Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking

I try a new old author

2011-03-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

On my last visit to LA, a friend studying English literature loaded me down with a box of her old books she thought I'd like. Mostly these have just sat on my shelf, as the ones I'm familiar with I'm not terribly excited about, even though the few I've chanced so far have been on the whole winners.

Recently, though, I picked up Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, the story of a young woman who is transplanted from the comfortable, rural South of England to a rough industrial city in the North, read Manchester, and the eventual reconciling between the attitudes of the two places, represented by her heated relationship with one of the factory owners. I must say, I like the characters, the even-handed representations of the motives of both the factory workers and owners, and especially the frank acknowledgement of passion in the relationships between men and women, but I am getting annoyed by the amount that the narrator is in everyone's heads.

It is one thing to give us insight into the feelings of Margaret and Mr Thornton after a tumultuous encounter, especially since they are so apparently poor at examining them themselves, but to be presented with every minor character's thoughts and opinions is tiresome. I don't need to hear the doctor's silent soliloquy on how much he admired Margaret's strength after she's been told her mother is dying, it was already obvious he was impressed. In fact, he practically said as much in the moment.

The amusing exception, given how much Gaskell champions for the working classes, is Nicholas and Bessy Higgins, characters whose main purpose is giving both Margaret and the reader insight into the factory workers' hard lives, turning a faceless mob into sympathetic individuals. Even the servants must suffer the narrator's regular prying into their thoughts, but not these two key characters. It is almost as if the workers are not privileged with any private thoughts to reveal; they speak everything they have.

The long and short of it is that I appreciate Austen's restraint in doling out free indirect speech much more after these outpourings.

Dog Names: A Reference Guide

2010-12-01T12:41:00.000-08:00

Higgs	Oliver
Higgs Particle	Oliver Baron von Opel-Kadett
Higgster Fluff	Olives
Fluffy Butt	Wiggle Worm
Fuzzy Bear	Little Seal
Cuddle Bear	Cuddle Monster
Wobbles	Wiggle Stomp
Mopey Boy	Muscles McGee

More book reviewing

2008-11-21T12:13:00.000-08:00

Today we're going to talk about Poul Anderson. Who is Poul Anderson you non-scifi geeks might be asking? Well, only the author of the best YA novel ever, The High Crusade. The premise is that a world-conquering alien race lands a scouting ship outside a medieval English town, interrupting the local lord's preparations to set off for the Holy Land. Lucky for him, the aliens are a little cocky, and soon the English have captured the ship and decided it would give them a nice advantage against the infidels. Through a series of miscalculations on the part of their alien captive, massive bluffing on the part of the English, and just plain accident, they end up conquering the entire alien empire. Amidst all this silliness, it actually gets a large amount of history right, particularly the interplay between the Norman nobility, their clergyman, the English-speaking peasantry, and the (half) Welsh knight no one quite trusts. In other words, it's pretty damn brilliant for its genre.

Sadly, Poul Anderson is quite an inconsistent writer, and you never know what you're going to get when you pick up one of his books. The most recent gamble I tried was People of the Wind, which sadly lacks both good characters and good prose. This example is pulled from the first pages:

Ranchland rolled beneath him. Here around Gray, the mainly Ythrian settlements northward merged with the mainly human south; both ecologies blent with Avalon's own, and the country became a checkerboard. Man's grainfields, ripening as summer waned, lay tawny amidst huge green pastures where Ythrians grazed their maukh and mayaw. Strands of timberwood, oak or pine, windnest or hammerbranch, encroached on nearly treeless reaches of berylline native susin where you might still glimpse an occaissional barysauroid. The rush of his passage blew away fretfulness.

I'm still half-heartedly trying to read it, but in many places (especially a later list of alien plant species) I am forcibly reminded of this comic:

Biscuits

2008-11-04T18:43:00.000-08:00

As a prize for all you who voted, or, since I can't enforce that at all, just because I feel like it, I decided to divulge the best biscuit recipe in the world. It's one of three recipes for biscuits I have from my great granma, Mama Christine, none of them too healthy since she was used to feeding farmers. Even better, it doesn't require rolling out and cutting dough — too much work no matter how good the biscuits.

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 T baking powder
1.5 t salt
4 T vegetable shortening
2/3 cup cream
1 cup buttermilk
flour for shaping

Preheat oven to 425° and grease a round cake pan. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, then work in the shortening with your fingers until there are no large lumps. This is what will form the nice layers in the biscuits.

Add the cream and the buttermilk, stirring until it looks like cottage cheese. In other words, a lumpy liquidy mess. Here's what a double batch looks like at this point:

Put about a cup of flour in another bowl. Drop a spoonful of dough into the bowl and cover it in flour. Pick up the dough ball and toss it gently from hand to hand to remove the excess flour, then plop it into the greased pan. Repeat until the dough's gone and you've dusted your whole kitchen with flour.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tops are golden, and enjoy with a nice soup or breakfast.

Yes, they do kinda rise all on top of one another in the cake pan, so don't fuss about spacing them out nicely or anything. I think they would ooze too flat on a sheet pan. Yes, they're so good because of all the shortening, but you know, it could be worse — the recipe actually calls for pouring melted butter on top of them once they come out of the oven. Unnecessary.

Painting

2008-10-03T15:26:00.000-07:00

I think my dog would talk like this

2008-10-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

I've been catching up on my Escape Pod a lot lately. Time was, I would regularly exhaust Savage Lovecast, Escape Pod, Pod Castle, and as many audiobooks as I could get my hands on, but lately I just listen when I run, which isn't often enough. With the house painting has finally come some extra listening time. The best out of the recent bunch was by far How I Mounted Goldie, Saved my Partner Lori, and Sniffed Out The People's Justice. If you've ever wondered what a talking dog would sound like, you'll find the answer there. It rivaled Conversations With and About my Electric Toothbrush in all-time enjoyability.

