C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 57

The tank, somewhat later…

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Thing’s taller than I am. 105 gallons. Dream tank of a lifetime—but boy! has it been a bear to get set up! I think we are finally where we should have been last year at this time!

Why the ocean is the ocean…

The ocean’s chemistry is really pretty simple: it eats rocks. It supports organisms that, from microcellular up, eat the dissolved rock and eat light of a favored spectrum, which energizes their little cell-parts and makes the eating re-constitute into shells, tissue, skeleton. If conditions go ‘off’ it fosters areas of the food chain that ordinarily are very sparse, and other things start to grow—like cyanobacteria, which lives on sunlight as a sheet of red thick feathery slime, photosynthesizes simple sugars, and gives off oxygen bubbles.

If it weren’t for cyano, earth wouldn’t have an oxygen atmosphere, wouldn’t have recovered after the Permian Extinction, and wouldn’t have green plants—which developed incorporating an element of cyano. It’s part of earth’s balance: the atmosphere goes wonky enough to distort the solar spectrum and you get lots and lots of cyano. Piles of it.

If it happens in your tank, alas, not so good. So you have to keep your lights burning true to the sun’s spectrum…and metal halide bulbs don’t so much burn out as ‘burn down’, or yellower.

Things die, and the ocean dissolves their skeletons and new critters suck it up and build their skeletons. The precise amount of calcium ocean water can dissolve is 2 tsp a gallon, unless the ph is high. Then maybe 2.5. People put white vinegar in their tanks to force a bit more into solution, but you have to supply the calcium in the first place…and what we use is, yes, Mrs. Wages’ Pickling Lime, meant for cucumber pickles. Works like a charm, dumped into the fresh water we add as make-up for evaporation.

A marine tank is surprisingly little care, so long as you keep fresh water slipping in via a float switch (a lot like your toilet tank) and keep the water circulating and a high rate of speed and the calcium in the water sufficient—since no more than 2 tsp WILL dissolve, I don’t even measure: I dump a whole packet in and trust basic chemistry to happen. You have to change out the lights periodically. And there’s a device called a skimmer, which produces bubbles in a chamber and extrudes froth, which is amino acids the system doesn’t want: with that, pure water, a good salt mix you buy—things are remarkably stable and coral grows and fish thrive.

A lot of people get spooked off aquaria at the goldfish level—and the pure answer is—goldfish are a type of fish better off in ponds, not gallon jars. They don’t get enough exercise and eat too much: recipe for bad health; and one gallon doesn’t provide enough oxygen, either: if in the least dirty, the water carries even less oxygen. And tapwater is full of stuff they shouldn’t be breathing, even if you correctly use water conditioner to remove the chloramine. Small wonder goldfish demise. They’re NOT an easy fish in the first place.

The hobby as a whole has marvelous equipment compared to what we used to use. We’ve got one freshwater and one marine tank, the latter of which shouldn’t have been as much trouble as it’s been, except that I got some iffy rock, which has taken months to condition into honest live rock—[meaning it's got bacteria living all the way through it and it's soaked out all the phosphate it came in with]—which now serves as a very important biological filter. It’ll be great rock, now. And the coral should start to grow.

This is how the tank arrived. 800 lbs. In the street. If it hadn’t been for Mike and Patty Briggs, who drove up from the Tricities (150 miles one way) to help us, and Tim Martin who came straight from work—we’d have been in real trouble. If you’re interested, I’ll show more pix of the tank during setup.

Just resting up…

…working on outline, which is not your A, B, C sort of outline, but a ragtag set of ‘this scene’, coupled with ‘things that need to be explained’ and ‘things that need to happen’ and ‘people in the scene’ so I can move them about. I used to do this on strips of paper. Now computers cut and paste.

Writing in series is kind of an assembly of a garment from a scrap barrel. You need notes. You have ideas. But you need organization.

And I want to have most of my flapping, squawking ducks in a row before I settle down to write that first sentence. If you write the wrong first sentence you can be two weeks trying to fit it in before getting sane and junking it.

So I try to be right the first time.

We’ve had some cooling rain. Weather is settling back to blue skies. Clean blue skies, which is a great thing. That means the fires are out.

The knee is doing pretty well—not so’s I want to hike and carry stuff, but doing ok.

Bardarbunga IS erupting.

If you have a long plane flight upcoming, heads up. This volcano could affect air travel, particularly in Europe.

It’s still erupting under the glacier: this will likely produce catastrophic local flood, once it breaks out. In the meanwhile the Icelandic government has evacuated areas to the north and put a no-fly around the volcano itself: Icelandic airports are still open.

