incidents and accidents, hints and allegations

For extremely tight muscles: menthol, menthol and camphor, or capsaicin? Bonus if you can vouch for non-stinky brands.

(No Aspercreme or equivalent.)

I had a bit of excitement, last week, when I turned my computer on . . . and found it caught in an endless reboot cycle because it couldn't load the OS. Fortunately, I had 1) the bootable CD that came with the computer, 2) the sure and certain knowledge that all of my data was backed up, and 3) relaxation techniques to keep me from wrecking my shoulders, jaw, and stomach while I determined that it was a software, not hardware, problem (some file in the boot sector had gotten corrupted).

Back up your data!

We bought an exercise bike a week ago. It uses magnets for resistance and so is remarkably quiet. So far, so good; I'm going to have to be very diligent about my stretches (hip bursitis), but otherwise no complaints. Oh, and very diligent about keeping the foolish dog away from it: I clonked her good right on the flat of her nose with the pedal, the first time I was pedaling away.

Entertainment:

• My Neighbor Totoro is a charming, odd, low-key, family movie that deserves the label. I recommend it. Also, have some icons.
• We saw Amos Lee, Elvis Costello, and Bob Dylan in concert last night.

  Unfortunately we missed all but the last couple of Lee's songs, but he was quite good and got a satisfyingly warm reception from the crowd. He closed with his best-known song, "Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight," and I think he may have played "Shout Out Loud" too, which you can hear at his website.

  Costello was doing the very solo thing, him and a guitar. He came out and banged right into "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes," and did several songs before doing any stage patter at all. Good stuff, very energetic and entertaining, also notably smooth at getting the audience to sing without explicitly asking for it.

  Dylan was touring with a band. I am not terribly familiar with his music, especially his recent stuff, so I can sum up my reaction in eight words: I like my pop music to have words.

  Seriously, except for the occasional line, he might as well have been singing in Swedish. And I know he's capable of enunciating, because he did do it once in a while, and because he was great when we saw him in 1999. I ended up zoning out for much of the set, trying to relax in the uncomfortable seats. Fortunately, I was fully awakened by the last song, "All Along the Watchtower" Hendrix-style.

  For the perspective of a Dylan fan, see Chad's report.

• Episode 51 of Bleach has an amazing number of characters and not much forward movement. (It was on Adult Swim while I was doing stretches after the concert.)

Miscellany:

• Donate $30 to DonorsChoose and buy Chad's blog.
• Someone came to my booklog and put "i am searching for a spell to reverse timeto july29,2007" (sic) into the "search" box.
• Neighborhood fauna spotted recently: a fox, fireflies, bats, and frantically-active squirrels.
• Useful LJ bookmarklets, including one that will change pages to your style—even ones in "format=light".
• del.icio.us is my new obsession. I'm planning to use it for con report roundups, and to that end, added this year's Boskone links as a trial run. Any comments on the tagging or anything else? (Chad suggested tagging by panelist as well, but I'm uncertain about that; people often don't show or are added at the last minute, and not all panel reports will reflect that. However, if people would really like it, it can be done.)

  (Also, for the auto-posting, I need to hide the tag lists with CSS or otherwise format them so they don't overwhelm the links (see what I mean?).)

I don't really know how long it's been since I've done a life update, and so I will probably forget a boatload of stuff. On the other hand, if I've forgotten it, it probably wasn't that important.

Probably the most consequential news is my jaw. ( medical stuff, cut for length )

In other news, a friend from high school is getting married, so I've been back to Massachusetts for the shower & a bachelorette day (lunch and a spa visit. A facial is nice and all, but a massage—on a heated table—that's just bliss). If only I'd waited another week to write this, I could add the wedding to the list . . .

A while ago (err, end of April, which does put a lower limit on how long it's been since I did one of these), I was in NYC for work on a Friday, so we stayed over an extra night on our dime. We had a very lovely dinner with the Nielsen Haydens, and visited the Met on the way out. The new Greek and Roman galleries were more interesting than I expected, mostly thanks to the neat Roman wall paintings. The exhibit on Louis Comfort Tiffany's country estate has concluded, but I recommend seeing Venice and the Islamic World before it closes on July 8, because it was really excellent, full of informative and gorgeous stuff.

