100 Percent, Doc

If You Were Wondering...

2007-08-06T11:50:00.000-07:00

The press of business precluded my posting here on top of the other elsewheres (Running Air, my livejournal; Eat Our Brains, a group blog I'm doing with Steve Gould, Brad Denton, Maureen McHugh, Rory Harper, Morgan Locke and Caroline Spector; and Deep Genre, another group blog about writing, with cool writers too numerous to decently mention here) where my presence is expected..

Why have I abandoned you? I haven't in my heart; but I was getting more traffic and more feedback and conversation at Running Air, so I tend to be there. If you're looking for me and the further adventures of Sarcasm Girl, Younger Girl, and Emily the Felon Puppy (who is now large enough to be Emily the Felon Dog) that's the place to look.

100 Percent, Doc, still has the cooler title. That will have to suffice. The conversation continues over at madrobins.livejournal.com.

Thanks!

Mad

Felon Puppy

2006-09-17T17:59:00.000-07:00

I was unaccountably sleepy this afternoon and had dozed off shortly before Sarcasm Girl took the Em-dog out for a drag. I woke when she returned, dashing up the stairs demanding to talk to me. "It's really important!" she said gravely. So I prised my eyes open and asked what the problem was.

Apparently, she took the dog down the street to the corner store so she could buy a Mocha Frappucino. On the way, Emily and SG fell into conversation with a couple of people at a table at one of the local coffee-and-breakfast joints. The couple were much taken with Emily's beauty and charm, and SG was much taken with their admiration of our dog, and no one noticed, until it was in her mouth and half-gobbled down, that the dog was eyeing one woman's grilled cheese sandwich.

Fortunately the people seemed to think this was charming, too. (You can get away with a lot when you're young and cute, I'll tell you). Sarcasm Girl, apparently under the impression that a grilled cheese sandwich might poison the dog, dragged her home forthwith to report to me. Since that time Emily has had an outing to the dog park where she ran her skinny butt off; she is now lying asleep by my side, alive-alive-o, but, it must be admitted, not as ravenous as she would ordinarily be at this hour.

Death is an Unfortunate Side Effect

2006-09-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

It seems that a street festival in Texarkana was ruined by a rain of dead and dying pigeons. While one observer notes that the pigeons "dive bombed" the proceedings, I get the feeling they weren't attacking, merely dying. Apparently a nearby bank had hired an exterminator to take care of their pigeon problem, and the exterminator scattered poisoned corn on the roof of the bank. The company said "its goal with the treated corn was to sicken pigeons so they would leave the rooftop. Death was sometimes an unfortunate side effect." Especially if you're the pigeon.

"Hey, you know what, Jerry? I'm feeling a little sick--maybe it was that corn on the bank roof? I'm gonna knock off early and go home to the nest."

"Me too. Remind me never to order the corn there. I thought there was something wrong--got a funny taste in my mouth."

Super Hair

2006-07-17T07:53:00.000-07:00

I live among frivolous beings. Hell, I'm one myself. Which is why this morning's post-shower-watch-the-dog-eat-breakfast conversation with my husband was all about Superman's hair. Or rather, why did Superman Returns (which I rather liked) and the 1970s movie get Clark Kent's hair so wrong? This was touched off by the repeated laments of our local movie critic, Mick LaSalle, who kept bitching about Kate Bosworth's hair in the movie. He thinks it's a wig, and he thinks it's ugly. I thought they dyed her hair, and I thought it looked like the untidy hair of a woman who's learned to dress herself well, but never took the time to worry about her hair. I'm much more concerned about what they did to poor Superman's head. It shouldn't be so hard: the 1950s TV serial managed the hair okay. On Lois and Clark they managed it also. So why, when Superman leaps over tall buildings to get to the big screen, do they plaster his hair unflatteringly to his head in a haircut that makes him stand out from every other living being in the film? Forget about "is Clark Kent Superman?" The real question people should be asking is "why does this Clark guy look like he's shellacked a fox fur and stuck it to his head?" Or perhaps, "where did he get that awful toupee, and wouldn't just shaving his head be more dignified?"

The Spouse, of course, had a brilliant notion: they should have used the hair as a talking point in the movie. Superman has to put tons of styling product on his hair to subdue the famous Super Spit Curl because he has super hair, see. So either it is a really bad, possibly homemade, toupee, or when he changes back from Superman to Clark Kent he has to redo the goop in his hair really fast.

The thing is, the guy is really Clark Kent: the people who raised him and gave him his values, are the Kansas farmers. Superman is just his job title. So if anyone should have the real haircut it should be Clark. Maybe the Super Spit Curl is part of the disguise.

Totally Emily

2006-06-25T22:33:00.000-07:00

Here you see Emily in her favorite room (the kitchen) and in her favorite lounge-chair: my lap. Like many dalmatians, her true character doesn't show up in a photo. But she is awfully cute...

Dog Crazy

2006-06-15T17:10:00.000-07:00

Or crazy dog.

We seem to be making progress on the housetraining thing; more hits outside than misses inside, as it were. How much this means is debatable--it may be that the Em-Dog (her rapper street name) has me half-trained. In the first 24 hours, perhaps aware that the metaphorical cellophane had only just come off, she was all sweetness and light. She's still breathtakingly sweet and fairly light--but she also has discovered her teeth and wants to bite and chew everything. Particularly clothes and the flesh under them. The current thinking is that you can yell loudly, as if hurt (as if? as if? Ow.) but don't push the dog away. Of course, if the dog has her teeth so deeply sunk into your pants that she's scraping your shins and poking holes in the denim, a certain amount of gentle disentanglement is required.

