C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 155

still awaiting that keyboard. but plotted out the new bren book…

…i have spent some weeks working on the short stories i promised for the heroes in hell project and the poul anderson project. [with a lame keyboard. occasionally it gets important enough to use the righthand shift, but my hand just is not trained for that, so i shall be e.e. cummings today.]

both those projects were painfully slow.

i sat down to do the outline for the next bren book, and it just fell into place in five minutes.

that kinda tells you where my head has been at and why the last two projects went slowly.

i also have a new contract in the works—of course i actually have to write the books—but in today's market, that's a great thing.

so happy un-birthday to you all; i'm at work on the new book.

watching 'through the wormhole'…i believe i have figured out time travel…

Random thoughts, —explaining why we never see time travelers…

You can only travel forward. And never back. If you go forward-only, we all have to wait until they invent a time machine. And that hasn't happened yet. When it does…everybody piles up in future ages, increasing the population of really lost disaffected people…

Wait, I believe I wrote that book…

or at least the short story that used to preface it.

my keyboard's dying….again

if you notice me typing without the left shift key—yep, that's why. it's beyond annoying. i thought my little finger was having an issue, but it's worse, to the point of not working. i've checked under it for cat fur. i fear it's just one more in the long string of keyboards i've done in.

dell and i get along, and i'm used to them. i go on site, they instantly recognize my machine individually, i tell them i've got a keyboard issue, they hand me an e-file manual for instruction and ship me the part. i'll install it myself. if it were something techie, a guy with a briefcase and a pocket protector would show up as soon as the part arrives and install it; i've had new motherboards, new displays…i love that next-day business service. since i wear out about a keyboard or two a year, this is a good deal for me, and as aforesaid, sometimes they replace practically the whole machine. on one, just as the policy was about to run out, decay set in, and i got a new keyboard, new touchpad palmrest, new display and new motherboard. that machine is now one of our fallbacks if things really go south with a regular work machine.

a writer is not easy on keyboards. i've typed since i was 10, and i'm fast, and have longish fingernails.

Pay close attention to Jane's blog…we're trying an experiment.

Jane's going to be putting an offering up on Amazon. We need more traffic on Closed Circle—just to stay in the game—and we're going to be doing a few new things, which she's trying first, to see how it flies. There will be a time when you can do us an immense favor, which is to get up on Amazon, once she has the stuff up, and give Jane some reviews that will help her. I will post when she actually gets it up: it is a bit of a bear of a process, and it is taking some time: this weekend we are trying to get the accounting done, so we can nail that down and get necessary mailings off.

We are giving a try to the Amazon process to try to give CC a boost. Our books, sold from OUR site will still be DRM-free, will still have free updates should anything change in the technology, and personal intervention if you have any trouble with a download, and there will not be anything on Amazon you can't get from us—in other words, CC will be what CC has always been. Bear that in mind. We are going to Amazon to try to get some new readers to come here.

Yet one more kink in the diet….

Forever, Jane and I have had two eggs, two pieces of Canadian bacon for breakfast. Now it seems—we can't.

We have to take Levothyroxine on an empty stomach, without calcium or magnesium or soy for at least 4 hours.

Now we also have to avoid anything that's high cholesterol. We cannot have Eggbeaters, because we are allergic to onion—which Eggbeaters contains in sufficient quantity to cause problems.

We cannot have cereal, because we can't have the milk, or soy, and almond milk is fortified with calcium.

We cannot have either eggs or bacon because of cholesterol.

We are now having Eggos. I got some nice muffintops but we can't have those either, because they're reinforced with calcium.

Sardines are out: there's no way either of us could choke down one at 7 am. And besides—Jane's also on a low sodium diet, so that would be out, too.

I tell you, this is a poser. I can cope with lunch and supper and bring us down to nearly zilch in cholesterol…but! breakfast! Wah!

At least the ricotta desserts still work.

Jane's SEEKING NORTH story is up on Closed Circle/Seeking North

…or use the button we have at the left sidebar

She got it up despite various hassles and a dying printer!

Go ye forth and read the next installment of our shared world for free!

snowing again, after raining…and back on the ice…

Weird day on the ice—I felt like hell, kitted up anyway, and halfway laced up, looser than usual. Well, we've determined I was Vitamin B deficient (not taking my vitamins, on a diet that restricts starches, ergo B vitamins)—

I took a pill. I was in too foul a mood to bother with what I thought a bad lacing, just go out there, skate a bit, get off the ice and go read a newspaper.

