ConQuest 38 in a nutshell

My Sparring Partner and I went to the local SF con over the weekend. It was pleasant. Handed off the corset to my client (looked pretty darn good), bought some books, dressed up a bit, said hi to everyone we needed to see and got a little costume love.


His outfit was mostly purchased, although I tailored it a bit. It's a lot easier to find off-the-rack items that will pass for men's western wear; their fashions just haven't changed that much in the last 140 years, and the fitting is less crucial. I made my dress, of course. The skirt I made years ago (it used to look like this), the corset I made last year, the jacket I made last week, finally putting to use the striped fabric I'd been hoarding for ten years. Everyone was very nicely complimentary. Jan said, "You sure class up the joint."
I think that deserves a close-up, don't you?

I did not, alas, have time to finish my hat. I'm not too broken up about it, because I liked the feathers in my hair and they were easier to wear than those little pin-on hats ever are.

We also got to wear our "Baptist" tee-shirts around the con floor. Yes, Brennan at Zazzle came through, after several harried phone calls, delays, machines breaking down, etc. Sounds like Brennan could use a vacation, too. But he got the shirts to me by noon on Friday. Since I'm not used to wearing printed tee-shirts, it always caught me off guard when someone was staring but not meeting my eyes. "They're eating my.... what?" and then I'd have to explain. Everyone was polite but I don't think many were interested in the story. Many were amused by the quote, though. "Good for them!" one guy said. "Feed 'em the Lutherans, next."

Curious thing I noticed, when other writer-acquaintances asked what I'd been doing:

"I made my first pro sale back in March."
"Really! That's great! To whom?"
"Baen's Universe."
(With face falling flat) "Oh. Well, good for you."

Depending on who I was talking to, that flat reaction was either polite distaste for the digital market, or flat-out jealousy at the venue--or in some cases, both. I mentioned it to Rob, who concurred. "I get the same reaction when I sell to Analog," he said. "Small presses are great for what they do, but I want to play in the major leagues." Chaque a son gout, I say, without the accents because I'm too lazy to look them up.

Rob and Tracy in the onslaught of the wind tunnel a/k/a the party floor:

(Thanks to Shara for the pictures.)

oh, now this is cool

The preview of End of the Line is up already.

If you Google "Holly Messinger," that page comes up third, right after my homepage.

And yes, Dave, there's a podcast feed.

I think I'm gonna make it

I got my green striped jacket all put together this weekend. It looked really sharp until I put in the front lapel facing and ran the piping all around the edge, which created a lot of puffiness that won't quite press out. I think I may have to topstitch it. I hate to do that on a costume but there's no time to handstitch it and hey--it's a costume. Made of scraps, no less. Maybe I can try out some of the decorative stitching on my new machine. Oh, and I found some nice black frog closures that will look super down the front. I shall put those on tonight, make some cuffs, and I'm done. I may have time for that hat, after all.

The corset is done except for the top binding, which I cannot complete until the boning gets here. I'm hoping that will be today.

Zazzle is out of the tee-shirt style I wanted. Bastards. I hate it when companies put up stuff on their web sites and can't be bothered to notify the public when things are out of stock. Nevertheless I ordered a couple of other tees, one for me and one for the SP.

Oh, and the SP bought me a lovely little cotton sundress this weekend, kind of antique-bottle green with an allover eyelet stitch. I haven't worn a dress--that I wasn't getting married in--in years. Furthermore, my birthday present from Trashy Diva finally arrived--after several miscommunications and a lot of wasted postage (see above re: not advertising things you don't have in stock). It's a 40's replica, really gorgeous claret-colored silk. All of which is great, except for now I want to buy more shoes. It's tough being a gal.

yikes!

Suddenly I've only got 9 days left until the Con! And my jacket isn't even cut out yet! And I ordered the wrong boning for the corset! And we haven't ordered our tee shirts yet! Gah!

in the club/update on the distractions

1. I now have an author/bio page up at Baen's Universe.


2. The EOTL, "They're eatin' my Baptists!" tee-shirts are available to order from Zazzle.com (see sidebar). There are basically two designs; white type for dark shirts and vice versa. You can specifiy the style, color, and size of tee-shirt you want at Zazzle.


3. The paid-job corset I've been working on is virtually done except for the top and bottom binding, which I cannot complete until the boning arrives; should be today.


4. The jacket I'm making for myself for the con is mostly patterned and the lining cut out. The fabric is green/black/gold striped, to be worn over a green skirt and black corset. Should be very cool. I may even have time to make my hat.


5. Couple weeks ago, the SP ordered himself a custom-made leather shoulder-holster. Friday night, I came home and found him posing before the mirror in full gunslinger regalia--suspenders, vest, hat and all--thus fulfilling a fantasy I never knew I had. Ain't I a good woman to you, Doc?

more childhood memories, or, too preoccupied to conceive my own topic today

Remember those segments on Sesame Street when they'd visit the crayon factory or the noodle factory and show you the process step-by-step? I swear I could sit and watch hours of that sort of thing, especially if it was brightly colored (which may explain the continued existence of HGTV and its ilk).

Anyhoo, Abby's Yarns has a post-in-vein today. Check it out.

childhood memory chicken soup

There used to be a Campbell's Chunky variety of chicken noodle that included broad noodles, mushrooms, and--according to the label--white wine. I loved that stuff when I was a kid. Apparently I had fairly sophisticated tastes as a child. I particularly liked it because it did not contain carrots. I hated cooked carrots when I was young, and although I'm more amenable toward them now, I still don't think that celery and carrots go together well, which eliminates about 99% of the chicken soup recipes out there.

Campbell's quit making that variety of its soup some time in the late 80's, and ever since I've been queen of my own kitchen I've had a half-assed ambition to reproduce that soup. Thing was, I couldn't really remember what was in it. I know there were some little brightly-colored bits in among the drab mushrooms and pale celery, but I had no idea what they were. Just not carrots.

A few weeks ago I was preparing some other dish that contained chicken, probably the jambalaya soup, which happened to have roasted red peppers in it. How wonderfully chicken and peppers go together! And celery is much more cooperative with that combination, too. Suddenly I realized what those little bright bits in the soup must've been: pimento (which is basically roasted red pepper).

Last night I was in the mood for soup, and I had most of the parts laying around, so I gave it a shot. It was not quite perfect, because I had no wine in the house and had to substitute lemon juice, and the herbs could use some tweaking. But it's a massive step forward.

• Take 2-3 pounds meaty chicken parts with bone and skin, and some extra fat if available. Boil in about 1/2 cup white wine and 2 cups water, with some chicken bouillon, salt, and black pepper or seasoned pepper.



• Meanwhile, dice up about half a sweet onion, and two cloves of garlic. Saute in a bit of butter until onions are wilting, but not brown.



• Chop about 1-1/2 cup celery and a small jar of sliced button mushrooms, drained.



• Divide, seed and roast a red pepper under the broiler. Peel, if desired, and mince.



• When chicken is done, remove to cutting board to cool. Add prepped vegetables to pot. Add: chicken flavored bouillon, black pepper, rosemary, marjoram, oregano, parsley, and thyme (I used Penzey's Bouquet di Garni blend). Cover and simmer.



• Skin and bone chicken. Mince meat and add to pot. Add water to desired concentration of broth/solids. Taste and adjust seasonings.



• To enrich the broth (if, say, you had only boneless skinless flavorless chicken breasts on hand), you may add an egg yolk or two; beat and mix with a little warm water before adding to the hot broth or you'll have Egg Drop soup. A couple tablespoons of butter helps, too.



• To thicken, dissolve 2-3 tablespoons of cornstarch in warm water and whisk in. It helps give it that made-in-a-can slimyness.



• At the last, throw in a handful or two of egg noodles and a tad more water if needed. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to med-low and cover tightly. Let simmer for 10-20 minutes, or as directed on noodle package.

In my mind this soup needs no sides, but buttered Saltine crackers are the appropriate fare for a childhood memory.

forget the frogs and canaries

Apparently bees are disappearing all over the world. (New York Times, may require registration.)

More than a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million bee colonies have been lost — tens of billions of bees, according to an estimate from the Apiary Inspectors of America, a national group that tracks beekeeping. So far, no one can say what is causing the bees to become disoriented and fail to return to their hives.

...About 60 researchers from North America sifted the possibilities at the meeting today. Some expressed concern about the speed at which adult bees are disappearing from their hives; some colonies have collapsed in as little as two days. Others noted that countries in Europe, as well as Guatemala and parts of Brazil, are also struggling for answers.

The researchers have collected samples in several states and have begun doing bee autopsies and genetic analysis. ...So far, known enemies of the bee world, like the varroa mite, on their own at least, do not appear to be responsible for the unusually high losses.

Genetic testing at Columbia University has revealed the presence of multiple micro-organisms in bees from hives or colonies that are in decline, suggesting that something is weakening their immune system. The researchers have found some fungi in the affected bees that are found in humans whose immune systems have been suppressed by the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or cancer.

Meanwhile, samples were sent to an Agriculture Department laboratory in North Carolina this month to screen for 117 chemicals. Particular suspicion falls on a pesticide that France banned out of concern that it may have been decimating bee colonies.

in which the last two posts achieve gestalt under the heading, "big money owns your brain"

I've been reading much about food the last couple of days: natural foods versus the over-processed junk that makes money for a few fat cats and is more poison than nutrients. Of course I already knew a lot of it, but recently I ran into some new examples that turned my stomach.

First, the grocer where I frequently bought meat has started injecting all its beef with "up to 12% of a flavor-enhancing solution." Excuse me? You're charging me $8.99/lb. for saline solution? I knew they already did it to the pork and the chicken, but I bought organic whenever I could. There is no alternative for the beef in that store. And I'm not buying it. I don't want to eat it and I'm not going to pay for it.

