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.

1. 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 and the relationships and you can form a mental image of how tight the little localities were. I'm going to be printing out a book, a very thick book, not just the tree, but a page for absolutely every individual I turn up. One copy for Jane's family, one for mine. The hunt is as addictive as potato chips. And what a way to learn history! Sobering to think that if just one of these individuals had gotten run over by an ox-cart or failed to dodge a mace back in 1200, I wouldn't be here and you wouldn't be reading this blog.

3/05/08. Wednesday. 106593. Jane got her new skate blades. She's been skating on Ultima Lights, as you recall, and having trouble: they're a very thin blade. Most middling-advanced skaters rely on Coronation Ace blades, which are somewhat wider. It's what I have. Jane has, again referring to before the break, tried mine on the ice, same boots, different blades, and decided to go for them. She ordered them and they came in; and now she's having the Ultimas taken off and the Wilson Coronation Ace put on. I, meanwhile, have just moved my right blade way in, and may take it further. If I don't break my neck.

3/06/08. Thursday. 106593. Got the skates with the new blades on—from Larry. Jane says they do too make a difference—a huge scary difference. But she says backwards is much easier on these blades, and she is going to go for it.

3/07/08. Friday. 106593. Took Jane's skates over to Larry's place to get the blade set, and Larry says it's going to take some leather plugs to cure the screw holes to make it secure. This is going to take a few days. So it looks as if we'll be off the ice. Jane only has one skate.

3/08/08. Saturday. 106593. Still chasing ancestors. Doing not a thing constructive.

3/09/08. Sunday. 106593. Jane finished her book! She's asked if I'll read it. Of course I will. I've been looking forward to this.

3/10/08. Monday. 106593. And no skates. Reading Jane's book. So I'm settled in. It's raining. It's a nice day to snug up with a good read. The fish twist to the diet is working. I'm down some more. I'm now into a size 10...a stretch size 10 jeans, but still...

3/11/08. Tuesday. 106593. Still no skates. We stayed home. Reading Jane's book—which is going to take a few days. It's come at a good time for me to do this.

3/12/08. Wednesday. 106593. Reading Jane's book. And Larry got Jane's skate back, so we went skating for the first time on all proper blade-sets. Jane says it's still scary. Just about as scary—we decided to skate in street clothes because we'd only have had 20 minutes before session-end if we stopped to kit up, a 30 minute process. It was amazingly hard to skate in jeans and jacket. Couldn't flex, had to constantly watch my blade-heels about getting caught in my jeans-hems—you have to tuck up tight on some moves. Just scary. Tomorrow we'll kit out properly.

3/13/08. Thursday. 106593. Reading on Jane's book. Back on the ice with proper dress this time. And easier. Still scary: I've gone back on one heel twice today, and recovered. This is going to take some adjustment, but it's right. I know it's right. We did make a Costco's run, and picked up, amid the household necessities like bacon, a very large, well-grown potted rhododendron, Catawabiensis Buford or something of the sort—it's a pale purple frilled one. We just barely got it in the car. We will have to wrap it tomorrow night, because it's going to drop into the mid-20's tomorrow night.

3/14/08 Friday.106593. Still reading on Jane's book. And back on the ice. Today was a zoo: lots and lots of tiny kids. But my feet are beginning to get the trick of this new blade set—it's so much more secure, having the edges react [tilt of the foot] much more readily. I think the problem is that I have a very narrow heel and a very broad forefoot, so much so that Graf had to build me a special boot, and being able to tip the skate over to get the edges into action requires the blade inset more than average. But once I can do that—wow! It's a whole new ball game! Things I've done with difficulty are starting to add up. Jane's getting her feet under her too—I can't imagine the change for her: from tilted footplate with one stanchion higher than the other, to a totally flat footplate on that blade. It's got to be worse than going from high heels to flats...and a lot scarier.

3/15/08 Saturday. 106593. Finishing up the read-through on Jane's. Good book. I love it. We celebrated by going off to the Swinging Door and getting the annual offering of corned beef and cabbage for St. Paddy's day: they have it for 3 days. And it was really good. Last year it was an Irish pub with pipers but not such great corned beef: this year, in our new neighborhood, the corned beef is light-years better but there aren't any pipers. Heard from Sharon: she's in New York for Adult Figure Skating Nationals, and giving me a report on the ice at Rockefeller Center: rutted, she said—very rutted. But it's still a thrill to get to skate there.

3/16/08 Sunday.106593. Back at my own stuff, finally. Had a good holiday. I'm starting where I left off with a clear head and rested. There's a lot of stuff I need to do, but I got a new filing cabinet for the office, before the weight breaks down the two file drawers in that nice desk we bought last spring. A two-drawer ought to handle the essentials, besides the two I have upstairs, and the big file downstairs—which itself is falling apart, since the move. Take it from me, if you have stuff, the particulate put-together filing cabinets are not for you. It's still raining. Cars passing that are coming from the north are coming down the street with snow on them: it's that kind of day. Yesterday's foray to the Swinging Door for corned beef and cabbage has us up a pound and a half, so we may not do it today. Maybe again Monday before the special goes off if we can get the pound off by then.

3/17/08. Monday 107497. St. Patrick's Day. We got back on the ice---Jane's still battling her new blades, but we're gaining on it. Now that I've moved mine a total of a quarter inch each, or more---I suddenly find out why I've been having trouble with the Mohawk, the Inside 3-turn, and the Outside Back Edges. Funny thing, having your blades both aimed alike is very, very useful. I'm amazed. I have spent a lot of time trying to nerve myself to fling myself outward onto the outside edge, and the balance point between just tipping over the edge where you can ride, with enough speed, and falling right over---has been so scant as to be non-existant. By moving the balance point [the blade] over a quarter inch, that has an immense effect [think of an inverted pyramid] on the balance I achieve by leaning outward. It means, in translation, that the blade goes over on the outside edge *before* I've committed myself wholly across the point of no return. I can get a clean edge. That means the blade is biting into the ice, which is sort of like having your tire tread working on a turn---versus not. I'm so excited. Jane is less so, but says she'll live. Her other blades had a boot attachment plate that goes up at either end---and the Coronation Ace blade doesn't. It's flat. This means her whole mode of attack has to be revised. She's so happy. We grabbed up Joan and Terry and got over to the Swinging Door for the last day of corned beef and cabbage. This is not helping my diet, but it was good.

3/18/08. Tuesday. 108382. Yep, the weight is up. Jane's on crunch, editing her book. I'm finishing mine. But we did get over to the rink for a while, then came home and started to work. Jane says this new-blade thing is getting to her: but you always feel stressed when you're in massive 'edit' mode, and have your brain full of details. Myself, I'm in the other kind of mode, so I'm doing fine. We just tucked into the house---didn't even get to the store, which we need to do. Jane's rushing because she has a hair appointment tomorrow, and we have a chiropractic appointment the day after, and she wants to get through the worst of the edit before she has to take a break.

3/19/08. Wednesday. 108991. Still working. We're laying out of skating today since Jane is working hard on her edit. I managed to OD the marine tank on kalkwasser yesterday: made a nasty white cloud throughout: second time I've done that in two weeks. I think I need to buy that extra pump, which will let me do things much more conveniently down below. I need to do some thorough testing, water changing, and cleanup down there: the skimmer is a disgrace. But I want to get this book finished, Jane wants to get hers mailed; and meanwhile croci are blooming and we need to get that rhododendron planted and the roses trimmed for the spring...another reason why I love winter. You don't have to manicure a snowbank. In my spare time I've turned up several other interesting ancestors---one I'm really delighted to be related to, an actual hero, William the Protector, William Marshal. He knew everybody who was anybody through 5 kings of England and ensured those 5 both stayed on the throne and stayed as honest as he could manage to make them...or as Jane puts it, "I do believe your ancestor was the boss of the Sheriff of Nottingham." It seems likely. Also Humphrey de Bohun, who was quite a character, and happens to be one one of 6 fragile ornamental plates I bought in England and nursed [in a duffle bag] all the way through Turkey and back to the states: I'm attached to those images, if nothing else because they were so hard to keep intact. And one of my favorites is the portrait of Harry [Henry] "Hotspur" Percy---who was hotheaded, impulsive, and died that way in the Battle of Shrewsbury: lifted his visor to yell at somebody and got an arrow in the face. He set one king on the throne and tried to remove another, and had a rep for being difficult to deal with. He's always portrayed as a young, handsome crazy guy. What fun! I also turned up that my great-great grandfather was not a lawyer, but a sawyer: the original record indicates the person doing the transcription couldn't read the handwriting. A sawyer is a person who hand-saws lumber in the days before power saw mills.

3/19/08. Thursday. 108991. The tank is fine. We skated in the morning, and went off to Pullman---I was the one scheduled, but we switched patients on Dr. Shane and it was so good we did. He managed to get some relief for Jane's back that she says is marvelous. I didn't need it that bad and she really did need it, so that was to the good.

3/21/08. Friday. 108991. The rink is having an Oldtimers Hockey Match and it sounds like a good day not to go in. So we stayed here to get some things done and for me to get some writing done. We did go out to the grocery---and I swear to you Mercury must be in retrograde, as the astrology buffs put it: all communication goes to blazes, everyone you meet on the road is dangerous, and the stores are messed up beyond belief. I went to get salmon---the gal who orders the fish for Fred Meyers hadn't ordered any for Good Friday, because she thought Lent was over so everybody would be tired of fish---and the gal at the counter was going bananas with people wanting fish. I hate codfish. But that's what we got. I'll figure how to cook it somehow.

3/22/08. Saturday. 109221. Sharon came over. I spent the morning trying to get the main computer backed up, and trying to get the right software to back us up on the whole disk. I think I'm going with Acronis True Image 11---but I have rarely dealt with a company as disorganized and screwed up. Suffice it to say the mess was SO bad, the company itself told us to order their software from Amazon: it was impossible for their company to get the mess sorted out and it was simpler just to cancel the order---oh, but we'd have to do that, if we'd just call the company that handles their internet sales...do you get the picture? >After all this craziness, Sharon came over and we sat, had chicken from the Swinging Door, had frozen yogurt, a bottle of wine, and watched the skating World Championship. We could not BELIEVE the outcomes. I want to see a breakdown of why who did what, because admittedly under the new judging system you have to look sharp, and edges count during takeoff, but I just do not believe certain performances weren't better than the ones that won. I'm going to have to go to the USFSA site and see if I can find the actual blow-by-blow scores.

3/23/08. Sunday. Easter. 109221. I got at least the personal taxes organized. It wasn't as bad this time with an office, with real filing cabinets, and room to move. I was so tired of filing things in plastic bags in cardboard boxes. I started in at the crack of before-dawn and sipped coffee and hunted files, backing up zealously, because the main computer is about to have a motherboard failure, and I can't depend on it staying alive. It freezes spontaneously every thirty minutes or so. I was slopping about in my houserobe, rolled the office chair over the hem, caught it, while reaching for something, managed to turn the chair over and hit the edge of the desk with my upper arm: the bruises are going to be spectacular. I race around glassy ice at high speeds and collect bruises leaning to get into a filing cabinet. At least I didn't pull that over on me.

3/24/08. Monday. 110832. Spent at least the better part of an hour on the phone with Social Security: I'm at that age. And the documentation they sent me along with the original interview transcript denied my medical insurance, fondly known as Medicare. Took a phone call to straighten out their wording, which it turns out doesn't mean spit. Oh, no, we don't mean that. We have nothing to do with that, actually. Arrgh! >Then we're just trying to get the place recovered from the new glitchup with the main computer, which is still glitched. I did get our personal taxes ready to be mailed to our accountant---major job, that. I can't do the corporate taxes: it's a long story, but say our software is firmly tied to the fouled-up computer and the other version of the software on the good computer can't open the files, which are too 'advanced' for it. Twice arrgh!> Got some work done, thank goodness: because this ending sets up the other two books of the arc, I have to be careful what I lay down. > For relaxation I went chasing down Jane's ancestry: not only is she related [sort of] to Francis Drake the privateer, she's related to Richard de Fitchemont, one of the 25 barons who corralled King John [one of my ancestors] and made the rascal sign the Magna Carta. And of course once you're in that little country club, piece of cake to chase at least one of your ancestors back to Charlemagne, which we both can, since another of my ancestors, Humphrey de Bohun, was another of the 25. I'm going to make this all into a book---not a for-sale book, but a family book with commentary on these various folk. It's just stunning the ironies that crop up. If somebody'd explained to de Fitchemont and de Bohun, while they were waiting to snare John, that their descendants would be rooming together on the other side of the world writing science fiction, and that one of them was related to John [de Bohun knew that bit], and that half of the county of Essex, where they both hung out, would be emigrating to the other side of the world, too, into a place called Virginia...they'd have taken a swing at the bearer of that news, for sure. So far both our accounts goes back to the mid-700's AD, which is pretty neat. Took all that just to create us. The name of the site again, for those who might want to give their own try at this, is ancestry.com and take the 14 day free trial. You can do a lot during that 14 days. It's the best thing since video games.

3/25/08. Tuesday. 110832. Pure chaos. I decided not to skate today, because Jane's not, and there's so much to do here. The main computer is down, she's trying to fix it, and I'm trying to work, but it's just too chaotic. We took off for the chiropractor's office, and Jane got a really good treatment. Mine...helped some. But the doc taped up my back like you wouldn't believe---and I don't know how I'm going to skate tomorrow.

3/26/08. Wednesday. 110832. Chaos continues. I tried skating, but nearly killed myself: without the shoulders able to move, just not a good thing, so I got right off the ice and went shopping instead. We got the personal taxes off to our accountant, did some mailing, and in general, we're just exhausted. My back hurts: the tape holds it in one particular position and now I remember the particular joys of wearing a cast. Stiffness. Ow. Ow. Ow. Sleep last night wasn't easy. Plus Ysabel thinks she can sit on me, and that just makes it worse. You'll note, however, that I am doing better about updating the blog. Less elaborate entries, but more often. It's snowing again---38 degrees, and it's still sticking and whitening the ground. Welcome to spring! I'm wanting to get some work done, I'm so close to finishing this book. And we're trying to get back on our fish diet. I tried to cook salmon a couple of days ago, but it had gone bad, and one bite persuaded me I needed to cook something else. Shall we say I'm changing the recipe tonight? Don't want that taste again soon. But it does help us lose weight.

3/27/08. Thursday. 111273. I'm off the ice, still, and we had to turn in the main computer for repair, did I mention? So it's offline, off getting a new motherboard and chip. Fortunately I'm not offline: the house net stands firm. I'm working, is all.

3/28/08. Friday. 112139. The book is finished! It didn't end where I thought it would, but that's all right: what would have been there will be in the next book, which I'm starting very soon now. Still no main computer, so I can't print it out---well, I could, but the last time I tried to navigate the tangle in the office to plug in my computer directly to the printer, I leaned, tipped over the office chair, hit the edge of the desk and still have a fist-sized bruise on my arm, so I'll wait to print until Monday or so when we get the big computer back. My back is still taped up and I am not risking going on the ice.

3/29/08. Saturday. 112832. Just had an emergency call from Shejidan---the website, not the capital. Seems the message board crashed, and they're working hard trying to find the problem. I'm asked to relay that they will be back online soon, but in the meantime, don't panic. The Assassins' Guild has been called, and they hope to have a solution soon. Here on planet Earth, specifically Spokane, it's, would you believe, snowing hard. We have about four inches on the ground that didn't melt, and more is possible over the next several days. I went out yesterday and watered that rhododendron we have sitting in a pot awaiting planting, so I hope it will come through the cold snap fine. We went out to celebrate last night and it was snowing aggregates of snowflakes, which makes really a very fast snow cover. I joked that was snowing 'fully assembled' snow, and sure enough, it did cover. And blowing hard. They told us to stay out of the mountain passes this weekend and they were serious. Spring---not yet, up here.

3/30/08. Sunday. 00000. Haven't actually started work on the new book yet---taking a couple of days off to catch my breath. Sorting the boxes from the move last March...got most of the books on the shelves, though all out of order. And a lot of stuff awaiting a garage sale. Meanwhile all the snow from yesterday melted by late evening, but today a new storm replaced it all. I'm really missing the printer, which means getting the main computer back. Sigh. My historical research has turned up the fact Jane and I both are descended from Hugh le Despenser, the baddest man in England, who came to a really bad end: he was the king's lover, was a pirate, was the king's lover again, and finally, after assaulting several ladies and breaking the arms of one, was chopped up in little bits at his execution...the king himself was done in fairly shortly afterward, but you can pretty well blame old Hugh for the king's plight. Several others of my relatives in this phase of research have turned up losing their heads---a few officially at Tower Hill, one without benefit of trial, since he had really annoyed Henry IV and had gotten caught on the battlefield---he'd been conniving with Percy Hotspur, another of my "plate" relatives, to overthrow Henry, so Henry had a reason to be annoyed. This history thing is down right fun at this remove. I turn out to be related to Alfred Lord Tennyson and Boyle, of Boyle's Law, for those of you who do chemistry, as well as Peel, who invented the modern police force. Neat.

3/31/08. Monday. 00000. But thinking. We finally got back on the ice for an extended session. I wanted a lesson. Jane wanted one. But it's spring break and the ice was crowded, including with juvie hockey-skated types who don't have the skills, except to cut up the ice in a dangerous way, or scrape the surface into snow that can make a new skater fall face-first, no kidding: it abruptly slows down those rental skates and can pitch a novice onto the picks, and bam! face first onto the ice. I'm at least getting to where I can skate over the damage they do. I made a new discovery: since moving my blades inward, I can now do a one-footed slalom--this means tilting the foot inward to produce an arc and then tilting upright and outward to produce the opposite arc. A serpentine on the ice. Experienced skaters can do huge sweeping ones of 6 feet or so that really rip the ice at high speed, but I'm just managing to do it barely, at about a foot of arc in either direction. The left foot is still cranky: I'm going to be sure those blades are exactly right. But this is the best test of good blade setting that I can imagine. That tilt is easy if your blade is where it needs to be. Impossible if it isn't. I worked on it for an hour, in an hour and a half on the ice, longest I've managed in months. This had my butt aching from unusual exercise. Knees are holding fine. I have a charley horse on the butt. Both sides. We agreed with Sharon and Kay to meet at our house, watch our recordings of Men's Worlds, then go to supper---our 3-day hiatus from the diet. So we did. And I couldn't stay awake. Now, I'm due a celebration for the book, and did have 3 glasses of wine, but I couldn't stay awake before that. It's the exertion from skating, no question: it does that to me when I'm not acclimated to it. After Sharon left, I went to bed, and slept right around til 5:30 in the morning, which is my usual get-up time. Jane, meanwhile, spent a righteous evening putting the computer back into the house net and getting software straightened out. I've got to be virtuous. And the fact I started thinking about the new book, and came up with a title...and that the book has started to flow...is a sign of impending virtue.

4/1/08. Tuesday. 1359. Starting to outline. And that's no April Fool's joke. The book title is Deceiver. And that's all I know at the moment. We've decided that this weekend is the best window we have to get over to Seattle to visit Jane's brother---because at Dr. Shane's office, we ran into a nice young man who told us that SAM, the Seattle Art Museum, is hosting a major exhibit of the Louvre's collection of Roman art. We have to go. And for a project of Jane's, we need to revisit the Seattle Underground. So we investigated and we've called Jane's brother to ask if we can come. Affirmative. We've told Sharon, and she's interested---didn't think she could make it.

4/2/08. Wednesday. 1359. Sharon says she's got a cheap ticket, and Jane's brother says come ahead, so we will. We got a day in skating, at least, but it's just not happening. We have packing to do.

4/3/08. Thursday. 1359. We got to Seattle on a rainy day, and Jane and I set to work on the emotionally difficult task of going through her mother's belongings, which have been in storage. We moved boxes, a lot of boxes. Jane is having some trouble with her knee, and of course, with the nature of what we're doing. But it has to be done.

4/4/08. Friday. 1359. More sorting and re-boxing, and Jane is exhausted. I thought I'd be able to update from Jane's brother's net, but it keeps going down. I think we've got that fixed, but I have to help Jane. It's raining, it's cold, and it's miserable over there. Another of Jane's brothers has shown up: we're trying to figure where people are going to sleep, because Sharon is flying in.

4/5/08. Saturday. 1359. Sharon arrived. We had breakfast at Tommy's, our favorite Renton breakfast place. Jane's knee is kicking up, badly, so I got her a knee brace at Freddy Myers, and we went to the Underground adult tour---which tells you all the salacious bits. We had a great time, Jane's brothers and Sharon and I. We had after-tour drinks at Doc Maynard's pub, and another round at the Market Cafe across the street, over on Yessler, which was one of the starting points of the tour, and bills itself as one of the original restaurants in the district. A fire, you may know, burned down Seattle, and half the rebuilding got buried when they brought the cliffs down in a disputed 'leveling' of the streets. If you're ever in Seattle, be sure to save one evening for the Underground, and don't forget to get the book "Sons of the Profits," which tells early Seattle history. If you like pirates, scoundrels, crooked deals and enterprising madams, plus a riotous narrative style, you'll love it.

4/6/08. Sunday. 1359. Jane's on her second knee brace. And a good thing we got the second brace. We went to the Roman exhibit at SAM, which is downtown again, and while we had an easy time getting in, we ran into the line upstairs---they mean it about the start times, and we have one o'clock tickets. So there we are...we got in, and I was surprised by the scale of what they brought over from France: it apparently took 6 weeks just to set it up. Roman sculpture of the imperial sort tended to be life-and-a-half to twice-life in scale, meaning tall, massive, and heavy. They had the imperial family---Augustus, Livia, Tiberius, Caligula, young Nero, not the older, and various ordinary Romans of life scale, portraits intended to be seen close up---including some of the imperial family. The Roman skill with portrait busts is breath-taking. You can see them in books, but up close when you can see the detail, and get the real 3-d effect by walking around them---amazing. This was somebody's grandfather, this was mama. This was a pretty girl, a very earnest young boy...there were the 'personal' exhibits, the jewelry, the set of toiletry items; the overdone---the casket with hunting scenes; the tragic---the child's coffin with the portrayal of a little boy's short life: he evidently died at about eight or nine, to judge by the activities: being with his mother, driving a silly goat cart, saying goodbye to his father...that's the usual death scene on a Roman or Greek tomb: the deceased stands ready for a journey and bids farewell to someone seated. They have some new finds. What I found shocking about the Louvre exhibit is the lack of attribution. In the Capitoline Museum, in Rome, there's notation about where the items came from, but a lot of these things were scooped up by Napoleon Bonaparte as loot. We have no idea where a lot of them came from...but probably from places where previous Renaissance-era pot-hunters had dragged them. Michaelangelo, in his lifetime, saw the Laocoon statue pulled from the muck of a building site in Rome, and was so taken by the sight he used the massive torso as the bodies of God and Adam in the famous "Creation of Adam" segment of the Sistine ceiling. A villa on Capri has Roman statuary all over it---no attribution. People just didn't write these things down---unless, like Michaelangelo, they kept diaries. And an artifact lifted out of context is much less than it could have been---but good that we have them, good that Napoleon saved them, unlike his predecessors in conquest, including Roman general Mummius, who took statues from Corinth and lost them in a shipwreck in harbor [we found them: beautiful bronzes]---and the Conquistadors, who melted down the Inca gold and burned their books as 'pagan.' It took us 4-5 hours to walk through it all, and Jane's knees are really suffering.

4/7/08. Monday. 1359. Drove back from Seattle---Sharon in the back seat with the cats, and me reading. I got through another 75 pages, which, let me tell you, does it for the throat. The text is rougher than I thought, but in a week I'll have it cleaned up. I'm assured Cajeiri is in good form. We don't think we're going to be able to skate tomorrow. We have a chiropractic appointment, and Jane is hoping Dr. Shane can do something for this knee of hers. The check we were hoping for did come, and we have to get that into the bank.

4/8/08. Tuesday. 1359. Well, we had the chiropractic appointment. And no, Dr. Shane can't do anything for Jane's knees. Ice and rest, ice and rest. Jane's afraid she's going to have to have surgery on the worst one and she's not happy about that.

4/9/08. Wednesday. 1359. We're laying out of skating, trying to get Jane's knees into shape---it's slowly improving. Meanwhile I have to install the financial software on the repaired computer and start attacking the corporate taxes. Getting that software on took me three hours, including calls to the software company. It is a bear. And I had to move all the company files.

4/10/08. Thursday. 1359. I'm reading the rest of the book to Jane in the evenings, working on entering the changes during the day. So I'm not getting a thing done on the new book, just editing the one I need to send in.

4/11/08. Friday. 1359. More of the same. Jane's knee is very slowly improving. I've been able to persuade her not to carry 40 lb boxes. She doesn't want me to do it. But somebody has to. We need to get the house in order. Jane's brothers are coming to visit in a couple of weeks.

4/12/08. Saturday. 1359. Just a little ways from the end of the edit. I'll finish up today. I'm waffling on the new book title. That's normal. But meanwhile I've got to get the taxes in order. So that will take up a certain part of the weekend. I should have Conspirator ready to mail by Monday.

4/13/08. Sunday. 1483. Working on the outline for the next book...

4/14/08. Monday. 1722. I did get everything mailed. Conspirator, the taxes, etc. Plus a few boxes of books for Selina.

4/15/08. Tuesday. 1826. Tax day officially. I've gotten everything in, and all is well. I'm calmer on tax day than I usually am. It's an odd feeling: I'm usually up to my neck in figures that don't make sense.

4/16/08. Wednesday. 1937. For the last several weeks it's been such an effort to get to the rink. Jane's having to start over for the third time—this time new blades and new balance are the reason—and I have a real appreciation for what she's been through. First it was bad boots, then a change in boots, then this—not to mention the knee injury. Sometimes it gets hard to keep going and practicing until you wear a single track in the ice, over and over and over, and I'm stuck at that stage, and Jane is stuck at that stage, and it seems as if there's never any real progress—hasn't been, for three months. We can do what we do—only Jane has had to backtrack—and not much else. It's depressing. And skating is what we use to cheer ourselves up. Bad, I tell you, when it becomes a source of frustration. But giving up? Not when you consider the shape we were in when we started this. We'd start getting old if we gave up, and we're not doing that.

4/17/08. Thursday. 1989. Skating. More practice on back edges. Sigh.

4/18/08. Friday. 2077. They're tearing up our street again—not where we live, but between us and downtown. Bummer. That'll be messed up until September. Our poor little latte stand gave us a flyer explaining the repair schedule, and when they'll be shut down and when they hope they'll be open again. Things rumble as the big trucks go by and traffic is stacked up on the roads that ARE open.

4/19/08. Saturday. 2182. Working on the new book. A lot of outlining, and some progress. I have a pretty clear vision where this one is going.

4/20/08. Sunday. 2318. Working...trying to clean up the house. We desperately need to have a garage sale. Company coming has got us looking at the stacks of stuff, and it's so depressing. We hauled furniture—hauled the big heavy former mattress into the house, and down into the basement bedroom, and it's risky for Jane's knees, so I tried to take the weight, and now I'm sore and limping.

4/21/08. Monday. 2575. We laid out of skating. We're both sore. And we got a call from Chip...his friend's mother died, the funeral is on his birthday, the day he'd planned to be here. So the visit this weekend is postponed until next. Poor Chip.

4/22/08. Tuesday. 3638. Skating again, and I got a lesson. I'm still shaky. Seems as if anytime I try to do what I actually can do in practice in front of witnesses, like my coach, I screw it. We're still cleaning the house. Jane has done a marvelous job downstairs: you can actually find things.

4/23/08. Wednesday. 3822. More practice on the ice and a bit of progress. We're still shifting boxes and trying to clean things. Our intended garage sale is screwed because of road construction downhill reducing traffic to near zero. I'm trying to cook. I keep screwing that up. Such a day.

4/24/08. Thursday. 4931. Skating. Another lesson, and Joan swears I'm getting it, but I don't feel as if I'm getting it. But she told me something right at the last that may really be valuable—swinging my skate-side arm all the way over frontwise to the other side of the body as I shove off. That seems to be incredibly more stable.

4/25/08. Friday. 5016. Skating. And a miracle. When I do that arm-swing, all of a sudden, the feeling that I'm falling over backward just goes away. Counter-balance! It's not a fast swing, not even a hard one, but a steady push of the arm to the other side of the body, and all of a sudden the falling-feeling goes away, because you are solidly balanced.

4/26/08. Saturday. 6810. We are now sure that Chip and Roger are coming next Thursday, so we are back at house-arranging. I desperately need to get to the fish store and I need to do a water change. Green algae is starting to grow inside the tank, and that is a bad sign that my water is contaminated with phosphate: the reverse osmosis filter is going out, and phosphate is getting through. So other things could. The frogspawn is not looking good at all. I urgently need to do something. But I've got so many other things to do. For one thing, we haven't entered credit card charges in forever, and I've got accounting to sort out, to get the corporate accounts off to the accountant who actually does the stuff, because the corporate tax deadline is looming.

4/27/08. Sunday. 7392. Working.

4/28/08. Monday. 7703. Skating. Practicing backward arcs, over, and over, and over. The book is going really well. I'm happy with that. I feel a little progress with the skating, but I still have trouble shoving off without screwing my balance. So I practice. I wear tracks in the ice that would throw Wayne Gretsky. But I'm gaining on it. Jane, meanwhile, is having a bad time---allergies may figure in it. The knee is slowly getting better, but the rest of her is just lower than a snake's belly. We're hoping she's not going to have trouble in this climate.

4/29/08. Tuesday. 8302. Skating. A really good day skating, as happens, and a lesson with Joan. I'm really truly beginning to get my backward-arc balance, and like so many things, it's essentially simple—a matter of training the body to be in a certain position and stable. Carry the same-side (as the foot) hand on around in a half arc as you shove off, and keep having the same-side hand cross the body axis: as I said, it provides a needed counterbalance that keeps you from feeling as if you're apt to fall over backward. It also firms up the muscles that hold the body core in line. All important. I'm very excited. All of a sudden things I've practiced in vain for months are coming into focus all at once—the backward arcs on a line. The waltz-eight pattern. The runout from the waltz jump. From the three-turn. Big stuff. All of a sudden I may look like a skater.

4/30/08. Wednesday. 8721. Skating is going so much better. We're still cleaning the place. And I'm getting a little work done. The story is going really well. But I'm going to have to take some time off for house guests.

5/1/08. Thursday. 9189. Chip and Roger arrived. They came over in the big van, and brought some family heirlooms over to Jane. For the most part, we just sat around and talked, went out to the Swinging Door for supper...I'm not trying to cook. I tend to use a lot of hot spice, and many of the people up here in the north aren't used to peppers, so I rarely offer my cooking to people who can be set alight by a jalapeno or two. We managed to fit two guests in, but it's dicey, trying to accommodate extra sleepers.

5/2/08. Friday. 9189. Dinner at Anthonys'...we had pancakes at the Swinging Door for breakfast, and I was just too over-sugared. The lads went off to fly a radio plane: I ordinarily like to get involved in whatever's going on, but the sugar just hit me hard and I didn't want to move. I live on kind of a plain diet: lot of protein, some carb, fruit, veggies, but very little processed sugar, and I very, very rarely eat or drink anything that's got a whole load of processed sugar. Syrup, in this case—hit my system like a ton of bricks. By afternoon I was shaking so badly I couldn't do any fine task, even type accurately. I kept pouring down protein, like milk, cheese, finally got my system calmed down. And then the feature of the day—dinner at a spiff restaurant. Which was about the last thing I needed, I'll tell you. I was so stuffed I didn't want to move.

5/3/08. Saturday. 9189. Breakfast at our place. Dinner at Scotty's, early, because I had to get some fish supplies and the store is in the Valley, where Scotty's is. So that worked out: it's one of our favorite places, and the lads liked it quite well. Mostly I worked on the genealogy stuff, there being too much activity around to get writing done, and just printed out the family tree—a laborious process. It's huge. Goes back some 62 generations. I do NOT do anything with the lateral relations: these are all direct-descent stuff. And I started purging the new ro/di filter and am getting some water run—that's a 12 hour process, to get 32 gallons of really pure water. We're going to get a longer line and route the wastewater from that process into the washing machine, so as not to waste it. It's good for all purposes except the tank.

5/4/08. Sunday. 9189. Bloomsday—the big all-city 7 mile run—which we didn't do, but Sharon did: she's done a fantastic number of them, into the high 20's. Jane and I swear there is no exercise more dangerous to the joints than walking. We have both seriously hurt ourselves doing Bloomsday and we have resolved that the last time we did it, that would be the last. We stick to the ice, which is low-impact unless you fall down, and where we have never been seriously hurt. Walking is infallible—for injuries. Meanwhile Chip and Roger headed home after a Swinging Door breakfast amid all the traffic and the Mariners have had a really wretched day. We, however, sat around and rested after our weekend of eating too much and exercising too little. After they left we did, however, attacked the big stack of dead videotapes, betas, etc, that we just need to throw out. We've boxed some of the better commercial ones we can sell and culled out the family videos we need to convert to DVD. So we have created even more space in the basement.

5/5/08. Monday. 9189. Quite a day. Cinco de Mayo...we'd forgotten about that, remembered only when we got back to the Swinging Door to catch supper. Met with Sharon after her dental appointment—and she is very stiff and limping: Bloomsday. And while we were having supper, the news came on to announced that Spokane has won the 2010 National Figure Skating Championships venue competition for a second time—a record for a small city—so it will be back. I don't know if we will go to the whole thing again, but we will certainly go to the men's competion (our favorite). We got the cats vaccinated today—rabies and feline viruses...nice vet, too: Ysabel likes him, which is a first. She's bitten every other vet who's ever worked on her. And then the capper for the day: we're sitting there watching telly and got a call from Selina and Lynn that I accidentally mailed Conspirator to them, not to my agent. I can't believe it. I've never done anything that careless with a manuscript. To my recollection I gave it and other packages to the nice older lady who runs the back-of-store postoffice at the hardware—or did we give it to the post office? Heck, I think we took it to the post office. I think they screwed up the labels. I refuse to think I was that wrongheaded. At least it went to somebody who knew what to do. They're mailing it on to my agent with my return address. What a mess!

5/6/08. Tuesday. 9189. Home, seeing to cats, etc. Trying to clean stuff up. At least the sprinkling system finally deigned to cut on. I have it running for only 5 minutes, and possibly that wasn't even enough time to fill the lines before it cut off again, prior to this. I winterized the system myself last fall, and it's been a bit of an adventure getting it started this spring: the brand is Irritrol, and it has the hardest, most complicated control and scheduling setup of any system on the market—not so bad once you figure it, but the number of possibilities is huge. Last fall I blew out the lines by the simple process of shutting down the individual lines to the two halves of the sprinkler system, letting it run dry for a week, then unscrewing a small brass tap in each line that allows air to get in. I reversed that procedure and got the outside water cut back on (it also shuts down the outside faucets) and had the water on, but, I don't know—it was disappointing it didn't cut right on. But it's working now, and with our new blue spruce tree (expensive) and our new rhododendron (not), not to mention those roses we fought to get ordered and delivered last year, including World Peace, and my iris, we want to be sure the water is adequate.

5/7/08 Wednesday. 9189. Big scare with Ysabel this morning. She'd kind of laid about all yesterday, the day after the shots, not surprising, and so did Efanor. But she sleeps beside me on my bed, and she just didn't move all night. This morning she wouldn't get up, not even for food, nor drink, nor her brushing, which is her absolute favorite thing. I set her on the ground, and she halfway fell—wouldn't drink, even being brought water. So we called the vet, and took her straight in. What I'd found on the internet with reaction to rabies shots wasn't encouraging—things like neural and kidney damage. The vet, however, said sometimes a shot will trigger a breakout of any lowgrade infection and they wanted to run a test or two. Sure enough, bladder infection. So I get to give Miss Cuisinart doses of medication twice daily. A little antinflammatory and a sub-cute dose of fluid and she was feeling better. She even ate a few bites when she got home. So Ysabel is being pampered, and I'm very relieved it's nothing worse, like a reaction. A bladder infection can be cured. I plan on buying extra bandaids for the dosing.

5/8/08. Thursday. 9189. I didn't get much done yesterday—the Ysabel thing had me rather rattled. But she took her meds last night and even this morning. She's feeling better and moving around on her own. That's a great relief. Efanor wants to play and can't understand that she's definitely not in the mood. But I'm around to protect her, and she's doing a whole lot better. Thank goodness we got right on it. I spent the day futzing with the genealogy stuff. You wouldn't believe the bollixed-up mess in the history of the Charlemagne family. The Merovingians, between maiming and assassinating one another, couldn't keep their records straight, and when you get into the history of their ancestors, you're right into fantasy. I expect to find Adam and Eve in that tree any day now. Ausbert the Senator and Clovis the Riparian are the last two I trust to have been semi-real. Worse than that, Jane and I are both related to them, and they intermarry a lot. A lot! That means every line of a huge segment of the tree is full of Merovingians and Carolingians, each one of which has about a dozen names. Take Bertha of Kent, who is Bertha Kent, who lives in France. She's also Bertha OF Kent, Blithhild, Blithildis, and Fleur Blanche de....(the white flower of something or another). Why Kent? Because this is the time when the Saxons (her grandfathers) were pouring in on the Angles in England to make up the Anglo-Saxons, whom our OTHER relatives, Vikings who were married into the French coast, the sons of Hrolf (Rollo) etc, invaded, while some of our OTHER-OTHER Viking relatives were up in Northumbria (north end of England) marrying in with the Scots, ultimately—and so did some of the fugitive Anglo-Saxons after they'd lost down at Hastings. ONLY...it turns out that the people running the database have confused the real Bertha of Kent, known as St. Bertha of Kent to the English, who is the daughter of the Merovingian king Charibert I of Paris—and married to Aethelstane of Kent, mother of several Kentish children...with Berthildis who is the wife of Ausbert the Senator, whose real name is Ansbert; and Berthildis was, (I think) the daughter of Claribert. Unless I've gotten them both mixed up with Bertrade of Laon...who MAY be the daughter of Claribert, but not Charibert. Databases are marvelous things, but because this one operates like a Ouiji board and takes input from EVERYBODY, skilled or not, knowledgeable or not, it's prone to an echoing-gallery of errors. This is a real good example. Somebody got an ID crossed, and now only honest history books (and to a certain extent, Wikipedia) can straighten it out. It's like chasing things in circles. But what's represented in the historic record is solid: there IS a connection between the Kentish folk, ultimately the Mercians and West Saxons (Wessex)...and the pattern of movement of people, regardless of the names, holds true. You get beaten down toward Kent, you run north into Northumbria in England or over into France, you marry whom you can to get safety—and nobody seemed able to tame Northumbria, though there was fighting back and forth across the border with Scotland: the fact the same family was on both sides of that line puts a whole different slant on Scottish relations with Northumbria. No enemy worse than a relative who feels put-upon. And during my days teaching ancient history, I never really had a good chance to get into the dark ages stuff—which this is. The real dark ages. Look up Brunhilda (not the one in the opera) in Wikipedia. There was a character. And I'd always heard of the wreck of the White Ship, but never understood what it meant---the list of really critical people who were lost on that ship is amazing. It really was the Titanic of its day. Meanwhile...recall that Viking chap in the Tony Curtis/Kurt Douglas movie The Viking, the one that died in the wolf pit? It seems to have been a snake pit, or the like, in Northumbria, and after fathering a googillion children, old Ragnar Eysteinsson turns out to be an ancestor, too, so we now have to feel sorry for the old guy, who seems to have been one of those Vikings who had settled at York. If you all get tired of these little vignettes (as bad as visiting somebody and having to watch their home movies) let me know; but I'm enjoying looking this stuff up. Oh, that's the other thing: we lost our address book in the computer crash, as well as a bunch of mail, so if you're waiting for something from me, do let me know. Everything is in the kind of mess you may well imagine.

5/9/08. Friday. 10283. Packing. Mostly packing.We're off for our trip to Dallas to visit my mother and brother and nieces, and we're up to our ears in suitcases...and we would have been gone already, but had to delay because of Ysabel. She's doing great now, and I'm confident she'll be fine on the trip—if not, we know vets along the way, but I wouldn't risk it if we weren't doing well with the medication: she's been wonderful about taking it—it's liquid; and she's been a real doll about it.

5/10/08. Saturday. 10283. We took out on the longest leg of our trip, starting from Spokane at 6:30AM and ending in Casper, Wyoming, at the good old Motel 6, which takes pets and sits across from Banjo Bob's Barbecue—as good as it gets. But we thought our Garmin had bit the big one: it kept telling us absolutely crazy routes and protesting to us about “a better route is available”...all the way to Bozeman, Montana. Finally we figured it, as the apparent route would take us through the park...as the crow flies. So we checked the settings, and the poor thing had been told to find the “most direct route”, meaning surface streets—and it had been plotting us as direct a line as possible through the back streets of everyplace between Spokane and Bozeman—which was why our arrival time was way later than we'd figured. We reset it and relaxed: plenty of time to get to the barbecue.

5/11/08. Sunday. 10283. Driving from Casper, WY through Denver, and on through Pueblo, Trinidad, CO, and Raton, NM via I-25. We stop for the night at our favorite small hotel, the Inn on the Santa Fe Trail...but Blackjack's Grill, our wonderful restaurant, is closed on Sundays, so we had to eat at the local Italian place—we don't do well with onions, and Jane really doesn't do well with garlic powder, so we were in a fix. At least we survived it on a lot of Reglan and other meds.

5/12/08. Monday. 10283. Long drive with a stop for the first Whataburger...the cats got excited as we entered the parking lot: we think they can smell it. Can we has Whatachken? Pleeze? We had supper at Hanks in McKinney, then went on in to Mum's and settled in for the stay.

5/13/08. Tuesday. 10283. Mum isn't as able to get about as she was, but she had some errands to run and we insisted on the first one she use the wheelchair—a good thing: we were exhausted from the trip ourselves. We did go out for dinner, and hang, no, she wasn't about to use that chair—Hanks wasn't as good a place for Mum, because of the noise level, but we tried.

5/14/08. Wednesday. 10283. I decided to try cooking: but I couldn't locate any of Mum's spices, and she didn't know where they were. It was kind of interesting stew/pork roast, but it was edible and there was a lot of it.

5/15/08. Thursday. 10283. Our last day in Dallas: we took Mum shopping, and did get her a couple of things. And we went out for our usual dinner at the Texas Roadhouse, which is convenient and a good place that can please almost anybody. Then we began packing up again.

5/16/08. Friday. 10283. Back on the road. We had an easy day today, back to Las Vegas and this time Blackjacks was open—but to our extreme dismay, they've gone ordinary. They must have lost their chef, because it's good, but it's just ordinary food. Sigh.

