Steven Harper's Blog, page 18

Ahhhhhh

The best part about summer break: the beginning!
 

comments

Writer's Tic

I'm reading a Stephen King book published in 2012. King has an annoying writer's tic. His teenagers tend to speak like they're in the 50s. Their slang consists of phrases like "rolling in dough," and "mum's the word," and, "cross-dressing," and describing a beautiful woman as, "Va Va Voom!" His editor clearly isn't paying attention. 

comments

Pride 2023

Fifty-four years ago this month, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a refuge for the LGBTQ+ community in Manhattan. It wasn't the first time but, that night, led by Black and Latino patrons, they said, "Enough!" Despite the threat of losing their jobs or homes because of who they were and whom they loved, they protested and sparked the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

Millions of Americans have continued to fight to not only live authentically and love whom they love — but to simply exist. We've seen incredible progress in the years since Stonewall, but constant efforts to turn back the clock continue. Extreme Republicans in states across the nation have passed new laws to further restrict the rights of LGBTQ+ people, while others are attempting to erase their existence entirely. So this month, I want to encourage you to celebrate Pride with our LGBTQ+ community and show care and compassion for yourselves.

I also hope you'll take action. We stand at a critical moment where the rights that LGBTQ+ people have won in the courts could easily be erased. And today, too many still face the threat of being evicted or denied services for who they are. Vote for politicians who support equality. Attend local school board meetings and tell the board you demand inclusion of LGBTQ materials in the classroom and the library. Donate money to LGBTQ causes (the ACLU, the Triangle Foundation, the Human Rights Campaign). Be vocal with your friends, family, and co-workers about your beliefs in LGBTQ equality. All these little steps taken together can make great strides forward.  

comments

Setting Up the Deck

The little deck behind our house is pretty much unusable in summer. It gets sunlight from dawn to dusk, no shade whatsoever. It's like standing in a blast furnace out there. I wanted to remedy this, and so Darwin and I went shopping.

At a large hardware store chain, we found a deck umbrella that turned and tilted. We got it home, but of course it was "some assembly required." I'm awful at this stuff, and I knew if we waited for Darwin to do it, we'd never have an umbrella. So I got on TaskRabbit and arranged for someone to come over and do it for us. Two guys showed up and in a trice had it all set up.

We also shopped for a barbecue grill. We had one two homes ago, but got rid of it when we moved to the condo--no grills allowed on second-floor balconies. Now that we're in a full-sized house again, I felt the loss. Still, our deck is quite small, and all the grills we saw were huge. Even the small ones were enormous. And expensive! 

Finally, we went to another big box hardware store, and there I found a tabletop grill. It was perfect! It's just the two of us, after all. I also pointed out that we could take it to campgrounds. It was also way cheaper.

We bought a small table for it to sit on and got everything home. The table, it turned out, needed a fair amount of assembly, and it wasn't easy. As usually happens, the directions weren't always clear, and we got some of the parts on the wrong way around, requiring us to take it apart and try again. But we finally got it done.

Additionally, I'd done my usual version of gardening, which involves buying potted flowers and setting them outside. Just for fun, I also got a couple of potted tomato plants to see what happened.

Now we have a usable deck! The umbrella shades everything nicely and--bonus--keeps direct sunlight from flooding the dining room through the sliding glass door. The flowers give some color and greenery, and the grill is ready to go. I tested it today on some kielbasa. It worked great!

The summer has begun.



comments

Trying to Come Back

I haven't blogged much lately, though lots has been happening. It's like that spoon analogy. I only have so many spoons every day to lift stuff with, and by the time I think about updating this blog, I don't have any spoons left.

I'm the administrator of my brother Paul's estate. It's not a job I ever thought I'd have. It's certainly not one I want. But it must be done, and I'm the person in our family who is closest to Oakland County, where Paul lived. The job requires multiple trips to the courthouse, you see. So many forms, so many little jobs, so many people and businesses to talk to. It's daunting and draining and it's a continual reminder that my brother died. This takes up a lot of spoons.

I decided early on that I would do One Thing Per Day. That'll hopefully prevent me from burning out. Sometimes I break that rule, but mainly it lets me be okay for not plowing through every single thing that I =could= do on a given day. It lets me give myself a break.

This job isn't a labor of love. It's a labor of grief.

In the meantime, we have The Short Version of what's going on right now:

--My seniors have taken their exams already. They're done with school! This means I only teach one class of freshmen per day. (!) This makes my life easier in so many ways, as you might imagine, especially since I have all this estate stuff to handle now.

--On the day the seniors came in to pick up their caps and gowns, a large group of young men who I swear hated me--they seemed to delight in making class difficult--stampeded into my classroom wearing their gowns and booming, "We're gonna miss you, Mr. Piziks!" "This was my favorite class!" "I'll never forget you!" and such, and I was thinking, "Then why did you make life so difficult for me?" It's the way many teenagers shows affection, I suppose. It was both strange and uplifting.

--I did Paul's taxes. I was secretly hoping it would only take an hour or so. It took five, and basically wiped out an entire Saturday. The experience left me drained and exhausted.

--The results of my cancer biopsy came back. The cancerous lesion hasn't moved or grown since last time, so I don't need treatment. Additionally, the oncologist decided my risk of problems was so low that I was demoted to seeing the physician's assistant now. So ... yay!!

