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July 12th, 2009
coffeeem
 | 06:39 pm - When last we saw Our Hero...
I'm looking forward to tonight's Shadow Unit DVD extra. It picks up very shortly after last week's episode ended.
*fans self*
Good thing the WTF Network is on cable.
...We are on cable, aren't we?
8>O
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/charitycam/aliens/happy.gif) cheerful
Current Music: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. theme
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jaylake
 | 04:29 pm - [cancer] Some days you fly, some days you fry
Had a cancer meltdown over lunch with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kenscholes. Not a full tilt, crying-screaming fit. (I've had a few of those, too, just not in the middle of the Lloyd Center Stanford's.) A lot anger, a lot of grief, some good old-fashioned rage, and a whole lot of fear. I said a bunch of irrational things about myself, about the cancer, about calendula_witch, about my writing, about my publishing career. He was very patient and loving and thoughtful.
I don't suppose the details matter much, but they felt very real to me in the moment. Still do. And some of them are real, or at least meaningfully possible pending we see how hard chemo hits me and what comes next with the lung scan on the CT, etc.
This disease turns me inside out, makes me not myself. And it drags everyone who loves me along through the hole. Emotional terrorism, courtesy of rogue cells within my own body. Who ever expected it, eh?
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redbird
 | 08:25 pm - Firefox navigation problems
I just upgraded to 3.5, and the navigation buttons aren't working. I have been to the forum, and followed the suggestions here--the simple "reboot," and the more complicated "remove or rename places.sqlite and places.sqlite-journal". The problem persists.
I have posted a question to the forum, but it also seems worth asking here. (One suggestion there, which I hope not to have to follow, is to create a new profile.)
Does anyone have any other suggestions for fixing this directly?
Failing that, thoughts on Chrome versus Opera? [This is Windows XP, if that's relevant]. Or have you tried reinstalling an earlier 3.x after Firefox 3.5?
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jaylake
 | 04:24 pm - [photos] Your Sunday moment of zen
Your Sunday moment of zen.
Butterfly, photographed in Mendocino County, CA.
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jaylake
| 04:19 pm - [writing] Endurance progriss riport, day 27-28
Day 27 was lost to illness. Today I managed 2,400 words in an hour, making 18,400 for the past week (measuring Monday-Sunday), so I did manage goal in spite of illness.
Manuscript now stands at 105,900 and is going to end considerably shorter than predicted. I think Fred is trying to outrun the chemo.
Writing up on revision will be a novel experience for me, as I am usually madly cutting down. Live and learn. (Or hopefully so, in my case.)
( WIP... )
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timalyne
 | 07:43 pm - Message in a bottle
Sailing Day, first of the summer. My parents got the boat in the water AFTER the thunderstorm passed. Then, the whole crew went sailing in the Lolita. Out on Esther's Island we found everything from slimy seaweed and horseshoe crab shells to strange bones and a barbie shoe! (Of course...)
There are also videos of various beach encounters to be had - forthcoming.
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scarlettina
 | 03:36 pm - Mark Report 3:35PM Sunday
I arrived at the hospital about a half hour ago. Elizabeth's brother has just arrived.
Elizabeth tells me that Mark's temperature is down. The next challenge is to reduce his body fluids. He's got about 17 kilos to rid himself of. Elizabeth's just come out of his room; she says he's "outputting good quantity." He's off the heart-lung machine but is on a breathing machine. They have reduced support from the external heart pump they put him on. They've reduced his blood pressure meds a little; his BP is closer to where it should be and his heart is doing what it should be without external support.
The word is that given the amount of fluid they need to get out of him, he may not be closed up until Tuesday. Apparently some of this is because he's so swollen everywhere.
I haven't been inside to see him yet but I'll be going in shortly. I'll be bringing in things to read to him. Austin is retrieving his iPod and speakers so he'll have things to listen to.
More information as I have it.
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redbird
 | 06:23 pm - Books read, June
This month's book list is a little longer than the last, because I didn't do much rereading in June. I wasn't intending this, but looking at my list of books, it's (among other things) showing a significant amount of the range that the term "fantasy" can cover, without including anything that would reasonably be compared to The Lord of the Rings.
