Sarah Monette's Blog, page 48
January 17, 2011
cat update
The Elder Saucepan is doing Very Poorly. He's in the University of Wisconsin's Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital's Critical Care Unit overnight, to get IV fluids and nutrients. Tomorrow, they're going to do an ultrasound and see if they can figure out what's wrong with him. That worst of all words, "mass," has been used.
I hope that this will turn out to be something he can pull through, but I'm also preparing myself for the possibility that we're going to have to say good-bye to him sometime very soon.
I hope that this will turn out to be something he can pull through, but I'm also preparing myself for the possibility that we're going to have to say good-bye to him sometime very soon.
January 15, 2011
The Elder Saucepan is not doing very well. Any good thoug...
The Elder Saucepan is not doing very well. Any good thoughts you can spare will be much appreciated.
January 14, 2011
Project Valkyrie: waterlog
60 minutes, 39 laps. 289 miles, 21 laps.
Nobody goes to the pool Friday after work.
Nobody goes to the pool Friday after work.
January 13, 2011
Friday the 13th comes on a Thursday this month.
My afternoon got derailed by an unexpected trip to the vet, as the Elder Saucepan vomited up some blood. The answer is most likely the pain medication he's on, so we're switching for a couple of weeks, plus giving him Pepcid. (Yes, the OTC stuff, only he gets a quarter of the 10 mg pill.)
Because we were at the vet, I couldn't make my dressage lesson today, which makes me almost ridiculously glum. Hopefully, my instructor can fit me in this weekend. And I am quite certain I made the right decision.
When I got home, I checked the mail and found a packet from the sleep clinic waiting, with a twelve (count 'em, 12) page questionnaire. I filled it out while the cats ate, and stuck it in my purse, so that I cannot forget it when I have my appointment on February 10. It may be a little battered by then, but at least it won't be sitting innocently and uselessly on the dining room table.
From filling out the questionnaire, I can report, with the kind of relief you get when it's not a surprise but you're relieved all the same, that I have no symptoms of narcolepsy. Those questions were scary. But the RLS was a definite "yes."
Speaking of same,![[info]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380442897i/1319734.gif)
heresluck
pointed me at this article on RLS; I'm pleased that everyone agrees it's real, but can we talk about how comforting it ISN'T to be in a 3% minority?
I am very much hoping the sleep clinic can help me.
Because we were at the vet, I couldn't make my dressage lesson today, which makes me almost ridiculously glum. Hopefully, my instructor can fit me in this weekend. And I am quite certain I made the right decision.
When I got home, I checked the mail and found a packet from the sleep clinic waiting, with a twelve (count 'em, 12) page questionnaire. I filled it out while the cats ate, and stuck it in my purse, so that I cannot forget it when I have my appointment on February 10. It may be a little battered by then, but at least it won't be sitting innocently and uselessly on the dining room table.
From filling out the questionnaire, I can report, with the kind of relief you get when it's not a surprise but you're relieved all the same, that I have no symptoms of narcolepsy. Those questions were scary. But the RLS was a definite "yes."
Speaking of same,
heresluck
pointed me at this article on RLS; I'm pleased that everyone agrees it's real, but can we talk about how comforting it ISN'T to be in a 3% minority?I am very much hoping the sleep clinic can help me.
hither and yon about the internet
1. Tie-thulu, the most well-dressed of all the Elder Gods (via
jaylake
).
2. An RV that almost makes me want to drive across America in it (photo by
jaylake
).
3. This is very cool: Death Clicks is applying my idea of mikkary to real places.
4. Gabrielle Giffords is astonishing her doctors (via
casacorona
).
5. The 10,000 Year Clock (via
matociquala
).
jaylake
).2. An RV that almost makes me want to drive across America in it (photo by
jaylake
).3. This is very cool: Death Clicks is applying my idea of mikkary to real places.
4. Gabrielle Giffords is astonishing her doctors (via
casacorona
).5. The 10,000 Year Clock (via
matociquala
).
January 12, 2011
Project Valkyrie: waterlog
70 minutes, 38 laps: 288 miles, 18 laps.
[Rivendell is at the 458 mile marker.]
Managed two continuous freestyle laps. Which is notable only in that 2 > 1.
[Rivendell is at the 458 mile marker.]
Managed two continuous freestyle laps. Which is notable only in that 2 > 1.
January 11, 2011
we all have wings / but some of us don't know why
So, on the way to my dressage lesson, the radio played Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly," and I started wondering. How many songs are there with that title (for these purposes, we also count "Learning to Fly"), and would they make a good mix CD*?
I can think of four:
1. Foo Fighters, "Learn to Fly"
2. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, "Learning to Fly"
3. Pink Floyd, "Learning to Fly"
4. Joe Rathbone, "Learning to Fly"
(If you want to expand into songs that talk about learning to fly in the lyrics, like the INXS song I quoted in the subject line, that's okay, too.)
5. INXS, "Never Tear Us Apart"
Others?
---
*If I personally were to make such a mix, it would have to include my favorite song about flying, Kris Delmhorst's "Little Wings," but that's a song about what you do after you've learned to fly.