I've been walking her all over the local streets--mostly to tire her out, because she's a very high-energy creature. This has meant she has met many many people (and a few dogs). And I'm encountering the Dog Network, a thing of which I had heard but not met in person. So when Spouse left the house the other day, two people walked by and one turned and said "Aren't you Emily's person?" We have an identity!

Because the little dog had a small flea problem, we've dosed her with an all-in-one flea/tick/heartworm med which you are supposed to apply at the base of the neck, just above the shoulderblades. "Part the hair," the directions say. But how do you part hair on a dog with such short hair that it lies utterly flat? "Til you see the skin beneath?" The skin beneath glows under her white fur, but that fur is remarkably protective of the aforementioned skin. Ah, well. I did my best. And Emily is doing her best too, I'm sure.

Tentatively Emily

2006-06-11T20:19:00.000-07:00

We went to the ASPCA to look at dogs today. One of them looked back. She's a 3 month old dalmatian mix, sweet, energetic, and friendly. We got signed up for "puppy manners" class, bought a crate and treats and a grooming brush. I got to hold her in the car, a bundle of quivering, licking warmth. She has peed on the floor once, and thus far seemed very uninterested in her dinner. It's going to be an adventure. Needless to say, Sarcasm Girl has eschewed sarcasm, and Younger Girl is almost as quivery as the dog in her joy.

She is tentatively named Emily RowRow Robins. But that, of course, could change.

Paulie in the Sky with Spuds

2006-06-02T09:01:00.001-07:00

Ever get through some sort of boring process by imagining that you're explaining it to a camera? "And when I've put the garbage in the bin, I'll go upstairs and collect the recycling..." Well, apparently other people do it too, but with a camera. Thus we have YouTube - Paul McCartney making mashed potatoes. He likes to put onions in his mashed potatoes; how do you like yours?

He's still the cute one.

Fencing Upgrade

2006-05-31T08:37:00.000-07:00

My fencing teacher is starting up a Competition class in July: two hours a week plus additional out-of-class bouting, and I'd have to upgrade to electric fencing gear. My classmates in the intermediate class are trying to get me to commit, and (despite my general horridness as a fencer) I'm inclined to do so. My objection to bouting (where the real experience and practice comes in) has always been the cultural one of having to insert myself into a group of people I don't know and say "Hey, me next!" which I am generally (don't laugh) too shy to do. But this class will remove that objection, since I'll be working with people I mostly know, and won't have to feel like I'm forcing myself into the class. The question comes down to: do I want to spend the money, do I want to spend the time, and how much of an appetite for public humiliation in the cause of improvement do I have? I'm thinking the answers are going to be yes, yes, and Oh, what the hell.

Dueling Modems is Reborn

2006-05-30T18:36:00.000-07:00

If I knew enough Latin I would use it.

Those who wandered the halls, first of GEnie and then of DM.net, will be pleased to know that the site has been resurrected at duelingmodems.com. It has an interfact that is sort of the bastard child of GEnie and LiveJournal, with a smidgen of Blogger, but conversation is clearly starting up again. Oh, Goodie! One more way to procrastinate and hang out at the electronic water cooler.

Celebration

2006-05-25T17:10:00.000-07:00

Today is Ian McKellan's birthday; he is 76, I believe. I saw him in Acting Shakespeare in the mid-80s and fell completely in love (his voice is sublime, and he has beautiful hands, and the sort of rangy male beauty I find very compelling). Then I saw him in A Knight Out and realized that he was not just talented and gorgeous, but very smart and very funny. Since then, of course, he's been a mutant and a wizard and Richard III and many other things. I'm just glad he's alive. I think he's swell. Happy Birthday, Sir Ian.

And the pillow, too

2006-05-22T07:26:00.000-07:00

In addition to making the quilt, I also made a pillow (not quite as cool as the quilt, but I had extra fabric left over). The center has, on one side, Wiscon 30, and on the other hand a small picture of Space Babe.

Quilt!

2006-05-21T15:58:00.000-07:00

This is the quilt I made to be auctioned off at the Wiscon Tiptree auction: I've got pictures of 35 former Wiscon GOHs, plus Kate Wilhelm and Jane Yolen, this year's GOHs. Hope it raises lots of money. I'm already thinking about a quilt for next year....

Anyone Know...

2006-05-18T22:18:00.000-07:00

...if DM.net yet lives? I feel like there's a wake going on and I couldn't get in to pay my respects.

Pipe Dreams

2006-05-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

The people who did this have entirely too much time on their hands...in a very cool way.

Question

2006-05-15T07:20:00.000-07:00

Why is it that, no matter who does the dishes, no one (but me) ever washes the glasses or salad bowls? Just asking.

Dia de las Madres

2006-05-14T18:13:00.000-07:00

We broke the tradition today because YG had a sleepover last night in Orinda (and a "baby shower for the homeless" Scouts event at 11 am today). So I was taken out to a lovely breakfast by Sarcasm Girl and the Spouse, then drove out to Orinda, listening to The Golden Compass, which I have not read; captured the girl, drove her to her Scout event, then came home in time to be whisked off to a movie by the Spouse (MIssion Impossible: 3--probably the best line is when Our Hero tells his new wife about his profession. "I work for an agency called the IMF." "What does that stand for?" "Impossible Mission Force." "No, really." "Really!") Now the family is making dinner (with only minimal input from me) and I am drinking a glass of wine and updating my blog. It's been un-San Francisco-like weather: over 80 degrees, and sunny--which seems like a kindly gesture from the Gods, but more likely a sinister sign of global warming. Tonight I'm going to watch the series finale of The West Wing and dream of alternate universes.