Naomi Mitchison, Travel Light oursin has to some extent infected me with her interest in Mitchison, whose work is very hard to find. (The only one I'd managed before this was Memoirs of a Spacewoman, a second-hand paperback that is literally falling apart.) This is somewhere in the border between fantasy and fairy tale: the main character is Halla Bearsbairn, so named because she is fostered for a while by a bear, or maybe a were-bear: her foster-mother had been her nurse, who rescued her when her parents decided they couldn't keep her and their newborn son. The bears can't keep her for long, they have to hibernate, so she winds up with a dragon, who is treating her partly as his child, partly as one of the elements of his treasure. And on from there, adventures over what turn out to be several centuries, including a meeting with the all-father (who advises her to travel light) and repeated encounters with a valkyrie who tries to recruit her for that team. Recommended if you come across it; I picked it up at a warehouse-clearance sale from Small Beer Press, who have reissued it.
Daniel Abraham, A Betrayal in Winter Volume 2 of the "Long Price Quartet," more of Otah Machi's story. This one takes us to a different part of the same culture, several years after the ending of A Shadow in Summer, which disappointed me because I was hoping to see more of how Amat's plans came out after she decided she had to leave the trading house she had been working for, for reasons to do with different kinds of loyalty.( As papersky noted on Tor.com, Amat is an unusual hero for a fantasy novel (or, indeed, any novel), a middle-aged woman, an accountant whose leg hurts all the time, and hurts more when she has to hide out and doesn't have her medicine.) That said, this is well-written, with good characterization, if a somewhat odd political system. In the previous book, we saw a bit of how the khaiate handles succession; this one foregrounds the expected fratricidal conflicts between the incumbent's sons. We also get more about the andat, the reified verbs, magical beings whose great desire is not to exist, but who would be pleased to take a few, or a few thousand, humans with them on their way to nonexistence. The city of Machi controls, and is powerful and prosperous because of, one called Stone-Made-Soft. The applications to mining and manufacture are obvious; walking through mine tunnels with a being that is thinking about what it would take to bring them down on your head is unnerving.
MCA Hogarth, Flight of the Godkin Griffin (serialized at godkin Fantasy again, in this case about people who are decidedly not human: what they are is less clear, in part because they vary a great deal. Angharad is a Mistress-Commander in the Godson's army, all set to retire when she is appointed governor of a newly conquered province. The province, predictably, is not entirely conquered. She is also dealing with personal issues, and with her doubts about the basic motivation of her culture: to interbreed with people as different as possible in order to produce a god. The goal and project are both bizarre from outside, but the cross-breeding works at least in the sense of producing a wide variety of different intelligent beings, some with wings, different kinds of fur, or antlers.
As she was writing, Hogarth periodically posted polls, things like "should this conversation turn romantic?" or "how much do you want to hear about Ragna?" and used the results to guide the story. I don't think it made much difference to my connection to the story, but others' mileage may have varied. The print version, expected soon, won't have those: it's not a choose-your-own adventure book, maybe something closer to Philip K. Dick using the I Ching to guide his plotting.
Sarah Monette, Corambis The fourth and final volume of Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths series. These are set in a world where magic works, and many people mistrust magicians, often including other magicians. The ongoing story is about two brothers, Felix (a magician) and Mildmay (who has no magical ability, a former cat burglar and hitman whose most respectable skill is card playing). They are entangled in a variety of ways, emotionally, despite (or because of) not having grown up together, though they had similar poor and abusive upbringings, and are both damaged by their pasts, physically as well as mentally. Mildmay feels responsible for Felix, for reasons that may not make sense to either of them; they could also be the poster children for communication problems in a relationship. Much of the time, they aren't just wading through their own past arguments and resentments, they seem to be taking out all their anger at everyone else who neglected or mistreated them on each other. The world has magic and wizardry, and Felix has tasks to do with that, and with his past, but much of the story is about Mildmay's illness, and his and Felix's need to pay bills. The other thread here is about a margrave [name], who participates in an attempt to use magic to help a rebellion. Everyone else in the room is killed by the thing they awaken; he survives, blind, and is captured, and displayed by a vindictive man on the winning side, and then taken away from that and tries to figure out what is wanted from him, believing that, blind and defeated, he is by definition useless.
