Ne Cresin so'Arthaey

Multimedia message [Flickr]

2009-07-02T21:19:02-07:00

Arthaey posted a photo:

Week-Long Headache

2009-06-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

Last Monday night, I developed a nasty headache. A sense of nausea came along with it — it felt like motion-sickness in my head, not like food-poisioning in my stomach. I went to bed, hoping to sleep it off.

But it didn’t go away Tuesday or Wednesday, even though I stayed home and rested. So Wednesday I went to one of those drop-in medical clinics. The doctor wasn't exactly sure what's going on. Her best guess was that it might be my first migraine. (Apparently only some migraine-suffers are sensitive to light and sound, which I didn’t know. Specific migraine symptoms are supposedly rather individual.)

But it might something else. Helpful, those doctors are. :( (As if humans are complex or something! Psh!) She said there's a stomach flu going around that does have headache and nausea as symptoms, but my stomach feels and sounds fine. (As I said above, the nausea feels located in my head, not my stomach.) She said it could be low thyroid. She said it could be related to my other weird neurological thing. They took some blood samples (botching up my elbow all bruisy while they were at it) to rule out non-migraine causes. Update, 4 PM: The blood work all came back normal. So "migraine" remains the most likely diagnosis.

The doctor prescribed some Vicodin for the pain, which I took on Thursday. Unfortunately, it makes the nausea worse. I'd rather have a headache than worse nausea, so I stopped taking them.

Now that I've had this headache and nausea for a week, I've noticed patterns. The headache is worse in the morning, right after waking up. The nausea seems motion-sensitive: I inevitably feel sick in a car, and just walking or pacing can bring it on, too. Update, 4 PM: Rapidly scrolling text also triggers it. Awesome! Sitting still makes the nausea go away and lets the headache recede to mostly-ignorable levels. If I sit still long enough, I feel pretty much normal. So I've found coping strategies. But it really should just go away, dammit! :(

Pirate Pants, Closeup [Flickr]

2009-06-27T16:30:25-07:00

Arthaey posted a photo:

Pirate Pants [Flickr]

2009-06-27T16:29:45-07:00

Arthaey posted a photo:

Forrest noticed these piratey pants at Goodwill. I took their picture so I could share them virtually with my mom. :)

Month and a Half of Doing Very Little

2009-06-22T15:12:00.000-07:00

Lunch in the Backyard

What's been going on since I last posted a month and a half ago? Well, Forrest was away in California visiting his family, backpacking, and road-tripping it up. While he was gone, my days mostly consisted of work, bookstores, Battlestar Galactica, and more bookstores. I sure am exciting when left to my own devices! ;)

The weather was extremely nice while Forrest was gone, though. (He's brought the rain back with him, but I'll forgive him since I'm glad he's finally home. :)) But while the sunny not-too-hot weather lasted, I did try to enjoy it a little. For instance, I fixed myself lunch (that is, I heated up some frozen Trader Joe's food) and ate it in the backyard while reading a book. Very pleasant afternoon, that was.

Amy Finally Killed My Spider Plant

In less good news, my cat Amy finally killed my spider plant. A friend from work had given me a cutting of his spider plant a while back. I was proud of myself for not having killed it yet despite weeks on end of neglect, followed by guilt-ridden waterings. ;) Then I started noticing that its leaves had little punctures in them. Little cat-tooth-sized punctures. But I never caught either cat in the act.

Then one night, I was woken up around 3 AM by this great crashing, breaking sound. I jumped out of bed to see what the cats had broken this time. (They already have one ex-vase to their credit.) Amy was slinking out of the kitchen, and in the sink was the broken terra cotta pot that had held my spider plant.

The next morning, I transplanted it to the backyard. I haven't checked on it since then, so it's probably very dead by now. :(

Too Much Knotweed

I don't love all plants, though. For instance, knotweed must die. Japanese knotweed is a nasty, nasty invasive that grows on our neighbor's property and, along with their bamboo, sneaks under the fence and sprouts up all over our yard. It can grow 1 foot per week, and that's bushy too, not just straight up! It's Bad Times™.

So I spent some time hacking it all down. The photo is a pile from one afternoon's murderous knotweed rampage. Muahaha!

Strawberries on the Vine

Back to good plants. Like strawberries. Everybody likes strawberries! Last year, some critter was liking our strawberries, unfortunately. Just as the berries started to turn red, but before they were actually ripe enough for people to eat, something would munch holes in them and let the rest rot. So we didn't get to eat any of last year's crop.