5/17/08. Saturday. 10283. Going north—the drive up along the long stretch to Raton produced one bit of fun: we collect large rocks for the garden, and we like to have them from locales where we've been. We had admired and wondered at the origins of the massive limestone cap on the tablelands around Las Vegas—white, ergo limestone, and probably from a coral reef somewhen back in the days of the Sundance Sea—that's way prehistoric. We realized it's probably the same stratum that produces Castle Rock in Colorado (interspersed with volcanic ash and lava flows from the period in which the New Mexico volcanos were active) and maybe the same as you find up in northern Colorado near Cheyenne, Wyoming, where limestone hoodoos are very striking and photogenic. We name each of our rocks by locale (a bit of whimsy, not insanity—) and this particularly nice 2x2 slab we prised up from the roadside earth is Lulu the Las Vegas Limestone. We have our piece of that nice formation, and a memento of our favorite waystop. We also have Carlos of Raton Pass, Missy, the lovely green serpentinite from near Missoula, and Bubbles, the rock we got after our canoe overset in the Spokane River. We got to Casper on schedule, had a nice supper at Banjo Bob's, and turned in. Jane's having a bit of trouble with her leg hurting, and it looks as if I'll be driving tomorrow.

5/18/08. Sunday. 10283. Home again—and a really hellish trip. Jane was in incredible pain—the leg was really flaring up, and if it hadn't been a Sunday, I'd have suggested we try for a clinic. Painkillers wouldn't touch it. I drove—the longest leg of the whole trip—all but 2 hours, that Jane drove, but she's in such pain it's not really safe—so I took over again, and drove all the way in, interspersed with stops to let her walk about. She had the seat flattened so as to lie down, but it was just really, really bad pain.

5/19/08. Monday. 10283. We thought we were going to have to take Jane to the doctor, and put in a call to get an emergency appointment with the chiropractor—but she had a lightbulb moment and took a magnesium pill. 250 Mg, and within 20 minutes the pain just stopped. Mark that one in your reference books. So we'll go to the chiropractor tomorrow. Today we are too tired to move.

5/20/08. Tuesday. 11731. We made it down to Dr. Shane the chiropractor—we're sore, but Jane's leg is so much better. We're frantically doing laundry and trying to straighten up one trip's packing into the next. We're convention-bound...hoping to do a few more conventions, now that we have a house and a secure place to leave things.

5/21/08. Wednesday. 12142. One day to skate—still working on the back edge arcs, but with encouraging success, now. We went over to Joan's to check on the fish she's still fish-sitting for us, to clean a little algae and do a little decorator consultation on the house she's prepping to rent. I got a little writing done, just to get back in touch with the book before I lose touch again this weekend—we have to go straight off to Missoula for Miscon.

5/22/08. Thursday. 12361. No chance to get any work done: we're packing for the convention this weekend, doing laundry, arranging things, and hoping not to forget anything.

Just a fast note, because I'm up to my ears in alligators. Received a phone call, sad news which may have prompted you to consult this site: Robert Asprin passed away while waiting for a car to pick him up to go to a convention: it was fitting, and a good way to go, if you have to. My deepest, deepest sympathies to his family and friends. For Bob---we used to meet at conventions in the years-ago and he'd borrow my guitar at filks. My memory is of a darkhaired and youngish Robert enjoying the cons to the max, which is, I think, the way he'd like all his readers to remember him.

On the local front, Ysabel has been taking her medicine like a trouper, and is herself again.

5/23/08. Friday. 12361. Headed out to Miscon, Missoula, Montana, with Sharon and the cats—we were going to leave them home, but we have to medicate Ysabel twice daily, so she had to be with us. We have a marvelous room—open the window and you're overlooking a lawn and a very noisy creek that makes a lovely sound to sleep by. We've never had such a nice hotel room, ever, and that includes some four star hotels. The hotel is Ruby's Convention Center, and if you're ever needing to spend the night in Missoula, this is where: they have no restaurant—you have to eat in the casino next door, or up or down the block, but the rooms and the staff are excellent. And there is a breakfast complimentary the next morning. It's raining—it looks to rain for the next several days, but that's ok. I'm having to wear the same shirt for several days—I bet on cooler and only packed one sweatshirt, which is the only thing I have to keep warm.

5/24/08. Saturday. 12361. Did a couple of panels, good panels; and then we had to change rooms: we have a handicapped room—luck of the draw—and somebody arrived who actually needs the wheelchair shower, so we packed up and moved next door: same wonderful creekside view. Wonderful room. We're resolved to come back next year. We're eating at the casino next door, which is incredibly smoky, and my sweatshirt is picking up the tobacco like a sponge. Ugh.

5/25/08. Sunday. 12361. I spent most of the day sitting at a table at the con and working on the genealogy printout, discovering people who died before they were born in the computer record, that kind of thing. I get to pacing at cons and decided the way to get through un-exhausted was to have something to keep me busy during times when I'm not. We've already reserved a room for 2009 Miscon. The same room—thanks to Chthulu Bob. We love it! I resolved to freeze and change shirts—the tobacco is just too much. Lovely con barbecue—a Miscon tradition, and just a lot of fun. Lot of people: Patty Briggs, Dragon, Maggie Bonham, Bill Warren, and us—good con. Next year the guest will be Stephen Brust. Sunday night we had a bring-your-towel wake for Douglas Adams and included Bob Asprin, who's remembered fondly in the region.

5/26/08. Monday. 12361. Did our last bit at Miscon and drove home—about 150 miles or so. The area is still flooded—doesn't affect I-90, but it's cut off some local roads: you can see others threatened. It's completely up to the breakwater top on the road on the far side of Lake Coeur d'Alene, and they've shut down the pedestrian bridge above the foot of the falls in Spokane itself. You'd be soaked to the skin if you attempted to cross it. Jane now has a painful rash—on the same leg that was giving her fits; and we've got it figured at least this one was due to the knee brace. So that's not such a mystery. We got home and had supper at the Swinging Door—Sharon was exhausted and took out for home to collapse; we got back to the house and collapsed, watched another dismal Mariners game and went to bed.

5/27/08. Tuesday. 12508. We're awake. That's as much as we can say. We're going to go out with Joan for a dinner, pick up our fighting fish and our mail and probably collapse again.

5/28/08 Wednesday. 13261 Still resting, trying to get work going.

5/29/08 Thursday. 14818. Back on the ice again, and trying to get organized—laundry, cleaning, all those things without which you can’t face the world. Did pretty well on the ice, all things considered.

5/30/08 Friday 15719. More of the same. We still haven’t heard from Sharon. We assume she’s sleeping.

5/31/08 Saturday. 15719. No word from Sharon. Worried about her. Tested fish tank...and oh, my gosh—the alkalinity, which should be, in a healthy tank, about 9.3-8.3—is 4.1. I’m not even bothering to test ph and calcium levels. The critters are healthy-looking, except the frogspawn, which when we got back from the long trip had looked very bad; and then the peppermint shrimp got all over it, and it popped its base on one head, and over all, it was dying. Well, now I know why. Two other euphyllia-class corals in the tank are going great, but the frog must be sensitive to the alkalinity. Which has to be fixed. I’m dropping the heaviest dose I dare of buffer into the tank daily. It has algae growth—from the ro/di water filtering unit, which had needed a new cylinder: lack of one had let phosphate from the drinking water supply get into my tank, and so I know what caused that. The big puzzle was the brownish fluffy growth on the glass, nasty stuff. Well, now I know. The alk had dropped, while the calcium supply stayed steady, and the calcium wasn’t being absorbed as it should. If you wonder what goes on in your body, take a look at the ocean: critters can absorb calcium when the ph is 7.9-8.3, maintained by a decent alkalinity, as per above, a calcium level of 400 or so, and 1200 magnesium. If that gets off, growth doesn’t happen properly. And boy, is mine off! The thing is, off as it is, it requires a very slow fix: I daren’t shock these creatures that have filled their tissues with this badly balanced water.

6/1/08 Sunday 16172. The alkalinity isn’t budging, which is how far the balance is off. An 80 gallon system (30 sump and 54 tank) can swallow a lot of buffer and not budge the alkalinity a lot. But I’m just going to dose daily and hope. Nothing is reacting in any way but positive.

6/2/08 Monday 17373 Back on the ice, and working on back edges. Again and again and again.

6/3/08 Tuesday 18288. The first hint the tank is responding to the buffer: we’ve made it to 5.8. I’m keeping at the skating—lesson with Joan, and getting steadier.

6/4/08 Wednesday 19213. More of the same.

6/5/08 Thursday 19381. Doing a lot of thinking. But making progress. There’s just going to be a lot of politics at the front of this book, but it has to be, or people just won’t understand what’s going on. I hope at least I’m making it entertaining politics, with a suitable number of assassinations and doublecrosses.

6/6/08 Friday 20173 Can’t believe it. The alkalinity is now reaching 6, and the frogspawn skeleton, covered in algae and used as a hotel by three micro brittle-stars, has all of a sudden put out 5 new heads. There’s been life huddling down in the depths of that bony structure, and given reason for hope, it’s putting out buds.

6/7/08 Saturday 22181. We’ve gotten to 6.3. And by now we’re getting quite worried about Sharon...we haven’t heard from her: we called, and she’s really tired, and sleeping. Hope she won’t come down with something.

6/8/08 Sunday 22181. At about 8 am we had a power out. Glitched the whole house. I went downstairs to administer more buffer and do a water test—and the sump had more water in it than it should—and the “down’ hose wasn’t pouring any more water into the sump—thank goodness. I started investigating and discovered the 300.00 Iwaki 100 pump, though running, had seized up and decoupled its impeller. All of which was to say—those pumps don’t grow on trees and can’t even be replaced without a 4 week delay. And a tank can die in hours without the pump going. I got myself together and went to the fish store in fond hope they had one in stock: no, no such luck. They did sell me a Mag 18, which should be able to push the water upstairs. I brought it home, took things apart, put it on (imagine lots of salt water and crud and plumbing fittings and wrenches and pliers and swearing while working in cramped spaces) and it didn’t work 5 minutes before IT quit. At this point Jane got into the act and pointed out the hose could be clogged. Well, the only thing going to push a clog out of the hose would be, yes, a running Iwaki 100. So we drained the whole sump, overturning its sandbed: (imagine 30 gallons of water that looks like the muddiest stinkiest creek you’ve ever fallen in now in a 32 gallon trashcan, while I now hand-scoop the nastiest smelliest sand and rock you can imagine out of the sump into a bucket, incidentally killing off innocent micro-crabs and the like and swearing the while: no way to save them. The whole system can die.) We have now lightened the acrylic sump enough that we can lift it at an angle so Jane can unscrew the Iwaki, which has its nose threaded through a bulkhead into the sump. Freeing the pump, we then attack it with screwdriver and extract the impeller box, but can’t get at the impeller. A phone call to the fish store proves, yes, just tap it, it should come apart. Well, it did. The impeller assembly inside—remember that brown gunk I was complaining about?—had electrostatically fused itself as pure calcium carbonate gunk to the surfaces of the impeller, and clogged all our hoses like hardening of the arteries. ThAT’s why the pump quit. So we look for a way to clean 15 feet of hose that is threaded through our living room floor. Did I mention I also found a snail blocking the impeller? The final insult that had stopped the system...so we remove snail. Jane brilliantly finds some ribbed black hose just large enough to fit into the other hose and is using it like a bottle-brush, cleaning out gunk you wouldn’t believe. I am using 2 gallons of vinegar to clean the pump guts. We work a long time at this. The clock which had read 0:00 since the power-out read 9:25 by the time we put the whole thing back together and turned it on. No joy. One final set of pipes connected to the tank itself. We disassembled those—which were actually clean—and found one lousy pointed snail shell serving as a perfect stop-valve to the T-joint where the two outlets reach the tank. We removed the snail and tried again. We were soaked in nasty water, the tank was completely cloudy with gunk (I completely despair of the frogspawn) and we headed out to eat...I wasn’t fixing dinner with those hands, no.

6/9/08 Monday 23465. Everything is still running, we are sore from all the running up and down stairs, and the frogspawn lives! I’ve resumed adding buffer, and so far, so good.

6/10/08 Tuesday 24818. Good lesson today. The tank suffered a ph setback from all the goings-on, but is back up into the 6's in alkalinity, and thanks to the fact my tank has two sandbeds (the sump and the main tank) the one sandbed kept the tank alive while the other was disrupted.

6/11/08 Wednesday 25731. Continuing with the buffer. Still haven't hit 7. But trying.

6/12/08 Thursday 27163 Business as usual.

6/13/08 Friday 29763. Word is there’s going to be 2 public skating sessions starting Monday and all the adults are agreeing to go to the second, later one. That way we can have more of our day unbroken. This will be a big help.

6/14/08 Saturday 30187. Heard from Sharon, and we agreed to meet for dinner tomorrow—turns out she’s been doing medical qualification paperwork and that’s what’s had her occupied for a week.

6/15/08 Sunday 34324.Sharon came over and we had a good time, poured some wine, had some ice cream (not in the same hour) and watched So You Think You Can Dance episodes off the Tivo. A good time had by all.

6/16/08 Monday 35144. Great skate—the first on the afternoon session, and it was glorious.

6/17/08 Tuesday. 36176. Another really good skate. We got the gang together and went out to Tomato Street for supper. Jane had gotten the long-threatened haircut, and we were kind of spiffed up...a good feeling after all that wallowing in salt water last week. I even got inspired to call Dell and make a second try at getting them to replace my broken, limping keyboard. Since Dell had some bad publicity about service problems, they’re trying hard to recover their image, and you could tell the difference—I got a sane, fluent person who understood my complaint (the last had tried to tell me a wornout palmrest key could be fixed by software) and ordered a new keyboard. Which, thanks to the fact I have a home-visit policy means they come to my house and I don’t have to schlep it anywhere or do it myself. I am so looking forward to a mouse key that works and a spacebar that works.

6/18/08 Wednesday 37222. I couldn’t skate today. I took a lesson, but my legs were shaking terribly on everything. I finally had to get off the ice. I don’t know what’s wrong—allergy, maybe. But it’s just nasty. And after waiting all day for the Dell repairman, he was a noshow. When he was officially late, I went onto Dell’s chat—and they found out the repair guy had left no phone number. Well, they said they’d put “expedition” on it—and when I got back to the locker room I had a phone call from the national service company in Las Vegas, who swore that I would get the guy tomorrow, no question. I guess that’s what Expedition means.

6/19/08 Thursday 38021. Today skating went much better—except the kid quotient: we did get a pack of young hockey players with attitude who just made life miserable for everybody, throwing gloves, which can kill somebody if they plunk one in front of a figure skater; we got off the ice a bit early, because the ice was crap and we decided to go to Tomato Street again. Which we did.

6/20/08 Friday 40417. NOW I know what’s wrong. I’ve got the shakes again, probably won’t skate today unless I can cure them with electrolyte balance stuff or vitamins or something: I’m allergic to something Tomato Street is using, probably onion salt. I’ve gotten to where I can tolerate a little real onion in a sauce if very slight and cooked to mush—but neither Jane nor I can tolerate onion or garlic powder. Jane’s knees swell to the point of pain—and I get the shakes as if I were on a 3-day caffeine overload. Sigh. So our once-favorite restaurant is now off the list of possibles, for us. We can't afford to lose a day to that kind of thing every time we eat there. The computer guy did show up, the old Dell has a brand new face and keys that work again—next week I’m getting another packet, one I’ll install myself: 2 gig of memory. I can’t believe I’m getting 2 gig for 75.00. And the old machine will run much more happily with big programs.

6/21/08 Saturday 41274. Feeling just wrung out. Jane took my pulse yesterday and found it a bit rapid, so I'm not exercising, just sitting. Whatever it is I get at Tomato Street, and not just one recipe, is the culprit. A host of symptoms, but giving way to just blah-exhaustion once it clears my system. I'm disgusted. On a more fun note, my memory arrived. (Just what you need to do: install computer bits when you have the shakes.) I took out the battery, opened up my system memory access plate on the bottom, and discovered...only one memory slot, and it's empty. Well, *that's* odd. Obviously there's a chip somewhere. So I went online (on the desktop) and found out that the D800 Latitudes have one chip (dimm A) under the keyboard. And on this machine that IS a gig. So they'd sent me two; but at least, thank goodness, I don't have to pull the newly-installed keyboard. I went ahead and put in a 1 gig chip in the accessible slot, bringing me up to 2 gig; and then Jane decided, well, she'd put the other chip (rather than the expense of shipping back) into her D510 Latitude. They check out compatible, re chips. She has a 256 chip, and it's not playing nicely with the 1 gig, so she's getting another. That will help that machine a lot, since it only had a total of half a gig---not enough, with the programs we run, and the demands of XP.

6/22/08 Sunday 42699. Well....remember the big pipe-cleaning operation we did in the kitchen sink? Bad idea. Our kitchen sink plumbing is now blocked. We spent the day bailing and using caustics, and vinegar, and just about everything, finally took the trap off, and ran the ribbed hose up the drain pipe for the sink: blocked. We are now washing dishes in the bathroom sink and I am having to remember not to toss water down that drain. Sigh. Isn't it amazing how one disaster proliferates into another? We have to call the plumber and get them to run a snake down that pipe, which runs across the downstairs library ceiling. In my jittery downtime yesterday, I ran through Jane's 16th-great-grandparents: her people had a penchant for recording their relatives, and she has a lot of them...but it's getting fun: she's related to some of the movers and shakers of England of the 1300's, and they're in Wikipedia. I'm finding out all sorts of dirt. We now have 2 huge notebooks full of printout...all in sheet protectors, so it's not quite that thick, but it's at least a notebook and a half, of the largest sort. And it's amazing how related we are. At a certain point we share multiple ancestors---what time they aren't having at one another with swords, assassinating one another and besieging one another. The Black Douglases, the de Percys, the de Bohuns, and no few Plantagenets, de Meschines, de Braoses, and de Beaumonts, Beauforts, Beaumounts and Sackvilles---but no Bagginses.

6/23/08 Monday 43152. The plumber got us out of our mess---for about 150.00. He used the little snake: no joy; the medium one finally got it. We think it was just a long-term buildup in the pipes which now is cleared out: our fish tank cleanup just was the capper on already slow-running pipes. We also learned the kitchen plumbing runs all the way under the concrete floor of the basement to join the main sewer line under the floor. That means our sewer line is *deep* in this house. We're on a hill, on basalt, so I guess they did some serious excavation when they built our basement. I can't wait to dig into this when we finally start the fishpond in the back yard. Our lawn drains water away so fast it's real hard to keep the thing watered, and it really browns fast if I don't drown it. I'm betting there's a very thin layer of soil before serious rock starts. Skating: Joan didn't make it in today, so I just practiced. Jane's moved her blades in a hair: it may be helping. My back edges are starting to work, seriously. And Joan has me working on an extreme-edges back slalom that is serious butt exercise. Now I know why professional figure skaters can fall on their butts and bounce back unhurt. The muscle this is going to develop is major. And I am so sore---as long as I've been at this, I'm so sore...

6/24/08 Tuesday 44311. More of the same. We've been eating out too much: got to do something about this, but not this evening. Sigh. The Swinging Doors' new Italian sandwiches. Yum.

6/25/08. Wednesday. 45759. Liking this new afternoon schedule. And so far the general public we've shared the ice with has been nice folks. No idiots. I was appalled at one costume that made it to the ice---gangsta wear. I saw him from a distance and thought it a particularly unlovely older woman in a particularly bad-length skirt. Nope. Guy with buzzcut, tats, earring and underwear showing. Go figure. He fell down and nearly lost the pants. I tell you, I'm tired of baggy men. I want to see legs again. Not striped underwear. Give me guys with stockings, tight pants, fancy coats and powdered wigs before guys that look like bag-ladies. Give me back the days when men's clothes budget exceeded their sisters'. Give me some creativity. Spandex. I don't care. Today's fashions don't just look like unmade beds: they look like unmade beds with the mattress included.

07/20/08 Sunday 54548. Sometimes, in the creative process, you just need a break. So I took one. No hitting myself over the head because I wasn’t making the progress I’d like: I just took a break, so I could do some creative thinking. Ysabel got brushed a lot: she's happy. So here’s what’s gone on. Let's see...I'm sitting here rather uncomfortably because I made a mistake and lost my balance backward while practicing the toe loop Friday. I have a bruised---ahem---tailbone. How did I do this? Coach Joan has tried to improve my posture, and I found this made a great difference in my stability on the waltz jump: I flipped off three of them in succession and was perfectly balanced in open ice. So I applied this revelation to my toe loop, which I do along the wall. Wrong! I was too upright, too far back, lost the pick-in, had my foot skid as I did the forward kick, which catapulted me, shall we say, backward. It was a slow fall. It was ridiculous. I held to the wall most of the way down, which strained my shoulder, but the position I was in landed me square on my (thank goodness, padded) tailbone. If not for the padding, I probably would have broken it.

So let's just say I'm sitting gingerly. Doesn't hurt to walk, so it's just a bruise. But I'll be glad when this heals.

Yesterday we went to dinner with Steve and Sharon: had a very nice evening. Joan couldn't join us, and she was missed, but we had dessert.

Last week---oh, last weekend the puddle the dishwasher was making grew quite a bit larger. Now, I've had a dishwasher seal failure on a dishwasher, on a concrete slab floor. It ruined the tilework. On a wooden floor with our library directly below in the basement? Real scary. So we take a critical look at the appliance situation, and conclude we have a washer that's getting so weak you have to hand-wring the clothes before putting them in the dryer, and the dryer and washer both probably are original equipment. Harvest gold. Heavy---you wouldn't believe. And in the basement. So...on Monday we went to Fred's Appliance Ding and Dent: now---Fred's is the got-rocks store. Spendy. But we thought, well, maybe dinged up would save us money and the washer-dryer are going to the basement. We priced things, found what we wanted, got the model numbers, and went to Lowe's. Where they had the washer dryer combo for about the same as the dinged ones, and they had a cheaper but very similar dishwasher with no dings---the ding on the dishwasher we wanted was pretty obvious, right in the door. So we talked to Lowes, we talked it over, we went back in and bought the three appliances, figuring to use the no-interest credit card option, and pay it off over time, while NOT having a fire in the basement from a creaky dryer or a flood on the main floor and basement from the failing seal on the dishwasher.

So the guys show up with same, and we have to remove the basement door AND molding to get the dryer in after the other appliances went out. Then they hook up the water line to the dryer. Huh?

Turns out what we bought, having gotten our model numbers and concept of prices from Fred's, was one heck of a dryer---with a steam cycle for wrinkled clothes.

The washing machine, a Whirlpool, weighs your clothes and doles out water accordingly, so in spite of the fact it's a toploader, it uses water like a frontloader. An average toploader uses 50 gallons of water per wash. This one uses 25. It has no central column. And its spin-dry gets your clothes so dry it saves electricity in the dryer. Plus Lowes gave us a 100.00 rebate for buying a set, gave us free delivery and setup, about a 125.00 item, and our local power company is giving us 100.00 each for the efficient appliances---except the dryer: you get nothing for dryers. So we came out better than the ding and dent place. And we have a washer-dryer that is going to serve us very well for at least a decade. The dishwasher we wanted in black, so it had to be ordered in. It arrives next week. But so far we are really happy (how could we not be?) with the washer-dryer. Now we're praying the refrigerator holds out!

So that was Tuesday of that week. We skated, we worked---well, I thought. And thought, and thought.

Oh, and the reef tank. I've been going nuts for two months because I can't get the chemistry balanced. I added buffer daily for 2 going on 3 weeks, unable to raise the carbonate hardness (alkalinity), before I finally got the smarts to inquire online whether buffer that has solidified is the same as buffer that hasn't. Well, no, it isn't. It can't buffer any more. Use baking soda. So I pour baking soda in for 2 more weeks. Alkalinity rises---and falls. I'm still running a kalkwasser drip. Should I stop that until I get the water balanced? Well, no, but---maybe your corals are eating more calcium. In brief, marine water balance is a tripod: magnesium supports both alkalinity and calcium load. If your mag is high enough, neither alk nor cal should fall. Ha! so maybe the corals ARE eating it. And then somebody comes on who knows Kent Buffer. Seems it contains a lot of boron. And if you load your tank with boron (which was, of course, unaffected by the solidification) it destabilizes alk and cal even IN the presence of sufficient magnesium. Solution? Ton o' water changes. 5 gallons a swat. So now I'm doing 2 things---pulling the fine sand from the sandbed, in favor of medium grade, which won't blow and travel as much---while my downstairs planted tank (refugium) sandbed supports the tank's chemistry (Bacteria in the sandbed do the filtration for your tank: a marine reef doesn't use a filter). So I'm doing that, pulling sand, putting in water. The corals are ecstatic. The fish aren't unhappy. But this is going to be a long, slow process. It's getting better and better. But my hands are getting pruinish from salt water.

Skating is going particularly well. Jane had another bout with her boots, and then we began to figure out it's not the boots, it's the lacing. She changed her lacing style, pulling up snugly on the inside side of the boot, and is now getting some support. Amazing how much lacing affects skating boots---but they are lace-to-the-toe for a reason: the whole boot molds to your foot as you put stress on those laces. Want to change the shape of your foot? Change the lacings. I watch people go out there in rental skates (plastic) with half done laces and just shake my head. I'd be scared going around the rink once with the lace-up they're using. No control of the edges, not even surety your foot is not going to wobble seriously over onto an ankle. All these people who can't skate because they have "weak ankles." I have a news flash here: it's not your ankles. It's your lacings. Good lacing means your ankle *can't* turn.

One thing about the sport, too: I was getting some serious foot problems when I took it up---toe joint going crooked, etc, all from some high-falutin' walking shoes I paid over a hundred dollars for. Well, the skate lacing is meticulous, and demanding. You want that blade centered between big toe and second toe, and you yank and pull and adjust until you've made a cast out of your boot: your foot can flex, but those boots flex only with the impact of a jump (or a bad mistake or a highspeed turn). What happens? Your feet gain all sorts of muscle and little alignment problems get pulled straight. People with flat feet begin to develop some arch and actual control of their toes...I have a high arch, which could have given me trouble as I get older, and my feet have so much muscle they're painfree. Amazing sport. Your whole body undergoes that process. You stand straighter, your misaimed feet get corrected to go straight---you develop reflexes that save you in a fall---I can't think of a better sport to last you a lifetime. I could only wish I'd started this when I weighed far less in a fall and the distance down was a lot shorter! And after not falling at all for a year, I've fallen twice in the last two weeks---once caught a toepick in a crosswise hockey rut: my fault: should have been deeper in the knees and did a backward layout that corrected that pesky cervical vertebra my chiropractor has been after: did that one pitching chin-first over the handlebars of a bike on a downhill, near broke my neck, and it hasn't been straight for 30 years. Now it is. The second one I related above. Both are because I'm getting good enough to get cocky, and I'm taking chances. Occasionally those go boom!

Weather has been generally hot, but not as hot as usual: temperature range is around 90 down to 58 at night. I can live with that. Of course we get these temperatures the first full year we have central air up here! And what comes next is fire season: we've already had one serious fire in Spokane. Next we'll see a series of waves that produce lightning, no water, starting forest fires, and covering the region with smoke. Followed finally by real rain in September, and cooling temperatures. I can't wait.

We spent the 4th of July down the street at Joan's: she has a perfect overlook of the city, and the fireworks. That was pleasant.

For the rest, let's see: we're making slow headway with the gardens, but neither of us has had the time or energy to spare for that. The fish pond will probably not go in until next summer.

We're both working hard. I've done my thinking and the book is moving again. So, I hope, will this blog.

07/21/08 Monday 56468. Well, we're doing better...I'm updating again on schedule. I'm still sitting very gingerly---result of the fall. I have a very colorful 5" long bruise on my right arm, and the bracelet I wear on that arm---broke, just broke. It was sand-cast, and there was a bubble in the cast, so it just broke. I'm going to see if a modern jeweler can figure out how to weld it back together. The tailbone is quite, quiite sore, but improving a bit: from sheer agony to just damned painful. It's hard to focus on my writing. And the right shoulder glitched---Jane got that straightened out: she knows where to shove, and that quit, but muscle relaxants haven't given me a really focused brain. As best I can reconstruct the fall, it started even before the turn, when I failed the turn itself, due to a bad center of balance. I started the fall there---but since the next move involves a sharp turnabout, I completed that while falling, hurt the right arm, and ended up grabbing the wall with the left hand trying to prevent the fall---which landed me on my tailbone. Sigh. Bottom line, pardon pun, it hurts a lot. If I'd just fallen, I'd have emerged unscathed because of the crash pads. Grabbing the wall---bad move.//Dietwise, we're about to go back on Atkins. So I bought two family packs of meat. And some slow matches for the grill. It was gruesomely hot today, and I couldn't find my matches at first, so I gave up and we postponed starting the diet until after the trip to the chiropractor's tomorrow. Then I cook.//Gas prices---what a mess. You knew this was coming---and if anybody thinks, long term, it isn't going to get worse, they're doing some wishful thinking. We're using way too much. I wouldn't be surprised to see 6 dollars a gallon by next year, and it's about time for the people in charge of policy to do some creative things. Russia is going to corner the market on natural gas stations, which it's building all over. Our stations are gas-only, and Europe's going to be running on Russian natural gas. We haven't promoted public transport, which Europe has; we haven't supported passenger rail; which Europe has; we haven't made major moves to get off increasingly expensive gas, and here we are, 5.00 a gallon and upward, which increases the price of everything and hits us all in the pocketbook. If our national planners would get off their theoretical principles and realize they've got to drop some major incentives into the free market they so prize, like no-tax on hybrid cars, like major tax breaks for companies installing natural gas or hydrogen stations on the interstates, (one way to get it into both cities and smaller towns for a start)---and plan ahead of a crisis for once instead of running from behind---//I can rant on that for hours. We have a Forester, which gets about 26 mpg, and we would buy a Prius in a heartbeat if we had to trade, but right now we're being careful of finances, and the Forester is paid for and running well. I think a lot of people are in that boat. The Prius here has an eight thousand dollar surcharge tacked on to it because of its scarcity: read: the dealers are putting this charge on, because people will pay it; and that I just object to paying. So we'll go on driving our Forester, and combining trips, and not taking our usual trips across the Cascades this summer, because it just budget-wise isn't in the cards. In a normal year, we make about 3 such trips, and go to Mariners' games; so that's another industry that's hurting. Just so unnecessary, if we'd had somebody of either party to stand up and say, listen, we've got a problem ahead and we're going to solve it. Nawww. That takes guts. I hope the next crop of politicians figures it out.

7/22/08. Tuesday. 56791. Still unable to skate. If I fell on my tail again I think I'd faint on the spot. Damn! it hurts! We went down to the chiropractor, Dr. Shane, and he was sympathetic, but it's a bruise, and there's not too much to be done for it. We are also having our last ice cream for a long while: tomorrow we're switching back onto the Atkins diet---note that a recent CNN article cites a study that shows exactly what we've found: cholesterol is actually lower and good cholesterol is higher on that diet, plus people who do Atkins do pretty well at keeping it off. So we've been bad for a while, and we are now prepared to get serious before the weight creeps up. Omelets for breakfast, but one last hamburger/shake down in Pullman. Tomorrow we get the new dishwasher. And tomorrow I fire up the grill. It actually rained on the way to and from Pullman, and that is the first time in weeks. Very happy with that.

7/23/08. Wednesday. 57227. We got the dishwasher in, and it's a nice one. Even has a "sterilize" cycle. Which is good when you use glass utensils for both cooking AND the fish tank. I'm still struggling with the alkalinity issue---but gaining on it. The corals all look great.//I'm a little improved over yesterday: that long car ride was hard, even if Jane drove. I'm still hurting so bad it's hard to do anything. I have this lovely yellow bruise about 5" long on my arm. But the worst is the tailbone, no question. And it was such a silly fall. Jane's gone off skating today, leaving me behind (sob!) and I'm heating up the coals for porkchops. The day is quite cool...very nice. I sure wish this would last, but I see they've forecast near 90 in a few days. At least it beats last year's temperatures. The raspberry bush we're going to have to get rid of is bearing fruit: nice taste, sun-warmed. I'm beginning to think of ways I can clear around that bush and leave it. With actually being watered, it might actually produce respectable berries.

7/24/08. Thursday. 58291. Ah. Clean dishes. I wish I could work faster on the book. I'm in so much pain from this tailbone situation that every time I nearly get to work, it starts hurting because I've sat too long. This is a real downer. On the other hand, ideas are building up like floodwater behind a dam, so when I do feel better, it's going to go fast. I did go to the rink, to sit about and look pathetic (actually I brought my computer and the Railroad Tycoon III disc, which I haven't used in ages) in the theory Sharon might want to go out to dinner; well, Sharon had a schedule and said she couldn't, but Joan said she could at least drop in for drinks; and then Sharon said, well, and then we ended up with Dawn and Becky, too---Kay, poor thing, had to work. Joan found out what Swinging Door means by individual nachos---8 inches high piled with olives and stuff. She was intending a small snack. And that get-together was fun. We prevented at least two people getting their work done, but hey, it was fun. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to skate tomorrow: though it is improving: the rink is hosting hockey school this weekend and we are up to our armpits in rink-rats and people in armor. I've sworn all of us adult figure skaters ought to get together and give the hockey rascals a dose of their own medicine, by darting cross-ice and back at random intervals and angles the minute they start their down-ice run, the way they do us. But, sigh, we're responsible adults and we won't. We just try not to get knocked down. And I personally can't take another fall this soon. I at least got up this morning feeling as if I might skate---until I sat down. Ow. Re-ow. Jane has meanwhile tackled the back yard without me, and is making great progress on the flower bed by the garage. She has made the point, and I agree, no more flower beds get created or grass dug up until we get more control of the ones we have. Though she's proposing to fire up the Mantis tiller and see if we can't make headway toward digging the fishpond. I just wish we'd lose about 10 more degrees of daytime heat---though I can't complain too much about 88 degrees for a high in the end of July.

7/25/08. Friday. 58575. The tailbone is still extremely painful...and they're having the hockey school this evening, which means that the rink today is going to be a zoo full of yard apes in full apery, playing at combat. So even Jane is not going near the ice. Jane went outside and got the rest of the flowerbed by the garage, where the iris are going to go. The weather has been mild, for summer, but even so it's a brutal job. She was going to go down the street and help Joan sand her kitchen floor (wooden, under renovation) but Joan was errand-bound. So she settled in to recuperate for the afternoon---until I came with a suggestion we go to the fish store over in Spokane Valley and get some necessities, which just happens to take us past Scotty's. Never mind the new diet---well---sorta mind it: no hamburger buns. So off we go.//The water is doing so much better I decided to get one frag (small broken piece of living coral) to test the situation and, yes, a fish. I also brought the store half the cheatomorpha algae I've been raising in the refugium (small planted tank designed to absorb phosphate and nitrate from the water: growing plants do that). So we look. There's allegedly a Tomini Tang in one tank---but Kevin (the store owner) has many of his small tanks interconnected to enable water flow, and the tang could theoretically be most anywhere in 3 tanks. Which are heavily planted. And Kevin, his son and helper being in Iraq, has broken down his home tank and set up again in the store, but he has put a lot of his big specimen rocks (how I would love to buy a few of those, but I have only a 54g tank) in the fish-sale tanks. And they are not easy to search behind. So our quest for the Tomini Tang (one of only two tangs small enough for a 54) was futile. But, Kevin said, asked if he had a lawnmower blenny---no, but he had a starry blenny, a close and prettier cousin. The starry is basically black with white dots and goes to pinto with stark white if trying to hide among rocks and shadows. Or pale brown. Quite an elusive fellow. Well, Kevin keeps ordering them and then forgetting whether he has sold one, and they get lost in the tanks. He's pretty sure he has one. We found it. But it vanished while we were trying to net him. We found another, in another set of connected tanks. Couldn't get him either. We waited around another thirty minutes until past closing and after Kevin had served two other customers. And meanwhile found another Court Jester Goby (the cursed fairy wrasse, now traded back to the store, did in our last one.) This one proved easy to catch. I picked out my coral frag, a piece from Kevin's tank---when you move coral, you necessarily break bits off, and each bit is valuable, and can grow a whole new coral in somebody else's tank---which is how the hobby works. We try to reproduce the corals and trade them about, so each coral taken from the wild will enter the reproduction stream in hobbyist tanks and become one of the ones reproduced and studied by hobbyists worldwide. Kevin's green Bali Slimer, a branching coral, dates from 1978, and I lust after one of those frags, but I am not ready for it yet. It's a little crankier than the montipora frag I got. But I have faith that Slimer will be around here for decades and decades---corals, you know, are virtually immortal, and that one has offspring in tanks all across the northwest, plus its parent is likely still growing in the wilds off Bali---if some tanker hasn't plowed through that reef. Anyway---) I got my coral, and then, as a telephone call interrupted Kevin in bagging our order, I spotted the elusive first starry blenny, and we found his hiding-spot, to which he was returning---by the outflow-box. So when Kevin finished his phone call, and with Jane hanging back---she was wearing a shirt with large patterns on it that we figured could be spooking the fish (that happens)---Kevin bagged our fish. We named him Houdini even before we got him home. We took all our purchases into Scotty's with us, in black shopping bags, so they'd be safe and comfy, had wings, poppers (jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese), and cheese sticks for supper, and headed home, acclimated our purchases to our tank's salinity---they came in at 1.021, and I keep my tank at 1.025 salinity, so we dripped water in until they matched, and our guys went to their new address while the tank was under actinic light (blue-only, which follows the brilliant metal halide day-light and stays on for a few hours in the evening). They seem to be doing well. The Court Jester immediately offended one of the highfin striped gobies, but nobody got bit, and the Court Jester went somewhere I'm not sure. Houdini perched beside the blue crocea clam, taking occasion alarm when the mandarin dragonette would chase copepods (near-invisible crustaceans endemic to the tank and fuge) right up into his face, but he even took on his braver coloring while sitting there. All seems well.

7/26/08 Saturday 58736. He's even cuter today...actually both are. Noooo, I didn't quarantine. I've never gotten ich out of one of Kevin's tanks, and these fish have been with him for 2 months, getting fat and elusive. The starry blenny, 3" long, is shy. The Court Jester is in-your-face afraid of nothing, including the big yellow watchman who could swallow him whole (yellow watchman: eelshaped, 5" long) and gapes and blusters. But never bites. That's one reason I like gobies. They're such show-offs, but do no damage except to others of their identical type. So you just get one, you're fine. The little guy, about the size of your little fingernail 2-3x, is feeding nonstop and producing poo, which is even better; they're fragile and hard to get to eat and prosper. The starry is perched atop the rocks and undergoing color changes at the rate of 1 every 3 seconds, which indicates he's still spooked, but you can see little mouth-kisses all over the film on the black glass, so he's eating too. Healthy, full of it, and getting along fairly well with the yellow watchman. I'm delighted. Jane went over to help Joan a bit with floor-sanding in her renovation project: I'm still too ouchy. This afternoon we went over to Dawn's for a party---a bring-your-own-meat barbecue. She has a marvelous geodesic dome house, which she and her husband built from scratch on a bluff overlooking the Spokane River. What a wonderful location. A fun time was had by all. We got back late and stuffed, and watched some Laughing in the Wind---if you like Chinese martial arts movies like Crouching Tiger, you'll love this series of dvd's (Amazon.com). The cast is gorgeous; the subtitles are occasionally baffling Chinese idiom rendered in English, but you'll catch on. The story is great. The cinematography is just---with backgrounds like that, how can you go wrong? And rewatchable. You may have to watch this a number of times to really get all that's going on, huge number of subplots. Great fun. Occasional pathos. Occasional funny-as-spit. Check it out on Amazon.

7/27/08.Sunday 59224. Jane went over to Joan's and worked nearly all day. I've dropped 3 pounds on this diet and Jane, who's worked her tail off, has lost nothing, poor thing. And then Joan ordered pizza after handing us a couple of vodkas. I shoulda said no and gotten us home where I could cook something Atkinslike, but darn, we were having fun. Naturally we're going to pay for this. And THEN go strictly on the diet. I don't think I'm going to be able to skate tomorrow either. Darn, this tailbone bruise is slow to heal.

7/28/08 Monday. 60225. We got up late. And I'm still sore. Sandy from the rink called to have us alert the other adults that the afternoon skate is no more, at least until September, or in between hockey events. They'll be taking down rink 2, pretty sure, and public ice is always what's left over from the bigger groups that pay for a whole sheet. I wish there were enough of us to afford it, but we're not, and the rink graciously allows us to use public ice for lessons, so we just smile and say thank you for whatever hours we get assigned. Clearly today was out, since we should already have been on the ice by the time Sandy called, but I'm still ouchy. So Jane went over and worked on Joan's project, and then came back and attacked our back yard, creating a very Good Housekeeping flower bed out of our former weed patch. With fake stone edging, no less. We look so spiff. She stayed out until dark, which, up here, is pretty late, about 8pm, and really did big work. We had an informal supper of beer brats wrapped in a low-carb tortilla with cheese and jalapenos. Which was nice. Sobe to drink. And another episode of our Chinese drama.

7/29/08. Tuesday. 610252. Up at five, and so early I can't figure out whether or not I've taken the day's Aleve for the tailbone. Jane took to the garden again before breakfast, and I recalled she'd asked me to chop some brush she'd cut, so I got out with the loppers and let fly. Then she wanted me to make a Lowe's run after: 1. a big paver for a back step for the garage to the back garden: our last one has weathered into bits on one corner from ice last winter, and it's ugly. 2. adapters and head for the sprinkler hose we accidentally cut: we're taking advantage of the accident to install another head. 3. more fake stone edging to finish the job. 4. another big bag of garden dirt (she didn't tell me those weigh the same as your average sixth grader) and by the way, see if they've still got the molding we accidentally left behind. Sigh. Off I go. No, to 1. 2 took me half an hour to get waited on---I finally tracked somebody down after going to the front desk and asking for someone. And did I, after that, get the right size? Of course not. But a house with a tank never has too many plumbing connectors of various sizes. 3 was easy. 4 nearly killed me getting it into the car. And by the time I got back, she had tried starting the Mantis tiller. No joy. So she was setting out iris. We're moving them all to a new bed all their own. They had to share with the roses last winter. I cooked lunch---I get weird when I've had to lift an elephant and then have to hurry about something: must be blood pressure. I forgot and left Jane's good T-fal skillet on the fire, and ruined it. So fortunately Amazon has a special deal on T-Fal saute skillets. That's on the way.//Then I addressed myself to the mystery of the Mantis, flipped the on switch, punched the pump button 3 times, pulled out the choke and gave two tugs on the cord. Hey, the magic still works. (Jane hadn't found the choke and had decided it was an autochoke. Nope.) And this from a little engine that sat neglected since last October with a full gas tank...I tell you, they do not exaggerate in the commercials. We are digging the pond with this little machine---and it's a potent little wonder. I can control it---even when it behaves like a startled skunk and does a stifflegged bounce from side to side.// I laid out some garden hose in a meandering shape and asked Jane if she liked that. We tugged and tweaked and then I fired up the Mantis again and followed the outline. It stopped only twice, both times having a new-potato sized rock jammed in its tines---I swear it was the same rock---and threw other, larger ones out of my path. So we dug the full circuit of a pond that's about 20 feet long by 6 feet wide with meanders, and then dug the center, down at least a foot, and we are launched. Pretty good day's work for two hours of running the thing, and we actually 6" of depth in one end and a foot in the center. Beyond a foot we're going to hit much harder going. It's chipping like sandstone down there. But, hey, by 2010 we should have dug another foot down. Dust? Lord, this part of the lawn hasn't seen water since the spring rains! In the middle of it all I smelled smoke, thought of my incinerated skillet and wondered if there was a burner on---then saw a chip of ash float past and got really concerned. About this time we had fire engines, two companies called out, because a front is coming in and the wind is blowing. Some fool had started a fire in the little part behind the houses across the road, out in high grass. They got it out in fairly short order. Meanwhile I note we've had a moderately strong quake out in LA and hope all my readers are safe and well.// Mr Houdini and Mr. Sugaru are both doing well, eating away. And now I fear this wind is putting the kibosh on my plans to fire up the outdoor grill: it just wouldn't be pleasant, and might confuse people keeping an alert nose to that recent fire across the street, so I'll just pan fry the pork chops. I can do that.

