C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 160

New CC project…

Lynn came up with an idea.

This is a good thing.

We need to redevelop our working together and develop an ongoing feature on CC.

You're going to get the benefit of it.

We're going to do what all three of us know quite well: a shared universe for us.

Here's how it came down. We talked on the phone. We thought it sounded great. Then we polled 'us' with the question—anybody got a universe? Weelll, Lynn had a spare one. She'd been messing around with the old Acme Idea Generator, and this one fell out. It's called "Seeking North," and it's set on a colonial planet that's seen hard times.

Jane has a notion.

Lynn has one.

I, heaven help me, have one.

We're going to have something up come New Year's. The current way it works is just—it's free. We don't know what we're going to do with it. You've already seen what sort of scraps lie about my worktable awaiting spare parts. Haven't gotten my own finished yet, and I can't really divert my brain, in the struggle I've had to finish this novel properly. But Seeking North might just work with minimal effort, once certain things gel.

Stay tuned. Look at Lynn's site: Lynn's Blog /a> for details.

Not since 1979…

…have I weighed less.

The diet we've been on since September (REAL South Beach, meaning you-cook-it) is wonderful.

As Jane says, dessert every evening lets us go to a birthday party and resist cake, by telling ourselves, "we get dessert this evening, and if we have that, we can't."

Mostly veggies means, yes, sometimes I have to run to the grocery for fresh, and I always have to cook, but I've got most recipes down to 10-20 minutes, and pre-cooking 10 lbs of chicken means—diced chicken is always there to be used.

We miss some foods, BUT, because this diet doesn't rely on ketosis, it means we can set ourselves a date on which we will have our favorites (often creme pie, pizza, chili with spaghetti, and Champagne) and then go immediately back on strict dieting to burn it off. It's not yo-yo dieting because we don't really 'gain' the weight, ie, it doesn't stay long enough. It'll just take a couple of weeks to convince our bodies to drop some more, because it's stored a bit. But then we do go on losing.

Plateaus, old set-points, on the way down, are interesting. I even have wardrobe for these set-points…weight levels at which a diet stalls for a while, because that's an old maintenance level. It may take two months to work past an old set-point. But work past it you do. I have about five I've worked past, since 2000. But I am within 3 lbs of my original target weight. When I saw the diet was working, I reset my goal ten more pounds down, so I will stall again at the target weight—and keep dieting until I like the result.

Pretty darned good for going-on-four-months.

Babylonians supplant Pythagoras

BabylonianMathC2

The Tigris-Euphrates region has no few 'interesting' developments: the use of tiles, of brick…it would remain for Mohenjo-Daro over on the Indus to do 'standardized brick,' [they were about 2500 BC]—which makes their remains look astonishingly modern. The ancients of Mesopotamia had something like, using small stones and brick instead of the massive stones of Egypt, but not standardized, and they were using tar for mortar in areas—there's abundant limestone for mortar in Egypt, but I don't know the geology of the Indus/Tigris region that well. Anyway, it's just an interesting sidelight on who-did-what-when. I'll not be surprised if the Greeks didn't borrow a lot from Egypt and Mesopotamia/Persia. Greek roots go back, via Knossos, who were connected with Egypt—and who knows what the Egyptians could have borrowed from the Cretans, etc. As much as we DO know about these civilizations, we don't know it all.

Look at Jane's site!

The link to the new Blood Red Moon cover is up, and it's, shall we say, hot.

good news on the nature front…

The return of wolves to the wild has made a few homeowners uneasy: a few people checking mailboxes in remote areas have gotten a surprise, and a certain neighborhood had a catfit when it found wolf tracks around the school bus stop —but hey, you hack a hole in the woods and build a house in it and you just may see wildlife, and you may have to take precautions: if you want to send your kids to the bus stop, it might be good to go out there yourself and be sure they're safe. This is the city where you get visiting moose on the golf course and swimming pools, and bears investigating the garbage in the hospital district. Marmots and coyotes on city streets, yep, we gots 'em. Cougar—not since I've lived here, but it's happened.

Now it's wolverines. Those fellows are certifiable if surprised—they're sort of the North American version of the Tasmanian Devil, only larger, so I'd be real cautious going out to the woodpile in the dark without advertising my presence. But I'm happy to see another species pop up in its old range. You start putting the pieces back in a disturbed nature, and all sorts of critters may like it. I remember when the egrets came back to Oklahoma City: and kept coming; and kept coming. Now they have egret mitigation in certain places—they tried it on the lake I lived on—but I voted for the egrets, and so did the majority of the residents.

Katy, bar the door…we're under the Pineapple Express and an arctic cold front is coming…

The Pineapple Express is tropical rain, sweeping up from Hawaii. This morning we're being deluged in sheets and waves, the sort of thing you normally see in the near-tropic South, on the Gulf, and this end of Washington is already having flooding from the sudden week-long melt of a foot of snow. NOW an arctic blast is on its way.

La Nina is such a changeable girl. Spokane is in a borderland area, between reliable winter cold, the Continental Divide, and the occasional blast from the humid south.