Second, the raw-milk fracas that I stumbled across. I had no idea what kinds of chemical changes milk goes through when it's Pasteurized. I like milk and I think Pasteurization is generally a good thing, but then when I read how that catch-safe allows the farmers to degrade the care and treatment of their cows, thereby letting God-knows-what kinds of hyperbacteria to flourish in your milk, it all seems.... well, wasteful seems a weak term. Dishonest? Slovenly? Low-minded? (Those used to be pretty strong words.) You could say, "Where's the harm?" but the fact is there's always harm when you cut corners in the name of profits. In this case, the harm is put on the cows and the human customers, both.

I've sensed myself becoming less tolerant of milk as I got older. I thought perhaps it was my age, and I've considered it might be the hormones in the milk. The raw-milk proponents claim it's because Pasteurization kills the lactase that helps you digest milk. So some Big Dairy companies make products with lactase added back in so lactose-intolerant people can eat them! Talk about doing things the hard way! (Incidentally, one happy side-effect of this outrage was my learning about kefir. It's a fermented milk product, basically drinkable yogurt, with some added fiber. Boy is it yummy! I can't wait to get it in a blender with some fruit.)

Advocates of raw milk claim that the Big Dairy people have bought off their politicians and terrified the public with the dangers of non-pasteurized milk. I believe it's illegal even to sell it in most states. I found contact information for a few farmers in my area who will allow you to "time-share" a cow, so you're not technically buying the milk from them, they're just storing and caring for the cow on your behalf. I haven't decided yet what to do about it; I just like knowing that the option is there. I certainly don't need the government to tell me what I can and cannot eat--if you want to regulate something, go tighten the leash on your dairy farmers.

Now, what does all this have to do with my difficulties exporting a PNG image? Well, I'll tell you. When I learned that I needed a raster-based program to build my images, my first thought was to brainstorm all the ways I might buy, borrow or steal a copy of PhotoShop. Then AJ very sensibly suggested I obtain an open-source program, which left me smacking my forehead in chagrin. I just installed that open-source WP a month ago, and that worked fine, so why didn't I think to try it again?

Because Microsoft doesn't want you to, honey. They (and Adobe, and Mac, et al) are so omnipresent that unless you've got backstage access to the programming world, you may never know that open-source software exists. I didn't--I'd heard the term but didn't know it came in flavors other than SameGame. That makes me a little sad, because I taught myself html a few years ago and enjoyed it; I wish I knew more about programming, but there are only so many hours in the day, and one can't be an expert in everything. Hey, I make my own clothes, I can cut up a chicken and start a sourdough, and I'm living in a house that we're remodelling ourselves, so climb out of my nose, okay?!?

Seriously, I've very grateful to the code-monkeys who think it's fun to sit on their asses and reverse-engineer programs all day, then have the grace to share their efforts with the public as their own little way of giving the finger to the Man. I'm equally grateful to the folks who take time to research the deviousness of food manufacturers and then share their findings.

These folks keep poking holes in the propaganda screen. It's up to the rest of us to walk up and put an eye to the hole.

this may be premature, but...

I've been working on the tee-shirt issue. I have a design I like, the problem is getting it made. I looked into CafePress first, but Zazzle has more options for garments, particularly in dark colors.

Unfortunately, I'm a bit stymied by software. To get a true white-on-dark image, I have to create a transparent background for the image, and the Corel software to which I have access will not export the PNG's correctly. I'm looking into a source to get around that.

In the meantime, I managed to use Zazzle's default conversion method to get a passable mock-up of the shirts. The front looks okay, but the back may not be legible enough. We ordered one as a test sample. But if you want a preview...

EOTL tee eatin bat by hollysmess

Get this custom shirt at Zazzle

You can, of course, go ahead and order one if you just can't wait (I know what that feels like, it's why I had to post). But I recommend waiting a couple of weeks until I (hopefully) get this transparency issue resolved.

this is why no one understands the fat/carb dichotomy

.... Including me, really. Although this page discussing the structures of fats is certainly helpful.

Nobel Prize winner Paul Sabatier (1854-1941, at right) is considered the father of the hydrogenation process. He discovered in 1897 that the metal, nickel, catalyzes, or facilitates, the attachment of hydrogen to carbon compounds.

In the actual process, workers heat the oil to very high temperatures and bubble hydrogen gas through it in the presence of nickel or some other catalytic metal. Since the vegetable oils are unsaturated, they can take on a few more hydrogens.

When they do, the molecule stiffens, and the fat is now closer to a solid. They can control just how firm it gets by how long they pump the gas through. That's why you'll sometimes see the term 'partially hydrogenated' on ingredient labels.

Which is precisely why I quit eating margarine and Crisco six years ago. I always thought Parkay had a vaguely metallic taste to it....

If you're interested in natural foods, particularly dairy, I highly recommend reading the rest of the site. Of course I'm the choir behind the preacher, so you may not find it as amusing as I do.

Considering raw milk's role throughout history, it's simple to see that it's not a deadly food. If it were, all those dairy-loving primitive cultures would have died out long ago, leaving their vegetarian cousins to mind the store. At the very least, people would have dropped it from their diets entirely. And we haven't even gotten to germ theory yet...

story idea, rubber science

I have this idea. It involves a particular assassin of our acquaintance taking a job on a space station, probably an asteroid-mining operation owned by a big evil mega-corporation.

Awhile back I was daydreaming about artificial gravity systems with my limited knowledge of astrophysics, and I thought, Hey, they've simulated black holes in labs in the last 5 years....what if the space station engineers created a "hypermass" artificial gravity system made from a sort of controlled super-heavy black hole at the center of the station (I guess some other authors have already considered this, but I don't read much hard SF so I don't know of any examples).

I cribbed the word "hypermass" for use in a story and never explored how the thing might work.

Today, I was daydreaming about what might happen if the thing went wrong, because as you know, Bob . . . Bad Things tend to happen in my stories.

So I'm envisioning Quinn being stuck in this mining station, which is gradually collapsing in the middle, trying to kill the guy she's been contracted to kill while trying to get out herself--kind of like the Poseidon Adventure. But the collapse would have to occur at a fairly steady or slowly accelerating rate (ideally), or the station would just cease to exist. I think it would create a great atmosphere of claustrophobia if it happened slowly, but I don't know if that's possible.

Thoughts? Any way I can make this work?

I'm too young to be this old

Remember when you're twenty and thirty seems like the edge of a cliff? Of course now Sheryl Crow has decreed that forty is the new thirty, so I have some reprive.

I'm thirty-three. As of yesterday. I went and saw the family, took my grandmother some flowers (her b-day is two days before mine). My mother gave me a stick. Ok, it was a little condiment spreader made of cherry wood. I love wooden kitchen utensils. There's something very tactilely pleasing about them.

My sweetie asked what I wanted for my birthday, and I said "clothes," so he graciously allowed me to drag him to a half-dozen stores over the weekend. I tried on a score of garments and bought nothing. This is not a good fashion season for me. Everything is high-wasted, blousy, droopy. I have a waist. I prefer to be tailored. I do not intend to have children, so why would I want to look pregnant?

Lately, I've had a yen for a 50's-style cocktail dress or sun dress; fitted bodice, full skirt. I was considering making one, but Trashy Diva has some lovely things. The trick is buying one to fit. My shoulders are rather broad from the tai chi training; my hips are a size or two smaller than my upper body. This means I have to take in every shirt and jacket that I buy, and forget about finding a dress off-the-rack.

I told the SP it didn't matter. I've gotten pretty much everything I ever wished for in the last year. When I make wishes now I just hope for things to stay as they are.

With less plaster dust, of course.

P.S.--We got all the drywall done this weekend. Sometime this week we're going to tape and mud. Hope the weather dries out a bit.

post-tournament report

We went. We sat. We didn't embarass ourselves.

It was a very small tournament. Maybe 1/3 the size of the one in KC two years ago. We all cringed to think of the money the poor bastard was losing. Still, it was nice to go and hang with the people we know, shake the hands and make the rounds.

This tournament was small enough that they didn't separate the forms divisions by gender, so the advanced tai chi division consisted of four guys, one of which was the SP, and me.

"How's it feel to be competing against your husband?" our friend Belle asked.

It didn't feel like much. I knew he was better than me, he trains more seriously and has been doing it longer. Besides, by now I've learned not to compete for the medals, which are cheap and take up space in the drawer. You compete for the score, because it's the only time you get a hard honest grade from your sifu. Sit gave me an 8.6, on a scale of 8.0-9.0. I can live with that. The SP did somewhat better, and deserved it. My sparring partner is looking really steady and relaxed with his form these days, especially on his kicks. He got the gold, I got the bronze, and a Chen-style guy from another local school got the silver.

I did about the same on my fan form, although I was the only advanced internal weapons competitor. Sit grabbed me almost immediately afterwards, when he sent everyone on break, and said, "Is too much hip movement. Too disconnected. You adjust your feet too much." It made sense when he said it. Tournament is a great time for little private mini-lessons with Sit--he can't stop teaching, and we all get inspired by the atmosphere.

Another of our classmates took a video of my fan form which I watch and did not like what I saw. It's a very pretty form. A lot of people say I make it look very pretty. I think it looks like ballet or something, not like a martial art. You could say I'm "throwing my power away." There's too much extension, not enough movement from the body, and my feet are not rooted. That last I knew about, and I'm making plans to fix it.

Ah well. It wasn't completely embarassing. I had to cringe for my poor husband, though, who had to do push-hands competition with three guys who were six inches taller than he, the lightest of whom outweighed him by forty pounds. They just didn't have anyone else in his weight division. Still, he was game, and I feel safe in saying that he had the best "softness" and flexibility of them all. The guy who took silver was pretty good, too. The guy who won gold was the afore-mentioned Wookie who recently started coming on Wednesday nights. He's a beast--6'4" or more, 260 lbs., and in Sit's words, has "unbelievable rooting." He cannot be pushed. Occasionally he can be tipped sideways, but this makes him bellow like a bull and charge.