We never did find out if the culprit was slugs or birds or what. In any case, they seem to be ignoring this year's strawberries. Yay! :) So we've enjoyed the handful of strawberries that the plants have produced so far. They're small but very flavorful.

Seattle Skyline from Blake Island

Finally, two weeks ago my team at work went out to Blake Island on a manager's 50' boat, the Henry Young, as a morale event. I have a whole set of photos from the trip.

Master Head [Flickr]

2009-06-10T17:03:46-07:00

Arthaey posted a photo:

State Room [Flickr]

2009-06-10T17:03:29-07:00

Arthaey posted a photo:

We put our bags and jackets and such down in the state room.

Ozette Backpacking Overnighter

2009-05-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

Sunset over the Strait

Now that the snow has melted and the skiing season is over, I'm looking forward to other outdoor activities. Like backpacking! Forrest and I took Jerry on his first backpacking trip: an easy, flat 6-mile roundtrip hike on the Olympic Peninsula.

The night before our backpacking trip, we camped overnight at Salt Creek Recreation Area. It was very windy on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Even though my sleeping bag claims to be rated down to 15°F and it must have been in the 30s, I was still shivering and waking up once an hour. :( Either my bag lies or I sleep really cold; either way, I need to upgrade my bag to something warmer.

Forrest and Jerry Hiking

We got a late start on Saturday, not getting to the trailhead until 2 PM. "Quick stops" at stores for last-minute forgotten items sure does add up to a lot of time! We only had a 3-mile hike out to Sand Point on the coast, though, so we weren't worried about the time.

It was quite odd backpacking on such a tame boardwalk trail. Forrest and I both felt that it was harder on the feet. At least the boardwalk wasn't wet; we had been warned that it gets extremely slippery when wet, which is all the time in a temperate rain forest. But look at how dense the bushes are: I'm grateful there was a trail hacked through it and permanently held open by this boardwalk, 'cause there's no way you could hike through there without a machete otherwise.

We set up camp in the trees just beyond the beach. They provided a good windbreak, but we still had an easy trail out to the beach. Or at least out to the driftwood.

While Forrest and Jerry put up the tents, I went down to the creek to filter some water for dinner. I had remembered the task being tiring and boring, and pumping the water through the water sure was taking forever! I finally wore out my weak little triceps and was about to give up when Jerry showed up. He took over and I went back to camp to update Forrest on our slow progress. Not very longer afterward, Jerry returned to report that he must be doing something wrong, because no water was getting through.

Forrest asked us if we had cleaned the filter. I hadn't, because on our previous trips a fresh filter had been good for several water bottles before it had needed cleaning. And Jerry hadn't, because he'd never used a water filter before. Forrest went back with us to the creek to show us how to do things properly. :) It turns out that the water was so tanninized from running through the forest leaves that it clogged up the filter twice per water bottle! No wonder Jerry and I had such trouble.

Leaf Voodoo Stabbed in the Eye

We had originally planned on hiking the full Ozette Triangle loop trail (9 miles total). But we didn't finish breaking camp on Sunday until almost 1 PM, the weather was windy and chilly, my feet were hurting (wimpy city-slicker feet!), and we were feeling generally lazy. So we decided to hike back out the way we came.

On the hike out, we started passing several "leaf vodoo" faces. We suspect the boy scout troop that camped next to us was responsible. :)

I'm glad we went on a little weekend backpacking trip. I had fun, and being in the outdoors is relaxing after a week in an office building. Hopefully we'll do more trips!

Cross-Country Ski Skills Checklist

2009-02-26T14:52:00.000-08:00

I found a good "checklist" of skills for cross-country skiing at the Snoqualmie Nordic Center. I'll be checking off the various techniques as I learn them.

