11:59 High

Okay, a short version of why I haven't been posting here lately.

Basically, even at the best of times, I tend to run short on time and on sleep. The last few months have seen a statistical cluster (as in "clusterf***") of additional responsibilities, commitments, and stresses. The result has been even less time available for things like browsing the Internet or posting here. (I've cut way back on the blogs I regularly follow or post on, from about fifteen to three -- Making Light, Supergee, and John Scalzi's Whatever. The political blogs I read have been dropped entirely for the present -- Obama's still president, isn't he?)

The biggest source of stress has been having our neighbor and friend Anne end up in the hospital and having emergency abdominal surgery over five weeks ago, followed by a roller coaster ride of ups and downs, improvements and complications, since then, plus a second bout of surgery two weeks ago. When I took Anne in to the ER last month, she signed over a medical power of attorney to me, and since she's never quite recovered enough to make her own decisions since the first surgery, I've been called on to make some of those decisions regarding her treatment and care. Not fun.

We've known Anne for nearly thirty years, since Ed Meskys introduced us back in the early Eighties. Some readers here may recognize her as Anne Braude, one of the co-editors of Ed's fanzine NIEKAS. Since she discovered the Internet about ten years ago, she's been -- as "Talpianna" -- an active commenter on websites like dictionary.com and others. Back in 2003, she had some major health issues, moved in with us for several months, and ended up buying the house behind ours and has been our neighbor ever since, with a gate installed in the fence between our two backyards.

Anne's prognosis in still uncertain. Even setting aside the surgeon's comment that it was "probably a miracle" that she survived the initial surgery, she's also had to deal with several secondary infections that she's picked up simply by virtue of having been in the hospital as long as she has, and which kicked her back from the progress she'd made up to then. So the uncertainty and stress look likely to continue for a while.

There have been other stresses as well, including a major financial setback that means Hilde and I won't be, except for the house mortgage, debt-free by the end of this year like we expected. I... am... pissed (to put it lightly).

So that's why you probably won't be reading a post about why the winner of the Hugo Logo contest will probably be mediocre at best, or a post about The Worst Nebula-Winner Ever, or about an interesting first novel titled The Dust of 100 Dogs (that I managed to read recently mostly during periods sitting in hospital waiting rooms), or some of the other posts I've been wanting to write recently.

Eventually, tho', I may post some photos from the Making Light party at the recent FiestaCon (which Hilde and I managed to daytrip to, one of the few bright spots lately), and I may make an update on the "Six Characters In Search Of A Plot" post I made a while back. (I was able to do a little more work on the idea during a morning in, yes, a hospital waiting room.) And I'll probably eventually make a post with more details about that financial setback. (Have a plastic raincoat standing by for reading that post, because when I start Naming Names and Giving Details, there'll be blood spatters jumping out of your computer screen. I.. am... REALLY... pissed.)



(The "11:59 High" title on this post is a reference to Twelve O'Clock High, the classic WWII movie with Gregory Peck. Near the end of the movie, Peck's character finally hits his stress limit and is literally unable to climb into his Flying Fortress to accompany the rest of his unit on a bombing mission over Germany. There have been points over the last month or so when I've felt pretty close to that, like a rubber band stretched almost to its limit. Not enough sleep, what sleep I do get tending to be in two or three hour chunks, eating irregularly too much of the time as well, and not just not getting what I want to get done done, but not getting done what I need to get done. This can't last. Well, actually it could, but only until Bruce falls down, goes boom.)

Watch This Space

Too much has been going on, taking up too much time, to post here lately. Plenty to write about ("interesting times", indeed), but... oh, foo, you've heard the excuses before, from me and from innumerable other bloggers. I'll post when I post.

Update: Hilde Comes Home

Hilde came home from the hospital yesterday, five days after the events described in the previous post.

The final diagnosis was a systemic infection. She's off the IV antibiotics she was getting in the hospital, but will be continuing on pills for a while at home.

Things are getting back to normal, or as close as they ever get to normal around here.

One thought that occurred to me: If I hadn't switched to working nights a few months ago, Hilde might have died. If it had been a normal Wednesday when I was working days, I would have given Hilde her morning meds, etc, tucked her back in bed, and gone to work. Instead of my coming back from errands three hours later and calling an ambulance, she probably wouldn't have been checked on by Tabbi, her caregiver, until early afternoon. (Hilde usually sleeps until about two o'clock.) Considering how quickly and viciously that infection went on the rampage, by two o'clock Hilde might have been beyond critical, or already dead. Sometimes even seemingly small changes have big unexpected consequences (the "butterfly effect"); in this case, that change in schedule had a positive consequence, a very BIG positive consequence.

"Thanks", also, to all the friends, family, co-workers, etc, for their concern and best wishes.

So My Day Started Out Pretty Well....

I got up, fed the dog, gave my wife Hilde her morning meds and put her back to bed, went out to a doctor's appointment, picked up a few items at the grocery, dropped off a prescription, got back home, moved a load of wash into the dryer and started another, went into the bedroom...

...and that's when I called the ambulance.

It's... stressful... to find the spouse who'd been fine three hours before gasping for breath, arms and legs jerking spasmodically, unable to respond to you or to speak at all, possibly not even recognize you, covered with sweat and running a burning fever.

The good news is that by the time I got home from the hospital tonight, close to twelve hours after the ambulance took her there, Hilde had made an almost complete recovery. She was focused and coherent again, with no problems speaking or verbalizing. She was even able to speak to our son Chris on the phone and ask what he wanted for his birthday dinner tomorrow. (Though she'll likely still be in the hospital then, either getting tests or waiting for the results of them.)

She remembers going back to sleep before I left for my doctor's appointment, but the next time she was aware of her surroundings was in the early afternoon, when I was giving the ER doctor some further information at her bedside. She drifted in and out for several more hours, but then became more and more awake and aware. By the time a neurologist came in to look at her, she was able to give normal responses to his questions.

We're still not certain what exactly happened. Stroke was the immediate concern, which is why she was taken to the closest hospital with a stroke unit, rather than to Mayo Hospital, which is about ten miles further away, but which she prefers to go to when possible. (Her primary care doctor is with Mayo.)

But the jerking arms and legs seemed more like some kind of seizure. And the high fever and sweats seemed like an infection. (Which it turned out she had, and received several units of IV antibiotics for, but the ER doctor said the bacterial count didn't seem high enough to account for everything happening with her.)

So she's in the hospital tonight, with an MRI and EKG due tomorrow, to try and figure out what was happening, and if there's any sign of permanent damage.

But, oh, man, trying not to panic once I found her in crisis was a struggle. We've been through a number of medical crisis' over the years, but every other time -- even if she was in agonizing pain -- she could still communicate something of what was happening to her to me and/or the medics. This was the first time where it was completely up to me.

And beyond the obvious fear that she might have been dying, there was that other fear, possibly even worse: That she might not come back to a state of awareness; that her body and brain might remain "alive", but that Hilde, the person, the mind inside that brain, might never come back.

We seem to have dodged a very large bullet today.

(It's after midnight here. I'm going to take some anti-anxiety meds of my own and go to bed.)

Six Characters In Search Of a Plot

Over at ConceptArt.org, where I tend to follow the CHOW (CHaracter Of the Week) themed art challenges, they recently had a one-off "Team Chow" throwdown where several of the Chowdowners teamed up to produce a group portrait of six characters, based on short character descriptions.

The descriptions were purposely written to be vague on world and society background, so the teams could produce works widely varied in genre: fantasy, space opera, historical, Old West, cross-over ("Viking Steampunk" was brought up as a possibile interpretation), etc.

The drawback to this idea, from my point of view, is that the competition essentially produced a series of "snapshots" of the characters at a frozen point in time. The story, the dramatic narrative and background behind those snapshots, is largely unrevealed.

So I've decided to take those character descriptions and approach them from a writer's point of view, to try and springboard off them to develop a story arc and an accompanying world and background, and a set of antagonists for the characters to interact with.

How far I'll be able to push this, I don't know. Partially, this is to try and jumpstart myself into working on fiction again. I've never been able to finish any attempts at novels over the years, and it's been more than two years since I even finished a short story. (And that story will probably never be marketed.)