He was not doing good push-hands. And the other big guy kept getting more aggressive to try and match him. At one point Sit stopped them both and said, "You must be SOFTER. Use LESS force. Otherwise I disqualify you both and the SP win!"

He was joking. But we were all hoping to see the big bull put down. It's completely counter to the philosophy of martial arts to see the biggest strongest guy win with bad technique, but I guess it just gives us reason to train better.

One other thing about this tournament that was kind of weird. I haven't been out in public for a while, much less by myself, unless I was running to the grocery store or the hardware store in a pair of sloppy work pants and a nasty cap. I was looking kind of cute on Saturday, hair up, makeup on--we all dress up a bit for these competitions. Gotta represent, ya know.

But I had forgotten about the ratio of men to women at these events. And I had forgotten how appealing a female is to the males in the same interest group. I was getting a lot of attention. Outright stares, actually. Of course I was bouncing around smiling a lot, cos' gosh darn it, I'm happy these days, but since I'm happy at home and not looking for attention I kept getting startled by these strange gnomes who would wave at me, and hail me across the room, and come up to me as if they knew me. "Hi there!" (Pause to look me up and down.) "Aren't you doing anything this year?" And I'm like, "Um, yeah.... Do I know you?"

I know I'm not so shallow or airheaded to have forgotten these guys if I had actually been introduced to them. Some of the faces looked vaguely familiar, but then faces do after you've been to a few specialized gatherings like this. One tattooed, froglike dude actually followed me out of the auditorium, outside to the parking lot, and wandered over to where the SP and I were practicing push-hands, and goes, "So how's it going?"

"Good...," we said.

"Cool." Drag on cigarette. "So is that, like, push-hands?"

"Yeah."

"You're into that, huh?"

"Pretty much," I said.

He dragged on his cigarette. Wandered away crestfallen.

"You are a freak magnet," the SP said in awe.

stage fight-or-flight

I've made disparaging noises in the past about the usefulness of doing forms competition. Even the masters will acknowledge that there's a difference between form and application. We do forms to learn the moves, to learn relaxation, to coordinate body and mind, yadda yadda, but what gets you points in forms competition (high kicks, low postures, etc.) are not the most useful techniques for fighting. Some people argue that if you can do the more extreme postures, then you will be stronger and more balanced for useful stuff, and so on. I'm not here to debate that.

It occurred to me, during practice this week, that forms competition is useful for developing fighting skill in a psychological way. Most of us get stage fright--it's human nature. When you get scared, you tense, and that's not good for your balance; it's also detrimental to the more esoteric aspects of tai chi, like relaxing the shoulders. If you can cultivate enough control over your body and mind to stay focused and relaxed during competition, then you may stand a better chance during a fight. Anything helps, I think.

And I want to know where it's written that I have to be on the rag during each and every competition? Really, God, is it necessary? I guess if I can maintain mental and physical control through weakness and cramping and light-headedness, I can keep cool during combat, too. Although frankly I'm more of a mood to tear off the heads of the other competitors and feast on their hearts. Snarl.

progress/regress free association

From Abby's blog on weaving and spinning:

If I were going to pick a single least-favourite fiber, I’d have to go with corn-derived plastic fiber, ingeo. Unpleasant to spin, impossible to dye, with a melting point that suggests structural failure is possible with as little heat as could be generated by being left on the patio on a hot summer day, ingeo is totally inexplicable to me. I just don’t get it.

Seriously, what is the point of this fiber? “Oh look,” the hype about it says, “A fiber from renewable sources!” Well, huzzah — now with extensive industrial technology we’re able to create a fiber from renewable sources, finally! Thank heaven! What would we ever have done without a fiber that grows back? What, do you think cotton or linen grows in fields every year? Or fleece-bearing animals regrow their wooly coverings? If you want a sustainable product, what’s wrong with a natural one? What are we trying to accomplish here with ingeo? A more expensive, less functional, and nastier-feeling variant of acrylic yarns which is somehow superior simply because it’s corn-based? Where’s the value in that? Give me a nice regenerated cellulosic if we’re talking industrially-produced man-made fibers, and leave the oddball plastics to non-textile applications.

Not to mention that it's possible to synthesize silk in a lab, too; IIRC from my Leviatech research, silk protein is a fairly simple bi-chemical compound, and you can make threads of it as long as you like. But doing so would cost even more than the hand labor traditionally employed for growing silk, and it would deprive all those widows and orphans of the meager but crucial supplemental income they get from doing said handwork.

On a larger scale, Abby's point is applicable to things like the push for new fuels, too. Fuel cells to replace oil and so on. Gasoline made from corn. Gimme a break. Horses worked very well for a fair chunk of human history, and they made their own replacements. They only reason they don't work now is because we all have this idea that we must *go* somewhere. Into the city to work. To the coasts for vacation. To Asia for business. You know what would solve the energy crisis? Forbidding people to travel. We've got the communications technology in place now; for most workers it isn't necessary to travel outside of one's hometown. My God I'm starting to sound like a dictator.

Do you ever stop to wonder what our lives would be like if we still lived in a semi-agrarian culture, only with the medical and communications advances we now have? That's what a lot of space opera is about, directly or indirectly. I wonder if those advances would've even been possible without the push toward industrialization and the concentration of wealth and ideas in the cities. The increase of leisure time, the lack of needing to grub up the next meal is what gives scientific minds the time to think up this stuff. Furthermore, scientific theory and application (in the form of industrialization) are tied up together: more precise machines allow for more in-depth, accurate exploration and testing.

I was reading a little about 1870's and 1880's political issues, for possible story fodder, and was bemused to find that the decades after reconstruction were largely taken up by economic issues that look startlingly current: industrialization, protective tariffs, exploitation of farmers and laborers by big bad robber barons, an influx of immigrant labor that drove down wages. It took four or five presidential elections, and the efforts of organizations like the Grangers and their successors, to get any real movement on government regulation of big business, particularly the railroads and the textile industries.

Not drawing any conclusions from this. Just turning the compost in my head, letting the air in.

now I have an excuse to order those tee shirts that say "They're eatin' my Baptists."

There are so many people I hope are reading today. Mostly for vindictive reasons.

"End of the Line" got bought for Jim Baen's Universe. I got the acceptance letter and the contract yesterday. It's tentatively scheduled for release in the December issue. They're paying me a nice chunk of change, too; their pay rates were a big part of why I sent it to them. Their name and the recognition factor can do me no harm, either. Honestly, I could hardly have scored a better venue for my first pro sale.

This was what I wanted. The money, the venue, the timing. Not me self-publishing on my website; not a chapbook put out of somebody's garage; not a podcast sale for a measley $100--although now that the first rights have gone to Baen, I'd be more than happy to re-sell the story in audio format--wider exposure can do me no harm, either. Aside from the money, other editors give a certain amount of deference to the pedigree of your publisher. A sale like this is good for my resume, far better than a half-dozen sales to independent e-zines that will fold in six months. Granted, we are rounding a curve in terms of electronic media and some of those zines are going to grow up to be major Venues in their own right--but for now they're still minor-league. And that was not what I wanted. I'm not saying everything is going to be easy street from here on out, but it's a big step in the right direction.

The editor wants me to make some slight changes to the ending, which is fine. He also wanted to know if I'd considered making a series or novel with Trace and Boz--a comment I'm sure he wrote with tongue pressed firmly into cheek. I assured him it was a possibility.

This kind of jars my priorities back into order. I haven't thought about writing, except as something I used to do and would someday do again, in about a year. But 2006 was mostly lost to personal crap, and so far this year has been about tai chi and remodelling. Also there are some interesting (in the Chinese sense) things going on at work which have us all a little jumpy.

The sale of this story is going to allow me to pay off the smaller of the credit cards which my ex ran up. That freeing up of funds is going to allow me to buy a new laptop, which I critically need. That upgrade is going to alleviate a couple of factors which have made it very difficult for me to write in my new home. As I was relaying all of this to the SP yesterday, I stopped myself and said, "I guess I'm going to have to start writing again." He replied, "I guess I ought to speed up getting your office done."

He's at least as excited as I am. He's been a fan of my writing for a few years now, but he's a creative person, too, he understands how art is like a small flame that needs constant feeding and a certain amount of protection. We're talking about getting tee-shirts, attending Cons, and revamping my website, which I've been meaning to do anyway.

I knew the writing would demand my attention again when it was time. As karmic kicks in the head go, this one was pretty gratifying.

Thanks to all of you who told me I was worth it.

surrealism and customer service

One of the very kind and thoughtful gifts the SP and I received for our wedding was a gift certificate to a local martial arts supply store. On Saturday, since we were in the neighborhood and happened to think of it, we stopped by there.

I'd never been to the place before, although I'd heard horror stories. It's located in the front of an old house in a semi-residential, semi-commercial area. The windows have iron grids across them and there are two doors in front, one split top/bottom for UPS and Fed-X deliveries. NO PICK-UPS TODAY, said the sign.

There is a hand-lettered sign on the entry door, readable through the glass: "To enter, ring bell and push door open when you hear buzzer." We rang the bell. We heard the buzzer. We pushed the door open.

We entered into a claustrophobic, dark entry-way no wider than the door. To our right was a cedar-paneled wall hung with flyers and business cards; on the left were large pigeonhole shelves, crammed floor-to-ceiling with shoes, uniforms, sashes, and sparring pads.

The whole place was no bigger than my living room. It was divided into a U-shape by a hanging rack of uniforms at the front. The west wall was covered with practice weapons, mostly wooden; the east wall was full of books. The back wall had two doorways, the cash register, and many more pigeonholes full of colored ranking belts, neatly bundled. Occupying the back two-thirds of the showroom floor was a display case full of butterfly knives, pepper spray, boot knives, batons, shock guns, and all the other useless semi-dangerous paraphernalia that teenage boys like to collect. There was, in fact, a teenage boy sitting on a stool slinging around a butterfly knife in a way that suggested too much idle time for practicing such things. Finally he handed it back to the old lady behind the counter. "No thanks," he said politely. "I think I like the one I've got better."