Joyous Mother's Day to all of you who are, or have, mothers. Also aunts, cousins, sisters, and daughters.

Roots

2006-05-02T23:12:00.000-07:00

Maybe five or six years ago, writer Laura Resnick had a swell idea: why not establish a listserve for women who wrote science fiction and fantasy? Not exactly a professional organization, but a place where we could exchange ideas, ask for advice, swap gossip a little, announce our triumphs and complain as necessary. I joined the SFF-FW list shortly after it was formed; it now has Idunnamany women on it, and it has been a nice community to be part of. Last year, when Andre Norton was declining, a discussion began about how important she had been to many of the writers on the list; out of the discussion the idea arose of letting her know how important she had been, giving her an award or a gift or something from her peers--women writing science fiction and fantasy. Why stop there, we thought? In the end, SFF-FW gave Betty Ballantine, Madeleine L'Engle, Anne McCaffrey, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kate Wilhelm, Joanna Russ, and Andre Norton the "Roots in Writing" award: a plaque, and a tree or planting of their choice, meant to signify that these women were all, in some way, the roots from which our membership had grown. We all thought this was a one-time thing, and then this year we somehow found ourselves doing this again--but a little more modestly, with one recipient, Jane Yolen.

Elsewhere on the web I've seen a comment to the effect that SFF-FW is a "self-proclaimed and unknown group." Well, yes. Most groups are self-proclaimed, and we have not been much interested in being known beyond our membership. But if anyone out there is wondering who these people are and what the Roots in Writing award is, well, this is it.

Imagine There's No Heaven

2006-04-25T08:13:00.000-07:00

So this morning the guys on the radio were talking about this: a pay-per-view seance purporting to contact John Lennon. Anyone see this thing? Apparently the message Lennon's shade sent back was "Peace is the message" or something like that. There was an aural contact (ghosts manipulate sound equipment and leave messages, and this sounded like John); visual contact (looked like a face swarming up into the camera; said face, according to the Ghost Hunter interviewed on KFOG, could have been anyone). So I'm wondering, anyone see this, and if so, what did you think?

I'm a Geek

2006-04-21T07:23:00.000-07:00

But you knew that, right?

One of the passions the girls and I developed this winter/spring was for Project Runway, a weirdly addictive reality show where a bunch of clothing designers vie for a big prize that will help them in their career. The show is filled with outsize personalities, people you love to hate, people you love despite the fact that their talent is clearly not quite up to the others--all that gooey reality show goodness. And because when I was a kid I wanted to be a clothing designer (no one who looks at me now would believe that, since most days I am Mom Shlub, and quite cheery about it) I find it rivetting.

Okay, so last week when we were in NY on holiday we went to the huge Toys R Us in Times Square so that Younger Girl could take photos for her classmates, who didn't believe there was a three-storey high ferris wheel inside the store. We wandered through the store and into the Barbie section (which is a huge temple to all things Barbie and is, of course, pinkpinkpink) and there collided with a bit of Project Runway neepery. One of the projects on this season's show had been to design an outfit for a new "My Scene" Barbie. The winning designer was Nick Verreos, a very talented designer who was eliminated from the contest just short of the final three.

So there, as we turned a corner, was Nick's Barbie. All three of us (SG, YG and I) giggled and shrieked and said "Oh my God!" and agreed that while it looked miles better on a full-sized adult human, it was really cute. And Sarcasm Girl turned to me and said, "God, I'm such a geek!" Then, accusingly, "God, you're such a geek." Guilty as charged.

Bunny for Dinner

2006-04-17T13:35:00.000-07:00

Our traditional Easter feast is Bunny Meatloaf. Note: no bunnies are harmed in the making of this meatloaf. In fact, it's standard meatloaf, in she shape of a sitting rabbit (ie., one large oval loaf, with a smaller "head" loaf at one end) which is frosted with mashed potatoes, surrounded with a green vegetable (the friend who first showed me this silly recipe used green beans, but I have a slightly higher chance of getting the kids to eat broccoli than green beans, so this year it was broccoli), with paper ears, and eyes and nose made of cranberries or raisins or something like that (we used to use jelly beans, which make admirable eyes...but the die runs in the mashed potato, and there's something disconcerting about an Easter Bunny with pinkeye).

Yesterday my sister-in-law and her family came down from Sebastopol and partook of the Bun; for dessert we had an array of berries, strawberry syrup (which is basically the leftover syrup from some strawberry preserves I made in the morning), ice cream, and left over fudge which people started crumpling and sprinkling on the ice cream.

We had two Easter egg hunts--the one for the girls, first thing in the morning, and a second one mid-afternoon (in the back yard, since the sun briefly consented to emerge and smile) for the cousins and girls together. By the end of the night we were all in chocolate shock, but pleasantly so. And the Bunny was all gone.

Seasonal Products

2006-04-17T07:21:00.000-07:00

Sometimes someone with too much time on his or her hands can come up with something wonderful: for example, a new brand of peeps. Excellent with coffee or an ale.

Beta Girl

2006-04-15T23:24:00.000-07:00

So, two weeks ago, Younger Girl had her ice skating competition and won. Granted, in her class there was only one other contestant, but by gum, the girl came in first. Not only that, but this morning when she got to class we discovered that she's graduated from the Alpha to Beta lessons. "Beta is just like Alpha, only you have to do it all backwards." Sort of like Ginger Rogers with Fred Astaire: backward, in heels. Or at least skates.

