We had dinner with friends. I’m allergic to turkey, but there was plenty else to eat.
What WE had as a follower: made another spaghetti sauce. Here’s my personal recipe:
Spaghetti Sauce
3 pounds ground beef.
2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
4 tsp dry basil
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp powdered clove
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp red chili flake
dash of cayenne
dash of allspice
heaping TBS chopped garlic in oil
SEAR beef.
Then:
can tomato sauce (standard size canned goods can)
1 can tomato paste. (small can, not big one)
I tomato-sauce can-ful of water.
Bring to boil
let rest an hour
then add:
2 cans tomato paste
sufficient water. About 3 cups. Add more as needed.
Simmer for, oh, 3 hours checking periodically for need of water.
Usually when there’s banging in the kitchen here it’s yrs trly banging the lid of a Talenti Gelato jar against the edge of the counter top to loosen the lid . . . .
@WOL
I went “underground” trying to send you a comment, but as I tried to scroll down to the bottom of the screen, where I saw glimpses of the link, all nine yards of your blog kept downloading to keep it perpetually out of reach! 🙁 I hope there’s another way you could design the page to separate some stuff out to the side or top.
A story I liked:
A few months ago, I’d noted not only that some of CJ’s books were now highlighted as Audible Originals recordings.
I’d seen that because I’d seen a new short from Audible for FREE at the time (It may still be free), and I had liked the story, a fun science fiction adventure for middle school kids. But I think any bright preteen or teen or adults might get a kick out of it.
Ah, but now there are ebook and paperback editions due out, and a sequel audiobook is due out this month, not yet in ebook or pb that I could find.
Author: Dan Wells
Titles: { 1: Zero-G ; 2: Dragon Planet ; }
Length: The first is a short; the second may be a novella or novel, or a short;
I pre-ordered the second audiobook. The hero is a middle school boy on a starship sent to colonize a planet. The colonists and crew are all in suspended animation, cryogenic freeze, until something goes awry and the boy wakes up, and then has to solve the mystery. Hijinks ensue. If the sequel is as fun a listen / read as the first, it’s worth it for fans. Oh, there were a couple of places it got to goofy kid-level humor, which I rolled my eyes at, but overall, a neat little adventure with a problem to solve and enough of a thrill / thread to it to keep the listener’s / reader’s interest.
I don’t know what else he has written, but I think the info surrounding it had said SF&F and YA/teen were not his primary genres, but he wanted to try something else new. I was happy to see the sequel due out, I believe next week. Not sure of the dates for the ebook and pb release, but avail. for pre-order now. I didn’t see an ebook or pb for the sequel avail., but maybe I missed them; I’ll recheck.
Also, the price is cheap, an easy stocking stuffer for kids’ presents. Maybe an easy addition to a library acquisition.
—– Edit To Add:
Nope, no ebook or pb or hb showing for the sequel, Dragon Planet by Dan Wells.
Also, don’t get too excited when you see Ghost Station by Dan Wells in related audiobooks. Not if you were looking for ghostly goings-on on a space station. (Drat, that would’ve been a neat one.) Do get excited if you like spy thriller / international intrigue novels, as that’s what that one is, from the description.
Typographic / book design oddities noted in passing:
Maybe I’m the only one who’s ever noticed this or been irritated in that completist, persnickety sort of way, but here goes:
(Two colons? How anal-retentive is that? — LOL, sorry, the pun occurred to me and I couldn’t not include it, off-color though it be.)
We have a paragraph sign, possibly derived from a backwards-flipped P with a vertical line through it, or else a ligature of the letters CH for chapter, chapitre, and whatever to Latin equivalent was, Capiter or Capiteris or Capitalis, probably. But it became used for paragraphs, rather than its original Chapter or Section usage.
We have a Section sign, a doubled, stacked SS ligature or SC ligature.
We have horizontal lines (HR rules in HTML) and various flourishes, fleurons, or dingbats or pi font characters, used for section or scene breaks within a chapter.
One such sometimes used is the asterism, three asterisks stacked in a triangle pointing up, either as a single designed character glyph, or else in a row in most current usage or typescripts.
There are also sometimes end-of-story or end-of-article dingbats used, but those tend to be special uses, and are somewhat rare.
Then there are, of course, bullet point characters of many kinds, such as bullets or big spots, squares, triangles, arrows, ballot-boxes (checkboxes, blank or checked or exes or occasionally with a question mark), and numbers in circles or squares, or other symbols. That’s its own category.
There is also an uncommon archaic symbol called the obelisk, which looks rather like a division sign rotated so it’s a vertical line with a dot on either side, either centered, high, low.
So it struck me, why is it that we do not have a standard, agreed upon symbol for a “Chapter,” other than the letters Ch.? And then it struck me, why don’t we have a commonly used thing like the section sign on its side, double or triple, facing left or facing right (rotated plus or minus 90 degrees)? Why don’t we have begin and end pairs like parentheses, if we (rarely) use end-of-topic dingbats?
Ah, I left out something called the “Aldus Leaf,” and similar symbols, which face downward or right or rarely left or up. (The down and right versions are enshrined in Unicode code points.)
As an aside, if you put a secant sign in a heading, and then export that with HTML tags, that symbol doesn’t get converted as such, it ends up being replaced by a dash or underscore.