Managed to trip and jolt knee last night and half the night had knee pain

…the real good news is that, 7 days after the original (2nd) injury, it’s good. Feeling near normal this morning! Yay! That’s one monster medical bill I won’t be having! Not to mention having a functional knee!

The knee is improving…slowly.

I’ve now gotten to where bed is the only really uncomfortable place to be. There’s something inherently unfair about this, because I’m quite tired and really need sleep. I’ve tried every possible position of pillows, padding, etc, but, alas, the swelling just needs to go down.

Poured cats and dogs this morning. Which was nice. I love the sound of thunder and rain — especially when I’m not out in it. I’ll take a tent or a roof or a car—but being rained upon, well, not so much.

I think the seasons are headed toward a turn. After a couple or three weeks of 90 degree temps verging on 100F, we’re now in the 80′s with a couple of 70′s. I can deal with this.

There is so much to do—and unfortunately I’m not able to get out and do it. I need to change out the lights and filters on the marine tank, which is in shameful neglect, but no can do. The filter wrench on the reverse osmosis filter once it’s sucked down hard is a two man operation with good leverage…and I’m not up to hauling on that, which requires, yes, bracing and shoving or pulling. But—it’s less swollen today than yesterday, and the swelling is moving with gravity, which is a good thing—it’s getting better, and the likelihood of damage that’ll need medical intervention is less.

Anyway, I’ve had my ‘vacation,’ several days of convention, painkillers, eating too much, and lying abed, and time to get back to work.

Bardarbungu webcams….not blowing yet, and may not…

grimsfjall webcams

… but they’ve been at condition orange since yesterday and have evacuated the area north of the volcano.

This is one of Iceland’s BIG volcanoes. It could alter or ground flights. And it could affect global weather.

In an anthology:

http://www.amazon.com/Altered-States-C-J-Cherryh/dp/0957113056/

The story involved is “Mech.”

Well, I survived Spocon…barely. They were so sweet. I was so out of it…

It was a lovely convention—and everybody was very nice to me: they had a kind of special do for me as GOH and people said very nice things and Michael Whelan sent me a very special gift. Wiishu was ‘Doll Guest of Honor’ and Jane and Nina had a good time.

Unfortunately I’d sprained my knee out whacking weeds beforehand, and was walking with a cane, in a very long, strungout hotel…and it just got worse and worse, until on Saturday, I caught my foot on a microscopic rise of carpet between the tile bathroom and the outside, and sprained my sprained knee—again. Only worse. A doc at the convention advised me how much Advil I could safely take, and I did. And to put the compression wrap on spiraling up from the ankle, which also helped.

The Advil meant I was a little less than focussed. When I got home from the con on Sunday night, I went to bed, with the leg propped, and I’ve been mostly sleeping, on high doses of Advil, for 48 hours, leg elevated, which has done a number on my lower back, but it is getting better.

Anyway, I’m still a little groggy, but sitting up. I’ll tell you, after 3 days where every step hurt like hell, I am now walking without the cane, with occasional twinges. And I am sitting up again, in my regular working chair, which is a recliner with a footrest, thank goodness.

I have now done a thorough scout-out of the Shejicon hotel, and I can definitively say the hotel offers a very nice breakfast/buffet—but advise the waitress if you are allergic to onions (they will have the omelet cook use a different pan)—and do not expect the chef at Spencers (the hotel lunch/dinner restaurant) to have ANYTHING without onions, garlic, leeks, or shallots…the chef manages to put onion couli onto no-onion dishes, and is devout in his desire to have onions in every dish. If you like onion, you will be perfectly safe. But it’s a pricey restaurant. Azteca, the Mexican restaurant across the street, is less oniony than Spencers. And there is Chili’s, the chain, across the street (I made it once, Saturday night—I was getting desperate for food and had people to help me!—) Chili’s has one really excellent dish so far as I’m concerned: the baby back ribs—it never fails, they never screw it up, and half a rack is not a bad supper, for me. Their restaurant seating is bad and noisy and they make you wait. We almost never wait at a Chili’s, because we just ask if there’s seats in the bar, which is self-seating, and we get a nice comfy place with no waiting at all. This works at very many places that have bars. The bar is more comfortable because they want you to stay and drink and drink; the restaurant chairs are crap because they want you to eat and move on so they can seat another party. Rule of thumb at many establishments.

Writing the start of the outline for the next book…which…

…I hope to write faster than this one!

I am also shoveling through the office.

Answering 2 month old correspondence.

Finding OMGs in same…when we were on the road we had our mail held, and when we got back, we were snowed under and desperate.

I’m getting round tuits everywhere.

We have a house guest arriving just before the con—Nina Kiriki Hoffman is coming in. And we’re so hoping the kittehs behave!