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November 17th, 2009
 | 12:12 pm - Dammit
I'm feeling very glum just now. Weighed in up about a pound for the third week in a row. I've been stuck wobbling up and down around 220 since July. And dammit, I thought I ended this week with points to spare. AND got more exercise than I have in weeks.
Not glad to be heading into holiday-excess season.
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 | 12:09 am - Husband sweater
A friend gave me a bagful of Silkroad Ultra in shades of blue, suggesting it would make a good David sweater. Agreed! So. David wants a PLAIN sweater. Plain, plain, plain. OK, maybe some stripes at the chest, or even a two-color motif-stripe, but none of that distracting texture stuff.
Which is making me crazy (a) because I love cables, and it’s clear from everyone’s photos that Silkroad loves them too; and (b) because AFAIK there is no term for what I referred to above as “two-color motif-stripe”. So I can’t search for patterns that include one. And I’m not a pluck-ideas-out-of-my-head kind of girl. I’m a pluck-ideas-from-photos girl.
I'm wishing for a decorative band a couple of inches deep, far less detailed than typical Fair Isle work but something more than just a collegiate stripe! Could be stranded, could be intarsia, could be duplicate stitch.
Marnie MacLean's Astoria sweater has one example of what I'm thinking of. It's on the ornate end of the spectrum.
Looks like I'll spend a good chunk of tomorrow afternoon's knitting circle rifling through the store's book inventory.
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November 14th, 2009
 | 10:26 am - Clean Sweep Saturday
One hour of steady funging & decluttering starts-- 
now.
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November 10th, 2009
 | 10:17 am - Books Read, 2009
82. How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier. YA fantasy. A quick read and lots of fun. I enjoyed the way she lobs in made-up slang (or am I again confusing fantastical & Australian?), and then when the new kid in town says “cool” or “bummer” they look at him oddly and wonder what he’s talking about. I’m sure this drove some other readers right up the wall. Speaking of YMMV--
83. Rosemary & Rue by Seanan McGuire. Fantasy, of the “Kingdom of Faerie overlaps with mortal city” variety. Also murder mystery, of the “pillar to post” variety, wherein the protagonist dashes constantly from one unproductive rendezvous to another. Since this is hard-boiled p2p instead of cozy p2p, she gets ambushed and left for dead every time she turns around. I wanted to like this, I really did (we were greatly entertained by our encounter with Seanan at WFC), but p2p just makes me tired.
And she seemed to keep telling us the same things over and over and over again: Purebloods scorn changelings. Changelings are mortal. Iron hurts. The Fey don’t say thanks. Getting into Faerie strongholds is reeely reeely hard. She has to solve this thing quick because there’s that taste of dried roses again because she's under a curse you know! Yes. Yes, we do.
84. Not the End of the World by Christopher Brookmyre. Given that this is Brookmyre, you know from the very first description of a hotel lobby with overhead see-through swimming pool that it’s all going to be bloody flying shards at some point. (Yup.) Uncharacteristic was the relentless soapboxing. The plot is a bare excuse to hang diatribes onto; unpleasant characters are tarred with a brush of Stygian blackness and then set ablaze while we are clearly expected to dance about the bonfire shouting Huzzah! Bleah.
85. The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry. Set in Salem, Massachusetts; nice evocation of the touristic overlay on the town, and the coastal community beneath. (Not that I’ve actually been there.) Mainstream fic with either a fantastical element or a highly unreliable narrator, or both.
86. Keys to the City by Joel Kostman. Anecdotes from the life of a locksmith in NYC. It seems as though one could break into just about any car or residence, and many small businesses, simply by calling a locksmith and looking distraught.... Good writing.
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November 7th, 2009
| 11:37 am - Another lovely day at the Coast
I'm at Lincoln City for a knitting workshop The view out the door of the yarn shop. It was clear (tho wet) ten minutes ago. That's all hail! 
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November 6th, 2009
 | 10:21 am - Simdi güncellemek ister misiniz?
This morning I downloaded the Yelp iphone app, which reminded me that I've been wanting to see if the BBC has anything comparable to NPR News' excellent interface.
Thus I stumbled upon Radyo, a good-looking radio app (listings in the App Store include screen shots) with high ratings from the, er, seven people who have reviewed it.
It's Turkish, you see.