The old lady, whom I'll call B, is the heroine of our story today. She was petite and slim, though with an uneven gait that suggested a bad hip. She wore a purple sweater, lavender lipstick, and long lavender nails. Her silver hair was a helmet, perfectly coiffed and frosted. She very plainly did not want to be there. I speculate she was the wife of the owner, or some other relative, press-ganged into service.

There was very little in the shop that the SP or I needed, seeing as how I make our uniforms and he makes our weapons, but he had been wanting a new set of hand-bags for us to practice punching on, so we found those, plus a little paperback, The Thirteen Chapters by Cheung Man Ch'ing, that Sit recommended, and a glossy magazine that looked good for a laugh. In the five or ten minutes that we spent making these selections, an old hippie-type guy came in the door and started giving the old lady a hard time. Not like he was trying to be mean or anything--far from it. On the contrary he was one of those guys who thinks he is absolutely charming and can't say anything without trying to make a joke. I find this type either sad or annoying, depending on the circumstances, but I generally ignore them or goad them on, depending on how mean I'm feeling and whether there are witnesses.

This old lady, B, was clearly both annoyed and flustered. She apparently did not recognize irony in conversation, so when the guy said, "I'm here to bother you again," or "I'm just here to cause trouble," or "You mean I got to pay for that?" she'd get all indignant and say, "What do you mean?". Also the guy was asking for things that she did not have in the shop and had apparently never heard of before. Three times she said, "Let me call Bob," and got on the phone: "Do we have such-and-such?" Each time the answer was no. The third time I think Bob hung up on her (I'm fairly sure Bob was sitting somewhere in the back of the house, in his underwear, watching TV). And B kept getting more nervous, shrill and jerky. "Close the door!" she shrieked twice, at new customers coming in. "Push it closed all the way! Please! Otherwise the wind pushes it open!"

This went on for a while, with us hanging around snickering at the old guy and the two punks who came in, and the old lady trying to cope with a return and the old guy's weird questions. I cracked open the magazine and starting reading bits to the SP about how chi influences facial shape and can tell you who your perfect mate is.

Suddenly the old lady screams, "PUSH! PUSH!!!" in the kind of panicked tones that one uses when the vampires are scrambling for the box car door and you're trying to shut it (heh heh--more on that tomorrow). I jumped about a foot in the air and looked across the room at her, wondering what the hell she was talking about. "Can't they READ?!?" she screamed at me, and I realized she was yelling at somebody trying to come in the front door. I hadn't even heard it buzz.

Two teenagers came in, sheepishly. "I was trying to turn the knob," one said.

"It doesn't say turn the knob, it says 'Push!'--Please close the door all the way! Push it closed! It's a windy day out and the wind will blow it open! All the way! Push!"

The SP and I looked at each other and it was all I could do not to fall down laughing in horror. The two kids came in and started messing with the weapons, B finished up with the old guy and got him out of there, and I said sweetly, "We're ready to check out now."

"Ok, honey, I'm sorry about that," she said.

"That's not a problem," I told her. "Actually we got this gift certificate from you as a wedding present, we got married last November...."

"Oh, isn't that wonderful," she said. "Congratulations!"

"Thank you."

"Look at this, I signed this myself."

"I thought you did," I told her. "You've got beautiful handwriting." (It was also signed in her favorite color, purple.)

"Oh, aren't you sweet. I took penmanship you know, way back years ago when they still taught it."

"Oh, you're not that old," I told her.

"Honey, I just had a birthday."

"And you're twenty-five," I guessed.

She laughed, and looked pathetically flattered instead of amused. "I just turned sixty-four."

"No!"

"Yes!"

I pulled back and looked at her hard, the incredulity in my expression not hard to fake because that close, I could see she was wearing false eyelashes and I found it incredible that anyone could be that superficial after menopause. Grooming is one thing; faux finishing is another. "You're making that up."

This went on for a while, with her getting more gooey and pliable, while I steered her toward the cash register. She tallied up our bill, which was the exact amount of our gift certificate. "And I just won't charge you tax," she said.

"Aren't you sweet!" I told her.

I got her to hang up a current flyer advertising Sit's class on their bulletin board, and we split. Once the door closed behind us, we doubled over in paroxysms of laughter and had to stumble to the car. "Don't you know how to charm the crazy old lady!" the SP said admiringly.

"Oh baby, she was easy," I said, wiping my eyes. But hey--why not? I felt sorry for her, and it got us out of there quicker.

The coda to all this was that we stopped by Sonic on our way home, for a quickie lunch, and the girl taking our order had the damnedest time pushing those little buttons.

"I want two bacon cheeseburgers, one with mustard, and one with mustard and mayonnaise," the SP said. "A small order of onion rings, and a small chocolate shake."

"Okay, that's two burgers, one with mustard and what else?"

"One with mayonnaise and mustard, and one with no mayonnaise."

"Two burgers with mayonnaise." (This was when I started giggling and put my head between my knees. After the previous encounter it was too much to bear.)

"No, one with mayonnaise and mustard, and one with JUST mustard."

Long pause. "Okay, that's two bacon burgers with mustard and mayonnaise."

The SP looked at me helplessly. "Yeah!" he said, and I fell over. "I know when I'm licked," he muttered.

Both burgers arrived with mustard, no mayo. We ate them anyway.

cooking Chinese: beef with broad noodles

I don't think I've mentioned it, but in addition to being a fine martial artist and teacher, Sit is also a chef. He used to give classes in Chinese cooking but gave it up as too messy and expensive. But he and I are still trying to find some common ground over which to bond, because I think he's still a little bewildered by me. He loans me Jeffrey Deaver mysteries and just recently offered to teach me how to cook Chinese. Actually I asked, while we were at Lucky Wok, "Can you teach me how to make this?" and he responded enthusiastically. I was quite flattered.

So on Wednesday, I left work early, went to the Chinese grocery nearby and bought some rice noodles. That was an adventure. The place had the feel of a street market, even if it wasn't. Everything jumbled on top of itself and looming from shelves and racks above. Barely enough room in the aisles for one person to sidle through. Tanks of flowing water and semi-live aquatic creatures, everything smelling of bait, ginger, and bitter spices. For all the complaining I do about American diets, and how over-processed everything is, the Asians are far worse. Everything seemed to be dried, or powdered, or both. The produce wasn't bad, though. It looked as fresh and firm as the stock in the organic market we like.

Mostly it was just intimidating, because I barely knew what I was looking for and didn't know where to find it. So I spent some time wandering, and the clerks were looking at me a little suspiciously. I don't think they get many white girls in there.

Anyway. Here's the basic recipe/procedure, preserved here so I can remember it later.

Take a tri-tip beef roast, flank steak, or skirt steak. You'll probably have to ask for the tri-tip special from the butcher. Cut it into thick strips and then chop into thin stir-fry slivers. Put this in a big bowl; season with salt and pepper. In a small bowl, mix together about 1-1/2 tsp baking soda, 2-3 Tbs cornstarch, and enough water to make a thin gruel. Pour over beef. Add a couple generous dashes of sesame oil, and about 1/3 cup vegetable oil. Combine to coat all the beef and let sit. (This is a lot of meat--tri-tip cuts average about 2 lbs. You can easily prepare this and freeze part of it for later, which is what we did.)

We used a package of broad rice noodles, very fine, translucent-white, and essentially flavorless. They are about six inches wide by a couple of feet long and come partially dehydrated and oiled, folded together into a square shrink-wrapped package that is also refrigerated. Sit cut the block of noodles into strips, about 3/4 inch wide, and put them in the steamer for a few minutes, to soften them. When they are hot and loosened up, unfold the noodle strips and pull them apart. Put into a bowl.

Now, in a very hot large skillet or wok, stir-fry the beef with some chopped yellow onion, an inch or two of fresh minced ginger, and three cloves of fresh minced garlic. Use vegetable oil to keep it from sticking. Add a couple dashes of oyster sauce, and lots of soy sauce. Stir-fry until the beef is barely done. Turn out onto plate.

Put the steamed noodles and a couple cups of fresh bean sprouts into the skillet. Add more soy sauce and another dash of sesame oil, if desired. Stir until everything is coated. Add the beef back in; taste and add more soy sauce. "This is the only dish that's based on flavor of soy sauce," Sit said, adding, "Paul Prudhomme says to flavor at every stage."

That's basically it. Ours came out a little bland. Sit says it takes three tries to get a new dish right; the first time you over-season, the second time you under-season. This, he said, was his second time making beef with noodles.

"Next time I teach you make curry chicken," he said.

the Week of the Snippy Old Lady

I hope this isn't indicative of the rest of the year.

Exhibit A: Practicing the umbrella form at the start of tai chi class on Saturday. Two new students come in, one who came with Communiversity last week, and a friend. We handed them umbrellas and ushered them to the floor. Sit started at the beginning, as always, out of deference to them. Taught the opening moves. After three or four repetitions, the friend starts whining, "How come everyone else already knows this? I thought this was a beginners' class!" which necessitated a halt of everything so we could explain to her that there is only ONE class, and if she'll shut up and pay attention, she'll be held by the hand as much as necessary.

Exhibit B: In the grocery store, a hefty and bulldog-jawed woman in one of those powered drive-carts stops the assistant manager and says, "Are you Rob? Do you remember me? I used to come in all the time, a couple years ago. I'm back, now. Back in the neighborhood." She made it sound like a threat. Fifteen minutes later I was stuck behind her in the checkout line while she retallied all her order, divided up payment between cash and debit, and counted out change. I can excuse this, people are on a budget, but she took her time complaining about the service in the store and how everything had been moved around and made more difficult, instead of counting. While this was going on, another white-haired old lady pushing a cart stopped in the main aisle and hollered at the cashier, "Where's the baking powder!?" No "excuse me," no waiting until the cashier was free, nothing like that. Just yelling right over my head. I directed her to aisle six.

