C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 126

The Ultimate Upgrade is in progress at Closed Circle.

So if you get any weird result over there—there could be a file-shift in progress. You're going to have to re-do your link to the site (so am I, in links to it via the blog, once it gets done.) I'll tell you when. You'll see a new look, new covers, and very soon some new stuff. If you DON'T see a price on something it means it's not available yet, but is in production.

Stage One Snow Emergency in Spokane. We're comfy…

Beautiful to watch. Nasty to drive in. Wet snow and 100 wrecks and rollovers in the area. WE live on a short street between two arterials, so WE get plowed every few hours. We have no problems.

Jane's working away. I think I've finally made the breakthrough on this book—I usually veg in the evening and watch telly, but I started editing what I'd worked on all day. Jane went off to bed. I went to my room and worked until 1:30 AM, then slept and reworked it one more time from dawn til noon. I'm finally happy with it. It's been a bear. And for a time this year I began to despair of finding the threads I want. Got 'em! I think the bombed-out look in the bathroom was bothering us both, and while doing something about it took some time, we feel so good! I think we were getting mold from the bombed-out mess, and of course it was worse when we were working trying to fix it. Now it's clean and new and  beautiful and we're just happy and charging ahead.

We seem to have weathered it…and good news on the diet…

It's working. Those pounds we put on during the binge of pie, cookies, potatoes, chips, pasta, and other sins we committed between Jane's birthday in October and sanity returning after New Year's…? I've lost 'em all but 2. We're not starving, either. Stirfries involving chicken, shrimp; porkchops—we dump dry Ranch Dressing powder on those before cooking, use the whole packet, both sides: pan-fry, covered, to be sure they're done. Yum. That's dinner for tonight, with broccoli, squash, brussel sprouts, whatever I've got in the bins. I just troll the veggie aisle and get what looks best. We tried Daikon Radish the other evening and decided a whole one is probably quite a lot of radish. Breakfast is homemade bread toasted with real butter and sugarfree jam—and we drop weight. Life is good. The book is making sense, Jane is working and happy, and the only thing driving me crazy is Sei, who has learned he can get attention by headbutting the corner of my laptop screen again and again and again when he wants food. If we fed these cats all they want they'd be blimps!

 

Bear with us: the serious site upgrading has started, on Wave and elsewhere…

We think we know why there might have been an avatar problem and this may fix it.

We will, we think, implement this evening for Wave. This could cause us to turn funny colors and maybe make me have to restore certain changes to the defaults that give this site its character. We might lose our banners. All these things can be restored, and the site will be more compliant with other software—so don't panic. We control the horizontal, we control the vertical…sorta.

Foreigner book descriptions on Amazon a bit mixed up

I've reported the situation to DAW—a note from an alert reader—and they'll handle it. I'm not sure how many books are mis-described. If you spot that, comment here and we'll all know.

Meanwhile it's snow turned to rain here. I've got a re-exam at the eye doc's this morning: my prescription seems to have shifted a bit and I'm straining to see clearly.

Want a REAL timesync? Check out the cnn.com game site. Mahjongg Solitaire is absolutely wicked. The Games site has a few buggy games: getting the Crossword to take the first letter is an annoying one—but it will if you start and then erase.  But Mahjongg? I can see how fashionable Chinese ladies got seriously addicted to this game. Board play is only for 3 or more; but the electronic version is dimensional solitaire.

Fear not. I'm writing like mad.

 

 

The day after—the paper monster…

Has been growing in the office. I waded through a stack of miscellaneous papers, file-ables, bills, end-of-year statements, circulars, catalogs, and the refinance papers, found a slip for taxes on an acreage I inherited in Oklahoma—and couldn't even find out what year it was for or if it had been paid.

There was a phone number. And sometimes dealing with Anadarko, Oklahoma is a bit of a warm fuzzy. My great-grandads and great-grandmums on both sides came there before statehood (1907)…even before the land run. My great-grandad and granddad on Mum's side had their own agreement directly with the Kiowa tribe, for the payment of a cow of their choice and the right to hold meetings on the land, where otherwise my family ran horses and cattle. Suffice it to say—we're kinda from way-back in town history. And my uncle, after a combine accident that cost him his arm, became county clerk there. So when I had to call the county treasurer and ask if I was paid up on taxes, the conversation went pretty fast—I give my name, they look it up, and have the record instantly, the treasurer knows pretty well where the parcel is, I explain who my mother was, give the last name—oh, yeah. I say who my uncle was, oh, yeah—the man I'm talking to knew him well. It's old home week, and oh, yeah, if there's ever a problem, and you need to find me, just ask one of that family and they'll find me…

Anadarko's growing: it's got its Walmart and all; but there's still a lot of the old town that functions, where I remember buying barbecue from an outdoor pit, where my other-side grandad ran the only gas station on that side of town, and I pumped gas and washed windshields when I was about 10, and cute; where the cousins and I used to walk the alleys and pick particularly pretty river-polished agate stones out of the pebbles they'd hauled in to fill holes in the asphalt; the creek I used to ride across on the right-hand horse of the Percheron team that pulled the old tiller or the hay rake, a horse so big I rode astride on his neck—but I was very little then; the creek had quicksand, but if you were sensible and made like a starfish you could work your way out of it. There was the Martian-red sandstone hilltop where we cousins used to arrange ambushes of each other…and where I learned that you do not, unlike in the movies, try to jump from a cliff to an oak sapling. Oak saplings don't bend like birches, and they have a lot of branches on the way down. I had a most excellent childhood, especially weekends, when we drove 40 miles on a 2-lane to Anadarko to help out our grandparents. I fought a prairie fire with a wet gunnysack, right along with everybody in the area; I learned (with a hand plow in red clay soil) why a horse-drawn plow was really a big advancement (my few furrows looked like a drunken snake had laid them out)—and that if you harvest an entire row of ripe cabbages you are not helping grandma at all! [But popping the stems is so interesting!]

