C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 103

Happy New Year!

We really wanted to go join the local filk group: the downtown Opening Night theme this year is the Universe, and the filk group has a gig on in the celebration, but I’m still prone to tire out: mineral levels, electrolytes, or whatever: yogurt is helping, slowly, because my stomach is still iffy—and being down there with no easy way to get out is just panic-inducing. Hate to pay for the evening passes for two people and then have to go home after thirty minutes. So we’re ringing in the new year here…bubbly and chili mac. Tomorrow morning the Rose Parade, bacon, waffles, and who knows what?

After that—we go look at Y memberships and an exercise program.

We have decided to live….

It was up for a vote on Christmas night.

I usually drink box Chardonnay—Chard isn’t the fussiest of white wines, and Jane doesn’t always drink it, and bottled wine is spendy; you have to have a pricey re-corking device to keep it well, the little vacuum sealer you can get at the winery for under 10.00 is ok, but by the time the bottle is a day old, *most* Chards I’m willing to spring for on a regular basis are about down to the quality of the best box, and with only me drinking it (Jane likes the Captain or single malt) you can end up with the tag-end of a bottle which prompts you to go-ahead-have-another to finish it. So really good box works well. Lower quality but not that much.

Unless you get a bad box.

First time it happened, it was a little bubbly and weird, and the next day was the hangover from hell.

This time—brand new box—and it tasted just a little funny, but I thought, well, too much powdered sugar beforehand (Russian Tea Cakes)—

Bad mistake.

3 hours later I thought I was sick. Ten minutes after that, I knew I was. Shall we say, past a certain point, about 4 in the morning, I finally had to rouse Jane out and ask for help.

I was in bed all the next day except for maybe 10 minute stretches, and all I could keep down was chai tea and a little mac and cheese. Second day, at least I was on my feet again. But I still couldn’t eat anything but mac and cheese.

I think I’m working my way toward a more varied menu.

I lost my glasses…beyond the usual places to search. I have an appointment today to get replacements. I’ve also reached a point I have to admit I need regular glasses and have to give up on the contacts for now. The continuing bout with iritis (inflamation of the iris) is more serious than usual eye redness, and it improves when I don’t wear the contacts. So I think I either have to go with daily wear contacts—or none; and I want to let my eyes get over this before I even contemplate wearing contacts again.

So….off to the optometrist I go.

On the other hand, I had a marvelous Christmas—all my gifts to Jane worked, even the funny legwarmers; and she will get the little doll she wanted, part from me, part from her sis; and I got (from sis-Lynn) a perfectly wonderful ceramic skillet, one of those non-stick things that has a green coating, which you treat just like an iron skillet: don’t wash it, really, just wipe it out really, really well. And…*and*…my aging telly which is in my workspace is about 12 years old, and losing a lot of its colors: discovered that the reason I never got into Firefly when it was first on is that I thought the screen was black during a lot of the action. Well, there are actually images there, and so much more to see: Jane got me a small flatscreen and a wall mount, so I can *see* it from where I work, and it has a beautiful picture. I love How the Universe Works, and I had no idea how much detail there is in the pictures, and I don’t even have HD telly: mine is digital. I’m so very happy with it.

So I am fine, now, I will have glasses by next week, and I’m really enjoying everything, the snowflakes and the skillet and the telly and the beautiful beadwork Lynn did, and the pond heater my brother sent, plus our copy of Brave, which we absolutely loved!

We have one more ’round’ of gifts, —actually we always save one gift for New Year’s Eve; just to keep the fun going, and Jane is threatening me with peanut butter and jelly cookies.

Then we are giving each other a membership at the Y and working off all we gained.

A Note from CJ

Hi, everyone. Jane, here. CJ asked me to post that she had a wonderful Christmas and will be back as soon as she’s recovered from whatever zapped her last night. Either a little bug or something she ate has had her down for the count all day. Can’t even blame it on carousing. One glass of wine does not a carouse make! (You should at least enjoy getting this sick…) In the meantime, I’m posting pics of our Christmas morning over on my blog if you’d like to come hang out there for a bit. WOL’s lovely gifties will be up soon.

The end of the world…? Well, we had a good time.

It was Mike Briggs’ birthday. We drove down to Mike and Patty’s house—it was a costume party; we were pirates. And we had filk, food, and fun while waiting for the end of the world—which of course fizzled. We stayed the night, had a very nice breakfast, Jane got to see Patty’s two baby horses, and we had just a great time. We plan to exchange visits more often this next year.

If you’re on facebook, there’s a site for the Foreigner Movie-in-Audio

Foreigner-in-audio is not a ‘read’ type audio: this is like watching a movie with your ears, professional level movie audio with actors: let your imagination paint the pictures.

This link is to a community developing at that site, and if you ‘like’ it you stand a chance of finding it again, in the way FB continually loses bits and pieces according to whether you cap my initials or use periods.

There are discussions and questions and progress reports.

Snowing again…fine powder this time. And Jane’s sewing machine is a dud…

…I’d gotten her a simple Kenmore that should have just sewn a simple seam, eh?

