Last updated:06/26/2008
Archive: October '03-January '04 : probably working on Destroyer
Archive: Jan '04-July 3 '04: Pretender
Archive: July 4 04-January 23 '05: Pretender and Fortress of Ice
Archive: Jan. 24, 2005-June 30, 2005: Fortress of Ice
Archive: July 1 2005-October 5, 2005: Fortress 3 and A Foreigner Book
Archive: October 5, 2005 to January 31, 2006: Foreigner Book.
Archive: January 31, 2006 to July 6, 2006
Archive: July 7, 2006 to September 1, 2007: includes writing of Cyteen II, house move, etc.
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All contents copyright 2007 by C.J. Cherryh
One of those questions a writer gets asked (a lot) besides the one we all dread, "where do you get your ideas?" is "how long does it take to write a novel?" Well, I thought it might amuse my readers to know. First, how long is a novel? 80,000 words up to infinity. A book 3/4 of an inch thick is about 80,000 words. A book an inch and a half thick is about 120,000 words. How many words on a page of manuscript? About 325, doublespaced.
So---say that your target length is about 100,000 words or more.
And how much does a writer write a day? Bear in mind that sometimes you go backwards, and rip out 10,000 words. Sometimes you go forward, and gain 3. Words, that is.
Sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's slow. Sometimes you don't get anything done. Bear in mind I write full time. But I have to do other things, too. So I thought I'd just let you see for a while how progress goes.
9/01/07 Saturday. 217822. My birthday. I lazed around a bit, did a very little work, and then we went out to dinner—perfect evening, with a temperature in the mid 70's, no wind, and the best seating was out on Antonio's balcony, above Spokane Falls, which gave us a gentle water sound instead of the music inside. Lovely evening—we sat there a long time, opening way too many presents. Joan gave me a nice bottle of special vodka; Sharon gave me, among other things, an absolutely gorgeous little figurine of a dragonfly fairy I'd admired the evening we went out for appetizers at Klinkerdagger's, the total rascal; and Jane gave me a silver bracelet with a Tolkein quote outside and an engraving inside, which I greatly treasure.
9/02/07 Sunday. 219029. Rest and work. Sharon is supposed to be off to the mountains. Jane made an emergency run to Petco, who sold her a fish that just isn't eating, and I'm not sure the little thing is going to make it. Some distributors run fish through their systems with no food, no delay in a holding facility to let the fish recover, 2 weeks in transport without getting fed, and it's pretty darned bad, in my book. Once the fish has gone far enough, they can't eat, even in the presence of food.
9/03/07 Monday. 220712. Labor Day...we're being pretty lazy, actually; or sort of...if you count the leisure to really get some work done. And the poor little female betta died. Not a chance: I'll about bet you that most of that shipment dies. No ice available on a holiday, so we laid out of skating—obviously—and I got some serious work done.
9/04/07 Tuesday. 223291. I'd figured we'd lay out today, too, and I am caught up on my scenes and had a really important one to write, actually in the middle of writing, but, sigh, that can be a bit of a trap—you end up not going out to exercise, and that's not good. The brain works better if you exercise; Jane wanted to skate if I wasn't too far into work, so that's what we did. The ice was pretty good, and I got some good skating in. Came home, had last night's spare chicken for lunch, took out down to Pullman to visit Dr Mike and get our backs back in shape—I was so wiped by then that I just wasn't worth too much after we got back, so the scene is at least at a good spot to leave it.
9/05/07 Wednesday. 225020. We had really excellent ice for the first time in months, and we had Joan for a lesson, so it was a good day. Joan found what I've been struggling with—my equilibrium point, on the outside edge, involving getting a shoulder back. It's a narrow line between looking good and going down, but when you do it right, it feels good. We went home afterward, I called mum to see how she's doing—pretty well actually—and got that important scene written. The other thing Jane got me—the whole recent season of House—was our consolation while the Mariners continued to have problems. Sigh.
9/06/07 Thursday. 226211. Up at 5am to brush the cat, watch the sun come up, have a cup of coffee and get my head focused on the book. Skating scheduled for 10:45, so it's off to the rink at 9:45, and thirty minutes spent redressing, getting the skates on, the boots precisely laced and in the right tension. And I get out on the ice, and it's crap ice. They've needed to thicken the sheet, so they flooded without scraping, which at certain temperatures produces leopard-spotted ice, meaning it will jar your teeth out in decent figure skates. My back popped just skating around the rink; so I decided doing fine edge work was impossible, went and told Jane, who was in warm-up [takes her longer]; she went to look it over, and we'd called Joan to warn her, but we couldn't get her. Joan showed up, we told Joan it was just too rough for us---skating on that, besides being iffy on the edges, is going to aggravate every aching joint. So we bagged it for the day, and decided to follow Joan's recommendation and go get some tennies, which she claims [she has a really high arch too] will fit my feet. Most tennies cut off the circulation to my feet and numbness or extreme pain follows in about 3 minutes to an hour, depending. I've spent a fortune on high-end tennies, cheap ones, medium ones: I've had Nikes, Reebok, Avia, Keds, you name it, and none work. So we brave the mall, a thing I detest, and we don't end up at the shop Joan recommended, but at one on the way to that shop. She recommended a variety of Nikes. They had it. We tried it. I tried the 8 1/2 M which fits in most other shoes. No. Can't get my foot [arch] into it. 9's. No. 9 1/2. Ridiculous. I'm going to need a 10, and there's an inch play around my foot. This is not a fit. I've thought of getting lace-to-the-toe hunting boots, which might work, but we persist. We go to another variety. Two other varieties. With socks, impossible. Without, less impossible, but still impossible. Jane, meanwhile finds the perfect fit for her. Not me. We're into the third size of the third other variety. The stack of boxes around us looks like a cartoon. I gather it's the salesperson's first week. Yet one more set of boxes. Jane suggests I try hers. Two sizes of those. Nope. She suggests I try an odd-looking breed of Pumas. We try it in the most common size, and after a little fussing, lace adjustment learned with skating boots, we have something like a fit, that takes five minutes to start numbing my foot. I play with the laces a bit more. We have something like a fit. It's going to take me a hundred dollars to figure if these alligator-scaled shoes are going to work, but this is the most promising thing we've found, except---they're pink. Pank, as they say in Texas. Real pank. They have them in silver and blue. I go for that and we go home with tennies. I have to take them off after a while, and try them with thin socks. Real thin socks. Promising, however. The print on the side of the sole says, simply, "Cell." Which pretty well covers their appearance. We'll find out. Jane meanwhile is looking at a mattress for her room---hers is killing her back: we spent a while more at the Sleep Number bed store in the mall. Those things are spendy. But you only have one back. She's going to try a platform bed under the mattress she has, then decide whether she needs a step further.
9/07/07 Friday. 227398. Up at 5 again, the daily ritual, watching the lights go off as the sky lightens, brushing the cat. I got some work done, then back to the rink for another try---Joan's at home with a sore neck; Sharon's off in the Tetons with Steve, being close to nature. I'm trying the new tennies, and, wonder of wonder, I wore them to the rink and my feet weren't numb. I got a spare lace hook, because I'm tired of risking my nails fishing for the laces, but these are honestly the most wearable tennies I've had in decades...since they changed the last on Keds, in fact. It's navy beans [add about a quarter cup of black pepper and 2 tbs salt to 2 packages navy beans, plus a small precooked ham, diced] for dinner; but since I have dropped my MP3 player, my lace hook, my skate guards, my lace hook, burned lunch, and burned the toast---we decided to let the beans cook in peace in the Crockpot and go out for broasted chicken at the Swinging Doors. Perhaps it's the shock of having shoes that fit that's had me dropping things left and right, but after filling the newly painted kitchen with cindery smoke---did I mention trying to set the microwave afire trying to heat bread? I needed a break. Meanwhile Jane has threatened my life if I wear those clattery loose sandals one more day. So they're relegated to the house, if I can make these work.
9/08/07 Saturday. 229102. Up at 5:30...I slept late, it being a weekend, and brush the cat, have 2 leisurely cups of coffee, then to work. Which I did all day long. However the shelves Jane ordered arrived, and she's carried these monstrous things to the basement---they're advertised as CD/DVD shelves, and they'd be good for that, but, dear readers, they also handle paperback books, are about 6 feet high and about that wide. She got two of these creatures, and we think we may have something. They're extremely stable, handle huge numbers of books, and don't look bad, either. Two of these back to back could make a spine in the library and stand stably; or they could line the unfinished area of the basement, and that's where they're going. I carried a few pieces for Jane, mostly went back to the book and worked. Re dinner: you always go through a moment with beans that you're sure you've oversalted them; and I was really afraid I had, but they turned out fine. 5 quarts of bean soup, up to the rim of the Crockpot. That'll hold us a few days, lunch and supper.
9/09/07 Sunday. 230705. Again---up at 5:30. I'm being bad this weekend. But I worked all day on the manuscript---literally all day, breaking for lunch, for a brief look at the Mariners' game with Detroit---after dropping 10 games in the middle of what had been a run for the Wild Card, the M's finally won one. Hurrah for that. It was getting depressing. And after I had worked so long I was getting a charley horse in my butt, I decided to go help Jane in the basement moving books, which was where she'd gone after her day's work. We emptied a raft of boxes. Now we have to find a place to dispose of those. I hate to throw them out: we need to find somebody who needs boxes.
9/10/07 Monday. 230705. At this point, my friends, I absolutely lost track of everything...and have to reconstruct this record. I thought I might get through this book...but books end where they want to end, and I am working my tail off. A weird thing happened to knock us out of skating for the week...the rink compressor broke its crankshaft and we got a call yesterday from the rink asking Jane [who serves as webmaster for the Lilac City Figure Skating Club, otherwise known as the local FSC] to put on their site that they're down, no ice, melting. They're having to ship in a new crankshaft from California. So I went to ground with my computer and kept no records, not of word count, nothing.
9/11/07 Tuesday. 230705. Ditto.
9/12/07 Wednesday. 230705. Still working like a lunatic, grudging the time I have to sleep. Up at 4:30, working hard.
9/13/07 Thursday. 230705. Ditto. There may be ice today, but we are staying home working, Jane working on unpacking boxes and hanging plates, I remember that...the whole light yellow kitchen blossomed out in her huge collection of Russian fairy tale plates, black with Russian Palekh-style painting on them...I'd sort of thought of them when I designed the color scheme, believe it or not—Russian art uses a lot of primary colors, and it really does look good. I tend to a Zen vacancy in my own decorating, but we have so many 'things' that have come out of those boxes, well, they have to hang somewhere...
9/14/07 Friday. 230705. Working...still off the ice. We did hear that Sharon went to the rink, but we didn't. I can't remember what we were doing in the neighborhood, but it was something—maybe picking up prescriptions.
9/15/07 Saturday. 230705. Soooo close to the end. Jane just heads me to restaurants for food, doesn't ask me to cook, on account of it wouldn't be edible when I'm in this state.
9/16/07 Sunday. 230705. Closing in on it. All the taxes are in---we got those done before I got into this mode. SO I don't have to worry about that.
9/17/07 Monday. 237021. Cyteen II is finished! I'm exhausted. I gave it three hours of celebration, then, as per my hobby, got to work, transferred the file to the computer that has a printer hardwired to it [faster], and then sat back down and wrote an outline for the next Bren book. That's a habit of mine from way back: I never go to sleep without a book in progress...
9/18/07 Tuesday. 237021. Jane's started her read. I printed the book out in singlespace, and she's going over it in her patented edit. It's 425 singlespaced pages. That's a lot of editing.
9/19/07 Wednesday. 237021 Jane's given me a handful of pages with her comments. And she's reading it in rough; I'm correcting it to final form on computer. This is a matter of re-reading the whole book and nitpicking it line by line into order. I'm up at 5am, brush the cat, pour coffee, get to work, which lasts until we go to skating; lunch; then more work; then supper. I'm cooking via the crockpot, so I don't have to do anything but dish it up; and Jane is staying up to all hours so she can give me pages for tomorrow. And it goes on.
9/20/07 Thursday. 237021. Up at 5, skating at 11. Work. Jane's given me 50 pages more. I'm going hard. Here's where my recollection gets beyond sparse.
9/21/07 Friday. 237021. Up at 5, skating at 11, then back to work.
9/22/07 Saturday. 237021. Working from 5am on to supper, no skating: still in my dressing-gown. That's how social I am.
9/23/07 Sunday. 237021 Working, ditto.
9/24/07 Monday. 237021. Joan's been having trouble with her shoulder. So we skated, but Joan didn't. Then back to work. My back and neck are killing me..at times I sit hours without moving more than my fingers when I'm on edit-entry. If I weren't getting this couple of hours of exercise, I'd just die.
