I really don't know how I feel about this.

From the program goals for the alternative school my-nephew-the-freak expects to be sent to:

"Character development instruction may be taught in a classroom setting. If they do not receive character development instruction in this class, they will receive it through their health/physical education class."

The idea of character devlopment through health/physical education seems to me so archaic, it's absurd. The idea that sports somehow magically develop your character has never made any sense to me. Plus, an awful lot of the folks I know report mainly that their physical education teachers graded on how well they did (or rather, didn't do) rather on how they behaved and participated and whether they made an effort. It was not exactly a morale booster. Character devlopment, my ass.

The icing on the cake.

My-nephew-the-freak called me tonight. He assaulted a teacher, he's been kicked out of school, and charges may be filed. If he doesn't finish 45 days in "alternative" (read "reform") school, he's expelled for two years. If charges are filed, he probably goes to juvie."

Of course, he reports that he just bumped into her, but knowing my nephew, I suspect it was accidentally-on-purpose. And I listened to him tell me about it, and the words I heard coming out of his mouth were the same goddamn victim role that I heard from his mother all the time.

He reports taking 21 pain killers last night, because dying seemed easier than dealing with how his grandfather was gonna react. It gave him the mother of all stomach aches. But he doesn't want to be in foster care, because it would take him away from his brother.

I called him a chickenshit. It felt like the most constructive thing I could say in that moment, and to this kid.

I have to call CPS. I'm just waiting for the other "auntie" to find physical address so I've got something to give them, in case there's more than one kid with his name in Florida. And of course, the social workers I work with tell me the Florida child welfare system is notoriously bad.

If he can keep his ass out of jail and CPS doesn't prevent, we're gonna try to get him out here this summer. Auntie #1 (I'm #2 in this instance) will put him up. And we'll see if there's anything left we can work with. He needs to be in therapeutic foster care, and I can't pull that out of my hat. I hate feeling so helpless.

How did Georgia ever manage to go and make this kid my responsibility, without even being my "sister"?

Surrealist Joke #2

If it takes 17 pancakes to shingle a dog house, how long will it take a flea to kick the seeds out of a dill pickle?

See comments for answer.

The Great Roxio Fishing Trip of '06

This is one of the weirder ways I've spent a day as a computer geek.

My boss and I were unpacking the last of the moving boxes, at least in some temporary fashion. He went to slide a box across the top shelf to make more room . . . and it fell. Into the corner where the two sets of shelves meet. The gentleman who built the shelves, who did not do a good job in several other facets, either, did not close off that corner.

The box contained a dozen copies of Roxio Easy CD burning software. At our pricing, this is somewhere around $200 dollars. The shelves are ungodly heavy, and quite likely fixed to the wall. And thus began the fishing trip.

My boss located a length of miscellaneous 3/4" PVC pipe, lugged with us during the move because it might be useful. He determined that 1/3 of its length could be unscrewed. The remaining 2/3 should have unscrewed, but the two sections were either stuck or glued together. He left the IT suite with a determined look in search of a hacksaw, and came back with two pieces of PVC pipe and the comment that men should not be allowed near serrated kitchen knives. He then arranged the three lengths of PVC pipe in such a fashion that they nested into each other, creating a reassemble-able pole, loosely jointed.


At this point, a trip to Ace Hardware was required. The end of the implement you can see is a long machine bolt with a wing bolt/toggle bolt screwed down onto it. The orange tip is some kind of screw-on plastic piece which he then cut at an angle to get some kind of a point. There was a long piece of twine attached to the bolt, in case we had to separately retrieve it. The bolt was duct-taped to the end of the PVC pipe and the twine was drawn up through the three separate lengths of nest-able pipe.