And I was absurdly happy to see that there was another offering of pennies at the same Ganesha statute as the last time I was there.

Anyway, the visit made me realize that I wanted a camera of my own. We have a quite good one, but it's too big for me to just toss in my purse when I go to museums, and there were a lot of things I'd have taken pictures of if I could. I have one picked out, but I'm not going to say what it is to discourage Chad from just buying it for my birthday. => (I think it's too expensive for a single-person gift and am somewhat uncouthly wanting money as gifts instead, which I can then aggregate into said camera.)

As for more recent stuff, I'm kind of behind on a lot of stuff I need to do this summer. There's reading all the Hugo [*] and Campbell nominees before it's time to vote, and re-reading the Harry Potter series before the seventh book comes out, and learning at least a little Japanese ("But I don't wanna, that's work," my subconscious whines), and getting all the logistics squared away (like what we're doing about the dog . . . ).

[*] Does anyone else use Palm's eReader and want the short fiction as nice marked-up files, complete with italics etc.? Minus the two stories only released as PDFs, that is.

And (not that it will help with getting stuff done) there will be Readercon. Woo!

Finally because I am getting tired, we saw Ocean's Thirteen today. Much better than the second, not as good as the first because ( oblique spoiler )

Earlier in March, we went to New York City on the occasion of relatives' birthdays and saw a musical called The Drowsy Chaperone about which I intend to write more, really, I promise. Getting half-price same day tickets makes for a really long day, but if we got tickets ahead of time, going down for a matinee would be quite workable, so we'll have to keep that in mind. Any particular recommendations? I should note that Chad's not much on musicals unless they're metafictional or have some other reason for people bursting into song.

We've also booked our Japan flights and hotels. All we need is the rail pass (90 days ahead) and our flight seat assignments (ditto; not that I have any great hopes of getting an exit row, but we'll try). Now I need to start thinking about learning the language . . .

And as discussed previously here, I started taking a yoga class. It's certainly exercise, but I haven't decided if I'll take another one; the instructor hasn't been very useful in telling me which exercises I should avoid or modify because of the bursitis in my hips, and I'm not suited to the less-concrete parts of the class. On the other hand, having a scheduled class is a good thing for a procrastinatory Kate. We'll see when it's over.

Last weekend we went to Boston. We spend all day Saturday at the Museum of Science, as it was hosting the Darwin exhibit that originated at the American Museum of Natural History. It had all the stuff you would expect, documents of Darwin's and fossils and specimens, all of which were informative and interesting—plus two Galapagos tortoises that I found terribly comic in how very slow and deliberate they were. As a complement, we went to the IMAX movie on the Galapagos, which includes some great underwater footage. After a break at Papa Razzi, a local chain Italian place, we just wandered around the Museum. Lots of the hands-on stuff still needs fixing, alas, but we still found plenty to entertain ourselves before having dinner with prince_eric and spouse. Sunday morning we put in an intense two hours at the Museum of Fine Arts: Japanese Bamboo Art, Tsutsugaki Textiles, really cool marbled paper made by Sufis, and a fascinating exhibition called "Women of Renown: Female Heroes and Villains in the Prints of Utagawa Kuniyoshi." According to information in the exhibit, the MFA has thousands of Japanese prints and is starting to digitize them; you can see some online.

Finally and very belatedly, papersky tells me that I am Bapchild. I have what is "thought by many to be one of the finest Village Halls in Kent"; a cricket club (with fantasy cricket!); and a spring named after St. Thomas a Becket. I was the site of the Synod of Baccanceld in 694, and am currently involved in a controversy over the construction of a Kent Science Park.

(And now to post this while the borrowed wireless connection has faded in rather than out, since our DSL went out last night and Verizon doesn't know why . . . )

I think I can best give the flavor of my work week by describing dinner on Friday night, tapas at Cella Bistro, at which I deliberately ate deeply acid-reflux-unfriendly food, on the grounds that stress had regressed my acid reflux all the way back to late November, when I had two weekends full of unfriendly food, and so how much worse could it be?

