched the trailer for the movie, incidentally, and I couldn't help but notice that it emphasizes the action (what there is of it) instead of the romance.  Gee, why would that be?

One of the tropes I hate about vampire romance is that the vampire falls for a Sweet Young Thing, despite the fact that he's hundreds of years old.  Edward is 110, and Bella is 17.  This is a good age spread for a relationship?  What could he see in someone so much younger?  I'm 41 and I don't find anything romantically interesting about teens.  And if a 60-year-old tries to get involved with a teenager, we talk tar and feathers, but make the guy even older and turn him into a monster, and suddenly the relationship is really great.  Gah!

Meyer explains this away by saying that Edward finds Bella super-tasty and he's constantly fighting the impulse the drain her dry.  Gee, this sounds like a great person to spend your life with!

Having a case of the Bella munchies doesn't explain why Edward begins falling in love with her, though, but he's totally devoted to her, with a startling intensity.  She learns that he's been hanging around outside her window, watching her at night and listening to her talk in her sleep.  (I think the courts call this stalking.)  He's totally fixated on her.  It's wank-fantasy romance--the guy with face and body of a god who's completely devoted to you, who wants you no matter what.

Rrrg.

Me, I found myself rooting for Mike.  He's the nice boy Bella meets on her first day.  He's a happy-go-lucky, friendly kid who tries to befriend Bella on her first day, and who has a minor crush on her.  But Bella finds him too nice, too sweet, and she foists him off on her friend Jessica instead.  Bella would rather date a monster, you see.  Nice guys truly do finish last.

Did I mention what happens to vampires in direct sunlight in Meyer's world?  They don't die or even get hurt--they become even more beautiful, with delightfully sparkly skin.  I metaphorically threw the book across the room at this point.  Edward had been building up this big thing about not letting Bella see what happens to him in sunlight.  I was figuring he turned into something dreadful, forcing Bella to confront the fact that her boyfriend is also a monster.  It would have been a wonderful plot bit.  But no, Edward becomes even more wonderful instead.  The word "perfection" popped up yet again.

The vampires like the Seattle area because most days are cloudy, allowing them to blend in.  They can be active in daytime.  They aren't easily killed.  They don't have to drink human blood.  Becoming a vampire makes you super-strong, super-fast, and super-gorgeous.  In other words, there are no drawbacks.  So why don't we =all= become vampires?

Like I said--a girly girl girl's girl book for girly girls.  If that turns you on, the series will send you into vampire bad-boy heaven.  The rest of us are better off re-reading Harry Potter.

October 4, 2008: BSG: The Edits

Finished the page proofs for BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: UNITY yesterday and e-mailed the corrections to Ye Eddetor just under the wire.  I hate doing that--my preference is get such things done well before deadline.  But sickness in the house and other stuff got in the way.  At least they weren't =late=.  I've never, ever missed a writing deadline in my life.  This is the closest I've ever come to do doing so, and I intend to keep it that way!

I learned that the BSG trilogy omnibus, which contains SAGITTARIUS IS BLEEDING, THE CYLONS' SECRET, and UNITY, is indeed scheduled for January release, and it'll come out in both hardcover and trade paperback.  I should have a cover flat to post soon!

October 4, 2008

Last night I went to karate class for tournament practice.  I deliberately went late because they spend the first part of class practicing stuff I'm not gonna do at tournament.  The last part of class is for sparring, which I =am= going to do.  But this time around, they spent the entire time on breaking.  Gah.  Since I didn't do anything all evening except hold boards for people to break, I stayed after and worked on one of the punching bags, trying to bring my speed up.  I've gotten pretty fast on spin kicks, and my accuracy has gotten way better, and I was panting and sweaty when I was done, which is what I wanted.

Then on my way home, I started feeling draggy.  And I was coughing.  Aw man!

In a similar vein, Aran started throwing up last night, and he's been throwing up all day today.

I'm feeling all right, though.  I slept way in and I'm monitoring myself carefully.

October 3, 2008: Houseparent

This morning Sasha had a fever =again.=  I decided that today I would stay home with him because I have the feeling the reason his illness isn't going away is that while he was home unsupervised, he wasn't =resting.=  I'm sure he was on the computer all freaking day playing video games, and that isn't good for recovery.  For PC games, you're sitting up, you have to concentrate, you get worked up (or Sasha does), and you don't take breaks (or Sasha doesn't.)

So I called in.  I dropped the other kids off at school, returned home, and banished Sasha to the couch.  He has three choices today: 1) watch TV; 2) read; 3) sleep.  He's only allowed off the couch to go to the bathroom or go to bed.

I also made sure he's eating decent food, since he runs to junk when left on his own, and I'm forcing a whole lot of fluids on him.

In between that, I put up more applesauce, got laundry done, gave a bath to Sam the Dog (who rolled in something awful and was smelling up the whole damn house), bleached stains out of the bathtub, mopped the floors, and planned out supper.

October 1, 2008: eRant Update

I'm a member of SFNovelists, an on-line group of SF writers.  We have a blog full of many interesting things about all aspects of writing, along with information about our members and free samples of their work at http://www.sfnovelists.com/ .  A couple days ago was my turn to blog, and I posted my ePublishing rant.  (You saw it here first!)  It very quickly got a whole lot of responses, some agreeing, some disagreeing, and some that had their own take on the topic.

It also got some links from other sites that explored the topic.  tcastleb points out this one , and the blog site itself showed this one .

Pretty cool that the blog is getting some play.  More eyes on the group's site!  And the comments are pretty interesting, even the ones from people who don't agree with me.  (And how dare they?)

October 1, 2008: Karate Rolls

Today Aran and I went back to karate for the first time in a week.  Last week was hectic with various meetings, and to top it off, there was construction on eastbound 94, which is the route home from both AALC and from the karate school.  The highway was not driveable, and we had to drive through town to get home, adding fifteen minutes to the drive.  I couldn't bear the thought of driving that long home from picking the boys up from school and then doing it =again= on the way home from karate class, so we simply didn't go.

The highway is fully open now, though, and today we went back.  We did a lot of falling practice today.  It was pretty fun, and a nice break from the endless forms and kicks.  It was also a good workout, and I enjoyed it very much.

October 1, 2008: Meetings

Last week was rush, rush, rush.  So much to do, so much to monitor.  Appointments, meetings, and more.  There wasn't even a chance to go to karate class all week except on Friday, and by then I just wanted to spend an evening NOT going anywhere.

One of the meetings was the annual "How To Handle Our Kids" meeting.  We do this every year.  This time we kind of lucked out--Sasha and Aran have the same teachers (but in different  periods), so we could do it all at once.

We sat down with all three of them and went through a spiel that's become so familiar, it's like teaching a lesson I've done a dozen times before: "Aran is a high-functioning autist.  Here's a summary of his challenges.  Here are his strengths.  Here are the signs of an approaching meltdown.  Here's how to handle an actual meltdown.  Here's what to do if he says or does something socially inappropriate.  Here's what to do if he goes off-task or refuses to do his work.  We keep a close eye on Aran's schooling, but we also want him to gain as much independence as possible.  Please do contact us through phone, e-mail, or notes in his planner."

And then we shifted into Sasha: "Sasha was adopted from Ukraine.  He didn't really go to school until he was eleven, and he didn't learn English until he was twelve.  He's much older than the other kids, but he doesn't look or act it.  Here are his challenges.  Here are his strengths. . . "

We only had a couple of short conversations with Mackie's teacher.  His behavior this year has been overall fine.  He's a little rambunctious from time to time in class, but nothing even vaguely approaching his problems last year.  The worst it gets is that he sometimes doesn't hear the end-of-recess whistle (because he isn't paying attention) and a couple of times he's danced or wiggled around in class.  His teacher said that if we hadn't told her about his situation last year, she would never had pegged him has having problems.

There's simply no way that he matured or changed that much in just three months.  This tells me that the reason behind his difficult behavior at Fortis was a) the mix of kids in the class; b) the teacher; c) the school itself; or d) some combination of the above.  Removing the boys from Fortis was so clearly the right decision.

September 28, 2008: Sushi Oh Noes!

Kala was visiting her sister and I didn't feel like cooking supper after a full day in the kitchen with apples, so I told the boys we were going out for supper to Sushi Narn, their new favorite restaurant.  They were excited.  But when we got there, we discovered the place is closed on Sundays.  Nooooooo!

We ended up at Red Robin because we were hungry and it was close.

I don't like Red Robin anymore.  Their prices have risen sharply (thanks to rising gas prices, I assume), but their food quality isn't all that fantastic.  (How good can it be when it comes in a red plastic basket?)  I could handle all that, I suppose, but for one thing:

The place is NOISY.  A dozen TVs blare from the ceiling.  The kitchen is open to the eating area, so you get food prep noise and conversation.  The walls and furniture are all hard wood, which bounces and magnifies sound.  Whenever someone has a birthday, half the waitstaff joins a clapping parade that sings at the top of its lungs.  The loudspeaker music is loud enough to dance to.  It's like eating in a sports arena.  I had to lean across the table to hear whenever Mackie wanted to talk to me.

It was definitely not what I was hoping for in an evening's repast.  The boys like the food, but next time I think I'll go someplace else entirely or just bag the idea.  Red Robin just sucks all the way around.

And I really wanted sushi!

September 28, 2008: So Many Apples

Some distance up the road from us is a park with an apple tree in it.  Every year, it bears an enormous load of red fruit, and no one seems to touch it.  A great shame, really.  Today I took Sasha down there and in about ten minutes we filled two big bags with free apples.  Still left hundreds on the tree, but there are only so many you can handle at once.

Back home, I spent a large part of the morning and afternoon coring and peeling one bagful.  Not with a knife, thanks.  I have a crank-driven apple corer.  You skewer the apple on a spike, turn the handle, and the blades peel, core, and slice the apple in a spiral cut.  Cut them down the center, and you have a set of apple slices.  Takes about ten seconds per apple.