And as a further question, why, oh why, do we not have what are called “named character entities” in HTML for a downward-pointing vee to go with the upward-pointing ASCII caret ^ sign? Or named character entities for the very handy things like an unchecked check box, a checked check box, an exed check box, or the check mark and ex-mark by themselves? Or bolder, fatter arrows than the HTML uarr, darr, larr, rarr signs? It seems like those would be very useful.
I suppose these are used rarely enough that they felt the edge-cases didn’t need to be covered, though I think the check boxes and signs used as bullets or special symbols, separately from their purpose as interface elements (check boxes and radio buttons) would make sense and be common enough to reserve them as named identifiers.
While I’m at it, why, oh why doesn’t HTML (and CSS) provide for a hierarchical outing or tree, a nested list, complete with ways to expand and collapse, highlight, select, check and uncheck and dim and undim these? Yes, there is a way to nest OL and UL list tags already, but it’s sort of not entirely intuitive in how you have to nest them, and there’s no provision for a list heading versus list items, and no provision for this as, say, navigation or menu lists / items, either as an interface element, or as a simple outline or tree. Also, you’d need a way to provide for horizontal and vertical menus, such as a menu bar and drop-down menus, popup menus for right-clicks, and so on. Just as long as II’m wishing, and I’ve brought it up.
And another wish-list item I have had as a designer, ever since CSS first came around, is, why the blazes can’t I have a good way to declare and define my own color-names for a project, and asking those to a color-list with its own identifier name, so it has its own unique namespace? Wouldn’t that be so much easier, to say, XYZ-corp:FancyGreen or MyBlog:FunkyAccent or Crayola:IndianRed or Pantone:Pantone000c (whatever) ? Rather than multiple fiddly instances of rob() or hsl() or #rrggbb, which don’t tell me much, even when I know which of several ones those are? — I’d need an @-color-list “MyPaletteName” {} thing, with a way of giving color definitions in each model supported and a quoted string as the name I’m giving it. (There are various ways to do that, but a statement with each color model definition followed by the quoted name string followed by a semi-colon seems easiest. Preceding it with something like, color-def or color-item (for the color-list) might be best. — I’ve never written out an explanation of this, but I’ve sometimes made up files listing these to keep my own sanity when working on personal projects, or back when I did some volunteer website work. (Versions appear in my CSS files on my own website for instance.)
So, off-topic, and you get two or more wonder-why’s for the price of one today.
Hmm, there could be standard color palettes ready-made and provided free to designers, from companies like Pantone, Crayola, Speedball, Osmiroid, paint makers for artist paints, or paint bucket companies like Behr, Glidden, and so on.
And…oh why do we still have umpteen webfoot formats to support, and using, hosting, buying web fonts is such a pain? This should be easy by now. — And Apple still doesn’t include the usual Windows/Office fonts, and no one includes the old 35 standard PostScript fonts anymore, which is just aggravating.
Why can’t I have a word processor that gives me nice, clean HTML, CSS, and EPUB output files? Why? Why can’t I do, easily, what I used to be able to do in the 1990’s, for pity’s sake, in page layout programs and vector graphics programs, easily, today, for in-print or for on-screen for the web or for ebooks? And why do we have to be stuck with standard EPUB plus proprietary flavors for Kindle and for Apple? Sigh….
One more wish-list item: I want to be able to do cross-platform gradient text for special large headings and display size purposes. And I want a way to do that with images that might include nice textured looks, noise or concrete, gravel, plaid, bricks, you name it. Because why not? (Yes, I know it would look awful when abused and over-used. But when done right, it could be just enough to give a special zing. And currently, only webkit has a nice enough way to do that.)
That said, my eyesight is being a major pain in the posterior lately.
I think they may have plans for a cmyk() color model eventually to get added, but it still hasn’t happened.
LOL, in the 90’s I could do things with Macromedia Freehand and ReadySetGo or PageMaker that still are not easy to do online or for ebooks or printed matter today. And I am still ticked off that the old Macromedia file formats were never given good, complete import filters, so you’d lose half of what you had in a perfectly good, clean good-looking file and output artwork.
The model high-tech world is nuts. things have moved so fast that older formats and some great artistic work has gotten lost or forgotten because of it.
Back to what I was doing.
“a downward-pointing vee to go with the upward-pointing ASCII caret”
I’ve heard it called a haček – “caron” is what’s used in the Windows character map and in Unicode.
I think an obelisk is now a dagger.
The ASCII choices made for things like \ { } baffle me since they predate the languages that use those characters.
You can get some characters in some environment with & para ; ¶ and similar abbreviations.
Web colors exist, but I think that’s different from what you’re looking for:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors#HTML_color_names
You can use Unicode characters practically anywhere these days without special encoding. Simply copy and paste. Or use hex encoding if you have to.
☐☑☒✔☓
See BabelMap for thousands of Unicode characters. Especially the various ‘miscellaneous’ and ‘symbol’ blocks.
🎄 🎅 🎁
You can do nested lists with formatting in CSS. And you can easily do much fancier things for websites with free frameworks like Bootstrap. Bootstrap is very popular and incorporates Javascript as well as CSS.
LibreOffice will create both HTML/CSS pages and epub books, as well as many other formats, and you can do all kinds of page layouts. It also has vector graphics in its Draw module.
On the Mac, I use NeoOffice, which is a branch customized from either OpenOffice or LibreOffice, I forget which. I need to recheck the Draw app module. When I’d last looked, it still felt more like a diagramming / org chart tool than a drawing app.