7/30/08. Wednesday. 62020. Well, Jane's still able to move after yesterday: she dived back out into the weeds and started at it. I came out and got handed the Mantis and pointed at the front flower beds: the sprinklers had just run and they're under high, wet weeds, which meant I had to take the tines off halfway through the job and unwind long stems from around the blades, but hey, I got it done pretty well. I haven't run it in back yet: that's as dry and dusty as the front is wet, and I'm going to have to dig up some rougher shoes to tackle that dustbowl. You come into the house afterward looking like a farmer who's been plowing, and if that doesn't convey an image to you, think of coal mining, only with brown dust. Good thing, however, it's good clean dust and washes right off. I'm going to tackle that bed again. Jane meanwhile decided, after freeing the raspberry bushes of an outmoded and pretty nasty garden box, and being stung by bees, that she's done for a few hours, so I fed her lunch and she went for a long tub soak.//I think I mentioned yesterday---or did I---that I pulled the skimmer from the sump for the marine tank and found it pretty gunky inside. Nothing like skimmate. Glug. You know when oceans make froth on the beach? It's amino acid froth from dead fish and decaying weed and such---don't play in it. That's skimmate. It's what a skimmer does: shoot water into other water and make froth, which it then collects and purifies the water of it. So after being up to my elbows in skimmate and gunk, I filled the skimmer up to its neck with a gallon of white vinegar, which will dissolve lime deposits overnight. Well, it did. This morning I found the neck of the skimmer full of unmentionable goo, and purged it, and got the skimmer rinsed out and back to work. It began frothing with an energy it hasn't used in months. For one thing, I began investigating one of the couplings, which I thought was designed to swing about, since it was sold to me that way. I tightened it down so no air could seep in, and amazing difference, whether the washing, or that, or both. The thing is running as it never has, and may collect more skimmate in the next two days than it could do in a week, normally. So that will help the tank, too. We're not skating today: Jane is fixated on the back yard mess, we've got a few days of reasonably cool summer weather, and we're going at it. It's amazing how getting the weeds out and the beds defined makes a difference in the back yard. The middle of the yard is dug up and a construction site and the yard still looks rather spiff after Jane has been at work at it.

7/31/08. Thursday. 62020. What a day! We're still not back on the ice, but we are making progress on the lawn/grounds. (Can you have 'grounds' on an urban 90x90 lot with a ranch house on it?) We hope to have 'grounds,' because we're going for folded space. Just think as ourselves as zoo animals---pacing the limits of a square cage, versus having a yard that is all winding paths, plantings, rocks, mulched areas, and small surprises on the paths---an old fishtank castle (looks like a fairy ruin) in a bed of moss, a waterfall, a fishpond: an American Japanese garden, a world in miniature...so we will have 'grounds'. They'll just fit in folded space. Appropriate for sf writers, don't you think? Anyway, we decided with Jane's bad knee acting up she needed one of those sit-on rolling garden seats that lets you relax while weeding/mulching, etc. That's where it all started.//So we looked up several on the Ace Hardware site, then (Ysabel just fell off the bed: she attempted to jump up to it, caught my night robe, lying on the foot, pulled it off on her, and is trying to look as if that didn't happen...she did make it to the top of the bed, silly girl.) At any rate, we ended up at Lowe's, and were in a swift and businesslike fashion scooping up our necessities: a rolling seat, two more step strips and a doormat, some eggcrate industrial lighting grid we are going to use as a pebble sifter (like an archaeological dig: shovel dirt on, dirt falls through, pebbles and stones that will be useful in the pond stay on the grid)---and then---two more sacks of garden dirt, some gloves---and then---I decided to rest and wait for Jane in the garden seating area. Bad move! She got back from her run after something, sat down, we looked over, I pointed out a pretty table of smaller size than the one next to us---and it was gorgeous. A round, umbrella-table type with slate edge, glass center, and bar stool seats---worse, it was cheap, compared to the others. We loved it. We found out Lowe's had 4 left. Aagh. If we wait for a sale, we might miss the prettiest, most 'us' table we've ever seen. So we bought it. Due to the epoxy/slate top it weighs a ton, but we got everything into the Forester and got home. Now Jane had wanted to inspect the box we bought: I dissuaded her. This is always a mistake. Jane has an artist's eye for detail. Immediately she spotted a big scratch on the glass, four scratches (major) on the slate tiles, and a dent in the rim. So she calls Lowes. Back we go to trade out glass and top: and I swear, the two women in charge of the exchange were out of their minds---not us: them! We proposed to simply exchange tops with the display: 4 screws. No. These women were sure this could only be done by appropriate store technicians who were not to be had, and "we have to have one on display at all times". Come on, ladies: 4 hand-tighten screws, and we can't do this? No. We have to open a box to make the trade, then trade our 2 parts into that box, schlep that box and our box to the Return desk at the other end of the store, using a big blue cart; plus we had decided we wanted the 4 bar chairs and umbrella, lest we lose our set. There were only 3 more sets of chairs. And they had to scrounge to find an umbrella. So, after waiting in huge lines, everybody else wanting to exchange one hinge or a packet of screws, I get the monster to the Return desk and get some help getting the flat-pack table out to the car. Meanwhile the chair box is *huge*, about the size of a half-fridge. So Jane proposes to get it and the umbrella, and we're going to fit this into the Forester. With a table that can't lie flat, but has one edge up on the wheel-housing in back. Sigh. So we strip everything down, I've now lost custody of the rare blue cart, have to hunt down another, and then we have to get the rambling wreck Jane has unpacked balanced on same; which excludes the chair feet which she has to carry; and she drags the box and I pull the cart through the store to a likely checkout line. Wrong. The dragon guarding it announces it's closing. We have to schlep down to another line. We get through. We get to the parking lot. We get to packing, and the chairs won't fit. We start untying the bundles of 2 seats and get everything in, umbrella and all, *except* two seats nested, which I volunteer to carry if Jane will just promise not to hit anybody on the way home...which is only about 3 miles. I am sitting with the frames jammed up against my chest in such a way that if we hit anything and the front of the car compresses I will be decapitated. Which I advise Jane is the case. So she very cautiously eases out onto the major street, then lefts onto a residential maze that will get us near our house. Two more major streets, one of which we live on, and we make it to the driveway. She gets out and starts trying to extricate me---but the load has shifted a bit and it took several minutes to tug and twist until she could get the seats out of my lap/chest/chin so I could get out. Now, why, you ask, except the 90 degree heat, did we not make 2 trips, one of us to stand at the curb with the chairs? Because we had already loaded that effin' table top which it takes both of us to lift out of the back!//Well, we got it all put together, and got ourselves two drinks and sat in the cool shade overlooking the piles of trash in our slowly developing neat back yard, overlooking the dug-up construction site that is our future pond. "Look," I say. "With bar stools, we're sitting high enough to look down on the fish! There goes one now!" Of course it's all dirt at the moment. But we can dream. It's starting to be a back yard.

8/1/08. Friday. 62020. Well, here is the start of several days of not getting work done. It's the start of Spokon, the first convention in Spokane in about half a decade. Some brave fellows over at Gonzaga University are putting it on, and so far so good. They only anticipated 300-500 and I think they're already past that. Guests include Tim Zahn, John Dalmas, Mark Ferrari; plus there's me, Jane, Patty Briggs, Jim Glass, numerous others from the region...and fans from Miscon committee in Montana, fans from Seattle, TriCities, etc. The facility is at the University, and not a hotel, but there are hotels near, so next year we might even stay on site, though it's only about a 2 mile drive for us. We did miss the room parties (hard to do in a university) but there is a student union for socializing, etc. I managed to miss my first day panels---I've been too busy to gather up and sort emails, and apparently missed a notification, so that wasn't the con's fault. It's down the street from some good restaurants, and we gathered up a load and went there.

8/2/08. Saturday. 62020. Down to business at the con. Doing panels. And so on. A genuine, exhausting full day of work, meeting people, nice people, old friends, hanging out and talking with people I only see at cons. We autographed, Jane sold some of our spare books. More autographing. We enjoyed all our panels, some of which turned out really well. We tried to gather up Mark Ferrari for dinner, but a committee snagged him right out of our midst, and so we went back to the same Mexican restaurant. I am now officially full up on Mexican food.

8/3/08. Sunday. 62020. The last day of the con, but still going strong. We met up with Steve and Sharon for dinner, and went out to an Indian restaurant where the food tasted great---but oh, the repercussions. Seems they used onion powder, and this evening Jane's knees are swelling badly, and I'm sore and can hardly bend my fingers. We have taken our entire prescription arsenal to try to fight off the effects and hope to at least be able to walk tomorrow.

8/4/08. Monday. 62020. Well, barely walking, and not fit to write. It's 99 degrees out there, fire weather, after a perfectly gorgeous weekend in the 80's. And we'd love to work in the garden, but it's just killer. I'm still suffering from the tailbone injury---not helped by dinner last night; and in general we aren't going to do much outside today.

8/5/08. Tuesday. 62020. More of the same...the con, but mostly that disasterous Indian dinner, still has me in pain, and Jane too. We are not happy campers. There's only so much the drugs can do. The rest just has to work its way out of your system. Not happy, us.

8/6/08. Wednesday. 62832. I tried to work. Didn't get too far. I finally resolved that the chair I've been sitting in is killing me, and I have to get a replacement. On the way to the con we daily passed an inexpensive furniture store, National, and I decided I wanted an alternate chair in my room. So off we went to try to find one. Now Jane and I are pretty much of a height---except when we sit: I'm very long-bodied, she's the opposite, and where chairs hit our backs is different. So we start sitting in chairs that are the 30" width I need for the space I've got---and we settle/compromise finally on a wine red one for 249.00. A rocker/armchair. But they don't want us to take the one from the store. I'm wary of this: we've been burned before, getting a chair with a different back height by half a critical inch. They promise us if we go to their warehouse a few blocks away, the guys will unpack it and Jane can sit in it, and if we don't like that one, we can buy the one off the floor. Well, Jane liked it. We got it into the car---barely. And the darn thing is heavier than I would expect of a 249 dollar armchair/rocker. But we parked in front of the house and managed to carry it up the steps and get it inside only bashing Jane's shin once. And set it up, and dragged the old green rocker (same size) toward my room. First sitting in the new chair I'm absolutely certain Jane finds it lovely, and it feels like bare boards to me. But hey! I only use it in the mornings for about half an hour, and if Jane's happy, that's good. I've got the rocker/recliner for my room, and I'm the winner. Greatly concerned is Ysabel, who is happy that we have Claimed the green recliner to my room: she understands possession. But disturbing was its removal from the place where she gets brushed for half an hour every morning: she was not sure that the red one is acceptable, since it does not smell like Us or Her Majesty, and she eyes it suspiciously, hopeful it will produce a cat brush. I have every hope that, not being in pain while I sit down for the first time in nearly a month, I will actually get some meaningful writing done tomorrow! Hurrah! Jane meanwhile continues with the Mantis, chewing up lawn, which will give way to weedcloth and cobbled paths around the shrubbery and the end of the pond. And the weather threatens rain, but I have learned, in my time in the northwest, this is scary: oftenest it ends up as virga (rain that doesn't reach the ground) and dry lightning, which starts fires all over the map. We have not seen real rain since June, the woods are dry, and we are really hopeful we don't get much lightning.

8/7/08-9/1/08. Monday: 72415. Sorry to be away so long. I was doing so well, too. First I got overwhelmed by the smoke, which actually wasn't too bad this year, and then the remodeling started, and, well, it's my birthday, and I've now fallen twice on the ice, just hooked a toepick, a really stupid mistake at my level, and fell and reaggravated the tailbone injury. And I'm glum. Writing hasn't been easy the last month: chronic pain from the tailbone and then the bad chair, and just one dratted thing after another. I was doing so well before the convention, but it threw me off my schedule, and then things just got to where I'd write 4 words, erase 2 and try again. A little progress every day, but my concentration wasn't there, which means when my brain does return (and it's showing signs of doing that) I'll have to rewrite the whole section thoroughly. Let's see what has happened...first, the convention, and the disastrous dinner, the replacement chair, and the remodeling project: Jane got new tile for the mudroom, aka cat airlock on the back door, and that is now a glorious daffodil yellow with a fake stone floor. With an internal table to straighten out the floor line (it slopes) so we could get proper shelves (we stole the short shelves from the library and will put the expensive steel library shelves, also short, down there, because they're too heavy for the table-support legs. Then Jane found some tile for the bathroom...signaling she wanted to tackle that. So once we got the edging cap on the mudroom steps (a 3-day, 4 trip to hardware store feat) we attacked the bathroom...and its curve-fronted tub. Tiling was a challenge. And then we had to repaint the cabinets---correction: Jane had to repaint them: I wiffled out because of the fumes. I took over the majority of the housework while she painted. And helped lay some tile. Then the back yard. Digging continues, as I have energy, on the fishpond: with a sore tailbone, it's easier to stand and dig than sit and write. So I take out my frustration and temper on that, and become zen again. We are to about 3 feet on one spot, which is mandatory, and are down about a foot to foot and a half on the rest. It is in the shape of a map of England: I have figured this out. We are putting a waterfall out in the ocean at the origin of the Thames, we overlook Wales from the patio bar stools, and when we do the bridge it will span the English-Scottish border. Scotland is 3 feet deep, and I hit a root---wiping my fingers on it and taking a sniff proves it is from the hemlock, not the red hawthorn, which means it has come about 30 feet out from the tree to steal water from the flowering quince over near Wales. The garage, meanwhile, is of prefab board, and the finish on the door-frames and corner posts had weathered off. So we had to paint that...while being attacked by bees, which always favor Jane, for some reason. I have also a fair knack for knocking them into next week if they buzz about my work. But none came near me. We got the bird feeder into operation. The birds are still scared of us because of all the noise. The rose garden is lush and blooming. Jane redid the little triangular bed near Scotland, and mulched around the sole surviving tree, a weeping cherry, and the 2 peony bushes which have miraculously survived the summer; and the lantana and Unidentified, and the lupine. We have set interesting rocks in it and it looks pretty good. Then we attacked the fence this week: 3 color changes later, from plum-ish red to orange-ish red to what Olympic calls Pilgrim Red (do you know any red Pilgrims?) we are happy, and have painted the worst segment outside; and the streetside outside fence: Jane and I and Sharon, who came over to help us, got that yesterday. We went through all sorts of problems getting the right stain out of Lowes, and they mixed up the more expensive deck base instead of what I wanted. I usually accept accidents and will just grumble and pay it, but this was the fourth accident this paint department has had with our orders, so this time I marched over to the Customer Service desk and informed them I didn't think I should be charged 124 dollars for 5 gallons of paint, when what I had ordered was supposed to be 103. They agreed; and I still got the rebate slip for their 2-week paint sale. So I'm happy. Sore from all that painting. But it was a moral triumph. The fish tank has been an absolute pain: I discovered the alkalinity had plummeted from 9.3 to 4.8, and started consulting with chemistry folk to try to fix it before we lost the tank: that was last week: we decided a mysterious "ionic imbalance" had occurred, probably due to some bad/expired buffer I had used, so I did 2 50% water changes of a total of 80 gallons, quite a lot of work---Sharon helped on the second one, while Jane was fussing with tile-grouting. And then I started trying to bring it up. This went on for a couple of weeks, in which the calcium reading was through the roof, ditto the magnesium (on which the alkalinity/calcium readings equally depend for stability)---and yet the alkalinity kept falling. I tested the ph. 8.5. High by .2. I knocked it down with bar soda water to 8.2. Alkalinity buffer should also drop it. I added more. Still the alkalinity wouldn't stay up. So I checked the magnesium, which has been unwantedly high: it finally had dropped---plummeted from over 1500 two days ago to 1170...too low, by 30 points. I dosed that back up and added more buffer. Then the ph rose again and the calcium fell 60 points. Today I have gotten the mg to 1240, which is good, have the alkalinity at 7.1, the best it has been in a while, and will dose calcium this afternoon, ,but the ph is .1 high, and I am debating whether to add more bar soda. What a zoo. Throughout, the fish have been happy, the corals are ecstatic, no visible problems, but things are Not Right. Still, they are getting righter. And this evening we are bundling up to go on a lake cruise for my birthday, and Sharon's (belated), so we will look at the stars, have a few drinks, and enjoy water which does not require me to dig a deep hole or add buffer or magnesium.

9/2/08. Tuesday: 72415 Last night was fun. We bundled up in our polyfill coats and sat up on the top deck for most of it. Sharon gave me a hummingbird feeder for the new backyard establishment and Jane gave me one of her patented hand-drawn graphics, a tradition with us going back years and years. We all laughed, got home in good order. And I just tucked in and worked during the day, trying to get my writing back on schedule; but both of us, Jane and I, are in pain, and I've had trouble with one foot---it didn't adequately report where my toe was and has done it again on the cruise, when I caught the same toe on the stairs---fortunately not pitching over the taffrail (do square cruise boats have taffrails?) to the lake. But I decided it was time to call the doc, and we got an appointment, Jane determined to pursue the theory her longterm back pain is an 'out' sacroiliac joint, and me knowing mine is out again. So we gave the longsuffering Dr. Shane a real workout before he got off for the day---and we are both improved. We had 2 completely illegal huckleberry/crunchy peanut butter shakes for supper. Oh, we were bad.

9/3/08. Wednesday. 74288. Jane declined to go skating today and has spent most of the day abed, but says her back hurts less than it has in years. We are to set up to go back later this week, and if they could get Jane pain free for the first time in a decade or so, it would be wonderful. I'm sitting in my room writing, Jane's doing some reading, we painted a bit on the fence, and tried not to strain anything. We're just trying to let Dr. Shane's work 'set' in place before we mess it up. The tank chemistry still isn't the best---well, all right, it's not fixed, and I'm annoyed; but at least the magnesium is holding. If not the buffer. I've also decided it's time to turn the lights out on it for three days and get some of the nuisance algae cleaned up: the water runs down to the basement where it meets a tank that is lit 24/7, and that algae down there will sop up the nutrients the top tank is giving up as its algae dies. A nicely natural little nitrate/phosphate sink. But that is pretty well what we are up to, nothing exciting except I have Pilgrim Red measles all over from that paint roller.

9/4/08-9/22/08. Monday. 76372. Well, I have not been that good about keeping updated. This has been one of those seasons...I apologize, and each time I swear I'm going to do better, but I have been in one heck of a funk this last few weeks, which has, for the first time in my life, really extended to my work---I think because I put on such a huge push early in the year to get the Cyteen book finished; and then tried to pretend I wasn't tired. Well, so about 10 days ago I finally, using every mental trick in the book, got myself organized, got the current book booted back up in my head, got one day's work in that I was proud of---and the doorbell rang. It was, yes, the page proofs for the Cyteen book, which have to be turned around in short order. This means I have to re-boot-up the Cyteen book, particularly because of the way that DAW does things, which is not to send me the galleys, which would let me instantly spot (in red pencil) the things somebody has changed, but page proofs---which are the actual printed typescript of the thing with changes already entered. Which means they can have very persuasive, very plausible, entirely misinformative and wrong things in there. That means I have either to get out the typescript and do a 565 page line-by-line comparison, or really boot it up and read it for sense. Because of the sheer length I opted for the latter, while referring to typescripts with notes on them, to be sure they caught the really awful things. This means sitting in a chair without moving for hours. Which makes you sore. Really sore. So I worked, and worked, and worked, and got totally off in the Cyteen book again, which meant when I finally packed the changes I'd made back into the mail and sent it off, I then had to reapply all the tactics I'd formerly used to get the Bren book booted back up. And I am just so physically exhausted. So...that had to be done. That's all. I have to slowly haul my careening mind full 180 and get into another universe, where I have forgotten some of the threads. After another 5 days, I am finally making some limping progress, and had some ideas that wouldn't have occurred to me had I plunged ahead 10 days ago...so there is some gain. It doesn't mean I wouldn't have thought of them, but that they would be edited in, rather than dealt with from the beginning. And then...I get a call from my investment advisor that he needs to see me ASAP. So there's another interruption. I have to get my papers in order and run down there...which turned out to involve several decisions about how to collect my retirement savings, which is, yes, kind of important. And everything we figured out exactly prefaced the current market stupidity by about 3 days, 2 of them on the weekend. And one of the companies I'm invested with, involved in the current mess, won't turn loose of my accounts without some gymnastics on the part of the company I want to deal with---which, due to things going on, I now had better figure out, because I can't just leave this stuff unattended and hope for the best. At a certain point the Feds make you withdraw your stuff, and at a certain point you kind of need to know what you're doing. So that's another study-up. And, let's see: we were doing a garden pond. We got everything dug down 2-3 feet, except on the Scottish border, at which point we found a wire which turned out to be the control cable of our sprinkling system. So we start looking into replacing that and going around the pond. Ok. I go to Lowe's and get 100 feet of 5-strand non-power-carrying wire that has, yes, 5 different colors, replacing the 10-strand which is there, half unused, and we have to dig it in, which is a lot of work with the mattock. I am the mattock expert. I can dig a trench pretty efficiently. But then Jane says---"Can you double the width?" Oy! My aching back. I double it. We get it wired---yes, we were smart and wrote down which colors we'd subbed in for which. So we got it connected, tested, and it worked. BUT during the excavation of the control box, up near the house, we'd discovered a pipe. Says Jane, "I think we'd better be careful digging near that wire until we know where that pipe runs." Good idea. I say, "I think maybe I should take the mattock out there and do some investigating." Well---I won't say which of us did it, but it could have been either. First stroke of the mattock turns up the pipe---and puts a hole in it. Sigh. So we now have a working system which leaks, and that leak is going to be under the underlayment of the pond liner. Not good. So we get a hacksaw, cut out the damaged section, and I go off to Lowe's to replace the pipe. Pipe was a snap. It's one-inch sprinkler pipe, comes in huge rolls. I look like the Wichita Lineman as I trudge over to get the hose clamps and hose barbs, then out to the car. So we figure if we take the piece we cut out and use it to measure with, the slight additional depth we put on the pond meanwhile will be handled by the increased length the two hose barbs will give it. So we do it. I sit down in the dirt in the bottom of the pond and, with a hair dryer (extension cord), soften the new hose and insert the barb-connectors, with hose clamps. I'm doing fine, except---when we turn it on to test it---one side leaks. We conclude there must be another leak. So Jane takes all that apart and (her hands are stronger) goes for another, longer length of pipe I've cut, involving the new section we've sawed out, which now pretty well spans the Scottish border. She installs the pipe. Both joints now leak. We finally worked out that it's because of the sag in the pond floor, when we flatten the pipe with a big rock. The hose has been coiled a long time. So when we want to straighten it out, it doesn't want to, and warps, which makes it leak around the hose clamp. Consult with a neighbor produces the advice, yes, if you really tighten a hose clamp too much that can cause a leak. So we back off the screws. We have it down to 3 drips a minute at one end and 2 at the other, and call it done, and hope that hot sun will seat the hose barbs and seal the leak. It then clouds over to rain, which it is still doing. I have a call from my investment counselor that I have to come down there and sign more papers, the market of course has crashed, meaning I have less to invest than before---nice. And maybe we can finally get this stuff where it needs to be, but now I think I need some answers about the stability of the company I want to invest it in. At least it's not part of the current madness. And we've got, yes, seven yards of topsoil coming Tuesday, tomorrow, in the rain, which is scheduled to last for a week; and they want to put it on the driveway, which is where we have ten or so wheelbarrow loads of basalt rocks we've been gathering up from the roadside in our travels. And meanwhile the woes with the fishtank continue, but I am determined to get this figured out. I did get the old kalk reactor vinegared and cleaned (vinegar removes calcium deposits) and ready to trade in, but I may be forced to buy a calcium reactor to handle the problem. The corals are growing so fast they may have outstripped the capacity of our makeshift kalk setup in the basement. One of my hammer corals is the size of 3/4 of a soccer ball, and the torch is trying to overtake it. The candycane has increased from 3 heads to somewhere over 40. I need to break these up and turn them in for trade, but I really want to stabilize this tank first---yet their growth rate may be what's destabilizing the tank. And in a completely different arena---I need to call and order the pool guts: the skimmer, pump, hose, liners, and waterfall filter. I really would like to get that installed before winter fills the area with snow...we are going to have to stick to the garden walk when there's a thick snowfall, or have a nasty accident, with that pit in the yard. But first we have to move that 7 yards of dirt. The skating is finally getting back in form. And Jane has taken up ballet on Monday nights, along with Sharon. I am not about to. I will go with Jane to observe on nights Sharon can't be there, because it's kind of a notoriously crime-heavy neighborhood and the parking isn't great; but there is no way I'm going to screw up my very limited sense of dance, which involves my skating, in favor of an art I really didn't do well at some decades ago. Modern Dance was one of the most excruciatingly embarrassing parts of my college education: I stand 5 feet 8, and do not successfully imitate a flower, thank you. We were not amused. Skating is like flying, effortlessly, wonderfully, and you keep in balance because you're working with physics. Ballet is skidding on already-sore feet trying to leave behind more skin, while working against the physics that says somebody my size and mass is never going to make that turn before it all hits the wall and goes splat. Nope, no way, no how. I'll stay on the ice, where things don't hurt that much.

9/23/08. Tuesday. 77836. Yesterday evening...sigh...We were sitting there in an otherwise calm, drizzly rain, when all of a sudden a gust front blew through or a microburst hit---it caught our patio umbrella and overturned and somewhat broke our pretty new patio set table...scratched up the side of it before we ever got to have anybody over to enjoy it. We're upset. Just, whoosh, and that was it: there are branches all over the street. And no further storm. I incline to microburst, since the storm quit so soon after: a dying thunderstorm just took out our patio table, aimed right at it. Thump. I ran out to get it at Jane's warning---she was dressing for ballet class and in her skivvies. I happened to be in a floor length robe, and ran out into driving rain and hail that froze my hair together: mud: cold water, and the whole thing is tipped over and I'm working with the special wrench to get the umbrella disconnected from the pole so I can rescue the center glass and light unit, which is hanging onto the umbrella like a doughnut on a pole. I got Jane's help at the last minute and she got the umbrella in while I rescued the glass, then took my soppy self back out to right the table. It's aluminum, and took a scrape on the side, but at least wasn't bent, only an ornamental bit on the inside around the pole. And of course it's just fine weather after that happened, with the first frost up in the hills as the clouds race away to Idaho. Treacherous weather. Jane went off to ballet, and says she was muzzy-headed about the instructions---I think it was the storm and the rush to save the table. I meanwhile consoled myself by downloading Spore: don't do that. It took the better part of 3 hours to download, decrypt, install, and get running. I could have gone to the store and gotten it in less time. It's kind of a 'cute' game, and 'cute' dominates. It's not too scientific, to say the least. But it's amusing. Probably has replayability. A lot of variables. And I'm getting some work done, otherwise.// I was worthless on the ice yesterday---took a step onto my heel and nearly dislocated my shoulder with the arm-whip that kept me from going splat on the ice. I didn't fall. But it wasn't bright. //Today the 7 yards of dirt is supposed to arrive. If my calculations are correct, that amount of dirt would make a 3x3 column 21 feet tall---or a 2x10 foot pile 3 feet high. This is still a lot of dirt to move. At least the rain has stopped, giving us a window to move it before it becomes a brick. Washington dirt is amazing: if it weren't for the glacial moraine pea gravel throughout, it would be really easy to dig: and it is, sort of, when it's bone dry. Water it---and the rain has---and it sets up like concrete: you can walk on our pool berm as if it were concrete, not because the dirt has gone hard, but because there is that much rock in it. Amazing.

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.

1. 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 and the relationships and you can form a mental image of how tight the little localities were. I'm going to be printing out a book, a very thick book, not just the tree, but a page for absolutely every individual I turn up. One copy for Jane's family, one for mine. The hunt is as addictive as potato chips. And what a way to learn history! Sobering to think that if just one of these individuals had gotten run over by an ox-cart or failed to dodge a mace back in 1200, I wouldn't be here and you wouldn't be reading this blog.

3/05/08. Wednesday. 106593. Jane got her new skate blades. She's been skating on Ultima Lights, as you recall, and having trouble: they're a very thin blade. Most middling-advanced skaters rely on Coronation Ace blades, which are somewhat wider. It's what I have. Jane has, again referring to before the break, tried mine on the ice, same boots, different blades, and decided to go for them. She ordered them and they came in; and now she's having the Ultimas taken off and the Wilson Coronation Ace put on. I, meanwhile, have just moved my right blade way in, and may take it further. If I don't break my neck.

3/06/08. Thursday. 106593. Got the skates with the new blades on—from Larry. Jane says they do too make a difference—a huge scary difference. But she says backwards is much easier on these blades, and she is going to go for it.

3/07/08. Friday. 106593. Took Jane's skates over to Larry's place to get the blade set, and Larry says it's going to take some leather plugs to cure the screw holes to make it secure. This is going to take a few days. So it looks as if we'll be off the ice. Jane only has one skate.

3/08/08. Saturday. 106593. Still chasing ancestors. Doing not a thing constructive.

3/09/08. Sunday. 106593. Jane finished her book! She's asked if I'll read it. Of course I will. I've been looking forward to this.

3/10/08. Monday. 106593. And no skates. Reading Jane's book. So I'm settled in. It's raining. It's a nice day to snug up with a good read. The fish twist to the diet is working. I'm down some more. I'm now into a size 10...a stretch size 10 jeans, but still...

3/11/08. Tuesday. 106593. Still no skates. We stayed home. Reading Jane's book—which is going to take a few days. It's come at a good time for me to do this.

3/12/08. Wednesday. 106593. Reading Jane's book. And Larry got Jane's skate back, so we went skating for the first time on all proper blade-sets. Jane says it's still scary. Just about as scary—we decided to skate in street clothes because we'd only have had 20 minutes before session-end if we stopped to kit up, a 30 minute process. It was amazingly hard to skate in jeans and jacket. Couldn't flex, had to constantly watch my blade-heels about getting caught in my jeans-hems—you have to tuck up tight on some moves. Just scary. Tomorrow we'll kit out properly.

3/13/08. Thursday. 106593. Reading on Jane's book. Back on the ice with proper dress this time. And easier. Still scary: I've gone back on one heel twice today, and recovered. This is going to take some adjustment, but it's right. I know it's right. We did make a Costco's run, and picked up, amid the household necessities like bacon, a very large, well-grown potted rhododendron, Catawabiensis Buford or something of the sort—it's a pale purple frilled one. We just barely got it in the car. We will have to wrap it tomorrow night, because it's going to drop into the mid-20's tomorrow night.

3/14/08 Friday.106593. Still reading on Jane's book. And back on the ice. Today was a zoo: lots and lots of tiny kids. But my feet are beginning to get the trick of this new blade set—it's so much more secure, having the edges react [tilt of the foot] much more readily. I think the problem is that I have a very narrow heel and a very broad forefoot, so much so that Graf had to build me a special boot, and being able to tip the skate over to get the edges into action requires the blade inset more than average. But once I can do that—wow! It's a whole new ball game! Things I've done with difficulty are starting to add up. Jane's getting her feet under her too—I can't imagine the change for her: from tilted footplate with one stanchion higher than the other, to a totally flat footplate on that blade. It's got to be worse than going from high heels to flats...and a lot scarier.

3/15/08 Saturday. 106593. Finishing up the read-through on Jane's. Good book. I love it. We celebrated by going off to the Swinging Door and getting the annual offering of corned beef and cabbage for St. Paddy's day: they have it for 3 days. And it was really good. Last year it was an Irish pub with pipers but not such great corned beef: this year, in our new neighborhood, the corned beef is light-years better but there aren't any pipers. Heard from Sharon: she's in New York for Adult Figure Skating Nationals, and giving me a report on the ice at Rockefeller Center: rutted, she said—very rutted. But it's still a thrill to get to skate there.

3/16/08 Sunday.106593. Back at my own stuff, finally. Had a good holiday. I'm starting where I left off with a clear head and rested. There's a lot of stuff I need to do, but I got a new filing cabinet for the office, before the weight breaks down the two file drawers in that nice desk we bought last spring. A two-drawer ought to handle the essentials, besides the two I have upstairs, and the big file downstairs—which itself is falling apart, since the move. Take it from me, if you have stuff, the particulate put-together filing cabinets are not for you. It's still raining. Cars passing that are coming from the north are coming down the street with snow on them: it's that kind of day. Yesterday's foray to the Swinging Door for corned beef and cabbage has us up a pound and a half, so we may not do it today. Maybe again Monday before the special goes off if we can get the pound off by then.

3/17/08. Monday 107497. St. Patrick's Day. We got back on the ice---Jane's still battling her new blades, but we're gaining on it. Now that I've moved mine a total of a quarter inch each, or more---I suddenly find out why I've been having trouble with the Mohawk, the Inside 3-turn, and the Outside Back Edges. Funny thing, having your blades both aimed alike is very, very useful. I'm amazed. I have spent a lot of time trying to nerve myself to fling myself outward onto the outside edge, and the balance point between just tipping over the edge where you can ride, with enough speed, and falling right over---has been so scant as to be non-existant. By moving the balance point [the blade] over a quarter inch, that has an immense effect [think of an inverted pyramid] on the balance I achieve by leaning outward. It means, in translation, that the blade goes over on the outside edge *before* I've committed myself wholly across the point of no return. I can get a clean edge. That means the blade is biting into the ice, which is sort of like having your tire tread working on a turn---versus not. I'm so excited. Jane is less so, but says she'll live. Her other blades had a boot attachment plate that goes up at either end---and the Coronation Ace blade doesn't. It's flat. This means her whole mode of attack has to be revised. She's so happy. We grabbed up Joan and Terry and got over to the Swinging Door for the last day of corned beef and cabbage. This is not helping my diet, but it was good.

3/18/08. Tuesday. 108382. Yep, the weight is up. Jane's on crunch, editing her book. I'm finishing mine. But we did get over to the rink for a while, then came home and started to work. Jane says this new-blade thing is getting to her: but you always feel stressed when you're in massive 'edit' mode, and have your brain full of details. Myself, I'm in the other kind of mode, so I'm doing fine. We just tucked into the house---didn't even get to the store, which we need to do. Jane's rushing because she has a hair appointment tomorrow, and we have a chiropractic appointment the day after, and she wants to get through the worst of the edit before she has to take a break.

3/19/08. Wednesday. 108991. Still working. We're laying out of skating today since Jane is working hard on her edit. I managed to OD the marine tank on kalkwasser yesterday: made a nasty white cloud throughout: second time I've done that in two weeks. I think I need to buy that extra pump, which will let me do things much more conveniently down below. I need to do some thorough testing, water changing, and cleanup down there: the skimmer is a disgrace. But I want to get this book finished, Jane wants to get hers mailed; and meanwhile croci are blooming and we need to get that rhododendron planted and the roses trimmed for the spring...another reason why I love winter. You don't have to manicure a snowbank. In my spare time I've turned up several other interesting ancestors---one I'm really delighted to be related to, an actual hero, William the Protector, William Marshal. He knew everybody who was anybody through 5 kings of England and ensured those 5 both stayed on the throne and stayed as honest as he could manage to make them...or as Jane puts it, "I do believe your ancestor was the boss of the Sheriff of Nottingham." It seems likely. Also Humphrey de Bohun, who was quite a character, and happens to be one one of 6 fragile ornamental plates I bought in England and nursed [in a duffle bag] all the way through Turkey and back to the states: I'm attached to those images, if nothing else because they were so hard to keep intact. And one of my favorites is the portrait of Harry [Henry] "Hotspur" Percy---who was hotheaded, impulsive, and died that way in the Battle of Shrewsbury: lifted his visor to yell at somebody and got an arrow in the face. He set one king on the throne and tried to remove another, and had a rep for being difficult to deal with. He's always portrayed as a young, handsome crazy guy. What fun! I also turned up that my great-great grandfather was not a lawyer, but a sawyer: the original record indicates the person doing the transcription couldn't read the handwriting. A sawyer is a person who hand-saws lumber in the days before power saw mills.

3/19/08. Thursday. 108991. The tank is fine. We skated in the morning, and went off to Pullman---I was the one scheduled, but we switched patients on Dr. Shane and it was so good we did. He managed to get some relief for Jane's back that she says is marvelous. I didn't need it that bad and she really did need it, so that was to the good.

3/21/08. Friday. 108991. The rink is having an Oldtimers Hockey Match and it sounds like a good day not to go in. So we stayed here to get some things done and for me to get some writing done. We did go out to the grocery---and I swear to you Mercury must be in retrograde, as the astrology buffs put it: all communication goes to blazes, everyone you meet on the road is dangerous, and the stores are messed up beyond belief. I went to get salmon---the gal who orders the fish for Fred Meyers hadn't ordered any for Good Friday, because she thought Lent was over so everybody would be tired of fish---and the gal at the counter was going bananas with people wanting fish. I hate codfish. But that's what we got. I'll figure how to cook it somehow.

3/22/08. Saturday. 109221. Sharon came over. I spent the morning trying to get the main computer backed up, and trying to get the right software to back us up on the whole disk. I think I'm going with Acronis True Image 11---but I have rarely dealt with a company as disorganized and screwed up. Suffice it to say the mess was SO bad, the company itself told us to order their software from Amazon: it was impossible for their company to get the mess sorted out and it was simpler just to cancel the order---oh, but we'd have to do that, if we'd just call the company that handles their internet sales...do you get the picture? >After all this craziness, Sharon came over and we sat, had chicken from the Swinging Door, had frozen yogurt, a bottle of wine, and watched the skating World Championship. We could not BELIEVE the outcomes. I want to see a breakdown of why who did what, because admittedly under the new judging system you have to look sharp, and edges count during takeoff, but I just do not believe certain performances weren't better than the ones that won. I'm going to have to go to the USFSA site and see if I can find the actual blow-by-blow scores.

3/23/08. Sunday. Easter. 109221. I got at least the personal taxes organized. It wasn't as bad this time with an office, with real filing cabinets, and room to move. I was so tired of filing things in plastic bags in cardboard boxes. I started in at the crack of before-dawn and sipped coffee and hunted files, backing up zealously, because the main computer is about to have a motherboard failure, and I can't depend on it staying alive. It freezes spontaneously every thirty minutes or so. I was slopping about in my houserobe, rolled the office chair over the hem, caught it, while reaching for something, managed to turn the chair over and hit the edge of the desk with my upper arm: the bruises are going to be spectacular. I race around glassy ice at high speeds and collect bruises leaning to get into a filing cabinet. At least I didn't pull that over on me.

3/24/08. Monday. 110832. Spent at least the better part of an hour on the phone with Social Security: I'm at that age. And the documentation they sent me along with the original interview transcript denied my medical insurance, fondly known as Medicare. Took a phone call to straighten out their wording, which it turns out doesn't mean spit. Oh, no, we don't mean that. We have nothing to do with that, actually. Arrgh! >Then we're just trying to get the place recovered from the new glitchup with the main computer, which is still glitched. I did get our personal taxes ready to be mailed to our accountant---major job, that. I can't do the corporate taxes: it's a long story, but say our software is firmly tied to the fouled-up computer and the other version of the software on the good computer can't open the files, which are too 'advanced' for it. Twice arrgh!> Got some work done, thank goodness: because this ending sets up the other two books of the arc, I have to be careful what I lay down. > For relaxation I went chasing down Jane's ancestry: not only is she related [sort of] to Francis Drake the privateer, she's related to Richard de Fitchemont, one of the 25 barons who corralled King John [one of my ancestors] and made the rascal sign the Magna Carta. And of course once you're in that little country club, piece of cake to chase at least one of your ancestors back to Charlemagne, which we both can, since another of my ancestors, Humphrey de Bohun, was another of the 25. I'm going to make this all into a book---not a for-sale book, but a family book with commentary on these various folk. It's just stunning the ironies that crop up. If somebody'd explained to de Fitchemont and de Bohun, while they were waiting to snare John, that their descendants would be rooming together on the other side of the world writing science fiction, and that one of them was related to John [de Bohun knew that bit], and that half of the county of Essex, where they both hung out, would be emigrating to the other side of the world, too, into a place called Virginia...they'd have taken a swing at the bearer of that news, for sure. So far both our accounts goes back to the mid-700's AD, which is pretty neat. Took all that just to create us. The name of the site again, for those who might want to give their own try at this, is ancestry.com and take the 14 day free trial. You can do a lot during that 14 days. It's the best thing since video games.

3/25/08. Tuesday. 110832. Pure chaos. I decided not to skate today, because Jane's not, and there's so much to do here. The main computer is down, she's trying to fix it, and I'm trying to work, but it's just too chaotic. We took off for the chiropractor's office, and Jane got a really good treatment. Mine...helped some. But the doc taped up my back like you wouldn't believe---and I don't know how I'm going to skate tomorrow.

3/26/08. Wednesday. 110832. Chaos continues. I tried skating, but nearly killed myself: without the shoulders able to move, just not a good thing, so I got right off the ice and went shopping instead. We got the personal taxes off to our accountant, did some mailing, and in general, we're just exhausted. My back hurts: the tape holds it in one particular position and now I remember the particular joys of wearing a cast. Stiffness. Ow. Ow. Ow. Sleep last night wasn't easy. Plus Ysabel thinks she can sit on me, and that just makes it worse. You'll note, however, that I am doing better about updating the blog. Less elaborate entries, but more often. It's snowing again---38 degrees, and it's still sticking and whitening the ground. Welcome to spring! I'm wanting to get some work done, I'm so close to finishing this book. And we're trying to get back on our fish diet. I tried to cook salmon a couple of days ago, but it had gone bad, and one bite persuaded me I needed to cook something else. Shall we say I'm changing the recipe tonight? Don't want that taste again soon. But it does help us lose weight.

3/27/08. Thursday. 111273. I'm off the ice, still, and we had to turn in the main computer for repair, did I mention? So it's offline, off getting a new motherboard and chip. Fortunately I'm not offline: the house net stands firm. I'm working, is all.