I filled the crock pot with them, added some sugar and cinnamon, and turned it on.  Then I dumped the rest (in batches) into my biggest mixing bowl with other ingredients to make pie filling, mixed it all together, and assembled pies.  (I have to admit that I cheated by using store-bought crust--I would never have finished in one day otherwise.)  I got four pies out the bag and had a bunch of filling left over.

I slid one pie into the oven and put the other three, unbaked, into the freezer, possibly for Thanksgiving.  While the one was baking, I melted some butter in my cast-iron skillet and dropped the rest of the apple mixture into it.  It stewed very nicely--a really good side dish or dessert.

The pie came out perfectly an hour later.  I stirred the applesauce in the crock pot--the apples fell apart nicely--and let them finish cooking before spooning the mass into two large bowl to cool on the counter.  From there, it went into quart-sized freezer bags and the freezer.

And I still have an entire bag left!  I'll probably make it all into applesauce over the next few days.  We eat a lot of it around here.

September 27, 2008: Aran and Muffins

Aran somewhere got it into his head that he needs to make muffins, specifically chocolate chip muffins.  He's been asking about it for a couple of days now.  Today, after Kala finished grocery shopping, we made them.

We used a standard recipe for muffins from a cookbook, and I asked Aran if we should make regular chocolate chip muffins or chocolate chocolate chip muffins.  He immediately voted for the chocolate chocolate chip ones.  We added cocoa and chips to the batter, spooned it into paper-lined muffin tins, and baked.  They came out perfectly, and now the whole house smells wonderful.

September 27, 2008: The Great Debate

Last night I decided to watch The Debate.

I rarely watch Presidential debates anymore because I'm not an undecided voter.  (I don't understand how anyone can be undecided at this point--it's not as if there isn't any information out there about both candidates and it doesn't take much intelligence or work to ferret it out and decide which candidate has a platform that makes the most sense to you, but I suppose that's a different rant.)  The debate isn't going to change my mind any, so there isn't much point in watching except on the miniscule chance that the candidate I dislike will do something incredibly stupid, wiping out his chances.  And how likely is that?

However, this time around I wanted to see how McCain would stack up against Obama, and I had a stack of mythology papers to grade--two birds, one rock, etc.

First off, I found the choice of venue interesting, if purposeful.  I would be great fun to tell the dickwads who made life miserable for James Meredith back in 1962 that they would live to see Ole Miss be the site of a presidential debate with a black man.  Ironically, neither candidate could mention this aspect of the debate.  McCain couldn't say a word because no matter how he phrased the idea, it would come across as racist.  Obama had to keep his mouth shut because it would sound like he was playing the race card against McCain.

Anyway, I have to say I was annoyed with Jim Lehrer.  He said the debate was supposed to center around foreign policy, then said that "by definition" this would include the US economy, and jumped into several questions about that very topic, none of which had anything to =do= with foreign policy.  Lehrer was reaching, pandering to an audience who wanted to hear about the economy.  It came across to me as crass, and both Obama and McCain should be commended for responding to all the economic questions with apparent ease, since they couldn't have known Lehrer would toss this at them.

On a pure presentation level, Obama was the better speaker.  He was smoother, more articulate, and more focused.  I only caught once when he continued speaking when he should have concluded.  McCain tended to stammer and stutter, go off on strange tangents, and continue speaking about not much when he had already made his point.  Obama also wisely talked to the camera quite a lot, speaking to the viewers, while McCain talked mainly to Lehrer.

On a content level, I tried to stay objective.  I support Obama and was trying to look at him as if I didn't, necessarily.  For content, I think I'd call the debate a tie.

And I got all my mythology papers graded, too.  This is how teachers spend Friday nights.

September 26, 2008: Cover Blurb

And we now have a cover blurb for THE PLAGUE ROOM:

Just an ordinary day in Grandview with customers at the Village Java looking for that perfect caffeine fix and lookylous being transformed into buyers by the eclectic assortment of antiques at Same As It Never Was. But there's nothing ordinary about the blur of activity at Jack's Dry Cleaning, where shirts are spinning on the racks and dresses are dancing without their owners.

A spirit has taken up residence in the store, and although Melinda Gordon usually can sort out what's keeping a spirit from crossing over, this particular one is frustratingly uncommunicative. After a week of trying, the store owner is convinced that Melinda will never succeed.

Then self-acclaimed spiritual consultant Wendy King comes to town, guaranteeing success in moving spirits to the afterlife...for a fee. But Wendy's methodology involves trapping and forcing spirits into the light. And she pays no heed when Melinda tells her that what she is doing is wrong and dangerous.

After a young couple inherits the old Ray mansion and asks for help selling the antiques that fill the house, Melinda pushes aside her concerns about Wendy. But the old house holds a terrible secret and a spirit that Melinda cannot budge. The frightened owners turn to Wendy King, who forces the spirit to cross over, despite Melinda's pleadings. But Wendy's actions release an evil, unyielding spirit, one who promises to release a flood of disease and terror on the town, starting with the people closest to the Ghost Whisperer.

***

We are pleased.  :)
September 26, 2008: Magic: the Election

http://mightygodking.co

September 25, 2008: BSG: Um . . . Oh!


September 21, 2008: My Own ePublishing Rant

Electronic publishing is the future!  Embrace e-publishing!  Paper is dead!  You publishers are idiots, ignoring this new market!

Please.

I love watching the techno-geeks howl and cry about this.  I even agree with them.  Read here and here for some excellent examples.

But . . .

The problem with epublishing, one that neither of these people has addressed, is quite simple--NO ONE WANTS TO READ THE STUFF.

Okay, "no one" is a slight exaggeration, obviously.  Electronic erotic romance (say that three times fast) is thriving.  Some authors of my acquaintance are poised to make a major move into e-publishing their own work because they're certain they have the e-readership.  So someone out there is buying and reading.  However, such readers make up only a teeny-tiny percentage of the market.

Why should this be?

Here's the answer: reading at a computer screen feels like work.

It's not comfortable, it's not cozy, it's not relaxing. You can't do it at the beach, in the waiting room, or in your favorite easy chair. Amazon is trying to wean people onto its Kindle e-reader, but until the vast majority of book readers buy an e-reader, publishers aren't going to be willing to put full effort into e-publishing.

And there's the solution.  Once e-readers are in everyone's hands, then the market for e-books will be worth a publisher's serious time.

There's an easy way to bring this about.  Computer and phone companies have been doing it for decades.  If you want to have a market for e-books, simply do this:

GIVE THE E-READERS AWAY FOR FREE.

Remember when cell phones were only for businesspeople and the wealthy?  We regular folk couldn't afford the cell phones.  My, how things change.  The phone companies are responsible, of course.  When was the last time you paid full price for your cell phone?  What's that?  "Never did," you say?  Exactly!  The phone companies subsidize cell phones until we, the customers, get them for free or nearly free, creating a market.  Now the demand for the newest cell phones is huge, and the phone companies have an endless supply of customers for their cell phone plans.

Remember back when computers only had drives for 3 1/2" discs?  No one wanted a computer with a CD drive.  Everyone said, "Who needs that much memory?"  So computer companies simply started including them in computers for free.  They also gave out a couple of games that could only work on CD, since the computer's hard drive wasn't big enough to handle it.  Everyone got a taste of what a CD drive could do, and abruptly demand for CD drives skyrocketed.  Now such drives are standard on every computer, and the CD drive makers have an endless market for their product.

The publishers need to work with computer companies and distributors to get free or extremely inexpensive e-readers into EVERYONE'S hands, not just the hands of technophiles and businesspeople.  Amazon needs to GIVE the Kindle away, perhaps in conjunction with a publisher, and with it set up a plan for a certain number of e-books available for download per month, just like a cell phone company gives you a certain number of minutes every 30 days.

The market for e-books doesn't exist, and it won't puff into existence on its own  The publishers need to create it.

September 19, 2008: One-Sentence Stories

These are pretty cool:

http://www.onesentence.org/

The challenge: go post one!

September 16, 2008: The Ghost Whisperer: Plague Room

We have a cover for PLAGUE ROOM!  And it's available for pre-order at Amazon.




September 16, 2008: Mackie in the Kitchen

Today Maksim wanted to help make supper, and I brought him in.  We had a chunk of pork in the crock pot, and it was for pulled pork sandwiches.

Maksim helped me remove the bone (Sam was pleased and spent considerable time with it in the back yard).  Then we pulled the meat apart and put into another pot.  Next, we peeled and chopped onions.  I showed him how to saute them, which he thought was pretty cool.  He tasted a bit of raw onion and didn't like it, then was quite surprised at how the taste changed after sauteeing.  We added them to the pork, then stirred in the barbecue sauce for simmering.

Next we put together a salad.  It was all greens, so I had Maksim get out some carrots and we grated them over the top.  "The carrots taste good," I said, "and see how the orange looks nice on the green?"

"Yes," he said.  "It's pretty."

"Yep.  Food should both taste good and look good.  The carrots make the salad look nicer, so we add them."

We also cut up some musk melon, another light side dish to complement the heavy pork sandwiches.

Aran set the table, and we sat down to eat.  Mackie ate enormous portions of everything!

September 16, 2008: Narn Nom Nom

A while ago, Kala and I discovered a new sushi restaurant called Sushi Narn.  We went in on a whim and just loved it.  It occurred to us while we were there that the boys would probably like the place quite a lot, and recently we decided to see if this was the case.

Joy!  It was.

Sushi Narn's main attraction is the conveyer belt.  It's a small one that loops around the booths.  On it are little plates, each with three pieces of "chef's special" sushi and a sign explaining what they are and what's in them.  The plates are $2.50 each.  If you want one, you just snag it and eat.  The server counts the plates to figure out how much to charge you.  They also have a regular menu of both regular dishes and more sushi.

Sasha loves sushi, and fearlessly chows down any kind (except overly spicy types).  Maksim likes it well enough.  And Aran loves udon--as long as we call it Raman Noodles.  Aran, you see, picked up on the idea of Raman Noodles being a cool food from various anime cartoons.  Finally--a use for Pokemon!