Basic Beginner

Flat Skills

basic diagonal stride, with poles
star turn
double pole

Uphill Skills (gentle slope)

diagonal stride
side-step
herringbone
traverse and turn

Downhill Skills (gentle slope)

side-step
straight run
gliding wedge
braking wedge
stop at bottom with braking wedge

Advanced Beginner

Flat Skills

proficient diagonal stride, with some glide
kick/double pole
kick turn

Uphill Skills (gentle slope)

traverse with kick turn

Downhill Skills (gentle slope)

steered turns with braking wedge

Intermediate Skills

Flat Skills

efficient diagonal stride, with good glide
marathon skate
turn in place

Uphill Skills (most terrain)

half herringbone

Downhill Skills (most terrain)

linked wedge christies
linked stem christies (parallel finish)
stop on hills in wedge (parallel finish)

Advanced Skills

Flat Skills

efficient and flowing diagonal stride, with good glide

Downhill Skills (all terrain)

linked turns in open parallel
linked turns in modified telemark
stop on hills in parallel

As you can see (as of Feb 26th), I've been focusing on gaining techniques to let me control my downhill speeds. I dislike the adrenaline I get from zooming down hills without the ability to slow down. So I already have one downhill skill in the "intermediate" category.

Cross-County Skiing Every Weekend

2009-02-20T16:29:00.000-08:00

Since we first went cross-country skiing in January, we've gone every weekend (usually both days) since then. Excepting one weekend where Forrest and I did a Wilderss First Aid course instead, that is.

So you might say that I'm really rather enjoying cross-country skiing. :) You might also notice that I haven't, ahem, posted about my trips after that first one. My bad. I do have ski photos uploaded to Flickr, at least...

At some point, expect back-dated posts to regale you with tales from the Learning How To Ski department. :)

Budgeting with Shared Expenses

2009-02-12T12:08:00.000-08:00

I use Yodlee MoneyCenter to track my personal finances. Its UI isn't all that attractive, but it generally works pretty well. It automatically retrieves transactions from all my accounts, so I don't have to bother with data-entry. This is a huge plus for me; otherwise, I probably wouldn't do it at all.

But things fall apart when you want to follow a budget but you have shared expenses with someone. Say I've budgeted $200 for eating out. Yodlee can generate an "expense report" for that category, no problem. Except, what if I've only spent $100 on restaurants but my boyfriend has spent $400, half of which is my share? Then I'm clearly over budget, but Yodlee knows nothing about Forrest's accounts. Similarly, what if I've spent $300 on restaurants, but half of that is Forrest's share, so I've "really" only spent $150? Again, Yodlee has no way of dealing with this in its expense report or budgeting features.

On the other side of things, BillMonk is very useful for tracking who owes whom for shared expenses, but it has no personal finance reporting mechanisms at all (by design). So this doesn't really solve my problem either.

Enter Buxfer. As a former BillMonk employee, I feel like I'm "cheating" on BillMonk by even considering Buxfer. On the other hand, BillMonk never wanted to be a personal finance tracker, just a debt-between-friends tracker, so maybe I should let the guilt go. In any case, Buxfer does automatic transaction downloading and correctly understands how shared expenses affect budgets.

So I may be abandoning Yodlee and BillMonk in favor of Buxfer. Buxfer even has an API, so I should be able to whip up some script to take BillMonk's exported XML data and import it into Buxfer. (BillMonk almost released its API...) My group of friends still uses BillMonk, though, so I may have to write another script to keep my Buxfer account in sync with BillMonk.

I'll let you know how it goes.

20 Finance Questions

2009-02-11T13:01:00.000-08:00

One of the personal finance blogs I read is "I Will Teach You To Be Rich." Ramit (the blog's author) posted an interesting list a couple days ago: 20 questions that your financially unprepared friends are afraid of. Check it out.

It's really too bad talking about money is such a touchy topic; I find that I usually learn something when I talk to others about finances. But I have to judge whether it's safe to breach the topic in the first place. Frank discussions are unfortunately rare, apart from talking with my dad.

Almost-Perfect Roth IRA Contributions

2009-02-05T15:38:00.000-08:00

The contribution limit to a Roth IRA in 2008 was $5000. I set up automatic deposits from my paycheck so than X dollars went to Vanguard, and in Vanguard I set it up to divide that single deposit into Y% to the Roth IRA and Z% to my money market fund. I started my job in February, not January, so my math had to take that into account, too — divide things by 11, not 12.

Despite these factors, I ended up with $4998.36 in my Roth IRA account at the end of 2008. That means I was only off by $1.64, and that was only because I couldn't use enough precision in the Vanguard percentages! I so win.