We dragged the ladder out of the server room and set it up in the supply room, and my boss assayed its lofty heights. The pointy end of the implement went into the hole behind the bookcases. The second piece was threaded down the rope and nested into it, and which point, my boss secured the join with a shitload of duct tape. The third piece followed, with me keeping tension on the rope at various points, and nested but was not taped. After that, it was time for harpooning practice. After perhaps ten minutes of fiddling, Mark succeeded in stabbing the pointy plastic and toggle bolt, both, through the mislaid box to a depth at which the toggle bolt's "wings" could open up behind it, acting as a barb to keep it stuck in the box.



Then we had the fun of pulling on the string to draw up the box, disassembling the pole a piece at a time. The results are as you see: It ain't pretty, but it was indeed extracted. We're not too worried about whether or not we broke the CD media; we have lots, we just need to be able to read the license key. The fishing implement was retained as potentially useful. Some extraneous cardboard and styrofoam was taped to a computer chassis box, which we then stuffed in to cover that corner and labeled, "Do not move me," "I live here," etc.

Four to six man-hours. Because a stressed-out handyman couldn't be bothered to do it right in the first place. At least there was significant amusement value.

Anger

At my parents' house this afternoon, our friends Doug and Deb were over. I say friends, but they're my parents' age, so they've been more like an aunt and uncle to me. Deb commented on how good I was looking. My father very proudly mentioned that I'm down over 50 lbs., now. I said that yeah, my knees say "thank you."

Dad said, "I'll bet Pete says thank you, too."

You have to understand, I was in the laundry room when he said this. So I didn't see his expression, the looks on his faces of everyone else present. But there was this moment of dead silence, like nobody could believe he'd said it.

Except me. I could believe it.

And as my mother pointed out that Pete has been dating me since I was much heavier, and as Deb stepped in to play peacemaker and mentioned that Doug loved her however she was, but they'd decided they were both too out of shape for the lifestyle they wanted to have, I sat in the laundry room and tried to decide how I felt.

I love my father. But it took me a lot of years to like him. When I was fifteen, I lost weight for the first time . . . and because I was given an unrealistic goal, I gained it all back over the following two years. He was always so proud of me when I was losing . . . and then so silent when it came back. That silence became condemnation. I had never realized how much I missed his approval until I actually had it. When it went away, I was pretty violently depressed.

My Jenny Craig nag (consultant) asked once, during this process, if my family was supportive. I said my mother was very supportive--she promised to buy me new underwear as long as I was shrinking out of the existing stuff. And my father . . . said nothing. And that was for the best. Because nothing he could say would make me happy. Not praise, not anything. Not after the last time. And I'm smart enough to know it.

Today, he said something. And I was not depressed. I was angry. Angry because I felt it was a sexist comment, because neither Pete nor I are lightweights, and I certainly wouldn't feel any differently about him if he gained or lost weight. Angry because I am an intelligent, compassionate, strong-willed, and vibrant woman, and with one sentence my father tried to reduce me to my weight. Angry because it took me twenty-one years to realize that I was beautiful, and that it had nothing to do with what was outside. Angry that he thought Pete could be that shallow. Angry that in the last fifteen years, one of us has learned to be a grown-up . . . and it's not my father.

It took me twenty-five years to learn to love myself in certain ways that are healthy. Once, that careless sentence would have crippled me. Because I would have believed him. I am stronger than that, now. And in that strength, I find anger.

I have spent nine years deciding that it takes two people to have an argument, and I refuse to be one of them with my father. I have spent a great deal of time unbuilding an internalization of my father as the enemy. He thinks my sister and I see him that way. We may have, once, to an extent. While he may have been unwittingly cruel with his words at some points during our childhood, we're all guilty of that, sometimes. Parents are human, too. He was never really the enemy.

Today, I finally realized that while he's not our enemy . . . in a way, he's his own.

Quote of the Week

"Was it worth such a cost, my harping?"
"Why, well worth it. I have remembered how to sing."