We sat down and ordered.  Kala got a couple of sushi rolls.  Sasha and I said we'd eat from the conveyer belt.  (Sasha was particularly fascinated by this concept.)  For Maksim and Aran, we orded a single udon bowl.  This turned out to be a good idea, because the bowl was the size of a stew pot!  Aran happily slurped down noodles, and Maksim alternated between those and bites of sushi.  Sasha loved being able to snag whatever kind he liked whenever he liked it, and Kala and I knew from our previous visit that we really liked their food.  Everyone ate to bursting!

The bill, when it arrived, was eminently reasonable.

It's a splendid thing to find a restaurant where the boys will eat that doesn't serve french fries, hamburgers, or grilled cheese!

September 15, 2008: Kala News

Kala has a different new job.  (!)

Last week, Ann Arbor Schools called her.  They had her application on file for classroom parapro work and wanted to know if she were still interested in a position.  A parapro job would be more in line with her certification and it would put her in a better position for any teaching slots that might open up later, so she said she was.

She did a phone interview, which went very well, and then went in to visit the classroom they wanted her for.  When she arrived, the staff at the school thought she was already starting that day!

They checked her references on Friday, and today she got the news that the position was hers if she wanted it.  She's taking it.  The money is a little less than the preschool, but it's better career-wise and the hours are way better--she'll get home much, much earlier, which will take a lot of pressure off the family.

Go her!

September 15, 2008: Writing Wow

3,000 words a few days ago, 3,000 more words yesterday.  Editing and rewrites today.  Usually I can't manage much of any writing in September, when I'm adjusting to a new school year, but this time around I pulled off a nice chunk of it.  The short story I'm working on is largely finished now.  Go me!

September 15, 2008: Via E-Mail

Got this in my e-mail today:

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.'  Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic  Muslim.  Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a  maverick.

Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.  Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well-grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second-highest-ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising two beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age-appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.  If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible. 

If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner-city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.  If your husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

September 13, 2008: Rain!

Slept nine hours last night and woke up this morning to . . . rain!  Steady, pouring rain!  After more than two dry months, we're finally getting a steady, soaking shower.  It's supposed to do this for a couple days, too.

Funny how quickly the relief switched to annoyance at the damp.  Humidity is at 100%, and you can tell!  I closed up the house and turned on the AC.

September 13, 2008: Pounding

Yesterday evening was tournament practice.  Class runs for 90 minutes instead of 45, and we go over breaking, forms, and sparring.  I'm not planning to compete with breaking and forms--no interest.  Sparring though . . . sparring is fun.  It's also exhausting, which is why it's always the last half hour of class, so I had to wade through the first hour.  (Maybe next week I'll show up late.)

This time for the sparring practice, the instructor put us in two lines and first person in each line became opponents.  We fought until the instructor blew his whistle, whereupon the next two rotated into place to fight.  It was great fun.  All the adults were red belts--three ranks higher than me--but I didn't care.  I kept getting matched up with a woman, though, who consistently held back, which was a little annoying.  (I knew she was holding back because when she got matched up with someone else, her fighting suddenly became a lot more intense.)  The bouts go fast and furious, and even after ten or fifteen seconds, you're left panting and sweaty. 

I've learned that while front kicks are easy and fast, they're almost useless in sparring because they're so simple to block.  Side kicks are a little better because you can kick higher, but they're risky because of the threat of being knocked off balance.  Back kicks, spinning back kicks, and wheel kicks are the most useful for two reasons.  Turning your back (but not your head) on your opponent is a defensive maneuver that still allows you to strike.  And the spinning motions look really cool.  Seriously.  The flurry of movement is a little confusing to your opponent, which makes it harder to block or dodge the kick.

One of the guys in the class and I have an unwritten understanding that we don't hold back, that we pound on each other at full strength.  We both like it that way.  You're not supposed to do this in sparring--you're supposed to use just enough power to penetrate your opponent's defenses and score a point.  We ignore this when we fight each other, and we both have bruises to prove it.  It's great fun!

Got home and had to peel my dobak off to shower.

September 11, 2008: More Zooming

Today I went to school and caught up with R-- some more.  (We didn't have much time to talk at Curriculum Night.)  It turns out she did teach all my (our) classes all day yesterday when I was out.  And she did a fine job of it, too.  Go her!

In addition, her field professor, the guy in charge of her intern teaching, came in to observe her teach a lesson by herself.  When he arrived at the beginning of class, I asked him whether he wanted me to leave or stay.

I knew what he'd say, and he said it: "Oh, that's completely up to you."

See, it's =my= classroom, and professional etiquette dictates that another educator doesn't have the right to even hint that the classroom's teacher should leave.  I elected to leave, actually, because I figured it would be distracting for R--- to have two people in the room watching her, and the students would probably wonder what was going on.  If I left, they'd probably figure I had a meeting and the field professor was a sub.  If I stayed, they might focus more on trying to figure out the real deal rather than on their work.  So I left.  Graded a bunch of papers in the workroom and returned at the end of class.  Apparently, R--- did quite well.  Go her again!

Drove to the boys' school to pick them up, went back home for about half an hour, changed into karate dobaki, and went to class.  Quite the workout today!  With sparring!  Aran and I sparred, since I was closest to his size.  Then home for catching up on e-mail--first time I'd had time to get on-line in almost a day.

And there's some probable good news on the Kala front, too.

Much zooming around.

September 11, 2008: Busy Evening

Yesterday was Curriculum Night (also known as Open House) at Nameless High, in which the parents are all invited to come and visit each of their kids' classes to see what everything's about. I went, despite having called in sick. It went normally, actually, with the addition of R--- being there and introducing herself. After each of the media literacy class presentations, I had several parents who said, "I wish =I= could take this course!"

Drove home, took my new sleep meds, and had a decent night's sleep.  Yay!

September 10, 2008: Insomnia 2.0

I'm still not sleeping.  I fall asleep with difficulty, then wake up a bit later and can't get back to sleep.  Dreams are restless.  I know why it is.  September is always a difficult month, and I'm still coming off an extremely stressful summer.  I don't get stress symptoms during stressful situations; I get them afterward.  Since the stress was drawn out over several months, it only makes sense that the come-down would be drawn out as well.

At any rate, because I'm not sleeping, I'm getting sick a lot.  I've been having low-grade crappiness, and last night, I was feeling even worse.  And then I couldn't sleep again and woke up feeling horrible.  So I called in today and made a doctor's appointment.

(As an aside, I'm interested in seeing when I get back what happened in my absence.  The school still assigned a sub, but did R--, my intern, take over most of everything?  If so, how'd she do?  I really want to know.)

The doctor gave me a prescription for sleeping meds designed to get sleeping properly but not be a long-term crutch, which is what I wanted. 

Afterward, I went out for breakfast.  So there!

September 7, 2008: Nightmare

Last night, Mackie came into our room.  He said he'd had a bad dream and wanted to sleep with us.

He climbed into bed and immediately snuggled up to me.  It was very cute.  It also made for a restless night.  Poke poke.  Shift shift.  Rustle rustle.  Kick kick.  At about five o'clock, sandy-eyed and very tired, I picked him up and carried him to his own bed.

"Thank you, Daddy," he said, and went back to sleep.

Children survive to adulthood by being cute.

September 7, 2008: Moving Day

You know who your true friends are when you ask them to help you move.

Earlier this week, my friend Tammy moved into her new apartment, and I went to help.  Now, moving sucks, and that's the best you can say about it.  Fortunately, Tammy was only moving half a household and was moving within the same living complex.  I admit I was dreading it a little--last I'd heard, Tammy only had about three people to help, counting me, and the weather going to be hot 'n' muggy.  Yeek!  But when I arrived, there were half a dozen people schlepping stuff, including two other males (for heavy lifting*), so we were good.  Even the weather didn't get quite as hot as predicted.

We piled stuff on dolly carts and in wheelbarrows and wheeled it about half a block down to the new place for unloading.  The most challenging part, as always seems to happen, was getting the mattress downstairs because it was too big for the stairwell.  "It got up there--it has to come down!"  But Tammy and I managed it.

And since Tammy was only moving half a household, there wasn't a lot of ultra-heavy stuff to haul.  The one surprise was an unexpectedly hernia-inducing box that I brought up from the basement.  It turned out to be Tammy's entire stock of chocolate for her chocolate business.  I told her I was charging a percentage for moving that one.

We were quite a parade, wheeling back and forth, back and forth.

The new apartment is pretty cool, I have to say.  Nice hardwood floors, a rear deck that opens onto undeveloped woodland, and a bedroom view of the same.  Oh, and a skylight!  I want to live there!

At last everything was moved, and we headed into the next stage--assembling new furniture.  Tammy had already bought and collected several pieces from Ikea to round out her new place.  The women worked on a new bed upstairs (more complicated than it sounds) while the men put together a couple of storage units, a couch, and a chair in the living room.  The chair, unfortunately, refused to sit flat.  After much wrangling with the legs, we came to the reluctant conclusion that the bed of the chair was uneven, and the only recourse was to exchange it at the store later.

There was a break in there for pizza as well.  (Cottage Inn--score!)

Unfortunately, I had to bail out before things were =quite= done--prior obligation--but it was at the 90% mark, I think.  See, true friends help you move, but only relatives help you unpack.  :)


*No, it's not sexist.  I have yet to have been part of a moving operation in which any female jumped in and said, "Oh, the women can move that heavy couch/bed/armoire.  You go deal with that pile of shoes."

September 6, 2008: Cooking and Karate

I'm in charge of cooking dinner now.   This is for the simple reason that Kala doesn't get out of work until 5:30 and is lucky to get home by 6:00.  If she cooks, we won't eat until 6:30 at the earliest.