Scary Treats

2006-04-04T07:41:00.000-07:00

So I stopped off at Safeway last night, on my way back from a school meeting that wasn't (short story: meeting at 7:30 turned out to have been at 7:30am, dammit). The lines, which were very long for 8pm, wound past the ice cream locker, and I was examining the different sorts of ice cream and "novelties" available--Haagen Dasz bars, Ben and Jerry cones, Whole Fruit juice bars, Scooby Doo Push-up Pops...and then I saw it. Fear Factor Push Up Pops: sour sherbet with either a sherbet "eyeball" set in it, or with what looks like ribbons of sherbet blood streaming down it. It's the faux gross out that sells: the flavor is strawberry or lemon or something like that; only the appearance is troubling. If you're going for true gross-out, wouldn't it make more sense to have classic-looking ice cream novelties with surprise flavors like liver or dust-bunny?

April 3

2006-04-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

Huzzah. Sent all the tax stuff off to the accountant today, a good week earlier than last year. He knows us, nothing wildly out of tune has shown up, with any luck the wretched mass of stuff to send to the IRS should be here by the end of the week. How about you? Filed yet?

Categorization

2006-03-23T22:06:00.000-08:00

Like everyone else I know, I occasionally give way to the urge to Google myself (doesn't that sound filthy? I mean, really?). Tonight I discovered the 2004-2005 Tayshas High School Reading List (for Austin, Texas) which includes Point of Honour on it. It lists the book as YA. This gives me pause only in that I would not have thought the book had specific YA markers. Of course, To Kill a Mockingbird and Jane Eyre don't have YA markers either, and they get handed over to kids on a regular basis. Not that I'm saying I'm in that class. I was just surprised, is all.

Attention Must be Paid

2006-03-22T20:25:00.000-08:00

Today William Shatner is 75.

When Sarcasm Girl was very small, she used to watch Star Trek:TNG with us on Saturday nights; it was known as "Captain," as in "Mama, I want to watch Captain, and space, fina fwonteer!" (This has to be said in a sprightly small-child voice to be really effective.) When we first introduced her to the original Star Trek she was adamant, that wasn't Captain. "I want really really captain!" I mentioned to her that as far as I was concerned, Shatner is "really really Captain." Now she is old and jaded, and able to appreciate the overthetop pleasures of Shatner and Ricardo Montalban overacting at each other; still, when I showed her the photo of Young Shatner that was on IMDB this morning her mouth dropped open in stunned amazement.

Cookietime

2006-03-13T07:59:00.000-08:00

If asked in a public forum, I must someday admit that it is possible to have too many Girl Scout cookies in one sitting.

We are deep in Cookie Territory. YG's troop is run by a powerhouse of a woman who says "my blood runs Green!" and manages five troops from Daisys to Seniors: 85+ girls in all. To say the troop is the big seller of the Bay Area is an understatement: we took pre-orders for 31,000 boxes and sold them all, and are in back orders now. Obviously, YG's responsibility is significantly less: her goal was 450, and I think (despite crappy weather) that she'll make it. I am in awe of (among other things) the family of three girls who have sold 4,000 boxes of cookies (and this a week before the final deadline for selling).

Yesterday YG and I set up a stand in the middle of our neighborhood "commercial strip" in front of the unhappily defunct Dr. Video, and despite the fact that the rain kept coming and going, we sold 50 boxes. Last week we had a "hotspot" (one of those presumedly high-volume spots that you get by lottery from the Girl Scout Council) but unhappily we also had a severe thunderstorm and the Oscars to compete with. I will say it's hard to resist a cute kid with Thin Mints, even in the rain (a cute kid with Samoas is also pretty irresistable).

And My Theme Song?

2006-03-10T08:53:00.001-08:00

Your Theme Song:

"I Love Rock n Roll" - Joan Jett & The Blackhearts

'What is your theme song?' at QuizGalaxy.com

In Which I'm Interviewed

2006-03-08T18:30:00.000-08:00

Adventures Underground: Interview with Madeleine Robins...all typos and idiocy regrettably mine, but I think it turned out okay.

Appreciation

2006-03-07T11:38:00.000-08:00

It appears I've gone up in value. This is so odd. I wish they'd send me a check; I could use the money.

My blog is worth $3,387.24.
How much is your blog worth?

The Measure of a Blog

2006-03-03T18:30:00.000-08:00

My blog is worth $2,822.70.
How much is your blog worth?

Of course, my LJ blog is worth $580 or so. Put it all together and I've got the advance on a first paperback sale, give or take.

...

2006-02-26T19:53:00.000-08:00

...and Darren McGavin too. Damn.

Octavia Butler

2006-02-26T13:26:00.000-08:00

Two of my favorite works of speculative fiction, Kindred and Wild Seed, were written by Octavia Butler, who died yesterday at the age of 59. Butler was one of those writers whose stories contained huge ideas but never lost track of the human lives and emotions at their core. Her writing was clear and crisp and frequently luminous. In person (I only met her for a nanosecond years ago and stumbled over trying to tell her how much I admired her work) she was rather shy. I read anything of hers I could, just to see what she was thinking and writing; I read her latest book,Fledgling, a few months ago. I hoped would be the start of a new cycle of books, and was looking forward to so much more of her writing.

Damn.