And yes, if you like sci-fi, I highly recommend Escape Pod.

I am tired

2008-09-02T14:03:00.000-07:00

The other Laura, being much more motivated to get things going than anyone else, decided we should finally go on the backpacking trip we've been talking about all summer. We started at 9,000' and went up to the continental divide at about 12,000', then over a few valleys towards Rawlins Pass and back down. So glad we didn't go the other direction, because the last climb would've been so much steeper and more painful.

View Larger Map

Unfortunately, Matt couldn't come, but it still turned out to be fun, and we've already got another trip in the works. Higgs did come, along with his little pack with his food. He always seemed confused when it started to get late and we weren't heading home, though.

Boulder is weird

2008-08-25T14:34:00.000-07:00

I got this flyer in with the pizza coupons and such on my doorknob today. With a name like Rolfing, it's gotta be good, right? I don't even know why they need to throw in the spacetime jazz to convince me.

I feel lazy

2008-08-25T13:33:00.001-07:00

Have you ever found yourself thinking, "I wish I could write a wonderful, creative novel, and I could do it if only there was some computer software to tell me what to write." Shockingly, there is a market for such a thing. You just pick a title and select a type of story line, and the software will suggest character names and tell you just how many pages to spend on each step of the narrative.

I feel like I might have read some of the books produced by this method.

I don't know what to say

2008-07-23T20:38:00.000-07:00

Steampunk Star Wars. That's all there is to say.

I not so briefly summarize

2008-07-15T19:27:00.000-07:00

A lot's been going on lately, which is a good thing. First of all, it's really fucking hot. No, I mean I can feel myself radiating heat after I come back from a run and have been reduced to waking up early just to run. I can honestly say I never thought I'd be one of those people. Really.

Shakespeare started a while back, but so far all I've seen is Love's Labour's Lost, which was a new one for me. Incredibly brief summary: Four men in Navarre have sworn off women to pursue their studies and establish an Academy at the court. The problem is that the king has forgotten that the Princess of France and her three ladies are en route to ask for a war funds. The four men fall in love, but the four ladies fail to take them seriously. Everything is ruined by the announcement that the Princess's father has died.

The production was set in Kennebunkport before America's entry to WWI. This worked well with the French envoy of ladies requesting a war loan and was cleverly used in a couple of important moments. For instance, when the four men discover they've all broken their oaths and decide to jointly pursue the ladies in earnest, they rip off their old school matching college football sweaters. But as to the play itself, I don't think it's held up so well as the other comedies. Harold Bloom claims it as one of his favorites, but it's so full of contemporary jokes and allusions that you're left lost too often. It doesn't help that one of the comic characters, Don Armado, requires an overblown Spanish accent, rendering his jokes even more difficult to follow. This production also gave the scholar Holofernes a little bit of a lisp, further exacerbating the problem. So not my favorite play.

On the writing front, I was told by my workshop last week that the story I gave them was a novel, which is actually how it started out. So not all bad, although I really wasn't looking to be working on a novel now. I've got another couple of days to put together my next piece for them, which most definitely is not a novel, although the world it's in could certainly support one. I do find myself creating quite a number of worlds that sit astride the scifi/fantasy border to varying degrees, and this one very much so does that with post-apocalyptic magic fun.

I hate viral marketing

2008-07-03T07:08:00.000-07:00

So these random faceless people have been turning up in photos around England lately, and thus making it onto Fark.

To which I say, it would be damn awesome if this was how someone's responding the surveillance cameras everywhere. About time that there was some sort of outrage at the crazy erosion of privacy and liberties over there. They keep going on about how cameras have lowered crime, when it's only been shown to push crime out of sight. But that only means you need more of them, right? Also crazy: they don't have the right to use force to defend their property. That's what the police are for. As a result, half of all British burglaries now take place while the victim is at home.

But, of course, turns out it's a creepy viral marketing campaign instead. For Lotus. How weird is that?

On to the next thing....

2008-07-02T16:43:00.000-07:00

Today I went ahead and put a deposit on the Red Lion. I think despite the quirks of the place it'll be quite fun, wonderful in nice weather, and will certainly have the best food. Some further pictures:

Appetizers would be out here in nice weather (imagine I wasn't too lazy to get the tent strap out of the frame).

This would be where dinner and dancing and an outdoor bar will be. I think it's all rather charmingly Colorado.

I meet other writers

2008-06-23T20:21:00.000-07:00

I went and signed up for a writing workshop, knowing that I both need some hard deadlines for producing something I'm okay with others reading and the feedback of other writers. Chris and Matt and others are dying to read my work, but it's not the same as getting honest feedback from another writer. I should be encouraged that the worst I've received from editors is try again later rather than outright rejection, but I still am really doubtful of everything I produce. Eventually it just sucks the motivation for that piece dry so that I have far too many almost finished things.

The people in the class look to be an interesting assortment. There's the engineer who, when asked what he wanted to get out of the class, proceeded to read a list of very specific syntax questions. Then the geek who runs a wiki, and the former musical theater major who perpetually smiles. And many memoir or fictionalized memoir writers. Should get a very well rounded set of opinions out of them.

I've been thinking about what I want the class to read, so I know what to work on. Oddly enough, I am really tempted to have another go at a novella I've barely touched since last fall, rather than anything else nearer completion. Probably because I often find myself thinking of it as my only serious piece so far (which makes it that much harder to make myself work on). I've found myself thinking about it more frequently the last few weeks, so I'll give it a shot and see how much more I can do this week.

