incandragon

I've been slacking on regular posting, which I will try to fill in with backdates. Still I'd like to get one post done before my trip to Austin, since I suck at updates while I'm on a trip.

Have I mentioned I'm headed back to Austin for a week?

Anyhow ... the most notable thing that happened to me recently is that the acupuncturist accidentally left a needle in my leg. I'm not sure how far in those suckers are supposed to go ... either much farther than I thought, or I smacked it while I was getting up.

Now, don't be alarmed: I didn't feel a thing. Not even a pinch. But as I was getting dressed I looked down and saw the hilt of one of those things sticking out of me. So, I thought, I can call the acupuncturist while I'm mostly naked and don't even have a sheet on me so he can remove it professionally, or I can just Pull. It. Out. Myself.

I did, and about two inches more steel came out of my body than the inch I was somehow expecting. It was nutsy.

I could feel the sensation of pulling something out of my body, but no pain.

And that, my friends, is quite likely was the single most macho moment of my life.

This morning we discussed how, if you're going to be a serial killer, right next door to a head-cheese making facility isn't a bad place to be. People blame the smell on the head-cheese. (I do feel sorry for the sausage guys in that grisly story. There's no way you can scrub your factory clean enough to compensate for a serial killer next door.)

Then we discussed how nice it must be for a company to go to extra effort for a customer (in this case, sending an extra photo print to the customer because the size they asked for was "not easily frame-able," and then discovering that your customer was the Wall Street Journal, secret shopping you).

Tomorrow's conversation will almost certainly be how long it has been since the military has executed a soldier following a court martial, and what modern-day method could be expected for a soldier these days. To quote a friend's elderly uncle ... it sure seems like lethal injection is a "slap on the wrist."

High-quality leather books (aka "pretty books"), hardbacks, paperbacks, Kindle, and iPhone -- I really like them all, but not for the same reason. I wish there were one version that didn't have a flaw.

I didn't think that I'd like the Kindle enough to justify the money, but the fact that it has an instant-access dictionary is a huge thing in my world. I don't have to guess from context ... and something like "zareba" doesn't really carry a whole lot of contextual imagery unless you actually know what the heck it is. The ability to change the size of the text is great. So is ... and this is almost embarrassing ... the ability to get all cozy in bed and be able to easily manipulate the book with one hand.

I didn't think I'd like the iPhone reader, but it's just dandy. It's easy to read, easy to manipulate, and it's always with me when I have to wait an extra 5 or 15 minutes. I'm grumpy that it doesn't have a dictionary, though. That's now my baseline requirement for an e-book reader.

I enjoy reading paperbacks, but I really hate how short their lifespan is. I have multiple series that I've had to replace one or more times because the book's lifespan is a dozen years or half a dozen reads, whichever comes first. And I begrudge the space a paperback takes if I never read it again.

Pretty books ... yum. I wish there were more titles offered in archival-quality, leather-bound, permanent ribbon bookmark format. Usually only tried and true literature gets bound in leather ... but there are all sorts of titles I'd love to have on my "top shelf." But then there's the price. Le Sigh.

I really wonder what the book industry will consider standard in twenty years.

My sister's statement "Well, maybe I got confused, because tomorrow was such a long day" reminds me of the worst job I ever held.

At that company, the rules were arbitrary and VERY strictly enforced, and I was expected to perform duties I had no idea how to do. The head boss yelled (YELLED!!) at any and every mistake. I was a temporary receptionist for two months there and just about had a nervous breakdown.

At one point I was trying to make copies (you have no idea how stressful that can be until your boss screams at you for doing it wrong) and when I got back to my desk there was a man sitting in my chair.

I gave a little shriek.

The guy looked at me in surprise, and I said, "OH! It's you! Thank goodness! I thought it was me sitting over there, and that would be scary because I know I'm still in the copier room."

Yeah. That place had me rattled.

(The end of the story is that when my two-month tour was over, the company tried to hire me permanently. I mean, they tried really hard ... up to and including an executive from Italy talking to me on the phone. Turns out the longest anyone else had stayed in the position was three days. The shortest was half a day ... that receptionist called her doctor, described her heart attack-like symptoms, and was told "Get out of there, now.")

