After playing Wii sports at a friends’ house and at my in-laws, not to mention several rounds of discussion over the last six months or so, Spouse and I caved in and bought our first (and probably only) game console.
So, those of you In the Know, which are the good games? I’ve tried the bowling and tennis, so far, and like both.
I am a triple threat. I cannot sing or play any musical instruments, I cannot dance, I cannot act. And every single one of you out there should thank your lucky stars that I am too old to be the next Hannah Montana. (I certainly do.)
My Spouse and In-Laws, on the other hand, are fairly dripping with musical talent.
To give you an idea, this is the first thing you see when you walk through Spouse’s Parents’ front door.
Great Wall of Instruments
When they were up at our house for Thanksgiving, Spouse’s parents brought their instruments, and we had quite a good time with the playing and (in my case) the listening. Sheet music was exchanged, and when we had our after-Christmas get-together in Louisville, they reconvened and added in Spouse’s Aunt, Brother, and Sister-in-law. Even without having practiced together (or in some cases, at all), they were sounding darned fine, if I may say so, particularly on “Silent Night” and “Scarborough Fair.”
If I didn’t know that at least one of the parties involved would probably have my head for posting their picture on the internet, I’d upload the videos. But I wish to live a long and happy life, so you’ll have to make do without.
Mother-in-law played both the mountain dulcimer, and a teensy bit of autoharp (just long enough for me to get a couple of pictures).
Mountain Dulcimer
Autoharp
Father-in-law can play anything he picks up, but last night alternated between hammered dulcimer and what I think is a tin whistle, but I’m so musically ignorant that I’m lucky to have identified the other instruments correctly.
Hammered Dulcimer
Whistle?
Spouse’s Aunt brought her bowed psaltery, an instrument that I had not only never seen before but had never even heard of until Thanksgiving, when she mentioned that she’d forgotten hers.
Bowed Psaltery
Spouse brought his harp, and Brother-in-law took a break from his three-day stretch of making Julia Child’s cassoulet—
The Art of French Cooking, as Mastered by Brother-in-Law
(for Christmas, he and I both got copies of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1 from Mother-in-law) and borrowed a guitar.
Harp & Guitar
I’m particularly fond of this picture, because autofocus is a bitch.
Brother-in-law’s wife sang, because she mostly plays woodwinds, her instruments are all on the West Coast, and nobody had any loaners. The pair of them did a great duet on “Folsom Prison Blues”. (Sometimes, you have to go with the songs to which you know the words.)
And the cassoulet rocked, even though I skipped the many and various kinds of red meat and only ate the beans. Definitely worth three days of work…especially when someone else is doing the work.
We also played Wii bowling, of which I have no pictures because discretion is by far the better part of valor. Normally, I don’t like video games, and I’ve never bowled in real life (rental shoes—need I say more?), but it was fun and the company was very, very good.
It’s been brought to my attention that I haven’t posted for a while. So here it is.
Recovery from surgery went fine. I was more tired, and tired more easily, than usual, but other than having the mother of all migraines the following Wednesday, it went as expected with no problems. Also, all the labs came back fine, which is good to know. The bill has not arrived yet, although an unrelated letter from the IRS has. And I will need to deal with that soon. But not today.
Work was very busy through the 24th. At my client site, people start trying to use up vacation right after Thanksgiving and it’s not uncommon for people who have been there for a while (like, say, the ones who review and sign our documents) to be gone for most of December. I have said before, and will probably continue to say that, after Thanksgiving, it’s like an Agatha Christie novel—fewer people each day. Plus, a lot of projects were careening towards an end-of-year finish, so instead of coasting, we were all hands on deck this year.
Then, two weeks before Christmas, Spouse had seven hearings in three days, which threw off our schedule for most of that week. Necessity, and all that. He followed it up with a bout with a nasty, nasty digestive bug the Sunday before Christmas, and didn’t make it into work at all last week. Not that he wasn’t motivated, but I tend to think that if you can’t keep down solid food, you probably shouldn’t be sharing your germs with the court staff. And I took advantage of his weakened condition to enforce that, because I’m mean, nasty, rotten, and not very nice.
I have avoided getting sick. In fact, I have insisted upon it. Tired, however, is another matter entirely. I could sleep like a cat for a month, I think, and probably get to the point where I had begun to feel a bit rested.
After a delightfully quiet Christmas day highlighted by Chinese food with friends, we spent the next couple of days driving up and down I-65 to visit Spouse’s sister’s place, where the extended family had gathered for December holidays and Youngest Niece’s birthday. Spouse’s Sister is quite the candy-maker, and she sent us home with a far-too-large-for-two-people platter with eight or nine kinds of cookies and candy. No reindeer logs, but I’ll have to send her the recipe.
Today, I took Youngest Niece, who just turned 18, for lunch, shopping, a manicure, and homemade hot chocolate (Spouse is turning out to be quite the barista, since we splurged on the espresso machine).