It makes for a long day for me, as well.  After teaching all day, I have two choices: 1) bolt straight out of there after the final bell, which gives me about twenty minutes of down time at home, and then drive over to AALC to pick up the boys; or 2) finish after-school stuff and drive straight to AALC to pick up the boys.

Once the kids are home, we have a fair amount of supervisory time.  They want varying degrees of attention.  Mackie is picking up Sasha's chatty tendency, and both of them want to talk at me.  Aran waits until they're talked out, and then he starts in.  Aran also needs to be reminded to practice piano.

Then I start supper.  I like cooking, to tell the truth.  I can make what I want, and I can make it the way I want it.  I like being creative in the kitchen.  But it's time consuming, even when you're making something simple.  We'll have to rely more and more on the crock pot on school days and experiment with making meals in advance and freezing them.  It'll make a lot of things easier.

Two evenings a week, karate class is in here, too.  We're still trying to work that out.  Class is 45 minutes long, but between driving there and back and getting ready, it takes about 90 minutes, all told.

I'm glad Kala's working.  It's requiring some adjustment, though.

September 2, 2008: The Boys' First Day


September 2, 2008: Official First Day (Without Students)

Mmmm . . . quite the day.

I arrived at Nameless High for my first official day back, but without students.  Before I even stopped at my classroom, I went to the library and checked out an overhead projector.  I knew if I didn't do this immediately,  I might end up with a crummy one or none at all.

From there, I headed to my room and set up a few things on my computer.  My intern arrived, and we rearranged the desk setup yet again to a better configuration and went over a couple classroom things.  Then it was time for the all-district opening day speech by the superintendent.  This we could watch from the TVs in our rooms, which was nice.  Directly afterward, we all trotted down to the main staff meeting.  This went on for some time, as it always does.

From there, it was back to the classroom for a bit more setup and discussion.  R---, my intern, needs to teach some mini-lessons and administer a short quiz within the first two weeks, so we set up dates for those.

A group of us all went out for lunch after that.  Teachers rarely get a chance to go out for lunch (no time within a half-hour time slot), so we go whenever we have the chance.  It was a mixed bunch from the English, science, math, and special education departments.  I was the only male at the entire table, though.  I didn't make a single harem joke, and I feel I should be commended for this.

In the after-lunch time, I met with R---'s university advisor, and then it was time for the English department meeting.

Are you noticing a trend here?

Right after the department meeting, my cell rang--I'd forgotten to set it on vibrate.  It was Kala.  She said she was going to be late home from work because she'd locked her keys in the car and would have to wait after work for someone to come and open the car.

"=I= can come open the car," I said.  "I'll just come by when I pick up the boys from school."

This I did.  I drove straight from my school to Kala's, opened the car, and delivered her keys to her.  Then I turned around and drove about a mile up the highway to pick the boys up from their first day of school.

August 30, 2008: A Light Review

I know I'm coming late to the party, but see, I get DR. WHO  and TORCHWOOD late because I don't receive  BBC America.  This means I see the shows whenever the SciFi network deigns to schedule them, or when iTunes finally puts the episodes on-line.

Anyway, I want to say this: knock it off!

DR. WHO keeps doing these world-shattering episodes, ones in which something happens to the entire planet.  An alien invasion seems to be favorite, but they ended the season with the whole planet being yanked off to another dimension for a while.  I think the BBC people feel the early years of the show were gypped in the special effects arena, so they try to go way overboard with the current show.  They don't feel right unless they can destroy a national landmark, send millions of Daleks through the skies, or move an entire planet.

Franky, it gets tiring.  And I'm losing my suspension of disbelief.  Setting aside the questions of atmospheric and gravitic disturbances (and what, pray, happened to the moon when the earth was moved to the other dimension and then towed back?), the people of Earth don't seem to be much bothered by these invasions, disturbances, and horrifying events once they end.  There are no repercussions among the greater populace.  Life goes on very much as before.  I'm not buying it anymore.  In previous incarnations of the show, there would be something to change the timeline so that the terrible, planetwide event never actually happened (it is a time-travel show, after all).  They don't do that anymore.

And can we please DUMP THE DALEKS?  Get it through your heads, folks: THEY AREN'T SCARY.  Not even vaguely intimidating.  You can gussy them up with computer animation, but no matter you do, they look like what they are: cheap, low-budge robots from the sixties.  Whenever I see one of the characters cowering in fear from a Dalek, I want to laugh.  It's like watching someone grovel in front of a Frigidaire.  I was willing to go along with it when the Doctor freaked over the single surviving Dalek, but then it was a dozen Daleks, and then it became hundreds, and then millions.  Dalek episodes became the Invasion of the Flying Fridges.  The writers apparently figured that if one Dalek was scary, a million would be a million times scarier.  They were wrong.  A million Daleks are overblown.

And, oh yes--the same goes for the Cybermen.  Anyone notice that they're bascially the same as the Daleks?  Both the Daleks and the Cybermen are robotic menaces who want to destroy humanity.  In every episode, they march (or roll) slowly toward our heroes (apparently to build suspense) while the good guys and gals empty their weapons clips.  But weapons don't affect Daleks or Cybermen, and they continue on their slow, implacable mission of destruction.  The heroes flail about helplessly until the absolute last second when a solution presents itself and humanity lives to fight another day.  The story is always, always the same.  Boring!

Here's an idea, writer-guys: CREATE SOME NEW VILLAINS!  You have creative minds!  Do something new!  The Daleks are boring.  The Cybermen are a yawn.  The Master wasn't very interesting, either.  The best villailn has been James Marsters's character on TORCHWOOD.  He had depth and character and characterization!

You have a fun, interesting universe with fun, interesting protagonists in it.  Don't stop there!  Make your antagonists as interesting as your heroes and the stories will write themselves!  You won't have to resort to destroying entire cities or threatening a whole planet.  Please, BBC writers!  I know you can do better than this.

August 29, 2008: Broke It!

Last night I took a larger dose of sleep medication and at last managed to sleep.  This morning, I'm still a little dragged out from the medication, but at least I slept all night.  Finally!

August 28, 2008: The New Year Begins

Today I went in to school, partly to finish getting ready for students and partly to meet with R---, my intern.

For the first half of the day, we put my--now our--classroom together, and we set up the teacher desk area so we both could use it.  We also put the TV/DVD/VCR back together (disassembled for the summer), got her a login for the school system, and did other similar tasks.

The second half the day we went over class materials.  I gave her a crash course in the curriculum for English 9, mythology, and media literacy and in how I run my classes.  Then we worked out some things for her to do in the first week of lessons.

Short entry, but a long day there!

August 28, 2008: Insomnia Continues

Couldn't sleep last night, either, even when I used a sleeping aid.  I'm bleary and half-blind today, and my voice is hoarse.  I haven't slept in something like four days now.

August 28, 2008: Cruising Night

Every so often, the Depot Town part of Ypsilanti has a Cruising Night.  They close off the main street and people park their showpiece cars out in the open so anyone who wants can come and admire them.  The boys hadn't done anything but lay around the house for several days, so Kala and I hauled them over for the latest showing.  As with the state fair, they protested that they didn't want to go, but we ignored that.  And as I predicted, once they got there, they liked it quite a lot.

There were antique cars and classic cars and custom cars.  One memorable truck was painted bright orange and had a race car engine under the hood.  For some reason, the floorboards were all covered in that shiny foil stuff.  I don't know why--the truck was weird enough without making the interior ugly.  Bizarre!   There was an antique taxi from London that you were allowed to climb inside, and Mackie loved that.  He also adored the motorcycles.  The boy has a serious motorbike thing going.  He rushed from car to car and bike to bike saying, "Awesome!" and "Sweet!"  It was very cute.

One of the store proprietors had a big checkers game set up.  He was giving away a free box of popcorn to anyone who could beat him.  Aran played him to a near standstill, then made a single mistake that allowed the proprietor to win, barely.  The proprietor gave Aran the popcorn anyway, saying that Aran was the first serious challenge he's had.  Aran would be devastating at checkers if he could learn to plan ahead more than two moves, really.  I wonder how he'd do at chess.

Sasha spent some time with us and some time off by himself, as is the habit of teenagers everywhere.

At the end, we got ice cream at the cafe, and then we went home.

August 25, 2008: Good News

Kala has a job.

We are pleased.

On Thursday, she got a phone call from a private preschool/kindergarten/daycare place out in west Ann Arbor.  They wanted her to come in for an interview on Friday morning (the day we were going to the state fair).  The inverview was scheduled for 8:30, and she was there until almost 10:30--always a good sign.  The interviewer said school starts on Monday, and they'd need someone quickly.

This morning they called to offer her a job.  She'll be teaching preschool students in the morning and early afternoon and then basically working daycare duties for the remainder of the day.  Her hours will be 9:00-5:30, which works well for getting the boys to school.  (I'll be picking them up.)

The pay is okay.  Not great, but okay.  The main thing is that she has a job which gets her out of the house and gives her some teaching experience.  We're very glad!

August 25, 2008: Insomnia

I just couldn't sleep last night.  I lay there, wide awake and bored.  Finally I got up, surfed the net, watched TV, read, and still failed to sleep.  Blug.  I'm glad I don't have to work today

August 25, 2008: Billy West!

Last night we got to see Billy West.  Eeeeee!

And somewhere out there, Billy West still has my pen.

August 23, 2008: State Fair

Yesterday we took the boys to the Michigan State Fair in Detroit.  And they didn't want to go.

Aran was actually neutral.  Sasha groaned and rolled his eyes and asked if he could stay home by himself.  Maksim threw an actual tantrum.  Our oldest and youngest, you see, would rather stay home and play video games than go out into the world and Do Something.



Got home thoroughly exhausted.  Felt lots better after a nice shower.  It was a good day.

August 20, 2008: Intern Meeting

This year I have a student teacher.  I mean, intern.  They keep changing the name--student teacher, practice teacher, intern.  It all amounts to the same thing--SLAVE LABOR!