Exhibit C: Me, at the bank, tapping my foot while two cashiers empty the change machine, one disappears into the back, and the assistant manager stands chatting with the guy at the head of the line, while four of us stand there figiting and there are NO cashiers behind the counter. Eventually the girls emptying the machine skip back behind the counter, and the first teller apologized to me for the wait, but the look on my face must've been threatening because she was very nervous and obsequious. "I would like a change of address form," I said very carefully.

Exhibit D: Me, venting my frustration on a "Customer Service Supervisor" at CapitalOne, trying to convey to her that I would like to pay off my credit card as quickly as possible, and toward that end it would be extremely helpful if she could either lower the interest rate, which is obscene, or remove the "restricted" status placed on the card 18 months ago, thanks to my &#!$^(*$!) ex-husband. "Oh, but you had a late payment," she said. I informed her that was incorrect. "Oh, but the computer says so. You had an interest rate of 9.0 back in December but your payment was late so we raised it again." My dear lady: my interest rate was never down that low, and my payment was not late. And I want that $35 late fee taken off of there, too. She did agree to that last, but I'm still paying 19.9% APR. They're lucky I don't declare bankruptcy and/or charge off the whole thing. I did investigate filing fraud charges, since most of that balance was charged by my ex without my knowledge, but they only give you 90 days after the fraudulent use to do that. In my current mood, I'm fantasizing about taking my ex and/or his parents to small claims court for half the charges.

I have a hair appointment this afternoon. I'm almost afraid to go. In my current mood I'll come out of there looking like Britney Spears.

foods I had never tasted/refused to eat seven years ago, which now make up staples of my diet

• most fish
  
• guacamole/avacados in general
  
• tea of any kind
  
• asparagus
  
• broccoli
  
• celery
  
• refried beans
  
• black beans, pinto beans, most legumes
  
• wild rice
  
• real butter
  
• red bell peppers
  
• real onions/garlic (as opposed to the powdered kind)
  
• fresh cilantro; most fresh herbs
  
• pea pods
  
• soy sauce, oyster sauce, horseradish--there are too many seasonings to list
  
• Chinese food in general
  
• blueberries
  
• pears
  
• cheese that didn't come in cellophane
  
• salmon & tuna that didn't come in a can
  
• peanut butter (I never realized how sweetened most peanut butter is until I was 25 years old--I still can't eat the sugary commercial stuff, but I like it au naturale)
  
• yogurt (ditto on the sweetened stuff)
  
• whole milk
  
• alcohol--not a beverage so much as a seasoning; I don't think I'll ever cultivate a taste for booze

I started thinking about this while living with my parents over the summer. Yesterday I looked around my kitchen and realized my mother would be utterly lost if she were called upon to fix a meal in there. And the odd thing is, I still ate a more healthy and balanced diet than most of the other kids I knew--it was just a bit monotonous. It's astonishing how much my horizons expanded after I got free of my mother's kitchen. Hanging out with the tai chi crowd didn't hurt, either.

New Year, motivation

Last Sunday was the Chinese New Year. May you have an Auspicious Year of the Pig!

To celebrate, those of us in Sit's inner circle went out for a really bang-up lunch at Lucky Wok. We had steamed fish with ginger slaw, beef with broad noodles (a favorite which Sit has offered to teach me how to cook), tofu hot pot, and assorted other delicacies.

Kung-fu brother Matt was in town, and introduced us to his new girlfriend, Serena. She's petite, Chinese, and very pretty. Interestingly, she looks as much like him as a person of another race and gender could look.

As a result of knowing that a visit from Matt was imminent, I FINALLY finished the vinyl weapons-carrying case I started making for him almost a year ago. It's the third such case I've made, and it turned out quite handsome, black with white trim. He seemed pleased. I was just glad to have it out of my workspace and out of my life.

I've been feeling remarkably cheerful and motivated lately. After finishing the weapons case, I reclaimed several items in my wardrobe by doing some simple alterations. I've written a bit, although production is hampered by internet connection problems. My computer is seven years old, and browser compatibility is becoming increasingly difficult.

Meanwhile, the SP and I are gradually developing a lingo and a pattern for practicing together, in our home, as a married couple. This is more tricky than it may sound. For me, practicing in front of my husband is rather like performing certain grooming procedures in front of him--like waxing, or cleaning out your navel. There are just certain things one prefers to do in privacy, partly because it's so undignified and partly because you don't want your beloved to know you are less than perfect. But it's becoming rapidly obvious that if we want to do these things (practice tai chi, not clean out our navels), time and space constraints dictate that we do them in front of each other--or better yet, together. So we are making progress.

=======

We had an unusually large class on Saturday, one of the biggest I've seen. We had twelve guests from the local "Communiversity" program, all adults. Some had previous experience with other teachers in the area. Personally, I hate that kind, because they come with these preconceived notions. Many of them are Sinophiles, and they tend to be gauche and fawning. Sit is pretty patient with them, but he does not suffer fools.

One guy was tall and gawky, like a scarecrow. Terrible posture (actually I was looking around at all the visitors that day, and they ALL had terrible posture. Whatever snotty remarks I make about our regulars, at least they've learned to stand up straight). Scarecrow-guy claimed he was a student of a particular grandmaster, when in fact he'd been to one of said master's workshops a few years back. He collared Sit after class and started asking him questions. I wasn't close enough to hear the conversation, but the tone was one I've heard many times. "Don't you think," the Sinophile will begin, and then spout off some simplistic statement about a half-understood fragment of Zen/martial arts/Buddhist philosophy that the Sinophile picked up from a Discovery Channel special, and call upon Sit to confirm it. And Sit will look at the poor slob in his politely incredulous way and say, "No!" with an undercurrent of Where the hell did you get that?

I saw Sit do a little demonstrating on the scarecrow, in the process of this conversation, with a great many exclamations of, "No--no!" thrown in. Later Sit told me and the SP he remembered the guy. "I remember his structure," Sit said. It was not a compliment.

Another visitor was a young woman around my age, a bit shorter than me, cornsilk blonde, rabbity-pink complexion. She seemed reasonably fit, but shapeless, and again with the poor posture. When Sit directed us to pair up, I did a few exercises with Rabbit-girl. Turned out she'd done a few years of kickboxing with one of the SP's old teachers, a guy we'll call DL.

DL took some lessons from Sit way back when. It was through DL that my SP found Sit. Both Sit and the SP speak highly of DL as a kickboxer and fighting instructor, but he is definitely not a tai chi guy.

Rabbitgirl was strong, and very tense. Every move she made was stiff and jumpy, and she had no grounding. I could have pushed her over rather easily, I think. She thought she knew the tai chi form, because she'd learned it from DL, but her postures were all wrong and there was no flexibility in her. Sit worked with her a bit after class, too, and adjusted her stances, tried to get her to relax. She told him she'd been with DL for four years and Sit said, "It doesn't matter how long you train, you got to have a good teacher or you never be good!"

Afterwards he came up to me and the SP and said, "What a waste of time!" which gave us a good snicker.

It's a double-edged superiority, however, because however much we may believe that Sit is the real deal and competency will come with time, both of us know we aren't there yet.

Since the class was so big, with so many guests, Sit switched over to workshop mode. He demonstrated a few of his standby maneuvers, the ones that usually impress people, then had us pair off and try them. Now, there's a curious aspect to these moves: beginners tend to have good luck with them, in part, I think, because they absolutely believe that they have just learned some fabulous Oriental secret and they have no reason to suppose it won't work. It's not until later, when Sit's breathing down your neck about peng and the mind and the body-turning that suddenly everything gets a lot more difficult, even when you know you've done it before.

The other reason these trick-moves tend to work for beginners is because they use leverage and momentum. So the novice whips her arm around hard and fast, and Wow! that really works!

Those of us who have been doing it longer know that you have, in fact, entirely missed the point by doing it hard and fast, but none of us (except occasionally the SP) can do it properly while moving slowly and softly, which is what Sit wants us to do. It's a very strange phenomenon, done properly: Sit can move you without you hardly being aware that you're being touched, much less moved. None of us are that skilled. And leverage and momentum will only take you so far: against a larger, stronger opponent, they won't work, particularly if that person has had martial arts training.

So I'm working with Rabbitgirl, who was pretty well matched to me in strength, and she could do these escapes using leverage and speed, but I can't yet do them correctly and I wouldn't do them incorrectly, so it probably appeared that I was very low-level. That was okay, I just did a couple other tricks I know, to save face. Even Sit will say, "If he very strong, and it won't work, do this." So I did. And Rabbit-face was duly impressed.

Still, I want to be able to do it correctly. I keep thinking that for as long as I've been doing this, I should be better at it, if only to represent my teacher well. Beyond that, I want to do it right. It's cool stuff, and it's fun, and potentially useful. That's why I took up tai chi in the first place; that's why I've kept with it.

So partly because of that, partly because of upcoming competition in March, and partly just 'cause it's the time of year when the days get longer and we all wake up from the winter slump, I am feeling motivated to practice. I have been practicing, doing basic Six Elbow drills down in the lunchroom at 2 o'clock and drawing strange looks of envy and contempt from the slobs at the vending machines. I have also been practicing in my head, going over the sequences of the Internal Form. I think I've finally got the first two-thirds of it memorized. I suck at it, but oh well.

This weekend, the SP dug out some old videos of Sit and former students doing demonstrations in various venues. At a guess, those videos were at least ten years old. I got to see demos of the old prodigal students, the legendary and apocryphal ones, including a couple I've mocked in this blog before. And you know what? They sucked, too. I'd estimate those guys were probably at the same level I'm at now, but they've stopped. They were bad in some of the same ways I am now, and in some totally different ways. And judging by what I've seen from their now-students, they've found whole new ways to be bad which I hope I never develop.

What was even more amazing was watching Sit do his form ten or twelve years ago. There are light-years of difference in his structure and movements between then and now. Of course he'll freely admit that he's changed things over the years; I can name some things he teaches differently now than he did when I first went to him. But overall he looks to me more efficient, more the embodiment of what he claims we should be striving for.

