(Posted here for reference. At twitter, I'm "yeff")

• 19:56 Stella Artois, indian food cooking, holiday music, warm house - it's a good evening! #fb #

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I was in a foul mood driving up to the farm and couldn’t figure out why until Jeremy suggested that maybe, just maybe it had something to do with the fact that my pony had died? And while it doesn’t actually change anything, even stating the root cause in unambiguous words does seem to make it more tractable somehow. Defining the problem domain. I hadn’t realized, either, that Reg and Thussy had demolished the old farmhouse – more of a farmhovel, really – and that the new, architect-designed, passive solar, rainwater and greywater reclamation house was nearly finished.

It is beautiful. I admire it especially because it has two bedroom/study/bathroom arrangements, one at each end. I call them Reg and Thussy’s sulking corners. They are finally moving in together after only twenty years – I hope they’re not rushing it, they’re both very young – and they’re a couple who expresses love through bickering, not that Jeremy and I would know anything about that. Sulking corners seem to me to be a fine contribution to domestic architecture. There should be more of it.

My godparents were in rare form. I got Reg to explain a bit more about his adventures after the war, as a gun runner for the Australian arms dealer Sid Cotton. It was 1947. Reg, just out of the RAF which he had lied about his age to get into – he only survived the war because he was sent to Canada as a flight instructor – got a call about a job. He sensed that something was up when he turned up to a meeting with Cotton, Don Bennett, the creator of the Pathfinder Force, and a third man who he recognized as a very close advisor to then-leader-of-the-opposition Winston Churchill. Oh, and Osman Ali Khan, the Nizam of Hyderabad and the richest man on earth.

After partition Hyderabad and its Muslim Nizam found themselves surrounded by Hindu India. With aid from Pakistan, and with the de facto support of the British shadow cabinet, the Nizam hoped to establish an independent Hyderabad. Cotton supplied six planes. Reg’s job was to fly arms out of Geneva to Karachi, in Pakistan, and then onto Hyderabad. They lost two planes to poorly packed cargo – rifles and anti-aircraft guns. Reg barely made it out of Hyderabad ahead of two Indian air force bombers, who cratered the runway from which he had taken off. He lost his pilot’s license and went to what was then Rhodesia to earn it back – anecdote here about a friend who was killed by an elephant – and after flying briefly for British European Airways he became a Qantas captain, which is how he ended up in Australia, building a house with my Austrian godmother. Truly, the twentieth century was an age of wonders.

I dropped the family at home and headed out to Mike’s birthday drinks, which was perfectly lovely once I finally managed to sort out which Darlinghurst watering hole is which. It was at the Beauchamp, no, the Burdekin, no, the Beresford. People of Sydney please could you disambiguate these a little? Uncles Barnaby and Rob came over for dinner. Barnes gave us a laser show with lasers he had built himself; as we were washing up Rob and I had a moment of bonding over being Ric’s in-laws, and just missing him so very much. Today was errands: passport photos, exercise books, a failed assault on the post office. This afternoon was occupied with wushu, taiji, music theory and long phone chats with Mum and Kay. And here are Jeremy and Jan back from visiting Ric.

Mirrored from Yatima.

Item the first: For anybody who thinks they might want a Giant Ridiculous Dogge on their very own, my mom and her partner have a bitch in whelp, and are expecting puppies on the ground in January if all goes well.

You can read thecoughlin's informational post here. If that intrigues you, the Eiledon Briards website is here.

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Item the second: Climbed tonight with buymeaclue and TBRE and The Jeff. Did not climb particularly well, mind you, but I did get out there. Better luck on Monday. *g*

I really love Jen the Horse Vet. I realized the other day that not being able to lift heavy things for the next few weeks includes water buckets. Not a problem while hubby isn't in school, but once he goes back he doesn't have time to carry them. The hose is unreliable in winter, plus a pain in the ass to drag to where I need it. I said to Jen the other day that I hadn't quite figured out how to deal with this yet and she said I could borrow her 65 gallon trough, which is about enough water for a week. I could have cried. I have three places I can put it, each one is not perfect, but I'll figure it out.

I spent an hour today scrubbing out frozen algae. She apologized for the state of the trough, but I figure if she had any idea anyone other than her was going to see it this winter she would have scrubbed it thoroughly in the fall. I already knew I was extremely lucky that my vet lives across the street/next door, but this is just... above and beyond.

I work pretty damned hard at being strong and smart about all this cancer stuff, but sometimes the horror of it all overtakes me again, flashing by like an S-class Mercedes on the autobahn.

Then all I've got left in my hand is tears.

Oh, well. At least I was in the shower. And it proves I still have a heart.

Around 600 words on The White City today, and still waiting for it to tell me how it goes. I wrote the last scene (denouement), and the closing sentence, but I'm missing like four scenes that comprise the climax.

It's interesting writing Sebastien in a situation where he is NOT in charge.

Tomorrow is a work day. God damn it. I will have focus and I will get somewhere.

Well, time to stare at it  for a while again.

Teacup today: cabbage roses, a gift from ctwriter.
Tea today: Mokalbari East
Temperature this morning: a balmy fiftyish


Sebastien is having a fraught conversation with somebody he's never met before, who knows him uncomfortably well. I have just skipped the climax and am working on the denouement.

ETA: And a very brave neighborhood cat is apparently using our back porch as a base of operations, as there are two Green Bits (TM) on the steps. I wonder if that was the end of our Kitchen Smouse.

Finished candles.

I really like the blue one.

I should eat something and work for a bit before it's time to go climbing with buymeaclue, The Jeff, and TBRE.