--Fionn Fionnbharr; Arafel, in The Dreamstone, by C.J. Cherryh

From the blog of a complete stranger

http://justinland.typepad.com/justinland/2004/01/marriage_and_ma.html

Unsettling

I'm talking via IM with my nephew right now. Not my-nephew-the-freak, but his older brother. For the sake of distinction, the older is G and the younger is C.

G seems like a good kid. He's got some issues, of course, but he grew up with an SCA sense of ethics and some martial arts training at a critical time. He's got a steadiness to him that C doesn't. G told me just now that he plans to go into the Army when he graduates. I know he was doing the high school ROTC program before his mother died and he got moved across the country to live with his grandfather.

I think this is an excellent thing for him. He's one of those people who I think thrives on discipline, but might get into trouble with a lack of it.

This made me wonder what's going to happen to C when his big brother goes off to join the Army. Mind you, it's a couple years from now, but C will only be in ninth grade or so.

Then I wondered what C will do after he graduates, six years from now.

Then I realized that I don't see him graduating.

Then I realized . . . I'm not sure I see him living that long. He bounced in and out of homeless shelters with his mom and had to deal with her string of deadbeat boyfriends. He's bisexual, and he's not exactly discrete about it. He has a history of drinking and drugs at the ripe old age of thirteen. He's been arrested. I think he's been in psych care once or twice. ADHD. History of cutting on self. Short of landing himself in treatment foster care, I don't think anything has a snowball's chance in hell of turning him around.

Somebody tell me what there is in the world for C? Before he graduates or after.

Overkill

I have an aesthetic preference for matches over lighters. Wooden matches, thank you, not the cardboard kind. And the big ones as opposed to the little ones.

Five or so years ago, it became depressingly difficult to find strike-anywhere matches. I had a little ceramic matches jar, and you could strike them on the bottom. I had to give it up and buy the big wooden kitchen matches and leave them in their box of 250.

I ran out of matches last week. I looked for more yesterday. Do you have any idea how difficult it's gotten to buy matches? It took me two stores and the assistance of a sales clerk. When I finally found them, they were behind the liquor counter. And there was no one at the liquor counter. I finally asked a beleaguered cashier and he told me just to walk behind it and get them. It's not like it was an open end; I had to open a gate to get back there.

I understand that we want to keep our children safe, but for gods' sakes, people, what ever happened to watching your kids? I don't care if it's matches or the internet, making the world safe for a five year old makes it awfully difficult for the rest of us. I resent the fact that it's as difficult to buy matches as liquor and more difficult to buy cold medicine than cigarettes. And easier to buy firearms than either--at least there's an illegal market for them.

Do you suppose there's an illegal market for strike-anywhere matches?

Archetypes

I was reading a friend's journal today, and he commented on being upset that a good character died in a movie he was watching. I was very surprised, because in my mind, the character wouldn't have been nearly as good . . . if he hadn't died. He fit an archetypal role--maybe not as ancient an archetype as the Hero, the Ingenue, or the Fool, but an archetype, nonetheless.

For the sake of convenience, let's call him the Expert. He's the grizzled old veteran who's been there and done that. He knows that the thing he's involved with can kill him. If it weren't deadly, he wouldn't respect it. If he didn't respect it, he wouldn't be fascinated by it. When he's faced with the prospect of his own death, he walks forward into danger, anyway.

He's not the hero; the hero survives. The Expert has to die at the hands of this thing that he understands, this thing that looms so large in his life. Anything less would be, in a way, demeaning to him. He maintains his respect of these forces larger than him right up until the moment that they kill him. If they didn't kill him, he wouldn't be right. His input would carry less weight. Instead, with death, he becomes larger than life to the survivors. The character has died, but his influence lives on in the lives of everyone who interacted with him.

Some examples of the Expert:

• Liet-Kynes, in Frank Herbert's Dune
• Robert Muldoon, in Jurrasic Park
• Hayes, in the recent Peter Jackson version of King Kong
• Quint, in Jaws
• Rieux, in Albert Camus's The Plague

Hmm. Looking at my list of examples, the Expert may be a post-modern archetype. I can't think of any examples back before a certain time.