A good book, including the drop into a somewhat higher-tech part of the continent: Felix asks "what's a train" when told, in his travels, that he will need to take one, and the person who told him explains, being used to foreigners not knowing. The railroad system is complicated enough that a large timetable (aftermarket documentation) sells well, as does the series of supplements. Enjoyed isn't the word for all of my reaction: the communications difficulties were convincing, and not fun to read. I suspect this book would be confusing and unsatisfying to someone who hadn't read the others. In fact, I wish I'd gotten this sooner, when they were fresher in my memory. (I may see about borrowing them again to reread; I bought a copy of Corambis at Wiscon, to support an author and a bookstore I like as much as because I was impatient.)
Rebecca Ore, Centuries Ago and Very Fast This one is weird, but fun. Vel is about 12,000 years old, and no explanation is given for why he, alone among anyone, lives so long, nor why he can travel back and forth in time. He moves with some care: he can't always get out of the time he's in, and has learned that not all injuries heal. We see Vel, and his "sisters" (by now greatn nieces, and his lovers. There's a lot of sex in this book, mostly between men, often explicit, and intended to be both arousing and in character. Out of bed and in, Vel tells stories: mammoth hunting, traveling, being treated as an extremely minor god, seeing his friends imprisoned or killed for homosexuality, the sort of low-key investment that you can make over time if you can see the future. When a necklace is stolen from him, Vel just waits and takes it from the thief's grave, decades later. In the afterword, Ore says that this book was inspired (at least in part) by slash fiction. I would say "recommended if you like that kind of thing," but I don't read much of that kind of thing, and I enjoyed it. On the other hand, one advantage of original characters over slash is that an author working with her own characters doesn't use the shortcut of assuming the reader already knows what they're like or the back story, which I often don't.
P. C. Hodgell, God Stalk and Dark of the Moon (in an omnibus volume as The Godstalker Chronicles) This feels almost like a parody in some ways: the viewpoint character is one of a created race/organization of powerful beings whose God has handed them the task of fighting evil. The evil force is called Perimal Darkling, and the agents of God include two more-or-less-humanoid species and one species of very wise, almost-immortal felines. The viewpoint character Jame (who goes by various other names at different points, including "the talisman") is a young woman of the Kendyr, one of those three people's. She has almost no memory of, well, anything, who stumbles out of the lands controlled by the dark force into a city, where she finds herself offered an apprenticeship as a thief, moves in many different social circles, and gradually regains at least some of her memories. God Stalk moves fast enough that I didn't much mind that the plot was more "and then...and then...and then" in which neither reader nor characters have time to get their feet under them. By the end of that book, Jame has gotten tangled with some of the local gods of the city she stumbled into; she talks about what the existence of other gods might mean for her rigidly monotheistic (in a trinitarian way) people, but is too busy with other things to really seem troubled by that point. She is convincingly concerned about why she can remember so little of her past, and by some of the things she can remember. This wouldn't be a problem if the title and story weren't setting Jame up as a destroyer and restorer of gods.
Dark of the Moon has Jame regaining more memory, and shows battles in a larger area, and I found it less convincing. Events seemed to take place because they suited the author's convenience, not because they followed one from the next or because things happen at least somewhat by chance. In addition to the formless but powerful Perimal Darkling, the threats this time include a vague group of tribes called the Horde, who we are told have been proceeding in a slow circle, consuming everything in front of them and fighting internal, cannibalistic battles for several centuries. It's not remotely clear why none of them ever broke away, in search of safely and fresher pastures. I was also both unconvinced and annoyed by the statement that the Kendyr had started restricting the powerful "Highborn" women, but not the men, after a specific woman had gone over to the dark side: because it is made clear, by the characters as well as the third-person narration, that she had done so following her twin brother. Yes, some men might find that a convenient excuse, but nobody, female or male, seems to notice that it's inconsistent, not only unfair but insufficient to provide the safety it is allegedly aimed at. You either restrict all of your powerful and potentially treasonous human weapons as much as possible, or train all of them because you need them to fight against the forces of Darkness. I'd recommend reading God Stalk and stopping there, which is easier if you find a used copy of God Stalk rather than the two-novel omnibus. (This isn't a "don't go there" warning that the second book ruins the first, just that I liked the first and found the second less fun and less plausible.)