So I bought myself $1.64 worth of shares to round out the 2008 tax year to the complete $5000 limit. I am pleased with my spreadsheet math. :) Oh, and having saved that money is pleasing, too, of course. ;)

Learning Words via Etymologies

2009-02-05T11:49:00.000-08:00

I'm using FlashcardDB to study Spanish vocabulary. Generally it's going pretty well, but some similar words are really tripping me up; I can't keep them straight! So, to help myself, I've researched the etymologies of the Spanish words and tried to find cognates, however distant, in English.

This works like silly mnemonics, except that I also find the etymologies themselves interesting. More work than just making up silly memorable stories, sure, but what do you expect from a lingweenie? :)

perjudicial: damaging, harmful, detrimental: From perjudicar: "Ocasionar daño o menoscabo material o moral." Looks like it's related to English injury.
precavido: cautious, prudent: From precaver: "Prevenir un riesgo, daño o peligro, para guardarse de él y evitarlo." May be related to English precaution? Think of the "v" in precavido being that Latin "u/v", so it's really precauido (but not really), which is more like precaution.
precipitado: hasty, rash: From precipitarse: "Arrojarse inconsideradamente y sin prudencia a ejecutar o decir algo." From Latin praecipitāre "to throw or cause to fall headlong," from which English precipitation comes. Rain is water falling headlong to earth, right? That hasty precipitation, has no parachute! :)

And the other set of words giving me trouble:

terco: stubborn, obstinate: The RAE has no etymology for this one. :( Think of someone being a turkey, which as "a stupid, slow, inept, or otherwise worthless person" isn't quite the same, but gets in the right ballpark of semantics, anyhow.
tosco: coarse, rough, crude, unrefined: From Vicus Tuscus, "el barrio etrusco, por alusión a la gente libertina que vivía en esta zona de Roma." So the folks on Etruscan Street were rough, crude, unrefined folks, apparently.
áspero: coarse, rough, harsh: "Insuave al tacto, por tener la superficie desigual, como la piedra o madera no pulimentada, la tela grosera, etc." Compare English asperate (which you didn't know existed): "To make rough or uneven in surface, rugged or harsh in sound, manner, etc" from the same Latin root asper. Although unrelated, think of an aspirated voice being rougher.
asqueroso: disgusting, filty, revolting: "Que causa o tiene asco." From Greek ἐσχάρα, which literally meant hearth. English scar is ultimately from the same origin as Spanish asqueroso: ἐσχάρα hearth → the mark of a burn (from said hearth) → scar the trace of a healed burn (or other wound). Scars and burns can be disgusting, right? So scars are asquerosos.

Update, 9:45 PM: It's already working for me! I just did some of the flashcards again, and this time I finally got all of them right! Wootles.

Spanish definitions and etymologies are from the Real Academia Española; the English ones are from the Oxford English Dictionary.

Cross-Country Skiing is Painful!

2009-01-18T15:39:00.000-08:00

So yes, cross-country skiing is fun. But it's also painful the next day! I swear, all of my muscles hurt. Even my triceps. Silly little triceps. Every time I move, something aches. I think I'll deal with this by reading about skiing, rather than actually skiing, at least until next weekend. :)

Cross-Country Skiing is Fun!

2009-01-17T23:32:00.000-08:00

Snoqualmie Pass Nordic Trails

In college, Forrest and I went downhill skiing... once. I quickly discovered that I disliked the adrenaline produced from zooming downhill with minimal confidence in my ability to recover if anything went wrong. So Forrest has been angling for some cross-country skiing instead. This weekend, we finally made it up to the snow!

Jerry came along with us. Neither he nor I had ever been cross-country skiing before*, so we signed up for the beginner's lesson. We meant to get there in time for the 10:30 lesson, but we took too long at the grocery store getting supplies and wandering around looking for a gas station, so we missed the lesson. We mentioned this to the lady doing registration, and she hooked us up with Betty, one of the instructors, to do a private lesson for us at 11. Very awesome, since we were only charged the standard rate.

Cross-country skiing was much easier than I was expecting! Granted, this is probably in large part because we were learning on groomed trails with convenient little ruts to guide the skis. Even so, I had a lot of fun figuring out the right amount of effort vs glide.

I only fell down 3 times, and all those were within a 5-minute window until I figured out that looking backward while moving made me fall. At which point I stopped doing that, and I didn't fall any more. Jerry can't say the same, falling a total of 18 times throughout the day. But his center of gravity's higher than mine, and his skis were longer and more difficult to deal with, so he's got some good excuses. Forrest fell too, so no one was immune.