When I’d last looked, there was a plugin or extension to adde .epub output, but it didn’t like (did not work well with) NeoOffice. — And eegad, the HTML and CSS that gets output by Neo, Libre, or Open -Office, and by MS Word, is still…oh, ’tis an unbelievable mess.
The ASCII caret, ^ above the 6, is different from the circumflex accent. Yes, the latter is the companion of the caron. (Compare ^ there is a ver sign somewhere in the Math block, I think; versus ê and č š ž ; I think there’s supposed to be a ǰ. Aha! At least some fonts do have it.)
—–
Walt, yes, what I’m talking about for a way to give user-defined color names is similar to, but not quite like the predefined Web Color names given in CSS 2 and 3.
What I mean is a syntax, a provision built into some future version of CSS, whereby we could assign our own names, identifiers, to color definitions, in a list also given a user-defined name, something like:
@-color-list “MyPalette” {
color-def: #rrggbb rgb( rrr, ggg, bbb ) hsl( hhh.hh, sss.ss%, lll.ll% ) “XYZ_Major_Color”;
color-def: #ffggbb /* etc. — may include cmyk() or others */ “XYZ_Minor_Color”;
/* probably want a way to give “tints” and “shades” of colors, diluting or adding white or black to the base color; */
/* of course, support the rgba hex, rgba(), hsla() color models from CSS3. */
/* note that the list-name, “MyPalette” can serve as a local “namespace” to specify which set of color-names you’re using. Perhaps a designer might use the predefined Web Colors from CSS3, with a default css3: list-name as its namespace; but also, others, like Pantone or Crayola, interior/exterior paint suppliers, or artists’ paint suppliers; or designers and companies could create their own color-lists for projects or for brand identities. An @import url() could then include these from elsewhere on a website, so public color-lists might be kept, open-source, for use, for example by local stores and advertisers, or for commonly used color palettes. Viridian? Red Ochre? and so on. *./
/* Note comments and whitespace used to give human-readable CSS code. */
/* would a way to include sub-lists or sections within a list (such as, these are all grayscale, those are all earth tones or flesh tones, those others are for A, B, and C colors derived from the main colors in the theme, and so on. */
} /* @-color-list “MyPalette” — comment to tell us which block we’ve ended; */
That, in a fairly succinct way, gives the main needs for associating color-names defined by users / designers with each model definition. So, as with other identifiers, further references get substituted back to the definitions, but now we have a more human-readable declaration of the purpose and the color that is less error-prone and more clear and high-level, like other variable names.
The examples on my own website’s CSS files use a slightly different syntax, because I’ve had the idea in mind for years. I’d almost looked into how to do a proposal at one point, but I didn’t see any guide for people from the general public to submit anything to the CSS Working Groups at the W3C.
}
Curry showed up when I opened the door, as if he’d been right there waiting. Either he was patrolling and heard my door, or he was awake or napping right nearby. And yet at other times, I can call and he’s nowhere around, or doesn’t want to be bothered.
So, he is in for a while, much water, a can of food, some attention soaked up, and napping is serious work, haha.
Gober is used to this by now, no matter what he actually feels about it. “Oh, him again? Gee….” is something like the response. So Goober’s with me, in the bedroom, and Curry’s in the living room, as per S.O.P. these days. Except that these days, I see Curry only intermittently, every few days, such that I’d stopped counting since the last time. Not yet two weeks, maybe not yet one week, since his prior appearance.
Also likely he’ll sleep all day, eat supper, then want out to cat around. OK, kitty. No longer so prone to lavish attention on him, but more like, this is just how it is, and oh, he’s here again, regular visitor. Hi, kitty, pet and feed him, water him, let him sleep, and see how it goes.
We’re warming up after the very brief two-day cold snap, not much of a cold snap, either. Looks like back to the 70’s for a week or so. Christmas may be 70’s weather, but that is halfway usual here. Even when I was a kid, you never knew if it would be warm or ice-cold or wet, but snow was a rarity, only every 5 years or so. This winter has felt too warm overall.
However, compared to what’s going on elsewhere on the planet, this is nothing, not worth complaining about. I guess nature finds a way. I would rather a good balancing point than to become another Mars or Venus, however, even though that’s beyond anyone’s lifetime, on a more geologic scale. But current climate effects are within the next 100 to 200 years, which are well within current generations’ lives. Meh. It is what it is, but we need to do better as a species. Or another species will get to try for sentience instead.
The Earth has no lack of thinking species, but only one technologically focused one. Any technologically focused species in the near future (geologically) would either have to use our waste or use a completely different basis for technology since we’ve used all the surface deposits of useful material.
The Fermi paradox, the lack of any detectable extraterrestrial civilizations (despite seemingly increasing estimates of extra-solar planets and biological activity in the universe), suggests at least a few explanations:
1. Earth technology has not yet progressed to the communications method commonly used by advanced civilizations;
2. Advanced civilizations entirely use encrypted communications and/or such low power communications that it is not possible to detect them;
3. Technology is not a successful survival strategy, long term.
Walt,
This is a really good and thought-provoking post with your ID of us as a “technologically-focused” species (rather than simply the standard point that humans can think) and related list of reasons why we haven’t definitively heard from others off-world. I don’t have other ideas to add right now to it, but am going to ponder your points. Thanks!
Thank you, Raesean!