I can think of four:
1. Foo Fighters, "Learn to Fly"
2. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, "Learning to Fly"
3. Pink Floyd, "Learning to Fly"
4. Joe Rathbone, "Learning to Fly"
(If you want to expand into songs that talk about learning to fly in the lyrics, like the INXS song I quoted in the subject line, that's okay, too.)
5. INXS, "Never Tear Us Apart"
Others?
---
*If I personally were to make such a mix, it would have to include my favorite song about flying, Kris Delmhorst's "Little Wings," but that's a song about what you do after you've learned to fly.
January 10, 2011
Project Valkyrie: waterlog
75 minutes, 43 laps. Mostly pull buoy, although I was virtuous and used the kickboard, as well as doing unassisted laps--enough to make my ankle ache.
Progress toward Rivendell?
Okay. The last time I calculated my progress (on July 23rd), I was at 282.76 miles. A mile (surely the most awkward unit of measurement ever invented) is approximately 36 laps. I'm going to round up to 283 miles (giving myself a quarter mile for all the crutch-work in August, September, and October), start counting by miles with laps left over, and catch up on all the math here so that we can proceed in a less ridiculous fashion.
07/27/10: 32 laps
07/30/10: 34 laps
01/04/11: 19 laps
01/07/11: 32 laps
01/10/11: 43 laps
TOTAL: 160 laps
DIVIDE BY 36: 4 miles, 16 laps
287 miles total, with 16 laps toward the next mile.
And 11 a.m. with the water exercise class was much better than 5:30 p.m. with the intramural kids swim team.
Progress toward Rivendell?
Okay. The last time I calculated my progress (on July 23rd), I was at 282.76 miles. A mile (surely the most awkward unit of measurement ever invented) is approximately 36 laps. I'm going to round up to 283 miles (giving myself a quarter mile for all the crutch-work in August, September, and October), start counting by miles with laps left over, and catch up on all the math here so that we can proceed in a less ridiculous fashion.
07/27/10: 32 laps
07/30/10: 34 laps
01/04/11: 19 laps
01/07/11: 32 laps
01/10/11: 43 laps
TOTAL: 160 laps
DIVIDE BY 36: 4 miles, 16 laps
287 miles total, with 16 laps toward the next mile.
And 11 a.m. with the water exercise class was much better than 5:30 p.m. with the intramural kids swim team.
January 9, 2011
UBC: Hitler Youth
Kater, Michael H. Hitler Youth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.
This was a very disappointing book. My early disquiet and dissatisfaction were not assuaged by more nuanced and careful argument later in the book. Particularly on issues of sexuality, Kater's discussion ranged from the vague to the infuriating. He never reliably distinguished between "sexual promiscuity" and sexual assault,* nor did he ever explain whether he was measuring "sexual promiscuity" by the Nazis' yardstick or some other measure, or indeed trying to analyze it at all. Although he did at least discuss the experience of German girls, he did so with a semi-covert chauvinism.
He also had a bizarre double standard. When talking about German boys, he expanded the category of "boy" to include "young soldiers" and then, less explicitly, "all soldiers," and thus spent a great deal of time talking about things, such as the siege of Stalingrad, that had no direct relevance to his ostensible topic. (Also, although he mentioned the atrocities committed by them and the effect on his "young soldiers," the Einsatzgruppen appear in his text like inclusions of alien material. There cannot possibly be any Hitler Youth or former Hitler Youth in them.) He remembers to put in the verses about German war crimes and the brutality of German soldiers, but over all, he presents the "young soldiers" as victims. And then, in the section on German girls in war-time, comes this sentence: "However, insofar as many young and older women had assisted their male superiors in creating a system that facilitated ever-greater human abuses, including their own continuous exploitation, German women were by no means without blame" (Kater 232). Here, he's using the opposite rhetorical strategy. Where, with the male Germans, he expanded the category of "boy" to include men, here he's expanding the category of "woman" to include girls, and saying that, where the men are tragic victims just like the boys, the girls are complicit criminals just like the women.
To be clear: I think the question of guilt and complicity in Nazi Germany is an incredibly complicated and difficult one. It's not that I think that women should be exonerated, or that the soldiers of the Wehrmacht were not cruelly exploited by their officers and government. But I object to the shoddy way Kater has constructed his argument.
I also object, while I'm at it, to Kater's tendency toward moral judgments, especially his unexamined belief that democracy must be morally good. While I agree that Nazi totalitarianism was certainly morally bad, I'm too aware of the corruption endemic in, say, the entire history of the American government to think that democracy is automatically going to be better or that it's somehow a sign of the stunted growth of German youth that they did not immediately embrace democracy with great glad cries at the end of World War II.
So. Poor prose style, poor organization (by which I mean his paragraphs were a mess, not the overall structure of the book, which was fine), fallacious rhetoric, and flatly unnuanced argument full of unexamined assumptions about morality, politics, warfare and violence, sexuality, and gender roles. This book did provide an English-language synthesis/summary of material on the HJ and the BDM that hasn't been translated, and for that I found it useful, even if still frustrating.