3/28/08. Friday. 112139. The book is finished! It didn't end where I thought it would, but that's all right: what would have been there will be in the next book, which I'm starting very soon now. Still no main computer, so I can't print it out---well, I could, but the last time I tried to navigate the tangle in the office to plug in my computer directly to the printer, I leaned, tipped over the office chair, hit the edge of the desk and still have a fist-sized bruise on my arm, so I'll wait to print until Monday or so when we get the big computer back. My back is still taped up and I am not risking going on the ice.

3/29/08. Saturday. 112832. Just had an emergency call from Shejidan---the website, not the capital. Seems the message board crashed, and they're working hard trying to find the problem. I'm asked to relay that they will be back online soon, but in the meantime, don't panic. The Assassins' Guild has been called, and they hope to have a solution soon. Here on planet Earth, specifically Spokane, it's, would you believe, snowing hard. We have about four inches on the ground that didn't melt, and more is possible over the next several days. I went out yesterday and watered that rhododendron we have sitting in a pot awaiting planting, so I hope it will come through the cold snap fine. We went out to celebrate last night and it was snowing aggregates of snowflakes, which makes really a very fast snow cover. I joked that was snowing 'fully assembled' snow, and sure enough, it did cover. And blowing hard. They told us to stay out of the mountain passes this weekend and they were serious. Spring---not yet, up here.

3/30/08. Sunday. 00000. Haven't actually started work on the new book yet---taking a couple of days off to catch my breath. Sorting the boxes from the move last March...got most of the books on the shelves, though all out of order. And a lot of stuff awaiting a garage sale. Meanwhile all the snow from yesterday melted by late evening, but today a new storm replaced it all. I'm really missing the printer, which means getting the main computer back. Sigh. My historical research has turned up the fact Jane and I both are descended from Hugh le Despenser, the baddest man in England, who came to a really bad end: he was the king's lover, was a pirate, was the king's lover again, and finally, after assaulting several ladies and breaking the arms of one, was chopped up in little bits at his execution...the king himself was done in fairly shortly afterward, but you can pretty well blame old Hugh for the king's plight. Several others of my relatives in this phase of research have turned up losing their heads---a few officially at Tower Hill, one without benefit of trial, since he had really annoyed Henry IV and had gotten caught on the battlefield---he'd been conniving with Percy Hotspur, another of my "plate" relatives, to overthrow Henry, so Henry had a reason to be annoyed. This history thing is down right fun at this remove. I turn out to be related to Alfred Lord Tennyson and Boyle, of Boyle's Law, for those of you who do chemistry, as well as Peel, who invented the modern police force. Neat.

3/31/08. Monday. 00000. But thinking. We finally got back on the ice for an extended session. I wanted a lesson. Jane wanted one. But it's spring break and the ice was crowded, including with juvie hockey-skated types who don't have the skills, except to cut up the ice in a dangerous way, or scrape the surface into snow that can make a new skater fall face-first, no kidding: it abruptly slows down those rental skates and can pitch a novice onto the picks, and bam! face first onto the ice. I'm at least getting to where I can skate over the damage they do. I made a new discovery: since moving my blades inward, I can now do a one-footed slalom--this means tilting the foot inward to produce an arc and then tilting upright and outward to produce the opposite arc. A serpentine on the ice. Experienced skaters can do huge sweeping ones of 6 feet or so that really rip the ice at high speed, but I'm just managing to do it barely, at about a foot of arc in either direction. The left foot is still cranky: I'm going to be sure those blades are exactly right. But this is the best test of good blade setting that I can imagine. That tilt is easy if your blade is where it needs to be. Impossible if it isn't. I worked on it for an hour, in an hour and a half on the ice, longest I've managed in months. This had my butt aching from unusual exercise. Knees are holding fine. I have a charley horse on the butt. Both sides. We agreed with Sharon and Kay to meet at our house, watch our recordings of Men's Worlds, then go to supper---our 3-day hiatus from the diet. So we did. And I couldn't stay awake. Now, I'm due a celebration for the book, and did have 3 glasses of wine, but I couldn't stay awake before that. It's the exertion from skating, no question: it does that to me when I'm not acclimated to it. After Sharon left, I went to bed, and slept right around til 5:30 in the morning, which is my usual get-up time. Jane, meanwhile, spent a righteous evening putting the computer back into the house net and getting software straightened out. I've got to be virtuous. And the fact I started thinking about the new book, and came up with a title...and that the book has started to flow...is a sign of impending virtue.

4/1/08. Tuesday. 1359. Starting to outline. And that's no April Fool's joke. The book title is Deceiver. And that's all I know at the moment. We've decided that this weekend is the best window we have to get over to Seattle to visit Jane's brother---because at Dr. Shane's office, we ran into a nice young man who told us that SAM, the Seattle Art Museum, is hosting a major exhibit of the Louvre's collection of Roman art. We have to go. And for a project of Jane's, we need to revisit the Seattle Underground. So we investigated and we've called Jane's brother to ask if we can come. Affirmative. We've told Sharon, and she's interested---didn't think she could make it.

4/2/08. Wednesday. 1359. Sharon says she's got a cheap ticket, and Jane's brother says come ahead, so we will. We got a day in skating, at least, but it's just not happening. We have packing to do.

4/3/08. Thursday. 1359. We got to Seattle on a rainy day, and Jane and I set to work on the emotionally difficult task of going through her mother's belongings, which have been in storage. We moved boxes, a lot of boxes. Jane is having some trouble with her knee, and of course, with the nature of what we're doing. But it has to be done.

4/4/08. Friday. 1359. More sorting and re-boxing, and Jane is exhausted. I thought I'd be able to update from Jane's brother's net, but it keeps going down. I think we've got that fixed, but I have to help Jane. It's raining, it's cold, and it's miserable over there. Another of Jane's brothers has shown up: we're trying to figure where people are going to sleep, because Sharon is flying in.

4/5/08. Saturday. 1359. Sharon arrived. We had breakfast at Tommy's, our favorite Renton breakfast place. Jane's knee is kicking up, badly, so I got her a knee brace at Freddy Myers, and we went to the Underground adult tour---which tells you all the salacious bits. We had a great time, Jane's brothers and Sharon and I. We had after-tour drinks at Doc Maynard's pub, and another round at the Market Cafe across the street, over on Yessler, which was one of the starting points of the tour, and bills itself as one of the original restaurants in the district. A fire, you may know, burned down Seattle, and half the rebuilding got buried when they brought the cliffs down in a disputed 'leveling' of the streets. If you're ever in Seattle, be sure to save one evening for the Underground, and don't forget to get the book "Sons of the Profits," which tells early Seattle history. If you like pirates, scoundrels, crooked deals and enterprising madams, plus a riotous narrative style, you'll love it.

4/6/08. Sunday. 1359. Jane's on her second knee brace. And a good thing we got the second brace. We went to the Roman exhibit at SAM, which is downtown again, and while we had an easy time getting in, we ran into the line upstairs---they mean it about the start times, and we have one o'clock tickets. So there we are...we got in, and I was surprised by the scale of what they brought over from France: it apparently took 6 weeks just to set it up. Roman sculpture of the imperial sort tended to be life-and-a-half to twice-life in scale, meaning tall, massive, and heavy. They had the imperial family---Augustus, Livia, Tiberius, Caligula, young Nero, not the older, and various ordinary Romans of life scale, portraits intended to be seen close up---including some of the imperial family. The Roman skill with portrait busts is breath-taking. You can see them in books, but up close when you can see the detail, and get the real 3-d effect by walking around them---amazing. This was somebody's grandfather, this was mama. This was a pretty girl, a very earnest young boy...there were the 'personal' exhibits, the jewelry, the set of toiletry items; the overdone---the casket with hunting scenes; the tragic---the child's coffin with the portrayal of a little boy's short life: he evidently died at about eight or nine, to judge by the activities: being with his mother, driving a silly goat cart, saying goodbye to his father...that's the usual death scene on a Roman or Greek tomb: the deceased stands ready for a journey and bids farewell to someone seated. They have some new finds. What I found shocking about the Louvre exhibit is the lack of attribution. In the Capitoline Museum, in Rome, there's notation about where the items came from, but a lot of these things were scooped up by Napoleon Bonaparte as loot. We have no idea where a lot of them came from...but probably from places where previous Renaissance-era pot-hunters had dragged them. Michaelangelo, in his lifetime, saw the Laocoon statue pulled from the muck of a building site in Rome, and was so taken by the sight he used the massive torso as the bodies of God and Adam in the famous "Creation of Adam" segment of the Sistine ceiling. A villa on Capri has Roman statuary all over it---no attribution. People just didn't write these things down---unless, like Michaelangelo, they kept diaries. And an artifact lifted out of context is much less than it could have been---but good that we have them, good that Napoleon saved them, unlike his predecessors in conquest, including Roman general Mummius, who took statues from Corinth and lost them in a shipwreck in harbor [we found them: beautiful bronzes]---and the Conquistadors, who melted down the Inca gold and burned their books as 'pagan.' It took us 4-5 hours to walk through it all, and Jane's knees are really suffering.

4/7/08. Monday. 1359. Drove back from Seattle---Sharon in the back seat with the cats, and me reading. I got through another 75 pages, which, let me tell you, does it for the throat. The text is rougher than I thought, but in a week I'll have it cleaned up. I'm assured Cajeiri is in good form. We don't think we're going to be able to skate tomorrow. We have a chiropractic appointment, and Jane is hoping Dr. Shane can do something for this knee of hers. The check we were hoping for did come, and we have to get that into the bank.

4/8/08. Tuesday. 1359. Well, we had the chiropractic appointment. And no, Dr. Shane can't do anything for Jane's knees. Ice and rest, ice and rest. Jane's afraid she's going to have to have surgery on the worst one and she's not happy about that.

4/9/08. Wednesday. 1359. We're laying out of skating, trying to get Jane's knees into shape---it's slowly improving. Meanwhile I have to install the financial software on the repaired computer and start attacking the corporate taxes. Getting that software on took me three hours, including calls to the software company. It is a bear. And I had to move all the company files.

4/10/08. Thursday. 1359. I'm reading the rest of the book to Jane in the evenings, working on entering the changes during the day. So I'm not getting a thing done on the new book, just editing the one I need to send in.

4/11/08. Friday. 1359. More of the same. Jane's knee is very slowly improving. I've been able to persuade her not to carry 40 lb boxes. She doesn't want me to do it. But somebody has to. We need to get the house in order. Jane's brothers are coming to visit in a couple of weeks.

4/12/08. Saturday. 1359. Just a little ways from the end of the edit. I'll finish up today. I'm waffling on the new book title. That's normal. But meanwhile I've got to get the taxes in order. So that will take up a certain part of the weekend. I should have Conspirator ready to mail by Monday.

4/13/08. Sunday. 1483. Working on the outline for the next book...

4/14/08. Monday. 1722. I did get everything mailed. Conspirator, the taxes, etc. Plus a few boxes of books for Selina.

4/15/08. Tuesday. 1826. Tax day officially. I've gotten everything in, and all is well. I'm calmer on tax day than I usually am. It's an odd feeling: I'm usually up to my neck in figures that don't make sense.

4/16/08. Wednesday. 1937. For the last several weeks it's been such an effort to get to the rink. Jane's having to start over for the third time—this time new blades and new balance are the reason—and I have a real appreciation for what she's been through. First it was bad boots, then a change in boots, then this—not to mention the knee injury. Sometimes it gets hard to keep going and practicing until you wear a single track in the ice, over and over and over, and I'm stuck at that stage, and Jane is stuck at that stage, and it seems as if there's never any real progress—hasn't been, for three months. We can do what we do—only Jane has had to backtrack—and not much else. It's depressing. And skating is what we use to cheer ourselves up. Bad, I tell you, when it becomes a source of frustration. But giving up? Not when you consider the shape we were in when we started this. We'd start getting old if we gave up, and we're not doing that.

4/17/08. Thursday. 1989. Skating. More practice on back edges. Sigh.

4/18/08. Friday. 2077. They're tearing up our street again—not where we live, but between us and downtown. Bummer. That'll be messed up until September. Our poor little latte stand gave us a flyer explaining the repair schedule, and when they'll be shut down and when they hope they'll be open again. Things rumble as the big trucks go by and traffic is stacked up on the roads that ARE open.

4/19/08. Saturday. 2182. Working on the new book. A lot of outlining, and some progress. I have a pretty clear vision where this one is going.

4/20/08. Sunday. 2318. Working...trying to clean up the house. We desperately need to have a garage sale. Company coming has got us looking at the stacks of stuff, and it's so depressing. We hauled furniture—hauled the big heavy former mattress into the house, and down into the basement bedroom, and it's risky for Jane's knees, so I tried to take the weight, and now I'm sore and limping.

4/21/08. Monday. 2575. We laid out of skating. We're both sore. And we got a call from Chip...his friend's mother died, the funeral is on his birthday, the day he'd planned to be here. So the visit this weekend is postponed until next. Poor Chip.

4/22/08. Tuesday. 3638. Skating again, and I got a lesson. I'm still shaky. Seems as if anytime I try to do what I actually can do in practice in front of witnesses, like my coach, I screw it. We're still cleaning the house. Jane has done a marvelous job downstairs: you can actually find things.

4/23/08. Wednesday. 3822. More practice on the ice and a bit of progress. We're still shifting boxes and trying to clean things. Our intended garage sale is screwed because of road construction downhill reducing traffic to near zero. I'm trying to cook. I keep screwing that up. Such a day.

4/24/08. Thursday. 4931. Skating. Another lesson, and Joan swears I'm getting it, but I don't feel as if I'm getting it. But she told me something right at the last that may really be valuable—swinging my skate-side arm all the way over frontwise to the other side of the body as I shove off. That seems to be incredibly more stable.

4/25/08. Friday. 5016. Skating. And a miracle. When I do that arm-swing, all of a sudden, the feeling that I'm falling over backward just goes away. Counter-balance! It's not a fast swing, not even a hard one, but a steady push of the arm to the other side of the body, and all of a sudden the falling-feeling goes away, because you are solidly balanced.

4/26/08. Saturday. 6810. We are now sure that Chip and Roger are coming next Thursday, so we are back at house-arranging. I desperately need to get to the fish store and I need to do a water change. Green algae is starting to grow inside the tank, and that is a bad sign that my water is contaminated with phosphate: the reverse osmosis filter is going out, and phosphate is getting through. So other things could. The frogspawn is not looking good at all. I urgently need to do something. But I've got so many other things to do. For one thing, we haven't entered credit card charges in forever, and I've got accounting to sort out, to get the corporate accounts off to the accountant who actually does the stuff, because the corporate tax deadline is looming.

4/27/08. Sunday. 7392. Working.

4/28/08. Monday. 7703. Skating. Practicing backward arcs, over, and over, and over. The book is going really well. I'm happy with that. I feel a little progress with the skating, but I still have trouble shoving off without screwing my balance. So I practice. I wear tracks in the ice that would throw Wayne Gretsky. But I'm gaining on it. Jane, meanwhile, is having a bad time---allergies may figure in it. The knee is slowly getting better, but the rest of her is just lower than a snake's belly. We're hoping she's not going to have trouble in this climate.

4/29/08. Tuesday. 8302. Skating. A really good day skating, as happens, and a lesson with Joan. I'm really truly beginning to get my backward-arc balance, and like so many things, it's essentially simple—a matter of training the body to be in a certain position and stable. Carry the same-side (as the foot) hand on around in a half arc as you shove off, and keep having the same-side hand cross the body axis: as I said, it provides a needed counterbalance that keeps you from feeling as if you're apt to fall over backward. It also firms up the muscles that hold the body core in line. All important. I'm very excited. All of a sudden things I've practiced in vain for months are coming into focus all at once—the backward arcs on a line. The waltz-eight pattern. The runout from the waltz jump. From the three-turn. Big stuff. All of a sudden I may look like a skater.

4/30/08. Wednesday. 8721. Skating is going so much better. We're still cleaning the place. And I'm getting a little work done. The story is going really well. But I'm going to have to take some time off for house guests.

5/1/08. Thursday. 9189. Chip and Roger arrived. They came over in the big van, and brought some family heirlooms over to Jane. For the most part, we just sat around and talked, went out to the Swinging Door for supper...I'm not trying to cook. I tend to use a lot of hot spice, and many of the people up here in the north aren't used to peppers, so I rarely offer my cooking to people who can be set alight by a jalapeno or two. We managed to fit two guests in, but it's dicey, trying to accommodate extra sleepers.

5/2/08. Friday. 9189. Dinner at Anthonys'...we had pancakes at the Swinging Door for breakfast, and I was just too over-sugared. The lads went off to fly a radio plane: I ordinarily like to get involved in whatever's going on, but the sugar just hit me hard and I didn't want to move. I live on kind of a plain diet: lot of protein, some carb, fruit, veggies, but very little processed sugar, and I very, very rarely eat or drink anything that's got a whole load of processed sugar. Syrup, in this case—hit my system like a ton of bricks. By afternoon I was shaking so badly I couldn't do any fine task, even type accurately. I kept pouring down protein, like milk, cheese, finally got my system calmed down. And then the feature of the day—dinner at a spiff restaurant. Which was about the last thing I needed, I'll tell you. I was so stuffed I didn't want to move.

5/3/08. Saturday. 9189. Breakfast at our place. Dinner at Scotty's, early, because I had to get some fish supplies and the store is in the Valley, where Scotty's is. So that worked out: it's one of our favorite places, and the lads liked it quite well. Mostly I worked on the genealogy stuff, there being too much activity around to get writing done, and just printed out the family tree—a laborious process. It's huge. Goes back some 62 generations. I do NOT do anything with the lateral relations: these are all direct-descent stuff. And I started purging the new ro/di filter and am getting some water run—that's a 12 hour process, to get 32 gallons of really pure water. We're going to get a longer line and route the wastewater from that process into the washing machine, so as not to waste it. It's good for all purposes except the tank.

5/4/08. Sunday. 9189. Bloomsday—the big all-city 7 mile run—which we didn't do, but Sharon did: she's done a fantastic number of them, into the high 20's. Jane and I swear there is no exercise more dangerous to the joints than walking. We have both seriously hurt ourselves doing Bloomsday and we have resolved that the last time we did it, that would be the last. We stick to the ice, which is low-impact unless you fall down, and where we have never been seriously hurt. Walking is infallible—for injuries. Meanwhile Chip and Roger headed home after a Swinging Door breakfast amid all the traffic and the Mariners have had a really wretched day. We, however, sat around and rested after our weekend of eating too much and exercising too little. After they left we did, however, attacked the big stack of dead videotapes, betas, etc, that we just need to throw out. We've boxed some of the better commercial ones we can sell and culled out the family videos we need to convert to DVD. So we have created even more space in the basement.

5/5/08. Monday. 9189. Quite a day. Cinco de Mayo...we'd forgotten about that, remembered only when we got back to the Swinging Door to catch supper. Met with Sharon after her dental appointment—and she is very stiff and limping: Bloomsday. And while we were having supper, the news came on to announced that Spokane has won the 2010 National Figure Skating Championships venue competition for a second time—a record for a small city—so it will be back. I don't know if we will go to the whole thing again, but we will certainly go to the men's competion (our favorite). We got the cats vaccinated today—rabies and feline viruses...nice vet, too: Ysabel likes him, which is a first. She's bitten every other vet who's ever worked on her. And then the capper for the day: we're sitting there watching telly and got a call from Selina and Lynn that I accidentally mailed Conspirator to them, not to my agent. I can't believe it. I've never done anything that careless with a manuscript. To my recollection I gave it and other packages to the nice older lady who runs the back-of-store postoffice at the hardware—or did we give it to the post office? Heck, I think we took it to the post office. I think they screwed up the labels. I refuse to think I was that wrongheaded. At least it went to somebody who knew what to do. They're mailing it on to my agent with my return address. What a mess!

5/6/08. Tuesday. 9189. Home, seeing to cats, etc. Trying to clean stuff up. At least the sprinkling system finally deigned to cut on. I have it running for only 5 minutes, and possibly that wasn't even enough time to fill the lines before it cut off again, prior to this. I winterized the system myself last fall, and it's been a bit of an adventure getting it started this spring: the brand is Irritrol, and it has the hardest, most complicated control and scheduling setup of any system on the market—not so bad once you figure it, but the number of possibilities is huge. Last fall I blew out the lines by the simple process of shutting down the individual lines to the two halves of the sprinkler system, letting it run dry for a week, then unscrewing a small brass tap in each line that allows air to get in. I reversed that procedure and got the outside water cut back on (it also shuts down the outside faucets) and had the water on, but, I don't know—it was disappointing it didn't cut right on. But it's working now, and with our new blue spruce tree (expensive) and our new rhododendron (not), not to mention those roses we fought to get ordered and delivered last year, including World Peace, and my iris, we want to be sure the water is adequate.

5/7/08 Wednesday. 9189. Big scare with Ysabel this morning. She'd kind of laid about all yesterday, the day after the shots, not surprising, and so did Efanor. But she sleeps beside me on my bed, and she just didn't move all night. This morning she wouldn't get up, not even for food, nor drink, nor her brushing, which is her absolute favorite thing. I set her on the ground, and she halfway fell—wouldn't drink, even being brought water. So we called the vet, and took her straight in. What I'd found on the internet with reaction to rabies shots wasn't encouraging—things like neural and kidney damage. The vet, however, said sometimes a shot will trigger a breakout of any lowgrade infection and they wanted to run a test or two. Sure enough, bladder infection. So I get to give Miss Cuisinart doses of medication twice daily. A little antinflammatory and a sub-cute dose of fluid and she was feeling better. She even ate a few bites when she got home. So Ysabel is being pampered, and I'm very relieved it's nothing worse, like a reaction. A bladder infection can be cured. I plan on buying extra bandaids for the dosing.

5/8/08. Thursday. 9189. I didn't get much done yesterday—the Ysabel thing had me rather rattled. But she took her meds last night and even this morning. She's feeling better and moving around on her own. That's a great relief. Efanor wants to play and can't understand that she's definitely not in the mood. But I'm around to protect her, and she's doing a whole lot better. Thank goodness we got right on it. I spent the day futzing with the genealogy stuff. You wouldn't believe the bollixed-up mess in the history of the Charlemagne family. The Merovingians, between maiming and assassinating one another, couldn't keep their records straight, and when you get into the history of their ancestors, you're right into fantasy. I expect to find Adam and Eve in that tree any day now. Ausbert the Senator and Clovis the Riparian are the last two I trust to have been semi-real. Worse than that, Jane and I are both related to them, and they intermarry a lot. A lot! That means every line of a huge segment of the tree is full of Merovingians and Carolingians, each one of which has about a dozen names. Take Bertha of Kent, who is Bertha Kent, who lives in France. She's also Bertha OF Kent, Blithhild, Blithildis, and Fleur Blanche de....(the white flower of something or another). Why Kent? Because this is the time when the Saxons (her grandfathers) were pouring in on the Angles in England to make up the Anglo-Saxons, whom our OTHER relatives, Vikings who were married into the French coast, the sons of Hrolf (Rollo) etc, invaded, while some of our OTHER-OTHER Viking relatives were up in Northumbria (north end of England) marrying in with the Scots, ultimately—and so did some of the fugitive Anglo-Saxons after they'd lost down at Hastings. ONLY...it turns out that the people running the database have confused the real Bertha of Kent, known as St. Bertha of Kent to the English, who is the daughter of the Merovingian king Charibert I of Paris—and married to Aethelstane of Kent, mother of several Kentish children...with Berthildis who is the wife of Ausbert the Senator, whose real name is Ansbert; and Berthildis was, (I think) the daughter of Claribert. Unless I've gotten them both mixed up with Bertrade of Laon...who MAY be the daughter of Claribert, but not Charibert. Databases are marvelous things, but because this one operates like a Ouiji board and takes input from EVERYBODY, skilled or not, knowledgeable or not, it's prone to an echoing-gallery of errors. This is a real good example. Somebody got an ID crossed, and now only honest history books (and to a certain extent, Wikipedia) can straighten it out. It's like chasing things in circles. But what's represented in the historic record is solid: there IS a connection between the Kentish folk, ultimately the Mercians and West Saxons (Wessex)...and the pattern of movement of people, regardless of the names, holds true. You get beaten down toward Kent, you run north into Northumbria in England or over into France, you marry whom you can to get safety—and nobody seemed able to tame Northumbria, though there was fighting back and forth across the border with Scotland: the fact the same family was on both sides of that line puts a whole different slant on Scottish relations with Northumbria. No enemy worse than a relative who feels put-upon. And during my days teaching ancient history, I never really had a good chance to get into the dark ages stuff—which this is. The real dark ages. Look up Brunhilda (not the one in the opera) in Wikipedia. There was a character. And I'd always heard of the wreck of the White Ship, but never understood what it meant---the list of really critical people who were lost on that ship is amazing. It really was the Titanic of its day. Meanwhile...recall that Viking chap in the Tony Curtis/Kurt Douglas movie The Viking, the one that died in the wolf pit? It seems to have been a snake pit, or the like, in Northumbria, and after fathering a googillion children, old Ragnar Eysteinsson turns out to be an ancestor, too, so we now have to feel sorry for the old guy, who seems to have been one of those Vikings who had settled at York. If you all get tired of these little vignettes (as bad as visiting somebody and having to watch their home movies) let me know; but I'm enjoying looking this stuff up. Oh, that's the other thing: we lost our address book in the computer crash, as well as a bunch of mail, so if you're waiting for something from me, do let me know. Everything is in the kind of mess you may well imagine.

5/9/08. Friday. 10283. Packing. Mostly packing.We're off for our trip to Dallas to visit my mother and brother and nieces, and we're up to our ears in suitcases...and we would have been gone already, but had to delay because of Ysabel. She's doing great now, and I'm confident she'll be fine on the trip—if not, we know vets along the way, but I wouldn't risk it if we weren't doing well with the medication: she's been wonderful about taking it—it's liquid; and she's been a real doll about it.

5/10/08. Saturday. 10283. We took out on the longest leg of our trip, starting from Spokane at 6:30AM and ending in Casper, Wyoming, at the good old Motel 6, which takes pets and sits across from Banjo Bob's Barbecue—as good as it gets. But we thought our Garmin had bit the big one: it kept telling us absolutely crazy routes and protesting to us about “a better route is available”...all the way to Bozeman, Montana. Finally we figured it, as the apparent route would take us through the park...as the crow flies. So we checked the settings, and the poor thing had been told to find the “most direct route”, meaning surface streets—and it had been plotting us as direct a line as possible through the back streets of everyplace between Spokane and Bozeman—which was why our arrival time was way later than we'd figured. We reset it and relaxed: plenty of time to get to the barbecue.

5/11/08. Sunday. 10283. Driving from Casper, WY through Denver, and on through Pueblo, Trinidad, CO, and Raton, NM via I-25. We stop for the night at our favorite small hotel, the Inn on the Santa Fe Trail...but Blackjack's Grill, our wonderful restaurant, is closed on Sundays, so we had to eat at the local Italian place—we don't do well with onions, and Jane really doesn't do well with garlic powder, so we were in a fix. At least we survived it on a lot of Reglan and other meds.

5/12/08. Monday. 10283. Long drive with a stop for the first Whataburger...the cats got excited as we entered the parking lot: we think they can smell it. Can we has Whatachken? Pleeze? We had supper at Hanks in McKinney, then went on in to Mum's and settled in for the stay.

5/13/08. Tuesday. 10283. Mum isn't as able to get about as she was, but she had some errands to run and we insisted on the first one she use the wheelchair—a good thing: we were exhausted from the trip ourselves. We did go out for dinner, and hang, no, she wasn't about to use that chair—Hanks wasn't as good a place for Mum, because of the noise level, but we tried.

5/14/08. Wednesday. 10283. I decided to try cooking: but I couldn't locate any of Mum's spices, and she didn't know where they were. It was kind of interesting stew/pork roast, but it was edible and there was a lot of it.

5/15/08. Thursday. 10283. Our last day in Dallas: we took Mum shopping, and did get her a couple of things. And we went out for our usual dinner at the Texas Roadhouse, which is convenient and a good place that can please almost anybody. Then we began packing up again.

5/16/08. Friday. 10283. Back on the road. We had an easy day today, back to Las Vegas and this time Blackjacks was open—but to our extreme dismay, they've gone ordinary. They must have lost their chef, because it's good, but it's just ordinary food. Sigh.

5/17/08. Saturday. 10283. Going north—the drive up along the long stretch to Raton produced one bit of fun: we collect large rocks for the garden, and we like to have them from locales where we've been. We had admired and wondered at the origins of the massive limestone cap on the tablelands around Las Vegas—white, ergo limestone, and probably from a coral reef somewhen back in the days of the Sundance Sea—that's way prehistoric. We realized it's probably the same stratum that produces Castle Rock in Colorado (interspersed with volcanic ash and lava flows from the period in which the New Mexico volcanos were active) and maybe the same as you find up in northern Colorado near Cheyenne, Wyoming, where limestone hoodoos are very striking and photogenic. We name each of our rocks by locale (a bit of whimsy, not insanity—) and this particularly nice 2x2 slab we prised up from the roadside earth is Lulu the Las Vegas Limestone. We have our piece of that nice formation, and a memento of our favorite waystop. We also have Carlos of Raton Pass, Missy, the lovely green serpentinite from near Missoula, and Bubbles, the rock we got after our canoe overset in the Spokane River. We got to Casper on schedule, had a nice supper at Banjo Bob's, and turned in. Jane's having a bit of trouble with her leg hurting, and it looks as if I'll be driving tomorrow.

5/18/08. Sunday. 10283. Home again—and a really hellish trip. Jane was in incredible pain—the leg was really flaring up, and if it hadn't been a Sunday, I'd have suggested we try for a clinic. Painkillers wouldn't touch it. I drove—the longest leg of the whole trip—all but 2 hours, that Jane drove, but she's in such pain it's not really safe—so I took over again, and drove all the way in, interspersed with stops to let her walk about. She had the seat flattened so as to lie down, but it was just really, really bad pain.

5/19/08. Monday. 10283. We thought we were going to have to take Jane to the doctor, and put in a call to get an emergency appointment with the chiropractor—but she had a lightbulb moment and took a magnesium pill. 250 Mg, and within 20 minutes the pain just stopped. Mark that one in your reference books. So we'll go to the chiropractor tomorrow. Today we are too tired to move.

5/20/08. Tuesday. 11731. We made it down to Dr. Shane the chiropractor—we're sore, but Jane's leg is so much better. We're frantically doing laundry and trying to straighten up one trip's packing into the next. We're convention-bound...hoping to do a few more conventions, now that we have a house and a secure place to leave things.

5/21/08. Wednesday. 12142. One day to skate—still working on the back edge arcs, but with encouraging success, now. We went over to Joan's to check on the fish she's still fish-sitting for us, to clean a little algae and do a little decorator consultation on the house she's prepping to rent. I got a little writing done, just to get back in touch with the book before I lose touch again this weekend—we have to go straight off to Missoula for Miscon.

5/22/08. Thursday. 12361. No chance to get any work done: we're packing for the convention this weekend, doing laundry, arranging things, and hoping not to forget anything.

Just a fast note, because I'm up to my ears in alligators. Received a phone call, sad news which may have prompted you to consult this site: Robert Asprin passed away while waiting for a car to pick him up to go to a convention: it was fitting, and a good way to go, if you have to. My deepest, deepest sympathies to his family and friends. For Bob---we used to meet at conventions in the years-ago and he'd borrow my guitar at filks. My memory is of a darkhaired and youngish Robert enjoying the cons to the max, which is, I think, the way he'd like all his readers to remember him.

On the local front, Ysabel has been taking her medicine like a trouper, and is herself again.

5/23/08. Friday. 12361. Headed out to Miscon, Missoula, Montana, with Sharon and the cats—we were going to leave them home, but we have to medicate Ysabel twice daily, so she had to be with us. We have a marvelous room—open the window and you're overlooking a lawn and a very noisy creek that makes a lovely sound to sleep by. We've never had such a nice hotel room, ever, and that includes some four star hotels. The hotel is Ruby's Convention Center, and if you're ever needing to spend the night in Missoula, this is where: they have no restaurant—you have to eat in the casino next door, or up or down the block, but the rooms and the staff are excellent. And there is a breakfast complimentary the next morning. It's raining—it looks to rain for the next several days, but that's ok. I'm having to wear the same shirt for several days—I bet on cooler and only packed one sweatshirt, which is the only thing I have to keep warm.

5/24/08. Saturday. 12361. Did a couple of panels, good panels; and then we had to change rooms: we have a handicapped room—luck of the draw—and somebody arrived who actually needs the wheelchair shower, so we packed up and moved next door: same wonderful creekside view. Wonderful room. We're resolved to come back next year. We're eating at the casino next door, which is incredibly smoky, and my sweatshirt is picking up the tobacco like a sponge. Ugh.

5/25/08. Sunday. 12361. I spent most of the day sitting at a table at the con and working on the genealogy printout, discovering people who died before they were born in the computer record, that kind of thing. I get to pacing at cons and decided the way to get through un-exhausted was to have something to keep me busy during times when I'm not. We've already reserved a room for 2009 Miscon. The same room—thanks to Chthulu Bob. We love it! I resolved to freeze and change shirts—the tobacco is just too much. Lovely con barbecue—a Miscon tradition, and just a lot of fun. Lot of people: Patty Briggs, Dragon, Maggie Bonham, Bill Warren, and us—good con. Next year the guest will be Stephen Brust. Sunday night we had a bring-your-towel wake for Douglas Adams and included Bob Asprin, who's remembered fondly in the region.

5/26/08. Monday. 12361. Did our last bit at Miscon and drove home—about 150 miles or so. The area is still flooded—doesn't affect I-90, but it's cut off some local roads: you can see others threatened. It's completely up to the breakwater top on the road on the far side of Lake Coeur d'Alene, and they've shut down the pedestrian bridge above the foot of the falls in Spokane itself. You'd be soaked to the skin if you attempted to cross it. Jane now has a painful rash—on the same leg that was giving her fits; and we've got it figured at least this one was due to the knee brace. So that's not such a mystery. We got home and had supper at the Swinging Door—Sharon was exhausted and took out for home to collapse; we got back to the house and collapsed, watched another dismal Mariners game and went to bed.

5/27/08. Tuesday. 12508. We're awake. That's as much as we can say. We're going to go out with Joan for a dinner, pick up our fighting fish and our mail and probably collapse again.

5/28/08 Wednesday. 13261 Still resting, trying to get work going.

5/29/08 Thursday. 14818. Back on the ice again, and trying to get organized—laundry, cleaning, all those things without which you can’t face the world. Did pretty well on the ice, all things considered.

5/30/08 Friday 15719. More of the same. We still haven’t heard from Sharon. We assume she’s sleeping.

5/31/08 Saturday. 15719. No word from Sharon. Worried about her. Tested fish tank...and oh, my gosh—the alkalinity, which should be, in a healthy tank, about 9.3-8.3—is 4.1. I’m not even bothering to test ph and calcium levels. The critters are healthy-looking, except the frogspawn, which when we got back from the long trip had looked very bad; and then the peppermint shrimp got all over it, and it popped its base on one head, and over all, it was dying. Well, now I know why. Two other euphyllia-class corals in the tank are going great, but the frog must be sensitive to the alkalinity. Which has to be fixed. I’m dropping the heaviest dose I dare of buffer into the tank daily. It has algae growth—from the ro/di water filtering unit, which had needed a new cylinder: lack of one had let phosphate from the drinking water supply get into my tank, and so I know what caused that. The big puzzle was the brownish fluffy growth on the glass, nasty stuff. Well, now I know. The alk had dropped, while the calcium supply stayed steady, and the calcium wasn’t being absorbed as it should. If you wonder what goes on in your body, take a look at the ocean: critters can absorb calcium when the ph is 7.9-8.3, maintained by a decent alkalinity, as per above, a calcium level of 400 or so, and 1200 magnesium. If that gets off, growth doesn’t happen properly. And boy, is mine off! The thing is, off as it is, it requires a very slow fix: I daren’t shock these creatures that have filled their tissues with this badly balanced water.

6/1/08 Sunday 16172. The alkalinity isn’t budging, which is how far the balance is off. An 80 gallon system (30 sump and 54 tank) can swallow a lot of buffer and not budge the alkalinity a lot. But I’m just going to dose daily and hope. Nothing is reacting in any way but positive.

6/2/08 Monday 17373 Back on the ice, and working on back edges. Again and again and again.

6/3/08 Tuesday 18288. The first hint the tank is responding to the buffer: we’ve made it to 5.8. I’m keeping at the skating—lesson with Joan, and getting steadier.

6/4/08 Wednesday 19213. More of the same.

6/5/08 Thursday 19381. Doing a lot of thinking. But making progress. There’s just going to be a lot of politics at the front of this book, but it has to be, or people just won’t understand what’s going on. I hope at least I’m making it entertaining politics, with a suitable number of assassinations and doublecrosses.

6/6/08 Friday 20173 Can’t believe it. The alkalinity is now reaching 6, and the frogspawn skeleton, covered in algae and used as a hotel by three micro brittle-stars, has all of a sudden put out 5 new heads. There’s been life huddling down in the depths of that bony structure, and given reason for hope, it’s putting out buds.

6/7/08 Saturday 22181. We’ve gotten to 6.3. And by now we’re getting quite worried about Sharon...we haven’t heard from her: we called, and she’s really tired, and sleeping. Hope she won’t come down with something.

6/8/08 Sunday 22181. At about 8 am we had a power out. Glitched the whole house. I went downstairs to administer more buffer and do a water test—and the sump had more water in it than it should—and the “down’ hose wasn’t pouring any more water into the sump—thank goodness. I started investigating and discovered the 300.00 Iwaki 100 pump, though running, had seized up and decoupled its impeller. All of which was to say—those pumps don’t grow on trees and can’t even be replaced without a 4 week delay. And a tank can die in hours without the pump going. I got myself together and went to the fish store in fond hope they had one in stock: no, no such luck. They did sell me a Mag 18, which should be able to push the water upstairs. I brought it home, took things apart, put it on (imagine lots of salt water and crud and plumbing fittings and wrenches and pliers and swearing while working in cramped spaces) and it didn’t work 5 minutes before IT quit. At this point Jane got into the act and pointed out the hose could be clogged. Well, the only thing going to push a clog out of the hose would be, yes, a running Iwaki 100. So we drained the whole sump, overturning its sandbed: (imagine 30 gallons of water that looks like the muddiest stinkiest creek you’ve ever fallen in now in a 32 gallon trashcan, while I now hand-scoop the nastiest smelliest sand and rock you can imagine out of the sump into a bucket, incidentally killing off innocent micro-crabs and the like and swearing the while: no way to save them. The whole system can die.) We have now lightened the acrylic sump enough that we can lift it at an angle so Jane can unscrew the Iwaki, which has its nose threaded through a bulkhead into the sump. Freeing the pump, we then attack it with screwdriver and extract the impeller box, but can’t get at the impeller. A phone call to the fish store proves, yes, just tap it, it should come apart. Well, it did. The impeller assembly inside—remember that brown gunk I was complaining about?—had electrostatically fused itself as pure calcium carbonate gunk to the surfaces of the impeller, and clogged all our hoses like hardening of the arteries. ThAT’s why the pump quit. So we look for a way to clean 15 feet of hose that is threaded through our living room floor. Did I mention I also found a snail blocking the impeller? The final insult that had stopped the system...so we remove snail. Jane brilliantly finds some ribbed black hose just large enough to fit into the other hose and is using it like a bottle-brush, cleaning out gunk you wouldn’t believe. I am using 2 gallons of vinegar to clean the pump guts. We work a long time at this. The clock which had read 0:00 since the power-out read 9:25 by the time we put the whole thing back together and turned it on. No joy. One final set of pipes connected to the tank itself. We disassembled those—which were actually clean—and found one lousy pointed snail shell serving as a perfect stop-valve to the T-joint where the two outlets reach the tank. We removed the snail and tried again. We were soaked in nasty water, the tank was completely cloudy with gunk (I completely despair of the frogspawn) and we headed out to eat...I wasn’t fixing dinner with those hands, no.

6/9/08 Monday 23465. Everything is still running, we are sore from all the running up and down stairs, and the frogspawn lives! I’ve resumed adding buffer, and so far, so good.

6/10/08 Tuesday 24818. Good lesson today. The tank suffered a ph setback from all the goings-on, but is back up into the 6's in alkalinity, and thanks to the fact my tank has two sandbeds (the sump and the main tank) the one sandbed kept the tank alive while the other was disrupted.

6/11/08 Wednesday 25731. Continuing with the buffer. Still haven't hit 7. But trying.

6/12/08 Thursday 27163 Business as usual.

6/13/08 Friday 29763. Word is there’s going to be 2 public skating sessions starting Monday and all the adults are agreeing to go to the second, later one. That way we can have more of our day unbroken. This will be a big help.

6/14/08 Saturday 30187. Heard from Sharon, and we agreed to meet for dinner tomorrow—turns out she’s been doing medical qualification paperwork and that’s what’s had her occupied for a week.

6/15/08 Sunday 34324.Sharon came over and we had a good time, poured some wine, had some ice cream (not in the same hour) and watched So You Think You Can Dance episodes off the Tivo. A good time had by all.

6/16/08 Monday 35144. Great skate—the first on the afternoon session, and it was glorious.

6/17/08 Tuesday. 36176. Another really good skate. We got the gang together and went out to Tomato Street for supper. Jane had gotten the long-threatened haircut, and we were kind of spiffed up...a good feeling after all that wallowing in salt water last week. I even got inspired to call Dell and make a second try at getting them to replace my broken, limping keyboard. Since Dell had some bad publicity about service problems, they’re trying hard to recover their image, and you could tell the difference—I got a sane, fluent person who understood my complaint (the last had tried to tell me a wornout palmrest key could be fixed by software) and ordered a new keyboard. Which, thanks to the fact I have a home-visit policy means they come to my house and I don’t have to schlep it anywhere or do it myself. I am so looking forward to a mouse key that works and a spacebar that works.

6/18/08 Wednesday 37222. I couldn’t skate today. I took a lesson, but my legs were shaking terribly on everything. I finally had to get off the ice. I don’t know what’s wrong—allergy, maybe. But it’s just nasty. And after waiting all day for the Dell repairman, he was a noshow. When he was officially late, I went onto Dell’s chat—and they found out the repair guy had left no phone number. Well, they said they’d put “expedition” on it—and when I got back to the locker room I had a phone call from the national service company in Las Vegas, who swore that I would get the guy tomorrow, no question. I guess that’s what Expedition means.

6/19/08 Thursday 38021. Today skating went much better—except the kid quotient: we did get a pack of young hockey players with attitude who just made life miserable for everybody, throwing gloves, which can kill somebody if they plunk one in front of a figure skater; we got off the ice a bit early, because the ice was crap and we decided to go to Tomato Street again. Which we did.