But with language support in English, French, and Spanish! So hey!
First thing I see upon installing it?
Thanks to the wonders of Google Translate, this is revealed as:
Revised proposal
Found a new channel list.
You release: 20
New version: 29
Would you like to update now? No / Yes
Hayir! Hayir! İngilizce ver!
[Whew.] That was invigorating.
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November 5th, 2009
| 07:49 pm - Pointy Sticks! Pointy Sticks! Rah!
Wowzer. As of 5:50 Pacific Standard Time, the yarn-based site Ravelry.com has 500,000 members. Half a millyun knitters, crocheters, spinners, all hangin' out and swappin' ideas.
I wonder if there are other special interest/hobbyist web sites out there remotely like Ravelry? Maybe I'm being blinkered, but really, look at this list of features and tell me the trainspotters or the belly dancers have anything comparable:
* Inventory one's yarn stash, with links to manufacturer's info
* Track one's projects, in-progress and completed, with details of yarns used
* Queue up a "wishlist" of future projects
* Browse the patterns database, looking at other people's felted pirate hats, or fingerless mitts or whatever, with links to their photos & project notes & comments about what went wrong or how they made it better
* Join any of 10,000+ Groups. These are geographical, technical, serious, humorous. Hook up with fellow sock knitters, regulars at your favorite shop, first-time fathers, hand-dyers, the Ankh-Morpork Knitters Guild, Afghans for Afghans, Socks for Soldiers.
* With or without joining, use Groups to find knitting circles in a town you're about to visit. Read the chat forums, ask questions, arrange meetings, share horror stories.
And these all link up together!! When I start a new project, I can specify that I'm using X yarn from my stash. When I call it Finished and I note that I used N skeins of it, my inventory reflects that. Project notes link to pattern sources. Forum postings link to personal profiles.
Have 5 skeins of laceweight Malabrigo? See 6201 projects using it. Need two more skeins? 133 people with laceweight Malabrigo in their stash have said they'll sell or trade, and you can see the color and dye lot.
I don't even use the needle inventory, or the Local Yarn Shop directory, or the online marketplace.
So congratulations, Jess & Casey; this framework you have given us is AWESOME.
p.s. free!!
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November 3rd, 2009
| 09:48 am - Books read, 2009
I have been reading since August, honest. Many of them have been guidebooks for one trip or another, or things that I dip into, maybe paddle about in, then retreat quickly, shivering on the edge and reaching for a towel. Others include:
78. Ten Sigmas by Paul Melko. I enjoy his "pods", persons made up of what you & I would consider to be multiple people in multiple bodies.
79. Slow Loris, a picture book by Alexis Deacon
80. The Day Gone By, memoir/autobiography from Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down. Runs from his childhood through the immediate aftermath of WW2 (he was about 25). Fabulously evocative description of a rural England that was nearly obsolete even then, and then there's the descriptions of boarding school, Oxford, military life. Highly recommended.
81. Alyzon Whitestarr by Isobelle Carmody. YA fantasy. It was a page-turner, but flawed in a way I can't put my finger on. As though there are blank spots in the description, places where the painting isn't finished yet? Many of the names struck me as odd; I'm curious how much of that was fantastical and how much just Australian. (Zambia probably the former; Harlen and Gilly probably the latter; but Sybl, Jezabel, Mirandah, Sarry, Glad?)
Current shelf inches of To-Be-Read: Erhm, are we counting the box shipped home from World Fantasy Con that is still en route?
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October 31st, 2009
 | 09:39 pm - World Fantasy Cuisine
We're in San Jose for World Fantasy Con. The bar is like a giant conversation pit in the center of the very large lobby; coming towards it from outside or from the elevators one hears a growing roar, as of surf.
I'd like to be down there but I'm a bit sub-prime. Bailed on a dinner date; emerged later to graze on antipasti at the Art Show Reception and gaze upon Poe's 200th Birthday cake upstairs, then back to my cave.
Unhappy tummy is probably something I ate. I imagine, sometimes, somehow being at the ER during a con and being asked "What have you eaten in the last few days?" Ha! Since Weds. night there's been Spanish, upscale Oaxaca Mexican, greasy spoon Mexican, Japanese, Vietnamese mystery deli, falafel, and French pastries from the place just across the courtyard. Most of these involved sharing multiple dishes. Oh, and Chinese egg noodle soup with crispy chicken for breakfast. I figure if a place is open at 9am, it has something someone considers bfst. Yay to MadRobins for adventuring with me.