I’m told that there was once a wise old elder in China who, when he saw the animals all start to act strangely, made everyone move out of the buildings because he was sure an earthquake was coming. It was winter and no one thought it was fun (or necessary) to camp in the cold, but he insisted that the animals were all acting so strangely that surely an earthquake was coming. For three days he made everyone stay outside, because the animals hadn’t returned to normal.

On the third day, a massive earthquake came and flattened all the buildings in town.

I hope they built a statue to him, or at the very least said “You betcha” when he said “I told you so” every day for the rest of his life.

I’ve got earthquakes on the brain. It’s because I’m reading Echoes of Fury, and when a volcano blows up, there are earthquakes. It’s an interesting experience to be thinking about earthquakes in while actually living in Washington, because … well, in Texas, earthquakes are essentially mythological creatures.

( Once upon a time, Lycangeek went to California... )

I do, in fact, suck at sympathy. But seriously, where I come from you can die from wind, sun, rain, or quite a few combinations, and/or critters of all sorts, but the earth just stays put.

It drives me nuts that there is no stained glass supply shop convenient to me. Seriously, I'm two miles from the factory that makes, what? a third? half? of the stained glass in the United States, and I either have to drive to Seattle or pop in during the bizarro hours of the one store in Eastside.

It's like living in Damascus, and being unable to buy an anvil.

In other news, Lycangeek fixed the porch light. I normally do stuff like that, but it turns out that this problem required programming. And a new bulb.

Oh, and we lost track of Nigel at the leash-free park for 5-10 minutes. That's like three months in worrywart years.

Here's what happens on Halloween at my house. I prefer to hand out the "good" stuff at Halloween. You know, recognizable candy bars (preferably chocolate), not just lollipops. So does Lycangeek. And of course, it would be terrible if we ran out early, right?

So, I buy too much candy, and then Lycangeek buys too much candy "just in case," and then the kids don't start to show up until 7:30 even though it was dark at six and we begin to say things like "maybe we should just turn off the porch light if no one is going to come by," and simultaneously we panic that we have too much candy ... so when the first caped crusader comes up, we say, "Take a fistful."

"Take a fistful" to a child translates to "cram your hand in as hard as you can, and then use the psychic power of your lust for sugar to pull a zillion bars out."

Alas, desire for massive amounts of candy doesn't mean diddly when you have a handspan of three inches. But, boy, they try.

This year I used the carni-counter to tally up the children who came to my door (20), so maybe next year I'll have some empirical evidence with which to apply brakes on the candy purchase. We'll see. Meanwhile, Lycangeek's new team gets a sugar rush on Monday.

For those people who want to experience everything before they die, to your bucket list please add having your gall bladder expressed by a peppermint-and-lime scented tree-hugger crushing your thumb and clavicle with her pincer-like fingers. Insist that she gently mutter "I know" every time you shriek.

I felt much better afterward, but there's a chance that's on account of pain gating.

My jack-o-lantern has developed blueish-green fuzzy mold in its left eye and inside its mouth. It's much scarier that way, akshully.

Although nowhere near as scary was what a neighbor of mine, back in Austin, did. She left the dang thing out until it returned entirely to nature. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, slime to slime. That was, in fact, a truly horrifying Halloween decoration.

So I found a second decent barbecue place in Monroe, which is a town about twenty minutes from my house. That made the second decent barbecue place I've found, and it's weird that they were both in the same podunk little place.

Which is actually neither here nor there. The interesting point is that it's really pulled out of the woodwork people's ideas and opinions about Barbecue, the Experience.

Not counting the home-cooked stuff, I think "good barbecue" should be divided into ( three categories: )

The first time Nigel refused to eat his food, we immediately hauled his fuzzy butt to the vet. That's because we'd never had a picky eater for a dog before. For $80, they told us to try a different flavor dog food for variety. Nigel ate it, it was fine.

Today Nigel didn't eat his kibble. Fair enough. I tried another kind of kibble. He ignored it. So I -- last resort -- gave him a cup of milk.

He ignored it.

I started preparation for taking him to the vet. Then I had an idea.

I gave him a piece of cornbread. Which he deigned to eat. Stupid dog.

Then he drank the milk. Then he ate his kibble.

Have I mentioned that my acupuncturist is from Louisiana? Yes, he is. The whole thing is very odd when someone with a southeast accent tells me that the reason my shoulder is borked isn't because I napped on the floor ... it's because I've got a "wind cold" issues from hiking in the chill damp.