[crossposting by hand between LJ and DW, comment wherever you like]
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fringefaan
 | 03:05 pm - Ticket to ride
Well, Sharee and I have our plane tickets for Montréal, so I guess we're really going to do it. We'll be arriving late on Saturday the 1st, playing tourist in the city for the next few days, then checking in to the Delta Centre Ville on the 6th for the World Science Fiction Convention. I've wanted to go to Montréal for a long time, so this is pretty exciting. Anybody have any recommendations for what to see and do there? The Jardin Botanique is already on the list. It looks like the convention is being held right next door to the old part of the city, Vieux-Montréal.
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peteyoung
 | 10:27 pm - Timesink of the Day
COULD THE HOUSE PRICE CRASH HAVE SEX WITH THE QUEEN?
COULD CHANNEL 4 MOLEST YOUR PETS?
WILL PAEDOPHILES CHEAT PENSIONERS? Via Daily Mail-o-matic.
Fit airy-fairy liberals with electronic tags, and then put them under a curfew order.
Deny refugees the right to trial by jury, and then give them an on-the-spot fine.
Try Muslims in secret, and then put their children into care. Via the David Blunkett Policy Maker.
Plus Michael Howard Sings The Smiths and The Alastair Campbell Wheel of Retribution.
All via Lori Jolly on Facebook.
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wrong_questions
| 09:05 pm - The 2009 Hugo Awards: The Best Novel Shortlist, Part 1
http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2009/07/2009-hugo-awards-best-novel-shortlist.html I have a shocking confession to make: I did not read all of the best novel Hugo nominees before the July 3rd voting deadline. I have an even more shocking confession to make: this was not because I didn't have the time to read these novels, but because of a lack of inclination. I'd read the two nominated novels I was actually interested in--Neal Stephenson's Anathem and Neil Gaiman's The
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rivka
 | 01:46 pm - Theory of mind, in practice.
One of my favorite developmental psych concepts is "theory of mind." It's a complicated idea, but essentially, if you have a well-developed theory of mind, you understand that people have mental states (beliefs, ideas, desires, perspectives) which differ from person to person and affect how people behave.
For example, here's one of the common experimental tasks for assessing theory of mind: There are two dolls, Sally and Anne. Sally hides a marble in a box and then goes away. While she is gone, Anne moves the marble from the box to a basket. Then Sally comes back. Where will she look for the marble? It seems to be a trivially easy question, but before the age of three or four children universally predict that Sally will look for the marble in the basket. Why? Because that's where it is. Around three or four years old, children start to have the ability to understand that even though they know where the marble really is, Sally will act on a false belief about where the marble is.
I've never run Alex through the Sally-Anne task, but I think she's had the basics of a theory of mind for a while. (A lot of fiction doesn't make sense without it.) It's clear, though, that lately she's really been developing a more elaborate sense of other people's mental representations. She's playing with these ideas a lot, figuring out what you can do with them.
Deception, for example. She's figured out the basic concept, but right now she's hilariously bad at it. She'll get a crafty look on her face and announce, "Mom, don't look at what I'm about to do." Then she'll take some cookies out of the package and run away. She's almost got it! She's figured out that if I don't see her do it, I won't know... but now she has to work out the part about not notifying me beforehand.
Or secrets. She's developed a fascination with keeping pointless secrets, I think just because she enjoys the idea of one person knowing something another person doesn't know. She's always asking Michael and I to keep something secret from each other - "don't tell Dad how far we went on the scooter!" "Don't tell Mom what we got at the store!"
Once I went in to tell him about something she'd done wrong, and she asked me (in front of him) not to tell him. When I said "I certainly am going to tell him," she broke in anxiously with "Don't listen, Dad! It's all nonsense!" Heh. Only four years old, and she's already poisoning the well!
I tremble to think about what it will be like around here when she actually masters this stuff.
She's also doing some neat stuff with perspective taking. At the museum, as we left one room to go into another, she commented: "If someone was out here, they'd think we were coming into the room." At the O's game we went to, which the O's predictably lost: "If someone was from Detroit, they would say 'Hooray, the Tigers won!'" It always comes out of nowhere - she's just doing it for practice, I guess.
