C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 96

MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT: signed PROTECTOR h/b and INTRUDER p/b are here.

I have 14 copies of Protector, and 25 of Intruder. I am not telling the world yet, except that part of it that routinely visits Closed Circle. You are the ones that get the announcement first, and I will not tell others for a few days—but there are more than 14 of you on this site, alas.

Please move quickly: you’ve said you wanted these, so you get first crack at them. These are the copies I’ve reserved for you and nobody else gets a chance until you’ve had yours. Go to Closed Circle, go to the catalog, and you should be able to click on them and buy them on the spot. You can use credit card without being a Paypal member: just persist through all the nonsense.

Go for it.

If you have any confusion, let me know.

Alas, there’s a reason we moved from Oklahoma CIty…

Allergies: the worst cities in the US

I spent 3/4 of every year on the strongest allergy meds, while taking the allergy shots for 7 years, and I ended up working whenever the wind changed or the molds had died down, because at other times it was like having half your brain disconnected. I’d sometimes fall asleep in mid-work—sleepiness being a very major way allergy can get to you. Emotional upset is the effect of some molds, and we had those, too.

Up here, I rarely ever take any allergy med, maybe one week a year, don’t take the shots, and have a brain full time with no effort. If an environment gets you as badly as Oklahoma City got me, dear friends, it’s time to find a place that doesn’t. Life’s too short…

I’ll be so happy to visit there for Soonercon this June, but I’ll be packing the allergy meds, and so will Jane. I love the place. I have dear friends down there that I greatly miss. And now my brother’s moved ‘home’ again and is so happy to be back… but alas, it’s a place that was killing me, bit by bit.

I’ll be happy to see it and meet old friends.

Been watching The Men who Built America, or something like that…

Fascinating series. There’s a period of American history that in my own era was taught pretty much on the level of Washington and the cherry tree, ie, a lot of legend, no substance. This is the rise of the American Aristocracy, so to speak, the building of the castles, how and why…

It started with the Triangular Trade, in which some Scottish merchants (the Tobacco Lords) early on arranged a deal with the shipment of slaves from Africa to the Caribbean sugar plantations, Rum from the Caribbean sugar plantations to the Americas, Tobacco to England…

[Alas, it was one of my own x-great-grandfathers, an Adm Hawkins, who proposed this routing to Queen Elizabeth. He didn't originate it the traffic, but he proposed at least the route that would enable the rum-colonies-tobacco-England part of it, which is one reason we aren't all speaking Spanish: it funded the English navy in advance of the Spanish Armada---he was of a ship-building family, and used the funds to revised British ships and make them more efficient.]

Then the Tobacco Barons of the Post-civil-war South, Reynolds, Phillips, etc, who found a way to get rich from the farms down there, and who formed the political connection with the tobacco farmers-US Congress that would make the southern voting bloc and tobacco linked.

Add in the beginnings of the railroad, oil, and electricity, we have the subjects of this documentary—Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Morgan, Carnegie…and the upstart Ford. Fascinating how they interlocked, and what they were up to. The Edison-Tesla business is in there. We’re headed for the motorcar. But there’s also the Homestead Riot, which stained Carnegie’s career, and may have driven him to philanthropy in remorse; and the Jamestown Flood, the characters of Frick, Teddy Roosevelt and others who had a hand in it….plus some footnotes that explain why we now have laws against private militias and watering down stock. It’s on the H2 channel, and if you missed it the first time around, catch it.

Guitar…again

Meanwhile I’m still working on the guitar revival. I’ve still not rediscovered the more exotic chords, and a good D minor still eludes me, but C is getting there. There’s the beginning of callus on my fingers now, and there never has been pain: I play about 3-4 songs a day, and now am up to about 10. So finger-strength and flexibility will build, callus will build, and I’ll work up to a good clean C and Dm. B7 is still in the future.