After our hour-long lesson, we tracked down Forrest, ate a light lunch, and headed back out on the trail. The only green (aka easy) trail we could get to was the Cold Creek trail, since the lifts up to the upper trails were taken out during a recent avalanche. Including the lesson, we probably skiied about 4km, or 2.5 miles. Not to shabby for our first day, eh?

Not quite true: When I was a kid, my family once went cross-country skiing in the Sierras. But my memories are very dim and mainly involve patches of thin, muddy, half-melted snow. Those memories do not even vaguely resemble the thick, well-groomed trails I skied on today. So I don't think it really counts.

Us: 1, Rats: 0

2009-01-14T11:05:00.000-08:00

Dead Rat in Trap

A couple nights ago, Forrest went into the pantry/laundry room and discovered a rat staring back at him from atop the water heater. So over the weekend we spent the better part of a day moving all the pantry food into the kitchen or throwing it out (Pasta Roni from 2003, I miss you!). As far as we could tell, the rat(s) had only gnawed on a bag of rice.

We bought some nasty-powerful rat traps and baited them with peanut butter (per my dad's suggestion) for a couple of nights without arming the traps, so the rats would be complacent and unsuspecting. Last night, Forrest finally armed the traps for the first time. Around 1 AM, Forrest woke up, saying that he'd though he had heard a commotion and a rat-squeal from the pantry. It being 1 AM, he decided to go back to sleep and check the trap in the morning.

As you can see from the photo, we got the sucker! Please note that both Forrest and I had rats as pets when we were kids, so it's not that we hate rats indiscriminately. We just don't want rats living in our pantry, or worse, infiltrating the rest of the house.

We're hoping it was just this one rat — it's a small female, so maybe it was working on setting up a nest. We're hoping there isn't a colony of rats ready to move in to our pantry. But we'll be setting more traps tonight, just in case.

Songsmith Ad: Must Been Heard to Be Believed

2009-01-13T12:50:00.001-08:00

Ahhh, Microsoft. You make such great software, and ads to sell them! I like Videogun's commentary on the terrrrific ad for Songsmith:

“ [T]his REAL commercial for Microsoft's new Songsmith software (you sing at it and it creates horrible musak to accompany you) is completely insane. Not only is it apparently earnest and not a parody, self- or otherwise, it seems like it comes from a bizarro parallel universe where irony was never discovered. ”

See for yourself. Don't forget to turn up the speakers! ;)

Update: Forrest points out that this is from Microsoft Research, not the commercial arm of Microsoft. Still, the Cheese Factor is just to much for me. :P

Almuerzo Español

2009-01-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

Fui a un reunión hoy, durante el almuerzo, de hispanohablantes. He sabido sobre este grupo hace algunas meses, pero cada vez que occurió la reunión, me acobardé de ella. Esta vez, fui; ¡me alegré de ir!

Hubo un hombre, Rene, de Cuba, que es el líder del grupo. Él organiza las reuniones, manda los emails al grupo, etc. También hubo una mujer china de Ecuador (que nació en Nueva York) que se llamaba... Celestia? No recuerdo exactamente. Y un poco después, nos acompañó otro hombre, pero no se presentó.

Rene me dijo que mi pronunciación es buena, y (como me habían dicho otros hispanohablantes) mis Ses parecen españolas. :)

Google can translate for you. :)

Plan for Finishing My Novel

2008-12-06T19:34:00.000-08:00

Write Missing Scenes

Make a list of missing scenes. (Luckily, I already have easy-to-spot placeholders throughout the document, so this step should be pretty mechanical.)
Calculate how long it should take me to write these scenes. Set goals.
Write the scenes! Same "quality" bar as for NaNo; just get the remaining scenes written.

Track Characters

Annotate the document with where characters appear in the scenes.
Evaluate this character-appearances list: Who just disappears after chapter 4? Who randomly appears in chapter 8 as a major character (eg, the real antagonist; oops!) Decide whether to cut a character, combine multiple characters, or give a character a larger role so that their removal is unnecessary.
Make a list of "missed opportunities" that I might want to work into the story. (For example, no one important ever wrestles with whether to Sacrifice themselves. There's potential for good conflict/drama there, but the plot would have to be altered for it to be necessary.)
Make a list of scenes to add, modify, cut, or move.

Let both lists stew while going through the next two phases...