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bugshaw
 | 05:27 pm - [Cambridge] What's On
Aha - this (Cambridge Online) is the website I have been hoping existed, collecting links for lots of arts/theatre/cinema venues and a list of special events. The Shakespeare Festival fell off my radar last year, and I'd like to get to the Jesus Green Comedy Week :-)
Also, while I'm listing useful local websites which I forget exist, there's Local Secrets which has news, restaurant reviews, and offers.
Any favourite local sites I'm missing?
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brisingamen
 | 05:30 pm - A day of bits and pieces ...
I made bread this morning ... still familiar recipes, but I'm experimenting with quantities for the new loaf pans, which are a betwixt and between size. I seem to have got it right and the loaf looks fine. Of course, the proof will be in the slicing later tonight. Tomorrow I need to take a look at my sourdough starter and see how it's survived while I've been away.
I also made eggs Benedict for lunch, for the first time. Didn't work as well as I would have liked as I had to hold the hollandaise sauce for too long and it lost its mayonnaise-thickness. Poaching the eggs was a bit fraught; two were good, two were ok, but the end result was pleasant enough for a first attempt. I'll try it again soon, I think.
The Krumpies were allowed out into the garden a little less supervised than before as they now have their collars on. Not their new collars, which turned out to be still a little too big for them, but a couple of cheap reflective collars will do for now, and their tags look lovely. The excursion was somewhat complicated as Smidgin came in from next door, in a particularly vile mood. I thought he might attack me he was growling so much. What I can do about him, I really don't know. He's an unhappy cat, that's for sure, and I don't think he gets what he needs next door (possibly a thorough medical), though my neighbour is kind enough to cats. On the other hand, I don't want to use a water pistol, etc. on him because that's just brutalising too. (Any suggestions welcome.)
I have spent the afternoon catching up on the radio (Pt II of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, and a couple of episodes of McLevy) while tidying up in my study. Slow work, but at least my books are in good order. One day my papers will be as well.
Late afternoon, PK and I went to sit in the garden, watching the Krumpies frolicking around. Then I noticed a strange insect on the table. It seemed to be a grasshopper, but I'd never seen anything like it. When I fetched the insect book I couldn't identify it. A little googling suggests that I was looking at a Roesel's Bush Cricket, a species that was once rare but it's spreading through the south-east and beyond. Interestingly, there are short-winged and long-winged versions. The long-winged only appears in warm summers, when conditions are good for their spreading. Guess which sort of wings my Roesel's bush cricket had?
And now, to round off a very domestic day (a necessary antidote, I think, to the last few weeks), I intend to commit deep-fried shredded beef with chilli, and something involving noodles and sugar snap peas.
The Krumpies have now come to visit; once again I am struck by the fact that Nicodemus really is an ace tail with quite a nice cat attached. It's not so much a fluffy tail as a magnificent plume. Meanwhile, if Rosa was a human, she would be wearing Ugg boots; her feet are extraordinarily hairy, with many long guard hairs sticking out all over the place.
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scarlettina
 | 09:02 am - Reading to Mark
Hey folks--My plan for today is breakfast and Fremont Sunday Market with Kate and David before heading to the hospital.
As I mentioned yesterday, when I go to the hospital, I'll be taking some Shakespeare with me to read to him. If you have messages for Mark that you'd like me to read to him, please send them to me. I'll print them out and take them with me. They could be anything: best wishes, a joke, an anecdote, anything. Besides Shakespeare, I'm going to bring some poetry, and a copy of the latest Wired and Discover magazines.
If you have something you'd like to share with Mark, either post it here or send it to me privately. Whether I read it to him or someone else, it will all get to him.
Thanks!
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sbisson
 | 04:25 pm - Platinum Light
Deception Pass is a narrow channel at the north end of Whidbey Island, near Seattle.
Early on a summer evening the light is fantastic, a platinum sheen on the water, bright bright in the westering sun. The lines of the currents weave towards the cleft in the cliffs, drawing lines on the mirror-smooth water. Fishing boats pass by, drawing their own lines.
Zoom in on the reflections, on the white gold ripples...
Whidbey Island, Washington
June 2009
Current Location: Putney, London
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/neko/kaokitty/busy.gif) busy
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jaylake
| 06:57 am - [cancer] Things I am afraid of
It hasn't been my best week. Cancer follies are on hold til July 20th, from a purely medical perspective — appointment then for a follow-up CT scan is the opening measure of the next portion of this symphony. But I spent this past week at my parents' beach house on the Long Beach peninsula of scenic Washington State, mostly being quite ill with an upper respiratory infection. This did not lend itself to rational consideration of life options, though I did get several very good conversations in with Mom and Dad nonetheless.