In the meantime, let's see what sort of general brainstorming I can develop as a beginning effort. Here are the character descriptions:

Characters:

The Hero- Female, between 20 - 30. Has no memory of anything beyond a year
before present.
- Stubborn to a fault, but unswervingly loyal to those she cares about,
convinced that she could lose her memory of them at any time she makes the most
of every moment.
- Has a tendency to say things before she thinks about them.
- Rumoured to have a second personality that can remember everything from
before, a 'dark' side, as it were, with totally different personality traits.
- A quick learner, but unlikely to pay attention unless something
immediately catches her interest.
- Searching for her past but ultimately easily caught up in the present and
the worries of others, tending to think of other people before herself.
- Found (to her horror) that she is more than capable of handling
herself in a fight, and likely capable of killing.

The Shadow- Male, between 20 - 30 (should be around Hero's age).
- The only person that the hero has any memory of, beyond the last year
(though she can only remember his face), and the only person who might know who
she is. He pretends he doesn't know, or refuses to say.
- Seemingly self-absorbed but actually self-destructive, has a tendency to
take out his insecurities as malicious remarks on other people.
- Isn't well liked, but doesn't care, or pretends he doesn't.
- Doesn't seem to have any friends except the hero, who he would do
anything for, though of course he would never say that. However, though he seems
to actively despise the rest of her friends, he cares for them more than he
admits.
- Whether he is helping the hero find her memory, or actively hindering
her, is unclear. She believes he is helping her. He doesn't necessarily believe
that it would help her to find it.
- Often disappears for long periods.

The Protector- Male or Female, between 25 - 50, well-built
- Found the Hero directly after she had lost her memory, and managed to
piece her back together.
- Strong and loyal, but prone to worry. Decided to take hero under wing,
and began to notice the very strange energies* and events that surrounded
her.
- Completely distrusts the Shadow and the Sage and believes they are
actively working against the Hero's interests, but defer's to the Hero's opinion
and trust of them.
- Strengths lie in activities done with the hands - higher concepts either
are not a concern, or are too hard to think about in depth.
- Honest and blunt, so sometimes seems unkind, but never means it.
- Sometimes wonders if accidently stepped in way too deep into something
never meant to be approached.

The Sage- Male or Female, any age
- Does not come from the same country as hero. Came from far away to find
something, and claims that the hero will lead her to it, though will not say
what it is - even whether it is a physical object* or a higher plane*.
- Often seems to be looking through the person that he/she is
speaking to, and just as frequently stares off into space.
- Seems to disappear whenever trouble starts, but has saved the hero and
her companion multiple times to threats that they were completely
obvlivious/unaware of.
- Eats very little and sleeps less, and makes very little noise when he/she
walks.

The Technician*- Female, 18 - 28
- Completely in tune with anything mechanical. Takes things apart /
dissects things with disturbing regularity, and while can usually put them back
together again sometimes forgets to do so, to the dismay of her friends whose
objects* she 'borrows'.
- Fascinated by all methods of transport, and has an amazingly large
memory for all vehicles and machines but not for people or places (they are
just not important!)
- Initially hired for one-off job by the Hero and the Protector, but took
an instant liking to them and convinced them of her usefullness.
- Not very good in rough situations like fights, prefers cold logic of
puzzles, as her size tends to work against her. However, pressed into a corner,
she can make her technical* knowledge work to her advantage in place of physical
prowess.
- wears her heart on her sleeve and is often very cheerful, but takes some
blows very hard (a friend getting hurt, etc). Sometimes flighty.

The Rabble Rouser - Male, 20 - 30 (should be around Hero's age)
- Met Hero + crew rather accidently and they helped out of a bit of trouble
(which he had gotten himself into and was almost entirely his fault).
- Developed instant infatuation with Hero + told her that he would help her
find her memory. Infatuation may or may not be sincere. Hero does not return
it.
- Tends to bring trouble with him, or create it when he gets there, as he
grates people's nerves.
- Charming and seemingly hollow, but in select instances with the Shadow
has shown that he's invested more in the quest than one would think - though
perhaps not for the apparent reasons.
- Has good luck with gambling to match his bad luck with people, and never
is wont for money - it tends to find him as easily as he finds it.
- Has an excellent memory for faces as well as for numbers.- Well groomed,
but not as flamboyant as one might expect - unless it is on purpose as part of a
bluff.

Okay, where do we start?

First of all, whose story is this going to be? At first glance, one would think it would be the Hero. She's lost something (her memory) and has to find out who she was and where she came from, and why.

But I think the best choice for a main Point-Of-View character would be... the Protector.

The Protector is the one who first finds the lost and damaged Hero, and takes her in. We know from the character descriptions that these two characters have been together for at least a year. What happens during that year?

The Protector is a cautious type, but he takes the risk of taking in this unknown quantity of a person and helping her build a new life. We don't know, yet, why he took that risk. (Which will eventually become even more dangerous than even he expected.)

That new life for the Hero, what will that be like? Well, what's it like for the Protector?

So this is when we have to take our first baby steps towards building a world and society in which this story will take place.

First thoughts: A society with distinct class levels. A wealthy upper class, with the most power and access to the best resources and technology. A middle class that mans and provides the infrastructure supporting that wealthy upper class. And a lower class, with depleted or unaffordable resources, whose members struggle every day.

Let's take "upper class" and make it literal: A planetary ring around the earth, where the wealthy and powerful live. The middle class are those whose maintain and support that mini-Ringworld.

For varying values of "mini". Even a planetary ring is uber-huge, possibly containing tens of thousand of square miles, or even magnitudes more if the construct is built in multiple levels.
(Here's a thought: What if that planetary ring is NOT a human construct? Surmise: Enigmatic aliens entered our solar system at some point and, rather than directly colonize the planets, built planetary rings to occupy. Further surmise: They're not oxygen breathers, so had no reason to occupy Earth's surface. The Earth ring is, from their POV, essentially an outpost; the important rings are those built around the gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. They did, however, strip out a lot of Earth's resources, and offhandedly destroyed a lot of human civilization in the process of contructing their ring. Humanity and their concerns are essentially irrelevant to them. The vast majority of the ring belongs to the aliens, and is forbidden to humans. That upper-class, wealthy society is only a relatively thin strip - -but still huge by human standards -- built on the exterior of the aliens' ring; why they allowed it to be built is still unknown.) (All this paragraph is very tentative and speculative at this point. It might be used; it might be completely discarded. For the moment, we'll give it a spot on the Maybe Shelf.)

Back to our human characters: The Protector would be a member of that middle-class.

Initially, the Hero, freshly amnesial, would be fairly child-like. The Protector would be more of a father-figure to her, as she learns, grows, and begins to fit into the Protector's sector of society. (Thought: Has the Protector lost his own family -- wife & child, perhaps? Is that why he takes the risk of taking in the Hero?) This relationship may change as she becomes more knowledgable, more able to function as an individual. (Would they become lovers? Possibly.)

Time to lob a few hand grenades into the story: Something happens to trigger the Hero's fighting abilities. Holy shit, who IS this dangerous woman?

Next hand-grenade, the Shadow shows up. (Perhaps as a result of the story of the Hero's kick-ass abilities spreading?) The Hero recognizes the Shadow's face, but only his face. Who is this guy? What's his connection to the Hero's past? (A connection he denies.) Does he have connections to that wealthy upper-class? And if he does, what does that imply about the hero's past? And does that make him a threat to the Protector, and the Protector's relationship with the Hero? (This is why I like the Protector as POV character; he has something to lose.)

Let's take our aliens back off the Maybe Shelf and throw in one more hand grenade: The Hero finds her amnesia is not the result of injury. Rather, it was something that was deliberately imposed on her brain. And not by human technology, but by alien technology.

And could that mean that the Shadow not only has connections to the human upper-class, but to the aliens? Is that even possible?

How about our other three characters?

The Sage: Perhaps the Sage is a member of a church that believes the aliens were sent by God. Word of a human affected by alien tech might bring her onto the scene. She may also have connections and resources available across all the human classes.

The Rabble-Rouser and the Technician would, I think, start out as background characters. They become more important when the Rabble-Rouser screws up, and gets the authorities (who essentially work for the upper-class) coming down on the Hero and other characters. The hero and Protector have to go on the run. Rabble-Rouser, feeling guilt, helps them in their escape. (So does the Sage. The Shadow? Perhaps he offers an alternate escape route, one the Hero and Protector are not willing to trust.)