I'm done looking

2008-06-18T16:31:00.000-07:00

So, after many tastings, one shockingly horrible, the venue choice has been narrowed down to two contestants. The first, the Chautauqua Dining Hall, is an amazing historic location in the middle of a park backing up into the mountains, with views of the flatirons.

It's food is probably okay, parking will be very problematic, and it's at least a few thousand over budget.

The second, the Red Lion Restaurant, has really spectacular food in a rather oddly laid out place nestled just up Boulder Canyon. While a little strange — and I mean beyond being very German — it comes in just under budget.

Any opinions?

I hate Bridezillas

2008-06-12T19:14:00.000-07:00

So, I guess I haven't mentioned it here yet, but Matt and I have been engaged a few weeks now. The wedding madness had started even before, as we started deciding when and where and such. Thus there were wedding magazines, and Matt rolling his eyes as I girled out about the whole thing. This weekend, though, my mom's flying out so we can start the venue search, and I can feel that the real madness is only beginning. Really I just wish that I could throw a big fun party with all my friends where I happen to get married rather than a wedding. Is there some rule against that?

And, as to the title, just days after picking out the ring WE went and ran a wedding marathon made up of mostly Bridezillas. It annoys me just to know that this show is on television, that these people are being rewarded with attention for their bad behavior. And the grooms are such enablers. You never catch them saying, "Hey, isn't the important part that we're married at the end of the day?" This is what comes of the "your wedding day should be a perfect and magical experience no matter what it costs" culture. No, it's just a party where you get married.

I hike some more

2008-06-02T07:26:00.000-07:00

For her birthday this weekend the other Laura wanted to go tackle another fourteener, Quandary Peak, which is a popular first fourteener in the summer because of the nice trail ascent all the way to the top (map). Right now, however, it's still snow covered enough that two of our group lugged their skis up and made it all the way back to the trailhead on them. I wasn't nearly so badass — just happy to have lugged myself to the top.

We knew that Quandary had a number of false summits, but still got fooled. In fact, we were considering turning around since we'd passed our planned turn around time still unsure of how far the summit was. We only really realized that we would make it a few hundred feet from the top, when yet more mountain failed to appear. The way down was much more fun, and we did slide down some.

Afterwards, we went back to Laura's for burgers and whatnot with everyone, only a few hours later than planned. Despite thinking I wasn't really that hungry at first, I managed to eat two burgers (probably a third of my average yearly intake) in addition to salad, dessert, alcohol, etc. All in all a good day.

Unfortunately, coming home to a stuffy, no-AC house after a long day was apparently too much for Higgs. He started overheating and had to be showered with cold water and fed ice chips until he cooled down. I think it's time for another haircut.

I go hiking

2008-05-19T21:28:00.000-07:00

I'm finally starting to put up Yellowstone photos. Unfortunately, the volume of pictures is a little daunting, especially since we're getting ready to go out of town again this weekend. I wanted to do a nice summary post of the whole trip, but since I've been slow, I'm only going to tackle the backpacking trip just now. As the capstone to the week, Chris and I spent three days doing the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone, a stretch of the Yellowstone River along the northern edge of the park, ending in Gardiner, Montana (map).

I've got lots of pictures of elk and bison and pronghorn from the first day, but none that are really worth much. You can't really get close enough to the elk up there, so they all just look like way too many dots on the hillsides. Nobody at this altitude had any calves yet, either. We did get a bison running after us when we got stuck trying to go around a herd grazing a very narrow strip along Hellroaring Creek. I did not get a picture of that, but Chris did as I hissed at her to please not worry the animals that obviously are not used to people. An interesting contrast to the bison who let their calves play a dozen feet away from tourists at Old Faithful.

Most of our trail on that first day looked like it was maintained more by ungulates than by people. Only near the trailhead were any bootprints in evidence, and where trailmarkers were knocked over, we wandered onto a few animal trails that didn't look any different than ours. So it wasn't exactly surprising to find a herd anxious to pass by our campsite just after breakfast. This group did have calves, probably very recent. They took quite a while to move past, and then left a male to supervise us as we broke camp, until the whole herd was out of sight.

When we got to our second campsite, we discovered this very scruffy looking goat. The grass was quite nice, and shockingly ungrazed, so he hung around as we set up camp and chit chatted. Then he came back for more lazy grazing in the morning.

We were also surprised by a beaver, foraging in the bushes along the beach by our cooking area. He seemed to be living in a hole under a nearby tree rather than in a dam just yet. Later, in Gardiner, I picked up Decade of the Wolf, a very interesting book on their reintroduction to the park, which claims they're seeing an increase in beaver populations on the Yellowstone as a result. The idea is that elk no longer forage in narrow stretches with limited visibility, leaving willow and cottonwood to grow in those places where they once would've been eaten as shoots. Our campsite would certainly have qualified as elk-unsafe, with just a narrow shelf of grass surrounded by river and hills.

We saw lots of picked-clean carcasses along the trail, which we'd been warned about. Turns out that almost all the elk in the park winter in this valley, and, of course, the weak ones eventually die, drawing all the bears waking up hungry. As long as they're feeding on a carcass, a bear will stay nearby defending his food. In some places the bones were thick on the ground, all clean luckily, but obviously only recently so. We didn't see any meat left at all, in fact, until we got within sight of Gardiner, when we passed a couple like this:

Luckily we only saw a few bear tracks, and the only in-person appearances were along the road, like these two cubs wrestling:

And of course, the dozens of parked tourists photographing them. More photos of my own should be up eventually. Amongst them some actual shots of people, in addition to marmots, elk, and more geysers than you can shake a stick at. We also saw osprey, bald eagles, herons, and tons of other interesting birds (plus not so interesting Canadian Geese picking nesting sites), but I gave up on trying to catch them in time. Can you tell I'm no wildlife photographer?