The Drake equation skips from intelligence to communication. Crows are very intelligent, but they have a poor ability to manipulate objects to create technology, and seemingly no path to develop manipulation. Octopi are quite intelligence and adept manipulators, but they live in a poor environment for technology. To be fair, the Drake equation was invented in 1961, long before most information on animal intelligence, and before better communication was anything more subtle than adding more power, possibly excluding AC Clarke’s invention of communications satellites in the 1950s, I think.
I thought of #2 because of cell phones. They use little power compared to broadcast, and they are entirely at least somewhat encrypted due to frequency changing, and the huge numbers of cells broadcasting (narrow-casting? local-casting?) at once on the same frequencies.
Possibility #3 is terrifying.
Yes, I teach the Drake Equation whenever I can because it is another super thing to think about/with. Last I used it in class was a few weeks ago in my Geology course, which I end with an evening on Comparative Planetology (“geology” of solid surface planets & moons) and examine the question of “is anybody else out there” via the Drake Equation.
For anybody who is not familiar with this, here’s its basics via the SETI Institute:
https://www.seti.org/drake-equation-index
There are some neat videos covering the Drake Equations, either documentaries, or YouTube posts. If you haven’t caught Isaac Arthur’s YouTube channel, he has some well thought out, detailed videos regarding science fiction topics like this. Note for the first time you hear him, he also has a speech impediment involving saying his R’s, which come out as W’s or color the vowels around them. I also check John Michael Godier’s YouTube posts, and Anton Petrov’s.
Yes, there is a whole lot of territory between animal lifeforms (or complex life of some sort) and some measure of intelligence, and then the leap to communications and to technology. Multiple mammals show some ability, and several others, like crows, octopi and related, whales and dolphins (cetaceans generally), apes, other mammals. I’d tend to put raccoons in there too. So there are some pretty good candidates for intelligent life on this planet already. — And who knows what another wave of evolution might bring, either from mammals or birds, cephalopoda, or — There is also the chance of something new showing up from further down on the tree, branching off, or something appearing from high on the tree out of our nearby branches.
Humans like to think of ourselves as special and smart and somehow immune to disaster or above nature. But we aren’t. We are still more linked to our primate ancestors than we ever like to think. That’s embedded in our language and our basic behaviors, underneath all our veneer of civilizations, cultures, religions, morality. Our basic drives are still there, even when we deny them or claim (wrongly) that they are something else than what the biological truth is. (One of the things about this and about language is, scratch the surface, and even some of our words and phrases we don’t think of as reflecting those basics of biology or pre-human behavior do show how deep that goes.) (And most of us struggle in some way with the difference between our basic instincts and what we believe in, secular or religious or culturally so.)
In particular, somewhere in there is a whole range of proto-sentience/sapience, proto-intelligence, whatever we want to call it, the differences between higher animals and even higher forms that show edge-case intelligence, and then our own oddball brand of intelligent lifeform. (Ooh, the spell-checker keeps interfering with perfectly good words, trying to predict or to respell.) How do we account for those different levels of intelligent behavior? My cats, most mammals, particularly Carnivora and primates and cetaceans, are pretty good at a higher level. Then you go up to…where is the dividing line between, say, the other great apes and early hominids and whatever point where fire, real tool use, language, other markers of our brand of intelligence appeared, somewhere between Australopithecus and members of genus Homo, and then to ourselves? — If an Australopithecus (like Lucy’s kind) appeared today, would she (or he) seem like the other apes to us, or would we see qualitative differences quickly? What about the other hominids in the branch points around there, ape and pre-human and so on? I think we might be surprised at where our ideas get very blurry around there, at what point is that an “animal” and at what point is that a “person,” in a broader non-human person context? And yet that’s something we need to figure out, as we find out more about other species right here on Earth, and as the chances for life on other planets and moons look more possible and common than we’d thought. (There is some sort of difference between, say, a human child or person with mental impairment, and, say, a great ape. But given that at least gorillas can use signs and symbols to communicate simple ideas, and dolphins can do…we are still figuring that out…what then is the answer? I don’t know, and I don’t think that’s an easy answer to arrive at.
And…not unrelated, I am not sure it has ever reached 82 by mid-December here before. Our forecast high for Monday is 82°F, low being more normal for here in winter, but still very mild and warmer than usual.
Technology is a great thing. I depend on it for my daily life, for the internet and my computer, for my kitchen and bathroom, for the air conditioning and heating, and so on. And I would not have lived past birth without 1960’s level medical technology, as a preemie baby, pretty immature little newborn, there. Less clear is if, longer-term, my eyes will benefit from current or future medical and prosthetic / mechanical / computer assistive tehcnologies. But this means I depend on and like technology, as troublesome as the relationship can be at times.
Yet somehow, we as a species have to reach a better balance, or we won’t last like this. We aren’t too likely to go extinct, but we can’t last at the current rates, long-term. It won’t work. We have to adapt ourselves to something that works, sustainably.
Mr. Curry asked to go out early before dawn. But this was maybe an improvement — he asked politely. Meow, meow? Found me, and I suspected what he wanted. I went to the door, he stood and stretched his paws up to the doorknob, looking expectantly. OK, kitty, it was nice to see you, you want out? And out he goes, and I said goodbye and miss you and see you later. Did not see him today, but maybe tomorrow, or more likely in a few days. But hey, if he can ask like that, nice and polite, we can sure work with that.