It's the Technician who can provide the vehicle that will let them travel from the Ring down to Earthside in search of sanctuary. (Perhaps literally, provided by the Sage's church?)

But that sanctuary needs to fail. At some point, I see mountain-ripping alien ships in the skies of Earth again. Will they finish off humanity completely this time?

The Hero has to go from the defensive to the offensive. She has to find out who she was, why she was so important, and what she has to do to save her friends and the world.

Stuff happens. Bang! Boom! Wowie and zowie. Stuff blows up real good. Unexpected alliances and tragic betrayals. (Yeah, this part is a little vague at this point.)

Some things to remember: 1) Everyone has a past. 2) Everyone has an agenda. 3) Not everybody lives happily ever after.

I think we have a rough story arc at this point:
- Hero, sick and lost, is taken in by the Protector. Things go smoothly for a while.
- Complications arise. The Hero's fighting abilities are triggered. The Shadow comes on the scene, with a possible connection to the Hero's past. The Protector's chance at happiness is threatened.
- The Technician discovers the alien technology in the Hero's brain. The Sage arrives.
- The Rabble-Rouser knocks over the applecart. Everyone has to go on the run to planetside, with the Technician's assistance. The Sage provides a hiding place on Earth.
- Things go to hell. Not only is the group in jeopardy, but humanity is in jeopardy. The Hero has to go on the offensive.
- Boom, bang, wowie, zowie, et cetera. The Hero discovers and confronts her past. Revelations and resolutions. Not everyone lives happily ever after. The End.

I'll leave things at this point, but I'll try and do a "Six Characters In Search Of A Plot, Part II", developing things in a bit more detail, sometime soon.

Welcome To The Surveillance Society, Mr. Hanes

So the technicians finally finish up their wiring and troubleshooting, and pack up their tools and leave, and, hey, the Security office at the retail/office/hotel development where I've been working finally has access to the over one-hundred fifty security cameras scattered over the property. So this morning I'm spending a couple of hours there, very bored, eyeing the monitors and waiting for something, anything, to happen on camera.

And it does. I pick up the radio mike:

ME: Unit 211, could you go to the bus stop and speak to the man changing his clothes there?"

211: "Uhhh... repeat?"

ME: "There is a man at the bus stop changing his pants. He is standing in his underwear as we speak."

211: "Uhhhh... I am enroute."

ME: "He is putting on shorts, currently. Look for the guy with the yellow t-shirt and no shame."

The bus stop at the development is a small shelter with about a half-dozen hideously uncomfortable concrete seats. The space is about three-quarters enclosed by perforated metal screens, providing a measure of shade and some heat relief for people waiting for a bus. The guy changing his pants apparently thought the screens would keep anyone from seeing him change from pants to shorts.

Nope. On camera, on tape.

But even if there'd been no cameras... what the heck makes someone think, "Hey, I've got a few minutes before the bus gets here. I think I'll change my clothes."?

Get a room, guy.

Look! Up In The Sky!

All my life, I've tended to scratch my head whenever I hear the phrase, "The Man in the Moon"; I've looked at the Moon, and what I've seen is a blotchy circle. Try as I might, I've never been able to interpret those light and dark areas as any kind of a face.

So, a few days -- or, rather, nights -- ago, I'm doing my new late-night security shift on the same night as a full Moon. So I've got that thing hanging up in the sky overhead for hours. And, in the wee hours of the morning, it suddenly hits me that, yeah, it really is possible to see a face in the Moon.

"My God!" I cried. "It's Roy Orbison!"

I can see him. Can't you see him?

(How much of this can be ascribed to sleep deprivation I leave as an exercise for the reader.)

Update

*sigh* Six weeks since the last post?

Not that much exciting or interesting to post about lately, combined with the unexciting or trivial taking up too much time.

1) Hilde is still having trouble with her hearing. She's seen one of the Ear/Nose/Throat specialists at Mayo, and been referred another level up the medical-specialty tree for an appointment next week, where the recommendation is likely to have tiny tubes inserted into her ear canals to relieve the persistent pressure there since her respiratory infection earlier this year.

2) There was something else... interesting... in health concerns recently, but I hadn't mentioned it before because it was one of those matters where "interesting" is equivalent to "terrifying". An MRI on Hilde several months ago showed some indications of pressure on her spinal cord at the top of her spine, where it hooks up to her skull. This was scary because it might have been an indication that the hardware (bolts and screws and cables, and chunks of hipbone to replace shattering cervical vertabrae) holding her neck together since 2000 was starting to fail, and if her cervical spine was starting to fall apart again, it was one of those things that can lead to unpleasant side-effects like, ohhh, quadriplegia, brain damage, and, y'know, dying. (Back in 2000, Hilde was told that without the neck surgery, her life expectancy was about two weeks.)

Further consultation, with the neurosurgeon who performed the 2000 surgery, proved reassuring. The spinal cord constriction showing on the MRI was apparently an artifact of the neck hardware, and the hardware and Hilde's neck are, in fact, still stabilized. (This was particularly reassuring because Hilde has already beaten the odds by a considerable margin. Not only was there a 1-in-7 chance of dying on the operating table in 2000, but the average post-surgical life expectancy among people who've had the surgery is only two years. Hilde's already gone more than eight.)

3) On my own front, I started working night shifts last week, 9PM to 7AM, four nights a week. This was occasioned by a reduction in contracted hours at the worksite, which meant a reduction in hours for almost every employee there, drastic cuts in some instances. I'd been working 45 hours a week, but I'm one of the few employees still getting a full 40 hours a week. Adjusting to a night schedule is an ongoing process, but the four 10-hour shifts also mean I get an additional day off each week. (And just today, because of that extra day off, I finally got the leaky filtered-water spigot by the kitchen sink replaced. Next, replace the worn-out drawer slides in the kitchen cabinetry.)

And that's about it for now. Will try to post an occasional link to interesting stuff elsewhere on the internet, like the customized My Little Ponys in the last post here.

Obama's Been President For An Entire Month, And I Still Don't Have A Pony!

So I'll have to make do with looking at these:

25 Inspiring My Little Pony Mods

Hilde's Hearing: Update

Since I mentioned, downblog, the major problems Hilde was having with her hearing following a bout with the nasty virus that seems to be hitting everyone...

...there has been some improvement. She can hear me talking to her now if I talk loudly and directly, rather than my having to shout!

But she is still having problems strong enough (she describes the tinnitus as "like being locked in a metal-lined room with cicadas") that she'll be seeing an ENT specialist at the Scottsdale Mayo Clinic in a few weeks.

It's uncertain, at this point, how much of the problem may be from actual damage to the inner ear, and how much comes from the continued congestion and sinus pressure from that virus. The bug, from the anecdotal evidence of both local and online acquaintances, seems to have an acute phase lasting about a week, followed by a long phase where you can function again but still have a diluted version of the acute symptoms. (I still have an occasional light cough in the wake of my own bout with the virus.)

Because Other People's Money Is Never Enough

Over at Boing Boing, there's been spirited discussion of a recent NYT article regarding the proposed $500,000 salary cap for executives of financial institutions who receive Federal bailout money. The NYT piece bemoaned the fact that trying to live on $500,000 a year in New York City is just so difficult for high-powered executives and CEOs. Why, they might have to give up their armed chaffeur!

Among the plethora of helpful suggestions from Boing Boingers in comments, involving such items as lampposts and new ropes, I came up with what I thought was a wonderful solution to the CEO's dilemma.

All they have to do is clear off a corner of their desk, and set up one of these:



Problem solved. Any CEOs reading this, feel free to tip generously for the advice.

But Their Breakfast Cereal Still Sucks

So the Arizona Cardinals lost the Super Bowl.

I must admit to relief. And not just because a Cardinals win is in the Bible's Book of Revelations as a sign of the End Times.

Considering how bizarre people in Arizona have been acting since the Cardinals won the NFC game and earned a Super Bowl slot, I really didn't want to think what might have happened if they'd won the Bowl too.