Something happened. All of a sudden I was 'into' my boots and the blades were making real contact with the ice in a good way, absolute control of my edges in a way I haven't had in a whole year. I mean, I hit things that would have thrown me last Friday: 'fast' patches—it was cold as hell's hinges and you get spots more frozen than others, which can feel as if someone jerked your skates forward. If you don't have your knees bent and your butt and hip and upper leg muscles strong enough to yank you up even with your skates, you can crash and burn for no apparent reason. And hockey trenches. Hockey skates provide little trenches that can grab a figure blade and yank you on a sideways curve like a train hitting a thrown switching-point at high speed. Again, either you're 'over' your skate blade with strength in those muscles, or you're apt to go down. I hit both, several times, and they were just 'well, interesting', not a heart-stopping moment. The legs were there, and most of all, the blades were under me and responding to the littlest pressures of my feet—pressing down on the heel under the anklebone, sideways, drives you forward with real bite, and doing the opposite side sends you on an outside curve: backwards is behind the ball of the big toe, and backwards outside curve is the ball of the little toe, and if your center of balance is solidly low and 'over' your skate blade, you're just going to be steady and sure in all those moves. It's when you freak and stiffen your knees and stand up that you're going to go boom—or if you wave your hands around [poor little girl had been doing fine out there yesterday, and then she hit a spate of waving her arms around and every time she'd wave back behind her median side-line, boom! down she'd go. Which only made her more frustrated and nervous, which made her wave her hands more---the things we could tell the little ones, if only they could understand.]

Anyway, it was a day of the perfect boot lacing. I went back to the locker room in a much better mood and took careful stock of exactly how I'd done that lace-up, undoing it and measuring, and thinking back over what I'd done. I want to do that Wednesday! I mean, I was so steady I decided to try my backward outside edge pattern for the first time in a year, (a real balance challenge) and actually stuck it for a bit.

Still cold and the pond heater died…

Apparently the combination of anti-predator netting and a load of ice sank the heater, which shorted out. We are hoping that it did no harm to the fish, but we have no way of knowing until the weather warms and the fish should venture into view. I did some scurrying about and replaced the heater with a new one, of better design, and this one is now in service, but as aforesaid—no way of knowing if everybody is all right. There is a gfi on the circuit, but I don't know if that will have been enough.

The temperatures are in the minuses at night; the whole house was 55 degrees this morning.

It's hard to get warm. But we don't heat the house much in the winter: we don't like heat. We'd prefer just a wee bit more warm, but that's the way it is.

Another pound down, back to pre-convention weight, and snow…

We have well over half a foot of snow out there, and it's still coming down hard and fat/wet. Jane was going to get her blood test today, but I have a feeling we're going to be shoveling, and the streets won't be fun. I think she may go tomorrow!

Down two more pounds and having a picture-postcard snowfall…

The poundage is loss of 'wild weekend pounds' and therefore not a real weight loss. One more to go and I'm back where I was Friday morning.

Having Thai chicken tonight: chicken bits with salt and pepper, then smothered in raw spinach, and dosed with House of Tsang Peanut Sauce, wonderful flavors. I cooked it last night, dismissing any concern about Jane's absolute detestation of cooked spinach, because she always has a bit of mine when we go out to the Thai restaurant, and the taste is the same. She was dubious at the first bite, then today, when I went to the store, asked for a repeat tonight of the same recipe. I can oblige: dead easy to fix, and serves as many as you have spinach for…MUST start as raw spinach, no frozen stuff.

I bought myself a new purse. The other one had gone all the way to looking, well, disreputable doesn't cover it. But I'm very fussy. It has to have 3 or more outside pockets, shoulder strap, interior divisions, be able to hold a cellphone and camera, and have some security against an accidental spill. You could hand me a 12,000.00 Vuitton bag and I'd sniff and pass it up for one from Freddy Myers if the pricey one didn't meet my conditions, and if I had the spendy bag, I'd treat it just the way I treat my succession of other sad bags. Trade purses until the current one dies or begins to resemble road kill? No way! But I've been looking for 3 years now, and finally found one that meets my criteria…looking like something I'd carry is at the bottom of the stack: it's faux grey crocodile, which I refer to as neo T-Rex. Looks pretty spiff, and let's hope it absorbs scuffs well, because I do hang it from chairs, set it on the floor and kick it under the table.

And the snow is coming down: we're forecast to have our January this month, so we may need green woolies for St. Paddy's Day!