While he was in, he was very happy, and he left happy, and happy to be on his way. So, well, that’s better. I still like the little scamp. He sure liked the attention, and he liked the fresh, clean water and the food.
Goober’s been hanging out with me most of the day.
Only ordinary laundry to do. Hot diggity. But have to wait for it to air-dry.
Making inroads already into the frozen food I bought.
Still up. Couldn’t get to sleep, so I got back up. And around midnight, had, oh, the uncountable joy of hearing, first the upstairs neighbors clomping around (thought something fell for a minute), then oh, worse, a fighting couple from outside, possibly the same one from a few weeks ago. Young couple. You know, if you kids (20’s or 30’s?) can’t get along any better than that and take your (loud, emotional, some cussing) fight outside so everyone can hear, maybe you should separate and save each other, and the rest of us, the heartache. At least one of you could get a hotel room and sleep better? Oh, strain a point, both of you get hotel rooms (separate ones). And a midnight babysitter (a what?!) if you have kids stuck there. The poor kids would honestly probably thank you and be better off than to put up with either of you. Young lady and young man. Who, from the sound of them, ought to have better sense, but don’t.
I put my earphones back on once I heard what was going on. I don’t want to know. I hope they don’t actually hurt each other or themselves or any kids.
My mind is still reeling, that I thought up a “midnight babysitter.” I am not sure they have those, or how trustworthy that is, unless it’s a relative or neighbor you already know. But I obviously don/t know thise things. Seems I am lacking in the human relationships 101 dept, without knowing I was.
But I still suspect my snark that the kids would be better off and thankful, may well be true.
Earlier this evening, the kids and adults around here were having a good time with healthy, happy, playful noise, running around. At one point, I heard, “It’s a werewolf!” In appropriately kid-anxious tones. I do not know who or what was supposed to be the werewolf, or what happened when they got him/her or he/she got them, but…well, haha, it sounded like they were having a good, imaginative time, and I could approve of the werewolf thing.
So, back when I was first getting used to around here (I still am not) I had joked maybe they are vampires around here, up all hours as much or more than I am.
So possibly this is a mixed community, vampires, werewolves, day people, whatever. Heheh. OK, I could be OK with that. I dunno, if there’s a cute werewolf or monkey-boy running around? One could hope. LOL.
So…well, as far as I know, everyone is still OK around here. the fighting couple apparently did stop. No sirens, no dire, ominous noises (and please, I don’t want any).
I might (maybe) be getting the hang of this. … No, I’m not, I’m just silly enough to think so. Don’t think I am that sleep-deprived yet, though.
I would much rather have the kids playing happily, even in the middle of the night, than a couple fighting over who’s lying or being faithful or not. The kids pretending there’s a werewolf loose, that’s much better.
If there is a werewolf loose, as long as he’s sorta friendly, I could go with that. Hmm, why is it no one ever tries to give the werewolf an ear scratch or a belly rub? I mean, if you were a werewolf, wouldn’t you be much nicer once you got a belly rub? I’m thinking it could improve your werewolf disposition a lot more. Funny, they didn’t try that in Lost Boys, either…..
OK, I’m just gonna hush for now. LOL.
Thought you might like to read this from the Tor.com website:
https://www.tor.com/2019/12/16/predators-prey-honor-linguistic-worldbuilding-in-c-j-cherryhs-hunter-of-worlds/?utm_source=Feedburner%3A+Frontpage+Partial+RSS+Feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torcom%2FFrontpage_Partial+%28Tor.com+Frontpage+Partial+-+Blog+and+Stories%29
Thank you WOL, that was very interesting. Another book back to the re-read pile!
I have not read those in a very long time, and suspect I’d get something different from them this time around.
That short article was good, but if there was more than one page, I missed the “next page” link. It felt like it was only the start.
I read those in college, during one of my most spiraling / looping periods, not dealing well with things. I had read all of CJ/s books I could find, I was stuck on campus, and so I searched the uni library’s card catalog, because of course I would. 😉 It’s multiple floors of books. Surely they’d have a Cherryh book I hadn’t read. They did. Hunter of Worlds, Brothers of Earth, Voyager in Night, and Port Eternity all. I don’t think I had read Cyteen yet; I don’t think it was out yet. (This would have been around 1986, I think.) Ah, I was so off-kilter that I chose an out-of-the-way spot, a corner or other seat along the wall, and started reading one of the books. I must have sat there for an hour or two before I checked ou and went back to my dorm room, and basically hid. — But these helped get me thought that, and exposed me to very early Cherryh writing. I could tell she was still learning and not yet as polished as I had read in Downbelow Station, The Pride of Chanur, and Chanur’s Venture, which may have been all I’d read by then of hers. I think I read Hestia during this time also. I think it was later that I read the Faded Sun trilogy and some others. But b then I was hooked with CH as ny favorite writer.
I don’t recall at what point I had read 40,000 in Gehenna and Serpent’s Reach. I think I had read Merchanter’s Luck by then, which was a definite favorite as soon as I read it.
CJ’s use of language and culture and history, that real alien quality that wasn’t just funny-looking humans, and her compact writing style were what got to me. I was in the middle English and French as well as calculus and computer science, and possibly my history courses, so I was thrilled to find out my suspicions were true, that she had a background in languages and history. That was right up my alley.