And it was worth it. Our menu:

• Small balls of goat cheese, deep-fried until melty under a light crisp crust, and then drizzled with honey (so good);
• Shrimp in a sherry sauce (and then a lot of bread to scoop up the remaining sauce);
• Spanish tortilla with lemon-caper aioli (not what I was expecting, but good);
• Mussels with saffron sauce (I've decided I don't like mussels, saffron sauce or no);
• Clams meuniere (which I didn't have because I don't like clams either);
• Beef rib with BBQ sauce (that was all Chad).

(If you're keeping score: alcohol, tomatoes, and onions in the sauce for the shrimp; onions and citrus in the tortilla. If they'd had anything I wanted with garlic, chocolate, or mint, I could've run the table, as it were.)

Yesterday, I got quite sick when giving platelets; I appear to overreact to the calcium deficiency caused by the citrate anticoagulant (yes, I'd had a milkshake beforehand, taken my usual daily calcium supplement, and eaten a good breakfast). Unless plasma donation involves less of the anticoagulant, I'll have to stop donating, which I'd feel bad about, but I can't keep wrecking my own health for this (whole blood is no good either, it's just too high a proportion of my total volume).

After a nap and a cautious meal, we headed to our friendly local travel agent, and assigned him the task of finding us options for accommodations in each of our projected stops in Japan. Speaking of which: we're thinking of either Kanazawa or Takayama for the last few days; anyone have relevant experience to relate?

Or, well, however long it's been since. In haste:

• Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood of Whose Line Is It Anyway?: very funny live, as funny as the funniest bits of any given Whose Line? show.
• Hip pain of long standing; finally started physical therapy for it; loosening of extremely tight muscles = owwww.
• My acid reflux really is triggered by chocolate. Woe.
• We're hosting Thanksgiving this year for the first time, for at least six and possibly as many as nine people. I keep thinking about that rather than
• Work, which is kicking my ass from here to next month. (I figure I should have about a day to collapse before Thanksgiving prep starts.) Hence unanswered colonialism comments and general reduced presence. Sorry.

In which Kate resorts to bullet points, because she's suddenly very tired:

• Got a temporary crown placed over a molar Thursday. Wow but that impression-taking goop is vile. My jaw still hasn't forgiven me for letting it be held wide open for an hour. The crown came loose yesterday morning (nightguard now doesn't fit by this much: ><); I'll have to squeeze out some time this week to have that looked at.
• My stomach is much better, though, except when I abuse it with dental work or going-away cake or eating too much good Indian food. Mmmmm, masala dosai bigger than my torso.
• Ascended my first NetHack character since January 2005 (I just haven't been playing):

  Esme the Necromancer      St:18/94 Dx:23 Co:18 In:22 Wi:22 Ch:18  Neutral
  Astral Plane $:0  HP:670(676) Pw:324(579) AC:-46 Exp:25 T:108692
  

  No genocide, no polyself, lots of pets (though none survived but the Astral Plane Angel and a lone gremlin), otherwise a pretty typical Wizard ascension.

• Football season! Patriots weren't on TV here, but judging by the online play-by-play and the subsequent stories, they started ugly but came back well. 19-17 over the Bills on a sack for a safety.
• Art show yesterday in the Stockade, a historic area of Schenectady. Surprisingly extensive and with some interesting stuff, though nothing I liked enough to buy and find space for. Also discovered a new places that serves crêpes that we'll have to try sometime.

Busy week coming up: Wednesday-Thursday to Rochester for work; Friday-Sunday to Montreal for the Farthing party. Which means, among other things, that I have to read the final version of Farthing (duh) and think some more about the program item I'm on ("The Undefended Borders of SF. SF and fantasy have a clear border, one bristling with ray-guns and mind-shields, but there are other ways of sneaking up on the space between them. A discussion of some of the books and stories that do this."). After I get some sleep.