:)

My intern comes to me through Michigan State University, and their program puts the interns in the classroom all year.  (!)  R---, my intern, won't actually be taking over any classes until second semester, but she'll be co-planning, doing various "behind the scenes" teacher duties, and teaching a few lessons under observation to prepare her for the takeover.

Today we had a meeting for mentors and interns.  I had to get up at the ungodly hour of 7:00 to be there.  Hmf!  (When you spend the rest of the year getting up at 5:30 for work, you get annoyed at even a hint of getting early at any other time, believe me.)  There, the MSU people went over various things, and I got meet R--- for the first time.

R--- will eventually be taking over my two English 9 classes.  She'll have majority control over a section of media literacy second semester.  And I'm giving her total control over my second-semester mythology class, as in, "Hi, I'm Mr. Piziks.  Technically I'm the teacher, but you won't see me until the end of April.  Bye!"  I'll be keeping an eye on R---, of course, and helping as needed, but it'll be up to her what to teach and how to do it.

My philosophy of interns is that each one needs at least one class to be in complete charge of, to try ideas of their own, see what works and what doesn't.  R--- was enthusiastic about that.

Slave jokes aside, I like having an intern.  I had good mentor teachers myself, and it's my duty to pay that forward by being a good one myself.  I try to be the sort of mentor I would want to have.  If you need help, I'll help.  If you need me to stand back, I'll stand back. 

I =am= strict.  I require lesson plans for the following week to be done by Friday before the intern leaves the building--no planning over the weekend allowed!  Copies for the week also need to be made the week before-hand.  (This ensures that the intern will always arrive on Monday morning able to teach, no matter what personal disasters may have arisen over the weekend.)  I need to see and approve of all plans as well, to make sure they're within the Wherever curriculum and so that I can head off any obvious problems.  But these rules actually make things easier for the intern to function, once the intern gets used to them.

Another thing I like about having interns is that I usually pick up one or two new tricks from them.  One intern had a fantastic way of introducing the concept of formal essays that I absolutely loved and still use today, for example.  R--- said she'd just come off a project on making ROMEO AND JULIET accessible to high school students, so I'll be really interested in what I can swipe from that.

So here's hoping for a cool year!

August 20, 2008: Date with Dentistry

I'd spent the morning packing and loading, so when I got home from the karate booth, I hung the bike rack on the back of the car (with my bike) and left.

Going west in Michigan for the weekend is easy when everyone else goes north.  I arrived at the campground, set up camp, and did very little but read, hike, ride my bike, and otherwise relax all weekend.

I stayed until Monday, when I packed up and, instead of heading home, turned north to Cadillac and my date with dentistry.

My sister Bethany runs a very hi-tech dental practice which is also dedicated to pain management and making the patients feel comfortable.  The building (which she largely designed herself) is bright and airy, with lots of wood and open space.  In her practice, Bethany refuses to use silver fillings, which contain mercury, and she offers several amenities to keep noise and discomfort at bay.

I was there because I had several fillings that were more than twenty years old and needed replacing.

I arrived about half an hour early and read in the waiting room for a while.  It's kind of interesting going to Bethany's office, knowing it belongs to her.  This is where she works, where she's in charge, where she knows what she's doing. 

"You can see what I do all day," she said.  "A little of it, anyway."  Which is true--I only know a bit of what goes into running a dental practice, and it's rather odd to think that my "little" sister does all of it and does it well.

At any rate, Bethany put a whole lot of instruments into my mouth, pulled out the fillings, and replaced them with mercury-free white ones.  She actually replaced =all= of them on that side instead of just the two that really needed it.  ("While I'm in here . . . ")  And finally it was all done.

I had one of the last appointments of the day.  This was on purpose--with the office closing for the day, I was able to take Aunt Bethany, Uncle John, and Nephew Jason out for supper.  It was beautiful day out, and Bethany had ridden her bike to work.  John and Jason rode their bikes in to meet us, and I hoisted mine off the back of my car.  We all pedalled farther into Cadillac to a Mexican restaurant Bethany and John like.  My mouth was still numb when we ordered, but it had mostly cleared up by the time the food arrived.  Yay!

Bid everyone good-bye and drove south.  It was right on the way, so I stopped in Saginaw to visit my mother and grandmother, whom I haven't seen in quite a long time.  We had a nice visit, and I drove home from there to arrive home quite late.

I made a sort-of circuit of the state!

August 19, 2008: The Karate Booth

Back from the weekend trip.  And it all started with the karate booth.

As I said earlier, I'd volunteered to work at the karate school's booth at the Ypsilanti Heritage Festival from noon to three.  I put on my dobak, drove down to the festival, and wandered in to find the booth.

Oh!  It wasn't set up yet.  Various school-type people were there, doing set-uppy stuff.  Glad I hadn't brought Aran or Mackie along, I set about helping.

The booth, which was brand new, had two flaws.  The instructions were for a completely different model of booth, and two important pieces were missing.  We were not happy.

We packed up the offending euiqpment up as best we could and set on the grassy area behind us.  Then we set up our tables in the scorching August sun while one of the teachers dashed off to see if he could buy another booth at a nearby department store.  (The bad booth would be returned later.)

We handed out flyers, answered questions, and basically shilled the school.  I put on sunscreen--the sun was hot and brutal.

Eventually, the new booth arrived.  It was a different brand, had all the pieces, and was easy to set up.  Shade!  We finished the setup just in time for me to leave.

August 15, 2008: Busy Weekend Ahead


August 13, 2008: Aran, Voice Acting, and Billy West

Aran wants to be a voice actor when he grows up.  He loves animation, you see, and he spends large amounts of time imitating the voices he hears.  He was fascinated to discover that one actor often plays several voices on the same show, and those "behind the scenes" clips of the actors doing the voices for a show absolutely rivet him.  He wants to do that.

It occurs to me that voice acting would be a good career for an autist.  The script and microphone act as a filter between you and everyone else.  An encyclopedic knowledge of the field is helpful, and autists are really good at acquiring that.  Voice acting, like "regular" acting, requires a single-minded perseverence that autists are known for.  So who knows?  This might lead to something for Aran.

Aran is an enormous fan of Billy West.  All of you have heard Billy West, even if you've never heard =of= him.  He's played a billion voices on TV and in movies over the years, and is the current voice of Bugs Bunny.  Aran knows him best as the voice of Fry (and the Professor and Dr. Zoidberg and Zap Brannigan and . . . ) on FUTURAMA.

Last weekend, Kala and I went to see a comedian at the Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase.  It was an enjoyable evening that began with dinner at an Irish pub, segued into dessert at Kilwin's, and ended at the Showcase.  The comic was very funny.  ("Have fun with life!  When you make reservations over the phone and you spell your name, don't say 'D as in dog.'  Have fun with it! Try, 'Yeah, that's D as in W, A as in H, and N as in 'enter.'  You can take a whole hour on a single reservation if you want.")

At any rate, I bought the tickets for it on-line beforehand, however, and I discovered that in two weeks the Comedy Showcase is featuring . . . Billy West.

!!

I showed the page to Kala.  "We're going," she said firmly.

Unfortunately, the Showcase is part of a bar and you have to 18 to get in, meaning there's no way we could bring Aran.  :(

Kala did some searching and found Billy West's web site.  He has a forum there, and he does post to it, meaning he seems to be at least a little accessible.  She e-mailed him, explaining what Aran's deal was.  "Are you making any appearances during the day that we could bring him to?" she asked.  "He'd love to get the chance to meet you."

Even if he isn't appearing anywhere, we're kind of hoping he'll add, "But if you want to bring him by the club before the show . . . " or something.

At minimum, we'll bring some FUTURAMA stuff to the show along with a Sharpie and see if we can get him to autograph it for Aran.

August 13, 2008: Sasha and Coffee


August 13, 2008: A Letter to Fortis


August 12, 2008: Names

I posted this in response to a blog fellow UWGer Cindy Pape made about naming characters:

What names mean isn’t that useful for characters, in my experience.  I mean, so “Paul” means “little” and “Mirabel” means “extraodinary beauty.”  Meh.  The vast, vast majority of readers will neither know nor care.

Unless you’re going for symbolism, that is.

I lean on THE BABY NAME SURVEY BOOK, me.  The authors surveyed thousands of people and asked them what traits they think of when they hear a particular name.  In the book, they list the most common traits people came up with.  For example, the name Cindy makes people think of “a friendly, honest, perky child with looks that are average and size that’s petite.”  On the other hand, Cynthia “is pictured as a petite, attractive, blue-eyed blonde who is sweet, quiet, and perhaps a bit spoiled.”

The name Steven makes people think of “a tall, muscular, good-looking man who is quiet, mild mannered, and nice.”  (Dearie, dearie me.)  Interestingly, Steve is “a good guy who is strong, good-looking, humorous, friendly, and lots of fun.”

It’s a great shortcut for naming characters.  Want to name your hero Franklin?  Be aware that people see that name two ways: “a large, powerful, well-bred achiever or a dull,quiet, intelligent scientist.”  Could work.  How about Ira?  “An accountant or stockbroker who looks like an aging Woody Allen.  Ira is pictured as a short Jewish man who is smart, sensitive, and an irritable complainer.”  Hmmm . . . maybe not, then.

Thinking of naming your heroine Ann?  “The name Ann calls to mind a plain, middle-class woman who is kind, practical, industrious, and dull.”  Perhaps we should turn the page.  Deborah?  “Most people agree that Deborah is a good name for a willowy beauty who is dependable and intelligent.  Some, though, think of Deborah as theatrical or even wild.”  Sounds fine!

Naturally, none of this bears any resemblance to the reality.  I once knew a guy named Ira who would have been right at home as a romantic hero, and we know Anne Harris is far from dull.  But for a =character= the book is quite useful, since one of the first things the reader learns about her is her name, and choosing a name to fit the reader’s preconceptions is a quick shortcut to characterization.

August 12, 2008: Adventures in Web Pizza


August 10, 2008: Gay Rights and Grammar

I know many people sat through their various English classes thinking, "I'm never going to use this shit.  I'm going to be a _______ when I get out of here.  No one's ever going to ask me what an adjective is or how to avoid passive voice or about the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs."