Archetypes are not stereotypes. A stereotype is one particular instance of something that repeats so often it's cliched. When I say that, keep in mind that cliches become cliches because at one point, there was a great deal of truth in them. With the caveat that truth is in the eye of the beholder--stereotyping a particular race, for example, doesn't mean that that stereotype is or was true. It means that somebody looked through a specific set of cultural filters and saw the same thing over and over again, whether that thing was really there or not.

Archetypes are kind of backwards from this. Instead of being done to death, they're the roles you can't do without. The faces and facets may be different from instance to instance, but the role they fill is always the same. So . . . if I give you a list of heroes, I bet it'll make sense to you that they're all heroes, even though they're vastly different:

• Luke Skywalker, from the Star Wars films
• Hamlet, from William Shakespeare's Hamlet
• McMurphy, from Ken Kessy's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• Huckleberry Finn, from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn
• Neo, from The Matrix
• Lew Alton, from Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Heritage of Hastur (a Darkover novel)
• Ender Wiggin, from Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game
• Jack Sparrow, from The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

They all fill the hero's function, but if I did that right, they're pretty vastly different. So much so that it might make more sense of I broke it down like this:

Conquering Hero

• Luke Skywalker
• Ender Wiggin
• Harry Potter
• Anita Blake

Tragic Hero

• Neo
• Hamlet
• Winston Smith

Anti-Hero

• McMurphy
• Jack Sparrow
• Yossarian

The Fool

• Lew Alton
• Huckleberry Finn

They each run a different kind of story. The Fool isn't even properly a heroic category, but sometimes, that character functions in the hero's role. (I think this may also be a relatively recent development). If you let the Tragic Hero live, the whole story becomes vastly different. If the Conquering Hero has typically non-heroic qualities, again, you end up changing the overarching plot.

At a certain level, it becomes a design question. Some stories begin in birth and end in death. Some begin in death and end in birth. Some begin with a question and end with an answer. Some begin with a question and end with the understanding that there is no answer. Not every problem has to be solved.

Archetypal characters are the same way. Some have to come to the rescue. Some have to be in trouble. Some have to cause trouble. And some . . . have to die. To make you care about the story.

Meme

Have you ever . . .

• Taken a picture naked?

Not quite. Just barely. Given how into nude photography I am in general, this is a little odd. Chalk it up to not having found an enthusiastic photographer, yet. On the other hand, there are a number of dirty pictures of me hanging about on my hard drive. They're just not completely nude.


• Made out with a member of the same sex?

Yes.


• Danced in front of your mirror?

Yes.


• Told a lie?

Yes. I come from polite stock; little white lies are easy. Bigger lies . . . are also not that hard, which is not something I'm comfortable with. I have a lying face, one of those things I think of as Fox-based. And while I seldom use it, I figure it's there in case of emergencies. Violence, civil insurrection, the need to get off the school bus at the wrong stop . . . ;)


• Gotten in a car with people you just met?

Not without someone else along that I already knew. Though I have not necessarily known them in person.


• Been in a fist fight?

No, though as a kid I once hit somebody with a crutch. The one they were making fun of me for using. Everyone has a breaking point.


• Had feelings for someone who didn't have them back?

Who knows? For so long, I never let anyone know I had feelings about them.


• Been arrested?

Nope, and I'd like to keep it that way.


• Left your house without telling your parents?

Yup. Past a certain point, it wasn't required.


• Ditched school to do something more fun?

Nope. I was pretty dull until college, and at that point, they don't call it ditching.


• Slept in a bed with a member of the same sex?

Yes.


• Seen someone die?

Only if you count cats.


• Kissed a picture?

I'm not sure, so I guess I'll go with the spirit of the question, rather than the letter, and say "Yes." Mind you, it took me until my late twenties to be that girly for moments at a time.


• Slept in until 3?

Yup.


