C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 19

Still can’t drive…

It seems to be easing off, but it’s a real pain. Sort of like having your head stuffed with cotton wool while spinning in one of those astronaut trainers—if you’ve not had the experience, well, it’s like this.

Went to the Urgent Care doc on Monday—he says virus; and went to the endocrinologist on Tuesday—he says the bloodwork is brilliant, best ever—so, well, I suppose I’m fine, but I still can’t drive. Shouldn’t drive. Won’t drive. Nothing I need is worth a crunched fender, a lawsuit and me or somebody else dinged up, so well, Jane is going to have to be the ‘wheels’ for a bit, til this passes.

The star magnolia is breaking into bloom.

The pond is turning algae’d, not the floating stuff but the general green fuzz on the rocks. I’ve sent for a new chemistry kit to be sure of it before we put baby fishes in. In general, don’t trust water that’s too clear and clean: it’s probably not nice for fish.

And I’m trying to work—pretty successfully; but I’m a bit tired, which beats the previous two days on which I did hardly anything but sleep.

Irony. I am writing a zero-g bit.

And I have an inner ear infection.

The world rotates independently now and again, without asking me.

Just got back from the doc. They ran all sorts of tests, and it’s, yep, what I thought it was. It’s viral, it’ll run its course in 2-4 weeks, and I’ve had it since last Wednesday. Today it was at its worst, so I canceled the dental appointment and asked Jane to drive me to the clinic—yours truly is not getting behind the wheel, not being a fool.

So I tough this out. Don’t take phenylephedrine, the doc says, bad for the heart. Glug. It was the only thing giving me some relief from this. Concentration tends to be narrow. I can deal with some things. I can even write. But coping with multiple issues while I’m trying to sort up from down is sort of like one of those astronaut tests—can you thread bolts on this bar while you’re spinning…

Jane’s got the taxes ready to go in, today.

This is epic. We’re going to make deadline. We usually have to ask for an extension.

Guild Wars 2 is running an annual tax-time silliness called the Adventure box, which emulates the old 1960’s games, like Star Raiders, Frogger and Pong, with demented icon-characters and more jumping challenges. This is not my cuppa, but it’s Jane’s, and she’s going to do some R&R online, I hope. I’ve been so done-in by allergies this last week I’m doing well to function at all. I’m able to concentrate, but thread a needle? I’d stare at the two objects and wonder stupidly what one had to do with the other.

Our star magnolia, meanwhile, is breaking buds, the tree peonies and azaleas are developing their flower buds, and the quince outside my window is doing the same. Spring is springing, never mind that we had frost two days ago. Such a hard winter!

But 15 days from now we may begin getting word of baby fishes. We’ll need to get down and get that pond netting on. And our taxes will be done, done, done.

Tonight it’s the first one. When I find some decent Crimini mushrooms, the second.

Chicken with sweet potato

peel and dice 1 large sweet potato per person

dice pre-cooked chicken

line pan with foil

425 oven

mix all ingredients with olive oil and tbs curry powder of your choice. I use McCormick’s. Or vindaloo. Or…

Cook semi-covered for 20 min

Chicken mushroom white pasta

6 big crimini mushrooms sliced.

Garlic 1 T.

Pre-done chicken bits

Enough pasta—spaghetti, fettucini, farfalle, take your pick.

in skillet, real butter and olive oil: mushrooms and chicken, with little dusting of nutmeg, very slight.

cook about 10-20 minutes until browning.

Add Classico white alfredo sauce or heavy cream, cook till warm,

serve over pasta with grated parmesan.

New question: what percentage of a solar mass does it take…

…to start fusion and make a star?

Today’s question: what’s the largest crater on the moon, and how big is it?

I know.

a way to nuke spam e-mails

Caught a rec from a reader on Facebook, and it seems to be a good one. MailWasher—a freeware. It parks itself like a vulture on the phone-wire, so to speak, and picks off what you designate as bad sources. It can even (read the tips they provide) keep you from even seeing them, if it’s a habitual and obnoxious offender. The other spams it will let you see, and you can change their status.

From 50 annoyances a day, one day gave me the joy of tagging them, and the next day—absent from my awareness. Works with Thunderbird and various other mail programs. Pretty easy to set up: it’ll give you a convenient icon of your e-mail provider which you can use to access it, and a trash bin you can take a look at before nuking wholesale. Pretty hard to lose a good e-mail, and the clutter in the mailbox is history: you can now see the ones you need to see and be rid of the junk.

Tax-time

That annual misery in which on the honor system and backed by penal code, Americans devote 4 otherwise productive weeks to trying to remember their highschool math, trying to figure who Fred G Wayne is and why you wrote him a check for 32.34 and called it deductible, and trying, over all, to figure a way the government owes you a refund instead of you owing the government.

I’m not sure, but probably hospitals get an uptick in cases about now…stress-related conditions.

Personally, I think national productivity would jump 10 percent if we just declared a national sales tax and forgot this madness, into which successive legislatures have attempted to inject ‘good spending’ like credits for buying a house and deducts for having a child…woe for the child born at 12:01 AM on January 1. He missed being a deduction for the preceding year.

The whole system is crazy.

Allergies. Glug.

I took a nap after supper last night (meatloaf: I achieved my mum’s recipe, perfectly)—and slept from about 5:30 to 9:00 then got out of the chair and went to bed, and slept until 6:30 this morning, took the trash to the curb, went back to bed and slept til 7:30.

I’m better today. But not much writing got done yesterday. I did bake the meatloaf and clean up the kitchen…really clean it. But today my eyes are starting to water, and I’m going to take some Allertec and hope today is more energetic than yesterday.

We have the word on baby fishes.

Right now the weather is in a pattern of 50 degree days and 30 degree nights, which averages (given the warmth the pumps provide) about 48 degrees for the pond, of course a little cooler near the absolute surface.

I got hold of the pond store, and they will begin getting their new fish around mid-April, with a week of quarantine, before sale. This store is quite clean, no problems with contagion, so this should work fine. By mid-April the pond should be warmed into the high 50’s at least.

I told them our list, two main ones, a yamabuki ogon (shortfinned metallic gold) and a platinum butterfly fin, which is shiny white. I also want a blue-sided butterfly (a crossbred asagi, I think); a brilliant orange; one orange and white spotted; and maybe a pair of the black ones. That’s 7, which is a conservative population for a 5000 gallon pond. We might see one we can’t resist. But those are what we’re looking for. When we get a nice bright day (it’s raining again) I’ll see if I can get pix of the restored pond before the netting. It’s clear as a mountain stream right now. You can see all the bottom. The water lilies should like the amount of light their trial lilypads are getting down there.