I jabber some more

2008-04-26T19:10:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Card's The Worthing Saga, which includes some of his earliest fiction (apparently much-revised). The first half or so is made up of The Worthing Chronicle, which is a set of stories from all over the history of a planet told within a frame tale — he was studying medieval literature as he realized that the whole thing needed to tied together better. What's interesting is how engaging the frame tale structure is even though you have no real idea why it's being told at all, much less to our child narrator, or where the whole thing is going at all. Then, quite suddenly, you see that it has all been about what memories are so important that they are preserved for generations, about the necessity of conflict, both in life and in any story worth telling. It was a nice surprise theme.

Higgs: Best Day Ever

2008-04-14T11:30:00.000-07:00

Higgs was kinda freaked out by the pre-race scene — over 700 dogs turned out, but it was the flyball demonstrations that really agitated him enough that we had to take him out of sight of all the mayhem a couple of times — but as soon as everyone started queuing up with their dogs he was all about following their lead. And, most surprising of all, he actually followed my instructions for where to go without being distracted by the herd on all sides. All in all, I think he had a really great time, while for me it was much more interesting than a normal workout. Maybe next year they won't put flyball right in the center of everything.

I watch a deadline approach

2008-04-08T08:21:00.000-07:00

This year I decided to run in the Canine Classic, a local charity race you do with your dog (insert gratuitous plug for fundraising page here). This required training on two fronts: I needed to jog, which is normally not my preferred aerobic activity, and Higgs needed to learn not to freak running with other dogs. I just realized it's this weekend, and am kinda worried about the latter. First of all, since he usually runs with Matt, if Matt's around when we run he starts to whine that he's not with the right running buddy. Second, he's a very social dog, and could possibly get way overloaded with all the people and other dogs. Or he could have a really great time. As insurance, I think we're going to have to kind of pre-tire him out at a dog park, and then decide on site whether he gets to run or just watch.

I feel sorry for Dune lovers

2008-04-06T16:49:00.000-07:00

Reading The Butlerian Jihad is like living through a war: years afterwards you unexpectedly find yourself having flashbacks to particularly painful parts. Thus, the other night, I couldn't stop thinking about the "character" Erasmus. I use quotation marks because no one in the book was given more than a cursory characterization, if that. Each has one aspect that is simply trotted out over and over again, which gets really old when that aspect is bitchiness, say. With Erasmus, it's a complete lack of empathy. Despite the fact that he is supposed to be a very intelligent and engaging machine in a world where machines have learned to rule humans quite smoothly, he can't grasp that a woman might be mad if he neuters her so that she won't be distracted from him by children. Or that humans might be disturbed by the knowledge that he enjoys vivisections. And the actual humans were worse. I found myself wishing for a Cliffs Notes version, so that I could get the backstory without actually hearing any of the characters open their mouths. Of course, the Butlerian Jihad doesn't actually happen in The Butlerian Jihad, and no matter how much I want to know what happens, I can't bring myself to read any more.

I can sympathize

2008-04-01T06:41:00.000-07:00

I don't know if any of my readers (i.e., Drew and Amy and the lurking Matt) read the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin, but I'm going to assume you do because you should. So long as you don't mind that no one's guaranteed a happy ending — if you, in fact, rather relish the novelty of knowing that any character can be killed off at any time, and probably will be before the end — then it's really quite an enjoyable series. Unfortunately, the interval between novels has jumped from two years to five, and he's already had to increase the planned number of novels to seven. To force himself to finish the latest, he apparently decided not to attend any conferences until the manuscript was done, which meant skipping last year's worldcon. On my side, I've wasted a significant amount of time doubting the planned ending of a measly little 3,000 word story, tweaking what I've got to fit the new plan of the day, only to finally realize I need to just finish it. It's not a damn seven novel series or anything.

I go skiing

2008-03-31T14:33:00.000-07:00

Because I'm cheap, this year was the first since moving to Colorado that I didn't buy a season lift ticket to Eldora, the little local ski area that's actually somehow big enough for a whole season of skiing. Today Matt happened to get ahold of a spare ski pass, so I bundled myself up, dug out some embarrassingly dusty skis, and headed up. The snow was wonderful, but I was immediately reminded of just what happens the first time up in a season, when you suddenly discover all those muscles that don't get used at the gym. It was a short day, both because those ski-stabilizing muscles were quickly tired in the thick powder, and because it was still snowing. Eldora unfortunately faces northeast and usually gets rapidly colder, foggier, and less fun as morning ends. Maybe I shouldn't be so cheap.

I am in love with Susanna Clarke's writing

2008-03-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

I just started reading The Ladies of Grace Adieu, a collection of short stories in the same universe as Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which was absolutely wonderful, and, only one story in, I'm already in love with the collection. So far, my favorite part is the way the narrator apparently takes for granted that ladies could never be interested in magic, only in famous magicians (the same way that a lady might safely take an interest in daring young mountain climbers, but never in mountain climbing), continuing to naively report events that fly directly in the face of that assumption. It sets up a wonderful humorous tension.