So if I start practicing now, how far can I expect to progress in ten years? It's kind of fatiguing to think I'll be forty-three, but hey, if I don't practice, I'll still be forty-three! And not nearly as slim or healthy. Now there's motivation for you.

still trying to figure the Bell curve

I have a long history of losing in competition. Occasionally, it is true, I have sabotaged myself by not practicing or being otherwise unprepared. Most of the time, though, I miss the prize because gosh darn it, I just don't know how to be mediocre.

Case in point: we had a Sweet Treats Bake-Off at work this week. Categories were Cakes, Cookies/brownies, Pies, and Other. I entered my S'mores Pie as a Chocolate Ganache Torte, in the pies category. My competition consisted of a chocolate meringue pie made with pudding mix; a "key lime-pineapple" pie made with Jell-O, Cool Whip, and canned pineapple (I'm not kidding--I tasted it, and it was unbelievably bad); and a peach pie with a homemade-looking crust that was actually pretty decent although I don't care for cinnamon with my peaches.

The chocolate meringue pie won. The "key lime" got second.

I wasn't shocked. I just smiled and shook my head. I'm used to it. I derive my own satisfaction from little things. For example, after the judging, the rest of the office was invited to sample the treats, and my ganache torte was wiped out long before anything else. Also, two of the judges came by my cube this afternoon and asked for the recipe; they claim it was the best dessert entered. "That was the last thing I tasted," one of them said, "so I was all sugared out, and I was still like, Wow, that's good!"

I find that statement somewhat revealing. It is true, after you've eaten five or six bites of artificially sweetened vegetable shortening, a mouthful of real cream and moderate amounts of sugar is going to seem pretty bland. But I remember, also, Sit complaining about the judges at tai chi competitions: "If you give the first person 9.2, (on a scale of 8.5-9.5) what you going to give the next person? Nine-point-three, nine-point-four? You going all the way to ten? Because I guarantee the winner not going to be perfect. You don't give a grand master nine-point eight. Nobody that perfect!"

Judges at office functions are always volunteers, they don't have a set criteria for evaluating and they don't want to give offense. They give everybody middling grades until they run across something that really stands out, and then they don't know what to do with it. I've read that in test studies, people will rate a song higher if they think everyone else likes it, so I'd guess that dessert-judging works on a similar groupthink. Everybody "knows" that Jell-O desserts are what people want and like, so they choose an "appropriate" winner as opposed to a deserving one.

This is why I snort when people say the cream will always rise to the top. Yes, good work will usually be recognized, but not necessarily rewarded. People have an odd sort of reverse snobbery, particularly in the midwest: they want things that are mostly just like what everyone else has. Nobody wants to stand out too much. They don't want to have things that are too nice, or eat foods that are too rich, or perform too well at their given hobby, lest someone else's feelings be hurt.

The SP turned out a perfectly lovely raised-panel door yesterday, for a client; when I left for work he was taking the center panel downstairs to router it, and when I came home the whole thing was glued up in a frame, clamped together in the middle of the living room floor. I hunkered down and admired it for a long time. It's a real backhanded compliment to say it looked store-bought, and it did, but better. It was tighter, heavier, more solid work than anything you can buy at Home Depot. There were no staples in the wood, no cheap veneer, no splices of short ends. Had I not known better, I would have assumed it had been purchased from a very expensive cabinetmaker. And I realized that I, too, am used to seeing handwork that's rough and amateurish--except from my husband, of whose work I have actually seen very little. I haven't lived with him long enough yet to really appreciate what he can do.

A friend once told me, "When you first said you were a writer I was like, 'oh, right,' because everybody says they write... and then when you showed me some of your work I was like, 'Oh, you were serious.'" I found this funny, and flattering, and sad. There are a lot of amateur writers/ spinners/ woodworkers/ sewers/ martial artists out there, most of them blissfully ignorent of how bad they are, or else embracing their mediocrity as a sort of badge of (misguided) authenticity. (I may be cribbing Abby's Yarns, here, she had a very similar rant awhile back.)

Perhaps because I knew the SP long before I a) married him or b) knew what he did for a living, it's still a little hard for me to accept that someone from my world and my generation can be so skilled. (I've known "professional" costume designers who didn't know a pelisse from a petticoat, and the SP will tell you horror stories of the hacks he meets in his line of work.) But when he shows me a finished piece he's done, I'm struck by the seriousness of it. Or maybe sincerity is a better word. When he does something, it works. It's not merely good, it's right. And regardless of how good I think it looks, he knows there's always room for improvement. When he came home he pointed out all the rough spots in the door, how he didn't like sanding things but there are some places a plane can't go, and I just smiled because I always know where the gaffes are in my work, too. Maybe the real hallmark of a master is that he no longer makes allowances for himself--or at least makes his mistakes look deliberate.

I had enough chocolate ganache left over from the competition pie to make us a small Valentine's day dessert, just big enough for two kung-fu students to scarf down before running off to class on Wednesday night. It was the first time my new husband had had that particular concoction of mine. "Oh my God, this is good," he exclaimed.

"I put too much butter in the chocolate," I demurred.

"Well it tastes fine to me. You can make this any time you want. I can't believe they picked that pie with the Jell-O in it."

What can I say? Better the approval of one's peers than the adulation of the masses.

Victorian stuff

A blog called Victorian Passage. Full of all things Victorian, fascinating and useless. They have paint samples, for crying out loud.

This one's going on my sidebar.

blameworthy

I've been thinking some about the nature of competency, lately. This is mostly due to events in my tai chi universe.

• We had another visitor to the Wednesday night advanced class. This one we'll call the Wookie--Big dude. Bad posture. Nervous twitches. (What is it about martial arts that attracts these spazzes? The rumor is, this guy has some kind of genuine brain disorder, and is on medication for it.) The Wookie was very strong, but slow. He was like a big dumb bull, pushing through every exercise. He kept saying "uh-huh. uh-huh. uh-huh." like a parrot, to everything Sit said until I was ready to hamstring him. He clearly thought he was getting it; he very much was not.
  
  "Your technique is very good," Sit said. "But it's not tai chi. You do only the yang. You don't have the softness." The Wookie seemed irritated by this. Sit went on to say it was possible to study for "fifteen years," but if you don't have a good teacher and/or you don't practice, you'll never be good.
  
  I got to give credit to the Wookie; he seems to have practiced, but either his teacher wasn't setting a good example or the Wookie was disregarding it. He can't catch an attack, he can't do chin na or anything involving finesse: he can only bulldoze. With this guy, it's easy to assume that he's messed up in the head and will never learn correctly, but I wonder why Sit puts up with him. Does he hate to let a student go? Does he think that as a teacher he can still get through to him?
  
  The Wookie says he intends to come back and "keep learning"; we'll see.
• On YouTube, I stumbled across some videos by a trio of guys who claim to be doing the Tai Hui form. Tai hui is Sit's style of kung fu. It's fairly rare. As far as I know, Sit's the only one in the U.S. who teaches it. But there's a former student of Sit's in Kansas City, who claims to teach tai hui as well. Those are three of his students on YouTube. Technically, they are my kung fu nephews.
  
  To my eye, they look pretty rough. Their shoulders are up around their ears when they should be dropped and relaxed. Their elbows are flapping around like chicken wings. Their stances are all wrong--a proper tai hui stance is weight on the back leg, front leg cocked so the knee is out, ready for kicking or trapping. These guys are extending their front leg out straight, and distributing their weight in the middle.
  
  Meanwhile their friends are posting comments going "Good form!" which just makes me groan. Now, we could get into evolution of form and the "right" way of doing things, but that's not really the point. Chinese internal styles all have the same basic principles: movement from the core of the body, rooting of the feet, dropping the hip, elbow, and shoulder. I see none of that in their videos. I see varying degrees of it in other videos that people put up on YouTube. Of course, what is visible in the form is not necessarily indicative of one's fighting ability, but that's not the point.
  
  I used to think form, and competition in form, was a waste of time. Sit admits that what looks good in form is not necessarily good fighting technique. But to me, it's like being able to speak both Cantonese and Mandarin. If you're really that good, you should be able to do either, as appropriate to the context. It's about having control over your body.
  
  Of course there are 10-year students in Sit's class who can't do a proper forward stance, either. And sometimes it irks me that they still come to class, treat it like social hour, and pass on the same bad habits to a new crop of students. Because Sit has given up correcting them, they think they're pretty good.
  
  But it's a fact of psychology that in order to judge your own competency of a skill, you have to have a fair amount of competency. In other words, you can't know how good you are until you're already fairly good. People who are low-level tend to judge themselves more skilled than they are, because they have nothing to compare to.
  
  All of which makes me worry about what my form tells people about my teacher.
  
  
• As I'm mulling all of this, a friend directs me to a blog about weaving, where the author addresses the very problem I've been contemplating:
  

  I learned [weaving] in a context where praise is rarely given, and understated when it is; where praising newbie efforts the way we do in the US would be seen as insulting. When I first learned to spin, I was five years old and we’d just moved to Chinchero, Peru.[...]
  
  One day I braided my hair for myself, and I was super proud. I ran up to the first old lady I saw, and said, “Look! Look! I braided my own hair! Didn’t I do a good job?”
  
  “No,” she replied. “You did a waylaka [a lazy, incompetent woman] job. Here, this is how it should be. Do it like this from now on,” and she undid my braids, rebraiding them so tight they’d hold for a week, in about 2 minutes flat.
  
  This wasn’t criticism per se — this was caring, and ownership and community.[...] If she’d told me “You did good,” it would have carried with it the message that such work was all that could be expected of me; that I had no further potential; that I wasn’t worth wasting any time on teaching.
  