6/20/08 Friday 40417. NOW I know what’s wrong. I’ve got the shakes again, probably won’t skate today unless I can cure them with electrolyte balance stuff or vitamins or something: I’m allergic to something Tomato Street is using, probably onion salt. I’ve gotten to where I can tolerate a little real onion in a sauce if very slight and cooked to mush—but neither Jane nor I can tolerate onion or garlic powder. Jane’s knees swell to the point of pain—and I get the shakes as if I were on a 3-day caffeine overload. Sigh. So our once-favorite restaurant is now off the list of possibles, for us. We can't afford to lose a day to that kind of thing every time we eat there. The computer guy did show up, the old Dell has a brand new face and keys that work again—next week I’m getting another packet, one I’ll install myself: 2 gig of memory. I can’t believe I’m getting 2 gig for 75.00. And the old machine will run much more happily with big programs.

6/21/08 Saturday 41274. Feeling just wrung out. Jane took my pulse yesterday and found it a bit rapid, so I'm not exercising, just sitting. Whatever it is I get at Tomato Street, and not just one recipe, is the culprit. A host of symptoms, but giving way to just blah-exhaustion once it clears my system. I'm disgusted. On a more fun note, my memory arrived. (Just what you need to do: install computer bits when you have the shakes.) I took out the battery, opened up my system memory access plate on the bottom, and discovered...only one memory slot, and it's empty. Well, *that's* odd. Obviously there's a chip somewhere. So I went online (on the desktop) and found out that the D800 Latitudes have one chip (dimm A) under the keyboard. And on this machine that IS a gig. So they'd sent me two; but at least, thank goodness, I don't have to pull the newly-installed keyboard. I went ahead and put in a 1 gig chip in the accessible slot, bringing me up to 2 gig; and then Jane decided, well, she'd put the other chip (rather than the expense of shipping back) into her D510 Latitude. They check out compatible, re chips. She has a 256 chip, and it's not playing nicely with the 1 gig, so she's getting another. That will help that machine a lot, since it only had a total of half a gig---not enough, with the programs we run, and the demands of XP.

6/22/08 Sunday 42699. Well....remember the big pipe-cleaning operation we did in the kitchen sink? Bad idea. Our kitchen sink plumbing is now blocked. We spent the day bailing and using caustics, and vinegar, and just about everything, finally took the trap off, and ran the ribbed hose up the drain pipe for the sink: blocked. We are now washing dishes in the bathroom sink and I am having to remember not to toss water down that drain. Sigh. Isn't it amazing how one disaster proliferates into another? We have to call the plumber and get them to run a snake down that pipe, which runs across the downstairs library ceiling. In my jittery downtime yesterday, I ran through Jane's 16th-great-grandparents: her people had a penchant for recording their relatives, and she has a lot of them...but it's getting fun: she's related to some of the movers and shakers of England of the 1300's, and they're in Wikipedia. I'm finding out all sorts of dirt. We now have 2 huge notebooks full of printout...all in sheet protectors, so it's not quite that thick, but it's at least a notebook and a half, of the largest sort. And it's amazing how related we are. At a certain point we share multiple ancestors---what time they aren't having at one another with swords, assassinating one another and besieging one another. The Black Douglases, the de Percys, the de Bohuns, and no few Plantagenets, de Meschines, de Braoses, and de Beaumonts, Beauforts, Beaumounts and Sackvilles---but no Bagginses.

6/23/08 Monday 43152. The plumber got us out of our mess---for about 150.00. He used the little snake: no joy; the medium one finally got it. We think it was just a long-term buildup in the pipes which now is cleared out: our fish tank cleanup just was the capper on already slow-running pipes. We also learned the kitchen plumbing runs all the way under the concrete floor of the basement to join the main sewer line under the floor. That means our sewer line is *deep* in this house. We're on a hill, on basalt, so I guess they did some serious excavation when they built our basement. I can't wait to dig into this when we finally start the fishpond in the back yard. Our lawn drains water away so fast it's real hard to keep the thing watered, and it really browns fast if I don't drown it. I'm betting there's a very thin layer of soil before serious rock starts. Skating: Joan didn't make it in today, so I just practiced. Jane's moved her blades in a hair: it may be helping. My back edges are starting to work, seriously. And Joan has me working on an extreme-edges back slalom that is serious butt exercise. Now I know why professional figure skaters can fall on their butts and bounce back unhurt. The muscle this is going to develop is major. And I am so sore---as long as I've been at this, I'm so sore...

6/24/08 Tuesday 44311. More of the same. We've been eating out too much: got to do something about this, but not this evening. Sigh. The Swinging Doors' new Italian sandwiches. Yum.

6/25/08. Wednesday. 45759. Liking this new afternoon schedule. And so far the general public we've shared the ice with has been nice folks. No idiots. I was appalled at one costume that made it to the ice---gangsta wear. I saw him from a distance and thought it a particularly unlovely older woman in a particularly bad-length skirt. Nope. Guy with buzzcut, tats, earring and underwear showing. Go figure. He fell down and nearly lost the pants. I tell you, I'm tired of baggy men. I want to see legs again. Not striped underwear. Give me guys with stockings, tight pants, fancy coats and powdered wigs before guys that look like bag-ladies. Give me back the days when men's clothes budget exceeded their sisters'. Give me some creativity. Spandex. I don't care. Today's fashions don't just look like unmade beds: they look like unmade beds with the mattress included.

07/20/08 Sunday 54548. Sometimes, in the creative process, you just need a break. So I took one. No hitting myself over the head because I wasn’t making the progress I’d like: I just took a break, so I could do some creative thinking. Ysabel got brushed a lot: she's happy. So here’s what’s gone on. Let's see...I'm sitting here rather uncomfortably because I made a mistake and lost my balance backward while practicing the toe loop Friday. I have a bruised---ahem---tailbone. How did I do this? Coach Joan has tried to improve my posture, and I found this made a great difference in my stability on the waltz jump: I flipped off three of them in succession and was perfectly balanced in open ice. So I applied this revelation to my toe loop, which I do along the wall. Wrong! I was too upright, too far back, lost the pick-in, had my foot skid as I did the forward kick, which catapulted me, shall we say, backward. It was a slow fall. It was ridiculous. I held to the wall most of the way down, which strained my shoulder, but the position I was in landed me square on my (thank goodness, padded) tailbone. If not for the padding, I probably would have broken it.

So let's just say I'm sitting gingerly. Doesn't hurt to walk, so it's just a bruise. But I'll be glad when this heals.

Yesterday we went to dinner with Steve and Sharon: had a very nice evening. Joan couldn't join us, and she was missed, but we had dessert.

Last week---oh, last weekend the puddle the dishwasher was making grew quite a bit larger. Now, I've had a dishwasher seal failure on a dishwasher, on a concrete slab floor. It ruined the tilework. On a wooden floor with our library directly below in the basement? Real scary. So we take a critical look at the appliance situation, and conclude we have a washer that's getting so weak you have to hand-wring the clothes before putting them in the dryer, and the dryer and washer both probably are original equipment. Harvest gold. Heavy---you wouldn't believe. And in the basement. So...on Monday we went to Fred's Appliance Ding and Dent: now---Fred's is the got-rocks store. Spendy. But we thought, well, maybe dinged up would save us money and the washer-dryer are going to the basement. We priced things, found what we wanted, got the model numbers, and went to Lowe's. Where they had the washer dryer combo for about the same as the dinged ones, and they had a cheaper but very similar dishwasher with no dings---the ding on the dishwasher we wanted was pretty obvious, right in the door. So we talked to Lowes, we talked it over, we went back in and bought the three appliances, figuring to use the no-interest credit card option, and pay it off over time, while NOT having a fire in the basement from a creaky dryer or a flood on the main floor and basement from the failing seal on the dishwasher.

So the guys show up with same, and we have to remove the basement door AND molding to get the dryer in after the other appliances went out. Then they hook up the water line to the dryer. Huh?

Turns out what we bought, having gotten our model numbers and concept of prices from Fred's, was one heck of a dryer---with a steam cycle for wrinkled clothes.

The washing machine, a Whirlpool, weighs your clothes and doles out water accordingly, so in spite of the fact it's a toploader, it uses water like a frontloader. An average toploader uses 50 gallons of water per wash. This one uses 25. It has no central column. And its spin-dry gets your clothes so dry it saves electricity in the dryer. Plus Lowes gave us a 100.00 rebate for buying a set, gave us free delivery and setup, about a 125.00 item, and our local power company is giving us 100.00 each for the efficient appliances---except the dryer: you get nothing for dryers. So we came out better than the ding and dent place. And we have a washer-dryer that is going to serve us very well for at least a decade. The dishwasher we wanted in black, so it had to be ordered in. It arrives next week. But so far we are really happy (how could we not be?) with the washer-dryer. Now we're praying the refrigerator holds out!

So that was Tuesday of that week. We skated, we worked---well, I thought. And thought, and thought.

Oh, and the reef tank. I've been going nuts for two months because I can't get the chemistry balanced. I added buffer daily for 2 going on 3 weeks, unable to raise the carbonate hardness (alkalinity), before I finally got the smarts to inquire online whether buffer that has solidified is the same as buffer that hasn't. Well, no, it isn't. It can't buffer any more. Use baking soda. So I pour baking soda in for 2 more weeks. Alkalinity rises---and falls. I'm still running a kalkwasser drip. Should I stop that until I get the water balanced? Well, no, but---maybe your corals are eating more calcium. In brief, marine water balance is a tripod: magnesium supports both alkalinity and calcium load. If your mag is high enough, neither alk nor cal should fall. Ha! so maybe the corals ARE eating it. And then somebody comes on who knows Kent Buffer. Seems it contains a lot of boron. And if you load your tank with boron (which was, of course, unaffected by the solidification) it destabilizes alk and cal even IN the presence of sufficient magnesium. Solution? Ton o' water changes. 5 gallons a swat. So now I'm doing 2 things---pulling the fine sand from the sandbed, in favor of medium grade, which won't blow and travel as much---while my downstairs planted tank (refugium) sandbed supports the tank's chemistry (Bacteria in the sandbed do the filtration for your tank: a marine reef doesn't use a filter). So I'm doing that, pulling sand, putting in water. The corals are ecstatic. The fish aren't unhappy. But this is going to be a long, slow process. It's getting better and better. But my hands are getting pruinish from salt water.

Skating is going particularly well. Jane had another bout with her boots, and then we began to figure out it's not the boots, it's the lacing. She changed her lacing style, pulling up snugly on the inside side of the boot, and is now getting some support. Amazing how much lacing affects skating boots---but they are lace-to-the-toe for a reason: the whole boot molds to your foot as you put stress on those laces. Want to change the shape of your foot? Change the lacings. I watch people go out there in rental skates (plastic) with half done laces and just shake my head. I'd be scared going around the rink once with the lace-up they're using. No control of the edges, not even surety your foot is not going to wobble seriously over onto an ankle. All these people who can't skate because they have "weak ankles." I have a news flash here: it's not your ankles. It's your lacings. Good lacing means your ankle *can't* turn.

One thing about the sport, too: I was getting some serious foot problems when I took it up---toe joint going crooked, etc, all from some high-falutin' walking shoes I paid over a hundred dollars for. Well, the skate lacing is meticulous, and demanding. You want that blade centered between big toe and second toe, and you yank and pull and adjust until you've made a cast out of your boot: your foot can flex, but those boots flex only with the impact of a jump (or a bad mistake or a highspeed turn). What happens? Your feet gain all sorts of muscle and little alignment problems get pulled straight. People with flat feet begin to develop some arch and actual control of their toes...I have a high arch, which could have given me trouble as I get older, and my feet have so much muscle they're painfree. Amazing sport. Your whole body undergoes that process. You stand straighter, your misaimed feet get corrected to go straight---you develop reflexes that save you in a fall---I can't think of a better sport to last you a lifetime. I could only wish I'd started this when I weighed far less in a fall and the distance down was a lot shorter! And after not falling at all for a year, I've fallen twice in the last two weeks---once caught a toepick in a crosswise hockey rut: my fault: should have been deeper in the knees and did a backward layout that corrected that pesky cervical vertebra my chiropractor has been after: did that one pitching chin-first over the handlebars of a bike on a downhill, near broke my neck, and it hasn't been straight for 30 years. Now it is. The second one I related above. Both are because I'm getting good enough to get cocky, and I'm taking chances. Occasionally those go boom!

Weather has been generally hot, but not as hot as usual: temperature range is around 90 down to 58 at night. I can live with that. Of course we get these temperatures the first full year we have central air up here! And what comes next is fire season: we've already had one serious fire in Spokane. Next we'll see a series of waves that produce lightning, no water, starting forest fires, and covering the region with smoke. Followed finally by real rain in September, and cooling temperatures. I can't wait.

We spent the 4th of July down the street at Joan's: she has a perfect overlook of the city, and the fireworks. That was pleasant.

For the rest, let's see: we're making slow headway with the gardens, but neither of us has had the time or energy to spare for that. The fish pond will probably not go in until next summer.

We're both working hard. I've done my thinking and the book is moving again. So, I hope, will this blog.

07/21/08 Monday 56468. Well, we're doing better...I'm updating again on schedule. I'm still sitting very gingerly---result of the fall. I have a very colorful 5" long bruise on my right arm, and the bracelet I wear on that arm---broke, just broke. It was sand-cast, and there was a bubble in the cast, so it just broke. I'm going to see if a modern jeweler can figure out how to weld it back together. The tailbone is quite, quiite sore, but improving a bit: from sheer agony to just damned painful. It's hard to focus on my writing. And the right shoulder glitched---Jane got that straightened out: she knows where to shove, and that quit, but muscle relaxants haven't given me a really focused brain. As best I can reconstruct the fall, it started even before the turn, when I failed the turn itself, due to a bad center of balance. I started the fall there---but since the next move involves a sharp turnabout, I completed that while falling, hurt the right arm, and ended up grabbing the wall with the left hand trying to prevent the fall---which landed me on my tailbone. Sigh. Bottom line, pardon pun, it hurts a lot. If I'd just fallen, I'd have emerged unscathed because of the crash pads. Grabbing the wall---bad move.//Dietwise, we're about to go back on Atkins. So I bought two family packs of meat. And some slow matches for the grill. It was gruesomely hot today, and I couldn't find my matches at first, so I gave up and we postponed starting the diet until after the trip to the chiropractor's tomorrow. Then I cook.//Gas prices---what a mess. You knew this was coming---and if anybody thinks, long term, it isn't going to get worse, they're doing some wishful thinking. We're using way too much. I wouldn't be surprised to see 6 dollars a gallon by next year, and it's about time for the people in charge of policy to do some creative things. Russia is going to corner the market on natural gas stations, which it's building all over. Our stations are gas-only, and Europe's going to be running on Russian natural gas. We haven't promoted public transport, which Europe has; we haven't supported passenger rail; which Europe has; we haven't made major moves to get off increasingly expensive gas, and here we are, 5.00 a gallon and upward, which increases the price of everything and hits us all in the pocketbook. If our national planners would get off their theoretical principles and realize they've got to drop some major incentives into the free market they so prize, like no-tax on hybrid cars, like major tax breaks for companies installing natural gas or hydrogen stations on the interstates, (one way to get it into both cities and smaller towns for a start)---and plan ahead of a crisis for once instead of running from behind---//I can rant on that for hours. We have a Forester, which gets about 26 mpg, and we would buy a Prius in a heartbeat if we had to trade, but right now we're being careful of finances, and the Forester is paid for and running well. I think a lot of people are in that boat. The Prius here has an eight thousand dollar surcharge tacked on to it because of its scarcity: read: the dealers are putting this charge on, because people will pay it; and that I just object to paying. So we'll go on driving our Forester, and combining trips, and not taking our usual trips across the Cascades this summer, because it just budget-wise isn't in the cards. In a normal year, we make about 3 such trips, and go to Mariners' games; so that's another industry that's hurting. Just so unnecessary, if we'd had somebody of either party to stand up and say, listen, we've got a problem ahead and we're going to solve it. Nawww. That takes guts. I hope the next crop of politicians figures it out.

7/22/08. Tuesday. 56791. Still unable to skate. If I fell on my tail again I think I'd faint on the spot. Damn! it hurts! We went down to the chiropractor, Dr. Shane, and he was sympathetic, but it's a bruise, and there's not too much to be done for it. We are also having our last ice cream for a long while: tomorrow we're switching back onto the Atkins diet---note that a recent CNN article cites a study that shows exactly what we've found: cholesterol is actually lower and good cholesterol is higher on that diet, plus people who do Atkins do pretty well at keeping it off. So we've been bad for a while, and we are now prepared to get serious before the weight creeps up. Omelets for breakfast, but one last hamburger/shake down in Pullman. Tomorrow we get the new dishwasher. And tomorrow I fire up the grill. It actually rained on the way to and from Pullman, and that is the first time in weeks. Very happy with that.

7/23/08. Wednesday. 57227. We got the dishwasher in, and it's a nice one. Even has a "sterilize" cycle. Which is good when you use glass utensils for both cooking AND the fish tank. I'm still struggling with the alkalinity issue---but gaining on it. The corals all look great.//I'm a little improved over yesterday: that long car ride was hard, even if Jane drove. I'm still hurting so bad it's hard to do anything. I have this lovely yellow bruise about 5" long on my arm. But the worst is the tailbone, no question. And it was such a silly fall. Jane's gone off skating today, leaving me behind (sob!) and I'm heating up the coals for porkchops. The day is quite cool...very nice. I sure wish this would last, but I see they've forecast near 90 in a few days. At least it beats last year's temperatures. The raspberry bush we're going to have to get rid of is bearing fruit: nice taste, sun-warmed. I'm beginning to think of ways I can clear around that bush and leave it. With actually being watered, it might actually produce respectable berries.

7/24/08. Thursday. 58291. Ah. Clean dishes. I wish I could work faster on the book. I'm in so much pain from this tailbone situation that every time I nearly get to work, it starts hurting because I've sat too long. This is a real downer. On the other hand, ideas are building up like floodwater behind a dam, so when I do feel better, it's going to go fast. I did go to the rink, to sit about and look pathetic (actually I brought my computer and the Railroad Tycoon III disc, which I haven't used in ages) in the theory Sharon might want to go out to dinner; well, Sharon had a schedule and said she couldn't, but Joan said she could at least drop in for drinks; and then Sharon said, well, and then we ended up with Dawn and Becky, too---Kay, poor thing, had to work. Joan found out what Swinging Door means by individual nachos---8 inches high piled with olives and stuff. She was intending a small snack. And that get-together was fun. We prevented at least two people getting their work done, but hey, it was fun. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to skate tomorrow: though it is improving: the rink is hosting hockey school this weekend and we are up to our armpits in rink-rats and people in armor. I've sworn all of us adult figure skaters ought to get together and give the hockey rascals a dose of their own medicine, by darting cross-ice and back at random intervals and angles the minute they start their down-ice run, the way they do us. But, sigh, we're responsible adults and we won't. We just try not to get knocked down. And I personally can't take another fall this soon. I at least got up this morning feeling as if I might skate---until I sat down. Ow. Re-ow. Jane has meanwhile tackled the back yard without me, and is making great progress on the flower bed by the garage. She has made the point, and I agree, no more flower beds get created or grass dug up until we get more control of the ones we have. Though she's proposing to fire up the Mantis tiller and see if we can't make headway toward digging the fishpond. I just wish we'd lose about 10 more degrees of daytime heat---though I can't complain too much about 88 degrees for a high in the end of July.

7/25/08. Friday. 58575. The tailbone is still extremely painful...and they're having the hockey school this evening, which means that the rink today is going to be a zoo full of yard apes in full apery, playing at combat. So even Jane is not going near the ice. Jane went outside and got the rest of the flowerbed by the garage, where the iris are going to go. The weather has been mild, for summer, but even so it's a brutal job. She was going to go down the street and help Joan sand her kitchen floor (wooden, under renovation) but Joan was errand-bound. So she settled in to recuperate for the afternoon---until I came with a suggestion we go to the fish store over in Spokane Valley and get some necessities, which just happens to take us past Scotty's. Never mind the new diet---well---sorta mind it: no hamburger buns. So off we go.//The water is doing so much better I decided to get one frag (small broken piece of living coral) to test the situation and, yes, a fish. I also brought the store half the cheatomorpha algae I've been raising in the refugium (small planted tank designed to absorb phosphate and nitrate from the water: growing plants do that). So we look. There's allegedly a Tomini Tang in one tank---but Kevin (the store owner) has many of his small tanks interconnected to enable water flow, and the tang could theoretically be most anywhere in 3 tanks. Which are heavily planted. And Kevin, his son and helper being in Iraq, has broken down his home tank and set up again in the store, but he has put a lot of his big specimen rocks (how I would love to buy a few of those, but I have only a 54g tank) in the fish-sale tanks. And they are not easy to search behind. So our quest for the Tomini Tang (one of only two tangs small enough for a 54) was futile. But, Kevin said, asked if he had a lawnmower blenny---no, but he had a starry blenny, a close and prettier cousin. The starry is basically black with white dots and goes to pinto with stark white if trying to hide among rocks and shadows. Or pale brown. Quite an elusive fellow. Well, Kevin keeps ordering them and then forgetting whether he has sold one, and they get lost in the tanks. He's pretty sure he has one. We found it. But it vanished while we were trying to net him. We found another, in another set of connected tanks. Couldn't get him either. We waited around another thirty minutes until past closing and after Kevin had served two other customers. And meanwhile found another Court Jester Goby (the cursed fairy wrasse, now traded back to the store, did in our last one.) This one proved easy to catch. I picked out my coral frag, a piece from Kevin's tank---when you move coral, you necessarily break bits off, and each bit is valuable, and can grow a whole new coral in somebody else's tank---which is how the hobby works. We try to reproduce the corals and trade them about, so each coral taken from the wild will enter the reproduction stream in hobbyist tanks and become one of the ones reproduced and studied by hobbyists worldwide. Kevin's green Bali Slimer, a branching coral, dates from 1978, and I lust after one of those frags, but I am not ready for it yet. It's a little crankier than the montipora frag I got. But I have faith that Slimer will be around here for decades and decades---corals, you know, are virtually immortal, and that one has offspring in tanks all across the northwest, plus its parent is likely still growing in the wilds off Bali---if some tanker hasn't plowed through that reef. Anyway---) I got my coral, and then, as a telephone call interrupted Kevin in bagging our order, I spotted the elusive first starry blenny, and we found his hiding-spot, to which he was returning---by the outflow-box. So when Kevin finished his phone call, and with Jane hanging back---she was wearing a shirt with large patterns on it that we figured could be spooking the fish (that happens)---Kevin bagged our fish. We named him Houdini even before we got him home. We took all our purchases into Scotty's with us, in black shopping bags, so they'd be safe and comfy, had wings, poppers (jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese), and cheese sticks for supper, and headed home, acclimated our purchases to our tank's salinity---they came in at 1.021, and I keep my tank at 1.025 salinity, so we dripped water in until they matched, and our guys went to their new address while the tank was under actinic light (blue-only, which follows the brilliant metal halide day-light and stays on for a few hours in the evening). They seem to be doing well. The Court Jester immediately offended one of the highfin striped gobies, but nobody got bit, and the Court Jester went somewhere I'm not sure. Houdini perched beside the blue crocea clam, taking occasion alarm when the mandarin dragonette would chase copepods (near-invisible crustaceans endemic to the tank and fuge) right up into his face, but he even took on his braver coloring while sitting there. All seems well.

7/26/08 Saturday 58736. He's even cuter today...actually both are. Noooo, I didn't quarantine. I've never gotten ich out of one of Kevin's tanks, and these fish have been with him for 2 months, getting fat and elusive. The starry blenny, 3" long, is shy. The Court Jester is in-your-face afraid of nothing, including the big yellow watchman who could swallow him whole (yellow watchman: eelshaped, 5" long) and gapes and blusters. But never bites. That's one reason I like gobies. They're such show-offs, but do no damage except to others of their identical type. So you just get one, you're fine. The little guy, about the size of your little fingernail 2-3x, is feeding nonstop and producing poo, which is even better; they're fragile and hard to get to eat and prosper. The starry is perched atop the rocks and undergoing color changes at the rate of 1 every 3 seconds, which indicates he's still spooked, but you can see little mouth-kisses all over the film on the black glass, so he's eating too. Healthy, full of it, and getting along fairly well with the yellow watchman. I'm delighted. Jane went over to help Joan a bit with floor-sanding in her renovation project: I'm still too ouchy. This afternoon we went over to Dawn's for a party---a bring-your-own-meat barbecue. She has a marvelous geodesic dome house, which she and her husband built from scratch on a bluff overlooking the Spokane River. What a wonderful location. A fun time was had by all. We got back late and stuffed, and watched some Laughing in the Wind---if you like Chinese martial arts movies like Crouching Tiger, you'll love this series of dvd's (Amazon.com). The cast is gorgeous; the subtitles are occasionally baffling Chinese idiom rendered in English, but you'll catch on. The story is great. The cinematography is just---with backgrounds like that, how can you go wrong? And rewatchable. You may have to watch this a number of times to really get all that's going on, huge number of subplots. Great fun. Occasional pathos. Occasional funny-as-spit. Check it out on Amazon.

7/27/08.Sunday 59224. Jane went over to Joan's and worked nearly all day. I've dropped 3 pounds on this diet and Jane, who's worked her tail off, has lost nothing, poor thing. And then Joan ordered pizza after handing us a couple of vodkas. I shoulda said no and gotten us home where I could cook something Atkinslike, but darn, we were having fun. Naturally we're going to pay for this. And THEN go strictly on the diet. I don't think I'm going to be able to skate tomorrow either. Darn, this tailbone bruise is slow to heal.

7/28/08 Monday. 60225. We got up late. And I'm still sore. Sandy from the rink called to have us alert the other adults that the afternoon skate is no more, at least until September, or in between hockey events. They'll be taking down rink 2, pretty sure, and public ice is always what's left over from the bigger groups that pay for a whole sheet. I wish there were enough of us to afford it, but we're not, and the rink graciously allows us to use public ice for lessons, so we just smile and say thank you for whatever hours we get assigned. Clearly today was out, since we should already have been on the ice by the time Sandy called, but I'm still ouchy. So Jane went over and worked on Joan's project, and then came back and attacked our back yard, creating a very Good Housekeeping flower bed out of our former weed patch. With fake stone edging, no less. We look so spiff. She stayed out until dark, which, up here, is pretty late, about 8pm, and really did big work. We had an informal supper of beer brats wrapped in a low-carb tortilla with cheese and jalapenos. Which was nice. Sobe to drink. And another episode of our Chinese drama.

7/29/08. Tuesday. 610252. Up at five, and so early I can't figure out whether or not I've taken the day's Aleve for the tailbone. Jane took to the garden again before breakfast, and I recalled she'd asked me to chop some brush she'd cut, so I got out with the loppers and let fly. Then she wanted me to make a Lowe's run after: 1. a big paver for a back step for the garage to the back garden: our last one has weathered into bits on one corner from ice last winter, and it's ugly. 2. adapters and head for the sprinkler hose we accidentally cut: we're taking advantage of the accident to install another head. 3. more fake stone edging to finish the job. 4. another big bag of garden dirt (she didn't tell me those weigh the same as your average sixth grader) and by the way, see if they've still got the molding we accidentally left behind. Sigh. Off I go. No, to 1. 2 took me half an hour to get waited on---I finally tracked somebody down after going to the front desk and asking for someone. And did I, after that, get the right size? Of course not. But a house with a tank never has too many plumbing connectors of various sizes. 3 was easy. 4 nearly killed me getting it into the car. And by the time I got back, she had tried starting the Mantis tiller. No joy. So she was setting out iris. We're moving them all to a new bed all their own. They had to share with the roses last winter. I cooked lunch---I get weird when I've had to lift an elephant and then have to hurry about something: must be blood pressure. I forgot and left Jane's good T-fal skillet on the fire, and ruined it. So fortunately Amazon has a special deal on T-Fal saute skillets. That's on the way.//Then I addressed myself to the mystery of the Mantis, flipped the on switch, punched the pump button 3 times, pulled out the choke and gave two tugs on the cord. Hey, the magic still works. (Jane hadn't found the choke and had decided it was an autochoke. Nope.) And this from a little engine that sat neglected since last October with a full gas tank...I tell you, they do not exaggerate in the commercials. We are digging the pond with this little machine---and it's a potent little wonder. I can control it---even when it behaves like a startled skunk and does a stifflegged bounce from side to side.// I laid out some garden hose in a meandering shape and asked Jane if she liked that. We tugged and tweaked and then I fired up the Mantis again and followed the outline. It stopped only twice, both times having a new-potato sized rock jammed in its tines---I swear it was the same rock---and threw other, larger ones out of my path. So we dug the full circuit of a pond that's about 20 feet long by 6 feet wide with meanders, and then dug the center, down at least a foot, and we are launched. Pretty good day's work for two hours of running the thing, and we actually 6" of depth in one end and a foot in the center. Beyond a foot we're going to hit much harder going. It's chipping like sandstone down there. But, hey, by 2010 we should have dug another foot down. Dust? Lord, this part of the lawn hasn't seen water since the spring rains! In the middle of it all I smelled smoke, thought of my incinerated skillet and wondered if there was a burner on---then saw a chip of ash float past and got really concerned. About this time we had fire engines, two companies called out, because a front is coming in and the wind is blowing. Some fool had started a fire in the little part behind the houses across the road, out in high grass. They got it out in fairly short order. Meanwhile I note we've had a moderately strong quake out in LA and hope all my readers are safe and well.// Mr Houdini and Mr. Sugaru are both doing well, eating away. And now I fear this wind is putting the kibosh on my plans to fire up the outdoor grill: it just wouldn't be pleasant, and might confuse people keeping an alert nose to that recent fire across the street, so I'll just pan fry the pork chops. I can do that.

7/30/08. Wednesday. 62020. Well, Jane's still able to move after yesterday: she dived back out into the weeds and started at it. I came out and got handed the Mantis and pointed at the front flower beds: the sprinklers had just run and they're under high, wet weeds, which meant I had to take the tines off halfway through the job and unwind long stems from around the blades, but hey, I got it done pretty well. I haven't run it in back yet: that's as dry and dusty as the front is wet, and I'm going to have to dig up some rougher shoes to tackle that dustbowl. You come into the house afterward looking like a farmer who's been plowing, and if that doesn't convey an image to you, think of coal mining, only with brown dust. Good thing, however, it's good clean dust and washes right off. I'm going to tackle that bed again. Jane meanwhile decided, after freeing the raspberry bushes of an outmoded and pretty nasty garden box, and being stung by bees, that she's done for a few hours, so I fed her lunch and she went for a long tub soak.//I think I mentioned yesterday---or did I---that I pulled the skimmer from the sump for the marine tank and found it pretty gunky inside. Nothing like skimmate. Glug. You know when oceans make froth on the beach? It's amino acid froth from dead fish and decaying weed and such---don't play in it. That's skimmate. It's what a skimmer does: shoot water into other water and make froth, which it then collects and purifies the water of it. So after being up to my elbows in skimmate and gunk, I filled the skimmer up to its neck with a gallon of white vinegar, which will dissolve lime deposits overnight. Well, it did. This morning I found the neck of the skimmer full of unmentionable goo, and purged it, and got the skimmer rinsed out and back to work. It began frothing with an energy it hasn't used in months. For one thing, I began investigating one of the couplings, which I thought was designed to swing about, since it was sold to me that way. I tightened it down so no air could seep in, and amazing difference, whether the washing, or that, or both. The thing is running as it never has, and may collect more skimmate in the next two days than it could do in a week, normally. So that will help the tank, too. We're not skating today: Jane is fixated on the back yard mess, we've got a few days of reasonably cool summer weather, and we're going at it. It's amazing how getting the weeds out and the beds defined makes a difference in the back yard. The middle of the yard is dug up and a construction site and the yard still looks rather spiff after Jane has been at work at it.

7/31/08. Thursday. 62020. What a day! We're still not back on the ice, but we are making progress on the lawn/grounds. (Can you have 'grounds' on an urban 90x90 lot with a ranch house on it?) We hope to have 'grounds,' because we're going for folded space. Just think as ourselves as zoo animals---pacing the limits of a square cage, versus having a yard that is all winding paths, plantings, rocks, mulched areas, and small surprises on the paths---an old fishtank castle (looks like a fairy ruin) in a bed of moss, a waterfall, a fishpond: an American Japanese garden, a world in miniature...so we will have 'grounds'. They'll just fit in folded space. Appropriate for sf writers, don't you think? Anyway, we decided with Jane's bad knee acting up she needed one of those sit-on rolling garden seats that lets you relax while weeding/mulching, etc. That's where it all started.//So we looked up several on the Ace Hardware site, then (Ysabel just fell off the bed: she attempted to jump up to it, caught my night robe, lying on the foot, pulled it off on her, and is trying to look as if that didn't happen...she did make it to the top of the bed, silly girl.) At any rate, we ended up at Lowe's, and were in a swift and businesslike fashion scooping up our necessities: a rolling seat, two more step strips and a doormat, some eggcrate industrial lighting grid we are going to use as a pebble sifter (like an archaeological dig: shovel dirt on, dirt falls through, pebbles and stones that will be useful in the pond stay on the grid)---and then---two more sacks of garden dirt, some gloves---and then---I decided to rest and wait for Jane in the garden seating area. Bad move! She got back from her run after something, sat down, we looked over, I pointed out a pretty table of smaller size than the one next to us---and it was gorgeous. A round, umbrella-table type with slate edge, glass center, and bar stool seats---worse, it was cheap, compared to the others. We loved it. We found out Lowe's had 4 left. Aagh. If we wait for a sale, we might miss the prettiest, most 'us' table we've ever seen. So we bought it. Due to the epoxy/slate top it weighs a ton, but we got everything into the Forester and got home. Now Jane had wanted to inspect the box we bought: I dissuaded her. This is always a mistake. Jane has an artist's eye for detail. Immediately she spotted a big scratch on the glass, four scratches (major) on the slate tiles, and a dent in the rim. So she calls Lowes. Back we go to trade out glass and top: and I swear, the two women in charge of the exchange were out of their minds---not us: them! We proposed to simply exchange tops with the display: 4 screws. No. These women were sure this could only be done by appropriate store technicians who were not to be had, and "we have to have one on display at all times". Come on, ladies: 4 hand-tighten screws, and we can't do this? No. We have to open a box to make the trade, then trade our 2 parts into that box, schlep that box and our box to the Return desk at the other end of the store, using a big blue cart; plus we had decided we wanted the 4 bar chairs and umbrella, lest we lose our set. There were only 3 more sets of chairs. And they had to scrounge to find an umbrella. So, after waiting in huge lines, everybody else wanting to exchange one hinge or a packet of screws, I get the monster to the Return desk and get some help getting the flat-pack table out to the car. Meanwhile the chair box is *huge*, about the size of a half-fridge. So Jane proposes to get it and the umbrella, and we're going to fit this into the Forester. With a table that can't lie flat, but has one edge up on the wheel-housing in back. Sigh. So we strip everything down, I've now lost custody of the rare blue cart, have to hunt down another, and then we have to get the rambling wreck Jane has unpacked balanced on same; which excludes the chair feet which she has to carry; and she drags the box and I pull the cart through the store to a likely checkout line. Wrong. The dragon guarding it announces it's closing. We have to schlep down to another line. We get through. We get to the parking lot. We get to packing, and the chairs won't fit. We start untying the bundles of 2 seats and get everything in, umbrella and all, *except* two seats nested, which I volunteer to carry if Jane will just promise not to hit anybody on the way home...which is only about 3 miles. I am sitting with the frames jammed up against my chest in such a way that if we hit anything and the front of the car compresses I will be decapitated. Which I advise Jane is the case. So she very cautiously eases out onto the major street, then lefts onto a residential maze that will get us near our house. Two more major streets, one of which we live on, and we make it to the driveway. She gets out and starts trying to extricate me---but the load has shifted a bit and it took several minutes to tug and twist until she could get the seats out of my lap/chest/chin so I could get out. Now, why, you ask, except the 90 degree heat, did we not make 2 trips, one of us to stand at the curb with the chairs? Because we had already loaded that effin' table top which it takes both of us to lift out of the back!//Well, we got it all put together, and got ourselves two drinks and sat in the cool shade overlooking the piles of trash in our slowly developing neat back yard, overlooking the dug-up construction site that is our future pond. "Look," I say. "With bar stools, we're sitting high enough to look down on the fish! There goes one now!" Of course it's all dirt at the moment. But we can dream. It's starting to be a back yard.

8/1/08. Friday. 62020. Well, here is the start of several days of not getting work done. It's the start of Spokon, the first convention in Spokane in about half a decade. Some brave fellows over at Gonzaga University are putting it on, and so far so good. They only anticipated 300-500 and I think they're already past that. Guests include Tim Zahn, John Dalmas, Mark Ferrari; plus there's me, Jane, Patty Briggs, Jim Glass, numerous others from the region...and fans from Miscon committee in Montana, fans from Seattle, TriCities, etc. The facility is at the University, and not a hotel, but there are hotels near, so next year we might even stay on site, though it's only about a 2 mile drive for us. We did miss the room parties (hard to do in a university) but there is a student union for socializing, etc. I managed to miss my first day panels---I've been too busy to gather up and sort emails, and apparently missed a notification, so that wasn't the con's fault. It's down the street from some good restaurants, and we gathered up a load and went there.

8/2/08. Saturday. 62020. Down to business at the con. Doing panels. And so on. A genuine, exhausting full day of work, meeting people, nice people, old friends, hanging out and talking with people I only see at cons. We autographed, Jane sold some of our spare books. More autographing. We enjoyed all our panels, some of which turned out really well. We tried to gather up Mark Ferrari for dinner, but a committee snagged him right out of our midst, and so we went back to the same Mexican restaurant. I am now officially full up on Mexican food.

8/3/08. Sunday. 62020. The last day of the con, but still going strong. We met up with Steve and Sharon for dinner, and went out to an Indian restaurant where the food tasted great---but oh, the repercussions. Seems they used onion powder, and this evening Jane's knees are swelling badly, and I'm sore and can hardly bend my fingers. We have taken our entire prescription arsenal to try to fight off the effects and hope to at least be able to walk tomorrow.

8/4/08. Monday. 62020. Well, barely walking, and not fit to write. It's 99 degrees out there, fire weather, after a perfectly gorgeous weekend in the 80's. And we'd love to work in the garden, but it's just killer. I'm still suffering from the tailbone injury---not helped by dinner last night; and in general we aren't going to do much outside today.

8/5/08. Tuesday. 62020. More of the same...the con, but mostly that disasterous Indian dinner, still has me in pain, and Jane too. We are not happy campers. There's only so much the drugs can do. The rest just has to work its way out of your system. Not happy, us.

8/6/08. Wednesday. 62832. I tried to work. Didn't get too far. I finally resolved that the chair I've been sitting in is killing me, and I have to get a replacement. On the way to the con we daily passed an inexpensive furniture store, National, and I decided I wanted an alternate chair in my room. So off we went to try to find one. Now Jane and I are pretty much of a height---except when we sit: I'm very long-bodied, she's the opposite, and where chairs hit our backs is different. So we start sitting in chairs that are the 30" width I need for the space I've got---and we settle/compromise finally on a wine red one for 249.00. A rocker/armchair. But they don't want us to take the one from the store. I'm wary of this: we've been burned before, getting a chair with a different back height by half a critical inch. They promise us if we go to their warehouse a few blocks away, the guys will unpack it and Jane can sit in it, and if we don't like that one, we can buy the one off the floor. Well, Jane liked it. We got it into the car---barely. And the darn thing is heavier than I would expect of a 249 dollar armchair/rocker. But we parked in front of the house and managed to carry it up the steps and get it inside only bashing Jane's shin once. And set it up, and dragged the old green rocker (same size) toward my room. First sitting in the new chair I'm absolutely certain Jane finds it lovely, and it feels like bare boards to me. But hey! I only use it in the mornings for about half an hour, and if Jane's happy, that's good. I've got the rocker/recliner for my room, and I'm the winner. Greatly concerned is Ysabel, who is happy that we have Claimed the green recliner to my room: she understands possession. But disturbing was its removal from the place where she gets brushed for half an hour every morning: she was not sure that the red one is acceptable, since it does not smell like Us or Her Majesty, and she eyes it suspiciously, hopeful it will produce a cat brush. I have every hope that, not being in pain while I sit down for the first time in nearly a month, I will actually get some meaningful writing done tomorrow! Hurrah! Jane meanwhile continues with the Mantis, chewing up lawn, which will give way to weedcloth and cobbled paths around the shrubbery and the end of the pond. And the weather threatens rain, but I have learned, in my time in the northwest, this is scary: oftenest it ends up as virga (rain that doesn't reach the ground) and dry lightning, which starts fires all over the map. We have not seen real rain since June, the woods are dry, and we are really hopeful we don't get much lightning.