I am hating Delta

2008-03-10T10:02:00.000-07:00

I knew there was a good reason why I usually avoid Delta, but Denver to Pittsburgh is not exactly a high traffic route and I'm really cheap, so I bought the ticket through Atlanta. Unfortunately my cheapness meant I had a three hour layover, but they have great Southern food in the Atlanta airport — no joke, terminal A is where it's at. Anyways, I'm kinda confused when I arrive, because they show two flights to Pittsburgh at the same time, slightly odd, and mine is delayed. No worries because mine is in terminal A. Good lunch, then maybe a drink, some reading, should be a breeze. Well, no drink, since with DST it's still technically Sunday morning in Atlanta, but no big loss. I start to head off to my gate for the short wait for boarding, only there's no one there, and it says the next flight is to Austin. Double check the boards, and yes, my flight number is supposed to be there. The confusing thing is that both Pittsburgh flights are shared by Delta and Northwest, but they are shown with the same Northwest flight number. Well, apparently a delay with their plane getting in forced them to use another, which according to the Delta agent "forces them" to create a new flight number, thus the two listed flights. As in, keeping a reasonable on time record requires them to create a new flight that will magically get marked as leaving on time no matter the real delay. So, their plan was for everyone to go to the gate for their flight number in terminal A, then have a rather annoyed agent try to explain that they were secretly supposed to be on this other flight in terminal E.

Not a big deal since I had enough time, just a "what the hell is going on with these people?" moment. Flash forward to Pittsburgh baggage claim. Me and about twenty other people are waiting waiting waiting for our bags to come out. Everyone else on our flight has gotten theirs, but somehow there's still dozens of bags coming out, none of them claimed. Not to worry, we are reassured, because they just had too few luggage carts for the number of bags today and had to drive the empties back to the plane for another load. Fifteen minutes later, a dozen more bags come out, only one of them belonging to any of us. They had a whole three hours to get my bag on the right plane and somehow still didn't make it.

Gummy

2008-02-05T08:07:00.000-08:00

Both of our animals are expensive now, although kitty still much more so.

Higgs has always had a snaggle tooth in front that was almost impossible to get totally clean around and should have probably been pulled as soon as it came in. Apparently it was a much bigger problem than it looked. Now Mr. Gums is not very happy, except for the sudden switch to wet food.

I jabber about narrators

2008-01-19T17:55:00.000-08:00

I think I have found the most endearing narrator in all English literature — and somehow he was created by Dean Koontz. I know, it's crazy, but I am seriously impressed by the narration in Odd Thomas. I really don't particularly like Dean Koontz novels, even though I've tried many both before and since discovering the Odd Thomas novels. Maybe it's Odd's often self-deprecating sense of humor, even when in dire peril.

Don't get me wrong, there are weak spots, particularly in the sequels. The plot in the most recent was incredibly reliant on quantum jargon hand waving of the most blatant variety, which terribly annoys me. And all the stories have depended a little too much on everyone having a single defining crazy fact in their history that acts as a shortcut to characterization. But the narration is so enjoyable, and Odd Thomas so damn likable, that you forget those problems.

I discover snow cream

2007-12-25T19:22:00.000-08:00

So, my grandmother has quite the recipe collection, and finally compiled and printed up a massive cookbook after my mom and aunt started arguing about who would get the mass of unorganized recipe pages eventually. In the dessert section, amongst some very tasty unhealthy treats, is a short recipe for something called snow cream. I seem to remember asking about it before, and my grandmother went on quite nostalgically about how great it is. Apparently they would make ice cream from snow on the rare occaissions there was some in Arkansas when she was growing up.

Today my mom made a cobbler since we had some extra berries. Of course, cobbler calls out for ice cream, especially when my mom's boyfriend's daughter doesn't touch fruit with a ten foot pole. So out we venture into the fresh snow, looking for a grocery store open at 6pm on Christmas Day. I was hopeful since they've stayed open through holidays and even blizzards in the past, but apparently not so late. But with all the fresh snow, we decided to try snow cream. It is simply wonderful. All it takes is a two eggs, a cup of sugar, a cup of milk and two teaspoons of vanilla mixed in a very large bowl. Then you quickly add enough fresh snow to reach ice cream consistency (the whole bowl full in our case) and eat immediately. It probably helps that we chilled mix and bowl through dinner so they didn't melt the snow on contact. It's very light and fluffy and so quick for the satisfaction. We'll be doing this again.

Kitty is alive

2007-12-24T17:09:00.000-08:00

Well, a few days before mothers were due to arrive, Arthur decided that he no longer wanted to eat at all. He'd been rather irregular at eating the last few days, even though he had been so excited about wet food before. After probably 36 hours without any food at all, there was a stay at the kitty hospital to keep him from starving himself. Then an ultrasound that turned up possibly a really odd cancer, but eventually (after more than a day thinking we'd have to put him down) a biopsy came back as a horrible infection in the lining around his intestines. The solution: surgery to repair the source of the infection and flush it out. At this point he was so weak that he could barely walk, and wouldn't eat anything except finally a few bites of fried chicken. Surgery was on Friday night, and he finally came home this evening. Of course, in the meantime he required a feeding tube, a blood transfusion (there are kitty blood donors!), and constant vitals monitoring.

He's down at least 20% in weight after his starving time, and he was skinny to begin with, so he now gets a whole can a day of special fattening prescription food. His feeding tube is still in (under the shirt on the other side) in case he doesn't eat enough. I don't think it'll be a problem. This picture is immediately after his first meal at home: a quarter can scarfed down frantically, after which he asked for more. Now he's feeling so lively that he wants to do everything forbidden that'll pop his stitches.

Tell me more

2007-12-20T18:24:00.000-08:00

Ah, what use I could have gotten out of this little device back in the day. The best part is the endorsement letter at the bottom of the page.