Happy Birthday, George

2006-02-24T07:23:00.000-08:00

Who was your favorite Beatle? (Assuming you're of an age to have had a favorite Beatle when they first hit the world.) When I was nine years old and my best friend Clara Thompson started talking about this really, really, really cute band from England, Paul was the one most girls crushed on, because he was cute. Or John, because he was funny. Or Ringo, because he was adorably funny looking. I, weird kid that I was, fell for George. Paul was just too pretty (and besides, Clara had already claimed him as hers) and John was a little too smart (even at nine years old I had a sense that John would be a very uncomfortable friend). Ringo was cute too...but I liked George. Forty years later, he's still my favorite--music didn't seem to come as easily to him (watch film of him playing guitar in the early days--he's always making sure he doesn't screw up) as to Paul and John, but he worked at it. And he always seemed to be thinking about something funny, a private joke that made it easier for him to stand up there in front of a million screaming people. Someone asked him once, years after the Beatles had split into four different paths, "So, is Love all you need?" And he smiled, with that private joke look, and said, "yeah." Happy Birthday, George.

Real Life Intrudes

2006-02-15T09:03:00.000-08:00

I spent four years editing comic books, after 30-odd years of reading them. I have opinions (like, what, I don't have opinions about other things? Oh, shut up). But I do have a life-long interest in comic book storytelling--and I'm talking superhero comics, not talking animals or slice-of-life stories of depressives. People in spandex. Probably my first experiences in textual analysis came from writing to the letter columns to explain why a story worked or didn't work. And I think Frank Miller has a bad idea.
Look; Miller's an interesting guy. Some of his work, particularly on Batman and Daredevil, is brilliant. I'm not one of those people who adored Sin City, which seemed deeply obvious and derivative to me, but I can still read The Dark Knight Returns and remember the frisson of pleasure and recognition I got the first time I saw it. But now he wants to send Batman after Al Qaeda, and I think that's a bad idea. At least, a bad idea for someone whose comic work is regarded as something approaching literature.
On my coffee table I have The Great Comic Book Heroes, edited by Jules Feiffer, a compilation of super hero comics from the 30s and 40s which include superheroes taking on Hitler and Toho; we have video tapes of old Warner Bros. cartoons from the 40s ("Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips!"). There are all those late 60s-early 70s comics in mylar bags in my basement with "relevant" stories about drug use and Vietnam which seemed quaint even when they were published. They are curiosities, not stories. And even with Miller's ability behind them, I'm afraid that Batman taking on Al Qaeda is going to wind up being a curiosity, not a story. The comics which have made a political statement have always (it seems to me) done it sideways: Dark Knight Returns is a great super hero story, but manages to satirize the culture we were in, mid 80s, by showing us a near-future where everything was kicked up a notch. The Watchmen pretty much deconstructed the second half of the 20th century, politically and socially, as well as the idea of the super hero itself.
So, no, Frank, I'm sorry. If you want Batman to take on Bin Laden, I'd suggest that you go about metaphorically. Otherwise it trivializes the character and, worse, trivializes terrorism.

Happy VD

2006-02-14T07:37:00.000-08:00

We celebrated this morning with cards and candy for the girls, a card for the spouse, and a handmade card from spouse to me. And many hugs. Likin' the hugs part.

Homesick

2006-02-12T09:29:00.000-08:00

Our old apartment in NY was on the eighth floor at the rear of the building. It was not a "view" apartment, but (due to the fact that the Bigass Apartment Building Down the Block had bought up the airspace rights for the two lots immediately behind it in order to build up, and was therefore enjoined from building anything on the lots behind our building) we had a fifty block view. There was something really magical about looking down from our South-facing windows to see the roofs of the brownstones and the trees on 94th Street dusted and laced with snow, the cars buried in snow, the 50-block view hazed and softened with snow. It was always fun to slog along the two blocks between our house and Central Park, find a hill and slide down it (with or without the kids) and watch my urban neighbors get boggled by the fact that Nature has happend to them (you know what turkeys do in the rain? New Yorkers are similar in snowstorms: mouths open, looking upward, astonished). If I didn't feel like dealing with the cold, stay in, drink hot chocolate, and look out that window.

There are 22.8 inches of snow in Central Park today. I miss my view.

Sigh.

Things to Like about San Francisco #9

2006-02-07T19:12:00.000-08:00

Ocean. I am not (you may have noticed this) a Nature girl. I mean, I like nature and stuff, but I don't go into raptures. But it is kind of cool to come up a rise, reach the top, and see the Pacific in the distance, spread out and glittering dully.

Things to Like about San Francisco #8

2006-02-05T15:45:00.000-08:00

I think it's eight, anyway.

In New York, an alley is a narrow street without streetlights, often, but not always, a dead end. Usually odorous and possibly inhabited by homeless people, or full of loading docks and bits of garbage. A NYC alley is unnamed.

Here in San Francisco alleys are named (like the one that ran behind our old apartment, Quane Alley, which was a mews from the days when the houses on Dolores had carriage houses and the like). And some of them (Spouse and I passed three or four today) are little more than dirt roads, at this time of year with lush green grass between the tire ruts. They generally don't go much of anywhere, but they're very inviting to stroll along. And some have perfectly splendid names, like "Penny Lane" and "Lois Lane." Someone has a sense of humor.

There Go Howmany Civil Liberties?

2006-02-01T07:06:00.000-08:00

Cindy Sheehan was arrested at the State of the Union address last night because she was wearing an anti-war T-shirt. Holy crap.

Moving Tyop?

2006-01-31T12:05:00.000-08:00

The urge to bumper-stick is probably related to the urge for vanity plates. Today I saw a plate that made me wonder; it's a variant on the "MOMSBMW" sort of thing--a way of claiming your car (and its status). Only this one, on a sand-colored Ford Explorer, said "NANASVU."

Okay. So is that Nana's SUV, and someone got it flipped? Or is it Nana's VU? and what does that mean? Or is Nana simply a fan of Law and Order: SVU? I don't know why this sort of thing grabs hold of my thoughts so comprehensively, but it does. Maybe that was the point.