• Laid on your back and watched cloud shapes go by?

Yes. And sometimes, seen things there I wasn't meant to see.


• Played dress up?

Every chance I get. Mind you, my idea of playing dress-up tends to involve lingere and hooker shoes.


• Fallen asleep at work/school?

Um . . . not soundly enough to get in trouble for it. I was never stupid enough to put my head down on the desk, so when I started to nod, I'd start to fall over or my pen would fall out of my hand or something. I'm a light enough sleeper that those things wake me up.


• Felt an earthquake?

Yes.


• Touched a snake?

Yes. I like snakes.


• Ran a red light?

No. Almost ran a stop sign, once. This is why "unable to drive safely" is one of the reasons I'll actually stay home from work.


• Had detention?

Never. I was too dull.


• Been in a car accident?

Several.


• Pole danced?

No, but given enough training not to look dumb, I confess that I might. To entertain my boyfriend.


• Been lost?

Yes. In a foreign country, even.


• Sang karaoke?

Sing it? I can barely stand to listen to it.


• Done something you told yourself you wouldn't?

Yes. Sometimes, choices change on a moment-to-moment basis. So far, they have still not been unwise choices, and I hope to keep it that way. But I do suffer from having made the decision, somewhere in my middle twenties, that I would rather regret the things I've done than the things I haven't.


• Laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose?

There are several people who take great pride in exactly what they have made me snarf out my nose. The college dining hall accounts for most of this. But not all. Soda is bad and rice is really bad, but brownie is worse.


• Caught a snowflake on your tongue?

Yes.


• Kissed in the rain?

No. I've not really been into kissing at all, until I met Pete.


• Sang in the shower?

Oh, hell, I sing everywhere.


• Got your tongue stuck to a pole?

Nope.


• Ever gone to school partially naked?

Do mini-skirts count?


• Sat on a roof top?

Yeah. On the occasion of the eight-story rooftop, people were quite alarmed by my willingness to sit on the parapet. I feel about this the way I feel about bunk beds: I am no more likely to fall out of a space in a certain configuration if it's high above the ground than I am if it's one foot off the floor.


• Played chicken?

Not exactly, but I was in the car when kenilyn decided she was driving and the older of her younger brothers decided he wasn't moving. We were only going maybe five miles an hour when we hit him. I'd like to say this cured him of it, but I'm told there was a second incident at more like fifteen miles an hour before he got the idea.


• Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on?

Nope. As a result of being the only English major in a family of theatre majors, I haven't attended enough cast parties as an adult.


• Been told you're hot by a complete stranger?

Been told? No. Been whistled at out the window of a moving vehicle? Hehehe. Yes. It's kind of a morale-booster, actually.


• Broken a bone?

Cracked two. A toe and a collarbone. The toe I caught in a sidewalk crack getting off a schoolbus--how's tha for foolish? The collarbone I managed to stress fracture doing physical therapy, of all things. It was misdiagnosed twice before they sent me to the orthopedist, who x-rays everything on general principle. It was less than a week before my sister's wedding. My first thought was that if she had to alter a sleeve to go over a cast, she'd never forgive me.


• Mooned/flashed someone?

Nope. But I'm adventurous--take me to Mardi Gras. ;)


• Forgotten someone's name?

All the time. It's like my brain doesn't go on "record" during introductions. I have no idea why.


• Slept naked?

Yeah. I'd rather sleep in panties--a holdover from childhood with a swamp cooler. But occasionally, they're simply not handy.


• Blacked out from drinking?

Hell, I've never been more than mildly drunk. I don't think I'm missing anything. I'll do things sober that most people will only do, drunk. If the moment is right and it amuses me.


• Played a prank on someone?

Not by myself. I've been party to a few.


• Felt like killing someone?

Not literally. I want to smack our CEO on a fairly regular basis, but come to think of it, that's not literal, either.


• Made a parent cry?

Not that I know of.


• Cried over someone?

Oh yes.