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October 26th, 2009
| 10:44 pm - The world turned upside-down
David and I intend to travel to Australia for the Worldcon next year -- Melbourne, early September. I've always said that when we do get all the way to the Antipodes, we should bloody well stay for a while. The Aussies I met during college were always on months-long walkabout, having boosted themselves out of the gravity well, as it were. When this Worldcon bid was first announced a few years ago, we thought "Ooh! Maybe David could be retired by then and we won't have to hurry back? Maybe-maybe?" And indeed that wish came true.
So it's eleven months out--time to set dates and snag flights if our Frequent Flyer miles are going to be any help getting us out of steerage class. And I am flailing wildly.
Some of the factors:
1) England, France, and the rest of Europe are full of places I know about from books/movies/history. We eat their cuisines; the landscapes are woven into our archetypal fairy tales. The thrill of recognition is around every corner when I plan a trip there. Australia, not so much.
2) I'm having problems with scale. Intellectually I know that that Australia is the same size as the contiguous US (3 million sq miles, ±4%), but grokking it is something else again. Want to go to Perth after the con, or maybe to Cairns? That's like adding Denver onto your Cape Cod vacation. Gark. ( Read more... )
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October 20th, 2009
October 18th, 2009
 | 10:45 pm - Scoot and Plenty, but replace the Star with a Half Crazy Shazam
And so another wild and wacky square dance weekend draws to a close. There is a particular kind of silliness that crops up sometimes when a square of fundamentally good dancers keeps falling apart, and eventually just gives in to the slapstick. In the C-2 hall at one point, we were casting about in five directions at once in hopes of enlightenment when ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) trulygrateful suddenly calls out "SQUIRREL!"
We had a hundred and some dancers, four rooms at any given time (except when the hotel screwed up and Sun. afternoon had to collapse down to two). I acquitted myself pretty well all the way up to C-2. I don't want to be "that dancer", who cheerily squares up, says "Gee, I haven't danced this level since Convention!" and then proceeds to torpedo every ofher sequence.
Kris Jensen and Barry Clasper's calling kept us on our toes and yet flowed. Mike Jacobs excels at slipping in little teaching moments, like the difference betw. Left Vertical Tag and Vertical Left Tag. I forget who had the keen stuff treating two Z's as a Triple Box formation.
(Why no, this doesn't sound anything like the popular conception of square dancing, does it?)
We met up with writers Steven Gould and Laura Mixson for dinner at Yanni's. Caught a high-quality amateur production of Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. Ran into some other dancers at the Flying Star and dished happily over chocolate & coffee until falling-over time.
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October 15th, 2009
| 06:29 pm
We had a pleasant ramble thru a residential nbhd and then past historic shops around the old plaza as the sun went down. Tummies full of green chile enchiladas from Duran Central Pharmacy.
As our brains try to come to grips with this very different landscape, they snatch at the smallest of similarities, so we're constantly saying "This feels like Palo Alto-- if you took out all the vegetation" or "It reminds me of that place in Singapore, you know, with the thing." A wood-shingled house among the adobe jolts us by having "normal" rain gutters and only then do we consciously notice that its neighbors don't.
Tomorrow maybe some smaller towns north of ABQ, a museum or two (Indians, Hispanics, petroglyphs, balloons?). Dancing starts after dinner. The gay square dancers are sharing the hotel with the American Legion. It could be an interesting weekend.
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| 02:37 pm - Albuquerque ahoy!
We are arrivèd and heading to pick up rental car. Then will swing by hotel, check in, go play tourist! Wanna play too? Have dinner? call or comment...
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October 14th, 2009
 | 11:09 pm - Oh no! They've blown up Basketball!
The crazy lady cried most of the way home from the show.
In Buddhism they talk about being vulnerable, "having one's heart open". I seem to have been wide open tonight. Immersing myself in images and music from those movies, I remembered the times, my younger selves, so vividly.