Joys of Home Ownership

2006-01-30T11:45:00.000-08:00

As I noted elsewhere, there are apparently specific benefits to home ownership. Well these days we can certainly use all the benefits we can accrue, and we certainly own lots of homes: the one we live in, the Spouse's first apartment in NYC, in which he has a nice tenant; and my father's house in Massachusetts, in which we have a nice tenant.

So far this year there's been the new furnace, and the possibility of work on the well. And today my nice tenant calls to tell me that the water softener guy was in changing tanks and noticed a leak in one of the heating pipes. So his office called the company that services our furnace and arranged for a service call this afternoon. They were pleased (the furnace people) that I called, just so that they could get someone other than Culligan vetting the visit, but honestly, it seems as though the whole process could go on without me. As long as I send checks.

Things to Like about San Francisco #7

2006-01-29T13:22:00.000-08:00

Green Apple Books, on Clement Street, is vast and open late on Friday nights, so that while YG is at Girl Scouts, I can wander through a good used-and-new bookstore. They do segregate genre stuff--mystery and sf in particular--next door in the annex with music and DVDs, but they still have a good selection. It's not as good as The Strand in New York (I was weaned on The Strand; it's where I got my first taste of that lovely used bookstore must smell) but it certainly makes for a good first-place-to-check for reference materials.

Things to Like about San Francisco #6

2006-01-25T07:54:00.000-08:00

Driving down Portola into Noe Valley, the view from Clipper Street is amazing: the bay and downtown spread before you, the Bay Bridge. You can't see what's hidden by Twin Peaks behind you: the Golden Gate bridge and the Presidio. But the view from Clipper is about 230 degrees of San Francisco. It's even prettier at night with all the lights on.

Things to Like about San Francisco #5

2006-01-23T21:41:00.000-08:00

Where I grew up, houses come in a few colors: brick (red, for preference, but white and brown are also available). Grey (as in granite and shingles). White (as in clapboard). Red (as in barn red). There were occasional oddities--houses painted green or blue. But mostly New England and New York run to conservative paint colors.

We're not in Massachusetts any more. San Francisco runs to pastels; very Mediterranean. But beyond the shell pink and seafoam green and daffodil yellow of many of the houses, there are the houses that are really intense. Goldenrod yellow with melon and teal trim; hot pink with acid green and yellow and black and turquoise trim; forest green with hot orange. On a sunny day the hills shimmer with color. And there are the "what were they thinking" houses--primarily Edwardian houses that lend themselves (or don't) to the painted lady treatment. It certainly wakes you up...

Double Digits

2006-01-23T17:45:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, as I have been multiply reminded, YG attains the big 1-0. I was informed today that I can bring the cupcakes I hadn't even thought of making to her class tomorrow at 1:15. This does not excuse me, of course, from making a birthday cake. And Friday the kid is Scout of the Day, which means we bring snack (cupcakes, of course). And Saturday is her birthday sleepover: cake required, naturally.

I may never bake again.

Things to Like about San Francisco #4

2006-01-21T12:30:00.000-08:00

Saturday mornings YG, having recovered from her broken arm, takes ice skating (she is covered with bliss: today was her first class since the break six weeks ago, and she was promoted to the next level starting next month!). The lessons are at Yerba Buena Gardens, an area that comprises the Zeum (a kids' museum), a bowling area, a nice sprawly playground, greenspace for sitting and talking (if it's not that clammy SF weather, as it was today), a carousel, and several small places to get a snack or a quick meal. Sitting inside I can watch the classes (I particularly enjoy the toddlers on skates, practicing falling down. They have so short a distance to the ground that when they topple over it's in slow motion and appears to do no harm at all) or I can lean back in the bleachers and enjoy the cityscape outside the windows. As long as I wrap up warmly, it's a nice way to spend a Saturday morning.

Things to Like in San Francisco #3

2006-01-20T12:24:00.000-08:00

Destination Bakery, two blocks away, makes the best chocolate croissants I have ever eaten. Period. I daren't stop by there too often, for fear of vast weight gain, but...oh, my, they are good.

Five Easy Pieces (or is that Uneasy)

2006-01-19T12:25:00.000-08:00

Oh, look! It's a meme! This may be the first time I've ever been tagged for one. I'm, like, so honored.

Chris Barzak was tagged by Ms. Bond for the five weird habits meme. He tagged Maureen McHugh, who tagged me

The first player of this game starts with the topic "five weird habits" and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don't forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says "You have been tagged" (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.

Weird? Surely everything I do is entirely rational. If you're me.

1) Unless I'm sick, I have to be the last one to bed every night. This has more to do with how I defined myself as grown up when I was growing up than anything else, than it has to do with too-much-to-do or anything like that. It's okay if everyone is still awake, but I have to be the last one to physically crawl into bed. Unless I'm sick, in which case all bets are off.

2) I still like to eat black olives off the tips of my fingers. Inner Child, outer child. Just plain child.

3) I'm allowed three games of...whatever the current game is...before I write. Then no more until I've been working for three hours. If I break this rule I am superstitiously persuaded that whatever I write will be crap.

4) I like to eat the crusts only of my bread. Particularly good crusty sourdough or rye. The crustier the better, with maybe a smear of butter or a curl of cheese. Mmmmm.

5) I walk around the house with a shawl on, as if I were my own ancient Lithuanian grannie (except neither of my grannies were Lithuanian). Rather than looking bold and Auntie-Mamish, it makes me look a little like a bag lady. But I'm warm, which is what counts.