I'll bet these lawyers thought the same thing.


So.  The lesson is clear: pay attention to grammar.  No matter what your eventual profession, you may need to know it and know it well.

August 9, 2008: Hmmmm . . .


A Georgian man cries as he holds the body of his relative after a bombardment in Gori, 80 km (50 miles) from Tbilisi, August 9, 2008

This kind of thing makes me say, "I don't have any real problems."

August 9, 2008: Media and Oscars

Keith deCandido posted this  in his journal:

"Is the fact that, in this country, we view things on screen as more real than things in print. Part of it is simple numbers: more people watch TV and movies than read books and comic books. That's why when you adapt a novel into a movie, you've got an entire Academy Award category to yourself (and other adapters like you), but when you adapt a movie into a novel, you're a talentless hack who's just in it for the money (never mind that screenwriters are far better compensated for their work than prose writers)."

As a media tie-in writer myself, I have to admit that this has never occurred to me.  Exactly why is it that people who turn a book into a screenplay are potential Oscar winners while people who turn screenplays into books are nothing but hacks?

It's really meant as a rhetorical question.  I know the answer--money.  Screenplays earn scads of money, scads of people see the movie, and rave about it on TV, in movie reviews, and to their friends.  As a result, money pours into the studio, and money gets attention.

Far fewer people read books than go to movies.  Even fewer people read books based on movies.  Movies are easy entertainment; books are more challenging.  So almost no one cares about a carefully crafted novel adaptation of a movie.  Readers will flock to a movie based on a novel to see the book come to life and to see how well it does or doesn't work.  Unfortunately, the opposite isn't true.  Movie viewers are less likely to pick up books because are harder to get through, and they don't figure that the book will add anything to what they saw on screen.

As a result, screenwriters get Oscars while media tie-in writers languish.

July 31, 2008: Um . . . Ew!


July 31, 2008: The Dreaded Family Room


July 30, 2008: Vanishing Omens

Omen has disappeared.  He's been gone for four or five days now.  He's always been a standoffish kind of cat who almost never asks for attention, or even food, so it was quite a while before I realized I hadn't seen him.

Not much for it except to wait and see if he comes back.  Sirius has been meowing a lot more lately.  I think he misses Omen.

July 30, 2008: Abby and Autism

Abby's column today has a rather better take on autism:

http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/?uc_full_date=20080730

July 29, 2008: Hoo Boy


July 28, 2008: Savagely Backpedalling


July 27, 2008: Shark Week


July 28, 2008: Summer Birthday

Maksim's birthday is December 26, and it always a bit of a strain.  Kala and I were determined that his birthday would get lost or be diminished because of the holiday season, but it's hard--no one's in the mood for cake and ice cream the day after Christmas (and since we also have Yule celebrations, we've gone through that, too).  Mackie himself gets overwhelmed by the presents.  It's not as fun.

This year, 
July 27, 2008: Wow Video

Snurched from Anne Harris's blog:


Wow!

July 26, 2008: Space Chuck


July 26, 2008: Vanity, Thy Name Is Me

Google has a fame rater for the Internet.  You type in your name and it rates that name based on the number of hits it generates. 
Steven Piziks gets a 51.
Steven Harper gets a 46
Piziks gets a 53.

July 24, 2008: Being a Dad--All Freaking Day

July 24, 2008: Unexpected Book

In the mail today came a package that was clearly a book.  I hadn't ordered one, and my first thought was that it was a Phillip K. Dick mistake--I still get the occasional SF paperback in the mail from people who think I'm still a PKD Award judge--but it turned to be a copy of Shadows Return by Lynn Flewelling.

This wasn't likely to be a PKD mistake--the book is fantasy, and PKD is for science fiction.  No note or card.  What on earth?

I'd been meaning to buy this book for quite some time.  It hit the stores while I was in Ireland.  I'd read Lynn's other Rhiminee books and liked them a lot, and was happy to hear there was going to be a fourth book about Alec and Seregil.  I hadn't gotten around to buying it, though.

The return address said it came from Lynn herself.  This was even more of a puzzle.  I know Lynn only slightly, certainly not well enough for her to send me a copy of her latest novel, and there was no note saying "For your Nebula consideration" or anything like that.

I flipped to the title page.  It was autographed, and a handwritten note added, "To Steven, From Traci Castleberry and . . . " with an arrow zipping down to Lynn's autograph.  Ah ha!

Thanks, Traci!  This is wonderful!  Going to start reading this one next.

July 23, 2008: Car

Kala had some errands to run.  She was on the highway on her way to the west side of Ann Arbor when the car lost all acceleration.  She barely made it to the left shoulder.  She called the motor club, then the police, then me.  Oh, hooray.  I called our mechanic to let him know she was coming.  At least the towtruck arrived faster than the predicted 45 minutes.

Once Kala and the car arrived at the garage, I drove over to pick her up.  Now we're waiting to hear.  The mechanic may not be able to get to it unitl tomorrow.

I hate car problems.  (Does anyone like them?)  I had a few very bad breakdowns early in my car owning career, breakdowns that stranded me in far-off places, and the fallout still freaks me out, even when the problem is mostly an annoyance--neither of us has to be at work, we have another car, it didn't happen with the kids or out of town.

It still killed off most of my planned writing for the day--my concentration was shot--so I did research instead.

We'll have to figure out what to do if the repair bill is more than a couple hundred dollars, too.  The car is aged and not worth that much money.  On the other hand, we have to have two, and we can't really get another one right now.  Hmmmm . . .

UPDATE

It was the timing belt.  $400.

July 23, 2008: Savage on Autism


July 22, 2008: Invasion of the Bagpipes



July 20. 2008: Not Safe to Drive

I am, at the moment, NSTD.

Yesterday I made a mistake.  I took Maksim to see WALL-E, and I didn't get any caffeine beforehand.  By the third act of the movie, I started getting a mild caffeine headache.  I should have left the movie to get caffeine right away, but I didn't.  The headache grew worse.  When the movie ended, I took Mackie to Wendy's for lunch and I got a heavy dose of Mountain Dew, but it was too late--the headache was full-blown by then.

When I got home, I dosed myself with meds and lay down.  An hour later, the meds hadn't had any effect, so I took more, and then more.  Still absolutely no effect whatsoever.  I finally was forced to have Kala take me to the hospital.

I waited in the waiting room at St. Joseph's.  It was packed, as you might expect on a Saturday evening, and I was dreading a wait of several hours.  However, when you have severe migaine headache pain, you can't do anything--read, watch TV, write, use a computer, nothing.  I figured I could do nothing in a hospital awaiting treatment just as easily as do nothing at home awaiting nothing at all.

After about twenty minutes, the triage nurse called me back and we went through the usual Q&A (including the questions about domestic assault).  Then I learned that St. Joseph's had brought back their urgent care.  Quite some time ago, they'd merged urgent care with emergency.  Now urgent care had returned.  The nurse asked if I thought my headache could be treated with an injection (urgent care) or if I'd need an IV (emergency).  The emergency room care would need a much longer wait, but urgent care could see me right away.  I took the urgent care option.

They took me back to a bed, a doctor saw me, and not much later, I got a pair of shots.  The pain eased quickly, but one of the shots was for a heavy narcotic, and the room swayed around me whenever I moved my head.  Kala came to pick me up, and I went home.

I was useless, if pain free, the rest of the evening.  I lay down at around 9:00, woke up at 11:30, and decided I should just go to bed.

Today I'm still groggy and uncertain.  I can type, at least, but I can't drive or ride a bicycle or do anything that requires fine balance.

July 20, 2008: WALL-E

WALL-E opened while I was in Ireland, and I didn't get a chance to see it.  Kala and I decided THE DARK KNIGHT would be Too Harsh for Maksim, however, so she took Aran and Sasha to see it while I took Mackie to see WALL-E.

We were afraid Maksim, a big Batman fan, would be disappointed and/or upset that he couldn't go see DARK KNIGHT, so I told him the movie was big and too scary for little kids.  Instead, he and I would go see WALL-E, just the two of us.  He'd already seen it, but this time he could see it with me.

Mackie liked this idea very much.  "We get to do something, just you and me," he said.

Kala took Sasha and Aran off, leaving just Mackie and me.  He wanted to play SORRY, so we did until it was time to leave for WALL-E.

"We're seeing a movie with just the two of us," Mackie declared several time.

I liked WALL-E, though it was frighteningly plausible.  It was definitely pure science fiction, taking the "What if these trends continue?" question to its logical extreme.

July 20, 2008: Dark Knight

I saw THE DARK KNIGHT.  I don't want to comment extensively on it--there are many, many reviews out there--except to say that I really liked it quite a lot. 

The first scene needed to be cleared up--it was hard to follow what was going on with the Batman copycat--but things improved from there.  Heath Ledger did, as everyone says, a fantastic job as the Joker.  I liked the fact that they brought the Joker back to his original comic book origin.  In the books, no one knows where the Joker came from, what his real name is, or why he's so insane.  The bit with the Joker creating the Batman and the Batman creating the Joker was something created for the movies and was never part of the comics.

I wondered how it escaped an R rating, though.  Whoof!

I liked the blackmail subplot and the way it came back later as an important plot point.  So did several other things that appeared to be throwaway subplots.  I also liked the way Batman was handled as a team.  He has Alfred and Lucius Fox behind him--he can't operate alone, after all.  I liked the handling of Harvey Dent.  And they managed to work in three--count 'em THREE--villains without overloading the script.  That was a neat trick.

The film was definitely not one for Maksim.  Kala and I were a little wary of taking him to see it, and I'm glad we didn't.  I saw it alone, and Kala took Sasha and Aran to see it later.

July 20, 2008: Beaching

Thursday I decided would be a good day for the beach.  The boys were thrilled with the idea, and we put all the necessaries into the car for a trip to Independence Lake.