Coming up, we’ll be putting in more time on I-65, only going south rather than north, later this week. Also possible catching up with my Illinois relative. In between, I plan to do a little lot of laundry, some light housekeeping, enjoy my present from Spouse (all things AbFab on DVD!!) and not a hell of a lot else. Including blogging, so don’t worry if I’m quiet for a little while yet.
In the mean time, head over to your local library and get a copy of the book I just finished, Nancy Kress’s Steal Across the Sky, which is nifty novel about the ultimate double-blind experiment. (It’s given me an idea for a screenplay that I just might be able to finish. As opposed to some ideas that have been kicking around and mutating for ten or twelve years now, but never seem to come together. But I digress.) And if you haven’t read her Beggars in Spain either, get that while you’re at it.
Have a happy and safe New Year’s, all.
The faerie knight blinked in the late October sunshine spilling through the door under the hill.
“Mr. Tam Lin?” asked the lovely young lady standing there.
He smiled winningly at the maiden. “I see my reputation has preceded me.”
She smiled back. “You might say that, sir.” She reached under her cloak and handed him a sheaf of papers fixed with an unfamiliar seal. “Tam Lin, you are hereby ordered to appear in court on a matter of paternity one week hence, November first. Have a happy Halloween, sir.”
He heard footsteps behind him.
“Who is this?” asked the Queen.
For those who didn’t already know, I had a *very* minor surgical procedure on Wednesday. Everything went fine. No incision required, all done in (I’m told) about 30 minutes. No problems from the anesthetic, didn’t even need the pain meds after. Spent much of Thursday very tired, but slept a lot and Spouse took excellent care of me. No trouble at all at the facility; the staff was very nice and very competent. And I am glad to have it behind me; the anticipation and buildup was far worse than the reality.
Now, it’s all over but the billing.
My friend D., who makes this for Thanksgiving every year, tells me that when corn is out of season “like, er, now”, a one-pound bag of frozen corn is an acceptable substitute. Personally, I seem to recall that Trader Joe’s sells a roasted corn that would probably be very acceptable indeed.
6 fresh ears of corn
1/3 c. water
1/4 c. chopped onion
1/2 tsp. salt
4 c. milk
2 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. white pepper
3 tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 beaten egg
With sharp knife, make cuts through center of kernels. Cut corn off cob; scrape cob. In saucepan combine corn, water, onion, and the 1/2 teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Stir in 3 1/2 cups of the milk, butter, the 1 teaspoon salt and white pepper. Blend together remaining 1/2 cup milk and flour; stir into corn mixture in saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes more. Garnish with snipped chives and paprika if desired. Makes 6 servings.
As a side note, when I make corn soup, I like to dress it up by stirring in sauteed red peppers, pancetta, and “crab” surimi, which makes it utterly unsuitable for my vegetarian and kosher friends, but sometimes that’s how the gluten-free cookie crumbles.
Title: Little Brother
Author: Cory Doctorow
Genre: Science Fiction
Not only is Little Brother the most important book I’ve read this month, it may well be the most important book I’ve read in ten years.
I have always found Cory Doctorow’s work both entertaining and thought provoking. Little Brother is all that and more. It’s a great story that shows (rather than tells) us how important our civil rights are, both online and in real life, through Marcus, a cocky, seventeen-year-old hacker who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. After a traumatizing detention with the Department of Homeland Security, Marcus finds that his entire city is turned into a police state that makes his school’s intrusive security practices look like a pre-9/11 Canadian border. He turns his hacking skills toward creating an underground network intended for his peers by hacking his Xbox. His efforts to exploit weaknesses in DHS security escalate into a cyber arms race with the feds.
It’s not easy to work an explanation of the false-positive paradox, public-key cryptography, or DNS tunnelling into a work of fiction, let alone an explanation that most people could understand and not yawn halfway through. More than any other fiction genre, SF is likely to suffer from the fact that a) the science aspects require a lot of exposition, and b) it’s hard to understand the story of you don’t understand the science. Doctorow has actually managed to get around this in that you can still enjoy the story if the technical exposition doesn’t quite make sense to you.
But more importantly, this book brings up a lot of ideas that are important for kids to know and think about, especially kids who take it for granted that schools can force them to walk through metal detectors into camera-monitored classrooms; search their lockers, backpacks, and persons without a warrant; and expel them for heinous offenses such as possession of aspirin or diabetes supplies. If this is their normal environment, what will they be willing to accept when they’re out of school? We adults ought to be pondering the implications of that carefully, given that a lot of high school kids will be able to vote in the next election.
Another point that Doctorow slips in is how much we really own our tech toys. iPhones and Xboxes come with security measures to ensure that we can only load manufacturer-approved software on devices that we have not only paid for, but that we continue to pay to use. Sure there are hacks out there, and there’s always going to be a hacker who enjoys cracking those systems. But we all take it for granted that manufacturers can lock the devices down in the first place. Doctorow points out that most security doesn’t actually make us more secure. (I took this point to heart in particular. On the day I started reading Little Brother, someone used my home address and phone number to create a false email and eBay account and make a major purchase using one of my credit cards.) Hackers—and those of us who are paying attention—have always known this, and it’s often not hard to spot the weaknesses in a security setup.