  If she would have spent a long, long time rebraiding my hair, going slow, making me do it, that would have been condescending, and again, sent the message that I was of little value, due to my clearly sub-par learning skills. Doing it right, at close to normal speed, telling me what to feel for and think about, would give me more time to go off and practice without making someone else drill it into me. Suggesting that I needed a grown woman to teach me, painstakingly and at length, would have been to single me out from my peers to treat me like a problem.

  
  This segment really appealed to me, because it's the way that Sit teaches. He hardly ever says "good job." I think I'd been there three years before he said it to me, and that first time I was so shocked I thought I'd misheard. He just says, "Yes," when you do it right, and "No," when it's wrong. He rarely singles out anyone for individual attention unless you're fairly advanced and ready for fine-tuning, or have a genuine learning disability, as does one of the younger students in our weekend class. But I like Sit's method. It means you either sink or swim, and it weeds out people who insist on doing things their own way--who then go off and start their own school.

I'm at a level now where not much more can be drilled into me. I'm learning the internal form, which is pretty much the Holy Grail of forms in our style--from here on out it's a matter of refinement and practice. Sit helps as much as he can, offering clues and tricks he's figured out, but tai chi is like writing; you have to find your own method. I have my good days and bad days in class; sometimes I think I'm getting it and sometimes I'm crushed by how far I have to go. And because I am competent enough to see my shortcomings (and I have a teacher who won't let me get above myself), I sometimes get depressed because I know I don't really have the single-minded passion that it takes to excel at something like martial arts. I started tai chi seven years ago; I've been in Sit's class for four. I should be much further along than I am, but my interests are divided, and my time has always been sacrificed. I tell myself that if I just keep at it, I can't help but improve, if slowly.

In a way, all this tai chi indignation is motivating. The SP and I are both getting a little surfeited with honeymooning--not with each other, just with the indolent living--and eager to step up training again. I feel obligated to pass on what Sit has taught me, and to do it in a way that respects the tradition. Furthermore, we've got a couple tournaments coming up, a local one in March and the big one in July. I don't want my peers wondering if I have a lousy teacher or if I'm just a lazy brat.

Sit may be thinking along the same lines, because a few weeks ago he watched me do MY internal form and said, "Look, either you want to learn this or you don't. If you do, you got to practice."

Thank you Sifu-- May I have another?

chicken & sausage soup

This is a knockoff of my chicken jambalaya.

Poach a couple of chicken breasts in a big pot or deep skillet, with a little water and chicken bouillion. Add seasoned salt & seasoned pepper.

In another skillet, melt some butter and saute about half of a yellow onion, a red bell pepper and a green bell pepper, all diced coarsely. Throw in a couple cloves of garlic and a couple of celery stalks, also chopped.

When the vegetables are wilted and the chicken breasts are mostly cooked, remove the chicken to cool and dump the peppers & onion in the chicken broth. Add two 10 oz cans of diced tomatoes with their juice. Add about a tablespoon of basil or thyme, one or two bay leaves, and a few generous dashes of Frank's Red Hot.

Dice up cooked chicken and return to pot. Cut a package of smoked dinner sausage into rounds and add to pot.

Let simmer, uncovered, until some of the liquid is reduced and the sausage looks shriveled. Taste; correct seasonings.

Serve with crusty buttered bread.

(You can also eat this over rice. Originally I would add long grain and wild rice to the soupy mixture, and let it steam until it turned to hash. But the jambalaya didn't keep well when it had the rice cooked in; it became starchy and bland in the refrigerator. This soup is just as good the day after.)

nightmares and dreamscapes

I had a horrible dream last night. I dreamt it was morning, and I heard my spouse get up and start moving around, getting dressed, and I rolled over to see it was my ex-husband, the 450-pound leech. "What are you doing here?" I squeaked. "What do you mean?" he said. "I'm your husband."

This was followed by me trying to pretend everything was normal, while wondering--horrified--if the past year had been a dream after all, and trying to slip away to check my laptop for messages from the SP. Meanwhile, the ex is following me around, whining about how I seem so distant lately, and he doesn't want to lose me, and he's really going to change this time, really. I feel suffocated just remembering it. I finally escaped into the bathroom, staring down into the plastic almond-colored sink of my old apartment, trying to visualize the chipped white porcelain of my new sink, in the old house I share with the SP, muttering incantations like, "There's no place like home," under my breath.

Luckily for me, the SP started snoring, as he often does around 4 a.m., and I woke up violently to find his bony elbow nudging me in the temple. I tickled him in the armpit. He snorted and turned on his side and I began to breathe normally again, as the nightmare pressure eased off my chest.

When I told the SP about it this morning, he said it was no surprise I was having nightmares, after that movie we saw last night, Children of Men. It's an impressive piece of dystopic science fiction, but it makes you ask yourself, would it really be such a bad thing if humanity died out?

Oh, and we ripped down another section of wall yesterday. It's kind of fun. We're going to take the ceiling down, too, and encase the whole room in fresh new sheetrock and paint. I'm glad about that. Sheetrock is a lot cleaner than plaster, which tends to shower fine powder down on everything, constantly. That's a big consideration since I want to have my computer and sewing supplies in that room.

It's neat, having that room stripped out. It's like a blank canvas, waiting to be made pretty.

icy Tuesday

I woke up this morning to a report that massive ice storms had killed 29 people so far in Texas, Oklahoma and southern Missouri. That's a bit south of where I am, but news like that doesn't exactly inspire one to get out of bed.

We had a bit of precipitation this weekend. Less in my town, more in the City. Very cold. I started acquiring cold weather gear last Friday--hats, gloves, long underwear-- mostly stuff for doing manual labor. I used to have quite a lot of that stuff, but I let it go over the years because you just don't do as much while living in an apartment. Now, however, I am a House Wife, working in a drafty cold room with a lot of plaster dust in the air, and I need tough clothes. Tony is vastly entertained by watching me work. He says he can laugh at every other woman he's known. He's proud of me and I feel smug. The downside of this is he's getting more ambitious with his plans to remodel the house. Now he's talking about stripping off one wall in the living room, too, so he can realign the two halves of this doorway that's gotten kind of torqued by the settling. He's talking about curtaining off part of the living room with plastic. He says we can't burn the wood stove while the plastic is up, and in the next breath asks me to turn down the heat because our gas usage was up last month. He keeps calling me "intrepid" and "a trooper." I'm starting to wonder what I've gotten into.

Still, it's heartening to see the progress we've made. The room is down to bare studs except for one corner. Monday, I was off for MLK day, so we hauled out all the rubble from the demolished room and took it to the dump. That's kind of a scary trip, in the dead of winter, in the middle of nowhere with a wind that will numb your double-gloved fingers in a matter of seconds. When you go into a dump you get the feeling you've stepped back in time to something primitive and wild. The men who work in dumps tend to be rather proto-human in appearance. The massive earth-movers they drive are like mammoths, lumbering and inexorable. Gulls and birds rip at the carnage. Even in the dead of winter, the landfill is slightly warm and fragrant. You can feel the heat coming off the ground; your feet are warm but your hands freeze from the wind whipping across that bare wasteland.

I expect I'll get to see the dump in every phase of the year, this year: I gather this was only the first of many such trips. Just the rubble from half of that tiny room filled the pickup truck. "I think we got it scared now," Tony said, surveying the bare dusty floor.

=======

Shirley sent me a mildly intriguing reference to an American-Idol-like writing contest at gather.com. Simply put, Simon & Schuster are letting the public act as their first readers. I expect we'll see more of this in future. I think I even mentioned, back when I posted End of the Line on Jim Baen's Universe, that theirs was a similiar setup, although I later learned that they still had designated first readers and the whole process wasn't as democratic as they would have us believe. Currently, EOTL is still being "considered" by the editor of that publication. He's had it for a year. I'm tempted to write them a nudge note but I really don't care that much.

I'm just not in the mood to write. I'm more interested in rebuilding my house and reading everything I can get my hands on, and catching up on the movies I missed over the past three years. I'm even less in the mood to publish, since I realized that selling a novel is uncomfortably like running for public office--it takes a lot of glad-handing and getting your name out there. No thanks. If I ever do finish Trace's adventures I'll either self-publish or find a nice small press to do it for me.

That's the mood this week, at least. Winds may change. I'll admit I had a brief hiccup of excitement at the gather.com contest, and I might've tossed something into the hopper just for fun, but I don't have anything submission-worthy. I'm not sure what "commerical fiction" means, anyway. Does that exclude genre type stuff? Oh, and there's a sinister little rule that if you win, you agree to sign their contract within five days. Lord only knows what's in that contract.

Oh well. Nothing here but hiding out in the bunker, soaking up pop culture and stuffing myself with chocolate.

saith the gourd unto Herod

Aren't spam subject lines fun?

Anyway, here's some mental housecleaning for the week, mostly about words and writing. Hey, did you know this used to be a writing blog?

=======

DK sent me an email yesterday:

As I recall you are not particularly fond of writing short stories, but I thought this might present as a good opportunity for you to get something published. Check it out.

http://www.escapepod.org/2007/01/06/300-word-flash-contest/#more-185

I have several thoughts on this. First, I wonder if DK has some kind of stock in escapepod.com, since he's mentioned it to me three or four times, apropos of nothing each time. Second, I worry that the state of publishing is even worse that I suspected, because I see several "names" on the lists of escapepod's fiction list, and I know that even the award-winning midlist authors are scrabbling for publication space/money, so I really doubt that my odds would be better in this venue vis-a-vis any other.

Thirdly, I really love it when people (men, generally) who don't know me send me little pearls of wisdom about how I could get published, when the pearls they send me are in no way related to anything else they've seen me do, and frequently reveal the sender's own ignorance about writing and publishing. What's the goal in this? Winning my undying gratitude? Hoping to siphon off some vicarious fame? But then, DK once wrote to Tom Clancy suggesting they write a book together, or barring that, could Mr. Clancy please forward copies of all his research so DK could write the book? Honest to God.