As for who I'm tagging...Um...Jonquil, Emma Bull, Sharyn November (because her answers are bound to be incendiary), Nineweaving and my lovely editor Anna, who will no doubt ignore the whole thing. As Maureen says, No Karma Applies.

Things to Like About SF #2

2006-01-19T08:01:00.000-08:00

Back east, even in times when water was scarce, things stayed pretty green. In the height of August the trees and grass might crisp a bit, but certainly in the spring New England rivals the deep, lush green of its namesake (okay, I've not yet been to Ireland, so by my lights Great Britain--particularly Wales--is pretty damned emerald). Hereabouts, the landscape is generally sere; you get so used to the hills being a pale brown that when the winter rains begin and everything turns green it's startling and magical. The speed with which this happens is amazing: one day, everything is paper-bag brown; the next day the hills and parks are a lush, velvety green, as if the land itself is so grateful for water that it has to give something back. It's definitely a thing to like.

Things I Like About San Francisco #1

2006-01-18T08:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, we've lived here three years, and I still have a love-hate thing going with my new city. This is more about me than the city: living here is (for me) a bit like wearing a dress that is too small or too tight--people tell me what a great dress it is, but that doesn't make it fit any better.

Still, we own a house here, my kids are in school here, we're not going anywhere soon. So, in the interest of accentuating the positive, I'm going to try to keep a list of things I like about living here, and see if I can come up with one a day until I reach 100.

Today's Thing? When you're driving through the streets you'll see signs pointing to the nearest Public Library. As a fan of public libraries and as a writer, I'm very much in favor of letting everyone know where to find them.

One Way to Solve a Problem

2006-01-15T13:39:00.000-08:00

I have been trying to get Sarcasm Girl to do as much of her homework downstairs, away from her computer, as possible. Why? Who among us is not prey to the siren call of the internet? There's a reason her Mama does a lot of her work in coffee shops that don't have WiFi. Still, the kid likes to have music while she works, which is a reasonable request. Today, on my way out the door to buy weatherstripping (I know, my life is an unparallelled round of joy, in't it?) I suggested that she use her Christmas money to buy herself an iPod. I have made this suggestion several times, but today it lodged. Much jumping up and down and chortling. I go out and buy her an iPod Nano (2 gig...the kid's not made of money) for which I will be instantly reimbursed. Spouse calls just after I've made the purchase and points out that Emphatic Girl, reasonably or otherwise, is going to feel very deprived that everyone (meaning Spouse and SG) has an iPod except her. I point out that she has some Christmas money too, and could afford an iPod Shuffle. Again: Oh, joy! Rapture! So I have to go back to the bemused man and buy another iPod.

It's damned near miraculous. SG finished her Modern World homework without a murmur, sitting downstairs at the dining room table; she's now doing a biology lab report. YG did a chore when she was asked, without demur. If I'd known this would be the effect of technology I'd have had them issued MP3 players at birth.

Oooo, Shiny

2006-01-10T18:18:00.000-08:00

Finally getting to the NY Times Arts and Leisure section, I noticed a full page ad for a Roundabout Theatre production of Threepenny Opera with Alan Cumming as MacHeath, Ana Gasteyer as Mrs. Peachum, Jim Dale (presumably as Mr. P), Nellie McKay as Polly Peachum, and Cyndi Lauper as Jenny Diver (replacing Edie Falco). It could be heaven or it could be hell, but I'd sure love to see it.

Bad Vampire, No Biscuit

2006-01-10T07:45:00.000-08:00

I love musical theatre. I adore the work of Stephen Sondheim--even when I think it doesn't work, I want to hear what he's doing. I don't care for the sort of overwrought faux Opera that a lot of musicals in the last few decades have become--part of what I loved about Hairspray was that it wasn't Phantom. Andrew Lloyd Webber--not my thing. And while I'm fond of The Lion King and thought the staging was impeccable, when you take away the staging you've got a Disney movie on the hoof (and I find most of Elton John's music pleasant wallpaper). I'm also not a fan of Anne Rice's Lestat novels; fought my way through Interview with the Vampire and decided that life was far too short.

This all goes to explain why, when I saw the first posters for Lestat, with Elton John's music and Anne Rice's characters, all I could think was that I'd probably rather have root canal. So I wasn't surprised, but did get a little schadenfreudian (?) thrill, to read the SF Chronicle's review: The vampire Lestat has settled in San Francisco. And he's singing in a new musical. Quick! Someone fetch the garlic and a wooden stake!. I suppose it's inevitable that the review concludes by saying that the show "sucks."

Meanwhile, the Chronicle's Leah Garchik included a bit of Anne Rice's bio in her column today:

Among the program's biographical notes about Rice, which I'm told came from her: "Each beloved character iridescently animated and virtually manifested before our eyes witnesses their creator's experience in triumph and in sorrow and in searching for some semblance of Happy Peace. ... Anne Rice gives herself -- her life in full -- as a gift to the world in every spellbinding chapter, every carefully turned page, every meaningful word. Mere footprints of a life lived in art."

Thanks. That makes it all so clear.

A Pleasant Absence of Noise

2006-01-06T14:49:00.000-08:00

For about the last month, the garage door opener has been getting increasingly creaky. Half the time it wouldn't open, or required jiggering. The thing was probably installed in 1985; when you opened the garage door the whole house thundered and shook. So finally we called the repairman, who diagnosed a burned out clutch. Had to replace the engine. $422 including tax. So this morning he came and did the work, and we have a new garage door opener and...Wow. Like, it's almost noiseless. Until now, when someone came home with the car, everyone else in house knew it because of the thunder of the garage door opener; now we'll be able to sneak up on each other. Is this a good thing? I dunno. But the absence of noise is splendid.