Lots more to say, and I'll be saying it here, but this morning I've been noodling with the idea of all the things I'm afraid of. Many of these are no rational, but rationality has never been a prerequisite for existential dread. Most of them are not formless. My fears have very definite form, thank you. (Wonder Twins power activate: in the form of a tumor!) But I find it useful to drag the fears out into the light, turn them over a few times and think about them. That seems to disarm some of their power, and makes me feel better.
So, things I am afraid of:
- Dying soon
- Dying slow
- Dying fast
- Not seeing the_child graduate from high school (or even 8th grade)
- Chemo head
- Playing whack-a-mole with this shit til it kills me
- Losing myself in a fog of illness and never coming back
- Losing my ability to write
- Losing my desire to write
- The look in my parents' eyes
- My daughter's tears
- That I'll be so sick I won't be attractive to calendula_witch any more
- That I'll spend the rest of my life smelling sick
- That I'll get too thin on chemo
- That I'll grow too big on chemo
- That I won't be able to work and my life will collapse financially
It goes on from there. You get the idea. Hamsters chase one another through my head with alarming alacrity. Irrational or not, they're real. As chemo grows closer, I dread it more and more. The next CT scan will tell us whether I have tumors on my lungs. I dread that. Every piece of bad news is a strike against my mortality. My life. Myself.
Still, I carry on. Because there are no other choices except to spit at it and fight. I am so tired of being afraid.
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kim_huett
 | 10:08 pm - The Hobbit
The first time I read J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit was as an assigned text in my high school english class. In other words so long ago I no longer remember what year it was though I'm guessing before 1977. (And I never went back and read it again because a little later on my own bat I borrowed Lord of the Rings from the school library and who wants to reread The Hobbit after experiencing Lord of the Rings? Even now, over thirty years later, I don't feel the urge to read The Hobbit but that's partly because I discovered the 1974 Argo Records version on YouTube. This is an abridged version read by Nicol Williamson who does an excellent job.
What I found most interesting about encountering this story again after so many years of rereading various sections of Lord of the Rings was the sparseness of Tolkien's countryside. Unlike LoTR in which Tolkien takes care to give the reader ample detail with which to envisage Middle Earth The Hobbit concentrates on unfolding the plot with scenic descriptions kept to a bare minimum. To be fair the abridged nature of this version is going to accentuate the lack of background material but even without those cuts I'm certain I'd notice the different emphasis.
I don't see the minimal attention to background as a flaw in The Hobbit, it is after all a much simpler tale that would not work half as well as it does if made as elaborate as LoTR. It's interesting though to compare the two books and note how Tolkien's approach to telling a story evolved. So The Hobbit eschews passing detail like any good classic tale (because the stories of King Arthur, Jason & the Argonauts, Sinbad the Sailor, and all the rest were created as spoken literature first and those creators had enough to do describing all the action without burdening themselves with anything not integral to the story). By the time he started LoTR Tolkien had obviously realised that he need no longer follow models such as Beowulf so there was no longer any reason not to detail Middle Earth as he traveled through it.
Listening to The Hobbit again has caused me to develop a new theory. For a long time I've wondered what Tolkien was up to in the opening chapters of LoTR because between Bilbo leaving the Shire and the Council of War at Elrond's there's an awful lot of faffing about. It's true that a couple of the events in that section are important later on but for the most part it's entertaining but without furthering the story. Given the breadth of the story Tolkien must have been envisioning by the time he came to write about Farmer Maggot, Tom Bombadil, and the Barrow Downs why not skip such diversions and get to the meat of the tale? Surely he had set himself an enormous enough task as it was without needlessly adding to the stories length?
I now have to wonder if Tolkien didn't regret skipping over Middle Earth so much in The Hobbit. Perhaps he wanted the reader to actually see the Shire which he had passed over with a few bare sentences in his previous book and learn what a primordial, untamed forest was like. I suppose that if he was resigned to penning a very long book anyway there was no reason to not indulge himself in such matters.
