from other discussions

Over on Kung Fu Monkey they were talking about the media in general, and in comments the talk veered toward the ever-popular "biased media!" debate. As I said in comments, my rabid-conservative ex-husband claimed the media was all full of pinko Commie fags, and my quiet but stalwartly Democratic SP insists they are all in the laps of conservative fat cats. If we are to deduce anything from this, I'd think it would be that the media is so overwhelmingly negative and focused on tearing down whomever is in power, that they will always seem to be against whatever you are in favor of.

Me, I don't care. Insisting that the media is biased is kind of like stamping one's foot and crying, "It's not fair!" It's childish, and it's more concerned with being "right" than having a meaningful discussion about a subject, any subject at all.

So even if you do perceive a bias in the media, acknowledge it, accept it, and adjust your bullshit meters accordingly.

ADDENDUM: The SP would like me to clarify that he is not one of the folks whining about the bias of the media. He doesn't deny that there is one, but he's good about searching out the better options, like NPR and the Christian Science Monitor. Which I think is the right attitude to take.

for Lizzie

Into the family room strode a dapper young man in a sack suit and a bowler hat. He tipped the hat and marched toward Trace with his hand extended. “Sheriff Paulson?” he asked.

“No,” Trace said, “I’m—“

“Oh, you must be Mr. Lombard,” the young man said, nodding at Boz. “And this must be your hired man, Aenard?”

“No, this is my partner, Boz,” Trace said. “And I don’t know any Lombard. Who are you?”

“Rex Reynolds, reporter for the St. Louis Times,” the young man bared his teeth cheerfully. “Were you a friend of the deceased?”

“We knew him,” Trace said.

“Didja?” Rex Reynolds pulled a tattered notebook and a stub of pencil from his pocket. “What was his name again? Hershel, wasn’t it? Was it just him or all of them? Looks like a slaughterhouse in here, don’t it?”

“What are you doin here?” Trace asked pointedly.

“Searchin’ out the truth, mister. People got a right to know when there’s a murderer in their midst.”

“There ain’t no murderer,” Trace protested. “He’s dead in the well with the rest of ‘em.”

“Really? I heard there’s a young girl down at the jailhouse with blood all down her dress. Did you know Miss Anna Hershel before she killed her family?”

“That young girl didn’t kill anybody,” Trace said in disgust. “Hershel was a decent fella with two proper-raised daughters and somebody did for them in a bad way.”

“Mind if I quote you on that, mister…?”

“Tracy. Jacob Tracy. And if you’re here to search out the truth you might ask some questions before you start jumpin to hare-brained conclusions.”

“How did you know about the murders?” Boz interrupted.

“It’s all over the streets this end of town,” Reynolds said.

“You mean you read it in the Voice this morning like everybody else?“

Reynolds sucked his teeth. “Hey, that neighborhood rag may’ve been first with the story, but the Times has got the readership, we’ve got the resources, and this reporter is gonna break the case wide open long before Anna Hershel faces a jury. Now stand aside, gentlemen, I need to see the bodies.”

The young man flipped his notebook shut, shouldered past Boz and strode out the kitchen door. It seemed only prudent to follow him.

They stepped into the back yard just in time to see one of the women hauled up out of the well, dripping wet and dangling from the hook that had caught under her arm and neck. Her head was thrown back, her stringing hair partially covering the gaping white-lipped wound at her throat. There was so little blood left in her that the flesh was white as a trout’s, but her clothes were stained a uniform rusty shade from the saturated water.

“Get her down!” one of the men snapped, and two of them reached to catch the body and the line from which it hung. Together they wrestled the sodden corpse over the lip of the well and lowered her to the ground. She still had her shoes on, which struck Trace as somehow inappropriate.

Rex Reynolds gave the pitiful thing a cursory glance and then barged up to the man in charge. “Sherrif Paulson, I’m Rex Reynolds, from the St. Louis Times, what can you tell me about the situation here?”

Sherrif Paulson swayed away from the young man with a wave of his hand, like an ox flicking at a horsefly. “Nothin’ to tell, son, got three dead bodies and a hysterical young girl watched her father go mad.”

“So you believe her story that the father was the killer,” Reynolds said, jotting in his notebook. “How’d he end up in the well, then?”

“She says he slipped and fell,” the sherrif said. “Easy, there! Don’t go tearin’ up the clothes until Doc’s had a chance to look at em.”

“He was a big strong man, wasn’t he? Is that the body over there?” Without waiting for an answer, Reynolds marched over to the quilt-covered figure on the grass.