Weirdly enough

2007-12-20T08:41:00.000-08:00

It turns out that if you spend all day thinking about plots, you have shockingly plot-driven dreams. I mean, sometimes even novel-length ones that actually make sense. I do have to admit that I can't figure out why the one last night ended with a funeral. It might help if I remembered whose funeral it was supposed to be. Up until then, though, it was ridiculously self-consistent for a dream.

I go on about books

2007-12-17T20:13:00.000-08:00

Since I've been complaining a lot lately, both on- and offline, about disappointing books, I thought that I should be fair and mention some stand-out books that I read this last year.

A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
This is the most memorable of the lot this year: written in 1722, it describes the breakdown of society in plague-stricken London, 1665. Defoe includes a satisfying amount of facts and figures in with the story, which brings to life how the city experiences each stage of the plague. A remarkably modern work in many ways.

The Jeeves and Wooster books by P.G. Wodehouse
Any BBC-philes out there will recognize these characters: the '20s upperclass twit Bertie Wooster and his ever-resourceful gentleman's personal gentleman, Jeeves. The books top the movies, of course, particularly as they are told through the incredibly silly narration of Bertie himself (with a few notable exceptions told by Jeeves). There's just one succession of crazy plot after another, all meant to variously advance, dodge, or break an engagement. They're simply wonderful.

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
I suspect that I actually read this in '06, but we'll sneak it in here since it seems to have gotten me started on this year's humor streak. This book is just endlessly entertaining. I am still amused picturing the demon Crowley intimidating his houseplants into becoming the most beautiful and lush houseplants ever — he read that talking to your plants is good for them, you see. It's just a great absurdly hilarious world.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
Yes, yes, how did I ever go so long without reading this book? In my defense, I'll only say that the first Heinlein I ever read was a late work, so I wasn't rushing to read more of him. This, however, truly is the classic that everyone touts it as. An interesting narrative perspective and a plot so well executed and believable that you could almost take it as a blueprint for a revolution. Just read it.

Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
I'm an anecdote addict. I like telling and hearing them, and, of course, no one can tell them like Twain. Mostly an autobiography of his time as a pilot's apprentice learning the river, the book combines anecdote, legend, and news reports to document a culture that had already vanished by the time of its writing. I think it was this bittersweetness that's the real appeal.

Lyonesse by Jack Vance
Jack Vance is probably best known for his sci-fi adventures, which are marked by fully realized worlds and remarkably well-crafted language. I thoroughly enjoy almost any Jack Vance, but the Lyoness books are unique as a tongue-in-cheek Grail quest in which the Grail is completely and utterly trivial. The real quests are for identity and recognition. Just don't expect any depth of character in the fairy-tale villians.

The Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books by Fritz Leiber
The original heroes of sword and sorcery — the books are really lighthearted and funny, too. They're all prime examples of buddy comedy adventure stories, each with the equivalent of Bond-girls.

I want Mexican food

2007-12-15T07:54:00.000-08:00

Matt and I have been severely disappointed in the local Mexican food. The upscale stuff is all really Americanized California-style, while a lot of the mid-priced places are really bland New Mexico style. And with high rents in the area, there's really no hole-in-the-wall kind of places. I, of course, want spicy Tex-Mex — I like my Americanization in the Texan variety. Luckily there's one good family-run place within walking distance of our house that is more than adequately spicy and has pretty much become our sole supplier of Mexican food satisfaction. Unfortunately, said family is now under indictment for supposedly running a largish drug ring. All I know is that the feds better not try to seize our only fajita source.

I am disappointed

2007-12-03T20:29:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Camouflage, which supposedly won a Nebula, but I'm finding it hard to believe. The story mostly follows a changeling alien that wanders the oceans masquerading as various animals for millions of years, only coming out onto land to investigate humans in the 1930s. It spends quite a lot of time trying to understand and imitate us before it decides to start looking for where it came from. When a team of scientists unearths a strange artifact from the ocean, the alien's naturally on the spot.

The actual writing was ably executed — nothing spectacular but good. The beginning was interesting, and main character sympathetic, but the ending was foreseeable about a mile off. Unfortunately, the best part of the book was the chapter I read in the bookstore, in which the alien ends up stuck in the Bataan Death March, trying to understand this new aspect of humanity. In the end it is supposed to learn to love, which is carefully developed over a whole two scenes. It is just assumed that the immortal, multiple PhD holding, repeatedly married (and currently young and sexy) alien naturally only learns to love immediately upon meeting a middle-aged, slightly pudgy and admittedly desperate scientist. I'm willing to bet that it's old astronomy department was full of them. It's all so fast and superficial that we never see anything special, and what starts out as a story of an alien learning what it means to be human ends as an indulgent fantasy. Apparently acknowledging human suffering is so rare in sci-fi that it warrants an award even if the story is otherwise lacking.

I am good at time management

2007-11-07T19:26:00.001-08:00

So, I'm doing National Novel Writing Month because I have a novel I already thoroughly outlined and like the idea of telling yourself that it's okay to write a crappy first draft so long as you do get a first draft, even if that means telling yourself you have to do it in a month. (Though, for some reason I almost decided to work on another novel idea that is currently without a main character, any minor characters, plot, or really anything except a world. I just really liked that world.) Of course, since the start of November I have started working on a short story that has languished maybe a year in the to-be-finished pile, revised a short story that I meant to do three months ago, and written perhaps a tenth of what I should have on the novel. The lesson: next time I want to finish some projects I should just set a hard deadline to finish something bigger. It reminds me of this essay.

I am a glutton for punishment

2007-11-05T12:53:00.000-08:00

Well, both Matt's mom and mine have confirmed: they are both coming out to our place for Christmas. Cross your fingers for me.