Annual cookout yesterday. It started out very well (though if I'd realized that Chad was trying to convince one of the kids that werewolves are allergic to Nerf, I would've intervened), but a couple hours in my vision started going wonky. I took my contacts out, but I knew even as I did so that it was futile: sure enough, it was a migraine. My standard response is Excedrin [*], but that has acetaminophen and I'd had a glass of wine earlier; probably I was being overly paranoid, but I really like having a functioning liver. So I quietly went upstairs and laid down. It actually passed quicker than I expected, but not enough for me to go back to the party, which was too bad because I was having fun.

[*] My migraines are extremely mild on the absolute scale of migraines, and don't show up that often. Excedrin knocks out the pain almost completely, though I'm not crazy about the side effects. I took a couple ibuprofen last night, though I have no reason to believe they did anything.

Today I had an appointment to give platelets at 9, for the first time since October. It didn't happen, but at least it wasn't my fault this time. ( cut for those who dislike needles )

But at least I got to see half an hour of Ocean's Eleven, which I could re-watch very often indeed. After I got home, caught up on the Internet (our DSL had been out since Friday night), and ate, I finished re-watching the movie (well, I fast-forwarded all the Tess scenes). I just love the groove of the dialogue, especially between Danny and Rusty. I wish the plot of the second hadn't been so bad that it wiped my memory of whether its dialogue was as good.

Some follow-ups:

• Conclusions from the "Erie Canal" poll: people who know the song out-number those who don't 2 to 1. The vast majority know the variant I'm familiar with, which is not about gin. As I suspected, New York was the big leader for those who learned it in school (though not everyone who went to school in New York learned it), but there was a respectable geographical scattering

  Also, though I knew this already: ticking off boxes is fun.

• In related news, rachelmanija has a general poll on folk music familiarity and a follow-up post.
• I've just finished buying all seven seasons of Homicide on DVD for $20 a season (though only the set of seasons 1-2 has arrived so far). homicidereruns, here I come (when things settle down some). Also, if anyone wants to know how to get the DVDs cheaply, give a yell.
• papersky has a thoughtful post about lies springing off the whole MsScribe affair.

Finally, a request for advice. I have a few very small scrapes and dents on my car, at least one of which is fully three years old. I noticed this week that the paint around these is flaking and rust seems to showing. I blame the miserable weather we've been having basically all year, but whatever. The question is, is there anything I myself can do to stop the damage from getting worse, or is this a job for professionals?

Dinner and cleanup and so forth took a very long time, so I'm afraid chapter one of Fellowship will have to wait yet again.

Quickie time-in-review:

Spent two weeks with a cold. It was actually a relief to realize that I very likely caught it from Mom over Mother's Day weekend, because that meant it wasn't a flare-up or relapse of the sinus problems I'd had earlier. Other than that, not much fun: decongestants stopped working one or two colds ago, so I had pretty much a constant sinus headache and went through several boxes of Kleenex. At least the congestion stayed loose and I mostly avoided coughing.

Chad's parents and sister came up for dinner one night, which was great. We also had Chad's upper-level class and advisees over for dinner on Memorial Day, which is entertaining in the kind of way that makes my introvert self hide after a while (fortunately, dusk and the accompanying bugs were a reasonable excuse, not that any of them noticed my not coming back out of the house after a whiel). I'd had the day off and used it to cook: two batches of chocolate chip cookies, one batch of mac & cheese (so that the vegetarian would have something filling to eat). I was hoping for leftovers, since I didn't think baked food would be that popular on a hot day, but it was like locusts descending. College students; I should've known better.

Besides what's been already mentioned here, it's pretty much been work, a fair bit of it as I finished something short-fused. Between that, my cold, the weather, stressful LJ discussions, and, I don't know, the position of Saturn and the spatial arrangement of my office furniture, I've been feeling vaguely cranky. However, I'm cheerful about the LotR re-read project, and have hopes that this will carry over to a generally less-cranky attitude.

Who wants to play at giving medical advice this morning?

( Has Kate's sinus infection returned? Cut for yuck and a poll. )