“Now you just get away from there,” the sheriff began, and was distracted by a shout from the men at the well. The rope and hook jerked up, suddenly slack, and flung a disembodied arm in a gingham sleeve onto the grass.

They all looked at it in varying degrees of dismay. “So tell me, sheriff,” said Reynolds, “you think a fifteen-year-old girl could swing a kindling-hatchet with that kind of force?”

a Potter-free post or, tournament adventures

We went to Dallas (Plano) Texas last weekend for the annual Chin Woo Association's Tai Chi Legacy Tournament. It's a big one, maybe the second-biggest in the country.

A lot of stuff happened. We did workshops. We did forms. We did push-hands. We ate a lot of good food. Strangely, I haven't felt like reporting any of it. The competitions were not bad, but not very good, either. Both of us have improved since last year, but neither of us had trained for this tournament. I did all right in my first ever push-hands competition, I got bronze, and I think I could've gotten silver if they'd had everybody do two fights instead of using the "bye" system. The chick I fought was kind of wild. She kept breaking contact, which is a no-no and she was warned about it. She was real steady in her low stance but her upper body was easy to move. I was starting to get her figured out but I ran out of time. Final score was 10-5, but I learned a lot and kept my cool. The woman who got silver was actually knocked down twice, and I never lost my footing, hence my thinking that I could've beaten her.

At any rate I don't think the judges were very strict in that ring. Even before I went up, I noticed a lot of grabbing that wasn't being called. But it doesn't matter. I was in a good frame of mind for the fight, empty and ready to learn. I know a couple of things to work on for the upcoming year. The SP and I both received compliments on our form; we were both trying really hard to do "correct" push-hands (I was really trying hard to stick to the rules, especially) but we got beat by people doing rather rough and tumble push-hands. Obviously we will have to help each other practice by doing rough-and-tumble attacks, so we can practice deflecting them softly.

Other things happened, all the little petty scandals and dramas inherent in a gathering of special-interest parties. Remember the Wookie, the sometime-attendee of my Wednesday night class? He met us at the tournament, attended no workshops, did no forms, just sat around for three days waiting for push-hands. In the meantime, somehow he met up with a snake of a master who decided to sic him on another visiting master. So the Wookie approaches this 70-year-old Chinese guy who probably weighs what I do, who came out of retirement to teach workshops at this tournament. The old master is a nice guy, so he invites the Wookie to touch hands with him, and the Wookie lays him out on the pavement. The old master is mortified, of course, and asks who is the Wookie's teacher, and guess what he says?

Sit gave him what-for, in his own quiet way. "I didn't teach you push-hands," he said last night in class, "so don't tell people I'm your teacher. Especially after you push someone down."

The Wookie is either mortified or sulking, I can't tell which. He's not the most expressive human being I've ever seen. I've never seen Sit actually kick anyone out of class, but I've never seen anybody as clueless as this big lump, either. He's wasting the time of the rest of us. The SP refuses to talk to him or even look at him, in part because he had met the old master and liked the guy. I can't quite find it in my heart to be cruel to a big dumb animal, but I may say something to him if the chance presents itself.

If that weren't enough, the Wookie invited along a friend to the tournament, another big lump I'll call Charlie because of his resemblance to Manson. Disheveled, dirty, holey clothes, wild hair, wild look in the eye. This guy claimed to have 30 years experience in Akido ("Maybe he do Akido thirty years ago," Sit snorted.). He, too, came just for the fighting, and he spent the three days before going around the tournament picking fights with guys smaller than him. I saw him wrestle a skinny 17-year-old to the ground and put an elbow on his throat before the kid's teacher intervened. Eventually Charlie picked on the wrong guy, a Chinese named Huong, I think. Huong evidently wanted to start a school in China and came to the U.S. tournament to win himself a grand championship--which he did, very handily. He entered 19 forms divisions, and won most of them. That would've been impressive enough, but he also fought in the light contact sparring and won that. At some point early in the weekend Charlie ran into this guy and started some shit, and got a nosebleed for his trouble. After that Charlie went to the registration board and asked to drop his enrollment in the sparring competition.

Ironically, I never met the guy during the weekend but we all knew who he was, thanks to his tenuous connection to our group. I hope I never do meet him.

Oh, and he lost at push-hands, too. The Wookie won in his division, which prompted Sit, on Wednesday, to suggest he start his own style. "Then you can teach people like you. Hard-style push-hands. Nobody else do that. That's a good idea, actually. You should go do that."

It was very hard not to laugh aloud at that. But Sit was careful to say to the SP and me, privately, "Don't think he's not good. He's very good at what he does. That's why he wins. That's why the old master make a mistake, he think he's not good, because he's a white guy and he talk slow, so the master is not prepared. You can never underestimate somebody. Especially if you going to let them touch you."