If you’ve ever wanted to play guitar, filk is one of the easiest ways to start. Learn A minor and E minor and there are four or five songs you can play just with those: they’re both two-fingered, and they’re only one string apart from each other. View the music this way: those lines are the guitar strings, but upside down. If the note is high, arrange to strike the highest strings (the lowest as your guitar sits, which are the highest notes). If low, try to aim your hand toward the lower strings. Amazingly, the melody may surface. If you then learn G there’s a raft more songs you can do. And all of these chords are very easy to finger, requiring no finger-gymnastics. You can look up chord charts on the internet, or get a chord book that shows you how to hold your hand. If your guitar’s action is too high or its ‘voice’ is too high, get a capo, a little squeeze device that clamps onto your guitar neck and creates a new top fret (section) that’s going to sit a little lower than the maker made the real top fret do. Capo 2 is nearly standard with group-sings, to pitch it where ordinary humans live.

It’s not that difficult an instrument to do on a very basic, singalong level. Mastering it, now, can take many, many years. But even if you can’t read music, just play the chords and view the music as I suggest, and you’ll be amazed how your ear can find the tune.

The only thing that’s going to be a pain with the ‘new’ Atkins…

…is their fondness for onions.

When you get beyond the pre-prepared foods, you have to cook your own, and most recipes contain things like onions (no-go in this house), lamb (we don’t eat sheep or goats), fish—ok, if it’s salmon. And you have to improvise.

Main thing is to keep it to half a cup of veggies and half a cup of entree. And bread remains verboten during the next stage.

The good news is we’re dropping the last-acquired weight, which will amount to about 7 lbs apiece. THis is ‘easy’ weight, so no big deal. I’ve dropped about half of it in two days on the diet, induction phase; Jane’s right with me.

Then we have to get rid of more ‘established weight’ which is harder. Sigh. And we’ll be on induction a while, maybe through the first 10 lbs beyond the 7. And then…

WE’re up against dieticians who believe that lamb, steamed fish and jicama is nice and bread is not. What I’ll have to do is just to start grilling meat (chicken, pork, salmon and beef) and steaming veggies in usual recipes, with, however, no starches. So a burger is a pile of hamburger with avocado and such piled on it. I can do better than that. Small steak or chop with mushrooms atop greens, no onions, but nice spicing. Nice ground beef with Mexican spice, raw tomato and peppers, sprinkle of cheddar cheese, and a little side of jalapenos and a spoonful of sour cream. I think I can do this.

This is their rethink of their anything-goes diet with fat and meat and alcohol: now it’s no alcohol and restricted fat, and no starch. And it’ll work for us, but I’ve got to take a different route to spiciness, and try to permanently reform our portion sizes.

It’s that old adage of ‘feed the person you want to become,’ and hold the servings down.

But we’re optimistic.

And fortunately the meals they serve all taste good. There’s a tiny bit of onion, but we can thus far cope with it…nothing enough to cause the symptoms a real dose causes.

We also can manage the South Beach Ricotta dessert, once we’re allowed to have nuts: some pecans, a few raisins, cinnamon, and a little ‘latte flavoring’ in a Splenda-sweetened ricotta, and there’s a nice semi-frozen ‘ice cream’ that’s perfectly legal, or will be when we get past this couple of weeks of induction.

Comet may hit Mars, and we haven’t any seismological instruments aboard…

the link

But it may convince some people on Earth that a program to deal with these things matters…

I have some paperbound copies of Intruder…

On a first-come, first-served basis for members of this site: 8.00 each, signed to you or just signed, plus US postage, which will probably work out to about 6.00. Overseas is worse. I’ll give more detail on that when I figure it out.

So it’ll be something like 14.00 total. Postage is a pain, or packaging is a pain.

I’ll likely be getting some HB copies of Protector, but they haven’t arrived yet.

And now that the fish book is finished, and the medical crisis is over…

…and my brother has finally gotten moved into his new house…hurrah!…all of which were simultaneous: the fish book was to keep me from climbing the walls, something I know awake or asleep, and sans crisis—

Back to the novel outlne. I fortunately have approached this one with an outline, 10,071 words, so far—so that I know exactly where I am, it’s easy to review, and I’m right back into the swing of it. I don’t outline everything, but I do when life is apt to go crazy.

I’m delighted to say, this one should be fun.