I smell like butter

2007-10-03T20:22:00.000-07:00

Matt and I have been trying to eat at home more often, both because we'd like to eat healthier than most restaurants make doable and wouldn't mind saving money in the bargain. So we've been trying out a lot of new recipes, mostly from our favorite cooking show, Good Eats. Some things like the granola bars have been big hits, but like any cooking show, the majority of the dishes lean to the unhealthy side. For instance, tonight I made Chicken Piccata for the first time. That's chicken pounded flat, floured, and fried in a metric ton of butter. Then you add shallots (the "vegetable"), white wine, lemon juice, and more butter to make a sauce so rich that you only need to wave your pasta near it. The result is, naturally, crazy delicious. The downside is that I'll apparently smell like butter for days, not to mention that I should probably take a year off my life expectancy. I don't think that one will be going into the regular rotation.

Fall

2007-09-26T10:43:00.000-07:00

Well, fall is finally here: the trees are turning spastically, trying to figure out what's up with the repeated hot-cold cycles; the prairie dogs are so busy nibbling the last plant material left in their territory that they are no fun for Higgs to chase; and coyotes are foraging even in the day, occasionally teasing the slow dog for fun. Seriously, this coyote walked out onto a trail a yard away from me and didn't blink. Higgs went crazy.

Weirder yet, our neighbor found a bat roosting in his tree. Apparently our little mountains don't have enough nice rocky caves and outcroppings anymore.

I am starting to panic

2007-09-21T18:53:00.000-07:00

So Matt's mom and middle sister are coming to visit third weekend in October. This really wouldn't be that big of a deal by itself: afterall, I've met both of them before and they're cool. Allison has never been out to Colorado, so we will have the standard selection of activities already laid out.

Turns out, though, that the weekend before that my cousin in Denver is getting married. I thought it would just be a good chance to see my aunts and uncles, and maybe, just possibly, finally lure my dad out for a visit. Turns out my sister already had the time off for an undecided vacation with her boyfriend when she got the invitation, so now I shall have my dad, sister, and the boyfriend I have not yet met but who my sister plans on marrying soonish. Right up until the day that Matt's family arrives. They might overlap, actually.

Of course, Matt's satellite was launched this week, and all the junior people get put on night shift, giving the satellite little bursts of instructions for a few mintues every couple of hours until it's all operational. That means he's gone 7pm to 8am, attempting to sleep from 8am to 5pm, then we make dinner and repeat. Meanwhile, there's a ridiculous amount of stuff that has to happen before visitors arrive (e.g., tons of laundry, clearing out all the boxes in the second guest room, etc.) that's too noisy to do while someone's trying to sleep, leaving only a few hours in the evening when I'd really rather watch a sappy movie while the cat complains that Matt isn't home when he should be. Luckily there's a couple of weeks still, but I'm starting to think the whole thing will be rather hectic.

Fourteener

2007-09-05T09:27:00.000-07:00

Now I just need to get in shape and do a real one.

I prepare

2007-08-28T06:19:00.000-07:00

Today: hike up Green Mountain to make sure that Higgs and I can do a fourteener on Saturday.

So I've been way slacking on hiking this year, mostly doing stuff out here on the plains instead of in the mountains. Now my friend Sinclair wants to go up Mt. Bierstadt, the easiest fourteener in Colorado, on Saturday. It's the easiest because the trailhead is at 12000 ft (nice!), and the approach is crazy shallow until the very top, but there will be very little air. Green mountain is in town and it's been a favorite over the last couple of years. The hike up is roughly the same elevation change and distance but 4000 ft lower, so hopefully we can still do it at a solid pace.

I dream about flying

2007-08-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

I've been redoing this decaying old album for Matt of his great-grandad's war stuff. He was a flying instructor in WWI and again in WWII. He didn't seem to keep much from the second war, but we've got tons of photos and almost every piece of paper he ever touched in WWI. I've been scanning some of the interesting photos and put them up here. It's pretty surprising that anyone was willing to take those flimsy things up in the air.

I love the Internet

2007-08-08T07:59:00.000-07:00

I watch too many videos

2007-08-05T20:38:00.000-07:00

I totally stayed up way too late last night watching first newish OK go videos, then various OK go imitations, and finally some good Flight of the Conchords songs. In the middle of this spree I happened to IM my little sister, who was coincidentally home alone watching silly youtube videos, too, but of the stop-motion lego variety (by the way, there's actually lego OK go on treadmills, but I don't recommend it). The only redeeming feature of the evening was that I found the Futurama DVD trailer, which pleased me immensely.

To make my day even better, I just discovered that my favorite show as a kid, Get Smart, is being revived as a movie with Steve Carrell. Nevermind that I kinda can't stand Get Smart as an adult, I'm convinced that it'll be genius.

I am intrigued

2007-07-30T19:25:00.000-07:00

Two MIT architecture grad students propose building what they're calling a Crowd Farm that converts the energy of people walking through train stations and such into electricity. They think it'll be fun to have more activity feedback into, for instance, louder concerts. I already think crowds are annoying, and they're not really selling them by making them moreso. Still a funny idea.

Harry Potter, Harry Potter!

2007-07-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

Despite having been 111th on the library's hold list, I have magically gotten the new Harry Potter at last!

In other news, thanks to Elizabeth, I found out that Katie has an album out and have been listening to some samples. A freaking amazing album. Everyone should check it out.

I am flabbergasted

2007-07-24T21:12:00.000-07:00

Sticking your eyeball in a particle beam to tell if it's on or not is one thing, seeing the bones in your arm through your closed eyelids is a whole other story.