If the PE doesn't clear town before the Snow Queen moves in, we're in for it.

Global eruption on Sun…from Aug 1, so we did survive…

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/...

There's something in Classical Studies about climate change—remember, we're the guys [in my old academic field] that deal with the oldest written accounts and oldest civilized remains in the world. And somebody noted something interesting back before the 1970′s…

The rhythm of civilization is on a 500 year cycle. Every 500 years, the barbarians ride out of the steppes and trash the farmers in the Tigris-Euphrates; dynasties fall; famine hits the Tarim Basin; the Gauls (later in history) invade Rome (then move on to Asia Minor). Ie, every 500 years, the apple cart upsets and things rattle for a while.

Some enterprising folk have wondered if our Sol is a periodic star, with a 500 year cycle. So I always told my history students to look out for the year 2000, that there might be climate glitches, famines (crop failure), or weather upheaval. What went on in history was a drought in the Tarim, forcing horse-using barbarians to move on, which nudged the next guys over, and they nudged the next: it was dominos, all along the trade routes and migration routes. People who'd matured into a power would try to go south to get food around the Med (or north, from Africa) and weaker civilizations would go down. When Rome ruled, they did what any selfrespecting global civilization would do, and used their ships to move grain from regions of plenty to regions of famine and kept civilization together in that one; but come 500 AD, they blew it, got caught in a period of disorganization; 1000 AD, give or take a century, you've got the Vikings and the Normans, not to mention chaos in Asia; 1500—heck, explorers were out in ships, and TRADE was big because there were areas where they really wanted goods like food…etc.

Just some food for thought.

So warm the koi have come out to sun themselves…

I really worry when they come out of torpor. I'd like to see stable cold so they can sleep soundly…but they seem to be fine. I saw Ari, and Gerard, and Rukia and Amy quite clearly: the water's kind of murky since the pump's been off, but it's good quality. I do need to go out and put some more (holding nose) bacteria in: the snow's melted enough I can get to the rim, so it's a good time to do it.

The end of this coming week is supposed to be snow, snow that stays. Our roofs are mostly clear, so this is fine. We're looking good for a white Christmas.

Nice evening with Patricia and Mike Briggs…

…two of the nicest folk on planet Earth.

Patty had a signing at Aunties (Spokane's largest indie bookstore, an institution in Spokane)—and we got together for Lennies' Thai, which set my diet back 2 weeks, but the evening was worth it. We had great food, a great time, enough starchy food (rice and thickening) to take more weeks dieting off, but hey! We love that restaurant.

Of course it was freezing rain, and Patty and Mike and their daughter (who picked them up from another location) had a 3 hour drive into the dark afterward, but we hope to reprise this in warmer weather, maybe in the other direction. Patty threatens to get me on horseback again—Jane swears my figure skating may have restored the core flexibility that would enable me to stay on horseback again without clutching the saddle. I confess to being a chicken rider these days: 'chicken' is gripping a secret close fistful of the horse's mane so if I fall the horse gets his hair pulled, while hoping the horse knows that. It's the "I've got a handful of hair and I'm not afraid to use it" method of riding. Actually, it's more to prevent me going off head first. I've gotten that iffy in balance.

When you drive I-90 out of Spokane in bad weather there are 2 places to worry about: toward Idaho, there's 4th of July Pass, which is a bottleneck of the sort you may imagine. And in the other direction, there's the far sneakier Ritzville, which must have offended some ancient gods, or something: it catches the unexpected worst of whatever's going—wind, ice, snow, volcanic eruptions, whatever: it piles up at flat, unassuming Ritzville, which does not look all that threatening. But it's dangerous: it actually has more elevation than it seems to. We thought if our friends could clear Ritzville and take the southbound exit, things would rapidly get better: the Columbia River Valley has generally warmer weather, so the closer you get to the river, the weather gets milder.

Anyway, everybody arrived safely and a good time was had by all.

OK—holidays are coming. Recipes. Food. Fun.

Doesn't have to be diet. But I'll put out one that, surprisingly, is.

CHICKEN MOLE:

whitemeat chicken, already diced [we get an economy packet, cook it on the George Foreman grill, dice it into small Ziplocks, and freeze the leftover]

ramekins for individual servings.

heat chicken: we use skillet and a little virgin olive oil. I'm going to give the amount for one serving, so it's straight multiplication.

Turn off fire. Add 1/2 can diced tomato.

1 heaping tsp dark chili powder (heat of same to your personal taste)

1 heaping tsp cinnamon

1/2 level tsp nutmeg

1/2 level tsp ground clove

1 heaping Tablespoon peanut butter with no sugar…(Adams, or natural peanut butter; crunchy or smooth doesn't matter)

1 heaping Tablespoon unsweetened cocoa

refire, and stir in with chicken.

When thoroughly mixed, put mixture into ramekin (individual baking dish) uncovered.

Add handful of white and yellow shredded cheese.

Microwave about 1 1/2 minutes (until cheese melts)

Top with dollop non-fat sour cream.

Voila! Honest chicken mole! (pronounced MO-leh)

Takes 20 minutes or less if you already have the chicken.