8/7/08-9/1/08. Monday: 72415. Sorry to be away so long. I was doing so well, too. First I got overwhelmed by the smoke, which actually wasn't too bad this year, and then the remodeling started, and, well, it's my birthday, and I've now fallen twice on the ice, just hooked a toepick, a really stupid mistake at my level, and fell and reaggravated the tailbone injury. And I'm glum. Writing hasn't been easy the last month: chronic pain from the tailbone and then the bad chair, and just one dratted thing after another. I was doing so well before the convention, but it threw me off my schedule, and then things just got to where I'd write 4 words, erase 2 and try again. A little progress every day, but my concentration wasn't there, which means when my brain does return (and it's showing signs of doing that) I'll have to rewrite the whole section thoroughly. Let's see what has happened...first, the convention, and the disastrous dinner, the replacement chair, and the remodeling project: Jane got new tile for the mudroom, aka cat airlock on the back door, and that is now a glorious daffodil yellow with a fake stone floor. With an internal table to straighten out the floor line (it slopes) so we could get proper shelves (we stole the short shelves from the library and will put the expensive steel library shelves, also short, down there, because they're too heavy for the table-support legs. Then Jane found some tile for the bathroom...signaling she wanted to tackle that. So once we got the edging cap on the mudroom steps (a 3-day, 4 trip to hardware store feat) we attacked the bathroom...and its curve-fronted tub. Tiling was a challenge. And then we had to repaint the cabinets---correction: Jane had to repaint them: I wiffled out because of the fumes. I took over the majority of the housework while she painted. And helped lay some tile. Then the back yard. Digging continues, as I have energy, on the fishpond: with a sore tailbone, it's easier to stand and dig than sit and write. So I take out my frustration and temper on that, and become zen again. We are to about 3 feet on one spot, which is mandatory, and are down about a foot to foot and a half on the rest. It is in the shape of a map of England: I have figured this out. We are putting a waterfall out in the ocean at the origin of the Thames, we overlook Wales from the patio bar stools, and when we do the bridge it will span the English-Scottish border. Scotland is 3 feet deep, and I hit a root---wiping my fingers on it and taking a sniff proves it is from the hemlock, not the red hawthorn, which means it has come about 30 feet out from the tree to steal water from the flowering quince over near Wales. The garage, meanwhile, is of prefab board, and the finish on the door-frames and corner posts had weathered off. So we had to paint that...while being attacked by bees, which always favor Jane, for some reason. I have also a fair knack for knocking them into next week if they buzz about my work. But none came near me. We got the bird feeder into operation. The birds are still scared of us because of all the noise. The rose garden is lush and blooming. Jane redid the little triangular bed near Scotland, and mulched around the sole surviving tree, a weeping cherry, and the 2 peony bushes which have miraculously survived the summer; and the lantana and Unidentified, and the lupine. We have set interesting rocks in it and it looks pretty good. Then we attacked the fence this week: 3 color changes later, from plum-ish red to orange-ish red to what Olympic calls Pilgrim Red (do you know any red Pilgrims?) we are happy, and have painted the worst segment outside; and the streetside outside fence: Jane and I and Sharon, who came over to help us, got that yesterday. We went through all sorts of problems getting the right stain out of Lowes, and they mixed up the more expensive deck base instead of what I wanted. I usually accept accidents and will just grumble and pay it, but this was the fourth accident this paint department has had with our orders, so this time I marched over to the Customer Service desk and informed them I didn't think I should be charged 124 dollars for 5 gallons of paint, when what I had ordered was supposed to be 103. They agreed; and I still got the rebate slip for their 2-week paint sale. So I'm happy. Sore from all that painting. But it was a moral triumph. The fish tank has been an absolute pain: I discovered the alkalinity had plummeted from 9.3 to 4.8, and started consulting with chemistry folk to try to fix it before we lost the tank: that was last week: we decided a mysterious "ionic imbalance" had occurred, probably due to some bad/expired buffer I had used, so I did 2 50% water changes of a total of 80 gallons, quite a lot of work---Sharon helped on the second one, while Jane was fussing with tile-grouting. And then I started trying to bring it up. This went on for a couple of weeks, in which the calcium reading was through the roof, ditto the magnesium (on which the alkalinity/calcium readings equally depend for stability)---and yet the alkalinity kept falling. I tested the ph. 8.5. High by .2. I knocked it down with bar soda water to 8.2. Alkalinity buffer should also drop it. I added more. Still the alkalinity wouldn't stay up. So I checked the magnesium, which has been unwantedly high: it finally had dropped---plummeted from over 1500 two days ago to 1170...too low, by 30 points. I dosed that back up and added more buffer. Then the ph rose again and the calcium fell 60 points. Today I have gotten the mg to 1240, which is good, have the alkalinity at 7.1, the best it has been in a while, and will dose calcium this afternoon, ,but the ph is .1 high, and I am debating whether to add more bar soda. What a zoo. Throughout, the fish have been happy, the corals are ecstatic, no visible problems, but things are Not Right. Still, they are getting righter. And this evening we are bundling up to go on a lake cruise for my birthday, and Sharon's (belated), so we will look at the stars, have a few drinks, and enjoy water which does not require me to dig a deep hole or add buffer or magnesium.

9/2/08. Tuesday: 72415 Last night was fun. We bundled up in our polyfill coats and sat up on the top deck for most of it. Sharon gave me a hummingbird feeder for the new backyard establishment and Jane gave me one of her patented hand-drawn graphics, a tradition with us going back years and years. We all laughed, got home in good order. And I just tucked in and worked during the day, trying to get my writing back on schedule; but both of us, Jane and I, are in pain, and I've had trouble with one foot---it didn't adequately report where my toe was and has done it again on the cruise, when I caught the same toe on the stairs---fortunately not pitching over the taffrail (do square cruise boats have taffrails?) to the lake. But I decided it was time to call the doc, and we got an appointment, Jane determined to pursue the theory her longterm back pain is an 'out' sacroiliac joint, and me knowing mine is out again. So we gave the longsuffering Dr. Shane a real workout before he got off for the day---and we are both improved. We had 2 completely illegal huckleberry/crunchy peanut butter shakes for supper. Oh, we were bad.

9/3/08. Wednesday. 74288. Jane declined to go skating today and has spent most of the day abed, but says her back hurts less than it has in years. We are to set up to go back later this week, and if they could get Jane pain free for the first time in a decade or so, it would be wonderful. I'm sitting in my room writing, Jane's doing some reading, we painted a bit on the fence, and tried not to strain anything. We're just trying to let Dr. Shane's work 'set' in place before we mess it up. The tank chemistry still isn't the best---well, all right, it's not fixed, and I'm annoyed; but at least the magnesium is holding. If not the buffer. I've also decided it's time to turn the lights out on it for three days and get some of the nuisance algae cleaned up: the water runs down to the basement where it meets a tank that is lit 24/7, and that algae down there will sop up the nutrients the top tank is giving up as its algae dies. A nicely natural little nitrate/phosphate sink. But that is pretty well what we are up to, nothing exciting except I have Pilgrim Red measles all over from that paint roller.

9/4/08-9/22/08. Monday. 76372. Well, I have not been that good about keeping updated. This has been one of those seasons...I apologize, and each time I swear I'm going to do better, but I have been in one heck of a funk this last few weeks, which has, for the first time in my life, really extended to my work---I think because I put on such a huge push early in the year to get the Cyteen book finished; and then tried to pretend I wasn't tired. Well, so about 10 days ago I finally, using every mental trick in the book, got myself organized, got the current book booted back up in my head, got one day's work in that I was proud of---and the doorbell rang. It was, yes, the page proofs for the Cyteen book, which have to be turned around in short order. This means I have to re-boot-up the Cyteen book, particularly because of the way that DAW does things, which is not to send me the galleys, which would let me instantly spot (in red pencil) the things somebody has changed, but page proofs---which are the actual printed typescript of the thing with changes already entered. Which means they can have very persuasive, very plausible, entirely misinformative and wrong things in there. That means I have either to get out the typescript and do a 565 page line-by-line comparison, or really boot it up and read it for sense. Because of the sheer length I opted for the latter, while referring to typescripts with notes on them, to be sure they caught the really awful things. This means sitting in a chair without moving for hours. Which makes you sore. Really sore. So I worked, and worked, and worked, and got totally off in the Cyteen book again, which meant when I finally packed the changes I'd made back into the mail and sent it off, I then had to reapply all the tactics I'd formerly used to get the Bren book booted back up. And I am just so physically exhausted. So...that had to be done. That's all. I have to slowly haul my careening mind full 180 and get into another universe, where I have forgotten some of the threads. After another 5 days, I am finally making some limping progress, and had some ideas that wouldn't have occurred to me had I plunged ahead 10 days ago...so there is some gain. It doesn't mean I wouldn't have thought of them, but that they would be edited in, rather than dealt with from the beginning. And then...I get a call from my investment advisor that he needs to see me ASAP. So there's another interruption. I have to get my papers in order and run down there...which turned out to involve several decisions about how to collect my retirement savings, which is, yes, kind of important. And everything we figured out exactly prefaced the current market stupidity by about 3 days, 2 of them on the weekend. And one of the companies I'm invested with, involved in the current mess, won't turn loose of my accounts without some gymnastics on the part of the company I want to deal with---which, due to things going on, I now had better figure out, because I can't just leave this stuff unattended and hope for the best. At a certain point the Feds make you withdraw your stuff, and at a certain point you kind of need to know what you're doing. So that's another study-up. And, let's see: we were doing a garden pond. We got everything dug down 2-3 feet, except on the Scottish border, at which point we found a wire which turned out to be the control cable of our sprinkling system. So we start looking into replacing that and going around the pond. Ok. I go to Lowe's and get 100 feet of 5-strand non-power-carrying wire that has, yes, 5 different colors, replacing the 10-strand which is there, half unused, and we have to dig it in, which is a lot of work with the mattock. I am the mattock expert. I can dig a trench pretty efficiently. But then Jane says---"Can you double the width?" Oy! My aching back. I double it. We get it wired---yes, we were smart and wrote down which colors we'd subbed in for which. So we got it connected, tested, and it worked. BUT during the excavation of the control box, up near the house, we'd discovered a pipe. Says Jane, "I think we'd better be careful digging near that wire until we know where that pipe runs." Good idea. I say, "I think maybe I should take the mattock out there and do some investigating." Well---I won't say which of us did it, but it could have been either. First stroke of the mattock turns up the pipe---and puts a hole in it. Sigh. So we now have a working system which leaks, and that leak is going to be under the underlayment of the pond liner. Not good. So we get a hacksaw, cut out the damaged section, and I go off to Lowe's to replace the pipe. Pipe was a snap. It's one-inch sprinkler pipe, comes in huge rolls. I look like the Wichita Lineman as I trudge over to get the hose clamps and hose barbs, then out to the car. So we figure if we take the piece we cut out and use it to measure with, the slight additional depth we put on the pond meanwhile will be handled by the increased length the two hose barbs will give it. So we do it. I sit down in the dirt in the bottom of the pond and, with a hair dryer (extension cord), soften the new hose and insert the barb-connectors, with hose clamps. I'm doing fine, except---when we turn it on to test it---one side leaks. We conclude there must be another leak. So Jane takes all that apart and (her hands are stronger) goes for another, longer length of pipe I've cut, involving the new section we've sawed out, which now pretty well spans the Scottish border. She installs the pipe. Both joints now leak. We finally worked out that it's because of the sag in the pond floor, when we flatten the pipe with a big rock. The hose has been coiled a long time. So when we want to straighten it out, it doesn't want to, and warps, which makes it leak around the hose clamp. Consult with a neighbor produces the advice, yes, if you really tighten a hose clamp too much that can cause a leak. So we back off the screws. We have it down to 3 drips a minute at one end and 2 at the other, and call it done, and hope that hot sun will seat the hose barbs and seal the leak. It then clouds over to rain, which it is still doing. I have a call from my investment counselor that I have to come down there and sign more papers, the market of course has crashed, meaning I have less to invest than before---nice. And maybe we can finally get this stuff where it needs to be, but now I think I need some answers about the stability of the company I want to invest it in. At least it's not part of the current madness. And we've got, yes, seven yards of topsoil coming Tuesday, tomorrow, in the rain, which is scheduled to last for a week; and they want to put it on the driveway, which is where we have ten or so wheelbarrow loads of basalt rocks we've been gathering up from the roadside in our travels. And meanwhile the woes with the fishtank continue, but I am determined to get this figured out. I did get the old kalk reactor vinegared and cleaned (vinegar removes calcium deposits) and ready to trade in, but I may be forced to buy a calcium reactor to handle the problem. The corals are growing so fast they may have outstripped the capacity of our makeshift kalk setup in the basement. One of my hammer corals is the size of 3/4 of a soccer ball, and the torch is trying to overtake it. The candycane has increased from 3 heads to somewhere over 40. I need to break these up and turn them in for trade, but I really want to stabilize this tank first---yet their growth rate may be what's destabilizing the tank. And in a completely different arena---I need to call and order the pool guts: the skimmer, pump, hose, liners, and waterfall filter. I really would like to get that installed before winter fills the area with snow...we are going to have to stick to the garden walk when there's a thick snowfall, or have a nasty accident, with that pit in the yard. But first we have to move that 7 yards of dirt. The skating is finally getting back in form. And Jane has taken up ballet on Monday nights, along with Sharon. I am not about to. I will go with Jane to observe on nights Sharon can't be there, because it's kind of a notoriously crime-heavy neighborhood and the parking isn't great; but there is no way I'm going to screw up my very limited sense of dance, which involves my skating, in favor of an art I really didn't do well at some decades ago. Modern Dance was one of the most excruciatingly embarrassing parts of my college education: I stand 5 feet 8, and do not successfully imitate a flower, thank you. We were not amused. Skating is like flying, effortlessly, wonderfully, and you keep in balance because you're working with physics. Ballet is skidding on already-sore feet trying to leave behind more skin, while working against the physics that says somebody my size and mass is never going to make that turn before it all hits the wall and goes splat. Nope, no way, no how. I'll stay on the ice, where things don't hurt that much.

9/23/08. Tuesday. 77836. Yesterday evening...sigh...We were sitting there in an otherwise calm, drizzly rain, when all of a sudden a gust front blew through or a microburst hit---it caught our patio umbrella and overturned and somewhat broke our pretty new patio set table...scratched up the side of it before we ever got to have anybody over to enjoy it. We're upset. Just, whoosh, and that was it: there are branches all over the street. And no further storm. I incline to microburst, since the storm quit so soon after: a dying thunderstorm just took out our patio table, aimed right at it. Thump. I ran out to get it at Jane's warning---she was dressing for ballet class and in her skivvies. I happened to be in a floor length robe, and ran out into driving rain and hail that froze my hair together: mud: cold water, and the whole thing is tipped over and I'm working with the special wrench to get the umbrella disconnected from the pole so I can rescue the center glass and light unit, which is hanging onto the umbrella like a doughnut on a pole. I got Jane's help at the last minute and she got the umbrella in while I rescued the glass, then took my soppy self back out to right the table. It's aluminum, and took a scrape on the side, but at least wasn't bent, only an ornamental bit on the inside around the pole. And of course it's just fine weather after that happened, with the first frost up in the hills as the clouds race away to Idaho. Treacherous weather. Jane went off to ballet, and says she was muzzy-headed about the instructions---I think it was the storm and the rush to save the table. I meanwhile consoled myself by downloading Spore: don't do that. It took the better part of 3 hours to download, decrypt, install, and get running. I could have gone to the store and gotten it in less time. It's kind of a 'cute' game, and 'cute' dominates. It's not too scientific, to say the least. But it's amusing. Probably has replayability. A lot of variables. And I'm getting some work done, otherwise.// I was worthless on the ice yesterday---took a step onto my heel and nearly dislocated my shoulder with the arm-whip that kept me from going splat on the ice. I didn't fall. But it wasn't bright. //Today the 7 yards of dirt is supposed to arrive. If my calculations are correct, that amount of dirt would make a 3x3 column 21 feet tall---or a 2x10 foot pile 3 feet high. This is still a lot of dirt to move. At least the rain has stopped, giving us a window to move it before it becomes a brick. Washington dirt is amazing: if it weren't for the glacial moraine pea gravel throughout, it would be really easy to dig: and it is, sort of, when it's bone dry. Water it---and the rain has---and it sets up like concrete: you can walk on our pool berm as if it were concrete, not because the dirt has gone hard, but because there is that much rock in it. Amazing.

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.

1. 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 and the relationships and you can form a mental image of how tight the little localities were. I'm going to be printing out a book, a very thick book, not just the tree, but a page for absolutely every individual I turn up. One copy for Jane's family, one for mine. The hunt is as addictive as potato chips. And what a way to learn history! Sobering to think that if just one of these individuals had gotten run over by an ox-cart or failed to dodge a mace back in 1200, I wouldn't be here and you wouldn't be reading this blog.

3/05/08. Wednesday. 106593. Jane got her new skate blades. She's been skating on Ultima Lights, as you recall, and having trouble: they're a very thin blade. Most middling-advanced skaters rely on Coronation Ace blades, which are somewhat wider. It's what I have. Jane has, again referring to before the break, tried mine on the ice, same boots, different blades, and decided to go for them. She ordered them and they came in; and now she's having the Ultimas taken off and the Wilson Coronation Ace put on. I, meanwhile, have just moved my right blade way in, and may take it further. If I don't break my neck.

3/06/08. Thursday. 106593. Got the skates with the new blades on—from Larry. Jane says they do too make a difference—a huge scary difference. But she says backwards is much easier on these blades, and she is going to go for it.

3/07/08. Friday. 106593. Took Jane's skates over to Larry's place to get the blade set, and Larry says it's going to take some leather plugs to cure the screw holes to make it secure. This is going to take a few days. So it looks as if we'll be off the ice. Jane only has one skate.

3/08/08. Saturday. 106593. Still chasing ancestors. Doing not a thing constructive.

3/09/08. Sunday. 106593. Jane finished her book! She's asked if I'll read it. Of course I will. I've been looking forward to this.

3/10/08. Monday. 106593. And no skates. Reading Jane's book. So I'm settled in. It's raining. It's a nice day to snug up with a good read. The fish twist to the diet is working. I'm down some more. I'm now into a size 10...a stretch size 10 jeans, but still...

3/11/08. Tuesday. 106593. Still no skates. We stayed home. Reading Jane's book—which is going to take a few days. It's come at a good time for me to do this.

3/12/08. Wednesday. 106593. Reading Jane's book. And Larry got Jane's skate back, so we went skating for the first time on all proper blade-sets. Jane says it's still scary. Just about as scary—we decided to skate in street clothes because we'd only have had 20 minutes before session-end if we stopped to kit up, a 30 minute process. It was amazingly hard to skate in jeans and jacket. Couldn't flex, had to constantly watch my blade-heels about getting caught in my jeans-hems—you have to tuck up tight on some moves. Just scary. Tomorrow we'll kit out properly.

3/13/08. Thursday. 106593. Reading on Jane's book. Back on the ice with proper dress this time. And easier. Still scary: I've gone back on one heel twice today, and recovered. This is going to take some adjustment, but it's right. I know it's right. We did make a Costco's run, and picked up, amid the household necessities like bacon, a very large, well-grown potted rhododendron, Catawabiensis Buford or something of the sort—it's a pale purple frilled one. We just barely got it in the car. We will have to wrap it tomorrow night, because it's going to drop into the mid-20's tomorrow night.

3/14/08 Friday.106593. Still reading on Jane's book. And back on the ice. Today was a zoo: lots and lots of tiny kids. But my feet are beginning to get the trick of this new blade set—it's so much more secure, having the edges react [tilt of the foot] much more readily. I think the problem is that I have a very narrow heel and a very broad forefoot, so much so that Graf had to build me a special boot, and being able to tip the skate over to get the edges into action requires the blade inset more than average. But once I can do that—wow! It's a whole new ball game! Things I've done with difficulty are starting to add up. Jane's getting her feet under her too—I can't imagine the change for her: from tilted footplate with one stanchion higher than the other, to a totally flat footplate on that blade. It's got to be worse than going from high heels to flats...and a lot scarier.

3/15/08 Saturday. 106593. Finishing up the read-through on Jane's. Good book. I love it. We celebrated by going off to the Swinging Door and getting the annual offering of corned beef and cabbage for St. Paddy's day: they have it for 3 days. And it was really good. Last year it was an Irish pub with pipers but not such great corned beef: this year, in our new neighborhood, the corned beef is light-years better but there aren't any pipers. Heard from Sharon: she's in New York for Adult Figure Skating Nationals, and giving me a report on the ice at Rockefeller Center: rutted, she said—very rutted. But it's still a thrill to get to skate there.

3/16/08 Sunday.106593. Back at my own stuff, finally. Had a good holiday. I'm starting where I left off with a clear head and rested. There's a lot of stuff I need to do, but I got a new filing cabinet for the office, before the weight breaks down the two file drawers in that nice desk we bought last spring. A two-drawer ought to handle the essentials, besides the two I have upstairs, and the big file downstairs—which itself is falling apart, since the move. Take it from me, if you have stuff, the particulate put-together filing cabinets are not for you. It's still raining. Cars passing that are coming from the north are coming down the street with snow on them: it's that kind of day. Yesterday's foray to the Swinging Door for corned beef and cabbage has us up a pound and a half, so we may not do it today. Maybe again Monday before the special goes off if we can get the pound off by then.

3/17/08. Monday 107497. St. Patrick's Day. We got back on the ice---Jane's still battling her new blades, but we're gaining on it. Now that I've moved mine a total of a quarter inch each, or more---I suddenly find out why I've been having trouble with the Mohawk, the Inside 3-turn, and the Outside Back Edges. Funny thing, having your blades both aimed alike is very, very useful. I'm amazed. I have spent a lot of time trying to nerve myself to fling myself outward onto the outside edge, and the balance point between just tipping over the edge where you can ride, with enough speed, and falling right over---has been so scant as to be non-existant. By moving the balance point [the blade] over a quarter inch, that has an immense effect [think of an inverted pyramid] on the balance I achieve by leaning outward. It means, in translation, that the blade goes over on the outside edge *before* I've committed myself wholly across the point of no return. I can get a clean edge. That means the blade is biting into the ice, which is sort of like having your tire tread working on a turn---versus not. I'm so excited. Jane is less so, but says she'll live. Her other blades had a boot attachment plate that goes up at either end---and the Coronation Ace blade doesn't. It's flat. This means her whole mode of attack has to be revised. She's so happy. We grabbed up Joan and Terry and got over to the Swinging Door for the last day of corned beef and cabbage. This is not helping my diet, but it was good.

3/18/08. Tuesday. 108382. Yep, the weight is up. Jane's on crunch, editing her book. I'm finishing mine. But we did get over to the rink for a while, then came home and started to work. Jane says this new-blade thing is getting to her: but you always feel stressed when you're in massive 'edit' mode, and have your brain full of details. Myself, I'm in the other kind of mode, so I'm doing fine. We just tucked into the house---didn't even get to the store, which we need to do. Jane's rushing because she has a hair appointment tomorrow, and we have a chiropractic appointment the day after, and she wants to get through the worst of the edit before she has to take a break.

3/19/08. Wednesday. 108991. Still working. We're laying out of skating today since Jane is working hard on her edit. I managed to OD the marine tank on kalkwasser yesterday: made a nasty white cloud throughout: second time I've done that in two weeks. I think I need to buy that extra pump, which will let me do things much more conveniently down below. I need to do some thorough testing, water changing, and cleanup down there: the skimmer is a disgrace. But I want to get this book finished, Jane wants to get hers mailed; and meanwhile croci are blooming and we need to get that rhododendron planted and the roses trimmed for the spring...another reason why I love winter. You don't have to manicure a snowbank. In my spare time I've turned up several other interesting ancestors---one I'm really delighted to be related to, an actual hero, William the Protector, William Marshal. He knew everybody who was anybody through 5 kings of England and ensured those 5 both stayed on the throne and stayed as honest as he could manage to make them...or as Jane puts it, "I do believe your ancestor was the boss of the Sheriff of Nottingham." It seems likely. Also Humphrey de Bohun, who was quite a character, and happens to be one one of 6 fragile ornamental plates I bought in England and nursed [in a duffle bag] all the way through Turkey and back to the states: I'm attached to those images, if nothing else because they were so hard to keep intact. And one of my favorites is the portrait of Harry [Henry] "Hotspur" Percy---who was hotheaded, impulsive, and died that way in the Battle of Shrewsbury: lifted his visor to yell at somebody and got an arrow in the face. He set one king on the throne and tried to remove another, and had a rep for being difficult to deal with. He's always portrayed as a young, handsome crazy guy. What fun! I also turned up that my great-great grandfather was not a lawyer, but a sawyer: the original record indicates the person doing the transcription couldn't read the handwriting. A sawyer is a person who hand-saws lumber in the days before power saw mills.

3/19/08. Thursday. 108991. The tank is fine. We skated in the morning, and went off to Pullman---I was the one scheduled, but we switched patients on Dr. Shane and it was so good we did. He managed to get some relief for Jane's back that she says is marvelous. I didn't need it that bad and she really did need it, so that was to the good.

3/21/08. Friday. 108991. The rink is having an Oldtimers Hockey Match and it sounds like a good day not to go in. So we stayed here to get some things done and for me to get some writing done. We did go out to the grocery---and I swear to you Mercury must be in retrograde, as the astrology buffs put it: all communication goes to blazes, everyone you meet on the road is dangerous, and the stores are messed up beyond belief. I went to get salmon---the gal who orders the fish for Fred Meyers hadn't ordered any for Good Friday, because she thought Lent was over so everybody would be tired of fish---and the gal at the counter was going bananas with people wanting fish. I hate codfish. But that's what we got. I'll figure how to cook it somehow.

3/22/08. Saturday. 109221. Sharon came over. I spent the morning trying to get the main computer backed up, and trying to get the right software to back us up on the whole disk. I think I'm going with Acronis True Image 11---but I have rarely dealt with a company as disorganized and screwed up. Suffice it to say the mess was SO bad, the company itself told us to order their software from Amazon: it was impossible for their company to get the mess sorted out and it was simpler just to cancel the order---oh, but we'd have to do that, if we'd just call the company that handles their internet sales...do you get the picture? >After all this craziness, Sharon came over and we sat, had chicken from the Swinging Door, had frozen yogurt, a bottle of wine, and watched the skating World Championship. We could not BELIEVE the outcomes. I want to see a breakdown of why who did what, because admittedly under the new judging system you have to look sharp, and edges count during takeoff, but I just do not believe certain performances weren't better than the ones that won. I'm going to have to go to the USFSA site and see if I can find the actual blow-by-blow scores.

3/23/08. Sunday. Easter. 109221. I got at least the personal taxes organized. It wasn't as bad this time with an office, with real filing cabinets, and room to move. I was so tired of filing things in plastic bags in cardboard boxes. I started in at the crack of before-dawn and sipped coffee and hunted files, backing up zealously, because the main computer is about to have a motherboard failure, and I can't depend on it staying alive. It freezes spontaneously every thirty minutes or so. I was slopping about in my houserobe, rolled the office chair over the hem, caught it, while reaching for something, managed to turn the chair over and hit the edge of the desk with my upper arm: the bruises are going to be spectacular. I race around glassy ice at high speeds and collect bruises leaning to get into a filing cabinet. At least I didn't pull that over on me.

3/24/08. Monday. 110832. Spent at least the better part of an hour on the phone with Social Security: I'm at that age. And the documentation they sent me along with the original interview transcript denied my medical insurance, fondly known as Medicare. Took a phone call to straighten out their wording, which it turns out doesn't mean spit. Oh, no, we don't mean that. We have nothing to do with that, actually. Arrgh! >Then we're just trying to get the place recovered from the new glitchup with the main computer, which is still glitched. I did get our personal taxes ready to be mailed to our accountant---major job, that. I can't do the corporate taxes: it's a long story, but say our software is firmly tied to the fouled-up computer and the other version of the software on the good computer can't open the files, which are too 'advanced' for it. Twice arrgh!> Got some work done, thank goodness: because this ending sets up the other two books of the arc, I have to be careful what I lay down. > For relaxation I went chasing down Jane's ancestry: not only is she related [sort of] to Francis Drake the privateer, she's related to Richard de Fitchemont, one of the 25 barons who corralled King John [one of my ancestors] and made the rascal sign the Magna Carta. And of course once you're in that little country club, piece of cake to chase at least one of your ancestors back to Charlemagne, which we both can, since another of my ancestors, Humphrey de Bohun, was another of the 25. I'm going to make this all into a book---not a for-sale book, but a family book with commentary on these various folk. It's just stunning the ironies that crop up. If somebody'd explained to de Fitchemont and de Bohun, while they were waiting to snare John, that their descendants would be rooming together on the other side of the world writing science fiction, and that one of them was related to John [de Bohun knew that bit], and that half of the county of Essex, where they both hung out, would be emigrating to the other side of the world, too, into a place called Virginia...they'd have taken a swing at the bearer of that news, for sure. So far both our accounts goes back to the mid-700's AD, which is pretty neat. Took all that just to create us. The name of the site again, for those who might want to give their own try at this, is ancestry.com and take the 14 day free trial. You can do a lot during that 14 days. It's the best thing since video games.

3/25/08. Tuesday. 110832. Pure chaos. I decided not to skate today, because Jane's not, and there's so much to do here. The main computer is down, she's trying to fix it, and I'm trying to work, but it's just too chaotic. We took off for the chiropractor's office, and Jane got a really good treatment. Mine...helped some. But the doc taped up my back like you wouldn't believe---and I don't know how I'm going to skate tomorrow.

3/26/08. Wednesday. 110832. Chaos continues. I tried skating, but nearly killed myself: without the shoulders able to move, just not a good thing, so I got right off the ice and went shopping instead. We got the personal taxes off to our accountant, did some mailing, and in general, we're just exhausted. My back hurts: the tape holds it in one particular position and now I remember the particular joys of wearing a cast. Stiffness. Ow. Ow. Ow. Sleep last night wasn't easy. Plus Ysabel thinks she can sit on me, and that just makes it worse. You'll note, however, that I am doing better about updating the blog. Less elaborate entries, but more often. It's snowing again---38 degrees, and it's still sticking and whitening the ground. Welcome to spring! I'm wanting to get some work done, I'm so close to finishing this book. And we're trying to get back on our fish diet. I tried to cook salmon a couple of days ago, but it had gone bad, and one bite persuaded me I needed to cook something else. Shall we say I'm changing the recipe tonight? Don't want that taste again soon. But it does help us lose weight.

3/27/08. Thursday. 111273. I'm off the ice, still, and we had to turn in the main computer for repair, did I mention? So it's offline, off getting a new motherboard and chip. Fortunately I'm not offline: the house net stands firm. I'm working, is all.

3/28/08. Friday. 112139. The book is finished! It didn't end where I thought it would, but that's all right: what would have been there will be in the next book, which I'm starting very soon now. Still no main computer, so I can't print it out---well, I could, but the last time I tried to navigate the tangle in the office to plug in my computer directly to the printer, I leaned, tipped over the office chair, hit the edge of the desk and still have a fist-sized bruise on my arm, so I'll wait to print until Monday or so when we get the big computer back. My back is still taped up and I am not risking going on the ice.

3/29/08. Saturday. 112832. Just had an emergency call from Shejidan---the website, not the capital. Seems the message board crashed, and they're working hard trying to find the problem. I'm asked to relay that they will be back online soon, but in the meantime, don't panic. The Assassins' Guild has been called, and they hope to have a solution soon. Here on planet Earth, specifically Spokane, it's, would you believe, snowing hard. We have about four inches on the ground that didn't melt, and more is possible over the next several days. I went out yesterday and watered that rhododendron we have sitting in a pot awaiting planting, so I hope it will come through the cold snap fine. We went out to celebrate last night and it was snowing aggregates of snowflakes, which makes really a very fast snow cover. I joked that was snowing 'fully assembled' snow, and sure enough, it did cover. And blowing hard. They told us to stay out of the mountain passes this weekend and they were serious. Spring---not yet, up here.

3/30/08. Sunday. 00000. Haven't actually started work on the new book yet---taking a couple of days off to catch my breath. Sorting the boxes from the move last March...got most of the books on the shelves, though all out of order. And a lot of stuff awaiting a garage sale. Meanwhile all the snow from yesterday melted by late evening, but today a new storm replaced it all. I'm really missing the printer, which means getting the main computer back. Sigh. My historical research has turned up the fact Jane and I both are descended from Hugh le Despenser, the baddest man in England, who came to a really bad end: he was the king's lover, was a pirate, was the king's lover again, and finally, after assaulting several ladies and breaking the arms of one, was chopped up in little bits at his execution...the king himself was done in fairly shortly afterward, but you can pretty well blame old Hugh for the king's plight. Several others of my relatives in this phase of research have turned up losing their heads---a few officially at Tower Hill, one without benefit of trial, since he had really annoyed Henry IV and had gotten caught on the battlefield---he'd been conniving with Percy Hotspur, another of my "plate" relatives, to overthrow Henry, so Henry had a reason to be annoyed. This history thing is down right fun at this remove. I turn out to be related to Alfred Lord Tennyson and Boyle, of Boyle's Law, for those of you who do chemistry, as well as Peel, who invented the modern police force. Neat.

3/31/08. Monday. 00000. But thinking. We finally got back on the ice for an extended session. I wanted a lesson. Jane wanted one. But it's spring break and the ice was crowded, including with juvie hockey-skated types who don't have the skills, except to cut up the ice in a dangerous way, or scrape the surface into snow that can make a new skater fall face-first, no kidding: it abruptly slows down those rental skates and can pitch a novice onto the picks, and bam! face first onto the ice. I'm at least getting to where I can skate over the damage they do. I made a new discovery: since moving my blades inward, I can now do a one-footed slalom--this means tilting the foot inward to produce an arc and then tilting upright and outward to produce the opposite arc. A serpentine on the ice. Experienced skaters can do huge sweeping ones of 6 feet or so that really rip the ice at high speed, but I'm just managing to do it barely, at about a foot of arc in either direction. The left foot is still cranky: I'm going to be sure those blades are exactly right. But this is the best test of good blade setting that I can imagine. That tilt is easy if your blade is where it needs to be. Impossible if it isn't. I worked on it for an hour, in an hour and a half on the ice, longest I've managed in months. This had my butt aching from unusual exercise. Knees are holding fine. I have a charley horse on the butt. Both sides. We agreed with Sharon and Kay to meet at our house, watch our recordings of Men's Worlds, then go to supper---our 3-day hiatus from the diet. So we did. And I couldn't stay awake. Now, I'm due a celebration for the book, and did have 3 glasses of wine, but I couldn't stay awake before that. It's the exertion from skating, no question: it does that to me when I'm not acclimated to it. After Sharon left, I went to bed, and slept right around til 5:30 in the morning, which is my usual get-up time. Jane, meanwhile, spent a righteous evening putting the computer back into the house net and getting software straightened out. I've got to be virtuous. And the fact I started thinking about the new book, and came up with a title...and that the book has started to flow...is a sign of impending virtue.

4/1/08. Tuesday. 1359. Starting to outline. And that's no April Fool's joke. The book title is Deceiver. And that's all I know at the moment. We've decided that this weekend is the best window we have to get over to Seattle to visit Jane's brother---because at Dr. Shane's office, we ran into a nice young man who told us that SAM, the Seattle Art Museum, is hosting a major exhibit of the Louvre's collection of Roman art. We have to go. And for a project of Jane's, we need to revisit the Seattle Underground. So we investigated and we've called Jane's brother to ask if we can come. Affirmative. We've told Sharon, and she's interested---didn't think she could make it.

4/2/08. Wednesday. 1359. Sharon says she's got a cheap ticket, and Jane's brother says come ahead, so we will. We got a day in skating, at least, but it's just not happening. We have packing to do.

4/3/08. Thursday. 1359. We got to Seattle on a rainy day, and Jane and I set to work on the emotionally difficult task of going through her mother's belongings, which have been in storage. We moved boxes, a lot of boxes. Jane is having some trouble with her knee, and of course, with the nature of what we're doing. But it has to be done.

4/4/08. Friday. 1359. More sorting and re-boxing, and Jane is exhausted. I thought I'd be able to update from Jane's brother's net, but it keeps going down. I think we've got that fixed, but I have to help Jane. It's raining, it's cold, and it's miserable over there. Another of Jane's brothers has shown up: we're trying to figure where people are going to sleep, because Sharon is flying in.

4/5/08. Saturday. 1359. Sharon arrived. We had breakfast at Tommy's, our favorite Renton breakfast place. Jane's knee is kicking up, badly, so I got her a knee brace at Freddy Myers, and we went to the Underground adult tour---which tells you all the salacious bits. We had a great time, Jane's brothers and Sharon and I. We had after-tour drinks at Doc Maynard's pub, and another round at the Market Cafe across the street, over on Yessler, which was one of the starting points of the tour, and bills itself as one of the original restaurants in the district. A fire, you may know, burned down Seattle, and half the rebuilding got buried when they brought the cliffs down in a disputed 'leveling' of the streets. If you're ever in Seattle, be sure to save one evening for the Underground, and don't forget to get the book "Sons of the Profits," which tells early Seattle history. If you like pirates, scoundrels, crooked deals and enterprising madams, plus a riotous narrative style, you'll love it.

4/6/08. Sunday. 1359. Jane's on her second knee brace. And a good thing we got the second brace. We went to the Roman exhibit at SAM, which is downtown again, and while we had an easy time getting in, we ran into the line upstairs---they mean it about the start times, and we have one o'clock tickets. So there we are...we got in, and I was surprised by the scale of what they brought over from France: it apparently took 6 weeks just to set it up. Roman sculpture of the imperial sort tended to be life-and-a-half to twice-life in scale, meaning tall, massive, and heavy. They had the imperial family---Augustus, Livia, Tiberius, Caligula, young Nero, not the older, and various ordinary Romans of life scale, portraits intended to be seen close up---including some of the imperial family. The Roman skill with portrait busts is breath-taking. You can see them in books, but up close when you can see the detail, and get the real 3-d effect by walking around them---amazing. This was somebody's grandfather, this was mama. This was a pretty girl, a very earnest young boy...there were the 'personal' exhibits, the jewelry, the set of toiletry items; the overdone---the casket with hunting scenes; the tragic---the child's coffin with the portrayal of a little boy's short life: he evidently died at about eight or nine, to judge by the activities: being with his mother, driving a silly goat cart, saying goodbye to his father...that's the usual death scene on a Roman or Greek tomb: the deceased stands ready for a journey and bids farewell to someone seated. They have some new finds. What I found shocking about the Louvre exhibit is the lack of attribution. In the Capitoline Museum, in Rome, there's notation about where the items came from, but a lot of these things were scooped up by Napoleon Bonaparte as loot. We have no idea where a lot of them came from...but probably from places where previous Renaissance-era pot-hunters had dragged them. Michaelangelo, in his lifetime, saw the Laocoon statue pulled from the muck of a building site in Rome, and was so taken by the sight he used the massive torso as the bodies of God and Adam in the famous "Creation of Adam" segment of the Sistine ceiling. A villa on Capri has Roman statuary all over it---no attribution. People just didn't write these things down---unless, like Michaelangelo, they kept diaries. And an artifact lifted out of context is much less than it could have been---but good that we have them, good that Napoleon saved them, unlike his predecessors in conquest, including Roman general Mummius, who took statues from Corinth and lost them in a shipwreck in harbor [we found them: beautiful bronzes]---and the Conquistadors, who melted down the Inca gold and burned their books as 'pagan.' It took us 4-5 hours to walk through it all, and Jane's knees are really suffering.

4/7/08. Monday. 1359. Drove back from Seattle---Sharon in the back seat with the cats, and me reading. I got through another 75 pages, which, let me tell you, does it for the throat. The text is rougher than I thought, but in a week I'll have it cleaned up. I'm assured Cajeiri is in good form. We don't think we're going to be able to skate tomorrow. We have a chiropractic appointment, and Jane is hoping Dr. Shane can do something for this knee of hers. The check we were hoping for did come, and we have to get that into the bank.

4/8/08. Tuesday. 1359. Well, we had the chiropractic appointment. And no, Dr. Shane can't do anything for Jane's knees. Ice and rest, ice and rest. Jane's afraid she's going to have to have surgery on the worst one and she's not happy about that.

4/9/08. Wednesday. 1359. We're laying out of skating, trying to get Jane's knees into shape---it's slowly improving. Meanwhile I have to install the financial software on the repaired computer and start attacking the corporate taxes. Getting that software on took me three hours, including calls to the software company. It is a bear. And I had to move all the company files.

4/10/08. Thursday. 1359. I'm reading the rest of the book to Jane in the evenings, working on entering the changes during the day. So I'm not getting a thing done on the new book, just editing the one I need to send in.

4/11/08. Friday. 1359. More of the same. Jane's knee is very slowly improving. I've been able to persuade her not to carry 40 lb boxes. She doesn't want me to do it. But somebody has to. We need to get the house in order. Jane's brothers are coming to visit in a couple of weeks.

4/12/08. Saturday. 1359. Just a little ways from the end of the edit. I'll finish up today. I'm waffling on the new book title. That's normal. But meanwhile I've got to get the taxes in order. So that will take up a certain part of the weekend. I should have Conspirator ready to mail by Monday.

4/13/08. Sunday. 1483. Working on the outline for the next book...

4/14/08. Monday. 1722. I did get everything mailed. Conspirator, the taxes, etc. Plus a few boxes of books for Selina.

4/15/08. Tuesday. 1826. Tax day officially. I've gotten everything in, and all is well. I'm calmer on tax day than I usually am. It's an odd feeling: I'm usually up to my neck in figures that don't make sense.

4/16/08. Wednesday. 1937. For the last several weeks it's been such an effort to get to the rink. Jane's having to start over for the third time—this time new blades and new balance are the reason—and I have a real appreciation for what she's been through. First it was bad boots, then a change in boots, then this—not to mention the knee injury. Sometimes it gets hard to keep going and practicing until you wear a single track in the ice, over and over and over, and I'm stuck at that stage, and Jane is stuck at that stage, and it seems as if there's never any real progress—hasn't been, for three months. We can do what we do—only Jane has had to backtrack—and not much else. It's depressing. And skating is what we use to cheer ourselves up. Bad, I tell you, when it becomes a source of frustration. But giving up? Not when you consider the shape we were in when we started this. We'd start getting old if we gave up, and we're not doing that.

4/17/08. Thursday. 1989. Skating. More practice on back edges. Sigh.

4/18/08. Friday. 2077. They're tearing up our street again—not where we live, but between us and downtown. Bummer. That'll be messed up until September. Our poor little latte stand gave us a flyer explaining the repair schedule, and when they'll be shut down and when they hope they'll be open again. Things rumble as the big trucks go by and traffic is stacked up on the roads that ARE open.

4/19/08. Saturday. 2182. Working on the new book. A lot of outlining, and some progress. I have a pretty clear vision where this one is going.

4/20/08. Sunday. 2318. Working...trying to clean up the house. We desperately need to have a garage sale. Company coming has got us looking at the stacks of stuff, and it's so depressing. We hauled furniture—hauled the big heavy former mattress into the house, and down into the basement bedroom, and it's risky for Jane's knees, so I tried to take the weight, and now I'm sore and limping.

4/21/08. Monday. 2575. We laid out of skating. We're both sore. And we got a call from Chip...his friend's mother died, the funeral is on his birthday, the day he'd planned to be here. So the visit this weekend is postponed until next. Poor Chip.

4/22/08. Tuesday. 3638. Skating again, and I got a lesson. I'm still shaky. Seems as if anytime I try to do what I actually can do in practice in front of witnesses, like my coach, I screw it. We're still cleaning the house. Jane has done a marvelous job downstairs: you can actually find things.

4/23/08. Wednesday. 3822. More practice on the ice and a bit of progress. We're still shifting boxes and trying to clean things. Our intended garage sale is screwed because of road construction downhill reducing traffic to near zero. I'm trying to cook. I keep screwing that up. Such a day.

4/24/08. Thursday. 4931. Skating. Another lesson, and Joan swears I'm getting it, but I don't feel as if I'm getting it. But she told me something right at the last that may really be valuable—swinging my skate-side arm all the way over frontwise to the other side of the body as I shove off. That seems to be incredibly more stable.

4/25/08. Friday. 5016. Skating. And a miracle. When I do that arm-swing, all of a sudden, the feeling that I'm falling over backward just goes away. Counter-balance! It's not a fast swing, not even a hard one, but a steady push of the arm to the other side of the body, and all of a sudden the falling-feeling goes away, because you are solidly balanced.

4/26/08. Saturday. 6810. We are now sure that Chip and Roger are coming next Thursday, so we are back at house-arranging. I desperately need to get to the fish store and I need to do a water change. Green algae is starting to grow inside the tank, and that is a bad sign that my water is contaminated with phosphate: the reverse osmosis filter is going out, and phosphate is getting through. So other things could. The frogspawn is not looking good at all. I urgently need to do something. But I've got so many other things to do. For one thing, we haven't entered credit card charges in forever, and I've got accounting to sort out, to get the corporate accounts off to the accountant who actually does the stuff, because the corporate tax deadline is looming.