Couldn’t work one day before it started making a loose-cam sort of sound and skipping stitches.

THAT’s being returned to Amazon, practically a round trip.

As happens, we spotted a good deal on a Brother machine at Costco—and since sewing is one of Jane’s delights, I couldn’t stand it—her Kenmore is going back; and I went and nabbed this machine which I hope works a lot better for her. She gets such pleasure from sewing—and NOT going out to eat on New Year’s and Christmas, and discounting those two ‘special occasion’ nights out, it’s just about paid for. It’s really a good deal—we hope.

Meanwhile Jane and I are cat-training. The two lads spend a lot of time sleeping together, but we’ve decided, by golly, they have a catly job to do, sleeping with their respective people: so we have started a campaign to keep them in our bedrooms and get them used to this idea. Seishi has always been very sweet—but a total spook about being picked up or handled; and I think this campaign of ours is a good thing—he’s gotten a lot more mellow about being picked up in just a few days of this. I began to realize how much I still miss Ysabel, and one of the big ‘misses’ is that she was always with me, 24/7, always at my heels, always sleeping with me, and by golly, Seishi can learn.

Minor success. He’s sitting in my room, now, just curled up on the carpet. He’s evidently decided this was where he wanted to be this afternoon: a hot air vent’s over there, which is a nice feature of my room. And Shu is downstairs, helping Jane unpack all the little parts of the sewing machine.

Two inches of snow on the ground, streets and walks melted clear…

And most of the CHristmas decorations are up. We had one oops last night, a vase set too near a door — which I knocked over; but it’s a metal vase and the greenery is all fake—us allergy sufferers can’t use the real stuff. But Jane’s got the place looking like a Macy’s window.

We’re just about ready for Christmas. I think it’s going to be my scratch-made pizza for Christmas dinner and Jane’s favorite chili and spaghetti for New Year’s!

The dishwasher arrived.

So far, so good. One load washed. Squeaky clean, no fuss, no bother, glasses sparkling. The dish-loading is quite different: but we’ll figure it out. They also recommend Finish additive—and when Jane and I thought this over, and thought over the local water, this sounds like a good idea. It’s, for one thing, got a light to tell you you’re out of Finish in the dispenser; and for another—if lime deposit is going onto your dishes, it’s also sticking to surfaces in your pump — We’ve taken apart enough aquarium pumps to know this little item. So…….we are going to meet this machine halfway and get the additive and use it. I will say, glassware sparkles with this stuff.

And it’s sooooooooooooooo nice to know you can clean the filter screen and not have stuff going into the works.

Also—it is 1-2 inches shallower than our GE, which means it actually fits INTO the cabinet, and does not just bare machinery sides out into the kitchen. Our GE looked like heck, and we had to create a fake edge, because this was built in by afterthought—a set of shelves and a drawer removed to accommodate it, and since our George Jetson 1950′s vintage cabinets have a slanting face for the drawers, this means the dishwasher showed machinery on its sides. Now it doesn’t. It gives an actually finished look to the place.

Next year I think the Project is going to be replacing the kitchen floor our old dishwasher ruined…it still has a little raising on its joins…with a nice woodgrain laminate. Jane and I will negotiate — I want maple woodgrain laminate matching our counters, and Jane wants non-matching, because she grew up in the NW and has a reaction against woodsy looks. I understand this intellectually, even if I am quite the opposite. We can always come up with something we both like, and next year—kitchen nirvana!

All this is assuming THIS dishwasher doesn’t leak!

Snow is coming down in huge pieces…

A real picturebook snow.

We thought we were going to go out to dinner.

I don’t think this is likely.

Galleys and pages and endgame and all…

It never fails. I’ve finally hit my stride on this book—which has been a harder-than-usual book, on which I’ve been thinking hard since June (interrupted by having my eyes messed up since late September: still not quite 100%, but gaining on it) and lo, just as things are really working well, in come pages for a hardbound which have to be signed (the signed special edition of Multiverse, the Poul Anderson piece,) just one of those evening chores…which I did while watching Cinderella 3, the kidvid. (And I will say I much prefer the story to the original Cinderella—I was quite surprised. This Cinderella takes initiative, and Charming is not quite a dunce, either.) Signing pages takes no brain, just a good rhythm, so I go that done fairly pleasantly.

And…we have the galleys, as opposed to copyedits, on Protector, which have to be back by Jan 7. This is a lot better than the usual ‘we need them in 5 days’ sort of galleys, so I really am not griping too much, but it’s just so…typical…that we get every single project hanging fire since March rushing down on us right at Christmas. One Christmas week I had 2 sets of galleys and a copyedit ALL with a one week turnaround, AND I was on the end of a book.

It’s the biz.

All our pretty snow melted—and there’s a widening hole in the pond. But it’s due to snow every night and melt every day for a week or so—welcome to the Northwest ‘striped weather.’ Our highs will be in the mid-thirties, our lows in the twenties.

I’m ahead-er than usual on my Christmas shopping, except stuff that has to go out via mail—on that, I am a wee bit behind.