(Our son Chris was getting ready for his night-shift security job last night, and asked who'd won the game. On learning that Arizona lost, he said, "Oh, great. Angry drunks tonight." Maybe, but nowhere near as many drunks if the Cardinals had won.)

From the online news reportage--

(No, I didn't watch the game. I only hear about these things from social osmosis. Our usual practice on Super Bowl Sunday is to rent a batch of movies and watch them instead. 'Cause, y'know, even if only one television station is broadcasting the actual game, the Super Bowl Cooties might spread to other channels.)

--the Cardinals actually managed to make it a close contest, coming from behind and maintaining a lead for most of the last quarter.

I think this is the football version of the first ROCKY movie. The "win" for the Cardinals lies in that they got the chance to go to the Super Bowl at all, and that they put on a worthwhile effort when they got there, and didn't just get rolled over by the Steelers.

So hey, props to the Cardinals.

Yes, I have actually made a sports-related post. The asteroid will hit the Earth in five minutes.

We're Getting Better (Kinda, Sorta...)

The nasty bug I reported in the last post, which has been bothering both Hilde and me for going on two weeks now, finally seems to be getting to its last stages. After another doctor's appointment Tuesday afternoon, I was able to finally get to CostCo for the shopping that's been piling up while I've been stuck at home. Even a couple of days ago, I would have felt completely wiped out by the time I got home and probably would have had to go back to bed. After the shopping, I felt tired and had a light sweat worked up, but I was still able to function, at least half-assedly. So I should be back to work on Thursday.

Hilde is still having trouble with her hearing, and the doctor has added a major decongestant (both of us are currently taking pills of a size I would ordinarily expect to see only in a large-animal veterinarian's office) to what she was already taking, to try and break the sinus passages loose. There seems to be a little improvement so far, hopefully to be followed by more.

The partial-deafness has been particularly alarming because there does seem to be some correlation between long-term arthritis and deafness, and a certain amount of fear that the pressure from the congestion might have done lasting damage to the inner ear mechanisms. If there's not significant improvement in another week, Hilde may be seeing an ear/nose/throat specialist at our local Mayo Clinic.

For my own personal part, the possibility of Hilde losing part of her hearing is... oh, what's the word?... terrifying. Since I've always tended to speak in varying degrees of Mumble (as I've aged, I've gone from Modern Mumble to Middle Mumble to, nowadays, Olde Mumble), I've always had to repeat myself frequently. But the recent developments mean I've been having to SHOUT! a lot when I've been trying to talk to Hilde. This sets off a mental script in my head that goes something like: "AIEEEEE! I"M SHOUTING AT MY WIFE! AIEEEE! BAD HUSBAND! BAD HUSBAND! AIEEEEEE!!"

And... for the last forty years, the rheumatoid arthritis has been bashing her with a baseball bat, over and over and over and over again. The thought that, now, it might be moving on from bashing knees, elbows, hips, feet, spine and virtually every other joint there is, and start bashing her in the head... that's really hard to accept.

There's a movie from the early 1970's, PETE 'N' TILLIE, starring Carol Burnett and Walter Matthau, based on Peter DeVries' novella "Witches' Milk". Pete and Tillie are two people who get married in middle-age. They manage to have a child, the only child they'll be able to have... and the young boy develops leukemia. There's a scene in the movie where Matthau is horseplaying with the young boy in the living room, just like everything is normal, just like everything is alright. Burnett watches them for several moments, then stands and leaves the room... and leaves the house... and goes into the backyard. Where she looks up into the sky and talks to God. And what she ends up saying to God is: "I spit on you! I spit on you!"

I've been thinking about that scene. I've been thinking about that scene a lot, the last few weeks.

Best case scenario: Hilde's ears clear up, and her hearing goes back to normal. (And there does seem to be some improvement, between the antibiotics and and antihistamines.) But I've always had a tendency to catastrophization, to seeing the worst possible outcome. Sometimes this can be a good thing, because expecting the worst means I can take steps to try and avoid it. But there are some situations where I don't have any control over what's coming... and that makes me nervous (where "nervous" includes scared, depressed, and angry).

We've Been Sick

There's been a bug going around town, and it's been going thru the household the last few weeks. Hilde's turn came last week, and mine started last Saturday. Both of us are still working on recovery.

Hilde's version (it seems to be like the Wild Card virus, in that everyone has a somewhat different set of symptoms) has been mostly upper-respiratory-based, and initially produced truly astounding amounts of phlegm and mucus. Even, at its worst, from -- ewwwww -- around the edges of one eye. (It may be a minor super-power, but even the most powerful villain would hesitate to face someone who can shoot snot-rockets out of her eyes.) She's been on antibiotics since last week, clearing up her phlegm production, but just got switched to a stronger one since her ear canals are still plugged and hindering her hearing.

Me, I haven't had the humonguous amounts of yuck like Hilde, or the nausea or diarrhea other people have reported, but I've had almost constant sinus drainage, resulting in a throat that feels like it has a strep infection (been tested; it's not strep, but damn, it's still sore!), and a headache that's never quite gone away since this all started for me last Saturday, plus feeling enervated and listless all the friggin' time. I've had more hours of sleep per day this last week than I've had in years... and it's still not enough to feel normal.

That last, the lack of energy, is actually the biggest suck of the entire suckapalooza. Not only have I not been able to go to work, meaning someone else will have to work extra hours to cover my assignments, but I haven't had the energy to do anything around the house either. Usually by this point in the week, I'll have finished the laundry, cleaned the kitchen, changed the catboxes and garbage cans, worked on the garden, done the grocery shopping, and about half a dozen other things. None of that's gotten done yet this week. (I've watched a lot of tv, when I've been up... and that's been about it.)

In fact, writing this blog post has been the most energetic thing I've done all week, save for several unavoidable trips to doctors for Hilde and myself... and I'm already feeling pretty pooped. (Hopefully, the fact that I can write this blog post at all is evidence that I'm at least starting to recover.)

(The illustration above comes from the LIFE Photo Archive, hosted by Google.)

You Say You Want A Resolution....

I've never been one to make New Years' resolutions. If I want or need to do something enough, I figure writing it down isn't necessary.

That said, these are resolutions that I should make for 2009, if I made New Years resolutions:

1: Work towards a more satisfying job. (Security work has its rewards, but it's the first job I've ever had where there are long periods of being, essentially, in "standby" mode; this drives me nuts.) Learn Excel, update my resume, keep my eyes open for suitable job openings, etc.

2: Try to do more work, more regularly, on my fiction writing.

3: Market the fiction I've already written.

4: Try to exercise regularly, and to lose some of the excess weight that's crept back on over the last few years.

5: Reduce/eliminate our debt (which isn't bad; not including the mortgage, we have less than $3,000 debt) and try to put more money into savings.

6: Try to get Hilde outfitted (netbook, voice-operated software, etc.) to where she can access the Internet herself.

That's the major stuff I'd like to see myself doing this next year. Some of it I probably will do, some will get partially done, and some may not get done at all.

And The "Good Citizen Award" Of The Year Goes To... A Pimp.

Hey, even a pimp has to have some standards.

A man soliciting sex with a 10-year old was arrested following a tip from a Phoenix pimp, according to Phoenix police.

UPDATE, 12/31/08: The fellow whose tip led to the arrest may not have been a pimp after all.

I Vas Dere, Charlie

One of the shopping mall properties where I've doing security work had a major water line break yesterday, December 29th.

News video available here.

So I ended up with a lot of overtime hours, helping direct traffic around the flooded areas and get them to the remaining exits. The line of slow-moving traffic reminded me of when I was a kid and the family would go to the drive-in movies; at closing time, every car in the lot would try and get through the narrow exit lane at the same time. (With the source of the flooding on the east side of the property, and four exits on the west side, why did the Phoenix PD close down all but one of the western exits? A lot of people waiting in that line of cars had that question, and I had no answer for them.)

This was after a morning stint at another property. And then after the worst of the flooding was under control, I had to go out to a third property where the security officer had come down sick and finish his shift. So I ended up working a sixteen-hour day, and finally got home about 1:30 AM.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation,Part 4

And one more post on the Sturm! The Drang! The Plotz! of post-retirement.