Research and World-Building

Read books about relevant Earth history: guilds, non-monarchy governments, coups (successful or not), dictators (especially their motivations), etc. Take notes.
Outline my territory's history, based on research. (How did they end up with their semi-representative High Council system of government? What have flesh/spirit relations been like before the current Guild system? What are the neighboring territories, and how have they influenced this territory's history and culture? Etc.)
Write character bios (including basic ones for "scenery" characters).

Practice Writing

(done concurrently with the researching step above)

Read books on writing. Take notes.
Do writing exercises (not on my NaNo story, though).
Critique other people's writing to practice what to look for in my own writing.
Read other authors. Note how they handle characterization, magic (especially mental battles, which I had trouble writing), government-taking-over intrigue, romantic subplots that aren't lame...

Refine Plot and Characters

While referring to the world-building notes and character bios, re-read the story and take notes about scenes and subplots to add or modify.
Write the scenes! At the end of the next step, I should feel ready for beta readers...

Revise Draft

Here there be beta readers! By the time I get to here, the plot and characters should actually be fleshed out the way I like. From this point on, I'll be working on the smaller parts of the story: word choice, tone, etc. I'll figure out in more detail what needs to be worked on once I get to here.

ʇsod uʍop-ǝpısdn

2008-12-05T11:18:00.000-08:00

(˙ʇsod ƃoןq sıɥʇ ʍǝıʌ oʇ ssǝupooƃ ǝpoɔıun ɥʇıʍ ʇuoɟ ɹǝɥʇo ǝɯos ɹo sɯ ǝpoɔıun ןɐıɹɐ pǝǝu ןןıʍ noʎ)

˙˙˙ooʇ 'sǝʇıs ʎʇıןıʇn ǝƃɐɯı-ɹoɹɹıɯ ǝɹǝʍ ǝɹǝɥʇ ʎןuo ɟı ʍou ¡unɟ ǝɥʇ uo uı uıoɾ uɐɔ noʎ ʇɐɥʇ os ןɯʇɥ˙sɹǝʇʇǝןuʍopǝpısdn/ʎɐןd/ɯoɔ˙sǝɹıʍuǝʌǝs˙ʍʍʍ//:dʇʇɥ ʇno ʞɔǝɥɔ oƃ ˙op ʎǝɥʇ ǝsɹnoɔ ɟo ¿ʇɥƃıɹ 'uʍop-ǝpısdn ǝʇıɹʍ oʇ sʇuɐʍ ǝuoʎɹǝʌǝ os

First Drafts

2008-12-02T23:59:00.000-08:00

During November, "pep talk" emails are periodically sent out to Wrimos. Published authors wrote these pep talks, which was pretty cool. The post-NaNo one was written by Kelley Armstrong (whom, I must admit, I hadn't heard of), author of several fantasy novels. She had this to say to us unpublishing Wrimo winners:

What NaNoWriMo gave me was a quick and dirty first draft, and by the end of it, I could see that my book had some good stuff... and it had some serious problems and missed opportunities. ... If a multi-published author can’t expect to turn out a publishable first draft during NaNoWriMo, then neither should you. ... It’s a rare writer who publishes the first book they wrote — I didn’t — so practice is invaluable.

The "missed opportunities" part is so true! I am braving the waters of letting other Wrimos critique my steaming pile of— er, I mean, my rough draft. Just writing the synopsis for my story, I realized "omg, I should have done that to the character!" or "d'oh, of course I need to include this!" That's what revising is for, eh?

Finishing NaNo Today

2008-11-30T12:27:00.000-08:00

I won!

Writing to you from the NaNo trenches: I have 47,285 words written right now. The 50,000 word finish line is in sight! I will be holed up at Peet's Coffee today until I cross it. I am going to win this year. Woohoo! :)

Update, 1:13 PM: I'm now at 48,325 words. 1.7k left to go!

Update, 5:37 PM: I did it! 50,000 words! I win! :D

Literary Books

2008-11-28T14:32:00.000-08:00

I'm at Barnes & Noble, about to start writing for today's NaNo session. About a month ago, this particular bookstore had rearranged its shelves so that "Fiction & Literature" is on one side of the building, while things like Mystery, Romance, and Science Fiction & Fantasy are on the other side.

So as I was walk past the information booth on the way to a comfy seat with electricity, I overhear an employee talking to a customer: "I think we're trying to separate the more literary books from the, um..."