At any rate, we are back, and life marches on. The SP bought me a decent metal sword from one of the vendors, and Sit told us we'd resume sword form on Saturday. I'm glad. I like the sword form and I'd like to compete in it next year. Despite my lackluster performance over the weekend I can tell I'm still learning and growing. Sit's been overall quite positive about my application work. I can't do everything just right all the time, but the successes are coming with more ease and more frequency.

In other worlds, I have a wedding dress to wrap up and a bit of writing to do. Miss Fairweather is quietly furious that I have neglected her for so long, and she is demanding an outlet. Stay tuned for details.

Abney Park

Ferris Bueller said a person should not believe in an ism, but occasionally one already believes in an ideal and just doesn't have a name for it. In my case, it appears I've been a steampunkist for a couple years now.

I'd always kind of turned up my nose at Steampunk as a fiction genre, because I didn't care for alternate history and the authors best-known for writing Steampunk were the types I always considered purveyors of techno-porn; I'm simply not interested in all the gears and gadgets. But maybe the time just wasn't right for me. Maybe the movement just needed time to evolve out of prose fiction and into an aesthetic. At any rate, after researching the links for my last post I found myself feverishly surfing for examples of glowing glass, brass, and leather.

(It deserves saying that my husband and I were already leaning in a direction that might be considered steampunk in the look we were designing for our house: rich wall colors, lots of wood shelves and cabinets built-in, pigeonholed storage and so on. But now with the SP bringing out his old metalworking tools and cutting holes in sheets of nickle and brass, suddenly a whole new medium for crafting and decorating has opened up for me.)

Eventually my travels led me to Abney Park. No, not the cemetary in England, the band. They dress like airship pirates from a Wells/Verne novel and they weave techno rhythms and Middle-Eastern wails through their music. It's just damn cool. They've sampled bits from a number of diverse sources and come up with something utterly original that feels like a sound I've been waiting for my entire life. Yes, I am drooling like a fangirl, but just last week I was trolling for a soundtrack to kick-start my Trace writing again, and it seems I have found it.

Here's their MySpace page. Start with "Stigmata Martyr." I'm gonna go scour the antique stores.

ah, that library smell

Here's a fun little project. I found a book at Half Price Books, The Book of Werewolves by Sabine Baring-Gould. I was perusing for a good witchcraft reference in the Magick section (the modern crap is awful) and I spotted this one and picked it up because the author's name was Sabine. Appealing coincidence, eh? Imagine my delight when I cracked the cover and found it had been originally published in 1865! This copy's a paperback reprint, of course, but the text setting appears to be original; at least it's in a style that I've seen in other 19th-century books. Since it was only five bucks, I bought it, figuring I could recover it in a nice cloth or leatherish hardcover. And after three minutes of Googling, I found a library site on how to do rebinding. Cool, huh?

At least, if you're a geek, it's cool.

Even more cool, and supremely inspiring are these macabre art installations from Alex CF. Last time I checked he had a werewolf research collection up for sale on Ebay; now he's got a Vampire hunter's kit, as well. These are very like the little bits I've built for Miss Fairweather's collection, but on a grander and more comprehensive scale. I especially like the bone fragments molded from resins. I've been thinking of trying something similar. Hell, I'd like to do a LOT more of this sort of thing, but writing and remodelling, alas, take priority.

ADDENDUM-- MANY MORE FUN THINGS:

For further coolness and inspiration, Brass Goggles, a hub for all things Steampunk.

...An online museum exibit to make you really glad you didn't live in the Nineteenth Century....

Shoot, now I found these really cool apothecary jars in all shapes and sizes. Hmm. The SP is making a new hilt for his sword this week, I wanna play too.... No! NO! Write, dammit!

more reasons to be wary of soy

From The Institute for Responsible Technology, who, among other things, are opposed to genetically modified foods.

Within three weeks, 25 of the 45 rats (55.6%) from the GM soy group died compared to only 3 of 33 (9%) from the non-GM soy group and 3 of 44 (6.8%) from the non-soy controls.
[...]
The FDA does not require any safety tests on genetically modified foods.[...] The rationale for this hands-off position is a sentence in the FDA’s 1992 policy that states, “The agency is not aware of any information showing that foods derived by these new methods differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way.” [1] The statement, it turns out, was deceptive. Documents made public from a lawsuit years later revealed that the FDA’s own experts agreed that GM foods are different and might lead to hard-to-detect allergens, toxins, new diseases or nutritional problems. They had urged their superiors to require long-term safety studies, but were ignored. The person in charge of FDA policy was, conveniently, Monsanto’s former attorney (and later their vice president).
[...]
There have been less than 20 published, peer-reviewed animal feeding safety studies and no human clinical trials—in spite of the fact that millions of people eat GM soy, corn, cotton, or canola daily. There are no adequate tests on “biochemistry, immunology, tissue pathology, gut function, liver function and kidney function,” [3] and animal feeding studies are too short to adequately test for cancer, reproductive problems, or effects in the next generation.

