botany and prepositions

A few sprigs of chives have sprung up through the poison ivy next to the sidewalk outside my office building.

Literal truth just begging for symbolism.

not a sequel, not a prequel, 1984.1?

Is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead a parralelquel?

Has anyone written a parralelquel about a guy who monitors the 2-way TV's in 1984?  He probably works in a cubicle among many.  His life is probably not too different from Winston Smith's.  My guess is there are folks now with similar jobs in nursing homes or prisons.

They must have some rules as to what kind of activity to report.  Probably lists of boring rules, with jargon.  I bet there's official jargon, for reporting activity, and slang that the monitors use for joking about the people they're forced to watch all day and night long.  I mean the 1984 folks, particularly, but I imagine it exists to some extent in real life.

I remember a high-tech day care center that would give parents a secure URL/Web address so they could watch their kid from their PC at work.  It is a reassuring feature for guilty/worried/lonesome parents.  But with some disturbing implications.

decent weekend

Saturday skating with Rafi.
Sunday Avatar with Zoe.
Got past page 100 in #1B1T and read some 21st century Ray Bradbury too.
Monday managed to swim before work.
O.K. Now work.   :^)

Rafi's haircut

First off, she looks adorable with it.  She was already adorable, and beautiful, but sometimes, as the day wore on, she looked... well like she could use some attention to her hair. 

Second, I've wanted her to have a short hair cut for years because

• I thought it would look good because she always looked great with her hair tied back. 
• Half the time she is off to school before anyone brushes her hair.  By the time I see her Friday night at Aikido her hair is often a disaster.

Third: I did not trick her the way my mother tricked me.  When I was 6, my mother asked me in a bright voice:  "Would you like a pixie cut?" and that sounded so magical I said yes.  I didn't know it would mean cutting my hair off.  I remember crying in bed that night missing my hair.  In defense of my mother, when I look at my first grade photo with the pixie cut I must admit it's a lot cuter than the 2nd grade photo of me with longer hair.

Remembering the pain of that pixie cut, I did not use trickery.  I used propaganda.  I asked Natalie to cut my hair short first.  Then I asked Rafi, "Do you want a short hair cut like Mommy?"  Rafi said "Yes!"  And her hair cut came out even better than I expected.  I'm amazed at how cute she looks.  She's pleased with herself.  That's the best part.

I, alas, don't look as good with a pixie cut as I did when I was 6.  No photos until it grows out.

Fourth:  Propaganda may not have been needed.  She had already taken a scissors to her own hair a few weeks earlier.  She wanted her hair cut.

As to donations, yes I would like it if it went to a child who could use it.  We'll measure it and send it off if it is 12".  I am too much an animist to send my 6-year old daughter's precious talisman of a braid to wipe up nasty oil spills.  My hair clippings, fine, but they've gone up Natalie's vacuum cleaner already.

on route 3 south this morning...

A pickup pulls in front of me in traffic.  It's a large olive drab Nissan Titan.  If it gets into an accident, will the police report be titled "Crash of the Titan"?

milk and sugar with that?

Years ago I weaned myself from loving cream in coffee down to only liking skim milk.  Now I find even half-in-half makes coffee undrinkable.  Whole milk, on the edge.

• really great coffee is great black and wrecked by sugar.
• somewhat bad coffee is drinkable only with sugar
• really bad coffee is undrinkable
• some great but strong coffee, such as some espresso, is improved by milk
• some mediocre coffee is best with both milk and sugar
• turbinado is the best sugar for coffee
• sometimes turbinado adds flavor to bland tea, but white sugar is better in mate or mate with tea

cheesecake is easy!

I baked a surprisingly good cheesecake last weekend, and it was rather easy.

I mainly followed the Joy of Cooking recipe for "cheesecake cockaigne", though I left out the sour cream topping, and that was just fine with my husband, kids, and me.