9/25/07 Tuesday. 237021 Lesson with Joan...though I'm being adamant about Joan not holding onto my hand while I'm working, in case I'd take her down; and anybody that know's Joan, all 5 foot 2 of her, and 95 pounds, knows that this won't hold up past ten minutes. It didn't. But I didn't take her down, either, and its good practice, being accurate enough not to jerk on her hand. We're still working on those edges. But it's so much better than it was. Let me explain that when you slant onto one of the two 'rail' edges of a figure skate [the center of the blade in cross-section is arched up, and there is an inside 'rail' and an outside 'rail' as it's sharpened...these can cut paper. Or fingers. I love it when people let their children 'fall down' in front of me. I'm scared for them—they don't have the brains to be scared...but I digress]...shall we say when you weigh near 200 lbs, stand pretty tall, and step onto an edge even from a near standstill, you whip around a half-circle deeply at a tilt...half a very small circle. As in...turnabout on a dime, at an extreme tilt—if you don't muscle your way into control of it, and the muscles involved are in your back and abs and knees and butt. Well, I used to whip around and grab the wall. Now I can do this on open ice and keep the circle 'open' and the rate of bend under control. This is major. It will also give you charley horses in really strange places. And back we go to the manuscript, which I am working on like a maniac.
9/26/07 Wednesday. 230705. Work, then skating. I'm absolutely exhausted.
9/27/07 Thursday. 230705. Got a call from Sharon—in the hospital. She's had a medicine interaction. I drove out to feed her kitty, and of all things, I'd lost the key. Skating. Really, really hard. Working from 5am, to make speed. Jane's working like a trooper, trying to feed me pages and keep ahead of me: I have an advantage, using the computer to flip back and find something on search function: she's doing hard copy, and that means a physical search.
9/28/07 Friday. 230705. Skating in the AM, on the little rink—and I blithely took my waltz jump not only off the wall, but way out in mid-ice, and even chained three of them together. The first is a biggie. That's huge. The second, quite honestly, means you didn't check your first one hard enough to stop. Sharon called and I had to tell her my accomplishment. She's doing better, for which we're grateful.
9/29/07 Saturday. 230705. Breakfast at Ferguson's. I've worked really, really hard all day: the mental energy you burn up doing this sort of edit loves carbs, and I gave myself some, never mind the diet. Blueberry pancakes. Jane's editing away—I love her comments. She makes me laugh. And after 10 straight hours of staring at micro-issues in a manuscript and trying to remember all the instances of a given item that's changed...you need that. I needed a little stretch of my back and butt, so I ran out and washed the windows...the weather is turning, and this needed doing in the worst way. So now we can see out. And then...the weirdest thing...I'm sitting there watching telly after supper, checking the news online, as I often do, and there's a reporter standing in the dark in front of our street sign, catty-angled, and talking about a carjacking, where a guy reached in a window and jerked out the driver and took the car, and the ponytailed passenger ran off into the dark and the car is missing. Well. This is the kind of neighborhood where people jog at all hours, neighbors chat over the fences, the nearest establishment is a church, and this kind of thing doesn't happen until you get a good 10 blocks south of here...so we were a little disturbed, and decided perhaps we should check the back door lock. Jane piled a can of cat litter in front of it, so it we got a burglar, he'd break his neck in the dark. ;) But just half an hour later, that news feed [with live reporter] and all record of it, vanished off the net. So I'm guessing it was a domestic dispute involving the car, and that's why it vanished. It makes us feel better to think so, anyway.
9/30/07 Sunday. 236406. Last day of baseball—up as usual at 5am, brush the cat, get some work done. I am so nearly done. Stopped for breakfast at Fergusons. Interrupted work to get the business tax done for the state. Back to work. I'm so tired I'm cross-eyed from staring at white space. Did have a call from Sharon: she's doing a lot better, which we are glad to hear. She's home and on her feet and saying she'd like to do a little genteel skating tomorrow. The baseball game we recorded for later play, and we won. Had a nice, quiet evening, and I so wanted to get that last editing done, but that takes brain, and mine was fresh out of energy.
10/01/07 Monday. 235497. Last forty pages edited and in. I'm printing out to send in even as I write this, and Jane's hanging more plates in the kitchen. Joan called to report she can't make it to the rink today—she's had a horrendous weekend with guests over and a very sick puppy. Poor Joan. Poor puppy. Major bout with kennel cough, for which he was vaccinated. Bro is a wheaten terrier and absolutely the sweetest dog. I have some mail I must get out today. I did the tax report online—no money at all coming in from July, August, or September: that makes accounting easy. Such is the life of a writer: you learn to budget or you end up in one heck of a pickle. Sharon didn't make it to skating—I'm not too surprised: she's running low on fuel. And we had lunch at the local pub, then came home to try to continue printing out, but the printer screwed up, and I've decided because of the size of the book I'm going to print it on lighter weight paper, not 24 lb bond. This is just too thick to mail conveniently. For some reason I can't figure, the printer seems to have spaced the words out—it's making a much thicker printout than I like; but I hate to throw it to 10pt type, rather than the more readable 12pt. Quel pain! I won't be able to get it printed and mailed until Wednesday, because we have a chiropractic appointment tomorrow...but I'll at least get it printed tomorrow. We did get the state department corporation registration [annual] turned in—again—this time with money, so the state of Washington won't break up our corporation—can't believe I left that out of the envelope. I didn't get any skating done to speak of; I've sat so still so long that my right knee was 'off' and I have a charley horse in my derriere. I just don't risk my neck with a knee that could collapse under me without warning—and worse, lay me up for weeks, if I do semi-tear the ligament, the way I've done on that knee a dozen times in my life. So...we do it the cautious way, on all fronts.
10/01/07 Monday. 235497. Got up at 7—luxury! And took out to Staples to buy lighter paper, a 20lb bond all-purpose that will cost half what it would cost to mail it, print well enough, and not give my editor a heart attack...not to mention will be easier for my editor and agent to handle, carry home, copy, and send out to various places. Jane spent an achy night, got up this morning too sore to skate, I'm still iffy on the knee from yesterday, plus I'd love to get this manuscript in the mail, and I'm just frustrated.
10/02/07 Tuesday. 235497. Well, we printed out and printed
out, and ended up finally with 1085 pages because no matter what I did, that
computer is declaring it *is* doing a 12-point typeface, when I swear it's
larger than that. So we got it. Meanwhile my computer is acting up. First it
upgraded to IE7, and then it lost its ability to change color of 'visited
sites'. Even Microsoft is baffled. They gave me a free phone number for a fix,
and the fix didn't work. I'm going to have to call them back. Then the Frontpage
software stopped communicating with my server, so I'm having to do thise updates
in the word processor, and just update when I can get back online. I'm so
frustrated. I'm exhausted. We laid out of skating so I could get that printing
done. We have a chiropractic appointment this afternoon—blackberry-peanutbutter
shakes and bacon cheeseburgers here we come! Not to mention our raspberry
granola bar and chai/latte at the stand on the way down. We are not well-behaved
on chiropractic day, but we do enjoy the treats.
10/03/07 Wednesday. 235497...and 1450 on the new Bren book. Jane has now
declared we need to go back on Atkins because she's determined to lose ten
pounds by her birthday. Well, ok. Probably we shouldn't have had the shakes, but
there we are. We're back on Atkins. Actually, we're going to stock up on chicken
and have that because I am just not in a cooking frame of mind. We did get the
manuscript mailed. It took the full space of one of those Post Office boxes, the
larger 1-size express boxes. And skating...Joan has about got me doing the back
outside edge strikeoff without wobbling [and nearly falling over]. It has to be
balanced, and the arm swing has to be coordinated while the shoulders stay up
and the head stays up and the tail stays tucked: forget any part of that and
you'll pitch and have to catch yourself. But I'm gaining on it. I'm starting to
do it without help of any kind. Meanwhile Joan had to rush home to a very sick
puppy, to take him in for a vet appointment. We're all worried about Bro. Hope
he gets well quick. We went out for chicken after skating and got a bucket to
bring home, and then I just went facedown in the bean dip for the rest of the
afternoon. It's that finishing a book thing. I got some good work done on the
outline, good work on the rink, Jane got a very nice compliment from Joan on her
Mohawk, and over all, a pretty good day.
10/04/07 Thursday. 1450 on the new outline. Well, I spent the morning trying to find my Dell program disks to try to fix the bugs in IE7 and in Frontpage, which have manifested ever since that IE7 upgrade. My entire packet of Dell disks is missing. I called Dell and they are sending replacements, no charge even for postage. This is good. It took 2 hours, but this is good. Went skating—had absolutely no energy left, asthma was bothering me, and I was out of breath, so I left the ice after an hour and went and used those Miracle Balls of Jane's—they do work, and take the pain out of a sore back, which I also had. I finally had to retire the green skating outfit, as having stretched beyond all use—it's sort of the consistency of a limp tee-shirt, and just doesn't look as good as it once did. I'd cut it apart to use as a pattern, except it's stretched so it would be hard to figure the percentage of stretch. Outside of that, we went home and I collapsed. My weight is down 5 lbs since yesterday. I've been taking Alli in addition to being on Atkins, and Jane, who lost 3 lbs and didn't fall on her nose, informs me I've been stupid, so I guess maybe I could afford a latte if I continue to do that: that's way too much too fast. I did take a vitamin this morning. I'll try it with my lattes, and if I still fall on my nose, I'll cut the Alli out and be good. I way overslept this morning.
10/05/07 Friday. 1727. The weight's back up half a pound, but I'm pretty happy, all the same.
10/06/07 Saturday. 2386. My day to take it a bit easy.
10/07/07 Sunday. 3431. Good day of work. The outline is going really well.
10/08/07 Monday. 4182. Hair appointment...and what turned into the bad hair day to end all bad hair days. I can't say I was mad...well, yes, I was mad. Not at the hairdresser, more at the situation, and nothing to be done about it. Jane, who will be honest with me no matter what, bless her, took one look at me after and gave me the Look that said, “Well, I'm going to say something, and I'd rather walk barefoot over coals than tell you this, but....” so I already knew it was as bad as I'd tried to convince myself it wasn't...and the hairdresser had cut into it, what was worse. I haven't been this upset since the day I got my hair snagged in the sink and had no way out but to cut off two central locks two inches from my head. [I then blew my stack and randomly cut all of it off an inch long...and had to wear a wig for half a year. Shall we say, bad hair days do not sit well with me?]
10/09/07 Tuesday. 5288. Went to the rink...but I was, needless to say, not worth shooting. Last night I was so mad about the hair I sat down with a whole bottle of wine, watched a calming movie, and flat drank it. Jane wasn't saying a thing: she knew my mood. On the rink today, just couldn't get my ankles to hold up under me: didn't fall, but sure scared Joan, and we gave up after a 15 minute lesson in which she advised me I was right: I should just get off the ice. Did have a new outfit, and some of the blade covers that flash on and off with lights, but that couldn't improve someone with my sense of equilibrium—ie, none.
10/10/07 Wednesday. 6319. Worked a bit, skated—certainly better than yesterday, and found a compromise hairdo that at least doesn't make me want to slit my wrists.
10/11/07 Thursday. 6428. I outlined a bit...and got onto the taxes, and found really lovely things in the mail stack—things that looked like advertising that turned out to be a must-pay bill for my health insurance: I'm just so thrilled. We didn't skate today: we have to get this accounting done. And if we don't hear from Jane's insurance soon I've got to chase that down. I then got on the phone with Dell about the ongoing IE7 problem [that the 'visited links' won't change color] and of course that the Frontpage connection is blitzed, and after an hour or so, we figured it out. Typical of things that go wrong very mysteriously, there's a cause-effect coincidence that makes it look like what it isn't—in this case, it turned out to be an incredibly huge packed condition in my internet temp files [history, to be exact] that was so huge it wouldn't hold anything else. Did I ever purge those files? Not on my personal horizon, things like that...and does Microsoft, which gives you little boxes to question the wisdom of the button you just pushed—does Microsoft provide a little box that says “Purge your history files, idiot—you're running into a jam!”? No. And there are hidden ones that don't appear if you just do it through IE. So you have to be a detective and figure how to access them—I'm actually not too bad with computers: I just use the internet a lot, and really had a large buffer that was just epically stuffed. And how did it get stuffed? Seems that upgrade to IE7 that Microsoft provided was such a monster it ate up so much room the thing then locked up. Isn't that lovely? That is now fixed. I have yet to figure out how to solve the Frontpage mess, but I'm going to work on it.
10/12/07 Friday. 6462. And 0. Well, I've finished the outline...and a good one, too, I'm glad to say. Sometimes a book just comes into focus very nicely. We were going to skate, but we still haven't got the tax stuff in to the bank, and Jane has the piano tuner in—several hours for that operation. Plus I have to mail all the disasters I found in the mail stack yesterday. And then Jane put up the drapery backing that came for the smaller window, it turned out too short, she's still not happy with the other window being in split panels, and we're just having to send it all back and try again. But Jane had tossed the paperwork and I had tossed the coffee grounds—bad combo. We're having to rescan it all and make it work so that it goes back in with paperwork. I still have to get to the post office, but I've figured out this can be as late as Monday. I planned to actually start writing on the new book—you'll see the word count go to zero as I change the document from outline to actual manuscript, so don't be confused. But between the piano tuner and the confusion with the drapery, there's not exactly a tranquil atmosphere around here today. I offer to help, but when Jane monofocusses on a problem, help only confuses her. So I'm updating the blog.