Just soy you know, Monsanto is not only the creator of the pesticide Roundup, they're also the patent-holder on a soybean that's resistant to it. That means they can sell you their seeds, to be planted in fields which can then be doused with their chemicals, whereupon the beans will survive to be harvested and made into everything you, your pets, and your meat animals consume everyday, complete with the chemicals from the pesticide! Ain't science grand!

I'm reminded of a line from Judge Dredd: "Eat recycled food! It's good for the environment... and it's not bad for you!"

Oh, but it is, kiddies. And it's not just for tofu-eaters anymore. Check your labels. I challenge you to find a condiment, chocolate bar, or loaf of bread in your supermarket that doesn't contain either soy lecithin or soybean oil. Go on. Try it. I'll wait.

Oh, and in case you're interested? Monsanto has as many enemies as Wal-Mart. Even if only half of what they've been blamed for is accurate, that's some scary shit they're getting away with.

Now I'm reminded of a line from Jurassic Park: "You guys were so eager to find out if you could do it, you didn't stop to wonder if you should."

My Little Pony never had one of these

Funky-looking horse-zebra cross born in Germany.



Looks like something out of Neverending Story or some CGI fantasy flick. Or P.T. Barnum's collection.

still a spark of hope in the world

Egypt bans all female circumcision.

Glory be.

(@&%&@)*!!

Ok, we all know that credit card companies are snivelling spineless bloodsucking dungeating vultures, right?

I'm down to one credit card now. I paid off the one my ex ran up and let go to collections. I closed it out today, and they owe me $10. They act so surprised when you want to close it.

I paid off the last delinquent bill that my ex claimed he had paid, and hadn't.

I am down to one credit card, ONE--that one is Bank of America, in its current gargantuan-merger personae. It has a fairly high balance on it, a hair under $7000. I keep paying it down, but since all my expendible income has been going toward it, I occassionally have to use it, too. The interest rate on that sucker is 23%. Twenty-three percent. All of which is largely because of my ex letting the other bills get behind. Y'all know that if one card is late, the others will jack up their APR's, too, right? I suppose it's within their right to do so, although I am definitely being punished for the sins of another.

Here's the bitter irony. They keep sending me offers for unsecured loans to "consolidate" my debt at a reduced rate. In other words, they will loan me MORE money to pay off debts I owe to other people, but they will not give me a lowered rate on the debt I already owe to them. This too makes sense, if I remind myself that they are in business to soak me for every dime they can get.

I've applied to my local credit union for a new Visa. I can't be totally uncreditable; my car loan was at a very good rate. But even if they give me a small amount of credit at a better rate, I will keep transferring funds to the new card and paying it down as fast as possible. I expect I'll have the Bank of America card paid off by next spring, after which I am cancelling that account, too. And I hope to God that new legislation gets passed to put caps on credit card interest.

tai chi/irritating bystanders/sewing

Suddenly, it is the end of June. And we've got 3 1/2 weeks until tai chi tournament.

Blech.

I am so not in a competitive mood right now. The SP and I just want to hide in our shady air-conditioned cave, with occasional bicycle forays out in the evening for citrus fruits and tandoori chicken. We have had no time to work on the house since, oh, about the first of April. We have made small ventures into the back yard to hack down brush and reclaim the back yard--the SP cut down two 10-foot-tall junk trees this weekend--and I did a great deal of sewing this weekend.

My friend, for whom I am making the wedding dress, has decided to elope, thank Ghod. It was what they really wanted to do, anyway. That means she will need the dress somewhat sooner than planned, but not sooner than I had planned, and this means I don't have to make a dress for myself to be in the wedding. Regardless, I want to get the thing done as soon as possible, so it's out of my living room and neither of us have to worry about it anymore.

That plan, however, is somewhat in conflict with my need to practice. I believe I have made some progress in tai chi this year, only by virtue of attending class regularly and not via any particular effort on my part (This could be self-delusion). However, Sit is making noises about the SP and me doing internal form, a/k/a the taihui form, at competition. I think he may be doing that to scare us. Or possibly as a form of motivation.