--The results of my latest kidney stone x-ray came back. When they showed up in my patient portal, the physician reading the x-ray reported "multiple" stones 4mm or larger on both sides. This freaked me out. Six months ago, I had two tiny stones, and that was it. So I was terrified I'd need more of the treatments that sent me to a therapist. But when I met with my urologist, he said he disagreed with the reading. "I don't know what he was looking at," he said, "but I only see the same two small stones you had before. Nothing's changed, and these stones aren't going to cause problems anytime soon. See you in six months." So ... yay!!

--After Paul's funeral and before my biopsy, I took a getaway weekend to Cleveland for a change of scene and to settle myself with some alone time. Why Cleveland? I overnighted there in order to fly out for my Hawaii trip last February, and said to myself, "This place looks pretty interesting. I should come back and explore it a little more." So I did. I biked some trails and slept late and visited the most amazing food market and bought the most amazing food and generally did my best to unwind. It was a nice trip, and I'm glad I went.

--I finally started writing again. It was difficult, honestly. I felt like I had forgotten how, and kept putting it off. But finally I did. I wrote more of the fantasy novel my Dear Agent is marketing samples for and surprised myself by finishing more than two thousand words in one sitting. I've also started an SF short story because I've decided to renew my campaign to get into the Big Three--F&SF, Asimov's, and Analog. I've gotten a lot better at short stories recently. They're more powerful and punchier now than my earlier work. I think it's a function of age and experience. It's nice to know I haven't peaked as a writer yet.

Life moves forward.





comments

Mind-Bending Books

Check this out! An interview with me! It's a little bit about RESURRECTION MEN, but mostly it's about the best books for bending your mind. Have a look: https://shepherd.com/best-books/bending-your-mind 
 

comments

Strange Cat Politics

We split a can of food between the cats once a day in addition to their hard food. I give a little more than half to Dinah so that chonky Dora gets fewer calories, but I set the can down for Dora to clean out. It gives her something to do.

Usually Dora gulps her food down and goes for the can while Dinah tidily finishes up her portion. Sometimes Dinah doesn't finish all of hers, and Dora dives for it. But today things ... changed. 

I bought a new brand of canned food and today gave the cats their first can of it. Dinah dove in and chowed down. Dora sniffed suspiciously, then licked tentatively, then ate slowly. Dinah actually finished first!

And then the weird thing happened.

Dinah went for the can, since Dora was still eating. Dora looked up and noticed that Dinah was sniffing at the sacred can. Dinah noticed her noticing, hunched up and STARED at Dora. Dora stared back for a moment, then quietly abandoned her half-eaten meal. Dinah sidled over and finished it off.

Darwin and I were flabbergasted! Never has Dora given up food. Never has Dinah intimidated Dora over food. Never has Dora abandoned the sacred can.

The world is turning upside-down.



comments

Biopsy 2023

I have cancer, but I'm "only" on cancer watch, which means every other year I have to get a biopsy to see what my intruder is up to and see if it's ... intruding elsewhere. This year is a biopsy year.

Last time I had this done, the doctor said, "We can do this in the office without anesthesia, or we can do it in the hospital with anesthesia."

"You want me to be AWAKE when you pop a needle into my prostate twelve times?" I said. "What kind of fool do you think I am?"

And so I had the anesthesia. But anesthesia comes with its own complications for me--the crippling terror that comes when I'm forced into unconsciousness and have no idea what a roomful of people are doing to me or saying about me. (See: shoulder surgery rape jokes, December 2021.) I got through it with lots of Valium beforehand and by sneaking a recorder into the operating room so I could listen to everything that was said. (Unlike the shoulder surgery team, this group was professional at all times.)

When I moved, I changed medical providers to UM Medical, but my records transferred, so when it came time for the biopsy, the doctor's office called and said they set up a lab order for me to get a PSA test first. I did this, and when the results popped up on my patient portal, I saw that my PSA levels had gone way down, from a 7 to a 4.7. Well, cool! Maybe I wouldn't even need the biopsy.

But when I talked to the urologist, he said, "Remember, you're on medications that reduce PSA levels. You have to double your score. It's actually 9.4." It had gone up by more than two points in the last six months.

Now I was in anxiety overdrive. The cancer was likely getting worse.( Read more... )

comments

Paul Piziks, June 27, 1970-April 14, 2023

 My brother Paul Piziks died yesterday. It was the worst kind of shock. He was the youngest, and he went first, even before our mom. The world isn't supposed to work this way. I'm functioning on fumes. I never knew I could cry so much.

Paul was famous for his outside-the-box creativity and his sharp, sardonic sense of humor. He loved doing standup comedy, and was brilliant at it. He and I were strangely at odds with our jobs--he worked at some point in nearly every facet of advertising, and I work hard to inoculate my students against ads. But Paul was always happy to give me insider information about how the advertising industry works.

I feel like I should write more about him, but the bond runs so deep that it's difficult to put into words. One of my earliest memories is of my parents bringing him home from the hospital. He and my sister Bethany Piziks and I were a trio, and we have so many shared memories and experiences that no one else in the world can understand. Now only two of us are left.

He was alive Friday. His funeral is Wednesday. I'm sure he'd have a devastatingly witty joke about this, but right now, it's just devastating.

comments

D&D: The Movie

The DUNGEONS & DRAGONS movie was great fun! They wisely made it into an adventure comedy (because D&D is outrageous in so many ways that you couldn't do it "straight" on the screen), but they did it without making fun of its source material. You can easily follow it and enjoy it if you know nothing about D&D or the Forgotten Realms (as Darwin McClary will attest), but it's packed with Easter eggs (Mordenkainen, Elminster, Bigby, Red Wizards of Thay, more!). Long-time players will recognize every location, every monster, every species, and every magic spell. It's definitely worth seeing. 
 

comments