And that because of the outline, I’ll know exactly where I’m going, since the next upcoming distraction is that annual American self-torture ritual, which is not, however, the Ides of April: April is a month in which the ides fall on the 13th day, which atevi consider lucky.

Not so most of my countrymen…

But—things are getting less complex. We’ve got a kind of routine. Jane and I will get to it RSN. Around April Fools’, we ritually sit together in the office and periodically have a meltdown trying to find things, which lasts about 3 days, or until we mail the bundle off to our longsuffering accountant and ask him to ask for the ritual extension…

Well, we tried the Atkins diet food, and the good news…

a) it tastes really good.

b) though the portions are small, if you can tough it out for 20 minutes after eating, you’ll find you feel full, and stay that way. It’s that protein hit. You’re getting a lot of protein, very little carb, so there’s no carb/sugar rebound telling you you need a snack. You don’t.

The regime we’re following is: breakfast—omelet. Lunch, one of the entrees; Supper, one of the entrees. Water, Splenda-based soft drink, black coffee or tea, no alcohol.

This means our protein intake is high, and our carb intake for the entire day is under 20 grams (a government-prescribed 1 ounce serving of pasta can be 46, and a Marie Callender’s Pot Pie is 54, with 650 calories, so you get the idea. 20 is pretty low.

We’ll be at this about 10 days, before we can start easing up a bit.

The best news is, these taste better than your typical frozen dinner. I even liked the turkey one, and I’m far from fond of turkey.

Vae! viximus, bibimus…nunc dietemus!

Atkins. We’ve sort of lived South Beach style, but we’ve gotten more luau than restrained South Beach for way too long, during the stress of the winter, and now—

Now we’ve agreed we both feel better if we can be some pounds lighter, Atkins is the most effective diet for us, and they’ve revamped it to include more variety—and are now offering frozen dinners. Which gives me a bit of a holiday.

The catch is, in our area, Walmart is where to get the frozens. And our neighborhood Walmart is the only Walmart in town that isn’t a superstore. WHich is… yes. The only store handling them.

So after driving a couple of miles, hiking the entire frozen section, waiting in a long line at customer service, and finally finding out the deal, I then drive four miles through the city’s worst traffic to reach the ghastly-sized giant Walmart, wherein getting a bag of potato chips requires half a city block of choices.

Of course the frozens are at the rear of the store, which is sort of looming like the Alps in front of Hannibal.

Of course people have hit this brand like locusts and the selection isn’t huge.

Of course Atkins has put onion in all the breakfasts. I detest onion and eggs. I detested it when I was able to eat onion, back in the Permian. Sigh. So I bought eggs. Jane doesn’t like eggs in the first place, but that’s our only choice: omelets, boiled eggs—I can think of things I could do, but none as zero carb as an egg and cheese. So I’ll try to get creative. I’ve got some ghastly thin buns and I’ll see if those can be rendered edible with egg and cheese.

But I got out of there.

Jane’s got company, doll enthusiasts—alas, it’s the only hobby we don’t share. I admire them, but I can’t quite figure what to do with them besides judge that they’re very pretty, so that’s Jane’s thing. I’ve been off on my own project, which I started when I was so distracted by the biopsy and the waiting for results. I’ve written a non-fiction book, a how-to manual for people starting or contemplating starting saltwater aquariums, which is one of my hobbies that I do more of than Jane does—not that Jane hasn’t done it and can’t do it, but I’m the one who primarily logics through the stuff. Took me all of five days, since I have a lot of saved articles I’ve written previously, and I’ll release it as a Kindle book, likely, with the hope it makes a little money. Never thought I’d write a fish manual, and my Grunt Chem prof would die laughing at the notion of me lecturing on chemistry, but hey, I do know this stuff pretty well, I do know marine chemistry, and I can do a good deed by telling people how not to fail massively and with loss of fishy life.

For the next few weeks I’m resigning cooking—except for eggs—, until we bust off some of this weight. We’ll feel better for it.

Don’t panic about the Atkins: we both have really good cholesterol when we’re on this diet, better than on a low-fat diet. Seems to us the worst sin is fat and carbs, not fat and protein. So we’re not failing to think about our health.