I know it well enough, at least the first half of it. It's just really really ugly. I don't have a "feel" for it. My feet are sloppy, my knee is out of place, my hands are not twisted enough, I have too much hand movement. I know these things. Sit took rather a lot of time to drill me on them last weekend. Attention from the master is always appreciated.

Also, I am feeling rather fat and flabby of late so I went over to the vacant mall across the street during lunch to practice a bit. Herein lie the irritating bystanders.

That mall is nearly empty of stores. There's a Macy's at one end, a Sears at the other, and a big swath of the middle has been converted to offices. But the main promenade of the mall is still empty, the stores dark and locked up, and a great many older folks come around from the nearby retirement villages to power-walk in the relative cool. This is great, as far as I'm concerned. They don't get in my way, they're quiet, they're usually friendly, and they keep the place from being scarily deserted.

The only problem is, they want to talk. I'll be standing there at the end of an otherwise deserted hallway, moving my body in strange mechanical ways, hopefully with a frown of concentration on my face, and as soon as they get within 10 feet of me they hollar, "How you doin?" or "What's that?" or "Looking good, there, what do you call that?"

One tiny lady, about sixty, had a very strong eastern-European accent and was clearly hard of hearing. She came up very close and started asking me what it was, where I had learned it, how good I was, and no wonder I had such a great figure. "I'm practicing right now, I can't stop to talk," I said, pointedly. "Oh, all right," she said, and a beat later, "How long have you been doing this?"

Anyway. Now I remember why I never liked practicing in public. I can handle weird looks, it's the intrusion that annoys me. People act as if you're performing. Maybe I should put out a hat with some change.

In other news, Sit and his wife went to China for two weeks at the beginning of June. They have been less than enthusiatic about the trip. "It was crowded," Sit said. "And the food is bad."

He's seemed kind of depressed since he got back. I don't know if it's because the trip was a drag, or he's suffering some kind of survivor's guilt for getting out of China as a young man, or if it's related to his classes shrinking to almost non-existent status. The SP and I are the only ones who come consistently to kung fu anymore, and usually only one other person shows, but it's always a different person, and always a beginner, so we end up going over the same material again and again. Hence, Sit's pushing us to resume the internal form. I feel sorry for him, having two lazy butts like us as his top remaining students.

Still, three weeks until tournament is somewhat motivating. At the very least I can pull out a couple of old forms and brush them up. I'm looking forward to the trip, and the workshops and the interesting stuff, but I really don't feel like competing.

apparently the old adage is true

The SP bought me a bicycle this weekend. It's red and has a bell. I think he's a little envious, actually. His bike is perfectly functional but it's older and has thick off-road tires.

Mine is what they call a hybrid, with slim but slightly toothy tires, upright seating and shock absorbers. Twenty-three speeds that you shift by twisting the handles, which is a lot cooler than flicking with your thumb.

It's a little odd, thinking of myself as a bike owner. A lot of people have them in my hippified college town; we'd talking about getting me one since I moved out there, so it wasn't exactly an impulse purchase. It was just kind of sudden--less than an hour between "Hey, let's pop in the bike shop," to "Let's take that one."

Bike technology has changed a lot since I was a kid, even I can see that. The frame structure is different, the thing is a whole lot lighter than any bike I've ever tried to move around (it wasn't much heavier than a large tricycle before they put the lock on; I think the Kryptonite lock weighs as much as the entire frame) and the wheels are a good deal larger in diameter. The whole apparatus has a graceful but compact appearance, like a sturdy little pony.

And boy, can it fly. It takes so little to make it move. Granted, I am not used to bike riding and that first big hill up to the campus was too much for me, but it wasn't the bike's fault. Twenty-third gear is amazingly efficient. And I felt great afterwards. That forty-five minute ride burned two pounds off of me by the next morning, and I'm not even sore.

So I guess I'll have to be all ecological now. The grocery store is about five blocks away, and probably quicker to get there by bike than by car, considering traffic.

She needs a name. I'm considering Penelope.

Oh, and even though I hadn't been on a bike in about 20 years? I hadn't lost the knack of it. I didn't crash even once.

Joy marches on

A writer-friend caught up with me over the weekend, and happily provided me with the URL to her new blog: Joy Marchand's Particles of Light. The lady has not been unproductive since I last spoke to her. Worthwhile fiction. Check it out.

parking's a bitch, but no one's gonna steal the stereo

I guess when Hummers and Hawgs have devolved to white-collar wimpmobiles, the REAL urban commandos have to kick it up a notch.

Voila: the JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank.

The comments say it all.

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.