Part 4: Relaxing

Between retirement and going back to work, and in between household organizing and cleaning and job-hunting, I also tended to get a lot more sleep, more regularly. And read a few books (yes, Patrick, I will do a review of LITTLE BROTHER, and thank you for the copy) and watched a number of movies via Netflix. Hilde and I also splurged on our anniversary in July and went to go see IRON MAN on the big screen at the local cineplex.

And spent way too much time browsing the Internet. A goodly amount of this was reading political blogs, trying to predict which way the country would go in November. Thank God that Obama was an expert campaigner, and that John McCain turned out to be a stumblebum. (Is that rude to say? But it's true!) I don't expect perfection, or miracles, from Obama, but at last I can feel that, finally, really, "the adults are in charge" (or at least will be in another six weeks).

One other aspect probably needs a few remarks: After retirement, between not working at a regular (fairly physical) job and both spending more time cooking at home and nibbling too much on the results of that cooking, I found myself gaining one to two pounds a week.

My ideal weight is about 165, and I was actually at that weight a few years ago, after spending some months on a diet and exercise program. I'd slacked off a bit, and had gotten back up to about 185 when I retired at the beginning of June. By early July, I was up to 193 pounds. Eep!

I started up an exercise program again, which stabilized the weight level, but didn't seem to do much to lose extra pounds. (I was building up muscle mass with the program, which was probably part of the reason the numbers didn't change, but too much of that extra weight was still fat.

It was only after I went back to work that I started losing weight again. Between a lot of walking (and some bicycle-riding) on the new job, and doing portion control on most of my meals (oatmeal & banana for breakfast, a diet shake and a can of V-8 juice for lunch), I've dropped back down to about 184.

At which point my weight seems to have stuck again. Going back to work meant that I pretty much lost the time to do my exercise routine daily; I need to try and find the time to resume that, in addition to calories burned at work, and see if I can drop at least a few more of those pounds.

And that, folks, is how I spent my summer vacation.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation,Part 3

Still more on post-retirement thrills.


Part 3: Re-Employment:

So, after mostly working around the house and kicking back for a few weeks after retirement, I started looking for a new job.

I'd actually sent out a few resumes before retiring, but now I was trying to work on finding a job every day, usually for several hours a day.


The last time I'd looked for a job, over thirty years previously, it involved perusing want ads in the paper, or going down to the nearest Job Bank office and going thru their microfiche listings. It was difficult, inconvenient, time-consuming and very frustrating.

The advent of the Internet since then has made the process a lot easier: You can browse job-listing sites like Jobing.com or CareerBuilder from the comfort of your own home, and the search engines at those sites, to varying degrees, make narrowing down possibilities much easier and accurate.

The goals I wanted to meet in my job search included:

• At least $9.00 per hour pay. (I'd figured this was what would bring our total income back to Postal Service levels.)
  


• A commute of less than 10 miles. (My last position with USPS was at a station about 6 miles from home.)



• Inside work, preferably office/clerical type work. (This was what I'd done before being hired by USPS; two-and-a-half years of my Army enlistment as a company clerk, and a year as a legal secretary. The inside work preference was because after thirty years delivering mail in the Arizona sun, skin cancer was high on my list of health worries; I'd had several basal-type spots excised surgically from my upper chest, and had numerous suspicious spots frozen off in my twice-yearly appointments with my dermatologist.)



• Work that would provide the satisfaction of being either creative and/or of being of service to the public.

I started out job-hunting fairly optimistic. There were actually a surprising number of clerical or administrative jobs listed within my 10-mile range. Beyond the listings on the job-hunting sites, I also bookmarked the jobs pages for local governments (city, county, state) and watched for possibilities there. And I also bookmarked some local businesses I felt I might enjoy working for. (AAA has a large operations center just a mile north of where we live, easy walk or bike distance. I've been a member and fan of AAA for nearly thirty years, so thought I wouldn't mind working one of their customer service posts. I also bookmarked some of the local hospitals websites.)

Not that I didn't have a few minor obstacles. My last, strictily speaking, job in a clerical position was more than thirty years ago. That's, ummm, a bit of a gap. (Sorta like the long-time housewives who find themselves widowed or divorced and suddenly trying to get back into the paid workforce.) In drafting my resume, I tried to emphasize the paper-handling aspects of my letter-carrier career (I mean, essentially, isn't sorting and delivering mail like sorting and filing papers, except that the "file folders" are a lot further apart than the ones in an office cabinet?) I also hoped that spending thirty years in the same job would be seen as my being a reliable, dedicated worker.

The other major obstacle was one I hadn't expected. It turned out that a lot -- a LOT -- of clerical-type job listings contained one particular line:

"Must be proficient in Excel."

Word-processing? No problem; I've been using wp programs ever since an old housemate brought home a TRS-80, back in the early 1980's. Publishing and layout programs? Pretty good there, too, with all the fanzines and what-not I've put out over the years. And even a moderate amount of experience with setting up databases, tables, and mail merges.

But spreadsheets? Except for dedicated, pre-formatted spreadsheet programs like Quicken, I've never had any good reason to learn a general spreadsheet program like Excel.

If I'd had the experience and proficiency in Excel, the number of jobs I could have applied for would have gone up by about an order of magnitude.

I took some steps to try and learn Excel. I downloaded a trial version of Microsoft Home & Student Office, and got a couple of Excel guidebooks out of the library. But I had a heck of a time trying to think of anything to actually do with the program, which made for pretty slow going. And meanwhile, the general savings account, which I'd figured would give me about three months coverage for the income gap between retirement pay and actual expenses, was shrinking away, and my mid-August deadline for "Start looking for anything" was getting closer and closer.

As that deadline got closer, I started looking at jobs more than 10 miles away, and loosened my goals; I put in applications for city delivery jobs with companies like DHL and Iron Mountain (a business records storage and transfer company).

Now, I could understand why an office might look askance at the long, long gap in time since my last office job. I might be disappointed, but I could understand why I might get no response. But I was really puzzled that -- with thirty years experience in delivery -- I got no response from any of the delivery-job applications I submitted.

All told, I submitted between forty and fifty applications to various employers before that mid-August deadline I'd set for myself. Out of those, I only got any signs of interest from three of them:

--A local city government sent a postcard saying that they'd determined my resume qualified me for the secretarial position I'd applied for, and that my application would go on to the next step, when they determined which applicants would be called for interviews. I wasn't among those called.

--A medical answering-service company called me in for testing. The test was computerized, and primarily tested for language skills: spelling, word meanings, etc. That's the kind of stuff I can pretty well ace; out of several hundred questions, I think there was only one where I wasn't absolutely sure of the right answer. But again, nothing further followed that testing.

--And finally, a security-guard company actually interviewed me for a receptionist position. My lack of proficiency in Excel was, again, a potential drawback. But the lady who interviewed me actually seemed like she might overlook that, because I had an advantage over all the other applicants.

Y'see, when this security-guard company hired its guards, part of the application process was a drug test. These drug tests were conducted on site, with applicants giving a urine sample. To guard against fraud, the applicants had to be under observation while giving their samples.

All the previous receptionists had been female. Which meant that whenever a guy had to give his urine sample, one of the guys working as an executive or administrator in the office had to stop what they were doing and go into the bathroom with the applicant.

So-o-o-o... if they hired me, those administrators and executives could continue their more valuable work, and I could go into the bathroom to make sure applicants were using their own penises and submitting their own urine.

Somehow, I never thought that "able to stare at another guy's penis without giggling" would turn out to be my most important job qualification.

As it turned out, I didn't get called back for that job, either. I must admit to a bit of relief.

SOMEWHAT IRRELEVANT SIDEBAR: Back when I was in the Army, we soldiers were subject to random drug tests. Eventually, my turn came up, and I had to go over to the Sick Call building. Went into the bathroom there, accompanied by the soldier assigned to observe and verify...

...and my bladder said, "Oh, I don't think so." I ended up standing at that urinal for four hours until the doctor in charge finally said "Come back tomorrow, damn it, and have your bladder ready to burst."

So, not only did I spend four hours trying to piss under observation, but the poor guy assigned to watch had the dubious pleasure of staring at my penis for that entire four hours.

At least, I assume it was a dubious pleasure. I didn't ask, and he didn't tell.