Finally, the author makes is perfectly clear that the best defense is a good offense. Knowing how to program is a useful skill, but it’s more important to agitate for cyber rights and the freedom of information. He points out that we actually used to have “illegal math” (cryptography) in the U.S., and not that long ago, either.
This is a very sophisticated book for young adults, and frankly, it’s about time we started talking up to teenagers instead of down to them. Buy a copy of this book. Buy one for your kids (if you have any), and consider donating one to the school library. Even you don’t agree with anything I or the author have to say, buy it in recognition of your right to dissent. And best do it before the autoimmune disease known as national security tells our schools and bookstores to ban this book. Ben Franklin reminds us that “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety,” and Doctorow points out that giving up essential liberty for security that doesn’t work is just plain stupid.
Title: Rosemary and Rue
Author: Seanan McGuire
Genre: Urban Fantasy
I decided to take advantage of being on vacation to read something a little longer than my 250-page limit, and Rosemary and Rue came highly recommended by two reliable sources. And after reading it, I can see why. The point of view character, half-fey changeling PI October Daye (insert groan here), is engaging and delightfully devoid of self-pity. Full of sarcasm, frustration, denial and anger, to be sure, but that makes for good character development. Not to mention that I’d be pretty cranky myself, after spending fourteen years as a fish in the Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park (although I can think of worse places).
But I’m getting ahead of myself, and besides, the vast majority of the novel is in Daye’s post-piscine life. Having gotten screwed over by the fey side of her life, she’s trying to put together the broken pieces of her interrupted human existence. And if that had worked out well for her, then there wouldn’t be any story. Instead, she’s dragged back into the dual drama-fueled worlds of PI work and otherwordly politics when her “worst friend and best enemy” is murdered.
Like the main character, the novel is continually striking a balance between the urban and the fantasy, and it’s a good balancing act. It has the faced-past action you’d expect from a Harry Dresden novel combined with the wry humor and blase acceptance of the supernatural that one expects from the Nightside series. The difference between McGuire’s novel and both of those other series is that the protagonist is underpowered and well aware of it. The pacing, setting, and storyline compare favorably, however, and the teaser chapter at the end of Rosemary and Rue was over too soon for my tastes. While the story does have a satisfying ending, there are plenty of loose ends that will probably make great stories in their own right in the not-too-distant (I hope) future.
Title: Shadowbridge
Author: Gregory Frost
Genre: Fantasy
I’ve only read one other book by Gregory Frost, Fitcher’s Brides, and I seem to recall thinking at the time that the man has a gift for making the disturbing utterly compelling. It’s the literary equivalent of the fascination that comes from seeing a horrible accident, only in a good way. Which probably doesn’t make sense, but there it is.
Shadowbridge is definitely less disturbing, but just as compelling. Like the Arabian Nights, it’s a story about a storyteller, and so there are many smaller stories embedded in the main text. The storyteller—actually a puppeteer—incorporates the stories she hears into her own narrative. Frost has also found a nifty device for juxtaposing a variety of cultures, by putting them on an enormous, world-spanning bridge on a world that appears to be mostly ocean. He’s designed the magical elements into the story to the point where they are taken for granted, like light switches and internal combustion engines are in our mundane world. (People don’t stand around marveling at them, pondering their history, development, inner workings every time they use them. Those things are just there, and we are far more likely to remark upon them when they don’t work.) Finally, he manages to make divine intervention a sensible part of the story, rather than trying to shoehorn it in.
The only thing I didn’t like is that Shadowbridge has a bad case of narrative interruptus, as it’s the first of a two-part story. Although the writer part of me appreciates the nerve it takes to have your protagonist struck by lightning a couple of pages from the end of a book.
Title: Unshapely Things
Author: Mark del Franco
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Unshapely Things is set in a Boston that results from an intrusion of Faerie into the human world, complete with interspecies (elf/faery/human) politics. However, it’s the ah, interpersonal, interspecies action that is at the root of the story told from the point of view of Connor Grey, a down-and-out former druid who is trying to recover from the loss of his powers. In order to supplement his disability checks, he consults with the human police on cases involving supernatural beings.
The setting is lovingly detailed, with a modern noir woven into it, along the lines of a Jim Butcher or Rob Thurman novel. The supernatural elements are neatly planned out, internally consistent, and make sense. (All magic is result of manipulating essence, but each type of being manipulates essence differently.) I can’t really call it a realistic portrayal of magic, but I’ll happily give it full points for being plausible.
The characters are well done enough that I would like to read more about them (According to the author blurb, a sequel is in the works.) In addition to being a recovering druid, is also something of a recovering asshole, albeit more from thoughtlessness than malice. The supporting cast is fairly interesting as well, ranging from a family of human cops to an extraordinarily powerful mentor.
As for the storyline, most of the familiar tropes from detective fiction are played out, including the political struggle between enforcement agencies. The mentor character plays something of a deus ex machina role in the end, and I would have liked to see the climactic fight resolved a bit differently, but I was willing to go with it, especially in a first novel.