I like the beach better than swimming pools, really.  Swimming pools are fun, but they rarely have good shade, they're more crowded, the water is harsh, and the hard cement around the pool is always painted white, which drives your eyes six feet into your skull.  Beaches (or at least, the beaches I go to) have shade and sun, take your pick, soft sand, soft water, and crowds that are spread over a wider area.  Beaches also often have playgrounds, and the kids can run (which is forbidden at pools).  I don't dislike pools; I just prefer a beach over a pool.

Anyway, it was a perfect beach day--sunny, not too hot, a hint of breeze with a few clouds to cut the sun.  I was surprised at how many people were there on a Thursday morning, but it wasn't badly crowded or anything.  It was just lovely.  We all swam and ate snacks and read (or Kala and I read, anyway) and generally lazed around for a few hours.  It was very nice.

July 16, 2008: Karate Kicks

Last night in karate class we reinforced back hook kicks and spinning back kicks.  We also learned how to do a jump back kick.  You start in a horse-riding stance, then jump straight up, spin halfway around in mid-air, and kick with your heel.  The plus side is that this kick generates serious power, and I kept knocking the bag over.  The minus side is that it's hard to learn, and I fell twice while figuring it out.  Good thing we have floor mats.  But I got it down finally.

July 15, 2008: Catching the Lightning

It's a quintessential Michigan summer night--still air, warm, slightly humid.  I was sitting in the backyard writing on my laptop and the lightning bugs were coming out.  Maksim put on his shoes and trotted out back to see them.

"Can I have a jar, Daddy?" he said.  "I want to catch dem!"

I found him a jar, showed him how to put some grass in it, and the two of us went around the yard catching fireflies to put in the jar.  We caught well over a dozen before it was time for his bath.  I put the jar on his windowsill, where he can see it from his bed.

"Tomorrow we'll let them go," I said.  "But tonight you can watch them."

"Okay!"

July 13, 2008: Cookie!

My cousin Dave sent me this link:

http://www.comedy.com/blog/2008/07/10/cookie-monster-on-colbert/

Only Cookie Monster could manage to get the last word on Stephen Colbert!

IRELAND JOURNAL

If you want to read the journal I kept while in Ireland, go here: http://spiziks.livejournal.com/tag/ireland

If you want to see pictures, go here: http://flickr.com/photos/28427567@N05/sets/72157606111066484/

June 24, 2008: Packing Genuis

I'm packing now.  I have a list--I always make a list.  And I am a fucking genius.  (Not just a genius--a fucking genius, baby!)

My goal was to have only a carryon for my clothes and a backpack for my lap.  That way, Corey would be my only piece of checked luggage.  Corey will a be challenge enough to haul around without the burden of a full-sized suitcase, thanks.  But could I pack into a carryon enough clothes for twelve days, several of which would likely include hiking over difficult terrain and others of which would include tromping civilized (and uncivilized) parts of Dublin?

Yes.  Yes, I could.  Why?  That's right--genius!

I first made a list.  I always make a list.  That way I'm less likely to forget something.  My list of clothes runs:

Socks
Underwear
Jeans (one black, one blue)
Light slacks (1)
Heavy slacks (1)
Polo shirts (5)
Fleece (2)
Windbreaker
Hiking boots
Rain suit
Pajamas

I'm not going swimming, so no swimsuit.  The weather will be too chilly for shorts (and they're not worn much in Ireland), so none of those.  T-shirts are out--polo shirts are just as comfortable for tromping during the day and have the advantage of being dressy enough for restaurants or clubs in the evening.  No dinner jacket--I won't be going anywhere that requires one.  Ditto for dress shoes.

All this went into a tiny carryon, with room left over.  How?  Well, the first rule of packing is Use the Dead Space.  I rolled up six pairs of socks and stuffed them inside the hiking boots.  Another six pairs were also rolled and stuffed into the cracks and crevices around the boots.  Ditto for several pairs of underwear.  (If it came to it, I was ready to cut the amount of socks and underwear in half and either rinse them out when I was there or just buy some cheap stuff.)

The second rule is Wear It.  On the trip to Ireland, I'll be wearing a pair of jeans, a polo shirt, and the windbreaker.  I could have worn a fleece, but that'll be too uncomfortable.

The rest of the clothes were folded down or rolled tightly.  Wrinkled?  Yep!  Such is life.  But I can wear the black polo shirt the first day while the wrinkles hang out of the other clothes.  I did lay the heavier slacks flat atop everything.  Zipped it shut, and I was done!

There are two pockets on top of the carryon.  These will keep my toiletries, including the plastic bag of liquid stuff.  Easy to access.

Next up--packing Corey and the backpack!

Genius!

June 24, 2008: Nails and the iPhone

Apparently some women are decrying the iPhone because it's too difficult to use if your nails are too long:

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/hughes/29052

Sheesh!  Get a grip.  Why don't they complain to harp makers, piano makers, keyboard makers, regular telephone manufacturers, and remote control makers?  All those things are hard to use with long nails, too.  Face it, ladies: long nails are a vanity.  They're unnecessary except in a very, very few professions (such as modeling).  If you choose to have long nails, you're choosing to deal with the problems.  Fashion or functionality?  You can rarely have both.  Been that way for centuries.  Don't act all huffy, like this is a new problem--or think that the tech industry should care about your petty complaints.

June 24, 2008: Two-Wheeled Mackie

Last year, Maksim kept saying he wanted to ride a bike with just two wheels, but whenever I took the training wheels off his bike and he discovered he was wobbly, he freaked and refused to try further.  After going through this two or three more times, I said he had the leave the wheels on.

A new summer has arrived.  Yesterday Mackie came to me and said, "I can ride a bike with two wheels!"

He had succumbed to peer pressure, you see.  All the kids he plays with in the neighborhood ride their bikes with two wheels, and he didn't like that.  He started borrowing their bikes and trying to ride.  He quickly got it down fairly well, then came to report it to me and Kala.  He wanted me to take his training wheels off for real this time.

I took them off (with an enormous crowd of neighborhood children watching).  Mackie climbed on his bike and pedalled away.  He still tipped over once in a while, but he improves with every stroke.

Today Kala took his bike to the shop to get a kickstand installed on it (and, incidentally, to replace the badly-worn rear tire).  Maksim begged to go on a bike ride with me, and off we went.

We pedalled down to the little park.  It was a beautiful, balmy day.  Maksim had near-perfect confidence on his bike and didn't show any signs of tipping over.  He mounted and dismounted perfectly well.  Once he announced we had to stop so he could scratch his nose--taking one hand off the handlebars isn't an option yet--and he handled that perfectly well.

Mackie thinks this is pretty cool, too.  He's joined the two-wheel club!

June 23, 2008: Dammit!

The airport changed the luggage policy on me.  The hard-sided travel case I have for Corey might be too big to check as luggage.  I'm furious.

I was double-checking stuff for the trip, and I came across Delta's luggage info.  Now you can't have any piece of checked luggage that measures over 62" (height + width + length) or weigh over 50 pounds.  I'm running into a serious problem.  Corey and the new case only weight 45 pounds, so that's not a problem.  But measuring the case itself is problematic.  It's a trapezoid.  One end is high, the other end is low.  To get the height, do I measure the high end?  The low end?  Measure both and take an average?

I called the airline to ask and, of course, got a representative in India who barely understood what I was asking.  Once I got her to understand the question, her only answer was to repeat the script in front of her.  ("It's the height plus the width plus . . . "  "I know that.  How do I measure the height when the height isn't regular?"  "Measure the height plus the width . . . ")

The airline does allow luggage between 63" and 82", but for a surcharge--of A HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS.  That would be $300, there and back, to take Corey with me.

If I measure everything at its highest and widest, I'm a few inches over the absolute maximum 82".  If I measure an average height, I'm fine (except for the $300).

Another option might be to wrap Corey in bubble wrap and put him in his soft-sided case.  Then he'd be easily within the size limits (though I'd still probably have to pay the extra fee).  But I worry about him getting smashed.  I mean, the bubble wrap will help against bumps and bruises, but it won't help if he's on the bottom of a huge pile of heavy luggage.  A harp is hollow, after all.

There's a distinct possibility that the luggage check-in person would accept the travel case without batting an eye or might just take a bit of persuading.  But I'm scared to death that I might have no trouble at this end, only to hit an officious jerk in Ireland who tells me on the return trip, "No, this is too big, even for the extra fee," and I'd have to abandon Corey in Ireland.

And here's a kicker--Delta allows you TWO pieces of checked luggage.  That means you can have 122 inches and 100 pounds worth of luggage, really, but they won't let you bring a single piece that's way less than this total.  Corey's airplane case is, at its maximum, 85" and 45 pounds, and it could well be refused.  But I could show up with two trunks of 62" each and weighing a total of 100 pounds, and they'd be accepted.  Thismakes no sense!

I called a friend of a friend who works as a luggage handler for Delta, and after hearing my problem, he said he wasn't sure what the measurement policy would be, but he'd ask around at work today.

If he can't get an answer, I'll just go down to the airport with my travel case, select a Delta baggage clerk, and ask.  See what happens.

I'm truly upset.  I really, really want to take Corey with me.  I'm looking forward to playing him on Irish hills and maybe even in tombs or stone circles.  But $300 is steep.  What sucks is that the case itself cost $300 to have made, and it may be suddenly unusable.

:(

June 23, 2008: Readying for Ireland

The last few days I've been getting ready for my trip to Ireland.  Many, many details to work out.  I get insanely detail-oriented in cases like this.  I spent considerable time, for example, putting together an itinerary for myself.  This involved getting on-line, looking up places to visit, and downloading driving directions to each place.  I've also been making out a packing list and shopping for various small things I need--a little flashlight, an empty water bottle (which you can take past security and fill in the bathroom, thereby avoiding stupid airport prices), luggage tags, travel-size toiletries, and so on.  I've also been downloading entertainment to my iPod.