Finding those books in that couple of university library trips, and later finding more at the bookstores at home, helped me get through that very rough spot in my life then. I will always be grateful for that. The stories were not meant for that, and yet, they helped when I was feeling very alien and alone myself.
So thanks again, CJ. That simple gift of good stories, a lot of work, can make a difference, even when you were not thinking along those lines with the stories you were telling. My college-age self, struggling with what he had been raised to believe versus what his feelings and his body were telling him, and real life on top of that, very much needed the reassurance and comfort and the challenge of those new and different ideas, the idea that I could be someone else and that was OK. I am not sure what all I really got besides great stories and the chance to lose myself in them and not dwell on my own or my other distractions for a while. But the chance to read great science fiction helped a lot in some ways I doubt I know of, even still.
(There were other great stories and writers I read then, in science fiction, plus what I was getting from class readings. Those also helped a great deal.)
Reminder: Resurgence, Foreigner #20, is due out on January 7th, just over three weeks from now. It’s a good time to pre-order, or to check that your pre-order is still there.
Well, Curry showed up after I got back from checking the mailbox. (I wish they had a mail drop-off there; I don’t understand that.)
So, Curry’s gotten food, water, and some attention. He was out during both nights of the recent cold snap and subsequent rain. He’s thin, he’s got a very minor scratch healing on one ear. He is, as before, glad to get, and wanting, attention.
Goober got attention too, but was having trouble sticking around to get it, which is usual for him, around Curry. Instead of staying for his rightful place and share, he’d rather retreat somewhere, be on the periphery, and then get attention when he thinks the coast is clear, or seek time to himself with me. Oh, bless you, most non-assertive (and a little passive-aggressive) and sweet-natured, clever but goofy cat.
Heh, Curry is his charming self, but too skinny. The healthy, young adult male cat bulk he’d built up while staying here is all gone, down to a too-lean if apparently still healthy tomcat alleycat. — And yet this same cat, prone to brawling and (I think) wenching (or trying to) is also a cat who can seek affection, wants his share of attention and then some, but isn’t quite sure what to do with it once he gets a certain amount. I think he gets overstimulated or just still has not figured out how to hold back. — I avoided us getting to that point now.
I offered him the door after he ate. No, thanks, he wants to stay in and nap. And the neighborhood kids and some adults will be out and around, the kids running and playing and making noise like some cross between monkeys and puppies, but mostly, just human kids being kids, a little feral like the stray cats, I think.
So in other words, Curry’s taking advantage of a safe, quiet, dark and comfy spot to nap and get attention and food and water. His usual m.o. — I might be getting used to this, but I still do not quite understand it. I hadn’t realized how very much I expect a housecat, one used to humans, socialized, not feral. — His desire for freedom and the outdoors above all else, even though he likes me, is understandable, admirable, and yet, I am wired that I would want that independence, that freedom, while at the same time, I want that song bond, permanent and lasting, of someone to love and be with, whether good friends or someone special or family or, as it is usually put in science fiction, a few, a team, a starship and crew as their own form of home and family, workplace, livelihood, and co-workers, a team.
So Curry still puzzles a significant part of me; meaning, I still wish he’d be so attached / bonded that he’d naturally want to stay, with Goober and me as his family / pride / friends, and this as his home base, although sure, in and out at will, the way I used to have cats in and out but staying, mostly. And yet that’s again, a domestic cat. I also grew up, in my early to late teens, with an outdoor, half-feral mama cat who decided we were an excellent home base and good people, so that she had a secure place for her many litters of kittens, and liked being with us — but couldn’t bring herself to come inside and stay, more than a tentative exploration a few feet into the den (living room) at times. I miss her, she was a sweet cat and several of her kittens stayed as our cats, linearly.
Well, anyway, Curry is safely in and napping and will get good attention while he’s in. I fully expect tomorrow or the next day, he’ll ask to go out, or will streak out when I next open the door, depending on his mood. But he is also likely to stay in when the door is opened, until he’s ready to go out again, or feels that call.
Goober, meanwhile, is napping on my bed, happy in his place.
It looks like I have an item, food, waiting at the apt. office for pickup, with a shirt and pants and possibly another item. No ideaa if those tardy, kind-of-friends will get those to me before the holiday, or if they are in town. All else has arrived that’s going to arrive, so far as I know.
I’m debating whether to get any groceries delivered before Christmas or wait until after. I’m leaning toward after, even though there are a few things I’ve used up and want. I have plenty to fix something or other, probably fix, maybe stew meat in a stir-fry or other entrée, so I am blessed more than it feels like. The one thing I lack is that human company or someone special. I am going to have to be OK with that as always, and work on it in the new year.
I don’t know if Curry will be in with me over Christmas Eve and Day, since I expect he’ll go out from this current visit before then. His range has been three to seven to ten days, and once, nearly two weeks. — I am glad he’s here while he’s here, and miss him and get discouraged whether he’ll be back or is gone for good, each time he’s gone for an extended period. — I don’t know if he is playing a round robin musical chairs thing with other friendly people, or if he is, more likely, holing up in some spot he thinks is warm and safe and dry, when he’s out roaming. — But I’m glad he’s here, a puzzlement though he be. He’s due for flea medicine; I messed up and applied it more to Goover’s collar than to him, so he will get another dose sooner than usual. But urry needs one as a precaution. I wish I could protect him from the risk of anything permanent or communicable, but I have no way to do that beyond the shots he got in September. So, it is what it is. Even so, he has it better than the other strays, I think. I haven’t seen them lately, but hear occasional evidence of them or Curry sparring or, uh, is that feline dating? LOL.