4/27/08. Sunday. 7392. Working.

4/28/08. Monday. 7703. Skating. Practicing backward arcs, over, and over, and over. The book is going really well. I'm happy with that. I feel a little progress with the skating, but I still have trouble shoving off without screwing my balance. So I practice. I wear tracks in the ice that would throw Wayne Gretsky. But I'm gaining on it. Jane, meanwhile, is having a bad time---allergies may figure in it. The knee is slowly getting better, but the rest of her is just lower than a snake's belly. We're hoping she's not going to have trouble in this climate.

4/29/08. Tuesday. 8302. Skating. A really good day skating, as happens, and a lesson with Joan. I'm really truly beginning to get my backward-arc balance, and like so many things, it's essentially simple—a matter of training the body to be in a certain position and stable. Carry the same-side (as the foot) hand on around in a half arc as you shove off, and keep having the same-side hand cross the body axis: as I said, it provides a needed counterbalance that keeps you from feeling as if you're apt to fall over backward. It also firms up the muscles that hold the body core in line. All important. I'm very excited. All of a sudden things I've practiced in vain for months are coming into focus all at once—the backward arcs on a line. The waltz-eight pattern. The runout from the waltz jump. From the three-turn. Big stuff. All of a sudden I may look like a skater.

4/30/08. Wednesday. 8721. Skating is going so much better. We're still cleaning the place. And I'm getting a little work done. The story is going really well. But I'm going to have to take some time off for house guests.

5/1/08. Thursday. 9189. Chip and Roger arrived. They came over in the big van, and brought some family heirlooms over to Jane. For the most part, we just sat around and talked, went out to the Swinging Door for supper...I'm not trying to cook. I tend to use a lot of hot spice, and many of the people up here in the north aren't used to peppers, so I rarely offer my cooking to people who can be set alight by a jalapeno or two. We managed to fit two guests in, but it's dicey, trying to accommodate extra sleepers.

5/2/08. Friday. 9189. Dinner at Anthonys'...we had pancakes at the Swinging Door for breakfast, and I was just too over-sugared. The lads went off to fly a radio plane: I ordinarily like to get involved in whatever's going on, but the sugar just hit me hard and I didn't want to move. I live on kind of a plain diet: lot of protein, some carb, fruit, veggies, but very little processed sugar, and I very, very rarely eat or drink anything that's got a whole load of processed sugar. Syrup, in this case—hit my system like a ton of bricks. By afternoon I was shaking so badly I couldn't do any fine task, even type accurately. I kept pouring down protein, like milk, cheese, finally got my system calmed down. And then the feature of the day—dinner at a spiff restaurant. Which was about the last thing I needed, I'll tell you. I was so stuffed I didn't want to move.

5/3/08. Saturday. 9189. Breakfast at our place. Dinner at Scotty's, early, because I had to get some fish supplies and the store is in the Valley, where Scotty's is. So that worked out: it's one of our favorite places, and the lads liked it quite well. Mostly I worked on the genealogy stuff, there being too much activity around to get writing done, and just printed out the family tree—a laborious process. It's huge. Goes back some 62 generations. I do NOT do anything with the lateral relations: these are all direct-descent stuff. And I started purging the new ro/di filter and am getting some water run—that's a 12 hour process, to get 32 gallons of really pure water. We're going to get a longer line and route the wastewater from that process into the washing machine, so as not to waste it. It's good for all purposes except the tank.

5/4/08. Sunday. 9189. Bloomsday—the big all-city 7 mile run—which we didn't do, but Sharon did: she's done a fantastic number of them, into the high 20's. Jane and I swear there is no exercise more dangerous to the joints than walking. We have both seriously hurt ourselves doing Bloomsday and we have resolved that the last time we did it, that would be the last. We stick to the ice, which is low-impact unless you fall down, and where we have never been seriously hurt. Walking is infallible—for injuries. Meanwhile Chip and Roger headed home after a Swinging Door breakfast amid all the traffic and the Mariners have had a really wretched day. We, however, sat around and rested after our weekend of eating too much and exercising too little. After they left we did, however, attacked the big stack of dead videotapes, betas, etc, that we just need to throw out. We've boxed some of the better commercial ones we can sell and culled out the family videos we need to convert to DVD. So we have created even more space in the basement.

5/5/08. Monday. 9189. Quite a day. Cinco de Mayo...we'd forgotten about that, remembered only when we got back to the Swinging Door to catch supper. Met with Sharon after her dental appointment—and she is very stiff and limping: Bloomsday. And while we were having supper, the news came on to announced that Spokane has won the 2010 National Figure Skating Championships venue competition for a second time—a record for a small city—so it will be back. I don't know if we will go to the whole thing again, but we will certainly go to the men's competion (our favorite). We got the cats vaccinated today—rabies and feline viruses...nice vet, too: Ysabel likes him, which is a first. She's bitten every other vet who's ever worked on her. And then the capper for the day: we're sitting there watching telly and got a call from Selina and Lynn that I accidentally mailed Conspirator to them, not to my agent. I can't believe it. I've never done anything that careless with a manuscript. To my recollection I gave it and other packages to the nice older lady who runs the back-of-store postoffice at the hardware—or did we give it to the post office? Heck, I think we took it to the post office. I think they screwed up the labels. I refuse to think I was that wrongheaded. At least it went to somebody who knew what to do. They're mailing it on to my agent with my return address. What a mess!

5/6/08. Tuesday. 9189. Home, seeing to cats, etc. Trying to clean stuff up. At least the sprinkling system finally deigned to cut on. I have it running for only 5 minutes, and possibly that wasn't even enough time to fill the lines before it cut off again, prior to this. I winterized the system myself last fall, and it's been a bit of an adventure getting it started this spring: the brand is Irritrol, and it has the hardest, most complicated control and scheduling setup of any system on the market—not so bad once you figure it, but the number of possibilities is huge. Last fall I blew out the lines by the simple process of shutting down the individual lines to the two halves of the sprinkler system, letting it run dry for a week, then unscrewing a small brass tap in each line that allows air to get in. I reversed that procedure and got the outside water cut back on (it also shuts down the outside faucets) and had the water on, but, I don't know—it was disappointing it didn't cut right on. But it's working now, and with our new blue spruce tree (expensive) and our new rhododendron (not), not to mention those roses we fought to get ordered and delivered last year, including World Peace, and my iris, we want to be sure the water is adequate.

5/7/08 Wednesday. 9189. Big scare with Ysabel this morning. She'd kind of laid about all yesterday, the day after the shots, not surprising, and so did Efanor. But she sleeps beside me on my bed, and she just didn't move all night. This morning she wouldn't get up, not even for food, nor drink, nor her brushing, which is her absolute favorite thing. I set her on the ground, and she halfway fell—wouldn't drink, even being brought water. So we called the vet, and took her straight in. What I'd found on the internet with reaction to rabies shots wasn't encouraging—things like neural and kidney damage. The vet, however, said sometimes a shot will trigger a breakout of any lowgrade infection and they wanted to run a test or two. Sure enough, bladder infection. So I get to give Miss Cuisinart doses of medication twice daily. A little antinflammatory and a sub-cute dose of fluid and she was feeling better. She even ate a few bites when she got home. So Ysabel is being pampered, and I'm very relieved it's nothing worse, like a reaction. A bladder infection can be cured. I plan on buying extra bandaids for the dosing.

5/8/08. Thursday. 9189. I didn't get much done yesterday—the Ysabel thing had me rather rattled. But she took her meds last night and even this morning. She's feeling better and moving around on her own. That's a great relief. Efanor wants to play and can't understand that she's definitely not in the mood. But I'm around to protect her, and she's doing a whole lot better. Thank goodness we got right on it. I spent the day futzing with the genealogy stuff. You wouldn't believe the bollixed-up mess in the history of the Charlemagne family. The Merovingians, between maiming and assassinating one another, couldn't keep their records straight, and when you get into the history of their ancestors, you're right into fantasy. I expect to find Adam and Eve in that tree any day now. Ausbert the Senator and Clovis the Riparian are the last two I trust to have been semi-real. Worse than that, Jane and I are both related to them, and they intermarry a lot. A lot! That means every line of a huge segment of the tree is full of Merovingians and Carolingians, each one of which has about a dozen names. Take Bertha of Kent, who is Bertha Kent, who lives in France. She's also Bertha OF Kent, Blithhild, Blithildis, and Fleur Blanche de....(the white flower of something or another). Why Kent? Because this is the time when the Saxons (her grandfathers) were pouring in on the Angles in England to make up the Anglo-Saxons, whom our OTHER relatives, Vikings who were married into the French coast, the sons of Hrolf (Rollo) etc, invaded, while some of our OTHER-OTHER Viking relatives were up in Northumbria (north end of England) marrying in with the Scots, ultimately—and so did some of the fugitive Anglo-Saxons after they'd lost down at Hastings. ONLY...it turns out that the people running the database have confused the real Bertha of Kent, known as St. Bertha of Kent to the English, who is the daughter of the Merovingian king Charibert I of Paris—and married to Aethelstane of Kent, mother of several Kentish children...with Berthildis who is the wife of Ausbert the Senator, whose real name is Ansbert; and Berthildis was, (I think) the daughter of Claribert. Unless I've gotten them both mixed up with Bertrade of Laon...who MAY be the daughter of Claribert, but not Charibert. Databases are marvelous things, but because this one operates like a Ouiji board and takes input from EVERYBODY, skilled or not, knowledgeable or not, it's prone to an echoing-gallery of errors. This is a real good example. Somebody got an ID crossed, and now only honest history books (and to a certain extent, Wikipedia) can straighten it out. It's like chasing things in circles. But what's represented in the historic record is solid: there IS a connection between the Kentish folk, ultimately the Mercians and West Saxons (Wessex)...and the pattern of movement of people, regardless of the names, holds true. You get beaten down toward Kent, you run north into Northumbria in England or over into France, you marry whom you can to get safety—and nobody seemed able to tame Northumbria, though there was fighting back and forth across the border with Scotland: the fact the same family was on both sides of that line puts a whole different slant on Scottish relations with Northumbria. No enemy worse than a relative who feels put-upon. And during my days teaching ancient history, I never really had a good chance to get into the dark ages stuff—which this is. The real dark ages. Look up Brunhilda (not the one in the opera) in Wikipedia. There was a character. And I'd always heard of the wreck of the White Ship, but never understood what it meant---the list of really critical people who were lost on that ship is amazing. It really was the Titanic of its day. Meanwhile...recall that Viking chap in the Tony Curtis/Kurt Douglas movie The Viking, the one that died in the wolf pit? It seems to have been a snake pit, or the like, in Northumbria, and after fathering a googillion children, old Ragnar Eysteinsson turns out to be an ancestor, too, so we now have to feel sorry for the old guy, who seems to have been one of those Vikings who had settled at York. If you all get tired of these little vignettes (as bad as visiting somebody and having to watch their home movies) let me know; but I'm enjoying looking this stuff up. Oh, that's the other thing: we lost our address book in the computer crash, as well as a bunch of mail, so if you're waiting for something from me, do let me know. Everything is in the kind of mess you may well imagine.

5/9/08. Friday. 10283. Packing. Mostly packing.We're off for our trip to Dallas to visit my mother and brother and nieces, and we're up to our ears in suitcases...and we would have been gone already, but had to delay because of Ysabel. She's doing great now, and I'm confident she'll be fine on the trip—if not, we know vets along the way, but I wouldn't risk it if we weren't doing well with the medication: she's been wonderful about taking it—it's liquid; and she's been a real doll about it.

5/10/08. Saturday. 10283. We took out on the longest leg of our trip, starting from Spokane at 6:30AM and ending in Casper, Wyoming, at the good old Motel 6, which takes pets and sits across from Banjo Bob's Barbecue—as good as it gets. But we thought our Garmin had bit the big one: it kept telling us absolutely crazy routes and protesting to us about “a better route is available”...all the way to Bozeman, Montana. Finally we figured it, as the apparent route would take us through the park...as the crow flies. So we checked the settings, and the poor thing had been told to find the “most direct route”, meaning surface streets—and it had been plotting us as direct a line as possible through the back streets of everyplace between Spokane and Bozeman—which was why our arrival time was way later than we'd figured. We reset it and relaxed: plenty of time to get to the barbecue.

5/11/08. Sunday. 10283. Driving from Casper, WY through Denver, and on through Pueblo, Trinidad, CO, and Raton, NM via I-25. We stop for the night at our favorite small hotel, the Inn on the Santa Fe Trail...but Blackjack's Grill, our wonderful restaurant, is closed on Sundays, so we had to eat at the local Italian place—we don't do well with onions, and Jane really doesn't do well with garlic powder, so we were in a fix. At least we survived it on a lot of Reglan and other meds.

5/12/08. Monday. 10283. Long drive with a stop for the first Whataburger...the cats got excited as we entered the parking lot: we think they can smell it. Can we has Whatachken? Pleeze? We had supper at Hanks in McKinney, then went on in to Mum's and settled in for the stay.

5/13/08. Tuesday. 10283. Mum isn't as able to get about as she was, but she had some errands to run and we insisted on the first one she use the wheelchair—a good thing: we were exhausted from the trip ourselves. We did go out for dinner, and hang, no, she wasn't about to use that chair—Hanks wasn't as good a place for Mum, because of the noise level, but we tried.

5/14/08. Wednesday. 10283. I decided to try cooking: but I couldn't locate any of Mum's spices, and she didn't know where they were. It was kind of interesting stew/pork roast, but it was edible and there was a lot of it.

5/15/08. Thursday. 10283. Our last day in Dallas: we took Mum shopping, and did get her a couple of things. And we went out for our usual dinner at the Texas Roadhouse, which is convenient and a good place that can please almost anybody. Then we began packing up again.

5/16/08. Friday. 10283. Back on the road. We had an easy day today, back to Las Vegas and this time Blackjacks was open—but to our extreme dismay, they've gone ordinary. They must have lost their chef, because it's good, but it's just ordinary food. Sigh.

5/17/08. Saturday. 10283. Going north—the drive up along the long stretch to Raton produced one bit of fun: we collect large rocks for the garden, and we like to have them from locales where we've been. We had admired and wondered at the origins of the massive limestone cap on the tablelands around Las Vegas—white, ergo limestone, and probably from a coral reef somewhen back in the days of the Sundance Sea—that's way prehistoric. We realized it's probably the same stratum that produces Castle Rock in Colorado (interspersed with volcanic ash and lava flows from the period in which the New Mexico volcanos were active) and maybe the same as you find up in northern Colorado near Cheyenne, Wyoming, where limestone hoodoos are very striking and photogenic. We name each of our rocks by locale (a bit of whimsy, not insanity—) and this particularly nice 2x2 slab we prised up from the roadside earth is Lulu the Las Vegas Limestone. We have our piece of that nice formation, and a memento of our favorite waystop. We also have Carlos of Raton Pass, Missy, the lovely green serpentinite from near Missoula, and Bubbles, the rock we got after our canoe overset in the Spokane River. We got to Casper on schedule, had a nice supper at Banjo Bob's, and turned in. Jane's having a bit of trouble with her leg hurting, and it looks as if I'll be driving tomorrow.

5/18/08. Sunday. 10283. Home again—and a really hellish trip. Jane was in incredible pain—the leg was really flaring up, and if it hadn't been a Sunday, I'd have suggested we try for a clinic. Painkillers wouldn't touch it. I drove—the longest leg of the whole trip—all but 2 hours, that Jane drove, but she's in such pain it's not really safe—so I took over again, and drove all the way in, interspersed with stops to let her walk about. She had the seat flattened so as to lie down, but it was just really, really bad pain.

5/19/08. Monday. 10283. We thought we were going to have to take Jane to the doctor, and put in a call to get an emergency appointment with the chiropractor—but she had a lightbulb moment and took a magnesium pill. 250 Mg, and within 20 minutes the pain just stopped. Mark that one in your reference books. So we'll go to the chiropractor tomorrow. Today we are too tired to move.

5/20/08. Tuesday. 11731. We made it down to Dr. Shane the chiropractor—we're sore, but Jane's leg is so much better. We're frantically doing laundry and trying to straighten up one trip's packing into the next. We're convention-bound...hoping to do a few more conventions, now that we have a house and a secure place to leave things.

5/21/08. Wednesday. 12142. One day to skate—still working on the back edge arcs, but with encouraging success, now. We went over to Joan's to check on the fish she's still fish-sitting for us, to clean a little algae and do a little decorator consultation on the house she's prepping to rent. I got a little writing done, just to get back in touch with the book before I lose touch again this weekend—we have to go straight off to Missoula for Miscon.

5/22/08. Thursday. 12361. No chance to get any work done: we're packing for the convention this weekend, doing laundry, arranging things, and hoping not to forget anything.

Just a fast note, because I'm up to my ears in alligators. Received a phone call, sad news which may have prompted you to consult this site: Robert Asprin passed away while waiting for a car to pick him up to go to a convention: it was fitting, and a good way to go, if you have to. My deepest, deepest sympathies to his family and friends. For Bob---we used to meet at conventions in the years-ago and he'd borrow my guitar at filks. My memory is of a darkhaired and youngish Robert enjoying the cons to the max, which is, I think, the way he'd like all his readers to remember him.

On the local front, Ysabel has been taking her medicine like a trouper, and is herself again.

5/23/08. Friday. 12361. Headed out to Miscon, Missoula, Montana, with Sharon and the cats—we were going to leave them home, but we have to medicate Ysabel twice daily, so she had to be with us. We have a marvelous room—open the window and you're overlooking a lawn and a very noisy creek that makes a lovely sound to sleep by. We've never had such a nice hotel room, ever, and that includes some four star hotels. The hotel is Ruby's Convention Center, and if you're ever needing to spend the night in Missoula, this is where: they have no restaurant—you have to eat in the casino next door, or up or down the block, but the rooms and the staff are excellent. And there is a breakfast complimentary the next morning. It's raining—it looks to rain for the next several days, but that's ok. I'm having to wear the same shirt for several days—I bet on cooler and only packed one sweatshirt, which is the only thing I have to keep warm.

5/24/08. Saturday. 12361. Did a couple of panels, good panels; and then we had to change rooms: we have a handicapped room—luck of the draw—and somebody arrived who actually needs the wheelchair shower, so we packed up and moved next door: same wonderful creekside view. Wonderful room. We're resolved to come back next year. We're eating at the casino next door, which is incredibly smoky, and my sweatshirt is picking up the tobacco like a sponge. Ugh.

5/25/08. Sunday. 12361. I spent most of the day sitting at a table at the con and working on the genealogy printout, discovering people who died before they were born in the computer record, that kind of thing. I get to pacing at cons and decided the way to get through un-exhausted was to have something to keep me busy during times when I'm not. We've already reserved a room for 2009 Miscon. The same room—thanks to Chthulu Bob. We love it! I resolved to freeze and change shirts—the tobacco is just too much. Lovely con barbecue—a Miscon tradition, and just a lot of fun. Lot of people: Patty Briggs, Dragon, Maggie Bonham, Bill Warren, and us—good con. Next year the guest will be Stephen Brust. Sunday night we had a bring-your-towel wake for Douglas Adams and included Bob Asprin, who's remembered fondly in the region.

5/26/08. Monday. 12361. Did our last bit at Miscon and drove home—about 150 miles or so. The area is still flooded—doesn't affect I-90, but it's cut off some local roads: you can see others threatened. It's completely up to the breakwater top on the road on the far side of Lake Coeur d'Alene, and they've shut down the pedestrian bridge above the foot of the falls in Spokane itself. You'd be soaked to the skin if you attempted to cross it. Jane now has a painful rash—on the same leg that was giving her fits; and we've got it figured at least this one was due to the knee brace. So that's not such a mystery. We got home and had supper at the Swinging Door—Sharon was exhausted and took out for home to collapse; we got back to the house and collapsed, watched another dismal Mariners game and went to bed.

5/27/08. Tuesday. 12508. We're awake. That's as much as we can say. We're going to go out with Joan for a dinner, pick up our fighting fish and our mail and probably collapse again.

5/28/08 Wednesday. 13261 Still resting, trying to get work going.

5/29/08 Thursday. 14818. Back on the ice again, and trying to get organized—laundry, cleaning, all those things without which you can’t face the world. Did pretty well on the ice, all things considered.

5/30/08 Friday 15719. More of the same. We still haven’t heard from Sharon. We assume she’s sleeping.

5/31/08 Saturday. 15719. No word from Sharon. Worried about her. Tested fish tank...and oh, my gosh—the alkalinity, which should be, in a healthy tank, about 9.3-8.3—is 4.1. I’m not even bothering to test ph and calcium levels. The critters are healthy-looking, except the frogspawn, which when we got back from the long trip had looked very bad; and then the peppermint shrimp got all over it, and it popped its base on one head, and over all, it was dying. Well, now I know why. Two other euphyllia-class corals in the tank are going great, but the frog must be sensitive to the alkalinity. Which has to be fixed. I’m dropping the heaviest dose I dare of buffer into the tank daily. It has algae growth—from the ro/di water filtering unit, which had needed a new cylinder: lack of one had let phosphate from the drinking water supply get into my tank, and so I know what caused that. The big puzzle was the brownish fluffy growth on the glass, nasty stuff. Well, now I know. The alk had dropped, while the calcium supply stayed steady, and the calcium wasn’t being absorbed as it should. If you wonder what goes on in your body, take a look at the ocean: critters can absorb calcium when the ph is 7.9-8.3, maintained by a decent alkalinity, as per above, a calcium level of 400 or so, and 1200 magnesium. If that gets off, growth doesn’t happen properly. And boy, is mine off! The thing is, off as it is, it requires a very slow fix: I daren’t shock these creatures that have filled their tissues with this badly balanced water.

6/1/08 Sunday 16172. The alkalinity isn’t budging, which is how far the balance is off. An 80 gallon system (30 sump and 54 tank) can swallow a lot of buffer and not budge the alkalinity a lot. But I’m just going to dose daily and hope. Nothing is reacting in any way but positive.

6/2/08 Monday 17373 Back on the ice, and working on back edges. Again and again and again.

6/3/08 Tuesday 18288. The first hint the tank is responding to the buffer: we’ve made it to 5.8. I’m keeping at the skating—lesson with Joan, and getting steadier.

6/4/08 Wednesday 19213. More of the same.

6/5/08 Thursday 19381. Doing a lot of thinking. But making progress. There’s just going to be a lot of politics at the front of this book, but it has to be, or people just won’t understand what’s going on. I hope at least I’m making it entertaining politics, with a suitable number of assassinations and doublecrosses.

6/6/08 Friday 20173 Can’t believe it. The alkalinity is now reaching 6, and the frogspawn skeleton, covered in algae and used as a hotel by three micro brittle-stars, has all of a sudden put out 5 new heads. There’s been life huddling down in the depths of that bony structure, and given reason for hope, it’s putting out buds.

6/7/08 Saturday 22181. We’ve gotten to 6.3. And by now we’re getting quite worried about Sharon...we haven’t heard from her: we called, and she’s really tired, and sleeping. Hope she won’t come down with something.

6/8/08 Sunday 22181. At about 8 am we had a power out. Glitched the whole house. I went downstairs to administer more buffer and do a water test—and the sump had more water in it than it should—and the “down’ hose wasn’t pouring any more water into the sump—thank goodness. I started investigating and discovered the 300.00 Iwaki 100 pump, though running, had seized up and decoupled its impeller. All of which was to say—those pumps don’t grow on trees and can’t even be replaced without a 4 week delay. And a tank can die in hours without the pump going. I got myself together and went to the fish store in fond hope they had one in stock: no, no such luck. They did sell me a Mag 18, which should be able to push the water upstairs. I brought it home, took things apart, put it on (imagine lots of salt water and crud and plumbing fittings and wrenches and pliers and swearing while working in cramped spaces) and it didn’t work 5 minutes before IT quit. At this point Jane got into the act and pointed out the hose could be clogged. Well, the only thing going to push a clog out of the hose would be, yes, a running Iwaki 100. So we drained the whole sump, overturning its sandbed: (imagine 30 gallons of water that looks like the muddiest stinkiest creek you’ve ever fallen in now in a 32 gallon trashcan, while I now hand-scoop the nastiest smelliest sand and rock you can imagine out of the sump into a bucket, incidentally killing off innocent micro-crabs and the like and swearing the while: no way to save them. The whole system can die.) We have now lightened the acrylic sump enough that we can lift it at an angle so Jane can unscrew the Iwaki, which has its nose threaded through a bulkhead into the sump. Freeing the pump, we then attack it with screwdriver and extract the impeller box, but can’t get at the impeller. A phone call to the fish store proves, yes, just tap it, it should come apart. Well, it did. The impeller assembly inside—remember that brown gunk I was complaining about?—had electrostatically fused itself as pure calcium carbonate gunk to the surfaces of the impeller, and clogged all our hoses like hardening of the arteries. ThAT’s why the pump quit. So we look for a way to clean 15 feet of hose that is threaded through our living room floor. Did I mention I also found a snail blocking the impeller? The final insult that had stopped the system...so we remove snail. Jane brilliantly finds some ribbed black hose just large enough to fit into the other hose and is using it like a bottle-brush, cleaning out gunk you wouldn’t believe. I am using 2 gallons of vinegar to clean the pump guts. We work a long time at this. The clock which had read 0:00 since the power-out read 9:25 by the time we put the whole thing back together and turned it on. No joy. One final set of pipes connected to the tank itself. We disassembled those—which were actually clean—and found one lousy pointed snail shell serving as a perfect stop-valve to the T-joint where the two outlets reach the tank. We removed the snail and tried again. We were soaked in nasty water, the tank was completely cloudy with gunk (I completely despair of the frogspawn) and we headed out to eat...I wasn’t fixing dinner with those hands, no.

6/9/08 Monday 23465. Everything is still running, we are sore from all the running up and down stairs, and the frogspawn lives! I’ve resumed adding buffer, and so far, so good.

6/10/08 Tuesday 24818. Good lesson today. The tank suffered a ph setback from all the goings-on, but is back up into the 6's in alkalinity, and thanks to the fact my tank has two sandbeds (the sump and the main tank) the one sandbed kept the tank alive while the other was disrupted.

6/11/08 Wednesday 25731. Continuing with the buffer. Still haven't hit 7. But trying.

6/12/08 Thursday 27163 Business as usual.

6/13/08 Friday 29763. Word is there’s going to be 2 public skating sessions starting Monday and all the adults are agreeing to go to the second, later one. That way we can have more of our day unbroken. This will be a big help.

6/14/08 Saturday 30187. Heard from Sharon, and we agreed to meet for dinner tomorrow—turns out she’s been doing medical qualification paperwork and that’s what’s had her occupied for a week.

6/15/08 Sunday 34324.Sharon came over and we had a good time, poured some wine, had some ice cream (not in the same hour) and watched So You Think You Can Dance episodes off the Tivo. A good time had by all.

6/16/08 Monday 35144. Great skate—the first on the afternoon session, and it was glorious.

6/17/08 Tuesday. 36176. Another really good skate. We got the gang together and went out to Tomato Street for supper. Jane had gotten the long-threatened haircut, and we were kind of spiffed up...a good feeling after all that wallowing in salt water last week. I even got inspired to call Dell and make a second try at getting them to replace my broken, limping keyboard. Since Dell had some bad publicity about service problems, they’re trying hard to recover their image, and you could tell the difference—I got a sane, fluent person who understood my complaint (the last had tried to tell me a wornout palmrest key could be fixed by software) and ordered a new keyboard. Which, thanks to the fact I have a home-visit policy means they come to my house and I don’t have to schlep it anywhere or do it myself. I am so looking forward to a mouse key that works and a spacebar that works.

6/18/08 Wednesday 37222. I couldn’t skate today. I took a lesson, but my legs were shaking terribly on everything. I finally had to get off the ice. I don’t know what’s wrong—allergy, maybe. But it’s just nasty. And after waiting all day for the Dell repairman, he was a noshow. When he was officially late, I went onto Dell’s chat—and they found out the repair guy had left no phone number. Well, they said they’d put “expedition” on it—and when I got back to the locker room I had a phone call from the national service company in Las Vegas, who swore that I would get the guy tomorrow, no question. I guess that’s what Expedition means.

6/19/08 Thursday 38021. Today skating went much better—except the kid quotient: we did get a pack of young hockey players with attitude who just made life miserable for everybody, throwing gloves, which can kill somebody if they plunk one in front of a figure skater; we got off the ice a bit early, because the ice was crap and we decided to go to Tomato Street again. Which we did.

6/20/08 Friday 40417. NOW I know what’s wrong. I’ve got the shakes again, probably won’t skate today unless I can cure them with electrolyte balance stuff or vitamins or something: I’m allergic to something Tomato Street is using, probably onion salt. I’ve gotten to where I can tolerate a little real onion in a sauce if very slight and cooked to mush—but neither Jane nor I can tolerate onion or garlic powder. Jane’s knees swell to the point of pain—and I get the shakes as if I were on a 3-day caffeine overload. Sigh. So our once-favorite restaurant is now off the list of possibles, for us. We can't afford to lose a day to that kind of thing every time we eat there. The computer guy did show up, the old Dell has a brand new face and keys that work again—next week I’m getting another packet, one I’ll install myself: 2 gig of memory. I can’t believe I’m getting 2 gig for 75.00. And the old machine will run much more happily with big programs.

6/21/08 Saturday 41274. Feeling just wrung out. Jane took my pulse yesterday and found it a bit rapid, so I'm not exercising, just sitting. Whatever it is I get at Tomato Street, and not just one recipe, is the culprit. A host of symptoms, but giving way to just blah-exhaustion once it clears my system. I'm disgusted. On a more fun note, my memory arrived. (Just what you need to do: install computer bits when you have the shakes.) I took out the battery, opened up my system memory access plate on the bottom, and discovered...only one memory slot, and it's empty. Well, *that's* odd. Obviously there's a chip somewhere. So I went online (on the desktop) and found out that the D800 Latitudes have one chip (dimm A) under the keyboard. And on this machine that IS a gig. So they'd sent me two; but at least, thank goodness, I don't have to pull the newly-installed keyboard. I went ahead and put in a 1 gig chip in the accessible slot, bringing me up to 2 gig; and then Jane decided, well, she'd put the other chip (rather than the expense of shipping back) into her D510 Latitude. They check out compatible, re chips. She has a 256 chip, and it's not playing nicely with the 1 gig, so she's getting another. That will help that machine a lot, since it only had a total of half a gig---not enough, with the programs we run, and the demands of XP.

6/22/08 Sunday 42699. Well....remember the big pipe-cleaning operation we did in the kitchen sink? Bad idea. Our kitchen sink plumbing is now blocked. We spent the day bailing and using caustics, and vinegar, and just about everything, finally took the trap off, and ran the ribbed hose up the drain pipe for the sink: blocked. We are now washing dishes in the bathroom sink and I am having to remember not to toss water down that drain. Sigh. Isn't it amazing how one disaster proliferates into another? We have to call the plumber and get them to run a snake down that pipe, which runs across the downstairs library ceiling. In my jittery downtime yesterday, I ran through Jane's 16th-great-grandparents: her people had a penchant for recording their relatives, and she has a lot of them...but it's getting fun: she's related to some of the movers and shakers of England of the 1300's, and they're in Wikipedia. I'm finding out all sorts of dirt. We now have 2 huge notebooks full of printout...all in sheet protectors, so it's not quite that thick, but it's at least a notebook and a half, of the largest sort. And it's amazing how related we are. At a certain point we share multiple ancestors---what time they aren't having at one another with swords, assassinating one another and besieging one another. The Black Douglases, the de Percys, the de Bohuns, and no few Plantagenets, de Meschines, de Braoses, and de Beaumonts, Beauforts, Beaumounts and Sackvilles---but no Bagginses.

6/23/08 Monday 43152. The plumber got us out of our mess---for about 150.00. He used the little snake: no joy; the medium one finally got it. We think it was just a long-term buildup in the pipes which now is cleared out: our fish tank cleanup just was the capper on already slow-running pipes. We also learned the kitchen plumbing runs all the way under the concrete floor of the basement to join the main sewer line under the floor. That means our sewer line is *deep* in this house. We're on a hill, on basalt, so I guess they did some serious excavation when they built our basement. I can't wait to dig into this when we finally start the fishpond in the back yard. Our lawn drains water away so fast it's real hard to keep the thing watered, and it really browns fast if I don't drown it. I'm betting there's a very thin layer of soil before serious rock starts. Skating: Joan didn't make it in today, so I just practiced. Jane's moved her blades in a hair: it may be helping. My back edges are starting to work, seriously. And Joan has me working on an extreme-edges back slalom that is serious butt exercise. Now I know why professional figure skaters can fall on their butts and bounce back unhurt. The muscle this is going to develop is major. And I am so sore---as long as I've been at this, I'm so sore...

6/24/08 Tuesday 44311. More of the same. We've been eating out too much: got to do something about this, but not this evening. Sigh. The Swinging Doors' new Italian sandwiches. Yum.

6/25/08. Wednesday. 45759. Liking this new afternoon schedule. And so far the general public we've shared the ice with has been nice folks. No idiots. I was appalled at one costume that made it to the ice---gangsta wear. I saw him from a distance and thought it a particularly unlovely older woman in a particularly bad-length skirt. Nope. Guy with buzzcut, tats, earring and underwear showing. Go figure. He fell down and nearly lost the pants. I tell you, I'm tired of baggy men. I want to see legs again. Not striped underwear. Give me guys with stockings, tight pants, fancy coats and powdered wigs before guys that look like bag-ladies. Give me back the days when men's clothes budget exceeded their sisters'. Give me some creativity. Spandex. I don't care. Today's fashions don't just look like unmade beds: they look like unmade beds with the mattress included.

07/20/08 Sunday 54548. Sometimes, in the creative process, you just need a break. So I took one. No hitting myself over the head because I wasn’t making the progress I’d like: I just took a break, so I could do some creative thinking. Ysabel got brushed a lot: she's happy. So here’s what’s gone on. Let's see...I'm sitting here rather uncomfortably because I made a mistake and lost my balance backward while practicing the toe loop Friday. I have a bruised---ahem---tailbone. How did I do this? Coach Joan has tried to improve my posture, and I found this made a great difference in my stability on the waltz jump: I flipped off three of them in succession and was perfectly balanced in open ice. So I applied this revelation to my toe loop, which I do along the wall. Wrong! I was too upright, too far back, lost the pick-in, had my foot skid as I did the forward kick, which catapulted me, shall we say, backward. It was a slow fall. It was ridiculous. I held to the wall most of the way down, which strained my shoulder, but the position I was in landed me square on my (thank goodness, padded) tailbone. If not for the padding, I probably would have broken it.

So let's just say I'm sitting gingerly. Doesn't hurt to walk, so it's just a bruise. But I'll be glad when this heals.

Yesterday we went to dinner with Steve and Sharon: had a very nice evening. Joan couldn't join us, and she was missed, but we had dessert.

Last week---oh, last weekend the puddle the dishwasher was making grew quite a bit larger. Now, I've had a dishwasher seal failure on a dishwasher, on a concrete slab floor. It ruined the tilework. On a wooden floor with our library directly below in the basement? Real scary. So we take a critical look at the appliance situation, and conclude we have a washer that's getting so weak you have to hand-wring the clothes before putting them in the dryer, and the dryer and washer both probably are original equipment. Harvest gold. Heavy---you wouldn't believe. And in the basement. So...on Monday we went to Fred's Appliance Ding and Dent: now---Fred's is the got-rocks store. Spendy. But we thought, well, maybe dinged up would save us money and the washer-dryer are going to the basement. We priced things, found what we wanted, got the model numbers, and went to Lowe's. Where they had the washer dryer combo for about the same as the dinged ones, and they had a cheaper but very similar dishwasher with no dings---the ding on the dishwasher we wanted was pretty obvious, right in the door. So we talked to Lowes, we talked it over, we went back in and bought the three appliances, figuring to use the no-interest credit card option, and pay it off over time, while NOT having a fire in the basement from a creaky dryer or a flood on the main floor and basement from the failing seal on the dishwasher.

So the guys show up with same, and we have to remove the basement door AND molding to get the dryer in after the other appliances went out. Then they hook up the water line to the dryer. Huh?

Turns out what we bought, having gotten our model numbers and concept of prices from Fred's, was one heck of a dryer---with a steam cycle for wrinkled clothes.

The washing machine, a Whirlpool, weighs your clothes and doles out water accordingly, so in spite of the fact it's a toploader, it uses water like a frontloader. An average toploader uses 50 gallons of water per wash. This one uses 25. It has no central column. And its spin-dry gets your clothes so dry it saves electricity in the dryer. Plus Lowes gave us a 100.00 rebate for buying a set, gave us free delivery and setup, about a 125.00 item, and our local power company is giving us 100.00 each for the efficient appliances---except the dryer: you get nothing for dryers. So we came out better than the ding and dent place. And we have a washer-dryer that is going to serve us very well for at least a decade. The dishwasher we wanted in black, so it had to be ordered in. It arrives next week. But so far we are really happy (how could we not be?) with the washer-dryer. Now we're praying the refrigerator holds out!

So that was Tuesday of that week. We skated, we worked---well, I thought. And thought, and thought.

Oh, and the reef tank. I've been going nuts for two months because I can't get the chemistry balanced. I added buffer daily for 2 going on 3 weeks, unable to raise the carbonate hardness (alkalinity), before I finally got the smarts to inquire online whether buffer that has solidified is the same as buffer that hasn't. Well, no, it isn't. It can't buffer any more. Use baking soda. So I pour baking soda in for 2 more weeks. Alkalinity rises---and falls. I'm still running a kalkwasser drip. Should I stop that until I get the water balanced? Well, no, but---maybe your corals are eating more calcium. In brief, marine water balance is a tripod: magnesium supports both alkalinity and calcium load. If your mag is high enough, neither alk nor cal should fall. Ha! so maybe the corals ARE eating it. And then somebody comes on who knows Kent Buffer. Seems it contains a lot of boron. And if you load your tank with boron (which was, of course, unaffected by the solidification) it destabilizes alk and cal even IN the presence of sufficient magnesium. Solution? Ton o' water changes. 5 gallons a swat. So now I'm doing 2 things---pulling the fine sand from the sandbed, in favor of medium grade, which won't blow and travel as much---while my downstairs planted tank (refugium) sandbed supports the tank's chemistry (Bacteria in the sandbed do the filtration for your tank: a marine reef doesn't use a filter). So I'm doing that, pulling sand, putting in water. The corals are ecstatic. The fish aren't unhappy. But this is going to be a long, slow process. It's getting better and better. But my hands are getting pruinish from salt water.

Skating is going particularly well. Jane had another bout with her boots, and then we began to figure out it's not the boots, it's the lacing. She changed her lacing style, pulling up snugly on the inside side of the boot, and is now getting some support. Amazing how much lacing affects skating boots---but they are lace-to-the-toe for a reason: the whole boot molds to your foot as you put stress on those laces. Want to change the shape of your foot? Change the lacings. I watch people go out there in rental skates (plastic) with half done laces and just shake my head. I'd be scared going around the rink once with the lace-up they're using. No control of the edges, not even surety your foot is not going to wobble seriously over onto an ankle. All these people who can't skate because they have "weak ankles." I have a news flash here: it's not your ankles. It's your lacings. Good lacing means your ankle *can't* turn.

One thing about the sport, too: I was getting some serious foot problems when I took it up---toe joint going crooked, etc, all from some high-falutin' walking shoes I paid over a hundred dollars for. Well, the skate lacing is meticulous, and demanding. You want that blade centered between big toe and second toe, and you yank and pull and adjust until you've made a cast out of your boot: your foot can flex, but those boots flex only with the impact of a jump (or a bad mistake or a highspeed turn). What happens? Your feet gain all sorts of muscle and little alignment problems get pulled straight. People with flat feet begin to develop some arch and actual control of their toes...I have a high arch, which could have given me trouble as I get older, and my feet have so much muscle they're painfree. Amazing sport. Your whole body undergoes that process. You stand straighter, your misaimed feet get corrected to go straight---you develop reflexes that save you in a fall---I can't think of a better sport to last you a lifetime. I could only wish I'd started this when I weighed far less in a fall and the distance down was a lot shorter! And after not falling at all for a year, I've fallen twice in the last two weeks---once caught a toepick in a crosswise hockey rut: my fault: should have been deeper in the knees and did a backward layout that corrected that pesky cervical vertebra my chiropractor has been after: did that one pitching chin-first over the handlebars of a bike on a downhill, near broke my neck, and it hasn't been straight for 30 years. Now it is. The second one I related above. Both are because I'm getting good enough to get cocky, and I'm taking chances. Occasionally those go boom!

Weather has been generally hot, but not as hot as usual: temperature range is around 90 down to 58 at night. I can live with that. Of course we get these temperatures the first full year we have central air up here! And what comes next is fire season: we've already had one serious fire in Spokane. Next we'll see a series of waves that produce lightning, no water, starting forest fires, and covering the region with smoke. Followed finally by real rain in September, and cooling temperatures. I can't wait.

We spent the 4th of July down the street at Joan's: she has a perfect overlook of the city, and the fireworks. That was pleasant.

For the rest, let's see: we're making slow headway with the gardens, but neither of us has had the time or energy to spare for that. The fish pond will probably not go in until next summer.

We're both working hard. I've done my thinking and the book is moving again. So, I hope, will this blog.