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jaylake
 | 05:59 am - [links] Link salad wakes up with a clear head, finally
A reader reviews "Rolling Steel" by calendula_witch and me — Specifically, she talks about the podcast version, read by Sean Farrell and Mur Lafferty.
The soda-pop map — I used to say "Coke" generically, these days I say "soda." Where do you fall on this continuum? (Thanks to garyomaha.)
Bridge to Nowhere: a Map of Golden Gate Jumpers — Another odd one from Strange Maps.
Solar for Dark Climates — I love the headline alone, but the article is interesting as well, about hybrid solar systems for northern latitudes. Mmm, Stirling engines.
Evidence based revenge — Ben Goldacre on revenge and bitterness. Money shot: Put very simply, if we desire it, does revenge work? People certainly believe in it, from modern thrillers such as Hamlet and Moby Dick, to classics like Kill Bill and Death Wish I-V.
Get Fuzzy on American political parties — Hahahahahahahahahaha.
?otD: Soda or pop?
7/12/2009
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike, 10 minutes of meditation and stretching
This morning's weigh-in: 218.2
Currently reading: Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold
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e_bourne
 | 05:37 am - Baby Steps
Mark is looking better this morning. His fever is down. Martha, his nurse, washed him last night and that really helped him feel better. I say this just knowing my husband. He would hate being in this condition, and messy as well. Love you Martha!
His heart is better, more regular, and a better rate this morning. High 90s instead of 100s. His blood pressure is also improved, and they have been able to lower his blood pressure medication a tiny bit. He'a still on a ton of medications, but being able to have, and keep, the blood pressure meds a tiny bit lower is a baby step in the right direction.
They have switched around his pain medication and his sedation some. He was getting too light, and they can'thave him fidgeting or coughing, or really doing anything at all while his chest is still open. I asked Martha if she thought there was a chance they'd close it today, and sh was not hopeful. Too much fluid, and he's still critical.
So more waiting, tears, and prayers. And that's the first of the morning news.
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peteyoung
| 01:10 pm
Spread a little happiness as you go by, by order.
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csinman
 | 02:12 am - Dammit, Potlatch 19! >:(
You should have asked me out before I said yes to Rainforest. I can't disappoint Rainforest (I have such feelings for it! Plus I already paid!). I do have room in my heart for both of you...just not room in my schedule.
Le sigh.
Current Location: our glass table
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/opiummmm/foxies/angry.gif) grumpy
Current Music: Planet X Marks The Spot - Dr. Steel
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scarlettina
 | 12:35 am - Mark Report: 12:35 AM Sunday
Just wanted to chime in that I haven't heard anything this evening. Jack and I got to the hospital around 3:30ish. Mark was in the cardiac ICU as previously posted around 7:30 PM. When we left, not much had changed. He was sedated, had a 102-degree fever, but his vitals were somewhat improved. They'd uncovered him to help the temperature come down.
( Some difficult details under the cut )
Jack brought us pizza and salad for dinner. Kate and David brought playing cards. We left at 8:30. Elizabeth had her friend Joyce with her at the time. Austin (E's son), his dad and dad's girlfriend had gone for dinner. I had reached a point where I needed to get away.
I'll be checking in with Austin tomorrow morning and going to the hospital in the afternoon. I'll pass along whatever news I can get.
My apologies to those who want more frequent news. Beyond a certain point, it's just hours and hours of the same thing: waiting for him to stabilize. And I promise I'll post about that as soon as I hear it. Thanks to everyone for all the support and good thoughts.
If you're a qualified blood donor, Mark's blood type is O positive. Blood donations in his name would be a help.
That's it for tonight, friends. More news as I get it.
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July 11th, 2009
scarlettina
| 07:23 pm - Mark report: not what we want
I'm at the hospital with Elizabeth and a Group of friends, posting from Jack's cell phone. Mark's still in ICU. He's sedated and they still haven't closed him up yet. Latest news is that he has a fever but that he's better than he was this morning. still, he hasn't quite stabilized; that's what we're waiting for.
I've been into Mark's room to see him. He's on several monitors, and not looking like himself
at all. I may post more detail later though I'm not sure how much detail people want to know
anyway, I'll post about the lovely brekkie Jack made this AM later. Want to go see Mark again.
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