10/13/07 Saturday. 0. Things only got worse. We did get everything mailed, did get the drapery blackout curtains back to Penney's, but we were exhausted, Jane absolutely wiped...she just collapsed with a very uncommon 3 shots of Scotch, spent the night with a horrid headache—which was fairly well repaired by bacon this morning. Hopefully the household can now settle to writing. I did some more research on the 'parse error' problem that is preventing my updating the blog, and I'm beginning to think I've got a really serious problem with that program. Apparently it is a known problem and a bear to fix.
10/14/07 Sunday. 6781. I'm now into the next Bren book...the working title is Conspirator. Probably it will be the published title. I spent today, besides, going into places within the web you don't want to know about. Say that webpages work because of a feature called 'stay-alives' that can be accessed by clicking on your computer name within another feature not normally loaded by an XP installation: the IIS, or Internet Information Service. To avoid a parse error, [meaning you can't communicate with your server] you have to have 'stay-alives' enabled. I have learned about snapons and stayalives and all sorts of little features of web programming...and what I have *just* learned—thank you, Bill Gates: Frontpage has been discontinued as of 2006, in favor of two new not-yet-available web design products. Well, thank you, thank you. That little fact isn't widely known on the web or much advertised on the commercial front. In the meanwhile we are high and dry and dangling in the wind. So I am now investigating Namo, a software I don't like, but apparently it responds to most any web system or language [Frontpage only one] as does every other designer out there BUT Frontpage, which tells you something. So it looks as if I'm going to be switching to Namo—we have a copy inhouse, which if I carefully pry Frontpage's fingers off my computer [quite a job] and install it—should let me install Namo and then upgrade Namo for half the cost of buying Namo cold. In the meanwhile I have a busy week: hair appointment tomorrow at 11am, trying to fix what the last appointment did; car appointment Wednesday at 2, in which we try to do something about the slight looseness in the Forester's get-along. Subarus do that as they age, but we'd like to hold that off as long as possible. It doesn't stop Subarus from running well above 150,000 miles, which we haven't reached, but we'd like to avoid a mechanical if possible. Jane's birthday is approaching, and I have one more gift to buy her, which I'd better get tomorrow—while I'm out and about in the Subaru and she's out in her car, Wesley—usually we just use the Subaru. And she offered to take the Subaru for an oil change, so it looks as if we're going to drive two cars Wednesday, and she gets the car out to the shop [clear out in the Valley] and I come pick her up. Late lunch at Scotty's, maybe. Maybe a trip to the fish store to get some more Mrs. Wages' Pickling Lime [yep, really high tech] for the kalk reactor [that supplies calcium to my corals.]
10/15/07 Monday. 7327 I'm closing in on the backward edges thing. I can do the back inside edges, not well, not elegantly, but I survive. The outside is scarier: you're not just going backward on your toe with your ankle cocked over onto an outside edge, you're moving the other foot and the corresponding hand first forward, then back, which is great if your timing is perfect. It's that timing of that movement that makes the difference between a swan and a dead duck. Do it right and you're solid as standing on a broad floor. Blow it and you're balanced backward on a cliff with the wind against you. But I had a few moments of doing it perfectly. Work is going well, too.
10/16/07 Tuesday. 7327. Spent most of the day at the hairdresser's. Tedious, tiring, and I do not understand people who believe beauty parlors are relaxing. Hours of an operator asking questions, personal stuff, gossip, talk, talk, talk. TMI. For my foreign readers—that stands for “too much information.” I'm exhausted, nerves absolutely abraded. And the hair doesn't do what I wanted, either. Nor will. So well, I got what I wanted for Jane, managed to leave my credit card at that store, got a call from the credit card company, who'd had a call from the merchant—I love Capital One—and I went and recovered it. We went out for supper with Joan, we all drank too much, and I was so upset about the hairdo I way overdid it. Again. I'm not going to be worth anything on the ice tomorrow. And of course with that schedule, I didn't get any work done, either.
10/17/07. Wednesday. 8462. Yep. I left the ice after 10 minutes, after spending 10 minutes driving there and thirty minutes getting into the gear. You just cannot drink too much the night before and have your feet under you. So I got off, feeling doubly down on myself, and decided that was a stupid thing to do—beyond stupid. Drinking too much wasted one evening and the next day. Enough angsting. The hair is what it is and the hairdresser isn't a miracle worker. No sense in my attitude, and I hate losing a day on the ice. So enough pity party. Back to a cheerful attitude. I did get the car's oil changed; Sharon and Jane got me some nice things to put me in a better mood, and we all went out to Scotty's—hugs from the waitress, since we hadn't been there in a while. It's that kind of place. Finished up the day watching Sense and Sensibility, which is good for a person in a mood. Sense sounds like a good recommendation. I think I'll try that for a remedy and cap the bottle after two glasses.
10/18/07. Wednesday. 9532. Still not worth shooting. Mark two days down to that stupid event. I'm still not worth much. Goes to show what a tantrum can do. I intend to remember this one for a while, and get myself into a much better mood. We're taking a trip tomorrow. About time: I love this house, but I think I've settled too deeply into routine.
10/19/07. Friday. 9532. Took out for Seattle with the cats. They weren't even hard to catch; long drive, snowed atop Snowqualmie pass, even though the temperature was 44 F. It was rainy and foggy and windy, and a headwind ate up 3.15 cent gas like it was going out of style. We went out to dinner with Jane's older brother, had a nice visit. The cats like his place: stairs to run, places to howl, especially when we're trying to sleep.
10/20/07. Saturday. 9532. We picked up Jane's younger brother and went to the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, which has a live glassblowing demo almost constantly, and which was a very fun trip; we got out without spending a lot, just got a DVD of one of the exhibits.
10/21/07. Sunday. 95322. Drove home while Jane read the other half of the Kid From Tomkinsville—Jane's favorite juvvie baseball book. Good stories. We had had a wretched breakfast at Shari's—which is going off my list of decent breakfast places; and had not much supper, either, give or take a granola bar on the way home. We're going to need to diet, as is, so that's not so bad.
10/22/07. Monday. 9532 Weight was up 4 pounds. Natch. But a good skate day...Jane got up feeling like death warmed over, but decided that exercise would do her good. I'm not so sure she hasn't a touch of the flu, but no fever, so maybe something she ate. We both had a really good day on the ice. I'm finally getting to where I can really sink back on a heel on an inward edge and know my feet are going to stay under me. We buzzed past the Walmart, Jane picked up another Halloween shirt—she loves that design; and I got some stuff calculated to get the butter sauce off the other one. Sigh. Something dictates that if you really, really like a shirt, butter sauce will find its way there.
10/23/07. Tuesday. 9532...not getting a lot of work done. I'm figuring some last moment things for Jane's birthday tomorrow, and I am through with the bad hair days: in a little bit, it is going *short* again, thank you!
10/24/07. Wednesday. 9532 Jane's birthday. The cats each got her a tree...she's been wanting some evergreens in the front yard, so Efanor and Ysabel got together and made her a card, and gave her two trees—not only that—two trees *planted* without her having to do the digging! That was her wakeup card. We went skating, and then went out with Kay and Joan, and went to Tomato Street for drinks afterward, after which I cooked the promised dinner. We haven't had the Taste of Thai Red Curry mix for a long time: two potatoes and one packet of Tyson's Diced Chicken with a can of Taste of Thai Lite Coconut Milk and one packet of that curry spice [hot, mind you!] and it is to die for! For the rest of her birthday she got the necklace I nearly lost my credit card buying...and a bracelet like mine. It has a Tolkein quote that seems appropriate for writers.
10/25/07. Thursday. 9532. Still not getting much done: the skating is going well, but I exhausted myself, literally standing on one five foot patch of ice for two hours, practicing the 'strike-off' for the back outside curve—ie, you stand on the ball of your little toe while moving your other foot forward, then slowly back, observing perfect posture, and leaning toward the foot you're standing on, keeping the heel your hands in contact with your body, palms flat but parallel to the ice, one behind your hip, one forward, while starting slowly to look over your shoulder, point your backward-extended foot, and rotate shoulders and arms slowly until you've gone as far as you can—which will make you glide in a nice backward arc bent away from your off foot...ie, toward empty space, opposite to where a saving foot can come down. That's short for, “You lean as if toward a cliff while going backward on ice and try to look relaxed and in control.” Meanwhile the airconditioner/heater fan has started screaming, so I had to call repair, who will be out tomorrow, and our oven reliably loses 50 degrees of heat the moment it's warmed up to the target temperature, which means a sensor is screwed, and *that* repairman will be out on Tuesday next. The joys of home ownership...but it beats having to do the same while going through apartment management at our first apartment. And then...in the evening...we both lost our e-mail functions. Ain't life wunnerful? And we've isolated Jane's persistent stomach pain to the water---we need to change the water filter, so rather than call the plumber to do it, I'm going to. This should be interesting.
10/26/07. Friday. 9673. Well, well, well...we figured out the internet problem. And here it is. When IE7 upgraded automatically, as aforesaid, it filled the buffer for temp files, and choked up the system so thoroughly it couldn't change colors. And here's the kicker, which is why when you can't see any logical connection between events, sometimes it really IS coincidence...on that very same night, our server changed its business name AND my ftp info, without my getting the e-mail that should have advised me. As many of you know, I check my e-mail when I'm between books, and when I'm on final crunch at the end of the book, I don't—well, I should have. I'd spent a while figuring out the buffer problem, but it was NOT related to the internet problem, which was that my FTP info was no longer valid—translation: my personal codes for updating this site were screwed. And then, as per yesterday, our e-mail stopped working. Jane's and mine. So we decided [another attempt to bring order to a random universe] hey, we moved, maybe the server doesn't know it and can't get paid, so they've frozen our accounts. So I got into the site under our server's new name and got the billing department, who swore, after putting us through hoops to get us to remember our actual password—that we had indeed paid. Well, if we were paid, sir, why did we need a password to find out we were paid? But theirs not to reason, just to follow the rules. And that he did. So on to the Troubleshooting division, a nice woman with an Asian accent who probably wasn't really named Margaret, whose accent sort of blipped in and out in time with the blip on the phone connection. Many, many repeat-that's later we figured out that BOTH our internet addy AND our e-mail connection had been changed, and if we got our mail often-er, we might have known that. So I turned Margaret over to Jane to have her figure out the e-mail thing, and I attacked Frontpage, which Jane refuses to touch with a pole, claiming the program is a thing of evil. It took me some doing, but say that I actually understand how Frontpage 'thinks'...ie, the logic behind it, so I was able to get it going again. Hurrah! Now I can update! I also got the water filter changed---got a faceful of water doing it; but managed to get the locline connectors fastened, so now we have ice that won't make Jane sick. And the guy supposed to see to our furnace came, and it turns out the reason we had a problem is that the thing froze up on us: silly me---I knew better, but the weather conditions up here are different than in Oklahoma, and it's been 7 years since we had central air, so I just ran it longer than I should have: under local conditions, if your outside temp falls under 65 degrees, it will ice. The unit we had in Oklahoma was a bit more forgiving. This isn't. Now we know. But it needs servicing, just as a matter of routine maintenance, so we will see to that. And the guy came to see about our malfunctioning oven: it varies wildly up and down in temperature during baking. That's going to cost a chunk of change, about 300.00. But we'll have a better stove/oven than we would have if we bought one for that price, so we just update the old one and they'll get the parts. I'm sure I'm right about this one---I know that fluctuation is happening, and it's lethal to delicate recipes like cookies, cakes, etc. I have a thermometer in the oven, and I can see it dropping and rising, not just because I opened the door to look. So this one I'm sure isn't my fault. Did I mention I also lost my temper after yet one more bad hair day, walked into the bathroom and took the scissors to it bigtime? Yep. Solved that problem. Back to short hair, thank you, and no more angst.
10/27/07. Saturday. 9673. Jane's having her birthday party on
Sunday, here at the house, and that means cleaning up the house. We did a little
of it last night, but here's a chain reaction for you: we're on Atkins again.
This means we eat a lot of meat. This means a lot of cooking with a lot of
greasy smoke, and unless I grill outside, this is a problem. Our kitchen, built
circa 1956, does not have a range hood—just a circular vent in the ceiling in
front of the range, beyond the cabinets which are over the range. This
means—smoky windows, walls, stuff, etc. Jane wanted to put a fan in the window.