I carved a pumpkin. Kalluna taught me the craft of felting. It was a lovely time using the studio:

We were going to look at the leaves in Steven's Pass, but on the way there we saw a waterfall in the distance. It was very pretty, so when we saw the sign to turn left for Wallace Falls State Park, we did.

That was a pretty impressive deviation for my "by the list" husband.

Well, I learned a few things. Firstly, I learned that 3.5 miles at "medium difficulty" is just about as much as I can physically do. My lifemate and dogmates were all very patient and supportive as I lagged, and puffed, and stopped to take many pictures.

Such as:

I'm narrating a book about the explosion of Mt. St. Helens (and will be for most of the next year). It's a non-fiction book that reads a lot like a novel. Lots of description, dialog, etc. Anyway, it follows the adventures of various people who were on the volcano when it blew.

I'm at the beginning of the book, which describes what these people did when the volcano blew up. Let me say that again. What they did when the VOLCANO they were STANDING on BLEW UP. This wasn't just a little burp. It fricking EXPLODED.

Seriously? Most people ran around getting their crap together prior to running like mad. I'm saying, they loaded their tent in the trunk, scurried around trying to find their purse or camera or ROLL OF FILM or dig their car out of the mud even though their buddy has a truck that's working fine.

Although, to be fair, the one guy who truly appreciated the enormity of the being on an exploding volcano didn't hold onto his sanity for very long.

Getting a Cranial-Sacral massage is the second most woo-woo thing I've ever done, and I must say it's good work if you can get it. She tugged my skin at a rate of a centimeter per half hour, and told me my sacrum was horribly compacted and veers to the right, and that my spinal fluid had to travel down a hose that was "kinked."

Just take this as a sign that I either have too much money or I'm just that sick and tired of my migraines.

Whatever. I cap it at four more times. I will keep the world posted of my migraines, because I know everyone is that interested.

I went to a new dentist today. Methinks this guy is used to Microsoft insurance, but that's just a guess. Halfway through the checkup, I thought to myself "If the Secret Service thought that my teeth were going to be used in an assassination attempt, they could not possibly examine them more closely than this." I had digital x-rays taken. I had panoramic x-ray taken. I had each tooth photographed individually, and anything suspicious was shot with a laser to determine if it was a cavity, or just pitting.

Seriously, the dental hygienist had an earbug and microphone that she used to keep in communication contact with the receptionist and assistant. At least one machine was voice-controlled.

When they were done, they gave me a gamut of options. ("Nice teeth, but ...")

So, I could have a root canal, a new crown, my gums trimmed, and my bite corrected with braces and jaw surgery. Or, you know, just wait another six months and get my teeth cleaned again. Whatever.

Sigh.

I've discovered that one of my favorite medical phrases is "we'll keep an eye on that." I don't need to have everything but everything fixed. I just don't want anything to be creeping in the shadows without me knowing about it.

My new vet, when she heard that Zoe had to have surgery for bladder stones, said, "Oh, how nervous making! It would probably be a good idea to check her urine every two or three months, to make sure she hasn't started an infection, and that her Ph is in the right zone."

I felt like I'd come home.

Lycangeek and I took the dogs for a walk. My goal was to take pictures of leaves in various autumnal colors. Red is too easy, I wanted a perfect orange, a perfect yellow, and one of those funky purples that happens when a tree just can't make up its mind.

A block into the walk, it began to rain. Not mist, mind you, but a real, hard-smacking rain. With thunder even. So I took what pictures I could without letting the camera get waterlogged.

Lycangeek likes the rain, and throughout the whole walk was planning how he was going to change into his loungy pants, and make tea, and have a cookie, and read by an open window so he could have his tea and cookie and book all while listening to the marvelous rain and theatrical thunder.

Yes, the rain stopped when we were one house away from home, and by the time the water was boiling, the sun was so bright that we needed to close the shades. You guessed it, it stayed aggressively sunny for the rest of the afternoon.

He was righteously annoyed with the weather.

I, on the other hand, came away from the walk with a few good pics. ( This is my favorite: )

At the pet store, they were selling stuffed plush poops. Yes, they were. You know, as toys for those dogs that like to ... well, obviously. Did I mention they squeak? Yes, they do.

They come with a back story that begins: "Mr. Poopie was abandoned at birth ...."