Blessings and best wishes to you all. My associates and salads here at the blog are long-distance friends, though we’ve never yet met in person.
Awkward and irritated observation: Those local erstwhile friends, I have seen or heard from them less often in the past two months than I have from Curry, as walkabout as he is. Though I do suspect my paternal grandpa would understand Curry’s “itchy feet,” because he always had that, wanting to go between Virginia and Texas, and they were used to keeping up with people around the rural counties there in Virginia. Grandpa, was, however, as far as I know, happily monogamous. (There were, after all, five kids, with one first infant that was stillborn. So, ah, grandpa and grandma did have a loving, if somewhat stoic, farm marriage. I owe much of who I am, strengths and flaws, to both sets of grandparents and the great-grands I never really knew, in Virginia and in Texas/Oklahoma. I was lucky to have both my parents in a good, loving marriage and my maternal grandmother and step-grandfather here, to grow up with.
Note: I just heard a neighbor, a young mom, ask another neighbor, a young dad, ask if it was OK for his little ones to be out. (I haven’t heard them outside, but did hear older kids running and playing earlier.) That, neighbors checking on neighbors, their kids able to play around as friends, as good and as imperfect as this apt. complex is — I am glad that, whatever things I complain about here, it is still a place where people can live and mostly get along. I am somehow still out of the loop on this. I need seem to catch people at the right time or make those bonds of good friendship, since I’ve been here. I am a loner, I am handicapped, I am gay, but dang it, I also want and need those friendships and the support with it. Somehow, while I am still here, I have to find a way to overcome this. I feel the people around here are regular folks, friendly enough, typical, even if I am not used to some of what goes on around here. And I know I grew up too isolated, because of things besides my eyesight or, uh, how others perceive a kid who’s gay before he knows it. (I don’t know how else you put that, since it is so outside my experiec=nce for there to be acceptance of that.) The folks here are a mix of mostly Hsiapnic, black, and some white families, with any other groups so small a percentage I haven’t noticed. (There should also be some notable percentage of Asian and Indian families here.) And here, blended / multi-racial families are a thing, with Anglo / Latino families the most common of those. I’m Ango, with a little bit of Native American a few generations back on both sides. I grew up middle-class, on the edge of the city, school in the suburbs in a very typical district with all sorts of people. But I guess I’m still getting used to things. Somewhere in this, I have to figure this out. I had thought my social skills were pretty darn good. Hey, manners, college, work, church, and so on. I’m presentable (except my teeth look bad and my eyesight is more apparent when it was more subtle before.) Meh…I’m rambling, sorry, folks. — At least I’m not talking to myself. Yet. I think.
Happy Holidays, all. This planet is nuts, but there’s still some good in it, some hope we won’t continue down that self-destructive path. I hope.
The apt mailboxes I’ve met generally have an “outgoing mail” box in the bottom right corner of the set of boxes. It’s only really noticeable by the slot in it, though it’s generally double height. It’s a standard USPS design.
I’ll look next time I check there. If so, that helps a lot. Thanks!
Curry’s visit was short-lived. Maybe he had a hot date for dinner and a movie, I dunno. But after supper had had time to digest and a short nap, “Meow. Meow? Myaauu?” No frantic yowling and no pawing at the blinds, but a calling, definite. That, though, is fine, mostly polite, and a stretch toward the doorknob confirmed it. Also a good, polite communication. So, “OK, bye, see ya later. It was nice to see you.” And out he went, despite people beginning to surface around.
He got two cans of food and a long siesta out of this, and water, all of which I think he needed. So, OK, kitty, but wow, that was short. About four hours all told.
Tom Hooper’s movie of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats has just been released, and the movie critics certainly have their claws into it.
There’s a certain pleasure in reading catty reviews. 😁
Quotes from the critics:
I read a story on it that posted Twitter responses.
https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/cats-movie-reviews-taylor-swift-judi-dench-14919005.php
I just finished reading a snarky and scathing review from the Boston Globe’s movie critic, Ty Burr, who obviously enjoyed writing the review as much as he despised the film. His final line quotes a line from the end song, Old Deuteronomy — “So, first your memory I’ll jog, and say ‘A cat is not a dog’”— and he concludes “I think we’ve finally found one that is.”
Snarky and worse is the order of the times, don’t you know?
I’m a bit shook up. I looked up an old friend’s name to see if I could find him. Instead, I found an obituary, and thought at first, oh, no. I can’t tell for certain from the picture if that’s him, but the birthdate is, I think, too far off from mine. (My friend was a few months to a year older than me, from the same grade / class year.) The brief obit. info. doesn’t quite match. (My friend had lived in Florida and they moved back there.) I don’t know his parents’ names and don’t think he had siblings. So I think this is a different man with the same first, middle, and last name.
A few of the coincidences about the time and place of death are oddly close, and I didn’t know there was a town by that name in Texas, nearest to where he ws killed in a traffic accident.
That has me thinking of almost-was and might-have-been and is a little freaky.
I truly hope the friend I knew is still alive and well and happy, wherever he is. The only other things I turned up were one or two guys who definitely were not him and a celebrity reference; as far as I know, he isn’t the father of that star. (If so, that would be a very strange irony indeed. I’ve never seen pictures of her dad.)