I held out for not obstructing the kitchen window, but for getting a ventless
range hood. This house, circa 1956, has a very shallow attic, and an access hole
that only a 10 year old or smaller could get into, so there's no way I'm going
to cut a hole in our solid maple cabinets and give up storage space to boot to
get into an attic where you can't stand up to try to install a vent through a
perfectly good roof—especially the day before a party. But two things in the
kitchen Jane swears she can't abide: more smoke, and the [to me] inoffensive
light above the kitchen sink. So off we go to Lowe's and get a light and a, yes,
range hood. Most any range hood can be made into a nonvented hood by using
carbon foam filtration just beyond the metal filter screens...which wasn't
available in 1956. So we got the slightly less than deluxe but way more than
basic model and brought it home. On the box it says you need a screw driver and
a drill to install it, and that's all. When you open the box, it turns out the
filters for the nonvented application, the lights, the wiring—are not part of
the kit. You have to go back after those. So off I go again, while Jane tidies
up. Toward dark, the night before a major party, I bring home the requisite
bits. The installation means shimming the underside of the cabinet [got the bits
for that, from the packing [wooden] that came with our recent purchase of
shelves.] So we did that. Jane got the notion of cutting the receptacle off a
grounded extension cord for the 120 v wiring we needed—the 'hot' wire always has
writing on it, the ground is always green, so she was able to sort out the
wires, so we have a wire for our hood that just has to be drilled into one
cabinet, through its wall into the area where the hood will go, threaded through
the punch-hole in the hood top, and we measure the position of the screws in the
hood, which has key-hole type slots: you half-screw in your screws through the
shims, lift hood into position, then shove the hood backward, thus forcing the
screws into the slot part of the keyhole, and tighten the screws. Voila! As of
about 9pm, we thread the wire through, connect, assemble the lights and such,
and have a range hood. Then we attacked the light over the sink—which proved to
be a worse problem. Seems the genius who installed it, didn't sink the wire box
into the ceiling, just mounted the light directly atop it. So we used a couple
of shims to steady the new light, but will have to go back in sometime soon—get
a new 'box' for the wires, sink it into the ceiling properly, and remount the
light. Jane hung her collection of cut crystals under it, so we get rainbows
floating about the kitchen by daylight. At this point we turned in, exhausted,
but with a newly organized kitchen—and! I also, in the intervals, managed to
figure out why my last effort failed in winterizing the sprinkler system. I'd
thrown the lever to cut off flow through the pipe, started to unscrew the little
brass tap that lets the line ventilate during the winter, and got a faceful of
water. So I'd stopped. Slowly, it had dawned on me that the outside windows
needed washing, but I'd cut off water to the—yes, outside faucets, which still
had the hoses on. So this evening I went out, disconnected the hoses, opened the
faucets to 'on', and discovered that the one to the line that had spat water at
me was, yes, still trickling. I went inside, gave a harder shove to the lever on
that line, got it really cut off, and this time removed the little taps [which I
taped to the underside of the ductwork right beside the cutoff] and have
successfully saved myself 35.00 it would take to have someone come and do that;
and the 350.00 it would take to repair the pipes if I let it freeze and burst.
10/28/07. Sunday. 9673. Still no writing done, but the kitchen looks great. I
got to the supermarket where Jane had ordered her favorite blueberry bundt cake,
picked up that, four pizzas, couldn't find a pizza stone, but Jane had located
my wooden pizza peel [the paddle-thing you use to lift pizzas into and out of
the oven]. The oven I think I've mentioned we have scheduled for repair, did its
usual thing, varying 50 degrees up and down during cooking, but I managed to get
decent pizza out of them...I always add extra pepperoni, extra mozzarella, and
extra basil and oregano to the storebought ones. So we all, Sharon, Kay, Joan,
and us two, sat around, drank wine, ate pizza, watched 'Strictly Ballroom' and a
couple of dance and skating videos, and partied late. So tomorrow we have to do
accounts, and recover. I also have to do some archiving: the scroll on the blog
has gotten way long. So I'll do that when I don't have a headache...as I expect
I will have tomorrow, and justifiably. Jane's birthday is our last blowout
before Christmas-New Year's...we don't do much for Thanksgiving, no big family
do, just a quiet, usually modest dinner, so we won't be overindulging in food or
drink for a while. And maybe we can drop more weight.
10/29/07 Monday. 9928. Work, work, and work. Note taking. It's amazing how confused I can get.
10/30/07 Tuesday 9252. A little erasing. A little work. Things are starting to perk and I'm wiping out some of my notes. I keep a 'calendar' that helps me straighten out who's where, and I got that established. Not all writing work shows up in word count.
10/31/07 Wednesday. 8281. And yet more erasing. But it's progress.
11/1/07 Thursday 9529. Starting to perk. I'm feeling good now. A new month. Skated. Have to get to the bank to turn in taxes and deposit our checks.
11/2/07 Friday 10220. And still more progress—didn't skate today, didn't even really dress for outside today, just kept working.
11/3/07 Saturday 10281. Made a run to the fish store, trying to get the kalk reactor to behave. I can't believe all the trouble I'm having with a simple stirrer.
11/4/07 Sunday 11098. Testing the tank, working, doing more tests. Laundry. Not an outstanding day. But hey, it's a day.
11/5/07 Monday 11098. Did I do any writing? I got up late, one problem, and then I took a one hour lesson with Joan, who is going to be the death of me. Or the saving. I bend shamefully badly when I skate certain patterns, and Joan has just laid down the law on the back edges: do them right or die! I worked the entire time on those patterns, and Joan gave me the big Word on posture, meaning arch the back and pull the shoulder blades down hard. I discovered about four muscles in my middle back I haven't used for years. It feels really unnatural, maybe even pompous, but Jane and others assure me it looks great, and the really funny thing is—standing that way relieves a persistent pain in my back as well as the one in my hip. Now—this means your head us up and you can't look at the ice, so you have to skate as if you had a teacup on your head, but I'm trying, Lord! I'm trying. But I was so absolutely wiped I just collapsed into bed for the rest of the day, with a pain patch on my shoulders and Advil. We also went over to the tree nursery to pick out Jane's birthday present---one blue spruce, and this is the day the live Christmas trees come in. Sure enough there was a 'Fat Albert', and it is hers! We're going to have it delivered.
11/6/07 Tuesday 11266. Another mini lesson with Joan, who checked out the new posture on my 3-turns, and then the waltz jump, and gave me one more trick—clapping my hands as I jump. This is a device: it means your hands meet and center your balance, so you come down much more securely. At least I came home alive. And I don't appreciably hurt today. Meanwhile the kalk reactor stirrer [Hanna Labs] has died again. I can't believe it. Eighty dollars, and the new one is dead. I'm trying to put it on a timer. I think what it's doing is magnetizing the plate on which the stir-rod rotates inside the reactor. Putting it on a timer may let it detox between runs and get it moving again.
11/7/07 Wednesday 13181. We took Sharon to the airport: she has to do some continuing education stuff [she's a nurse practitioner] over in Seattle. Then we went over to the rink a little late, not much. I'm still working on the posture thing. And 3 more attempts to start the kalk reactor have failed. I did get a timer—but it turns out to be a 2 prong and I need a three for that device. Argh!
11/8/07 Thursday 15209. One more session with Joan: I'm going to owe a mint when bills come due, but this is helping immensely. And there was a new novice adult skater who seems interested in really taking after the sport. She has two kids, they can all skate together: her name is Alise, and if we can keep her from breaking anything significant, we may have a new recruit to our ranks. Meanwhile I went down to Lowes and got a programmable timer. That thing is a bear. First thing, the instructions want you to hit the reset button. It's not on the diagram. The instructions were written in gibberish, meaning no discernible logic in the paragraphing or in the arrangement of the paragraphs, leaping from topic to topic, and the same person who wrote the text must have designed the chip: the time-set runs in minutes for any given two hours, then abruptly leaps to hour increments, and you can't read the AM/PM designation on the screen. It has mode buttons, day button, set button both positive and negative—and it will figure sunrise and sunset and compensate for daylight savings time and time zone, when all I want the damned thing to do is to come on and off 7 times a day and control that damned stirrer. It took me an hour and a half to get that result—but a later check proves that cursed stirrer is finally running! My theory is correct, and it works again!
11/9/07 Friday 18283. We laid out of skating today. I did some tank maintenance, did some writing, Jane got some writing in, and we generally worked on essential things. We are also starting a new diet: I blush to say which—but we've tried everything else and are now going to give the Fat Loss for Idiots diet a try. This whole program offends me in many ways, not least the shameless self-written reviews, but hey, if it works, I'll let you all know. Tomorrow I have to do some major shopping for that. Meanwhile, the timer stuck, threw the stirrer offline, and it's out again. I could spit nails.
11/10/07 Saturday. 20428. Off to the store to get food for the diet—and Jane asked me to take the Halloween decorations out to the garage. I did, piling my shopping bags and purse atop it for ease of maneuvering. I got to the store—no purse, no shopping bags. Sigh. I drive home [illegally] and get same, then head back to the store. I end up with a full shopping cart for the first time since moving to Spokane, but veggies and fruit take up a lot of room. And have you ever navigated a supermarket in which you keep meeting the same idiot shopper in every aisle, coming from every possible direction? A woman doing koochie-coo talk to a 3-4 year old in her cart, trying to interest him in ginger snaps, and walking backward first backs into me, then proceeds to turn up in every aisle, the two of us tangling at every opportunity...including in cars in the parking lot: she drives like she shops. The unworthy thought occurs to me that in three years he'll be talking babytalk like her or he'll be royally embarrassed in front of the other guys. Sigh. But at least I got out in one piece and we have now started this diet, which promises us rapid weight loss. At least it isn't hard to follow. But the meal choices are nutty.
11/11/07 Sunday. 20428. We're still dieting. And the weight is showing signs of coming down. This is good.
11/12/07 Monday. 20428. We planted Jane's little blue spruce tree...or rather, the nice guys from the nursery did. It's a Fat Albert blue spruce, and we ended up putting it right where I wanted, because the roots from the big hemlock have the spot where Jane wanted it—a difference of only 3 feet, so not bad for either of us. Since I've drained the outdoor water lines and winterized them—we have to carry big buckets of water to this little tree, but we will. We put 15 gallons on it.
11/13/07 Tuesday. 20480. So nice to look out the window before dawn and find this nice little tree growing out there!
11/14/07 Wednesday. 21211. Got some stuff mailed to Oklahoma Teachers' Retirement: seems somewhere during the move I forgot I had that regular check coming in, noticed it hadn't been deposited, nor forwarded, and I checked. Well, they are now firmly convinced I am senile and incapable of collecting my checks, so they want to direct-deposit them, but I have to get some stuff notarized. But their blanks don't have any spot for the notary to sign. So I had every piece of paper they sent me stamped and notarized. This will convince them I'm senile. But maybe they will deposit my checks.
11/15/07 Thursday. 21300. Skating and working—the book is being well-organized, however, and it's a fun story to write. Watered the tree. It's cold out there. The water is freezing in the buckets, but the weather stays dry, darn it!
11/16/07 Friday. 22620. We laid out of skating—Friday is on the smaller ice and there's always more people, a combination which just doesn't let us work on the harder things, like edges. The weather is being dry and contrary: I want it to just open up and snow. We keep being promised snow. It isn't happening.
11/17/07 Saturday. 23733. Working and working...Jane's got the house decorated for Thanksgiving, very nicely. I give up trying to do that sort of thing, because I tend to just set things on the mantel, which Jane studies distressedly and then adjusts, and then adds greenery or leaves or whatnot, and then ends up apologizing for moving what I set there—but what she set there instead always looks so much better I've decided the most constructive thing I can do in the decoration department is pile the useful items in her vicinity.
11/18/07 Sunday. 24281. Not getting as much done as I'd like. But there's a lot of cleanup around the house to do.
11/19/07 Monday. 24281. We're now on the veggie day of the diet. You'd be surprised how creative you have to be when the only thing you can have all day is veggies.
11/20/07 Tuesday. 26492. Skating and writing. Pretty much the tenor of our lives. But the diet is working. I am officially as low as I have been in a decade or so. We have each lost 5-6 pounds.
11/21/07 Wednesday. 27327. Shopping for tomorrow. We are officially on one of our days of liberty from the diet, and we ate out—we're trying to be moderate. So we went to Scotty's and had the burger which is one of our favorites. And the french fries which we are NEVER supposed to have. And Jalapeno Poppers. We were bad. We did go to the rink today, so we tried to skate some of it off.
11/22/07 Thursday. 27771. Thanksgiving. Jane has officially
started her holiday baking, and I have agreed to cook 'in', and what is more, to
cook her favorite recipe. I will include some of mine here:
1. Curry chicken:
chicken in any form: cook in virgin olive oil
add: curry powder or paste.
[optional: potatoes, green peas, etc.]
Cook more.
Last moment: add: sour cream lite or regular.