I can't help but smile, hearing her talk herself into an awkward corner. She notices me smiling; she half-smiles back at me. I laugh, having caught her in her literary snobbery. She laughs too, as does the other customer. We all know what she's avoiding saying. (I happen to disagree that non-"literary" books are the bane of literature like some do, but it was still an amusing moment.)

...Can I include these 171 words as part of today's word count? ;)

Happy Thanksgiving

2008-11-27T16:47:00.000-08:00

My First Thanksgiving on My Own

This is the very first year I've not gone home for Thanksgiving. It feels weird. But Forrest, Jerry, and I made a pretty good showing at our Thanksgiving dinner. They cooked most of the food — I only contributed Stove Top stuffing and fudge-in-a-box — but I kept them supplied with clean knives, pots, pans, measuring cups, etc by washing everything as they cooked.

We have sooooo much leftovers now! We, um, possibly had too much food: roasted turkey (only 8 pounds!), stuffing (both in-bird and on-stove), mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top, lefse, waldorf salad, peas and pearl onions, pumpkin pie, a mini cranberry tart-pie-thing, fudge, chips, milk, Dr. Pepper, Johannesburg Riesling, Franciscan Merlot (2004 vintage, a little too young), and some mead. And we still need to make turkey carcass soup!

TypeRacer is Addictive Fun

2008-11-21T16:50:00.000-08:00

TypeRacer Score

Do you have skills of a typist? Go type at TypeRacer and see how you do!

Decaf, Half-Caf, Whatever

2008-11-17T14:00:00.000-08:00

Single-Blind Coffee Taste Test

This weekend I had an annoying headache for much of Sunday, which I'm attributing to caffeine withdrawal. I had switched to half-caf at work to avoid just such a thing, but when I drink 2–3 half-caf cups of coffee every day, they add up. Forrest suggested I do a taste test to see if I can even tell the difference between half-caf and decaf, and switch to the latter if I can't.

So I enlisted my friend Hugh's help in doing a single-blind taste test between half-caf and decaf. (I didn't compare them against regular coffee, since I'm perfectly happy with half-caf and don't want to discover now that I actually prefer the fully leaded version. I'm looking to downgrade, not upgrade, my caffeine intake.)

Hugh made up three cups of coffee — using the "odd man out" approach is a bit better than just two options to compare against. Each cup was discretely labeled A, 1, or unmarked. He obviously knew which was which, but he left the room while I tried to distinguish between them so that he wouldn't influence my decision.

And damned if I couldn't tell the difference! I was very mildly suspicious of cup A, thinking it was the half-caf and the other two were decaf. But really, I couldn't tell a major difference and I wasn't even sure there was a difference. I made up my mind at that point to switch to decaf, since my silly taste buds don't know any better.

Afterward, I asked Hugh which was which. It turns out that the unmarked cup was the half-caf, and the other two were decaf. I was so wrong. :P

So I start my weaning off of caffeine tomorrow!

Halfway Done with NaNo

2008-11-16T23:59:00.000-08:00

I hit the halfway mark — 25,000 words — just one day behind schedule. Wootles! This is the most I've ever written for one story, so this is rather exciting for me. :)

Pet Sitting: Boarding vs In-Home Visits

2008-11-12T00:51:00.000-08:00

Forrest and I are looking for a pet sitter for the cats while we're off visiting family for the holidays. I hadn't heard of in-home pet visits before, and I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, the cats would definitely be happier on their own spacious, familiar turf. On the other hand, it would be some stranger we'd met only once before (during the "consultation" most of them do) in our house, and the cats would be unsupervised for most of the day. I'm sure they're already calculating the perfect place to pee. (The cats, not the sitters. ;))

Have any of you had experiences one way or the other?

Watching My Bus Drive Away

2008-11-11T10:21:00.000-08:00

I woke up late, looked at the clock, saw I had 13 minutes to get to my scheduled company bus pickup, and jumped up out of bed. So I'm bleary and tired, rushing around getting ready. I drive over to where the bus will pick me up, since I don't have 20 minutes to spare to walk there. As I'm parking a block from the bus stop, the bus comes by, picks up the people waiting for it, and drives off. Arrrrg!

So I drove to work today, which means no morning NaNo word count. :( Plus I feel groggy. Bleh. JIT mocha to the rescue!