By this point, mid-August had arrived, and I needed a job. This is what I wrote here back in March, when I first announced my plan to retire from USPS:

"And if all else fails, I know from friends and family's experience that if
you have a clean background, reliable transportation, and are willing to
work odd hours, there is always, always, always security guard work
available."

I applied to a security company (recommended by a friend) on August 16th, and started working for them on August 26th. I'll probably have more to say about working security in another post, but I'll say now that it's been more interesting than I expected, and that in my first month there I was shown more respect and appreciation from management than I'd gotten in the last ten years from the Postal Service.


Of my job-hunting goals, listed above, I ended up fulfilling the first ($9.00/hour or more) and partially fulfilling the other three. Three days a week I'm working at a property just under 10 miles from home, and the other two days at properties about 15 miles away. I occasionally work dispatch from the major property's office, so I do spend some time working indoors. (And hey, the office software they use? Primarily Excel. So I'm getting some experience with that, too.) And I do find myself occasionally helping people out in a satisfying way, helping people find their lost cars or lost children, etc.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation,Part 2

More on my post-retirement adventures.


Part 2: Living Tight:

When I retired, our income dropped by about a third. (That's from my base pay with USPS; if you count in the overtime money I earned each year, which varied from a couple of thousand dollars a year to -- once -- over ten thousand dollars, the percentage was even higher.)

This meant that, even paring expenses to the bone, we'd run five or six hundred dollars short every month. Our general-purpose savings (as opposed to our investment savings) would keep up going for a number of months, but *sigh* yes it really was necessary to look for another job.

("Hey, Bruce," you ask, "Why retire from the Postal Service if you had to turn around and find another job a few months later?" Because, I say with another sigh, the toxic management environment in the Postal Service finally just got so bad, so consistently, that even with taking anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs , continuing to work there was putting my health -- both physical and emotional -- at risk. I haven't had to take any anti-depressants or anti-anxiety meds since retiring. I miss the work; I always got a lot of satisfaction out of delivering the mail, and doing it well. I miss some of my customers; I miss some of my co-workers. But my overall feeling at leaving the Postal Service is simply one of relief.)

As part of that "paring expenses", we put book-buying on hold, and got all of our reading material from our local library. (Hilde reads a lot of books, so we'd already been a frequent library patron, but putting off actually book-buying probably saved at least $50-$75 a month.) We get movies from NetFlix, so put off any visits to the local cinema-plex too. We dug down in our big chest freezer to use up some of the stuff that had been buried for a while ("Hmmm, a roast from 2003? Yep, probably time to use this."). We planned shopping trips to maximize efficiency and minimize mileage.

We've always been fairly frugal in our lifestyle, but we ramped up and tightened down everywhere we could.

There were three areas of expense that, if we could have eliminated any one of them, would have brought our tightened-up finances almost to the break-even point: The mortgage payment, the monthly costs for Hilde's and my prescription drugs, and the Unexpected Expense Of The Month Club.

The Unexpected Expense Of The Month Club is something I've complained about before: I don't remember joining, I don't like the selections, there's no "Don't Send" box to mark on the reply cards, and the membership is non-cancellable. The costs vary from month to month, but we seem to almost always have at least a hundred to two hundred dollars in UEs every month. And then, once or twice a year, one of the Big Meanie UEs will come along -- usually involving major car or house repairs -- and raise the average monthly UE expense up to around $600 a month.

I was hoping that the next Big Meanie coming down the UE pipeline would hold off a few months, until I was re-employed and getting an expenses-plus income again.

And then our minivan was stolen about the beginning of August.

The good news: It was recovered two days later, across town in Tempe. The bad news: It needed repairs, not only to the ignition lock (which had been ripped out, and the van started with a crowbar inserted into the hole) and steering column, but several instances of body damage and a torn bumper (it looked like they'd taken it off-road for a bit and driven it thru some shrubbery or other vegetation). And... the engine now had a bad knocking sound it hadn't had before.

The insurance policy had a $500 deductible, but we hoped that would be the limit of how much the experience would cost us.

Unfortunately...

Let me see if I can say this forcefully enough:

Do not, ever, allow your car to be taken to Gerber Collision in Mesa, Arizona. Not even when your insurance company tells you they're one of their authorized service dealers.

Do not, EVER, allow your car to be taken to Gerber Collision in Mesa, Arizona.

Do not, EVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, allow your car to be taken to Gerber Collision in Mesa, Arizona.

That engine knocking? After the body and ignition repairs were done, I was told to change the oil a couple of times, and the knocking would take care of itself.

Right. Our son Chris drove the van back across town from Mesa; by the time he managed to get it into our driveway, the knock-knock-knock had become a BANG!-BANG!-BANG!, with the van rocking with each bang.

At which time it became clear that the auto thief had not just driven the van hard and put it away wet, but that the last thing he'd done before abandoning the vehicle was rev the engine until major damage was done. (Thanks a lot, asshole.)

After a phone call to my insurance, the van ended up being towed back to Gerber to have the engine replaced.

Yes, back to Gerber. I did not feel comfortable about this, and probably should have insisted the van be taken to a service dealer that specialized in mechanical work, rather than back to one whose specialty was bodywork.

The bodywork Gerber did was fine; I haven't any complaints about that work. But subsequent events proved that my instincts were very, very right about being wary of sending the van back to Gerber.

When the van was sent back to Gerber, it did not have a power steering leak.

When the van was sent back to Gerber, it did not have a cracked radiator.

But it did when it came back home.

Before the van was sent home the second time, the customer rep at Gerber did tell me there was a power steering leak, and asked if I wanted them to fix it. By this point, I just wanted the van home, and out of Gerber's shop (there'd been, in the interim, a number of frustrating delays in getting the engine replacement finished), and I figured that any other place would be better to get the power steering leak fixed. So I said no to their fixing it.

Now, from the conversation with the customer rep, I'd gotten the impression that this was a fairly minor power steering leak, one that would probably involve replacing some seals.

The morning after the van's been brought back home for the second time, I go out front, and underneath the van... is not some drops or splotches of power steering fluid, but a puddle, about a foot-and-a-half wide and four feet long.

This is not just a "leak"; this is a catastrophic failure of the power steering system.

This makes the customer rep at Gerber's telling me he was going to do me the "favor" of having the van towed back home, rather than my having to come across town to pick it up again, make more sense. I suspect the real reason he had it towed from Mesa to Glendale was because he didn't think the van would make the trip by itself.

By this point, I've learned my lesson. Chris, when he still had his own truck, had a mechanic he trusted. So we poured new power steering fluid into the van and took it to that place.

What the mechanic there told me was this: The power steering leak was probably caused when the old and new engines were swapped out of the minivan. If you're not careful when hoisting the engine out of or into the vehicle, the power steering pump can get smacked against the side of the engine compartment, damaging the fitting and causing a major leak like the van now had.

It was also that mechanic who also discovered the cracked radiator, cracked at the base of the hose fitting near the radiator's top side. This was another piece of damage that could have been caused by carelessness in hoisting an engine out of the compartment.

And it was also that mechanic who discovered that three of the four engine mounts were broken. Now, this was certainly a pre-existing condition; the thick rubber of the mounts was cracking and separating, badly. But what was unbelievable to me was that Gerber's mechanic could take out the old engine, and put in a new engine, without noticing the blatantly visible damage to the engine mounts. If I hadn't taken that van to a new mechanic, I might have had the damn engine fall out of the vehicle a month or two later. What a piece of fun that would have been.

In short, my quality-of-service rating for Gerber Collision is deep, deep, deep into negative numbers. The cost of repairs for the damaged power steering and radiator, which Gerber most likely caused, was nearly a thousand dollars over and above the $500 deductible I'd already had to pay.

Gerber Collision: DON'T GO THERE!

(Have I told my insurance company about all this? Actually, no; it's been nearly three months since all this happened, and it's only now that I can remain calm enough to write about it. Maybe now I can write Liberty Mutual and tell them just how less-than-wonderful their "authorized service dealer" turned out to be.)

At any rate, having that Big Meanie of an Unexpected Expense come along made my returning to work rather more urgent than before.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation,Part 1

So... I retired from the Postal Service on June 1st, and haven't posted all that much about experiences and changes since then. Let's see if we can remedy that in the next few days.