Serve: plain, over rice, over noodles.
2. pork 'ribs'
in crockpot
On low, allow as many as 8 hrs cooking.
One pork shoulder roast cut as 'ribs'. Add: chipotle powder, chile powder, salt,
pepper, basil, oregano, anything else that takes your fancy, but the above are
essential.
One hour before serving, increase to high.
Falls off bone. Serve with anything.
3. Mandarin chicken.
Cook chicken with all sweet/hot spices: cinnamon, clove, coriander, allspice,
nutmeg, plus half a refrigerated can of mandarin oranges.
Refrigerate rest of oranges.
Take juice in can in saucepan: add cinnamon and clove, reduce as sauce. Add
water or wine if need be.
Serve chicken over rice, add sauce, toss chilled mandarin orange pieces atop.
4. Luau chicken.
Cook chicken with cinnamon and allspice and clove powder. Refrigerate sm. Can of
peaches, sm can chunk pineapple.
Cook peach and pineapple juice with cinnamon and white wine to a reduction.
Serve chicken over rice with sauce, add cold fruit to plate.
5. Drunken Chicken
Marinate boneless white chicken in shot of Vermouth with dose of basil leaves.
Cook in virgin olive oil, add salt to taste.
Serve with good Italian bread and dipping sauce.
There you have it: I am cooking the Mandarin Chicken for Thanksgiving dinner,
and we are having a few of Jane's Russian teacakes.
11/23/07 Friday. 29820. WAY too many Russian teacakes. The scales are a shock. I am up 8 pounds. I am going to have to reform. We were allowed to go 'out' for dinner today, but we restrained ourselves and did NOT go to Ferguson's for blueberry and nut pancakes. We had nachos and quesidillas at the Swinging Door.
11/24/07 Saturday. 30161. Back to the diet. I have 8 pounds to take off. Jane won't admit hers, but it ain't pretty. Back we go on the diet. We hope. And I am getting some real work done. I now have Bren and crew headed on their way to trouble again. I did get some pieces from the fish store that let me T off the flow out of the two moving nozzles and calm down the flow in the tank. I think this will be a lot better. I scraped algae for two hours and it now looks really good. We also went over to the Valley where Sharon is keeping clinic, and got our flu shots—I also got the pneumonia shot. Sharon is, for the record, very good at giving shots. She came over after she got off, and we sat and watched the Firefly DVDs and had munchies; Jane's cookie-baking, and all.
11/25/07 Sunday. 31929. We are not getting straight away on this diet. Jane keeps baking cookies for Christmas mailing, and too many of them are going down our throats. Aagh! The weight is still down, but it's not going to stay that way at this rate.
11/26/07 Monday. 32188. I had a lesson—Joan straightened me out on the 'drunken sailor' step, which I can almost do. And I am making headway on the back outside edges. The effects of too much Thanksgiving are definitely showing when I have to wear total Lycra. I've got to reform! And I got a phone call from Oklahoma Teachers' Retirement who say a notary stamp isn't enough and the notary has to actually sign the papers. I told them what I thought of their paperwork...I somehow KNEW this would come back for one more round, and it is coming. We could get any lunatic on the street to sign this thing, and they'd never know, but we will be good and take it back to the notary to sign her name, and all will be well. The kalk stirrer is out again. But I have lost 3 of the pounds I gained on Thanksgiving. Jane likewise. And my arms, oh, my arms. I am so incredibly shot-reaction-sore from those shots Saturday. I am popping Advil left and right and everything hurts. Yesterday it was so bad I could hardly get to sleep last night. I'm ready for that to stop.
11/27/07 Tuesday. 33369. We have snow this morning! I love snow! We got about 3" and bought a snow shovel. And, well, we were good all day long, but we were just bad tonight. We went to lunch with Joan at Tomato Street---had salad, which is partially not on our diet. Then tonight Joan came down the hill to our place, snow and all, and we ate cookies, which are definitely not on the diet. You can get hung over on one glass of wine if you eat chocolate cookies. This is not good.
11/28/07 Wednesday. 33491. Jane had a lesson with Joan...I'm still practicing the 'drunken sailor step' and my back outside edges, and I discovered something really interesting: my right foot 'carves' the ice with an inside edge as it should when I shove off and go on that edge, but the left is silent, almost pushing on an outside edge, which is so not right! That's what's throwing me off balance on that side. I have to improve that foot---and once I began to do that, I began to do things much better. Since it's supposed to be alternating back edges, it pretty well stops me cold when I glitch the right foot glide. This means both feet will now work on this maneuver. What a nice concept! Meanwhile we're going to go up to Joan's for supper---we're ordering chicken from the Swinging Door and Joan will pick it up...because it says on the diet we can have chicken. I somehow suspect slightly breaded chicken isn't good, but hey, we're improvising because Joan's on her own for two days and we're going out. Sharon must be home from her job by now, but we haven't seen her since Saturday. Maybe she'll make it to the rink tomorrow. Shots are still achy, but not what they were. It's going to drop 5 more inches of snow tonight, so they say. Jane is in the kitchen baking up Nuts 'n Bolts, meaning a combo of peanut butter, cooking oil, mixed nuts, Cheerios [the nuts], straight pretzels [the bolts]...you liquify the peanut butter with oil, slather it over the dry mix, stir it around, bake it in the oven in a metal pan until it sinks in and somewhat adheres. It's pretty sinful. Carb City. I've stolen a few nuts [real nuts] but am going to try not to have a dish of this. We are shipping it to our friends who don't weigh enough. Ha!
11/29/07 Thursday. 33491. Well, last night we were bad, and had several vodka tonics plus the chicken. Went to see Joan's new rental house---nice. We might have rented it ourselves, but as we kind of guessed, we'd have been a bit cramped, and we were ready to settle, so we settled, and we're still close enough to Joan to walk down for a party. Which is good. Except with several vodkas. Bad us. But I got up bright and easy this morning. Skated a bit, but I'm having a persistent earache. I've skated through it for 3 days, but today, when I'd turn fast, it would twinge, and I just can't wait for it to affect my balance. I'm taking Sudafed hoping it will open up...but so far no great good. Jane and I both cashed it in early, de-skated and decided to go off to Costco in the theory that, since it snowed last night, it might be less crowded. Jane couldn't find her Costco card, which also happens to be a credit card. Bad! I got her in on mine and she went to ask the desk if they could track it. They couldn't. And our no-crowd theory? Wrong! We grabbed stuff, steered around the sample-food purveyors, and headed for checkout...on my card. After we got underway on the way home, Jane used my card to call American Express to figure out where she had last used hers. Guess where? Tomato Street. I U-turned, we went to Tomato Street to get the card, and, well, since we were there---we had salad again. Bad us.
11/30/07 Friday. 37476. All right. Starting the whole 11-day diet cycle over, since we have trashed the front end of this one. So I printed out a new 11-day diet plan...got confused, cooked the wrong breakfast: Jane said, "Eggs? I thought it was supposed to be bacon." I looked. She was right. Tossed the eggs. Cooked bacon. Lattes for brunch. We skated-up, but the ice was crappy, and both of us were on scenes [I've got Cajeiri in a pickle] and we wanted to get back to work, so we detoured past Freddy Myers' for essential groceries [like fruit and lunchmeat] and we went home. Grapes for lunch. The auto-topoff for the tank [a freshwater tank that supplies the constantly malfunctioning kalk reactor] is running out of water, so I have the ro/di filter running for the next 7 hours to produce enough water. And it'll be tuna salad and green beans for supper. I tell you, it's a crazy diet, but it's gotten us to lose, so back we go. Drinking 16 oz. of water every time I turn around. Got Ysabel's claws clipped, finally, before she draws blood: and clipping this girl's claws can be a bloody circus. Ever since I got the Air Muzzle, however, she's even getting relaxed about it. She is so instinctive that even brushing her, there's one spot that she will turn her head and snap at the brush: if I hold her head she relaxes and won't do that, and is quite happy---it's not anger, it's reflex, like the doc hitting that spot on your knee. So with the claws---if I use the Air Muzzle she's calm, cool, not fighting it at all, now [a few months ago, when the muzzle was new, she fought it, but that's gone by the wayside, and she's quite pleasant about it.] It's a space helmet for cats, doesn't let them bite while you deal with the feet, etc. Really good product. But now she has neat little feet that don't catch the carpet when she walks, and she's happy---came back to rub around our legs after we did it, so there. [Jane clips: I hold the cat. Her eyesight is better than mine at short range.] So it's a coldish evening, no snow forecast until tomorrow. We'll have snow a few days and then it will be rain---glug!---which will wash off all our pretty snow. Then snow again. It's the winter pattern.
12/1/07 Saturday. 38190. Well, I've got Cajeiri in hot water as usual. ;) Beautiful snow outside. The earache is now in both ears and that ear that's been stopped up for a month is now acutely painful. I'm popping Sudafed, which I'm not supposed to take, to try to get my ears open, which means now I'm getting a sore throat and a matching headache. I'm wondering if maybe that flu shot isn't giving us a little taste of the flu atop all, because Jane isn't feeling great either. I'm coughing, just a nuisance little cough. I was going to go out to the Valley Clinic where Sharon works and have her take a look at it, but Jane said call first, and sure enough, she's not working today, so well, there we are. I'm taking a Theraflu tonight but it's putting me straight out. Maybe at least I'll get some sleep. Today has been the 'fruit' day of the diet: we've been eating like chimpanzees in fruit season, with one deli meat sandwich. But I'm down a pound. So I'm happy.
12/2/07 Sunday. 38682. We had wind last night. I've heard of the wind rolling up snowballs, and seen pictures of it, but I have never seen it in my yard. But there it was this morning, fat little snowball, about 10" diameter, with a snaky long trail behind it and no footprints to say it was manmade. With a heck of a wind blowing, about 30mph, which is normal for Oklahoma on a good day [there, you don't want the wind to stand still, because the wind is what keeps you cool] but is disaster up here with these 40 foot tall pines with shallow roots. On the other hand, Montana is being warned of impending 60-80 mph gusts. A friend of mine there says you can watch 200 foot mountain ridge snowbanks being blown off. That must be impressive. And on the home front, I have a very froggy voice, and Jane spent the night sleepless with a migraine that wouldn't quit. Bacon is the cure. Today is a protein day: bacon, eggs, chicken with sausage, cottage cheese---those are our 4 meals. I'm not down a pound, but I gain weight on fruit, so tomorrow might be better. Been doing laundry, running downstairs and up, mourning the wind-driven melt of the snow [I love rain, but prefer snow.] Still, we have an appointment in SE WA on Tuesday, so it's probably best it be rain. There's a hill just outside Pullman that, sure enough, some sedan with normal tires will get stuck on, and then we'll all sit there as everybody else melts their way into an ice patch and has trouble making it. Our little Forester can get out of almost anything including a pure ice sheet, so we sit and stew behind 20 idling semis and a clutch of college students in a bare-tired sedan who've never driven on snow before, and wait for a wrecker. I know that hill very, very well, down to its last little hummock. Oh! Found a neat thing: a site for Walnut Wallpaper. Google them, if you have any decorating to do. Computer graphics meet the world of wall design, and you get the benefit of things that used to be incredibly expensive back in the 1930's. If I could think of where we could bestow that wallpaper, I'd be so tempted...Oh, and one more recommendation while I'm at it: if you have glare on your telly and the curtains don't help that much in the daytime: go to JC Pennys' online catalog and look up blackout curtains: very clever deal. They come with loops on the back that hook right into your regular drapery hooks, go right back up looking like clean white expensive drapery lining, behind your drapes, and best, have a magnetic strip you insert on the center closure. When those two mag strips find each other they make a seam you have to pry apart. No more glare in the middle of your telly. You can watch movies in bright afternoon. And it doesn't look sloppy from the outside of your house either.
12/3/07 Monday. 40298. I was so disgusted: I was looking forward to the new dinosaur programs on Nat Geo, [Dinosaur Death Trap and Dinosaur Autopsy] and they aren't on until next Sunday night. Hmmf. Meanwhile I've got the IRS complaining about a late routine deposit payment I think was on time---I've got to get into my records---but I feel like crap. I still have the earache. I still have the cough. The stuffy nose. The congestion. I have no energy. I'm getting so tired of this. Jane is sick. I'm sick. Ysabel is being a pest. I'm still writing, but without the energy I'd hoped for. We talked to Joan early this morning and she's sick, and it turns out Sharon is sick---talked to her yesterday. I'm beginning to ask myself what this flu vaccine was for, since all of us who have taken it are sick...though Sharon thinks she caught hers working in the ER and I'm wondering if we caught ours from Sharon and gave it to Joan. But I am so tired of this earache. Good news on the diet front, however: I've now officially lost everything I put on at Thanksgiving, so from here on out, it's new territory. Not a bad dinner: tuna salad [large helping] and half a Haagen Das pint of raspberry frozen yogurt. Watched A Series of Unfortunate Events---we enjoy that movie, and we were in the mood for it. And beyond that, not much brain left. Lord! I'm needing to get at the accounting and argue [again] with the IRS: I send it, they refund it, I send it back, they refund it, I finally deposit it, now they send me a bill for a late deposit---this is crazy-making.