• Had sex more than 5 times in one day?

Um . . . possibly. We weren't counting.


• Had/Have a dog?

Yeah. A Dalmatian that ate vegetables.


• Been in a band?

Nope.


• Drank 25 sodas in a day?

Gods, no. My kidneys are floating just thinking about it.


• Shot a gun?

If BB guns count.


• Lost track of a good friend?

Of someone who had been a good friend, yes. But without drifting apart first . . . only once. And that was on purpose, with great regret.

Surrealist joke #1

How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

(See comments for answer.)

What is it about doctors . . . ?

I have not yet had a doctor who had any difficulty talking to me about birth control. They raise the topic automatically when I go in for the annual check-up and pap smear. But doctors older than my generation do this suppressed freak-out when you express a desire to have a routine check for STDs.

First, they ask if you plan on getting pregnant. If I planned on getting pregnant, would I be asking about birth control? Then they ask if you had unprotected sex. No, I'm not stupid, I'm just also not foolproof. I scan my computer for virii even though I don't do dumb things. Why should my body be any different?

I finally told today's doctor to put down "STD exposure" under "reason," if that's what the insurance company needs to hear to make them happy. And this, boys and girls, is why you never ever have an HIV test done any way but anonymously.

Tuesday Morning Run-Down

Had a delightful weekend. Pete came down. He brought me roses. *blush* I can smell them right now. Did you know we were introduced a year ago last weekend? Heh, neither did I--I could have told you it was the middle of April, but he's the one who remembered the date. He swears he's not sure why, he doesn't remember other dates.

I took the cats to the vet this weekend. Cady has gained ten ounces over the last year. Boone's claws were almost grown around into her pads. I think the two are related--Boone doesn't chase her sister around as much anymore. She is also now going to be on antibiotics for five days a month, like clockwork. She's delighted; I have to put the meds in wet cat food in order to get her to take them.

Sunday night, I was appallingly tired. Monday morning I woke up with vertigo. Paint fumes did not make it any better. I cut out of work an hour early and promptly passed out for four hours. This is never a good sign. This morning, I'm nauseas and still tired. Oh well. Hopefully I'll get it out of my system before my vacations roll around.

Still no word from the travel agent on getting Pete onto the cruise. He's on the waiting list, but we'd have to find out in time for him to get a plane ticket. My mother has decided that prayer is in order--at any rate, it couldn't hurt. Think good thoughts for us. :)

I hope I didn't give him whatever this crap is that's making me sick.

Ironically enough, this morning is the annual check-up. Complete with a speculum in unpleasant places. And a mental note to talk to the doctor about birth control. And sea sickness patches. Which is how I come to be sitting at home at not quite eight o'clock, writing a blog post.

On the e-mail address front, I am leaning toward either retaining 'avalon' as a mercy to the reader, using simply 'coyote' with the expectation that some years down the road I may change it to some variant on fox, or using 'journey' and not explaining it. Though some small part of me thinks it would be amusing to use 'chariot,' which is the card that turned up in that silly "which tarot card are you" meme I did some weeks ago.

In work news, it is reported that as of Monday afternoon, we already had 50+ resume submissions for our two open positions. And that's just from the electronic postings; the thing never even went in the paper, due to the holiday. Hopefully we'll have enough good candidates that Mark feels we can start the interview process Real Soon Now. But I expect to spend a chunk of this week grading resumes--the idea is that Mark and I will each, independently, grade them and then see how close our results are. This will tell us if I can do this piece of the process the next time it becomes necessary.

Time to jump in the shower before running off to the doctor's office.

Quote of the Week

"The only difference between an ambulance and a hearse is slow driving and a black paint job."

--from The Dukes of Hazzard

And the icing on the cake . . .

We're losing our network administrator. Change of career. We have about a month. The timing could be worse. But not by much.