The crust was supposed to be graham cracker, but I couldn't find any when we started this, so we ground up oat-flake-cluster cereal with corn flakes. (The kids had fun squishing the crumbs in the cereal bag, by rubbing a mug over it.)  Then I noticed that the tub of cream cheese that I thought we needed to use up and thus the reason for the start of the project wasn't full at all--in fact we didn't have enough cream cheese, so we shelved the crumbs until I had purchased more cream cheese and actual graham crackers.

So the crust was about 2/3 ground up cereal flakes and 4 graham crackers--to make 2 cups of crumbs.

I mixed it with just enough slices of softened butter in a glass pie plate until I could smoosh it around the edges into a crust.  Baked it at 350 F while making the cheese filling.
The recipe for graham cracker crust called for adding sugar, but that seemed ridiculous, so I ignored it.

The cheesecake filling was a mixture of whipped cream cheese, regular cream cheese, a bit of cottage cheese and 2/3 pound packet of "neufchatel" lowfat cream cheese.  It was supposed to be one and a half pounds of cream cheese. I'm not sure how close I came to that amount.
The recipe's cup of sugar seemed too much, so I added about 4/5 cup.
Then whipped it all together with the marvelous Kitchenaid mixer (so happy to have purchased one at last!)
I added the 3 "large" eggs, one at a time like the instructions said.
The recipe called for almond or vanilla extract.  Almond sounded better, but I couldn't find any, so added vanilla.  Then a dollop of real maple syrup.

Blended it so that it was mixed and poured it into the pie plate.  Turned the oven temp up to 400 F.  Baked about 40 minutes.

It came out light, fluffy, kind of like a cheese souffle. 

And what remained was still good days later when taken out of the fridge.

Definitely didn't need a sour cream topping.  Would be a nice thing to take to a party.

improvements needed on facebook (or whatever replaces it)

• Allow me to filter out the Virtual World games

I want to know how you are doing. I don't care about your virtual farm or mafia world.

• As soon as you add a friend, you should be prompted for the name of a group.

Everyone is not the same sort of friend. "Friends" belong to different interest and social groups. I like hearing about all my facebook friends. I don't need to remind those in California to go to our town meeting. There are friends to whom I'd like to chat about a Tim Burton-esque moment, and many facebook "friends" whom I would not want to bother with that stuff.

Thus whatever replaces facebook will be something with a natural easy interface for adding friends to appropriate groups, and easily sending messages to groups. Some "friends" would be in several groups, of course.

I should be able to sort them into privately decided on groups. I should also be able to define public names for groups into which my "friends" can sort themselves. All of this should be extremely easy to do and not require me to read directions as to how to do it. It must be intuitive.

When you "confirm" someone as a friend, you should get a popup asking what publicly-defined groups you'd like to be in. For example:

• Margie's Movie and TV Discussions
• Guinea Pig willing to read Story Drafts
• Tell me about the kids. Photos please.
• All the minutiae about your day, really.
• Issues relating to our town's public schools
• People who might buy my sculptures

Democracy makes 49% mad

All this talk of "the people are against this" and this bill is being "shoved down our throats" ignores the fact that there was an election, and a majority of the people voted for the Democrats. Health Care reform was a major platform under which the Democrats campaigned. We got what the majority voted for. That's how democracy works. When I compare expenditure on Health Care to that on a bloody unnecessary war entered into by our previous, Republican, Administration, I'd say the Democrats are wiser at spending our money, and lives.

$5 for a box of summer

California raspberries in February.