12/4/07 Tuesday. 40832. We laid out of skating, all of us being sick, except Jane. Lucky her. I just want to crawl under a rock. But we did get down to the chiropractor---bought a bottle of Scotch for our departing Dr. Mike, but he's already retired, so they're going to get it to him. Dr. Shane did a good job, and we stuck to our diet, skipped our hamburger, but the diet lets us have a banana shake---with milk, so, well, we had one with ice cream. Not too bad, leaving out the hamburger.
12/5/07 Wednesday. 41921. Coughing too much to sleep at night. My ear is miserable. It cleared a little bit when the chiropractor gave my neck a twist, but it stuffed up again and now it's swollen. My eyes are wateriing. Jane went to skate. I couldn't possibly.
12/6/07 Thursday. 41921. I am sick. Really, really nastily sick. But Sharon, bless her, has got me some medication. This cough---is so bad I'm close to throwing up every time it gets started. My ear is painfully blocked and swollen. I'm not just not coping with anything. I try to work, and I end up back in bed, but if I lie down I cough and can't breathe and if I stand up so I can breathe, I stagger. This is just miserable. I take two of these pills tonight and one a day through Sunday. Here's hoping.
12/7/07 Friday. 43261. Still home, sicker than the proverbial dog. Our main computer has collapsed---Jane, poor thing, has elected herself to see to it: she always does, her book has started to move for the first time in weeks, and of course our computer goes down. I offered to try to see to it, but the thought of myself, at less than capable mentally, attempting to deal with the computer---well, she insisted, but says she will handle it tomorrow. Meanwhile I got the news that my aunt Jesse has died---funeral tomorrow, so I had urgently to send flowers. If I'd been close enough and well, I'd have gone to the funeral. Jesse was my father's younger brother's wife, my last aunt. So now there's no tie left with that town, which figures in childhood memories. I remember the Christmas rum cake Jesse made: absolutely saturated; and the teetotaling Baptist neighbor kept running over for "one more helping of that delicious cake." We all laughed. Meanwhile I'm feeling better, but the ear has been feeling pressure all day, I'm partially discombobulated, and I keep coughing. Jane's gotten some medication for me that will stop that cough and help me sleep, and that will come welcome. This the nice rip your stomach muscles sort of cough: I'm sore, and while my throat isn't sore, I just can't prevent the cough going off.
12/8/07 Saturday. 44114. Jane got up to try to resolve the computer mess, and I voted for find-a-geek. Any geek. You absolutely cannot stay up with computers enough to both do other work and continue to be 'up' on what's going on with an ever-changing array of hardware, and this is a hardware problem. If you try to solve it yourself you'll be two weeks reading up on it. We think the main hard drive is going skunky, which is the error message we're getting, but never bet the farm on those messages being right: that's only as far as where the immediate failure is, so far as I know. Meanwhile we've also gotten the word that our primary hardware supplier, CompUSA, is going out of business, so warranty on the Toshi is shot, and no support for the rest of the pieces and parts. Bummer. Besides that, they have nice general geek-folk behind the repair counter, who have fought for us as customers against the Toshi monolith, and won, and we like them. We took the recommendation of the office at the rink and took the computer in to a local company, who have phoned us to say they've got it solved. Hurrah! Maybe tomorrow I'll be well enough [drat this convulsive cough!] to work out some of the problems with the financial program and find whatever it is that has the IRS in fits. I think it's their fault, and it wouldn't be the first time. Meanwhile, however, the ear has finally opened up...first time in two months it's been clear. It feels wonderful. And I've finally lost that pesky pound that I was stuck at, so I am officially at the lowest in years. Today's diet: a handful of cashews, a banana shake, tuna salad, and half a pint of Hagen Daas Raspberry Frozen Yogurt. And I'm losing on it. Tomorrow: bacon, curried shrimp, green beans, and a latte, something like. Screwball diet, but it is working. I am really determined not to lose the progress--or rather---to gain on the three days off diet, which come Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We'll make it to the Swinging Door for their broasted chicken; I'm still debating pancakes at Fergusons; and the other day we just have to be good and basic. Don't forget the two excellent dinosaur programs tomorrow on the National Geographic channel. And if you haven't been catching Fearless Planet, do: worth the watch.
12/9/07 Sunday. 44599. The computer is still fritzed. We apparently can get to the internet. But our main desktop is down. Flat. Meanwhile Jane has reached that stage of I've-taken-so-much cold medication I can't think and I'm wondering if I'm right in my thinking on this book. [all that should be hyphenated, but it would drive the computer parsing nuts]. Well, this is what roommates and fellow writers are for. I'm going to give it a read and we'll talk. So I'm parking my manuscript where I can find *my* place easily and I'm going to read manuscript for a while.
12/10/07 Monday. 44599 I'm reading. Jane ran the computer over to our newly favorite computer shop and they fixed it in short order. It was back in a lightning turnaround and works great.
12/11/07 Tuesday. 44599 More reading.
12/12/07 Wednesday. 44599. Reading, in between sniffling and coughing with this cold-crud.
12/13/07 Thursday. 44599. Reading.
12/14/07 Friday. 44599 Reading. This is a fun book. Jane is dead-on with this book. Today also happens to be my brother's birthday, but I've got him—I sent him a statue he wanted.
12/15/07 Saturday. 44599 Reading.
12/16/07 Sunday. 44599. Reading. We eat. We sleep. We read. Occasionally we get visits from people we like.
12/17/07 Monday. 44599.And more reading. I'd be going skating—but not without Jane, the way I feel, which is pretty rocky. Still reading. Had to run the computer back for one more adjustment---it's re-fixed, but it was a little matter of a fan, as I hear from Jane. I'm mostly eating and going back to my room and reading. When I read in the critical mode, I'm so far gone I may forget food if not handed it.
12/18/07 Tuesday. 44599.Reading—it's been snowing—we're alternate bands of snow and slush, and we're housebound, mostly because neither of us is feeling well.
12/19/07 Wednesday. 44599. Reading and reading. It's a great story. I'm loving these characters.
12/20/07 Thursday. 46163. Back to my own manuscript. I'm feeling better. Just a little stiff from long sitting and reading. Big story conference, Jane and I—we do this for each other, as those of you who have long followed this blog know. This time it's her turn to be piece de resistence. We had supper at the Swinging Door—this is Jane's payoff to me for the read; and we had a good time discussing the book. Now she attacks it anew, and I get back to Bren and company.
12/21/07 Friday. 48211. Well, if I had energy I might possibly get to the rink, but we are snugged in and working, and we know the kids are out of school. It's just not worth going down there and getting knocked down by some hockey hopeful who doesn't know how to stop or judge what motion a figure skater makes on the ice—they go more straight and skittery, and we're a bit more s-curve in our strokes. You can die that way. We did go out to tea with Joan—the restaurant we headed for was stuffed and crazy, so we went up the hill a bit and had a lovely quasi supper on appetizers.
12/22/07 Saturday. 50124. A little last-moment running around and being sure we have things we need. I got Jane's presents wrapped. I'm ready for Christmas. And working hard. I suddenly remember I've got taxes to do, upcoming, and I need to get past a certain point in this story.
12/23/07 Sunday. 53189. It's melting out. Really disgusting. But I'm hoping it will snow hard tomorrow. Or at least that the snow cover we have holds out. Everything is pretty well done, and we're just looking forward to Christmas.
12/24/07 Monday.54821. If I had any get up and go I'd have gone skating today, but the kids will be on the rink and wild as March hares—it's somehow not worth it when what I need to do is get my feet on the ice and do some delicate practice. Joan, bless her, dropped over with a nice gift, and had a glass of wine—a Christmas visitor. Very genteel, very nice. Our snow is still melting, but more is forecast for late Christmas day. I'm still fussing with the kalk reactor. I finally lost my temper, emptied my expensive kalk reactor into the 32 gallon Rubbermaid Brute trashcan that is my reverse osmosis water, and piped *that* to the tank. I'm hoping it will work better than the reactor, which is always stalled out with a balky stirrer.
12/25/07 Christmas. 54821 Had a lovely Christmas morning—got up and broke our diet a dozen ways from Sunday with waffles, then had baked ham and fresh bread and 2 bottles of Barefoot Bubbly, our favorite Champagne [we prefer the dry variety, black label]. I gave Jane some piano music, including the sheet music to Pirates of the Caribbean [not for the fainthearted, but she's good] and also the full set of Samurai 7, an anime we both like. Akiro Kurosawa did the script—for those of you who know The Seven Samurai, a classic Japanese movies—and it is good. Jane got me some warm slippers that aren't a disgrace [she'd already made me a robe] and just some nice things...including a full Christmas stocking. Being new to this custom, I forgot to fill hers, so I am going to have to remedy this. We both did our rounds of family and friends calls. And it has started to snow, late in the evening. So we sat and sipped bubbly and watched our anime until way late while the snow came down.
12/26/07 Wednesday. 55800 It snowed off and on through the night: we have about 5 inches on the ground with more due. Jane shoveled the walks; I made the post office and grocery run. We are still being lazy: Jane's back hurts—I can't imagine why; and we decided there will still be too many kids on the rink. So we're just laying low and getting work done. Yesterday I messed with my new makeshift kalk reactor and dropped the exit hose—thus flooding the basement floor again [we have a drain nearby, but it is a nuisance!] I'm hoping it is now running smoothly. It looks to be working.
12/27/07 Thursday 56145 It's a pretty white world out there. My work on the tank is actually still working—to my amazement. And we should go skating, but stuff that urgently needs doing, like tax stuff, is just piled up here, and both of us are working hard.
12/28/07 Friday. 57261 We ought to be on the ice, but we're not. I'm still coughing a little; Jane's working hard on her manuscript, I'm working on mine. We pass, wave hello, and back to work.
12/29/07 Saturday. 58003 I spent the day working with the tank, doing accounts, doing some writing, just kind of a blah day, preparatory to yet one more holiday. We're trying to sort of stick with the diet. At least we're not gaining anything.
12/30/07 Sunday. 59382 I ran out to fill Jane's Christmas stocking, which like a ditz I failed to understand should be filled. I filled it with all sorts of things...having run the aisles looking for everything from bubble-blower to an eyebrow pencil. And then I settled in to try to do accounts.
12/31/07 Monday. 61788 It seems much too early to be New Year's Eve. I worked on the manuscript a bit, then went back into holiday mode. We're going to go to Tomato Street for supper—one thing I mortally miss on the diet is pasta, and that's what I asked for for New Year's, so that's where we're going. I am in desperate need of spaghetti and meatballs. Sharon called, and we're going out together.
1/1/08 Tuesday. 61788 New Year's Day. Last night we had a nice evening, drank too much Champagne [at home] and enjoyed the dinner out, in inverse order. Sharon liked her prezzies [we always exchange more gifts on New Year's, not to short ourselves of a good thing.] We liked ours. We watched Rudolph Nureyev's Don Quixote, and then after Sharon left, we watched anime and turned in—meanwhile some reveler had hit a light pole over by Tomato Street and blitzed the power in a city block, but we knew nothing about it until morning. On New Year's Day we skipped the waffles, having eaten so much last night, just had sausages, and were a lot happier for it. We watched parades, we watched our new dvd's, and we enjoyed ourselves in the last remnant of our white Christmas: it's warming up and our snow is starting to melt.
1/2/08 Wednesday. 62162 Back on the ice for the first time in six weeks. Jane's newly-arched feet have lost 'tone' and she's having to work that up again—while I got on the ice, sank properly onto my heels, a bit too far, and at one point nearly fell over backward. Dr. Shane's been working with me on posture, but due to the fact I have a little visual tracking problem when I turn my head, when Joan asked me to lift my chin on a backward edge, I sure did—it was my partly blind side, where the tracking isn't good, and the ice on that side visually bends 'up' like the inside of a space capsule. Whoa! I overdid it, and threw myself backward. Joan, 90 pounds that she is, yanked my hand and checked the balance problem, so I didn't go down, but it was close. We were her only students, so we went out to Tomato Street for lunch. What did I have, figuring that we are sort of, almost, still in our 3-day grace from diet rules? Spaghetti and meatballs, of course. And they were great!