Lack of Imagination

So . . . I went and grabbed my domain, and now the e-mail address that I planned to use as my primary suddenly doesn't seem right. I was thinking 'coyotegirl,' but it's maybe a little too cute, and more, it's a little longer than I like. Anybody got any clever suggestions? I'm averse to using my own name for reasons of anonymity, and I'm going to use my initials as a professional address.

Interesting

http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html

An interesting juxtaposition. I find it entertaining to have a visual explanation for why I'm forever explaining to conservatives why libertarians aren't liberal, and to liberals why they aren't conservative.

Decisions, decisions

Okay, I have a recommendation on e-mail hosting. Now it's time for the really important decisions. Do I want to register '3shifters' or 'coyotebites'? The former is neutral enough that I can do professional e-mail through it. I'm not sure about the latter. But the latter is more fun. But I wonder if 'coyotebites' isn't asking for trouble. Generally speaking, I have to pay more attention to Coyote in my life than two my otehr two shifters, so it seems appropriate. But I have this mental image of Coyote shaking his head and asking if we really want to advertise that way.

Thoughts? Votes? Preferences on what you type when you send me e-mail?

The care and feeding of parents . . .

My mother is under the weather and has finished off all her books. She asked me to bring her a couple when I come over to do laundry tomorrow. I'm always delighted to hook my mother up with new reading material, so I went to my shelves and looked. She prefers science-fiction to fantasy and paperbacks to hardbacks. This narrows things to begin with, because I prefer hardcovers, so my paperback collection is small.

Then I had to look for items I thought my mother might enjoy. Because there are certain places where I know her sensibilities well enough to be cautious of them. She doesn't care for books where it's like you're thrown into a whole new language or metaphor, sink-or-swim, though she'll sometimes read them and just wish they weren't written that way. This rules out all my cyberpunk. And I know she's not big on violence in movies. I don't know for sure if this carries over to books or not, but better safe than sorry, so I ruled out anything where descriptions of violence are particularly graphic or overwhelming.

I almost pulled a particular book for her, and then stopped. Because the entire premise of the book is that mankind needs pain. That without it, we don't appreciate joy. My mother is one of those people who doesn't favor the bittersweet. I thought to myself, "Maybe it's something she needs to read." Because sometimes, in my life, my role is to beat people about the head and shoulders with truths they'd rather ignore. Then I thought, "Do I have any right to play that role for my mother? I know I don't want to." In the end, I left it on the shelf.

So I ended up with The Surveillance and The Metaconcert, by Julian May. The only two from that world that I have in paperback. I also grabbed Phantom, by Susan Kay, which I think she'll enjoy. And I pulled the first three of the Vlad Taltos books, by Stephen Brust--they're fantasy, but I think she might enjoy them. They're humorous, written in a fun voice, and they're not high fantasy--they're low fantasy, as it were. And there's a science to the method of magic. I almost grabbed the Abhorsen books, for one of the same reasons, but I'm not sure how she'd be with the theme.

Sooner or later, I'll have to start lending her hardcovers.

Words, words, words

I have noticed, over the last several weeks or work-chaos, that phone calls which begin with:

"I'm sorry to bother you, but . . . "

are generally issues that really do need attention Right Now, while phone calls which begin with:

"I know you're busy, but . . . "

generally indicate that the call her no idea how busy I am, or they wouldn't be calling me.

Quote of the Week

"There's a fine line between two breasts, and we draw it frequently."

--C. Morrison

Inanities

It will be three weeks before most of the rooms in our new offices have doors. Evidentally there is a door shortage on account of Hurricane Katrina. I wasn't quite sure how this had an effect. Pete suggests that building materials all get sucked into the rebuilding efforts.

It's a good thing there are already doors on the bathrooms. Now if only the paint were dry.

Narnia

I saw The Chronicles of Narnia tonight. I was struck by how very much I am Fox.

I also suddenly realized that I've never actually read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Someone read it to me once, I think. I know bits of it. But stories I've heard never stick quite the same way as stories I've read.

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