We did some Reorganizing (that'll be Part 1, this post), went into Living Tight mode (Part 2), and I spent several months looking for Re-Employment (Part 3). Also managing an occasional bit of Relaxing (Part 4). And, at the end of August, ended up with a new job, which will be a separate post.


Part 1: Reorganizing:

The major reorganization involved clearing out our rented storage room (that also tied into Living Tight, because dropping the rented storage saved over $120 a month) and a major cleanup on the backyard sheds and yard.

Between all that, we ended up with a pile for the monthly Bulk Trash pickup that was about the size of a minivan. A lot of stuff went to the local Good Will branch, as well. And there are still other things I've meant to put on Craigslist or Freecycle, and some stuff that needs cleaning or repairs before donating or selling it somewhere.

But the backyard sheds are much better organized, the sideyards especially are much cleaner, and the back porch isn't quite as crowded as it was.

Some reorganizing and clutterwork took place inside the house, as well. Our longtime housemate Kay moved to her own apartment in May (and shortly afterward decided to move back to Michigan where her husband Ike has been living the last several years), so the living room -- which had been Kay's household territory for years -- got pretty much emptied out, then rearranged and refurnished by Tabbi, Hilde's live-in caregiver.

After Kay moved out of the front bedroom, our son Chris moved back in with us and took the bedroom over. This keeps some room-&-board money coming in, and helps Chris out with his own finances (room-&-board with your family is cheaper than an apartment, even an apartment you shared with several friends).

One of our other housemates, Holly, who'd been squeezed into a bed and a few shelves in one corner of the overstuffed craft room, also decided to move back in with family members, back in Kansas. This made room, kind of, for Tabbi's brother Paul and his friends James and Jason, to move in for a while. (James and Jason had both spent some months as crewmembers for one of the paddlewheel tourist boats operating in the Pacific Northwest, but came back to Arizona when the company went into bankruptcy.) The three guys come close to hot-bunking, with one in the craft room, one on a mattress on the floor of Tabbi's room, and one on the sofa. Paul's been doing the yardwork for his room-&-board, and Jason has taken over most of the cooking since I started working again.

There's a lot (a LOT!) of things in the house that still need to be gone thru and reorganized or gotten rid of. The biggest projects are: The "craft room", which is also supposed to serve as a guest bedroom. Currently, guests staying in that room negotiate a narrow pathway between boxes and stacks of craft stuff to reach the guest bed. And the library (which was formerly a garage); over the years, we've accumulated enough books that even four-walling the room with shelves, and with numerous free-standing shelves as well, has left us short on space. We need to go thru all the shelves and cull for duplicates and WNRTA (We'll Never Read This Again) books to make room for all the newer books presently sitting in stacks of boxes. But those two projects are probably going to still have to wait for a while (see Part 3, about Re-Employment).

This is the house we figure on spending the rest of our lives in, or until someone drags us away to a nursing home, so I really do need to try and stay on top of clutter. (That stuff adds up fast! I think there may be breeding involved.)

The Phantom Food Critic Strikes

Too chewy.

Yeeps! Two Months?

*poof* [blows off dust]

Um, yeh. It's been a while since I've posted here.

Very, very short reason: I went back to work at the end of August, supplementing my retirement (the monthly retirement check covers a lot of our monthly expenses, but not, alas, all of them) as a security guard for a company that provides security for a number of shopping malls across the country. This has cut back into my free time a lot.

I've meant to post a number of entries, discussing the several months between retirement and going back to work, and also discussing the new work experience. (Short take: More interesting than I thought it would be. On the other hand, from the company's point of view, a boring day is a good day; there are a lot of good days.)

I may yet get those posts finished and online; I'd like to.

In the meantime, though: One of the reguirements of working security, alas, was that I had to shave off the beard I'd had for 33 years.

Yes, this was traumatic. And Hilde had never seen me clean-shaven before. (When we were visiting my mother around the end of September, Hilde said to her, "It's like I've been sleeping with a strange man for the last month." To which, of course, I replied, "Hilde, you've been sleeping with a strange man for more than thirty years.")

I took before-and-after photos. I just want to say in advance, about the clean-shaven version, "This is not my real face."

To me, it's no contest; the bearded guy looks like me, the clean-shaven guy doesn't. And, in spite of the beard having been close to completely white, I think the bearded guy looks considerably younger than the grumpy-looking shaven guy.

Hopefully, more posts in days to come.

Just One Itchy Trigger Finger Away...

Redecorating...

I'm finally switching over to the New Blogger template, which allows you to do more customization and arrangement of features than the old version.

New Blogger actually got introduced several years ago, but I've resisted the changeover because some people had major problems with the transition.

I'm having a few too. It may take a while until I get things placed just so, with doilies and slipcovers and window treatments where I want them. Until then, the blog still seems to be functional, if a bit funky.

So I Said To My Wife...

"Honey, if I ever forget how many houses we own, take me to the nearest emergency room; I'll be having a stroke."

This Actually Made Sense, In Context

"When I was a dog, we had to milk our own cows and churn our own butter."

Because If I Don't Make A Post Soon...

...the Blogosphere Police will break down my door and take my computer away for neglect.

I've been busy with job-hunting (there'll be a post about that soon), dealing with having our minivan stolen (and recovered, with damage; there'll be a post about that, too), getting one of my short stories re-optioned for film (there'll be a post...), exercising (there'll be...), house repairs (there'll...), a bit of reading (LITTLE BROTHER, PERSEOPOLIS, RAINBOWS END, a few others in progress or scheduled for soon; there'll be reviews and commentary eventually), and all the other zillion and one things that keep on happening.

In the meantime a few odds and ends I've been meaning to post:

= = = = =

I've been using Blogger Play frequently as a temporary screensaver for times when I'm not actually doing anything on the Internet. Blogger Play is a feature of Blogger (the blogging site behind Undulant Fever and a few million other blogs) that provides a continuous feed of images that have been posted to Blogger blogs. A lot of family snapshots, baby pictures, travel photos, and just about anything else you might imagine; quite interesting, actually.

And occasionally, some image that makes you say "WTF?", pause Blogger Play, and backtrack to the originating blog to find out what the heck that's about.

Like this one, that made me consider the idea of Victor Frankenstein having somehow end up reanimating the corpse of John F. Kennedy:




(This came from the blog of a woman who makes quilts with a "stained glass applique" technique. Most of her work is in vibrant reds and yellows and bright colors, picturing cats and other animals, quite pretty. But this particular work... oh, man, what was she thinking with those color choices? All that's missing are the neck bolts to complete the "reanimated corpse" look.)










Another image snatched from Blogger Play below. I think this one needs no comment:

I've been composing occasional LolCats on the I Can Has Cheezburger site, at times when I've been fucking off... err, *koff*, *ahem*... I mean when I have a few spare moments. The "Mirror-Universe Oz" pic I posted a while back was one of them. Here's a few more:

And how can I resist a few of Our Embarassing President?:

More to come, eventually.

Project Rooftop: Geek Eye For The Caped Guy

Project Rooftop is a comics/art blog dedicated, not to superhero comics writing or stories, and not to comics art per se, but specificially to superhero costume design. As such, they've run several competitions asking for costume re-designs on popular superheroes: Robin, Wonder Woman, Impulse, and most recently, the daddy of them all, Superman.

Drew Blom's steampunkish "Man of Steam", shown above, was one of the entries. Other entries can be found here and here. (The second link is for the "Honorable Mentions". I'm not the only person who thought some of the Honorable Mentions were as good as or better -- Drew Blom's entry ended up in the HM category -- than some of the winners in the first link.)

This is Seriously Cool Stuff, especially if you're an old comics fan (I bought the very first Spiderman story off the spinner rack at a local grocery; yes, I'm that old) and even if you're not.

(Who would I like to see Project Rooftop re-design? Easy choice: Adam Strange. I liked the character, but even as a kid I thought his costume looked, well, dumb. (C'mon, a fin on his head?)

Jesse Helms Did One Good Thing

Since Jesse Helms, the controversial former long-time Senator from NC, died a few days ago, I've seen numerous commentaries about his life, career, and views. Almost all negative.

Stephen Lemons, columnist for the local version of the NEW TIMES alternative newspaper, grew up in North Carolina. His online column response to Helms' death, "Tramp The Earth Down: The Unlikely Debt I Owe The Late Sen. Jesse Helms", is, I think, one of the best.