1/3/08 Thursday. 62302 We went down to Pullman for chiropractic today: I got the results of the posture study from Dr. Shane—not as good as I hoped, but he's no slouch, pardon pun. He used it to id a spot I've been complaining about since I was ten, and says he can straighten it out, and that when he does, he can do something for my neck: this mid-back area is where the bind is, from an accident when I was 7 or 8---I had a penchant for back injuries in swimming pools, the first one trying to jump the age-skill divider [pipe fence] in a dry swimming pool---landed on my face on the concrete, after catching a toe: that hurt. And again, doing a full flex backbend---soles of my feet just about hit my head---while going off a waterwheel of a sort I am sure are now outlawed---I was paralyzed for some few minutes after that, had to use my arms to crawl out of the pool, had to have help, and lay on the concrete for some few minutes with no lifeguard ever asking why. But the feeling came back to my legs, and I got up and went back to swimming. Kids, eh? So fixing it after all these years is going to be interesting. For my age, I'm in pretty good shape. I had young Dr. Shane breathing hard after his attempt to adjust that one vertebra—and as I told him, “It's a pity, but after all that effort, it just felt like a good stretch. Comfy, but no cigar.” I am so interested in getting that one unkinked, let me tell you. I have no apprehension that it will do me any damage, understand: I am convinced what I did back then was break off one of the processes on the spine, but my back has had no subsequent weakness, just stiffness and refusal to budge at that point, which affects how straight I can stand. I am sore, bruised-sore, but my neck rotates a bit more than it did. I really want to stand straighter, and getting this will help. Re the diet, we're just kind of hoping to repeat bits and pieces of it [days] until we can get to the store and get started properly on the right things.
1/4/08 Friday. 64221 Jane was too sore from the adjustment yesterday, besides having a critical scene to work out, so we ended up playing hookey from skating one more day. We did go to Costco to get some diet-food...bacon, and grapes, and such. Grapes are hard to get at this time of year, and we could have oranges, but Jane bit into a rotten orange last month and won't have any, thank you. She really hates mold. But the all-fruit day is an important one on this diet, and I want to get started properly. We watched the last of the Samurai 7 anime, and if you like either Akira Kurosawa or anime, this one is good. It's like one of those movies where you go outside the theater and nobody's talking. Everybody's just stunned.
1/5/08 Saturday. 65279 We made one trip out, besides work. We went to take photos at the skating rink—we're the official photographers when they need photos of the staff to put on the board. The little kids who take skating lessons like to see the photos of their teachers up there. What a zoo the place is on Saturday morning: you can hardly eel your way through the lobby crowd. Good. I like to see our rink making money. And we are starting back on the diet in earnest, now, having just done 'typical diet days' most of the week with a little bit of backsliding. At least we have gotten through the holidays without piling on weight, so you can say that for the way we've been eating.
1/6/08 Sunday. 66280. Surprise snow—it was only supposed to do half an inch, but I guess what was to the south of us just kept coming. It's 3-4 inches out there, and it's a beautiful soft fall. You can see down the street under the lights, and the pines beyond, and our own towering hemlocks and Jane's little blue spruce—absolutely gorgeous. Today is the fruit part of the diet, so it's a lot of grapes, some bad strawberries, and some good pears. We'll have a sandwich for supper. It's a lazy kind of day---brilliant blue in the afternoon, that incredible blue of northern skies, but then it's gone gray again and we have snow forecast for a week. Jane, bless her, shoveled the walks again: I volunteered to do one, but she did both. Tomorrow I really am anxious to get back on the ice again. I need the exercise, and I am finally feeling the want of it. I am going to try to be a lot more regular about updating the blog. I spent quite a while this weekend yanking us off Norton internet security and getting us onto another service. Norton and I have had fusses for years, and I decided we'd give AVG a try.
1/7/08 Monday. 67592. And more snow. It started just before dawn---I was up brushing Ysabel and having my morning coffee: I can do this simultaneously. ;) It kept snowing while we went to the rink---Dr. Shane's adjustment is making a difference in my shoulders there. I can rotate further, and getting a shoulder back really helps on the edges. It was lovely: Jane and I were all alone on the ice for most of an hour before people started coming in. We decided to quit by twelve noon, so as not to be so sore this go-round. We're going to have to work up to the level we were at, 2 hours, no problem. Now we're a little ouchy after one hour. But I had a short lesson with Joan, before Hank and Terry, and we left to go home and take down the tree---no leaving it up for St. Paddy's day. We are changing over to a Mardi Gras theme in the room decor---we figure St. Valentine's is a little close; so it's Mardi Gras: we'll have a mask and some disembodied hands on the fireplace juggling temari balls. And if you wonder what those are, google them. They are amazing. Jane makes them. So we dragged in the boxes, and Jane shoveled the walks [again]. And more snow is coming down this evening. The diet's going pretty well. I held my lost ground [to mix metaphors] through Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, and the pants are getting loose. What's not good is that my crashpads are going south [on the rink] and I don't know how I'm going to keep them in place. Go to smaller skating tights, I guess. I started out extra large, and now am large, and I guess medium is the next stop. I haven't done writing at the same pace---because I'm thinking. Thinking counts.
1/8/08 Tuesday. 67783. It was snowing at dawn and hasn't stopped, really, except for a few moments. They're saying there's going to be more tomorrow---most snow I've ever seen, except the time it took me two airplanes, two tries, a bus and a local ride to get to a convention in Halifax NS. We're not going to have snow like that, but we're going to have quite a bit by the time this storm works its way through. Then, typical of Spokane, it will rain for a day, and then we'll repair our snow coat on the following day. I overslept a bit this morning. I try to get up by 5 to get some work done before we go skating, but I didn't make it out of bed until 7. I'm still in the thinking stage, but it's getting there. Sitting in the dark, with the big window uncurtained, brushing Ysabel, having coffee and watching the morning traffic on the road---that's conducive to thought. We're on the fourth day of our diet cycle, supposed to have bacon. We did get to the rink, with only green beans for breakfast---I tried to talk Jane into oatmeal, which for some reason I have a craving for---but someone forced Jane to eat oatmeal when she was a kid. She's bravely volunteered to try it again, but she said, not just before skating. They turned out to be having some sort of hockey event which took the primo ice, and relegated us to the second, smaller, harder-ice arena, which wasn't half groomed. And they'd changed the locker room combination, which we know, and Stephanie knows, and Dan knows, but tomorrow, who knows? It may get dicey with that new combination if we don't show up, which we're supposed to, however, to finish up the rink pictures. But today I had a sore tendon in my knee, just part of working my way back into shape, but since I have two football knees, if they start getting twingy, I stop and let them rest. I'm ordinary very strong in the knees, but I was one of those kids who shot up like a weed, and kept ripping ligaments in my knees, partial tears, apparently. I just don't want to do that now, and the ice was rough and bumpy. So I went over to Freddy Myers and got Jane's prescriptions, and we headed home---detouring via Jane favorite latte stand: she can't stand coffee, but she's gotten addicted to chai, [sugarfree], and the rink didn't do a good mix this morning. So she asked we drive down to Hold Your Grounds and get a chai. So I got a latte. Snow continues, and Jane is now taking down the tree---which is a several day operation.
1/9/08 Wednesday. 68271. Jane got the tree down: it's so nice to have a place to store things. We can shove them up in the rafters of the garage, which doesn't get too hot during the summer. And the real fragiles we can put in the basement. I love having a basement. We're putting the furniture back into the post-Christmas configuration.
1/10/08 Thursday. 68827. Work and work. The story is going well at the moment. Sure wish I'd hear from DAW about the Cyteen book—I hope they won't wait until the current story is really going well and then want changes on the last book. It often works like that. Skating is kind of frustrating: I'm having problems I can't quite figure—my left leg shakes. Maybe I should talk to Dr. Shane about that.
1/11/08 Friday. 69212. Same story...trying to make progress. The ice just is not happening right now. I lost a lot when I was sick. And I want to work this weekend, but we made a commitment to a small con, so we're going.
1/12/08 Saturday. 69911. Well, I got some water run, got a water change going [10%] in the tank. Doing some maintenance. Writing is being slow today—sometimes that happens.
1/13/08 Sunday. 70128. Small one-day convention here in Spokane. They're going to have an actual 3-day convention at the same venue [Gonzaga U] this summer. We'll attend, if the creek doesn't rise. It was a nice gathering—decent conversations, a latte stand. Unlike most such conventions, they have a rec hall that allows BYOB, so it will not be a dry con. If you're in the area, keep an ear up: it'll be Spokon, I think.
1/14/08 Monday. 71622. Trying to get back to work. Had a lesson—but I'm having real problems with my skates. The left one has a very bad shimmy that is driving me crazy---it's skewing everything I do.
1/15/08 Tuesday. 72612. Another try on the ice...and the skate is bad. Joan had a look at it, and we decided to move the blade. This is major, involving filling holes for the prior screws and getting the blade back on at a better angle. So we did. We fixed Joan's while we were at it. And Sharon's.
1/16/08 Wednesday. 74117. The new blade set does help, considerably. I had another go at it, but just didn't stay on the ice too long. I'm starting to feel as if I'm coming down with something.
1/17/08 Thursday. 74117. I can't believe I'm down sick. Again.
1/18/08 Friday. 74117. This is so tiresome. I can't breathe. Can't think. My sinuses are so badly swollen my eyes water.
1/19/08 Saturday. 74117. Still.
1/20/08 Sunday. 74117. Obnoxiously.
1/21/08 Monday. 74117.Sick.
1/22/08 Tuesday. 74117. At least I can breathe and the sinus swelling has abated. Joan has also had this stuff. I think I caught it from her...on the ice, your coach often takes your hand to steady you on certain moves, and you wipe your nose, and touch gloves, and there you are: contagion on the half-shell. Ugh.
1/23/08 Wednesday. 75729. Trying to get on my feet, just no energy.
1/24/08 Thursday. 75171. Feeling better. But just wasn't there yet. Got a little work done. At least my head is clear enough to write and to remember my book. We laid off the ice today because we went down to Pullman for our chiropractic appointment, and Jane got some sort of weird ancient Chinese artform of a treatment from Dr. Shane, which laid down huge bruises, but which has also freed up her shoulders from several years of problems. She is ecstatic, able to do full rotation on her arm for the first time in half a decade.
1/25/08 Friday. 76232. Well back on the ice...for about 20 minutes before dizziness and exhaustion advised me I'd better get off. I just wanted to go back to bed and go to sleep. No writing is happening after the skate—just sleepy. Jane's shoulders are technicolor. We have another appointment next Wednesday but Dr. Shane said if there was bruising [ha!] it had to be healed before he could do another treatment.
1/26/08 Saturday. 77917. Snow started. We collected several inches today. I'm trying to relapse. And fighting back with steam, sinus wash, and more steam.
1/27/08 Sunday. 78174. Feeling somewhat better. And the snow keeps coming down. It's thick at times. It's headed for really deep. Jane's doing all the shoveling, bruises and all, and it's the deepest snow I've ever watched come down---I've flown into worse, in Halifax, NS, but this is the most I've ever watched fall.
1/28/08 Monday. 79212. Skated. There were several 'hockey parents' egging on their kids to break all the rules about racing and glove-throwing on public ice, to the peril of beginning skaters [there were several] and more of figure skaters, including Joan giving a lesson to Hank. Suggestions didn't work with these jerks. If their kids cause one of us to fall and break something, we'll see how they like lawsuits. I get really testy when parents encourage bad behavior, and 'hockey parents,' forgive me, put every stage-managing, judge-schmoozing 'skating parent' I've ever met in the shade for bad behavior. There are nice hockey parents, for sure, but the bad ones really, really set new levels of bad. Meanwhile the snow goes on, still falling. Joan came over to get our help in a repair job, involving glue, and she said it was really slick out there.
1/29/08 Tuesday. 79212. Snow is lying a foot and a half deep now. Jane found the slick spot: she went out to help a neighbor help a stuck motorist at our stopsign, took a spill at the curb and looked as if she hit her head, but apparently just whiplashed her neck while saving her head from impact. We're stronger and cannier about falling but it still is a hard knock. We got a pronged mattock to help us break up the ice dam the snow plow makes. It's epic out there. And we're not going back to the rink today—just too rough on the roads: the bad drivers are starting to get desperate and try it.
1/30/08 Wednesday. 79919. A semi is stuck in the downtown, a train is derailed on a snow-hump in downtown Coeur d'Alene, a plane slid off our runway, schools are closed for the third day...we have tickets for Stars on Ice tomorrow night and have no idea whether it will happen. Another foot of snow is due. Jane has gotten up today sore as can be from her fall yesterday. Any motorists that get stuck today are SOL from us. The one Jane fell trying to help was a total ditz, just kept gunning the motor and digging herself in deeper, ignoring all advice. Finally a push got her on her way and out of our hair. But Jane's paying the price for it---and she will help: she can't stand watching somebody struggle with something. If I have to sit on her, she's not going out today. I think she'll be too sore to skate; I'm going to discourage her going today. It's just not worth it. We were supposed to go to Pullman to Dr. Shane today, but this is not happening. The roads are rough.