Warm, warmer, hot

2007-07-22T21:44:00.000-07:00

Usually the summers around here aren't too bad. It's pretty dry, so it cools off at night and stays okay in the shade, and half the time it rains in the afternoon, squelching the hottest part of the day and accelerating evening cool-down. No such luck this year. It's been freaking ridiculous. And, of course, we have no A/C, so we spent the last two afternoons napping in the basement rather pathetically. Meanwhile Higgs is camped on the landing, whose tile is no match for this heat, because the basement is the kitty's domain.

I see Julius Caesar

2007-07-22T10:30:00.000-07:00

Matt and I have been going to see the Colorado Shakespeare Festival again this season. (Although they replaced the Shakespeare improv group with two kid-friendly plays we're so skipping.) The first was Midsummer Night's Dream, which I think I've seen quite enough now. Their performance wasn't spectacular either, and the clown-like costumes on the fairy king and queen were very distracting. It was, however, the best version of the mechanicals' Pyramus and Thisbe, which made up for a lot. And then The Servant of Two Masters, one of their non-Shakespeare selections, was played a little too screwball. I'm also sure it probably had a lot of wordplay in the original Italian, none of which made it into the English. There was one stand-out performance in the part of Florindo. He carried this outlandish smile of naîve confindence throughout the play, and managed to strike such ridiculous poses in all seriousness. It really made the whole play actually stand up.

Turns out the same actor was in Julius Caesar as Mark Antony. Well now, this is a bit of an intriguing change. So we go to see the opening last night, and it was really well done. We were very impressed with The Tempest last year, particularly since it's a more difficult play, but I rather think this Julius Caesar was right up there. Matt, of course, prefers more traditional performances. They set it a few decades in the future, with all the familiar dystopian scenery and costume choices (a big pile of wrecked TVs; drab, utilitarian but rather ill-fitting clothes; a prophetess with strange cords connecting to her body and a screen over an eye). They also rather enjoyed all the blood in the play. They did intermission just as first blade is inches from Caesar, then began right up again there complete with techno music killing frenzy. It really did play like a movie version for the stage, right down to the servant putting Cassius out of "her" misery with a bullet to the head after she falls on her sword. Aside from all that, though, the performances by the leads were quite good, particularly Antony, who pulls off being more sympathetic than usual, which just makes you uneasy with both sides' choices. Also, they made Octavian a total spaz who stabs a beer can with a knife to drink it. It worked surprisingly well with the lines.

The kitty has us well-trained

2007-07-20T07:18:00.000-07:00

There are several unique things about Matt's cat, Arthur (amongst them that he acts like he's really a dog most of the time). One of his quirks is that he doesn't meow so much as chirp. It's like his vocal cords are so unused to producing noise that he can just barely croak out a short little sound. Since the dog moved in he has learned to be louder, almost managing a soft quarter-meow on a regular basis, in order to compete for attention.

Last night, in the middle of a dream, I suddenly hear these two soft but real sustained meows coming from inside the room. Matt and I are immediately awake and looking for kitty, thinking he must be dying or something. Of course, he's actually just having a little kitty dream; that's why he made full meow sounds. This means that all four members of our house talk in their sleep.

In other news, last night Higgs finally discovered where I hide his old and surplus toys under the bed.

I bite off more than I can chew

2007-07-17T18:12:00.000-07:00

So the other day I decided that one of my stories requires some alliterative verse poetry. Actually, I decided that it should have rather a significant amount of alliterative poetry. Problem: As much as I can't resist alliterating in prose, I've never written alliterative poetry. In fact, I haven't written any poetry at all in maybe eight years (and looking back at that, never any good poetry). I'm not really sure what I was thinking, but this has sort of fixed in my mind now. I rather think that I need to stop reading Germanic epics and Tolkien lectures.

I talk too much about German movies

2007-07-09T10:32:00.000-07:00

I was rather surprised recently when I saw a preview for No Reservations, a new Catherine Zeta-Jones romantic comedy, and recognized it as a remake of the German movie Mostly Martha. Mostly Martha is the story of an obsessive, emotionally isolated chef at a top restaurant whose life changes when she finds herself caring for her orphaned niece while trying to deal with the easy-going Italian chef brought in to help at the restaurant. Martha is the kind of person who, when ordered by her boss to attend therapy, spends her appointments quietly discussing various methods for preparing pigeon. The problem is that I can't see Catherine Zeta-Jones playing this role as anything but outgoing, flirtatious Catherine Zeta-Jones, rather than the reserved, slightly awkward character that made the original work. This is a very bad omen for the remake, and I anticipate yet another horribly cookie cutter romanic comedy. I am hating Hollywood right now.

On the subject of German movies, I saw The Lives of Others when it was out in theaters and it was probably one of my favorite movies this year. It's about a German Stasi officer observing a playwright, eventually becoming drawn into his life. The AV Club bemoaned it's lack of cross-cutting and other distractions to "keep the audience wound up", but that's part of what I liked about it. The tone of the movie matched the quiet stoicism of the main character himself, and the whole thing came together to feel more real than most movies. Matt seems to have liked it a lot, too, although he's probably tired of me talking about it by now.

It's not German, but I also have to recommend the Norwegian comedy Kitchen Stories, about an efficiency expert in early 50s Sweden sent out to observe the habits an uncooperative Norewegian farmer. The study requires that he regularly sit in a high chair in the corner of the room without speaking to the subject for weeks, which leads to funny situations but also makes you painfully aware of their mutual isolation. I just randomly picked this up off the shelf without looking too closely, and was very pleasantly surprised. Being yet another movie on voyeurism, it is also rather quiet, but interspersed with both hilarious and touching moments.

Update 25.7.07: Sadly, the actor who played the Stasi officer so movingly in The Lives of Others has died.