The section that sums it up:

I now realize, with the wisdom of a few more years, that I owe ol' Jesse a strange debt of gratitude. There are those raised in more enlightened climes that have never been exposed to such base, political villainy. I didn't enjoy that luxury. As a result, my antennae are acutely tuned to the malevolence, lies and smear-tactics of those who would use race, nationality and/or ethnicity as their bugbears. These individuals are common enough in Arizona, of course, save that here they're more concerned with brown instead of black skin.

I also learned from Helms' that the good fight is the one you win, and only the one you win. Metaphorically speaking, you need not become a snake in order to overcome the reptile. But you must overcome it, or suffer the consequences. Half-measures do not work against water moccasins like Helms. For teaching me that, I owe him one.

In short, the good that Jesse Helms did was to serve, publicly, as a Bad Example.

If this doesn't get me linked to Boing Boing, nothing will.

Hey, Gang, Let's Put On A Show!

And when your name is Josh Whedon...



...you can actually end up putting on a show!

Coming to an Internet near you, beginning July 15th!

[click image for official Dr. Horrible website]

Cool Art: Stephanie Hans

I've been spending far too much time over on ConceptArt.org, ever since I learned about it (curse you, Irene Gallo, curse you!). CA is a site where artists and illustrators meet to talk, exchange information and techniques, and challenge and critique each other in numerous ways.

One of those challenges is a "Character of the Week" (CHOW) forum where a theme or brief description of a character is posted, and participants submit their personal riffs and renditions on that theme.

One fairly regular CHOW participant, whose work has particularly impressed me, submits her work under the name "Ryuloulou". The art up above, which reminds me strongly of Charles Vess' work, is from one of the CHOW challenges.

Looking at Ryuloulou's profile led to a link to her home page, where I found her actual name is Stephanie Hans, an artist in France who's apparently done quite a bit of work for French YA bookcovers.

(It would be nice *coff* *ahem* *hint* to see some of her work on US bookcovers.)

Her home page has a nicely negotiable gallery section, where you can see more of her work. (If you read French, there's also a link to her blog.) Enjoy.

A Movie I'd Really, Really Like To See

Audrey Hepburn in BREAKFAST AT MOS EISLEY


(via Lucius Shephard) (Ummm... "Shepard") (As if brainfarts weren't embarassing enough when they're not made in public....)

It's Been A While..."

...since I've posted any pictures of the household cats:

Gremlin:

Bastet:

Cassie

(Not shown: Tia and Rikkus, who will apppear at a date to be determined.)

As an extra bonus, glads and iris from our garden:

Fuligin Stew

John Scalzi takes Fox News to the woodshed in "Fox News Would Like To Take a Moment To Remind You That the Obamas Are As Black As Satan’s Festering, Baby-Eating Soul”

Along the same line, Yahoo! News featured this juxtaposition of photos and subhead a few days ago:



Someone at Yahoo! News thinks they have a sense of humor.

Dr. Beckett's Mom Cuts Up His Food For Him

From Britain comes the news that hordes of kill-crazy, knife-wielding young people are slaughtering the people of England left, right, and a deep cut down the middle.

Well, not so much:

...experts differ strongly on whether this is a sudden phenomenon that is taking the country into perilous new territory, or just a blip that is generating a disproportionate response from the authorities.

The data is inconclusive. Government figures show fatal stabbings hover at just over 200 every year, with occasional spikes above 250. This time appears no different, despite shrill headlines warning of "blade-mad Britain" each time another teenager dies in a public altercation.

"There have been a number of high-profile incidents and that gives the impression that the problem is more widespread than it actually is," says Enver Solomon, deputy director of London King's College's Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. "There hasn't been an underlying increase in the number of people murdered by sharp implements."

[...]

Some even argue that this is not an epidemic of knife crime, just an epidemic of press stories about knife crime. "The BBC now puts any murder in the national news," said Simon Jenkins, a prominent commentator. "The effect of this nationalization of social panic is that you get knee-jerk policy reactions," he told BBC radio.

And:

Roger Matthews, a criminologist at London South Bank University, says that surveys of youth show that a "very significant percentage of young people routinely carry knives." He attributes knives' increased popularity to Britain's strong anti-gun legislation. [...] "The great attraction of knives is that they are enormously accessible and can be acquired from different places. Very often they aren't machetes, they are just kitchen knives," he says.

So, Britain has a growing problem with knife-based assaults, except that the problem isn't actually growing. And a lot of these attacks are being made by people carrying kitchen knives.

I. Don't. Think. So.

If I want to carry a knife around with me, I'm NOT going to say, "Oh, I'll just take this unsheathed, sharp-pointed knife from the kitchen and shove it into a pocket." Yeah, someone would likely end up in the ER with a knife wound, but he would be an idiot, not a victim.

If you want to carry a knife around with you, the overwhelming odds are that 1) it will have a sheath of some kind, or 2) it will have a folding blade. Like, oh, the folding pocket knife I usually carry (which also has a belt clip, which is not only more convenient, but saves worries about accusations of "carrying a concealed weapon").

My bet is that the overwhelming majority of "kitchen knife" attacks, in Britain or elsewhere, are the results of domestic violence incidents where someone goes over the edge and grabs the nearest household weapon available, usually the one on the kitchen counter.

But the newspapers say there's a problem, so obviously we need to find someone with a solution to it. Enter Dr. Michael Beckett:

Another medical expert, Dr. Mike Beckett, argues that it is time to remove sharp knives from kitchens altogether. He says there is no need for the pointed tips that make knives fatal. "What people want in a kitchen knife is the edge," he told the BBC. "The point on the end of the knife actually serves little culinary purpose, but it is the point that kills people."

Ay, caramba. No doubt when Dr. Beckett clips out the news article for his scrapbook, he'll use the round-pointed "safety scissors" he saved from his days in kindergarten.

The mental image that comes to mind is of a young British tough getting into an argument, pulling a "Beckett-Special" kitchen knife from a pocket, staring at the rounded front edge, crying "Damn! DAMN, DAMN, DAMN! This won't work!" and getting so depressed that he goes home, runs a hot tub, and slashes his wrists.

Can I be treated like a competent adult now, Doc? Thanks.

(photo from Geekologie)

Two Skilled Gentlemen...

I'd like to recommend Michael Chabon's short novel GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD, a rollicking "Jews With Swords" story set in the Khazar empire of the 10th century.

On its own, that would be plenty to enjoy. But as I was reading it, I came to the sudden realization "Oh my god, Chabon's main characters are Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser!"

The names may be different, the weapons they carry may be different, Amran may be a giant African instead of a red-headed Northerner, but the flavor, the banter, the style... if Chabon isn't a big fan of Fritz Lieber, I'll have to bake an edible hat and eat it.

Short take: If you miss Fritz Lieber's work, read GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD.

(Side note: Looking at the Wikipedia entry on Fafhrd and the Mouser, I found that the very first appearance of the characters in a comic-book form was in a 1972 issue of... WONDER WOMAN?!?!?! An issue written by... SAMUEL R. DELANY?!?!?!?!?! Pardon me while my head explodes.)

My Retirement Cake

This is the cake I had made for my last day at work. The decoration is based on a drawing by JayDee Faire named "March of the Happy Mailman" that I came across on deviantart.com several months ago. I was so tickled by the drawing that I wanted to put it on a cake. (Used by permission. Thanks, JayDee!) The original drawing can be seen here.

News, With More To Come

Last Saturday, May 31st, was my last day with the US Postal Service. I am officially retired.

I've been busy since then emptying our rented storage room, going thru the backyard sheds to clean, sort, trash and re-organize the stuff in them, and consolidating it all. BIG pile for bulk trash pickup next week, plus smaller piles for Craigslist, Freecycle, and Good Will.

Then comes similar work on the inside of the house. (Retire... you'll work your ass off!) And then emphasis on job-hunting to make up the difference in income between my regular USPS paychecks and the retirement checks.

More details to come, with pictures of retirement cake, etc., and hopefully more extensive posts on more extensive subjects. Right now, just time for this short post, and the occasional "Snarkaption" photo.

Snarkaption Nation #7

Star Trek Meets L. Frank Baum