1/31/08 Thursday. 81200. Jane is sore. Very. Didn't stop her from going out to shovel, but it did stop her from going to the rink---that and the fact that schools are still out, and the rink is apt to be a madhouse. We did get to Stars on Ice. Sasha Cohen headlined---it wasn't one of her best nights: she two-footed some jumps, and if she's coming down with either of the two things I had, both of which go right for the ears and the depth of breath, she has my sympathy. Dobreuil and partner were there; Michael Weiss; Todd Eldridge; Ilya Kulik, Inoue and Zimmerman, who do the scariest lift/spin you will ever see; and a surprise, Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao, who are just amazing---we had no idea they were part of it, and watching them in person is quite a treat. We shared seats with Sharon, and adjourned to our place for drinks afterward. We're being good: I have finally done it and gotten below the best weight I have had in 15 years, and I am going to go further.
2/1/08 Friday. 81210. Again, because school is out, we're not skating. I need it badly. I am getting so stiff sitting and working in one chair for hours on end. I am drawing maps and taking hand notes, having finally gotten down the research the site at Shejidan was kind enough to do for me: it is so valuable, and I can't say enough good words about this crew. I'm able to avoid mistakes, avoid confusing people, and in general, since I *can't* yet find all my library in the chaos of our basement, it is invaluable help.
2/2/08 Saturday. 82102. Still working on the notes and hand writing certain things as well as fixing names firmly to maps. Sharon gave me a lovely little abstract Laurel Burch notebook with cats on it, and that has become my handy-reference, where I write down things I am going to want to know sometime in the same book. So far it's served me through three books and has plenty of room.
2/3/08 Sunday. 82571. Superbowl Sunday, and I'm more wondering if Eric Bedard [pitcher] is going to end up with the Mariners. Also the Worlds should be on this evening and I want to catch that. I think I have gotten all my notes and things are starting to move. The weather has been blue skies above our snowy roads, and people are beginning to dig out. We expect school to be back in session Monday and we are anxious to take the ice again. My weight is up---couldn't be the chicken we had at the bar Friday night: I'm back on the diet with a vengeance, and intend to make this attempt good. Poor Jane has given up nearly everything and can't make her weight budge. We are trying so hard, and it's not fair she eats less than I do and can't lose an ounce; but it will happen. Sometimes you just stick on a plateau and need some time to convince your body it's not going to get chocolate mousse, no matter what. Ever! So there.
2/4/08 Monday. 85920. I am starting what we call the dreaded 'rolling rewrite', where you go through and expand names where you have had X's and fill in places where you've said 'magic happens' here, and otherwise make yourself sound brighter than you were when you wrote whatever-it-is...in this case, Conspirator.
2/5/08 Tuesday. 88029. It's always nice to see the word count balloon like this. It's going very, very well. This book should begin an arc that will carry the series into deeper—stuff. And I cannot adequately express my thanks to the people at www.shejidan.com who have done so much to help. All my reference books are in boxes, and I have asked these good people to come up with miracles of research.
2/6/08 Wednesday. 90891. I swear, every time I nearly get caught up with the blog and get good intentions, the sky falls...in this case, a nice little deficit in our personal credit card account. Seems this card, that I had ordered to draft from the bank, only drafted the minimum for the last half year. Half a year of personal expenses backed up on this card and unpaid, when I had also ordered our credit limit on that card reduced to an amount we usually could easily pay and held there. They didn't. They more than tripled our credit limit—oh, such a favor they did us! And of course deducted only the minimum. I was sick through November and December, Jane caught it, we attended other emergencies, thinking that particular card was handled, and being totally paid off every month. Nay! Not so. We ended up with a huge amount we can't pay off. We are, shall we say, mad at the credit card company—mad at ourselves, for failing to track it; and in a pickle. Plus, in the way of things in this industry, various checks we are owed are not here yet. I don't know what we're going to do, but it's going to be a squeak.
2/7/08 Thursday. 93172. We have had a council of war. We are going to cut out doctor visits except when we are in pain; we are going to have to put skating lessons on hold; we are going to have to forego luxuries like lattes, trinkets, and DVDs, we are going to have to buy only bulk items at the discount warehouse and not eat out. Period.
2/8/08 Friday. 94190. We're still trying to figure what to do. Our skating is paid for, since we have a year pass. I'm trying to figure what we can do to come up with the money. It's just such fun. And I'm not coming up with answers, except that the interest on that card is probably 18% and the bank is going to charge us a lot less. Our Forester is paid for—it's available as collateral on a loan. I sure don't want to go to a second mortgage for a short-term problem. If they'll give us enough on the car, we can reduce the interest by more than half. That will let us pay off all cards.
2/9/08 Saturday. 95082. Sharon came over to commiserate with us—and brought us supper, bless her. We had a nice evening.
2/10/08 Sunday. 95384. Working—debt is a great stimulus.
2/11/08 Monday. 95217. We're gathering up materials, finding things like the car title. Jane's needing to go to the optometrist, but she refuses, in the spirit of economy. I think she ought to go. Meanwhile I've contacted New York to see if various people can put a hurry-up on payments...this isn't as easy, in this era of corporate giant management, as it used to be, but hopefully some funds can be put on a fast track rather than meandering through usual channels. In the writing biz, you're almost always owed something that hasn't been paid, and now would be a good time.
2/12/08 Tuesday. 96983. Well, we got our loan: they gave us 2000 more than I thought we could get on the car, so the poor old Forester belongs to the bank, temporarily, but we're solvent. We wanted them to EFT the money to the card companies, but they say they'll do it by check and they'll handle it—red tape, I guess. At least as of today we are paying far less interest and they have given us 60 months to pay it off. I'm hoping for 6 months. But that's the way with money: if you haven't got it, everything grinds to a halt. We'll just economize until we can get it settled.
2/13/08 Wednesday. 97808. A little more leisure, and at least the confidence that we are now out of the nasty sort of debt and things are under control. Joan's father-in-law has died, and we are going to have to help Joan out, very likely, by dog-sitting while Joan goes to join her husband and help him take care of family business things. It's a hard time for Joan, and here we're having to cut off our lessons for a while.
2/14/08 Thursday. 98137. Got a check in the mail, intended for Amex...not that we wanted it. It was supposed to go to Amex—but apparently we failed to sign the authorization, so the bank mailed it to us and we had to sign more papers and mail it back to the bank. The other card apparently we signed, so it should be ok.
2/15/08 Friday. 99821. Skate and work.
2/16/08 Saturday. 99917. Work, work, work.
2/17/08 Sunday. 100201. And more work. Except Sharon bought us another dinner, bless her.
2/18/08 Monday. 100216. Adding and erasing, adding and erasing. Joan has left for her father-in-law's funeral, to be with her husband. We'd have taken care of the dog, but apparently other folk are doing that for her, so we're kind of left in the capacity of backup plan. Which we are fully willing to do.
2/19/08 Tuesday. 101200. Skate and work, skate and work and diet.
2/20/08 Wednesday. 102189. Ditto, skate and work. I still don't have the stamina I did before I got sick last November. But I'm feeling stronger. I've decided we're short of red meat on this diet, so I'm going to feed us both iron pills. I think that will help.
2/21/08 Thursday. 102718. More of the same. Jane thinks the iron is helping. She says it's stopped her yawning all the time.
2/22/08 Friday. 103181. We did get to the rink—a whole lot of people were there, Larry and Hank and Stephanie and others—we had regular traffic flow problems. And! And! I hit a weight I haven't seen since the 1980's. I'm very happy with myself. I feel sorry for Jane. She just isn't losing a thing and she's been so good on this diet.
2/23/08 Saturday. 103926. Talked to Sharon: she reacted to a medication and is absolutely miserable. Joan is still across the state attending her father-in-law's funeral. We are just snugged down and writing.
2/24/08 Sunday. 104211. We got a tiny, tiny snowfall after dark. That can raise one's mood. But mostly today we just wrote, and wrote. Jane's icing her back: she's having trouble with her back and her eyes. Welcome to the wonderful world of menopause. Not to mention that fall on the ice from a while back...that was nasty: she went backward on the steps.
2/25/08 Monday. 105201. Jane had a really wretched skate: her back is just killing her, and she's hurting it, endlessly practicing a balance move [back edges] that is putting tension on her back. She's cross as a bear and just miserable. I'm kind of down, consequently, because while I'm losing weight on this diet, Jane isn't: we've got to do something different, and probably go back to strict Atkins; and we've got to get Jane to the chiropractor...and do something about Jane's skating. I suggested that she put on my skates for a few minutes and try my blades—and she is going to do that...she's in so much pain she can't do it today. So we did call the chiropractor and got an appointment for Wednesday. But the great news is, New York has come through in a big way. Things I wasn't sure could be done have been done and we have begun to get the cash flow thing ironed out, the backed up stuff will be starting to come through, thanks to various people putting a superhuman hurry-up on their various departments, and that is very welcome news. It is so nice to see the dog sleds appear on the horizon when you're in a bit of a whiteout.
2/26/08 Tuesday. 106220. Jane tried out my skates, for about 15 minutes. She found out what I'd been saying: that the blades she has, which are thin and of a different 'circle' of rocker, are harder. On my skates, she instantly found her edge going backward, so despite the cash crunch, I put my foot down [well, figuratively] and said she had to get some new blades...just until she gets the balance thing. Then she can go back to her others. Found out during our quest for blades that our boots now cost about a third again what they used to cost. Glad we got them when we did. And then Jane found out, during her check on the credit card, that our bank hadn't sent the check to credit card...and they've lost it. We're being charged interest by both our bank and our card company on the same money. And they don't know where the check is. Our lives are a soap opera.
2/27/08 Wednesday. 105467. Peeling out a bit of chaff in the book. Headed down to Dr. Shayne for Jane's back. And we still have not heard from the bank about that lost check.
2/27/08-3/04/08. 106593. Well, about the time I swear up and down I'm going to keep up with the blog, something happens. In this case, absolute exhaustion happened. We did find the check. All is well. My agent says a check is going to come in that will fix everything. So we take a deep breath and wait.
I conclude, one chapter short of the end of my book, that I
need a rest. Badly. So I acquired a new vice: ancestry.com. You get a 14-day
free trial. And considering my brother has never kept up the habit, and has
kids, and I'm probably one of a few left in the family who actually met Aunt
Lela and Uncle Roy—I set out doing a little research to try to straighten out
the business for a family tree to give my brother's kids, if they're interested.
Well, it got to a lot more than that: turns out the search engine on that site
is amazing. Within a few hours I'd found the grandmother I'm named for, and
found out things that made family things make sense . . . often not in the way
I'd have expected.
So it became as obsessive as a new video game.
Things I found that I expected: I'm descended from the father of Daniel Boone.
Knew that. That my grandfather was in Oklahoma around statehood. Check: his
birthplace is listed as Indian Territory. You can look at the original census
records on line. Birth certificates. Army records. Flick of a key or two.
Things I found that I didn't expect: ancestors all the way back to 900 AD. But
there's a reason for that. If you've got one ancestor on record, chances
are—that person either did something notorious or was rich and had connections,
and thus the inclination to keep track of who his relatives were. And if you
chance to find a connection to somebody with a title, you're in like Flynn:
doesn't matter which side of the blanket—a noble connection is a noble
connection, and families like to be connected. More, nobles like to be connected
to royals, and royals all like to be connected to Charlemagne, whose kith and
kin took particular pains to be sure their lineages [and thus their lands and
titles, money, and inheritances] were all clear in the records. Kings of England
probably *paid* to get their line traced back to Charlemagne—not that it's
guaranteed 100% accurate, but it was important. And it's a great history lesson.
Use the tabbed browser to look up likely family members on Wikipedia. You'll
find all sorts of horse thieves, pirates [one of Jane's ancestors was related to
Francis Drake] and occasional reverends.
I have an ancestor with the romance-novel name of Blaeck von Swann. Dutch.
My favorite Christmas movie is The King in Winter—and it turns out I'm solidly
related to the whole quarreling clan...through baby brother John, who apparently
slept with everybody in the county. But my batch is [shudder] legitimate.
The Capets—you know—Louis the XVIth—branch off that line.
I did find one off the Dutch branch named Bloody Sven.
One off the French batch named Fulk the Rude. [Foulques, but the English
simplified the spelling.]
I'm heavily related to the Normans. But NOT through the side of the family I
thought was—who turn out to be German, and who fade out of view in the 1400's.
Jane, on the other hand, is descended from the OTHER side of the Norman
Invasion. She's got the Ethelreds and Eadwards, and her lot also includes the
MacPhails—trying to unravel the kinships of a Scottish clan, where names are
often repeated—is going to be interesting. Her line has turned up a lieutenant
governor of Colorado, numerous Puritans, a notable British naval officer, and
Sir Francis Drake, who privateered against the Spanish fleet for Elizabeth
Tudor—we haven't yet figured how she fits in. Then there was, on Jane's side,
Henry Atte Wode, the Captain of the King's Guard for Edward III.
As interesting are the shopkeepers and craftsmen of the day: you look at the
villages