Notes on Boskone panel: The Heroine's Journey

The Hero's journey is physical with internal parallel.
Archtypical Joseph Campbell, orphaned baby, foster parents, journey to end in becoming Wise Old King.
Real people make things for work and find a partner and have kids.
Getting Back what you lost.
Isis: Putting pieces of a man together so you can have a baby.
Greer: Girls in labyrinths.  Eilonwy and her bauble.
LeGuin's Tahana irritated other writers to write better.  Wizard of Earthsea vs Tombs of Ituan.
Theme of Escaping constricting female role.
Bujold: Women inherit from mother-in-law.  Go out and stay out.
Ista was stuck back at home.  At 40 she tries again.
Bujold was given credit for writing about a middle aged woman.  Someone in the audience remembered a crack about a 50-year-old heroine entering a dragon's lair:  Is it hot in here or is that just...
Bujold:  Women attract men.  Men defeat other men and get the woman automatically.  That's why men and women are both looking at men.
Bujold:  Not just the guy's story and flip it.  What is woman's power?
Janet Kagan's Mirabile.
Goddesses Priestesses figures, mother role.
Nanny Ogg - Middle Aged.
Demeter--Balbo lifts skirts and dances to make Demeter laugh.
Writing a Woman's Life.
Christopher Broockmeyer's tale of an Action-Adventure Grandmom: All Fun and Games

the best quote I heard at Boskone 2010

was when Verner Vinge said:

That humans will be here in a million years is kind of depressing.  There should be something much better around that we made or that we became.

 It reminded me of how we tell our kids we want them to be better than us, not take after us.

Rafi on the Boskone Badge

The Artist guest of honor at Boskone was John Picacio.  They used one of his cover illustrations for the Badge.  We noticed that the child in the image looked a lot like Rafi.  I tried to snap a photo of Rafi before leaving for the con Sunday morning but ran out of time and didn't manage to get the angle just right.

Edgy Mr Ed

This morning my husband was talking about how prime time television used to have more innocent shows with fantasy elements--like I Dream of Jeanie, Bewitched, and Mr Ed.

"Mr Ed, a talking horse.  A kid's show in prime time," I said, but then amended,  "No.  It was suitable for kids, but it wasn't a kid's show.  Because Mr Ed wasn't about a talking horse.  It was about a man who was frustrated with his wife and his small town middle class life.  His wife thinks he's a dolt, but he has this talking horse like a superman secret identity superpower."

"I never thought of it that way," said my husband. "He is frustrated with his wife--he probably married her straight out of high school.  The horse is his superman alter-ego.  That would be how to remake the show.  Have Wilbur be obviously psychotic, with Mr Ed just talking in his mind."

That led to whether Slaughterhouse Five should be interpreted as literal science fiction time travel, or as the character being psychotic, or as Magical Realism.

arisia 2010: silver costume

I didn't take many photos at Arisia. Here are two of people I don't know.

Someone needs to reinvent galoshes.

They're practical.  I'm tired of having to change my shoes when I'm running in and out.  There's also the puddle-sock hazard.
The old galoshes and rubbers were difficult to remove.  And they acquired a hopelessly un-Cool reputation.  Someone is going to re-invent galoshes, make them Cool, and make lots of money.

Arisia 2010

Ro helped Rafi with her Kamikazi Kids Pink Sparkle French Princess costume.

Pie helped Zoe with her Kamikaze Kids Phoenix costume.

Unicorn-C sold at the Art Auction!

Commercials we stop channel-surfing to watch

Currently, it's the American Express commercial with the frowns and then the smiles.  If commercials are engaging, sponsors don't have to worry about Tivo.

Four strings, eight dollars.

I bought a "First Act Discovery" ukulele for Hanukah on Sunday.  We gave it to Rafi, but she agreed to share it.  Sunday night, I looked on the web for how to play it.  Found a great on-line ukulele tuner. I wish I could find a similar page for lute.  There was also http://www.theuke.com, which has learn to play in 3 minutes (1 chord) or 4 minutes (another chord), and free sheet music with tablature.  Printed out jingle bells, home on the range, and auld lang syn.  Now we're all set.  Let's see who actually ends up playing it.  If any of us.  Lots of fun, the bit I did.  It did come out of tune after one attempt at Jingle Bells.  Is that normal?

Rafi raisin dog face

What a clever little girl!