---
*It's bad enough when he's talking about the youth groups of Nazi Germany, both sanctioned and unsanctioned, but his discussion of German girls and Allied soldiers is really not any better: "Rapes by French occupation soldiers, in addition to the Russians, were notorious, whereas in American and British zones of influence, the borderline between rape and consensual sex became blurred, since the use of chocolate, lingerie, and cigarettes as barter encouraged covert prostitution" (Kater 241). The line being blurred here is not between rape and consensual sex, but between consensual sex and prostitution--or possibly between rape and prostitution. It's hard to say, since this sentence is all the details we get. All other considerations aside, this is sloppy writing and sloppy historiography, and I'm disappointed in Harvard University Press for letting it slide.
This was a very disappointing book. My early disquiet and dissatisfaction were not assuaged by more nuanced and careful argument later in the book. Particularly on issues of sexuality, Kater's discussion ranged from the vague to the infuriating. He never reliably distinguished between "sexual promiscuity" and sexual assault,* nor did he ever explain whether he was measuring "sexual promiscuity" by the Nazis' yardstick or some other measure, or indeed trying to analyze it at all. Although he did at least discuss the experience of German girls, he did so with a semi-covert chauvinism.
He also had a bizarre double standard. When talking about German boys, he expanded the category of "boy" to include "young soldiers" and then, less explicitly, "all soldiers," and thus spent a great deal of time talking about things, such as the siege of Stalingrad, that had no direct relevance to his ostensible topic. (Also, although he mentioned the atrocities committed by them and the effect on his "young soldiers," the Einsatzgruppen appear in his text like inclusions of alien material. There cannot possibly be any Hitler Youth or former Hitler Youth in them.) He remembers to put in the verses about German war crimes and the brutality of German soldiers, but over all, he presents the "young soldiers" as victims. And then, in the section on German girls in war-time, comes this sentence: "However, insofar as many young and older women had assisted their male superiors in creating a system that facilitated ever-greater human abuses, including their own continuous exploitation, German women were by no means without blame" (Kater 232). Here, he's using the opposite rhetorical strategy. Where, with the male Germans, he expanded the category of "boy" to include men, here he's expanding the category of "woman" to include girls, and saying that, where the men are tragic victims just like the boys, the girls are complicit criminals just like the women.
To be clear: I think the question of guilt and complicity in Nazi Germany is an incredibly complicated and difficult one. It's not that I think that women should be exonerated, or that the soldiers of the Wehrmacht were not cruelly exploited by their officers and government. But I object to the shoddy way Kater has constructed his argument.
I also object, while I'm at it, to Kater's tendency toward moral judgments, especially his unexamined belief that democracy must be morally good. While I agree that Nazi totalitarianism was certainly morally bad, I'm too aware of the corruption endemic in, say, the entire history of the American government to think that democracy is automatically going to be better or that it's somehow a sign of the stunted growth of German youth that they did not immediately embrace democracy with great glad cries at the end of World War II.
So. Poor prose style, poor organization (by which I mean his paragraphs were a mess, not the overall structure of the book, which was fine), fallacious rhetoric, and flatly unnuanced argument full of unexamined assumptions about morality, politics, warfare and violence, sexuality, and gender roles. This book did provide an English-language synthesis/summary of material on the HJ and the BDM that hasn't been translated, and for that I found it useful, even if still frustrating.
---
*It's bad enough when he's talking about the youth groups of Nazi Germany, both sanctioned and unsanctioned, but his discussion of German girls and Allied soldiers is really not any better: "Rapes by French occupation soldiers, in addition to the Russians, were notorious, whereas in American and British zones of influence, the borderline between rape and consensual sex became blurred, since the use of chocolate, lingerie, and cigarettes as barter encouraged covert prostitution" (Kater 241). The line being blurred here is not between rape and consensual sex, but between consensual sex and prostitution--or possibly between rape and prostitution. It's hard to say, since this sentence is all the details we get. All other considerations aside, this is sloppy writing and sloppy historiography, and I'm disappointed in Harvard University Press for letting it slide.
January 7, 2011
PSA: the clock is striking thirteen
64 hours (and counting) ago,
elisem
had a stroke. Because she got to the hospital right away, she is coming out of it with no permanent damage.
What Elise would like people to do for her is to spread the word. The efficacy of TPA (tissue plasminogen activator, the drug that means Elise is coming out of this unharmed) depends on its being administered within a very narrow time window. Learn the symptoms of stroke, and if you observe these symptoms in yourself, a friend, family member, co-worker, etc., CALL 911 . If you're not sure, CALL 911 . This is a case where better safe than sorry are truly words to live by.
elisem
had a stroke. Because she got to the hospital right away, she is coming out of it with no permanent damage.What Elise would like people to do for her is to spread the word. The efficacy of TPA (tissue plasminogen activator, the drug that means Elise is coming out of this unharmed) depends on its being administered within a very narrow time window. Learn the symptoms of stroke, and if you observe these symptoms in yourself, a friend, family member, co-worker, etc., CALL 911 . If you're not sure, CALL 911 . This is a case where better safe than sorry are truly words to live by.