07/21/08 Monday 56468. Well, we're doing better...I'm updating again on schedule. I'm still sitting very gingerly---result of the fall. I have a very colorful 5" long bruise on my right arm, and the bracelet I wear on that arm---broke, just broke. It was sand-cast, and there was a bubble in the cast, so it just broke. I'm going to see if a modern jeweler can figure out how to weld it back together. The tailbone is quite, quiite sore, but improving a bit: from sheer agony to just damned painful. It's hard to focus on my writing. And the right shoulder glitched---Jane got that straightened out: she knows where to shove, and that quit, but muscle relaxants haven't given me a really focused brain. As best I can reconstruct the fall, it started even before the turn, when I failed the turn itself, due to a bad center of balance. I started the fall there---but since the next move involves a sharp turnabout, I completed that while falling, hurt the right arm, and ended up grabbing the wall with the left hand trying to prevent the fall---which landed me on my tailbone. Sigh. Bottom line, pardon pun, it hurts a lot. If I'd just fallen, I'd have emerged unscathed because of the crash pads. Grabbing the wall---bad move.//Dietwise, we're about to go back on Atkins. So I bought two family packs of meat. And some slow matches for the grill. It was gruesomely hot today, and I couldn't find my matches at first, so I gave up and we postponed starting the diet until after the trip to the chiropractor's tomorrow. Then I cook.//Gas prices---what a mess. You knew this was coming---and if anybody thinks, long term, it isn't going to get worse, they're doing some wishful thinking. We're using way too much. I wouldn't be surprised to see 6 dollars a gallon by next year, and it's about time for the people in charge of policy to do some creative things. Russia is going to corner the market on natural gas stations, which it's building all over. Our stations are gas-only, and Europe's going to be running on Russian natural gas. We haven't promoted public transport, which Europe has; we haven't supported passenger rail; which Europe has; we haven't made major moves to get off increasingly expensive gas, and here we are, 5.00 a gallon and upward, which increases the price of everything and hits us all in the pocketbook. If our national planners would get off their theoretical principles and realize they've got to drop some major incentives into the free market they so prize, like no-tax on hybrid cars, like major tax breaks for companies installing natural gas or hydrogen stations on the interstates, (one way to get it into both cities and smaller towns for a start)---and plan ahead of a crisis for once instead of running from behind---//I can rant on that for hours. We have a Forester, which gets about 26 mpg, and we would buy a Prius in a heartbeat if we had to trade, but right now we're being careful of finances, and the Forester is paid for and running well. I think a lot of people are in that boat. The Prius here has an eight thousand dollar surcharge tacked on to it because of its scarcity: read: the dealers are putting this charge on, because people will pay it; and that I just object to paying. So we'll go on driving our Forester, and combining trips, and not taking our usual trips across the Cascades this summer, because it just budget-wise isn't in the cards. In a normal year, we make about 3 such trips, and go to Mariners' games; so that's another industry that's hurting. Just so unnecessary, if we'd had somebody of either party to stand up and say, listen, we've got a problem ahead and we're going to solve it. Nawww. That takes guts. I hope the next crop of politicians figures it out.

7/22/08. Tuesday. 56791. Still unable to skate. If I fell on my tail again I think I'd faint on the spot. Damn! it hurts! We went down to the chiropractor, Dr. Shane, and he was sympathetic, but it's a bruise, and there's not too much to be done for it. We are also having our last ice cream for a long while: tomorrow we're switching back onto the Atkins diet---note that a recent CNN article cites a study that shows exactly what we've found: cholesterol is actually lower and good cholesterol is higher on that diet, plus people who do Atkins do pretty well at keeping it off. So we've been bad for a while, and we are now prepared to get serious before the weight creeps up. Omelets for breakfast, but one last hamburger/shake down in Pullman. Tomorrow we get the new dishwasher. And tomorrow I fire up the grill. It actually rained on the way to and from Pullman, and that is the first time in weeks. Very happy with that.

7/23/08. Wednesday. 57227. We got the dishwasher in, and it's a nice one. Even has a "sterilize" cycle. Which is good when you use glass utensils for both cooking AND the fish tank. I'm still struggling with the alkalinity issue---but gaining on it. The corals all look great.//I'm a little improved over yesterday: that long car ride was hard, even if Jane drove. I'm still hurting so bad it's hard to do anything. I have this lovely yellow bruise about 5" long on my arm. But the worst is the tailbone, no question. And it was such a silly fall. Jane's gone off skating today, leaving me behind (sob!) and I'm heating up the coals for porkchops. The day is quite cool...very nice. I sure wish this would last, but I see they've forecast near 90 in a few days. At least it beats last year's temperatures. The raspberry bush we're going to have to get rid of is bearing fruit: nice taste, sun-warmed. I'm beginning to think of ways I can clear around that bush and leave it. With actually being watered, it might actually produce respectable berries.

7/24/08. Thursday. 58291. Ah. Clean dishes. I wish I could work faster on the book. I'm in so much pain from this tailbone situation that every time I nearly get to work, it starts hurting because I've sat too long. This is a real downer. On the other hand, ideas are building up like floodwater behind a dam, so when I do feel better, it's going to go fast. I did go to the rink, to sit about and look pathetic (actually I brought my computer and the Railroad Tycoon III disc, which I haven't used in ages) in the theory Sharon might want to go out to dinner; well, Sharon had a schedule and said she couldn't, but Joan said she could at least drop in for drinks; and then Sharon said, well, and then we ended up with Dawn and Becky, too---Kay, poor thing, had to work. Joan found out what Swinging Door means by individual nachos---8 inches high piled with olives and stuff. She was intending a small snack. And that get-together was fun. We prevented at least two people getting their work done, but hey, it was fun. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to skate tomorrow: though it is improving: the rink is hosting hockey school this weekend and we are up to our armpits in rink-rats and people in armor. I've sworn all of us adult figure skaters ought to get together and give the hockey rascals a dose of their own medicine, by darting cross-ice and back at random intervals and angles the minute they start their down-ice run, the way they do us. But, sigh, we're responsible adults and we won't. We just try not to get knocked down. And I personally can't take another fall this soon. I at least got up this morning feeling as if I might skate---until I sat down. Ow. Re-ow. Jane has meanwhile tackled the back yard without me, and is making great progress on the flower bed by the garage. She has made the point, and I agree, no more flower beds get created or grass dug up until we get more control of the ones we have. Though she's proposing to fire up the Mantis tiller and see if we can't make headway toward digging the fishpond. I just wish we'd lose about 10 more degrees of daytime heat---though I can't complain too much about 88 degrees for a high in the end of July.

7/25/08. Friday. 58575. The tailbone is still extremely painful...and they're having the hockey school this evening, which means that the rink today is going to be a zoo full of yard apes in full apery, playing at combat. So even Jane is not going near the ice. Jane went outside and got the rest of the flowerbed by the garage, where the iris are going to go. The weather has been mild, for summer, but even so it's a brutal job. She was going to go down the street and help Joan sand her kitchen floor (wooden, under renovation) but Joan was errand-bound. So she settled in to recuperate for the afternoon---until I came with a suggestion we go to the fish store over in Spokane Valley and get some necessities, which just happens to take us past Scotty's. Never mind the new diet---well---sorta mind it: no hamburger buns. So off we go.//The water is doing so much better I decided to get one frag (small broken piece of living coral) to test the situation and, yes, a fish. I also brought the store half the cheatomorpha algae I've been raising in the refugium (small planted tank designed to absorb phosphate and nitrate from the water: growing plants do that). So we look. There's allegedly a Tomini Tang in one tank---but Kevin (the store owner) has many of his small tanks interconnected to enable water flow, and the tang could theoretically be most anywhere in 3 tanks. Which are heavily planted. And Kevin, his son and helper being in Iraq, has broken down his home tank and set up again in the store, but he has put a lot of his big specimen rocks (how I would love to buy a few of those, but I have only a 54g tank) in the fish-sale tanks. And they are not easy to search behind. So our quest for the Tomini Tang (one of only two tangs small enough for a 54) was futile. But, Kevin said, asked if he had a lawnmower blenny---no, but he had a starry blenny, a close and prettier cousin. The starry is basically black with white dots and goes to pinto with stark white if trying to hide among rocks and shadows. Or pale brown. Quite an elusive fellow. Well, Kevin keeps ordering them and then forgetting whether he has sold one, and they get lost in the tanks. He's pretty sure he has one. We found it. But it vanished while we were trying to net him. We found another, in another set of connected tanks. Couldn't get him either. We waited around another thirty minutes until past closing and after Kevin had served two other customers. And meanwhile found another Court Jester Goby (the cursed fairy wrasse, now traded back to the store, did in our last one.) This one proved easy to catch. I picked out my coral frag, a piece from Kevin's tank---when you move coral, you necessarily break bits off, and each bit is valuable, and can grow a whole new coral in somebody else's tank---which is how the hobby works. We try to reproduce the corals and trade them about, so each coral taken from the wild will enter the reproduction stream in hobbyist tanks and become one of the ones reproduced and studied by hobbyists worldwide. Kevin's green Bali Slimer, a branching coral, dates from 1978, and I lust after one of those frags, but I am not ready for it yet. It's a little crankier than the montipora frag I got. But I have faith that Slimer will be around here for decades and decades---corals, you know, are virtually immortal, and that one has offspring in tanks all across the northwest, plus its parent is likely still growing in the wilds off Bali---if some tanker hasn't plowed through that reef. Anyway---) I got my coral, and then, as a telephone call interrupted Kevin in bagging our order, I spotted the elusive first starry blenny, and we found his hiding-spot, to which he was returning---by the outflow-box. So when Kevin finished his phone call, and with Jane hanging back---she was wearing a shirt with large patterns on it that we figured could be spooking the fish (that happens)---Kevin bagged our fish. We named him Houdini even before we got him home. We took all our purchases into Scotty's with us, in black shopping bags, so they'd be safe and comfy, had wings, poppers (jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese), and cheese sticks for supper, and headed home, acclimated our purchases to our tank's salinity---they came in at 1.021, and I keep my tank at 1.025 salinity, so we dripped water in until they matched, and our guys went to their new address while the tank was under actinic light (blue-only, which follows the brilliant metal halide day-light and stays on for a few hours in the evening). They seem to be doing well. The Court Jester immediately offended one of the highfin striped gobies, but nobody got bit, and the Court Jester went somewhere I'm not sure. Houdini perched beside the blue crocea clam, taking occasion alarm when the mandarin dragonette would chase copepods (near-invisible crustaceans endemic to the tank and fuge) right up into his face, but he even took on his braver coloring while sitting there. All seems well.

7/26/08 Saturday 58736. He's even cuter today...actually both are. Noooo, I didn't quarantine. I've never gotten ich out of one of Kevin's tanks, and these fish have been with him for 2 months, getting fat and elusive. The starry blenny, 3" long, is shy. The Court Jester is in-your-face afraid of nothing, including the big yellow watchman who could swallow him whole (yellow watchman: eelshaped, 5" long) and gapes and blusters. But never bites. That's one reason I like gobies. They're such show-offs, but do no damage except to others of their identical type. So you just get one, you're fine. The little guy, about the size of your little fingernail 2-3x, is feeding nonstop and producing poo, which is even better; they're fragile and hard to get to eat and prosper. The starry is perched atop the rocks and undergoing color changes at the rate of 1 every 3 seconds, which indicates he's still spooked, but you can see little mouth-kisses all over the film on the black glass, so he's eating too. Healthy, full of it, and getting along fairly well with the yellow watchman. I'm delighted. Jane went over to help Joan a bit with floor-sanding in her renovation project: I'm still too ouchy. This afternoon we went over to Dawn's for a party---a bring-your-own-meat barbecue. She has a marvelous geodesic dome house, which she and her husband built from scratch on a bluff overlooking the Spokane River. What a wonderful location. A fun time was had by all. We got back late and stuffed, and watched some Laughing in the Wind---if you like Chinese martial arts movies like Crouching Tiger, you'll love this series of dvd's (Amazon.com). The cast is gorgeous; the subtitles are occasionally baffling Chinese idiom rendered in English, but you'll catch on. The story is great. The cinematography is just---with backgrounds like that, how can you go wrong? And rewatchable. You may have to watch this a number of times to really get all that's going on, huge number of subplots. Great fun. Occasional pathos. Occasional funny-as-spit. Check it out on Amazon.

7/27/08.Sunday 59224. Jane went over to Joan's and worked nearly all day. I've dropped 3 pounds on this diet and Jane, who's worked her tail off, has lost nothing, poor thing. And then Joan ordered pizza after handing us a couple of vodkas. I shoulda said no and gotten us home where I could cook something Atkinslike, but darn, we were having fun. Naturally we're going to pay for this. And THEN go strictly on the diet. I don't think I'm going to be able to skate tomorrow either. Darn, this tailbone bruise is slow to heal.

7/28/08 Monday. 60225. We got up late. And I'm still sore. Sandy from the rink called to have us alert the other adults that the afternoon skate is no more, at least until September, or in between hockey events. They'll be taking down rink 2, pretty sure, and public ice is always what's left over from the bigger groups that pay for a whole sheet. I wish there were enough of us to afford it, but we're not, and the rink graciously allows us to use public ice for lessons, so we just smile and say thank you for whatever hours we get assigned. Clearly today was out, since we should already have been on the ice by the time Sandy called, but I'm still ouchy. So Jane went over and worked on Joan's project, and then came back and attacked our back yard, creating a very Good Housekeeping flower bed out of our former weed patch. With fake stone edging, no less. We look so spiff. She stayed out until dark, which, up here, is pretty late, about 8pm, and really did big work. We had an informal supper of beer brats wrapped in a low-carb tortilla with cheese and jalapenos. Which was nice. Sobe to drink. And another episode of our Chinese drama.

7/29/08. Tuesday. 610252. Up at five, and so early I can't figure out whether or not I've taken the day's Aleve for the tailbone. Jane took to the garden again before breakfast, and I recalled she'd asked me to chop some brush she'd cut, so I got out with the loppers and let fly. Then she wanted me to make a Lowe's run after: 1. a big paver for a back step for the garage to the back garden: our last one has weathered into bits on one corner from ice last winter, and it's ugly. 2. adapters and head for the sprinkler hose we accidentally cut: we're taking advantage of the accident to install another head. 3. more fake stone edging to finish the job. 4. another big bag of garden dirt (she didn't tell me those weigh the same as your average sixth grader) and by the way, see if they've still got the molding we accidentally left behind. Sigh. Off I go. No, to 1. 2 took me half an hour to get waited on---I finally tracked somebody down after going to the front desk and asking for someone. And did I, after that, get the right size? Of course not. But a house with a tank never has too many plumbing connectors of various sizes. 3 was easy. 4 nearly killed me getting it into the car. And by the time I got back, she had tried starting the Mantis tiller. No joy. So she was setting out iris. We're moving them all to a new bed all their own. They had to share with the roses last winter. I cooked lunch---I get weird when I've had to lift an elephant and then have to hurry about something: must be blood pressure. I forgot and left Jane's good T-fal skillet on the fire, and ruined it. So fortunately Amazon has a special deal on T-Fal saute skillets. That's on the way.//Then I addressed myself to the mystery of the Mantis, flipped the on switch, punched the pump button 3 times, pulled out the choke and gave two tugs on the cord. Hey, the magic still works. (Jane hadn't found the choke and had decided it was an autochoke. Nope.) And this from a little engine that sat neglected since last October with a full gas tank...I tell you, they do not exaggerate in the commercials. We are digging the pond with this little machine---and it's a potent little wonder. I can control it---even when it behaves like a startled skunk and does a stifflegged bounce from side to side.// I laid out some garden hose in a meandering shape and asked Jane if she liked that. We tugged and tweaked and then I fired up the Mantis again and followed the outline. It stopped only twice, both times having a new-potato sized rock jammed in its tines---I swear it was the same rock---and threw other, larger ones out of my path. So we dug the full circuit of a pond that's about 20 feet long by 6 feet wide with meanders, and then dug the center, down at least a foot, and we are launched. Pretty good day's work for two hours of running the thing, and we actually 6" of depth in one end and a foot in the center. Beyond a foot we're going to hit much harder going. It's chipping like sandstone down there. But, hey, by 2010 we should have dug another foot down. Dust? Lord, this part of the lawn hasn't seen water since the spring rains! In the middle of it all I smelled smoke, thought of my incinerated skillet and wondered if there was a burner on---then saw a chip of ash float past and got really concerned. About this time we had fire engines, two companies called out, because a front is coming in and the wind is blowing. Some fool had started a fire in the little part behind the houses across the road, out in high grass. They got it out in fairly short order. Meanwhile I note we've had a moderately strong quake out in LA and hope all my readers are safe and well.// Mr Houdini and Mr. Sugaru are both doing well, eating away. And now I fear this wind is putting the kibosh on my plans to fire up the outdoor grill: it just wouldn't be pleasant, and might confuse people keeping an alert nose to that recent fire across the street, so I'll just pan fry the pork chops. I can do that.

7/30/08. Wednesday. 62020. Well, Jane's still able to move after yesterday: she dived back out into the weeds and started at it. I came out and got handed the Mantis and pointed at the front flower beds: the sprinklers had just run and they're under high, wet weeds, which meant I had to take the tines off halfway through the job and unwind long stems from around the blades, but hey, I got it done pretty well. I haven't run it in back yet: that's as dry and dusty as the front is wet, and I'm going to have to dig up some rougher shoes to tackle that dustbowl. You come into the house afterward looking like a farmer who's been plowing, and if that doesn't convey an image to you, think of coal mining, only with brown dust. Good thing, however, it's good clean dust and washes right off. I'm going to tackle that bed again. Jane meanwhile decided, after freeing the raspberry bushes of an outmoded and pretty nasty garden box, and being stung by bees, that she's done for a few hours, so I fed her lunch and she went for a long tub soak.//I think I mentioned yesterday---or did I---that I pulled the skimmer from the sump for the marine tank and found it pretty gunky inside. Nothing like skimmate. Glug. You know when oceans make froth on the beach? It's amino acid froth from dead fish and decaying weed and such---don't play in it. That's skimmate. It's what a skimmer does: shoot water into other water and make froth, which it then collects and purifies the water of it. So after being up to my elbows in skimmate and gunk, I filled the skimmer up to its neck with a gallon of white vinegar, which will dissolve lime deposits overnight. Well, it did. This morning I found the neck of the skimmer full of unmentionable goo, and purged it, and got the skimmer rinsed out and back to work. It began frothing with an energy it hasn't used in months. For one thing, I began investigating one of the couplings, which I thought was designed to swing about, since it was sold to me that way. I tightened it down so no air could seep in, and amazing difference, whether the washing, or that, or both. The thing is running as it never has, and may collect more skimmate in the next two days than it could do in a week, normally. So that will help the tank, too. We're not skating today: Jane is fixated on the back yard mess, we've got a few days of reasonably cool summer weather, and we're going at it. It's amazing how getting the weeds out and the beds defined makes a difference in the back yard. The middle of the yard is dug up and a construction site and the yard still looks rather spiff after Jane has been at work at it.

7/31/08. Thursday. 62020. What a day! We're still not back on the ice, but we are making progress on the lawn/grounds. (Can you have 'grounds' on an urban 90x90 lot with a ranch house on it?) We hope to have 'grounds,' because we're going for folded space. Just think as ourselves as zoo animals---pacing the limits of a square cage, versus having a yard that is all winding paths, plantings, rocks, mulched areas, and small surprises on the paths---an old fishtank castle (looks like a fairy ruin) in a bed of moss, a waterfall, a fishpond: an American Japanese garden, a world in miniature...so we will have 'grounds'. They'll just fit in folded space. Appropriate for sf writers, don't you think? Anyway, we decided with Jane's bad knee acting up she needed one of those sit-on rolling garden seats that lets you relax while weeding/mulching, etc. That's where it all started.//So we looked up several on the Ace Hardware site, then (Ysabel just fell off the bed: she attempted to jump up to it, caught my night robe, lying on the foot, pulled it off on her, and is trying to look as if that didn't happen...she did make it to the top of the bed, silly girl.) At any rate, we ended up at Lowe's, and were in a swift and businesslike fashion scooping up our necessities: a rolling seat, two more step strips and a doormat, some eggcrate industrial lighting grid we are going to use as a pebble sifter (like an archaeological dig: shovel dirt on, dirt falls through, pebbles and stones that will be useful in the pond stay on the grid)---and then---two more sacks of garden dirt, some gloves---and then---I decided to rest and wait for Jane in the garden seating area. Bad move! She got back from her run after something, sat down, we looked over, I pointed out a pretty table of smaller size than the one next to us---and it was gorgeous. A round, umbrella-table type with slate edge, glass center, and bar stool seats---worse, it was cheap, compared to the others. We loved it. We found out Lowe's had 4 left. Aagh. If we wait for a sale, we might miss the prettiest, most 'us' table we've ever seen. So we bought it. Due to the epoxy/slate top it weighs a ton, but we got everything into the Forester and got home. Now Jane had wanted to inspect the box we bought: I dissuaded her. This is always a mistake. Jane has an artist's eye for detail. Immediately she spotted a big scratch on the glass, four scratches (major) on the slate tiles, and a dent in the rim. So she calls Lowes. Back we go to trade out glass and top: and I swear, the two women in charge of the exchange were out of their minds---not us: them! We proposed to simply exchange tops with the display: 4 screws. No. These women were sure this could only be done by appropriate store technicians who were not to be had, and "we have to have one on display at all times". Come on, ladies: 4 hand-tighten screws, and we can't do this? No. We have to open a box to make the trade, then trade our 2 parts into that box, schlep that box and our box to the Return desk at the other end of the store, using a big blue cart; plus we had decided we wanted the 4 bar chairs and umbrella, lest we lose our set. There were only 3 more sets of chairs. And they had to scrounge to find an umbrella. So, after waiting in huge lines, everybody else wanting to exchange one hinge or a packet of screws, I get the monster to the Return desk and get some help getting the flat-pack table out to the car. Meanwhile the chair box is *huge*, about the size of a half-fridge. So Jane proposes to get it and the umbrella, and we're going to fit this into the Forester. With a table that can't lie flat, but has one edge up on the wheel-housing in back. Sigh. So we strip everything down, I've now lost custody of the rare blue cart, have to hunt down another, and then we have to get the rambling wreck Jane has unpacked balanced on same; which excludes the chair feet which she has to carry; and she drags the box and I pull the cart through the store to a likely checkout line. Wrong. The dragon guarding it announces it's closing. We have to schlep down to another line. We get through. We get to the parking lot. We get to packing, and the chairs won't fit. We start untying the bundles of 2 seats and get everything in, umbrella and all, *except* two seats nested, which I volunteer to carry if Jane will just promise not to hit anybody on the way home...which is only about 3 miles. I am sitting with the frames jammed up against my chest in such a way that if we hit anything and the front of the car compresses I will be decapitated. Which I advise Jane is the case. So she very cautiously eases out onto the major street, then lefts onto a residential maze that will get us near our house. Two more major streets, one of which we live on, and we make it to the driveway. She gets out and starts trying to extricate me---but the load has shifted a bit and it took several minutes to tug and twist until she could get the seats out of my lap/chest/chin so I could get out. Now, why, you ask, except the 90 degree heat, did we not make 2 trips, one of us to stand at the curb with the chairs? Because we had already loaded that effin' table top which it takes both of us to lift out of the back!//Well, we got it all put together, and got ourselves two drinks and sat in the cool shade overlooking the piles of trash in our slowly developing neat back yard, overlooking the dug-up construction site that is our future pond. "Look," I say. "With bar stools, we're sitting high enough to look down on the fish! There goes one now!" Of course it's all dirt at the moment. But we can dream. It's starting to be a back yard.

8/1/08. Friday. 62020. Well, here is the start of several days of not getting work done. It's the start of Spokon, the first convention in Spokane in about half a decade. Some brave fellows over at Gonzaga University are putting it on, and so far so good. They only anticipated 300-500 and I think they're already past that. Guests include Tim Zahn, John Dalmas, Mark Ferrari; plus there's me, Jane, Patty Briggs, Jim Glass, numerous others from the region...and fans from Miscon committee in Montana, fans from Seattle, TriCities, etc. The facility is at the University, and not a hotel, but there are hotels near, so next year we might even stay on site, though it's only about a 2 mile drive for us. We did miss the room parties (hard to do in a university) but there is a student union for socializing, etc. I managed to miss my first day panels---I've been too busy to gather up and sort emails, and apparently missed a notification, so that wasn't the con's fault. It's down the street from some good restaurants, and we gathered up a load and went there.

8/2/08. Saturday. 62020. Down to business at the con. Doing panels. And so on. A genuine, exhausting full day of work, meeting people, nice people, old friends, hanging out and talking with people I only see at cons. We autographed, Jane sold some of our spare books. More autographing. We enjoyed all our panels, some of which turned out really well. We tried to gather up Mark Ferrari for dinner, but a committee snagged him right out of our midst, and so we went back to the same Mexican restaurant. I am now officially full up on Mexican food.

8/3/08. Sunday. 62020. The last day of the con, but still going strong. We met up with Steve and Sharon for dinner, and went out to an Indian restaurant where the food tasted great---but oh, the repercussions. Seems they used onion powder, and this evening Jane's knees are swelling badly, and I'm sore and can hardly bend my fingers. We have taken our entire prescription arsenal to try to fight off the effects and hope to at least be able to walk tomorrow.

8/4/08. Monday. 62020. Well, barely walking, and not fit to write. It's 99 degrees out there, fire weather, after a perfectly gorgeous weekend in the 80's. And we'd love to work in the garden, but it's just killer. I'm still suffering from the tailbone injury---not helped by dinner last night; and in general we aren't going to do much outside today.

8/5/08. Tuesday. 62020. More of the same...the con, but mostly that disasterous Indian dinner, still has me in pain, and Jane too. We are not happy campers. There's only so much the drugs can do. The rest just has to work its way out of your system. Not happy, us.

8/6/08. Wednesday. 62832. I tried to work. Didn't get too far. I finally resolved that the chair I've been sitting in is killing me, and I have to get a replacement. On the way to the con we daily passed an inexpensive furniture store, National, and I decided I wanted an alternate chair in my room. So off we went to try to find one. Now Jane and I are pretty much of a height---except when we sit: I'm very long-bodied, she's the opposite, and where chairs hit our backs is different. So we start sitting in chairs that are the 30" width I need for the space I've got---and we settle/compromise finally on a wine red one for 249.00. A rocker/armchair. But they don't want us to take the one from the store. I'm wary of this: we've been burned before, getting a chair with a different back height by half a critical inch. They promise us if we go to their warehouse a few blocks away, the guys will unpack it and Jane can sit in it, and if we don't like that one, we can buy the one off the floor. Well, Jane liked it. We got it into the car---barely. And the darn thing is heavier than I would expect of a 249 dollar armchair/rocker. But we parked in front of the house and managed to carry it up the steps and get it inside only bashing Jane's shin once. And set it up, and dragged the old green rocker (same size) toward my room. First sitting in the new chair I'm absolutely certain Jane finds it lovely, and it feels like bare boards to me. But hey! I only use it in the mornings for about half an hour, and if Jane's happy, that's good. I've got the rocker/recliner for my room, and I'm the winner. Greatly concerned is Ysabel, who is happy that we have Claimed the green recliner to my room: she understands possession. But disturbing was its removal from the place where she gets brushed for half an hour every morning: she was not sure that the red one is acceptable, since it does not smell like Us or Her Majesty, and she eyes it suspiciously, hopeful it will produce a cat brush. I have every hope that, not being in pain while I sit down for the first time in nearly a month, I will actually get some meaningful writing done tomorrow! Hurrah! Jane meanwhile continues with the Mantis, chewing up lawn, which will give way to weedcloth and cobbled paths around the shrubbery and the end of the pond. And the weather threatens rain, but I have learned, in my time in the northwest, this is scary: oftenest it ends up as virga (rain that doesn't reach the ground) and dry lightning, which starts fires all over the map. We have not seen real rain since June, the woods are dry, and we are really hopeful we don't get much lightning.

8/7/08-9/1/08. Monday: 72415. Sorry to be away so long. I was doing so well, too. First I got overwhelmed by the smoke, which actually wasn't too bad this year, and then the remodeling started, and, well, it's my birthday, and I've now fallen twice on the ice, just hooked a toepick, a really stupid mistake at my level, and fell and reaggravated the tailbone injury. And I'm glum. Writing hasn't been easy the last month: chronic pain from the tailbone and then the bad chair, and just one dratted thing after another. I was doing so well before the convention, but it threw me off my schedule, and then things just got to where I'd write 4 words, erase 2 and try again. A little progress every day, but my concentration wasn't there, which means when my brain does return (and it's showing signs of doing that) I'll have to rewrite the whole section thoroughly. Let's see what has happened...first, the convention, and the disastrous dinner, the replacement chair, and the remodeling project: Jane got new tile for the mudroom, aka cat airlock on the back door, and that is now a glorious daffodil yellow with a fake stone floor. With an internal table to straighten out the floor line (it slopes) so we could get proper shelves (we stole the short shelves from the library and will put the expensive steel library shelves, also short, down there, because they're too heavy for the table-support legs. Then Jane found some tile for the bathroom...signaling she wanted to tackle that. So once we got the edging cap on the mudroom steps (a 3-day, 4 trip to hardware store feat) we attacked the bathroom...and its curve-fronted tub. Tiling was a challenge. And then we had to repaint the cabinets---correction: Jane had to repaint them: I wiffled out because of the fumes. I took over the majority of the housework while she painted. And helped lay some tile. Then the back yard. Digging continues, as I have energy, on the fishpond: with a sore tailbone, it's easier to stand and dig than sit and write. So I take out my frustration and temper on that, and become zen again. We are to about 3 feet on one spot, which is mandatory, and are down about a foot to foot and a half on the rest. It is in the shape of a map of England: I have figured this out. We are putting a waterfall out in the ocean at the origin of the Thames, we overlook Wales from the patio bar stools, and when we do the bridge it will span the English-Scottish border. Scotland is 3 feet deep, and I hit a root---wiping my fingers on it and taking a sniff proves it is from the hemlock, not the red hawthorn, which means it has come about 30 feet out from the tree to steal water from the flowering quince over near Wales. The garage, meanwhile, is of prefab board, and the finish on the door-frames and corner posts had weathered off. So we had to paint that...while being attacked by bees, which always favor Jane, for some reason. I have also a fair knack for knocking them into next week if they buzz about my work. But none came near me. We got the bird feeder into operation. The birds are still scared of us because of all the noise. The rose garden is lush and blooming. Jane redid the little triangular bed near Scotland, and mulched around the sole surviving tree, a weeping cherry, and the 2 peony bushes which have miraculously survived the summer; and the lantana and Unidentified, and the lupine. We have set interesting rocks in it and it looks pretty good. Then we attacked the fence this week: 3 color changes later, from plum-ish red to orange-ish red to what Olympic calls Pilgrim Red (do you know any red Pilgrims?) we are happy, and have painted the worst segment outside; and the streetside outside fence: Jane and I and Sharon, who came over to help us, got that yesterday. We went through all sorts of problems getting the right stain out of Lowes, and they mixed up the more expensive deck base instead of what I wanted. I usually accept accidents and will just grumble and pay it, but this was the fourth accident this paint department has had with our orders, so this time I marched over to the Customer Service desk and informed them I didn't think I should be charged 124 dollars for 5 gallons of paint, when what I had ordered was supposed to be 103. They agreed; and I still got the rebate slip for their 2-week paint sale. So I'm happy. Sore from all that painting. But it was a moral triumph. The fish tank has been an absolute pain: I discovered the alkalinity had plummeted from 9.3 to 4.8, and started consulting with chemistry folk to try to fix it before we lost the tank: that was last week: we decided a mysterious "ionic imbalance" had occurred, probably due to some bad/expired buffer I had used, so I did 2 50% water changes of a total of 80 gallons, quite a lot of work---Sharon helped on the second one, while Jane was fussing with tile-grouting. And then I started trying to bring it up. This went on for a couple of weeks, in which the calcium reading was through the roof, ditto the magnesium (on which the alkalinity/calcium readings equally depend for stability)---and yet the alkalinity kept falling. I tested the ph. 8.5. High by .2. I knocked it down with bar soda water to 8.2. Alkalinity buffer should also drop it. I added more. Still the alkalinity wouldn't stay up. So I checked the magnesium, which has been unwantedly high: it finally had dropped---plummeted from over 1500 two days ago to 1170...too low, by 30 points. I dosed that back up and added more buffer. Then the ph rose again and the calcium fell 60 points. Today I have gotten the mg to 1240, which is good, have the alkalinity at 7.1, the best it has been in a while, and will dose calcium this afternoon, ,but the ph is .1 high, and I am debating whether to add more bar soda. What a zoo. Throughout, the fish have been happy, the corals are ecstatic, no visible problems, but things are Not Right. Still, they are getting righter. And this evening we are bundling up to go on a lake cruise for my birthday, and Sharon's (belated), so we will look at the stars, have a few drinks, and enjoy water which does not require me to dig a deep hole or add buffer or magnesium.

9/2/08. Tuesday: 72415 Last night was fun. We bundled up in our polyfill coats and sat up on the top deck for most of it. Sharon gave me a hummingbird feeder for the new backyard establishment and Jane gave me one of her patented hand-drawn graphics, a tradition with us going back years and years. We all laughed, got home in good order. And I just tucked in and worked during the day, trying to get my writing back on schedule; but both of us, Jane and I, are in pain, and I've had trouble with one foot---it didn't adequately report where my toe was and has done it again on the cruise, when I caught the same toe on the stairs---fortunately not pitching over the taffrail (do square cruise boats have taffrails?) to the lake. But I decided it was time to call the doc, and we got an appointment, Jane determined to pursue the theory her longterm back pain is an 'out' sacroiliac joint, and me knowing mine is out again. So we gave the longsuffering Dr. Shane a real workout before he got off for the day---and we are both improved. We had 2 completely illegal huckleberry/crunchy peanut butter shakes for supper. Oh, we were bad.

9/3/08. Wednesday. 74288. Jane declined to go skating today and has spent most of the day abed, but says her back hurts less than it has in years. We are to set up to go back later this week, and if they could get Jane pain free for the first time in a decade or so, it would be wonderful. I'm sitting in my room writing, Jane's doing some reading, we painted a bit on the fence, and tried not to strain anything. We're just trying to let Dr. Shane's work 'set' in place before we mess it up. The tank chemistry still isn't the best---well, all right, it's not fixed, and I'm annoyed; but at least the magnesium is holding. If not the buffer. I've also decided it's time to turn the lights out on it for three days and get some of the nuisance algae cleaned up: the water runs down to the basement where it meets a tank that is lit 24/7, and that algae down there will sop up the nutrients the top tank is giving up as its algae dies. A nicely natural little nitrate/phosphate sink. But that is pretty well what we are up to, nothing exciting except I have Pilgrim Red measles all over from that paint roller.

9/4/08-9/22/08. Monday. 76372. Well, I have not been that good about keeping updated. This has been one of those seasons...I apologize, and each time I swear I'm going to do better, but I have been in one heck of a funk this last few weeks, which has, for the first time in my life, really extended to my work---I think because I put on such a huge push early in the year to get the Cyteen book finished; and then tried to pretend I wasn't tired. Well, so about 10 days ago I finally, using every mental trick in the book, got myself organized, got the current book booted back up in my head, got one day's work in that I was proud of---and the doorbell rang. It was, yes, the page proofs for the Cyteen book, which have to be turned around in short order. This means I have to re-boot-up the Cyteen book, particularly because of the way that DAW does things, which is not to send me the galleys, which would let me instantly spot (in red pencil) the things somebody has changed, but page proofs---which are the actual printed typescript of the thing with changes already entered. Which means they can have very persuasive, very plausible, entirely misinformative and wrong things in there. That means I have either to get out the typescript and do a 565 page line-by-line comparison, or really boot it up and read it for sense. Because of the sheer length I opted for the latter, while referring to typescripts with notes on them, to be sure they caught the really awful things. This means sitting in a chair without moving for hours. Which makes you sore. Really sore. So I worked, and worked, and worked, and got totally off in the Cyteen book again, which meant when I finally packed the changes I'd made back into the mail and sent it off, I then had to reapply all the tactics I'd formerly used to get the Bren book booted back up. And I am just so physically exhausted. So...that had to be done. That's all. I have to slowly haul my careening mind full 180 and get into another universe, where I have forgotten some of the threads. After another 5 days, I am finally making some limping progress, and had some ideas that wouldn't have occurred to me had I plunged ahead 10 days ago...so there is some gain. It doesn't mean I wouldn't have thought of them, but that they would be edited in, rather than dealt with from the beginning. And then...I get a call from my investment advisor that he needs to see me ASAP. So there's another interruption. I have to get my papers in order and run down there...which turned out to involve several decisions about how to collect my retirement savings, which is, yes, kind of important. And everything we figured out exactly prefaced the current market stupidity by about 3 days, 2 of them on the weekend. And one of the companies I'm invested with, involved in the current mess, won't turn loose of my accounts without some gymnastics on the part of the company I want to deal with---which, due to things going on, I now had better figure out, because I can't just leave this stuff unattended and hope for the best. At a certain point the Feds make you withdraw your stuff, and at a certain point you kind of need to know what you're doing. So that's another study-up. And, let's see: we were doing a garden pond. We got everything dug down 2-3 feet, except on the Scottish border, at which point we found a wire which turned out to be the control cable of our sprinkling system. So we start looking into replacing that and going around the pond. Ok. I go to Lowe's and get 100 feet of 5-strand non-power-carrying wire that has, yes, 5 different colors, replacing the 10-strand which is there, half unused, and we have to dig it in, which is a lot of work with the mattock. I am the mattock expert. I can dig a trench pretty efficiently. But then Jane says---"Can you double the width?" Oy! My aching back. I double it. We get it wired---yes, we were smart and wrote down which colors we'd subbed in for which. So we got it connected, tested, and it worked. BUT during the excavation of the control box, up near the house, we'd discovered a pipe. Says Jane, "I think we'd better be careful digging near that wire until we know where that pipe runs." Good idea. I say, "I think maybe I should take the mattock out there and do some investigating." Well---I won't say which of us did it, but it could have been either. First stroke of the mattock turns up the pipe---and puts a hole in it. Sigh. So we now have a working system which leaks, and that leak is going to be under the underlayment of the pond liner. Not good. So we get a hacksaw, cut out the damaged section, and I go off to Lowe's to replace the pipe. Pipe was a snap. It's one-inch sprinkler pipe, comes in huge rolls. I look like the Wichita Lineman as I trudge over to get the hose clamps and hose barbs, then out to the car. So we figure if we take the piece we cut out and use it to measure with, the slight additional depth we put on the pond meanwhile will be handled by the increased length the two hose barbs will give it. So we do it. I sit down in the dirt in the bottom of the pond and, with a hair dryer (extension cord), soften the new hose and insert the barb-connectors, with hose clamps. I'm doing fine, except---when we turn it on to test it---one side leaks. We conclude there must be another leak. So Jane takes all that apart and (her hands are stronger) goes for another, longer length of pipe I've cut, involving the new section we've sawed out, which now pretty well spans the Scottish border. She installs the pipe. Both joints now leak. We finally worked out that it's because of the sag in the pond floor, when we flatten the pipe with a big rock. The hose has been coiled a long time. So when we want to straighten it out, it doesn't want to, and warps, which makes it leak around the hose clamp. Consult with a neighbor produces the advice, yes, if you really tighten a hose clamp too much that can cause a leak. So we back off the screws. We have it down to 3 drips a minute at one end and 2 at the other, and call it done, and hope that hot sun will seat the hose barbs and seal the leak. It then clouds over to rain, which it is still doing. I have a call from my investment counselor that I have to come down there and sign more papers, the market of course has crashed, meaning I have less to invest than before---nice. And maybe we can finally get this stuff where it needs to be, but now I think I need some answers about the stability of the company I want to invest it in. At least it's not part of the current madness. And we've got, yes, seven yards of topsoil coming Tuesday, tomorrow, in the rain, which is scheduled to last for a week; and they want to put it on the driveway, which is where we have ten or so wheelbarrow loads of basalt rocks we've been gathering up from the roadside in our travels. And meanwhile the woes with the fishtank continue, but I am determined to get this figured out. I did get the old kalk reactor vinegared and cleaned (vinegar removes calcium deposits) and ready to trade in, but I may be forced to buy a calcium reactor to handle the problem. The corals are growing so fast they may have outstripped the capacity of our makeshift kalk setup in the basement. One of my hammer corals is the size of 3/4 of a soccer ball, and the torch is trying to overtake it. The candycane has increased from 3 heads to somewhere over 40. I need to break these up and turn them in for trade, but I really want to stabilize this tank first---yet their growth rate may be what's destabilizing the tank. And in a completely different arena---I need to call and order the pool guts: the skimmer, pump, hose, liners, and waterfall filter. I really would like to get that installed before winter fills the area with snow...we are going to have to stick to the garden walk when there's a thick snowfall, or have a nasty accident, with that pit in the yard. But first we have to move that 7 yards of dirt. The skating is finally getting back in form. And Jane has taken up ballet on Monday nights, along with Sharon. I am not about to. I will go with Jane to observe on nights Sharon can't be there, because it's kind of a notoriously crime-heavy neighborhood and the parking isn't great; but there is no way I'm going to screw up my very limited sense of dance, which involves my skating, in favor of an art I really didn't do well at some decades ago. Modern Dance was one of the most excruciatingly embarrassing parts of my college education: I stand 5 feet 8, and do not successfully imitate a flower, thank you. We were not amused. Skating is like flying, effortlessly, wonderfully, and you keep in balance because you're working with physics. Ballet is skidding on already-sore feet trying to leave behind more skin, while working against the physics that says somebody my size and mass is never going to make that turn before it all hits the wall and goes splat. Nope, no way, no how. I'll stay on the ice, where things don't hurt that much.

9/23/08. Tuesday. 77836. Yesterday evening...sigh...We were sitting there in an otherwise calm, drizzly rain, when all of a sudden a gust front blew through or a microburst hit---it caught our patio umbrella and overturned and somewhat broke our pretty new patio set table...scratched up the side of it before we ever got to have anybody over to enjoy it. We're upset. Just, whoosh, and that was it: there are branches all over the street. And no further storm. I incline to microburst, since the storm quit so soon after: a dying thunderstorm just took out our patio table, aimed right at it. Thump. I ran out to get it at Jane's warning---she was dressing for ballet class and in her skivvies. I happened to be in a floor length robe, and ran out into driving rain and hail that froze my hair together: mud: cold water, and the whole thing is tipped over and I'm working with the special wrench to get the umbrella disconnected from the pole so I can rescue the center glass and light unit, which is hanging onto the umbrella like a doughnut on a pole. I got Jane's help at the last minute and she got the umbrella in while I rescued the glass, then took my soppy self back out to right the table. It's aluminum, and took a scrape on the side, but at least wasn't bent, only an ornamental bit on the inside around the pole. And of course it's just fine weather after that happened, with the first frost up in the hills as the clouds race away to Idaho. Treacherous weather. Jane went off to ballet, and says she was muzzy-headed about the instructions---I think it was the storm and the rush to save the table. I meanwhile consoled myself by downloading Spore: don't do that. It took the better part of 3 hours to download, decrypt, install, and get running. I could have gone to the store and gotten it in less time. It's kind of a 'cute' game, and 'cute' dominates. It's not too scientific, to say the least. But it's amusing. Probably has replayability. A lot of variables. And I'm getting some work done, otherwise.// I was worthless on the ice yesterday---took a step onto my heel and nearly dislocated my shoulder with the arm-whip that kept me from going splat on the ice. I didn't fall. But it wasn't bright. //Today the 7 yards of dirt is supposed to arrive. If my calculations are correct, that amount of dirt would make a 3x3 column 21 feet tall---or a 2x10 foot pile 3 feet high. This is still a lot of dirt to move. At least the rain has stopped, giving us a window to move it before it becomes a brick. Washington dirt is amazing: if it weren't for the glacial moraine pea gravel throughout, it would be really easy to dig: and it is, sort of, when it's bone dry. Water it---and the rain has---and it sets up like concrete: you can walk on our pool berm as if it were concrete, not because the dirt has gone hard, but because there is that much rock in it. Amazing.

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