June 20, 2008: Some Outrage

I was talking to the Dean at Ann Arbor Learning Community, a school we're considering for the boys next fall.  He wanted more information about what went on with Maksim's suspensions.  He was a little startled, even shocked, that Fortis had suspended a kindergartener.

"What sort of interventions did the school suggest?" he asked.

"None," I said.  "Everything that happened came from us.  From me.  When he started acting up in class, I was the one who came up with the new behavior plan."

"Did the school suggest he see the social worker?"

"No."

"Did they suggest he see a psychologist?"

"No.  That was my idea."

The conversation continued, but I felt a growing annoyance that eventually bloomed into outrage.  What the hell was up with that?  Every time Mackie got into trouble at school, Fortis's reaction was to suspend him for longer and longer periods.  No one over the ever =ever= made suggestions about what to do.  No one ever suggested he meet with the school's social worker.  No one mentioned he should talk to a pscyhologist.  No one ever tried to be helpful in any way.  They just THREW A KINDERGARTENER OUT OF SCHOOL.

I'm a bit upset at myself as well.  I don't know why none of this occurred to me, either.  I should have met with the assistant principal and said, "Why is my son being suspended with no support?  What can Fortis do to help him?"  If this were a student in my school, we would have scheduled a meeting with him, his parents, teachers, counselor, social worker, and assistant principal to figure out how to get him back on track.  Fortis never once suggested a single intervention, and I should have realized it.

I'm pissed off.  The school would rather suspend a five/six year old than try to help him.  Just throw him the hell out of school instead, that's the solution.  Sure!

While I'm howling about Fortis, let me also mention that they excluded Aran from fifth grade camp.  Every year the fifth graders go to a week-long YMCA camp.  It costs a chunk of money.  Sasha went last year and loved it.  This year, Aran was looking forward to going.  The school was a little wary, though.  They worried that Aran might wander away by himself and get lost.  They worried that Aran might not handle the communal shower situation well.  The suggestion was that Aran be accompanied by a male relative who could get orient him, make sure he could handle everything.  This was eventually pushed to a requirement.

Unfortunately, I'm the only male relative who could realistically have done this, and I couldn't go--no sick days left.

The school said they'd try to get someone who could go, and they were fairly sure they could find a person.  Three days before camp, Kala and I got an e-mail from Aran's teacher.  No one was available to help Aran, so he couldn't go to camp.  He'd stay behind with the other kids who couldn't go doing "many other enrichment activitieis" with another teacher.

In a fury, Kala wrote back, "Let us know when you've told him."

Aran was disappointed, but at least he didn't melt down.  Kala and I are still angry.  Camp would have been great for Aran.  If he'd had a physical handicap, they wouldn't have dared exclude him.  But since he has a mental handicap, they exclude him.  We don't have the wherewithal to fight it.

So we're not at all happy with Fortis.

June 20, 2008: Time to Write

A few months ago, my friend Anne Harris asked me to guest blog at her site.  I was happy to oblige, and she posted what I wrote.  Considerable time has passed, so I'm reposting it here for those who may have missed it.  :)

I'm not just a writer.  I also teach high school English full-time.  I have a wife and children.  Like anyone else, I have a full life with little time for extras.

The year my son Aran, then age three, was diagnosed with autism, I had the perfect excuse to stop writing.  No one in the world would have blamed me if I had set aside my novels for a several months or even longer.  Instead, I wrote two books that year instead of one--in addition to writing TRICKSTER, I wrote THE NANOTECH WAR, a Star Trek Voyager book, to pay for Aran’s specialist and treatment bills.  (Go buy a few dozen copies for your friends.)

Five years later, my wife and I adopted two boys from Ukraine, and I had another perfect excuse to stop writing for a while.  Hell, I had my editor’s permission to turn in my then-current novel a couple months late.  Instead, I turned the book in early, as I’ve done with every book I’ve ever written.

Last February, I e-mailed my most recent novel to my editor--eight weeks before deadline.  People invariably ask me: "How?"

But here’s the thing--I LIKE IT.  I like writing.  I enjoy creating characters, setting up their worlds, and putting them through hell.  I enjoy it, I look forward to it, and I make little happy noises when I power up my computer.  Most of the people who ask me where I find the time to write don’t enjoy writing, and it mystifies them why anyone would voluntarily spend so much time doing something they would only do at gunpoint.

So the real question isn’t “How do you find time to write?”  The real question is, “How important is writing to you?”

June 20, 2008: An Engineer's Guide to Cats


June 19, 2008: Reminder Fox


June 19, 2008: Writing Update


June 19, 2008: Knee Update

Last night I took a mega-dose of ibuprofin and went to bed.  This morning, the stiffness is completely gone, though some of the pain still lingers.  Weird.

June 19, 2008: I Am Legend and Hulk


June 19, 2008: Knee


June 17, 2008: Querying Agents

Ye Agente has posted on her LJ a list of querying do's and don't's, for all those aspiring authors who want to read them.  Hit her up at http://varkat.livejournal.com/21728.html .

June 16, 2008: Misc. Writing


June 15, 2008: Weekend Away

This weekend I went away.  I went camping by myself to a little campground I like in the western part of the state.  In Michigan, just about everyone goes north when they get away, meaning traffic on summer Fridays in horrendous.  But I discovered that if you go west, you get Lake Michigan, some beautiful scenery, and very little traffic.  It's a little-known secret.

Anyway, Friday I left for me time alone.  Drove through some scary-ass rain and arrived at the campground just as it was letting up.  Perfect!  Set up everything, and settled in to relax for the evening--hiking, reading, dozing.  The only annoyance was that I'd forgotten to bring my bike.  I love riding my bike around this area.  Sigh.

Saturday I slept way in--ten o'clock!  I went into town for breakfast, then went down to Lake Michigan to enjoy the view and the lake air.  From there, I went into South Haven for lunch.  I also caught KUNG FU PANDA at the local movie house.  A fun movie.  Completely and thoroughly predictable.  Not one new twist.  I knew what was on the dragon scroll, and I knew what the secret noodle ingredient was because both bits have been done and done and done.  But it was still fun and enjoyable.  As a teacher myself, I saw how early on how Chi Fu should motivate Po the Panda to learn kung fu, and was gratified to see my way turn out to be the case.

As a trivia note, Chi Fu was the same name as the bureaucrat in the move MU-LAN.

After that, I wandered town a while, people-watching mostly.  I love people-watching.  I make up stories about their relationships and give them internal dialogue and let them lead entire lives that they don't even know about.  :)

The evening was spent back at the campground.  A storm swept through the area, and I stayed in my tent, reading and listening to the rain drumming on the nylon roof.  Once it ended, I went out for a night-time hike, and finally went to bed.

June 12, 2008: Cloned Twinkies

A while ago I came across a recipe for making Twinkies at home, yesterday I decided to try it.  It appealed to the complicated baker in me.

First I had to make molds for the cakes, which I did out of tin foil.  Then I made the batter, which came out just fine, and carefully filled the molds.  Baking was no trouble, and they came out perfectly.  Then I whipped the filling.

I don't own a pastry gun to get the filling in there, but I have a trick that works just as well.  I scooped the flling into a plastic ziplock bag, squeezed out the air, and snipped off a bottom corner.  Presto!  Instant pastry gun.  I filled the cales through the bottoms and had quite a lot of leftover filling.  I might try for some filled cupcakes later or something.

Once they were done, I sealed each in a small snack bag.  Twinkies!  They tasted great, and the boys certainly liked them.

CLONED TWINKIES

To Make a Twinkie Pan
Tear off a square piece of tin foil. Fold it in half, then fold it in half again. Wrap it around a round spice jar to form a half cylinder. Remove jar, tighten/crimp the ends of the cylinder. Repeat nine more times so you have a total of ten. Set the half cylinders in a baking pan.

Ingredients
1 box of pound cake mix
2/3 c water
4 egg whites
2 tsp very hot water
1/4 t salt
2 c marshmallow cream (one 7-oz jar)
½ c shortening
1/3 c powdered sugar
½ tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Beat egg whites until somewhat stiff. Pour cake mix into a separate bowl. Add water to make a stiff batter. Fold in egg whites.

Spray foil molds with non-stick spray. Divide batter equally among foil molds, about 3/4" full. Bake at 325 about 30 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.

For filling, combine salt and hot water in a bowl. Let cool. Cream together marshmallow cream, shortening, powdered sugar, and vanilla on high until fluffy. Add the salt water solution and combine. Scoop filling into pastry bag or gun (or put filling into a zip-lock bag and cut off one bottom corner to make a pastry bag). Remove cakes from foil molds while still warm. Use a chopstick to make three holes in the bottom of each cake and move the stick around to create space for the filling. Fill with cream from pastry bag.

June 13, 2008: The Best Part

Wednesday was the best part of summer break--the beginning!

Kala took the boys in to school, and I slept in.  Then I took a long bike ride, as I like to do in the mornings before it gets hot.  The air smells fine, the temperature is balmy, and far back where I ride, there's no traffic.  Everything is green, and I feel like I can go on forever.

Then I did very little of anything.  Some puttering around on-line, some video gaming, a bit of writing.

And then Fortis called.  Aran was throwing up and someone needed to go get him.  Kala went.  So much for a day without boys.  It was half a day instead.

That evening I went to karate class.  I got my green belt and we practiced a whole lot of targeted kicking.  Hook kicks, especially.  Regular hook kicks.  Back hook kicks.  Spinning back hook kicks.  (To do a hook kick, you stand on one leg, bring the other leg up level with the ground, and bend your knee, creating a sort of sweeping motioni.  The idea is to thwack someone with the bottom of your foot.)  Toward the end of class, we had what I call a Mr. Miyagi Moment.  The instructor took us outside and put us with a partner.  The partner held a paper cup of water on the palm of his hand at chest level.  The idea was to knock the cup off your partner's hand without touching your partner and, incidentally, get water on the people practicing next to you.  It was fun.  I was surprised that even though I'm now the lowest-ranked student in the class (as the newest gr