In other news, the rain and warmth came overnight, and now the snow is gone. It was a special delivery, just for Christmas.

I've been talking a lot lately about sex and cancer, about the overwhelming aspects of chemo, the impact of cancer on my circle of intimates, friends and family. But it has had other, less obviously dramatic impacts on my life, some of which are still very strong.

One of the most basic changes is not particularly TMI, which is that my sleep metabolism shifted substantially after the colonic resectioning of May, 2008. When I emerged from the immediate post-operative recovery period (during which one sleeps twelve or fourteen hours a day, or more), I found myself sleeping six hours per night instead of my classic seven and half or eight. This was a welcome surprise, and I immediately leveraged it to expand and firm up my exercise regimen.

So one of the frustrations of this round of surgery has been the intense oversleeping during recovery. I'm down now to six or seven hours per night, which tells me I'm at the tail end of the substantial recovery. Which is to say, I still have healing wounds, internal pain, range of motion issues, etc., but I'm a lot more myself. One of my chemo fears is that the sleep will spiral back up. Fatigue and lassitude are classic, and basic, side effects of chemotherapy.

Because I use those waking hours. That's how I sustain a Day Jobbe, parenting, a writing career, a love life, a social life, and still get laundry done. I'm not superhuman, I'm just awake and energetic more than most people. The eighteen hours a day I've been used to was a gift of the first Excellent Cancer Adventure. This round of New Adventures in Cancer threatens to take it away. Not pleased, me. Not pleased.

( Under cut for digestive health TMI. )

Your Sunday moment of zen.



Wildlife in rural Montana. © 2006, 2009 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

manmela with a mixed reaction to Mainspring [ Powell's | Amazon thb | Barnes & Noble | Borders | Audible ]

Ta-Nehisi Coates shows Herman Melville some literary love

Vintage Soviet era holiday cars — And more of them!. Stastliva nova godina, y'all.

12 'sexy' ads that will give you nightmares — Decidedly NSFW link. Brain bleach may be required. You have been warned. (Thanks, I think, to wllyumtx.)

Get your mass handed to you — Higgs boson for sale on eBay.uk, via Bad Astronomy. I love geek humor.

And speaking of geek humor, Science Tattoo Emporium — Now that be some awesome ink. (Via Language Log.)

Applied Materials moves solar expertise to China — Along with their CTO. A major American high tech manufacturer has shifted their innovation center of gravity to China. A powerfully symbolic move that is part of a process that has been going on for years, but what does that say about this country's role in shaping the future?

?otD: What did you give for Boxing Day?

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12/27/2009
Body movement: n/a (60 minute urban walk forthcoming)
Hours slept: 6.75
This morning's weigh-in: 225.5
Currently reading: Living With Ghosts by Kari Sperring

Total: 95,398 words.

...To be honest, I haven't been keeping exact track of my daily word-count, but on Christmas Eve and Christmas it was pretty minimal. So tomorrow: WRITE WRITE WRITE OR DIE.

On the bright side: Chapter 15 is now finished, so tomorrow I guess my objective is Chapter 14. This one is basically an excuse for several people to talk about their feeeelings with some explosions tacked on at the end, so it should be really easy or really hard. (Or both?)

And *then* I can start Chapter 16, which is when everybody goes to pseudo-India and things really kick into high gear.

(Posted here for reference. At twitter, I'm "yeff")

• 19:52 "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball." #fb #

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Just finished and filed my review of Sherlock Holmes for Tor.com (short version: it was awful and I loved it), and before that, I made some candles. See, I used to commit chandlery fairly often but had fallen out of the habit, and yesterday cristalia mentioned she was thinking of taking it up, which inspired me to break out the wax and crayons.



I'm still staring meaningfully at The White City, trying to figure out how the damed thing works. It would be nice if I could finish it by year's-end. But it all depends on if the story tells me how it ends.

 I guess tomorrow I start rereading it again.

It's finally raining out there, and the wind is gusting fiercely, but it's 41 degrees, which seems positively balmly.

calendula_witch explains today better than I can. Easy travel (relatively), quiet day, family stuff. All quiet here in the Witchnest, with the_child watching anime on her laptop and me about to sink back into Living With Ghosts, a very fine book by la_marquise_de_.

Most importantly, I'm back with calendula_witch. Yay!

Miri thinks the hole I was clearing to put the new rice cooker in the cupboard was really for her.

Apparently two of my 2008 novellas, "America, Such as She Is" (from Alembical), and "In the Forests of the Night" (from METAtropolis) are currently Nebula eligible, due to a fillip in the rule changeover. If you're a SFWA member and would like to see either of them, please let me know.

Quick post through my iPod now that I'm in Atlantic city and have free wireless.

Way, way too much rain. But I'm glad it isn't snow.

My sister said 'no presents'. She lied.

Saw Avatar and Sherlock Holmes. My recommendation? Rent Holmes. Go fucking see Avatar, in 3D if possible, holy fuck yeah.

My mom made me a totally awesome pair of pink and purple socks!



I guess now I get to sit and stare and think about how to fix The White City so it works. Maybe I will spin and listen to NPR. That seems a sitting and staring sort of occupation.

So close to the end. So close. Two ot three days' work, if I can just figure out what the work should be.

Meanwhile, today's teacup is one sent to me by stwish, made by his friends at Earthbound Arts (I also have a mermaid and a faerie queene--ornaments--from there, and both are lovely)  And today's tea is the last of the crepe faire from Stash--the last crepe faire ever, I suspect, as they've discontinued the flavor.