Weary indignation aside, I've been wondering in a more general way if audiobooks are going to continue to grow the way they have. I wonder if publishers have any hard numbers about how consumers are using books; so much media is throwaway or background noise these days. The emphasis is on portable entertainment--of which a book is the original format--but you can listen to a book while driving, or working out, or whatever. Even I'm hard-pressed to sit down and read these days. I wonder if I'd be more inclined to listen to a story, if there were more of the kind of story I want, available? Or would I simply be annoyed by the background noise, the way I so often am with music, these days?

========

My writer's meeting was last Saturday. We had a bit of material to cover, too, after a long dry spell. Three of our members have been going through household changes this year; the other three are just having really bad luck (car accidents, surgery, settling the estates of parents). But this time, Jan brought a nonfic article for her art history class, about the late-19th-century Japonisme fad, and how Japanese art influenced western art (especially the Impressionists, which is hard to fathom), decor, and dress. I knew a bit about this peripherally, because of my cultural research, but it was interesting to see a more in-depth article. I wrote several comments on her paper, and she wrote me a very nice thank-you. I love that. It's so nice to hear when my crits have been appropriate and helpful. Makes me feel like I've got a handle on this writing thing.

My contribution to the group was about 7 pages of a new story I'm working on, a little urban fantasy/slipstream/horror thing. Kinda Ray Bradbury, without the sugar coating. More Shirley Jackson, I think, which makes sense cuz I've been reading her.

=========

I finished reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle. That is some disturbing stuff. It's not supernatural in the slightest. It concerns a pair of sisters, the only survivors of a poisoning that killed the rest of the family (the elder sister was tried and acquitted of the murders). The girls have a symbiotic relationship that's all the more twisted and awful for all its surface normalcy. Jackson's style is tremendously clean, straightforward, and readable. It's like being stuck in a nightmare, where everything makes perfect sense even while you know it's wrong. I admire it greatly.

=========

I also finished The Knife Man (see sidebar). Good reading. Fascinating insight to the state of medicine on the cusp of science. Made me grit my teeth many times at the pigheadedness and shortsightedness of the establishment, who always want to do things the way they've always done them, a system that rewards mediocrity and resists any kind of change for the better.

=========

My writer buddy Rob loaned me Other Powers, by Barbara Goldsmith. It's a social biography, if you will, of Victorian Woodhull. I knew of Woodhull as an early proponent of birth control and the first woman to run for the American Presidency, but the last time I read about her I was in the seventh grade, I think, and the library books at that level were somewhat more sanitized than this account. To my delight, I find that the meat of Woodhull's life and biography center around the American Reconstruction era, and among other things she was a spiritualist. Looking forward to these pages.

awesome, awesome egg rolls

Take:

• 3 boneless pork sirloin cutlets (about 1 lb), cut into stir-fry strips
  
• 3 or 4 green onion strands, minced

marinate the above for 15 minutes in:

• 1/2 c sherry
  
• 2 tsp chicken bullion granules
  
• 4 Tbs soy sauce
  
• 3 Tbs oyster sauce
  
• 1 Tbs red pepper flakes
  
• 1 tsp sesame oil
  
• 2 Tbs brown sugar
  
• fresh black pepper and/or white pepper

you will also need:

• olive oil for stir-frying
  
• 3 garlic cloves, finely minced
  
• 1 cu in. fresh ginger, finely minced
  
• 1 bag shredded prepared coleslaw mix (cabbage and carrots)
  
• 1 pkg egg roll wrappers (usu. contains 18-20)
  
• peanut or vegetable oil for frying

Stir-fry the minced ginger and garlic in a little olive oil until a bit brown. Add the marinated pork and green onion and fry until pork is done. SAVE THE USED MARINADE. Remove cooked pork to a cutting board to cool. With a big sharp knife, mince the pork into tiny bits and put in a big bowl.

Stir-fry the cabbage mixture with the leftover marinade juice until the cabbage is a bit limp and the marinade is mostly absorbed. Remove cabbage with a slotted spoon and cook down the leftover sauce until thick and reduced. Drizzle this over the cabbage and pork mixture; toss together well.

Wrap about 3 Tbs of the cabbage/pork filling per egg roll wrapper, according to package directions. Fry in peanut or vegetable oil until golden all over. Drain well. Good hot or cold.

For passable sweet & sour sauce, combine about 1/4 c plum jelly with about 1 Tbs EACH soy sauce and rice vinegar; more or less to taste.

reasons I'm in a good mood today

1. We emptied my office and are going to tear out plaster this weekend. The SP said I need to be "thinking about" lighting for that room.
2. Sit smacked me in the face last night. This is a gesture of respect, though painful.
3. The loan servicing company has agreed to put my student loans in forebearance for another year, though they told me at first they wouldn't. This essentially means I can pay off the credit cards this year. Completely.
4. I wrote four pages yesterday. Totally new story, unrelated to anything.
5. My writer's meeting is Saturday.
6. My new fish cookbook arrived. We're having fish tacos for dinner tonight.

double-chocolate sour cream cookies

An enabler--er, friend came over Wednesday and we baked. I made the almond cream sticks and tried something new that was an instant hit: Chocolate sour cream cookies. Kind of like a soft sugar cookie, but with chocolate. I got the recipe off Recipezaar.com. Full instructions are there.

1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1 egg
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup baking cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used about 1 1/4 c organic dark choc chips)

The original recipe called for vanilla chips, as well, but I left those out. These were very good; dense, rich and not overly sweet. That and the use of brown sugar makes me suspect this is an older recipe (like: pre-seventies). The sour cream in this recipe makes up half the shortening (ordinarily there would be a full cup of butter to 2 cups sugar). This uses about 40% less sugar and adds the complexity of sour cream.

They make up a fairly thick, sticky batter and don't spread much as they bake. They were decent right out of the oven, but like most things with sour cream they were better the next day, and even better after that.

My Sparring Partner loved them. So did I; I ate six for breakfast the morning after I made them. That was good for an extra pound or four. I'd make another batch if I had a modicum of self-control.

I was intending to make a pound cake, too. I bought some dried Bing cherries and rehydrated them in a little orange & lemon juice, with a splash of almond extract. I figured I'd layer the minced cherry & almond comfit in the middle of a pound cake, but I got to feeling poorly on Thursday and let the project go. The cherries, however, have been marinating in the fridge and they are awesome. I've been eating them straight from the bowl. They're about gone.

Honeymooning is hard on the waistline. We've not been good little tai chi students. We haven't been training much. We've both put on a few pounds this month. Sigh.

nothing and everything

Have you ever been frightened by your own desire for something, because you knew it left you vulnerable? Have you ever gotten what you wanted and found that it exceeded your expectations? Have you ever been in a situation so perfect that in the back of your mind, you're terrified you'll wake up? That you figure it must've been a mistake, because you haven't been all that good in this life, much less the previous, and pretty soon the universe is going to up and sweep it all away?

Seriously--these Peppermint Bark candies are that good.

And the boy's not bad, either.

sugar jones

I am having this obscene urge to bake. Cookies, pound cake, pies, apple turnovers.... 'Tis the season, I guess. It's not really the eating I crave, it's the making. The smells and textures of butter, sugar, flour and eggs. The implements of baking--the pans, wooden spoons, spatulas; the cold fine-edges of cookie cutters in adorable little intricate shapes; the blunt smooth-grained weight of a cherrywood rolling pin, given to me by a mom who shared my passion for baking and is herself a champion bread-baker.

So I was scanning back through my recipe box and pulling out favorites, plus a few new things I'd like to try. Here's the litany of calories:

• The family favorite is coconut-sour cream cookies, a cakelike little pillow of heaven with a very fine texture, dense but very soft and moist. You can really only make them at Christmas. Once when I was a pre-teen I made a batch in summer, and they sagged into a mound of sugary mortar at the bottom of the cookie jar. We had to keep them in the fridge and dig out a serving with a spoon. But in winter, they keep very well. In fact they are better after two or three days.
• Almond cream sticks. These are fine-grained and slightly flaky, somewhere between shortbread and a pie crust. They are full of butter and cream cheese and are very rich, but oddly light. You can eat a whole lot of them before you realize the danger.
• Brownies made with Baker's bittersweet chocolate and swirled with cream cheese. (Are ya seeing a pattern, here?) My favorite brownie recipe. Moist and rich. Make a thin layer in a broad flat pan, cut into small bites and freeze the bulk.
• Chocolate- and butterscotch-chip cookies with oatmeal and pecans. I grind the rolled oats into flour and finely chop the nuts. That way they are more about flavor and texture than chunks. Most people will eat these, even those who claim to dislike pecans. Both additions are useful for upping the fiber contect and reducing the sweet, so you can tell yourself they semi-healthy.
• Grandma Rella's oatmeal with raisins and pecans. Now these ARE healthy. They have about 30-40% less sugar in them than most modern cookie recipies, and you make them with old-fashioned rolled oats. They're cakey and chewy, filling and satisfying. In my mom's house there is no shame in eating these for breakfast or dinner, preferably with milk. Hell, if you broke them in a bowl and poured milk over, you couldn't tell the difference.
  
  I keep thinking I can do a variation on this theme, with dried apples, maybe some almonds, and cut into bars.
• The perfect sugar cookie. Alas, I have not yet found it. I keep trying. I think there must be more dairy fat involved, somehow. (I have no interest in the dry cardboard-like cutout-type recipes. Blech.) A couple years ago I was experimenting with Madeleines: they kept coming out dry, so I added some sour cream. The Madeleines fell all apart but the batter was fantastic. It puffed and then sank into a wonderful chewy moist cookie-like substance. Must attempt this again.
• Something involving cherries and almond flavor. I don't know what form it will take, yet... maybe the base recipe for the coconut sour cream cookies, which strongly resembles a poundcake. I just bought a bottle of Almond extract from Penzey's--the real stuff, made with bourbon. But what form should the cherries take? Dried? Fresh? Canned? Pureed? Preserved? Comfited? I don't know, but I am undaunted.