 

Success!

We removed the cylinders from the new tub/shower handles and lo! there was a fit with the old shower valve assembly (that multihole brass thingie that distributes and mixes hot and cold water for the tap and the shower). We reassembled a mix of old shower valve (very nicely connected with the pipes) and new cylinders, handles, spout, and shower, and it's gorgeous and non-leaking.

We have, in effect disassembled our tub down to the porcelain bare holes, and reassembled it with new parts, which is every part of installing a tub/shower except carrying it into the house and seating it in its carpentry 'nest'. We have fixed a drain 3 plumbers and the best plumbing supply store in town swore couldn't be fixed. We have pretty new knobs, better drainage, 2 drains that work and drain briskly (the previous lever-based ones were as kaput as most lever-drains in the USA), and Jane has begun to post pictures. First a tour of the plumbing of the tub. But we have many, many more…

We are finished all but the trim, and rather than spend megabucks on prefinished or, heaven forfend, special order trim, we have figured a combination of 2 trims, one plain, one a rope that matches the rope tile border of the mural, and as soon as it warms enough for us to clean up the garage and get the miter saw out of its box, we are prepared to do a really, really nice finish on that cabinet top.

We have many areas in the house that could use some trim work, so that miter saw will see work. But not this year! We are pretty well done except the molding around the kitchen door and the molding on the edge of the new bathroom counter.

Yay us!

I think Eushu has just about reached his limit of domestic chaos…

We've moved 'breakfast' to 8 am to slow down kitteh terrorism in my room—since I have been feeding them: stressor 1.

We've done some last moment cleanup, moving things kittehs use. Stressor 2.

We've had our hyper moments, explaining plumbing to each other in loud voices. Stressor 3.

Breakfast got later. We slept in. Stressor 4.

The Feliway dispensor is out. Stressor 5.

The leap to my television top didn't rouse me to chase, then feed. Stressor 6.

So—Shu leapt from there into my closet, walking on the hangers. Didn't work. Now, Seishi, who is terrified of closets, was no part of this operation. Shu then leapt from the hangers to the top of my closet, which overset all the wicker baskets, a stack of suitcases and the vacuum bags I had up there…Shu and all this stuff exploded out of my closet just as poor Seishi strolled in—and had his phobia confirmed. Seishi's panic fed Shu's, and they ran like thieves.

This did not stop Shu from getting on the countertop repeatedly.

They did get fed—after a suitable time lapse.

Then Shu went in the living room and attempted to stand on the folded card table. It fell over.

Later this afternoon Jane attempted to answer the door (to get our new bathtub faucet set which was being delivered) and caught the lamp on the living room table. It came apart.

Shu tried the shade as a hideout, but this didn't work. We reassembled the lamp.

This so discombobulated Shu that he tried a mammoth leap from the glass top of the lamp table—taking it over, knocking the heavy 3′ tall lamp over again, scattering papers, cameras, glasses, pens, drink glasses, cups, and incidentally breaking the battery-card door off my Canon Powershot.

I got the camera door put back on. We discovered the 'cylinders' for the faucet doesn't match the cylinders of the old faucet assembly Experimenting with this entails cutting off the house water supply and being ready to call a plumber if we really screw it.

We decided at this point to have supper and solve it tomorrow.

 

 

 

Alas, I think it's time for a new eye exam…

This pair of glasses is not as sharp as it used to be (worn with my contacts) and without, the nearer things are blurry, while far things are sharp.

I just got the prescription adjusted in late summer, but this is going to give me a headache. I haven't got the contacts in at the moment—the lenses have to be tossed each month, washed every week, and today is new-lenses day.

We are officially oversleeping this morning: high time. Last night we watched Pirates: On Stranger Tides…and had cream cheese bundt cake and Champagne.

Today we diet. But I've bought a boatload of veggies for stirfry and to do oven-roasted veggies, with a little ham and chicken, and we're going to get back to where we were.

Comes the reckoning re diet…

…since we have eaten anything we pleased while the whole house was torn up; we had yams with butter, pasta, pizza, Mexican, all-you-can-eat Chinese, we had desserts, cookies, candy, even the dreaded Swinging Door carrot cake [enough for an army] and you name it.

I feared I'd have gained at least 15, maybe 20 pounds. To my delight, in spite of epic reckless behavior, I have only gained 8 pounds. They're where I don't want them (waist)—but they'll be easier to shed than some.

I think that's a tribute to the sanity of the South Beach style diet we've been on: mostly stir-fries, a little noodles and rice with a huge amount of veggies, a moderate amount of bread and dairy, and a very little meat—mostly chicken.  When off it, the weight didn't pile  back on.

So I went shopping today to fill the veggie larder. And then I realized it's Valentine's.

So I got Jane a card, remembered we'd sworn not to get more flowers that have to be planted, added the cost of most all cut flowers, and decided, y'know, there's the bakery. Who should start a diet on a holiday? So I got a cream cheese filled cake and a card, and we're having ham and baked yams tonight. Yay for us! We've earned it!