So…wow. And two friends from my childhood and teens are already gone, many years ago. I will always wonder about the circumstances of both. Life passed us by, but I miss them even so.
I am going to guess this case was just a very strange coincidence and not the friend I knew as a teen. But it’s a shame. The man who died was only two and a half years older than I am, and in a traffic collision and roll. He left behind a wife, grown children, and grandkids. (Yep, I am old enough that if I’d had a wife and kids, I could be a granddad by now. Or at least the dad of an 18 year old. I’m now the age my dad was when I was 18. A family friend had twin boys that year, who will be 36 when I turn 54. It gives one pause. I haven’t seen them since they were 10, and last had contact with their mom after my mom died.)
Life is too short. Go hug and kiss the ones you love. OK, maybe a kiss might be much for some of those friends, in this world. But a hug would be a good idea.
I hope and pray my old friend is OK, wherever he is. In the year and a half or so we knew each other, he meant a lot to me, and it was one of the most significant friendships in my life. He probably doesn’t even know that. So I wish him well, and I feel for the family who’ve lost the other man.
Wishing everyone a delightful Solstice—Winter here for me and many denizens of this blog… but for those in the Southern half of the world, may your days be as long and cool as our nights are long and starry!
Happy…Llamakah?? With llatkes? (This seems llike a nefarious scheme to expand the sales of ugly sweaters.)
I’m dreaming of a wet Christmas, which I’m likely to get. Snow will be on the mountains, but as with so many weather and astronomical events, I’m unlikely to be able to see it because of the coastal fog or low clouds unless I actually go to the mountains. No clear starry nights for a while.
It’s going to be warm (70+) during the day and chilly (48–) at night for the next few days, and sunny to partly cloudy, minimal chance of rain. That’s not atypical for Christmas here; it’s more within the normal, pre-global-warming range for us. It’s also possible to have near to below freezing weather here for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. The coldest I’ve ever seen it here was around 15°F to 20°F one year in the late 80’s. It hasn’t been near that since, although we did have a surprising bit of snow one Christmas while my grandmother was still living.
It’ll be very quiet here, except for neighbors and the kids playing outside. Just Goober and I, unless Curry happens to show up. I haven’t yet fixed the mince pie or fixed anything new to eat. I still have a few leftovers for today. But this afternoon or evening, I’ll cook whatever I decide to do, probably fish. There will be cranberry sauce. Not sure if I want to fix stuffing, if I fix fish. Probably tortillas, crisped a little, if I fix fish.
My cell phone is having a fit since it doesn’t want to update itself, and I’m going to have to get a new one after all, I think.
I’ve got to call those tardy friends to ask them to pick up packages from the apt. office. Two snack food packages and an organizer box and a couple of clothing items made t over there instead of to my door. — Got to look up my friends’ numbers the old-fashioned way (and put another card in my wallet) as the phone doesn’t want to give me even the Contacts list functions now. (Wretched thing.)
I am puzzling through features on the new-to-me font editors, things I knew how to do on the old program, but are somewhere in the interface and features on the new programs. (And using my old files on the one meant exporting to three file formats to try to get one that would import the source, rather than the output fonts.) So this is a mix of this-could-work and ugh-taking-extra-time.
But on the whole, well, I have an apartment, a cat, food, utilities, it is all right. Just solo.
I think I heard Curry early this morning, or some other cat, fighting. But I haven’t seen Curry in the fur since last Thursday. This, however, has been typical. So, no knowing if he’ll be camping out with me for Christmas, or if he’s out there catting around. At least the weather is good.
I hope everyone has a good holiday, Christmas or Hannukah or whatever you celebrate.
You might try accessing your contacts by desktop computer. Google Fi does that. If you need a new phone, consider https://g.co/fi/r/T5133P to save $$.
Let me wish everyone at the salad bar a Merry Christmas.
And for 2020, most of all, do what you can to de-emotionalize, de-extremify politics. We CAN’T make America great again if we’re split into angry, extreme, uncooperative camps.
For my part of the holiday, I’m using the NORAD Santa Tracker as our default wallpaper on the REF desk library computer 😀
Heheheh. That’s neat! Tho’ that bit with Santa and all on the beach is getting to be a little too real. — I remember as a little kid, the weather forecasts for the local TV stations would include a Santa tracker, something like that. I think at the time, it simply had a moving dot with a Santa’s sleigh and reindeer scrolling across the bottom of the screen, but it was still fun.
Regarding Paul’s point — Yes. It’s gotten too crazy-stupid in the political arena and discourse; and not only in America. It seems to have spread like a mental virus in several countries.
Ah, I will confess, I ordered a peach-colored dress shirt in quiet celebration, upon hearing the news. 😉 I ordered a “toffee” colored tie which I hope is sufficiently toward a reddish–orangeish brown to go with the shirt. Heh. One is in favor of, ah, peaches.
— It seems I have to search further for where certain cooking implements went in the Great Reshuffle. — One is going to make do, and whisk together a cake mix in the wok (!) since wherever I put the metal mixing bowls, they also are AWOL. I feel in the mood for a spice cake, and had the mix. I’ll prep the mince pie tomorrow. Running out of boxes where those items could be. Hoping they did not get thrown out (or “liberated”) during the Great Reshuffle last year. Sigh.
“Moscow rules”:
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action. –Auric Goldfinger (Ian Fleming)
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or whichever solstice festivity you celebrate!