Star Wars came out when I was 16. Sixteen. It's interwoven into the next six or eight years of my life as tightly as the brambles in this yarn I'm knitting with. I saw it in August, a few months after release but utterly unspoiler'd except for knowing the image on the T-shirt. There was a guy at summer camp I was crazy about. He'd worn this odd get-up at the impromptu costume contest; I didn't know until we saw Luke against the Tatooine sky that it was from Star Wars. For many viewings after that, when others saw Luke on the screen, I saw him.
There's a cliché about arguing philosophy into the small hours, in college? My bunch argued about whether the novelizations were canon, and whether Darth could possibly be Luke's father or Lucas was just messing with us. Ennnndlessly. (We had three whole years when that was an open question, remember.) For variety, we wrestled over Han's last words to Leia, and whether they made him endearing, or an asshole.
We saw #3 on opening day, of course, third row center. There were kids in the audience who hadn't been born yet when #1 came out. I had trouble wrapping my brain around that.
Exactly a year later I was with some of the same people, outside the same theater, for the next installment of a George Lucas/Harrison Ford epic (Indiana Jones #2), when I encountered the science fiction club that would be the center of my social life for a decade or so, and throw me together with davidlevine.
I was so young.
I'm 48 now, and given family histories there may well be 50 more to come. Am I fulfilling the sixteen-year-old's dreams, the twenty-two-year-old's? What influences and adventures are yet to come that I have no inkling of? Will anything ever reach as far into my heart as this saga did?
My mind is awhirl.
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| 07:12 pm - ...a little short for a Storm Trooper?
Sweet screaming Jesus. We are at sports arena to see Star Wars In Concert, a Big! Shiny! Live! Orchestral! Multimedia! Experience! The concourse is swarming w/folks checking out exhibits and posing for photos w/costumed characters. And I am twitchy as a cat in a jar of fireflies.
Why? Why?? Because I keep seeing hyper little fans whose freakin' PARENTS weren't even born yet when this came out.
(where by "this" I mean the 3 that didn't suck)
Don't mind the crazy woman. She's just old.
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| 12:55 pm - Tuesday Tea and Sympathy
I who do not volunteer for things, I who hate to be in a position where I feel responsible for other people's good times (because I do, oh I do), I am starting a knitting circle at a new yarn shop near us. I'm committed: the tweets and Ravelry posts have already gone out.
We have, let's see, at least ten yarn shops within the city limits, and others in the burbs. We are sooo lucky. A couple dozen knitting groups meet at various yarn stores and cafes, with varying degrees of conviviality and convenience. I've found two on Mondays that I may become a regular at.
What would really work best for me is a group that met at the same time as the Tuesday afternoon writing group at Fat Straw. (davidlevine, jaylake, karindira, joycemocha, thirdworld et al. get together most weeks and stare at laptop computer screens in each others' company.)
So I'm starting one.
Tuesdays, 3:30 to 6:00 pm, at Happy Knits, 1720 SE Hawthorne, Portland.
We'll see what happens. I've already gotten some nibbles.
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October 10th, 2009
| 10:10 am - Wordstock
We're off to Wordstock today! Find me after the noon Scott Westerfeld reading if you want to do 1:00 lunch (maybe a quick run into Chinatown?). Tan blouse, green vest.
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October 8th, 2009
 | 10:31 am - This is your brain on 3 screens at once
I've been learning interesting things on the neuroscience front lately.
Via Science Friday, a report that "multi-tasking" not only doesn't work, it drives down concentration and cognitive skills even when you're not multi-tasking. (Where that was defined as juggling two unrelated information streams. Radio + computer, or texting + lecture, but not note-taking + lecture.) (And people who think they're the talented exception are actually impaired most.)
And over here at Slate.com, information about the literally addictive lure of "just one more click". It seems that wanting something and liking the results are on two entirely separate circuits, and "the possibility of a payoff is much more stimulating than actually getting one." Following an information trail through Google, or constantly checking the email inbox (or, I suspect, searching for patterns in a 16x16 mega-Sudoku), provides a momentary dopamine high in and of itself.
Which we get hooked on, and want more & more of, and can never fully satisfy. Which messes with our dopamine system and its reaction to other everyday stimulation. (Dopamine also ties in with the brain's sense of time passing, which may be why computers suck one into a black hole so effectively.)
This morning's Ah-Ha moment: This is what meditation can prevent/repair. Focusing on one thing, or on nothing at all, for an uninterrupted span of time, to undo what we're doing to our brains the rest of the day.
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