Did You Know

2006-01-03T22:21:00.000-08:00

That today is National Chocolate Covered Cherry day?

It Pays to Check Your Sources

2005-12-30T17:26:00.000-08:00

Via Making Light: The Lion, The Witch and The World Trade talks. Apparently Narnia resents the intrusion of EU and US influence into its business practices.

Everybody's a Critic

2005-12-29T08:41:00.000-08:00

These days the comic strip "Zits" is required reading; they seem to have a pipeline into my house, if not my brain (or the brain of my 15-year-old daughter). And since I cannot read the works of Charles Dickens without wanting to wield my blue-pencil-of-the-mind, today's strip made me laugh.

Faith Music

2005-12-28T14:44:00.000-08:00

So, it being Christmas Break, Emphatic Girl is watching TV and an ad comes on for a CD of kid-targetted pop called Worship Jamz--light pop songs for religious Christians. EG is flummoxed by this. I (for whom most of the kid-targetted pop she likes is yucky) suggest that this is no worse than anything else that's out there. "But they're, like, rock and rolling and singing about Jesus!" she says despairingly. "Don't they have any respect?"

I'm not sure whether she feels the CD doesn't honor Christianity or doesn't honor pop music, but in either case, the kid is clearly not their audience.

Meanwhile

2005-12-24T09:03:00.000-08:00

'Tis the season to be cooking.

This year's Christmas feast: crown roast of pork, stuffed with sausage, apples, apricots, cranberries and onion; mashed potatos and green beans, salad, pumpkin pudding, Bishop's cake and butterscotch ice cream. Also shortbread, just cause I feel like it. I do a lot of cooking at this time of year just because I feel like it. I have abandoned svelte for the time being, obviously.

I feel unusually organized (virtually all presents acquired and wrapped) and disorganized at the same time. It's Christmas Eve, how could it all be so done? The best part will be the girls catapulting themselves onto our bed at far-too-early-o'clock tomorrow morning. Second best part will be everyone sitting around at the table tomorrow afternoon. Family coming from afar (well, an hour's drive north). It'll be swell.

May you all celebrate the dark of the winter and the return of the light, the birth of Christ or the miracles of the lights or whatever celebration brings you joy, in peace and warmth.

Intelligence Will Out

2005-12-20T12:17:00.000-08:00

The U.S. District court, in a thoughtful opinion, has ruled that teaching "intelligent design" would violate the Constitutional separation of church and state.>

At the risk of mixing church and state, I say: Thank God.

Damn

2005-12-16T23:50:00.000-08:00

John Spencer died today. He was a fine, understated actor, and a guy with a genuinely beautiful smile that broke across his face like dawn. I first noticed him in L.A. Law and as the p.i. in Presumed Innocent. He was fifty eight, which is too damned young.

HBTH

2005-12-16T09:34:00.000-08:00

Today is Jane Austen's birthday, and Beethoven's and my brother Clem's. Beethoven and Austen are older than Clem. So am I. He's 50 today. I suppose I really should stop calling him my kid brother.

Wow

2005-12-16T08:58:00.000-08:00

My father is blind. Macular degeneration, one of Fate's nastier jokes (as he has been an artist and designer his entire life)--the "wet" variety. MD knocks out central vision, leaving the afflicted person with some peripheral vision; over the years Dad, for whom vision and perception were professional preoccupations, has made all sorts of observations about his condition, and even wrote a book which he has self-published as Vision Junkie: Confessions of a Macular Degenerate. (You will note that blindness has not affected Dad's delicate sense of humor.) He has learned to navigate the world using that peripheral vision--if he wants to see the face of one of his granddaughters he sort of cheats the kid to the side and moves his head and rolls his eyes until he gets some sort of fix on her, sideways.

So I get a call today. Two pieces of good news: the first, and fairly astonishing, is that he has been growing new cells in the "dead" areas of the macula. They're not even sure what this means, but it's exciting. The second is that for the first time in several years Dad was able to read the first three lines of a visual acuity test (a more elaborate version of the stacked-letter test we know from the optometrist). He's pretty sure he did that with his peripheral vision, which he has been exercising in his own way. So as usual he has all the doctors hopping up and down. He's pretty damned pleased himself.

I Guess You Had to Be There, Kid

2005-12-13T17:53:00.000-08:00

YG just came bolting into the room. "I'm watching the 1933 King Kong." Tones of outrage: "It's terrible! Kong looks like this stupid doll, and the girl just keeps screaming like a moron! I mean, c'mon."

No calming words about the level of technology available to filmmakers in 1933, or about the styles of acting found in "action adventure" movies of the period made any impact. "It's just...like...eeeew!"

Again, Heinlein

2005-12-07T23:17:00.000-08:00

I just re-read Glory Road, Heinlein's only true fantasy, and in the reading I realized that it was the first of his books that I read. I was fourteen, and Jack Anderson (a friend who lived next door, not the columnist) suggested it. Jack's taste ran to Matt Helm and The Enforcer and Modesty Blaise--Heinlein was a benign, almost feminist selection, comparatively. I liked the humor and the energy of Glory Road, the fencing and the invention. I didn't see the misogyny (which was sort of a feature of a lot of SF and adventure fiction at the time); the sexual politics didn't horrify me, though I dimly recall that I thought them rather old hat. The politics-politics either went over my head or seemed utterly dismissable at the time (I don't think I connected the war that Oscar fought in with Vietnam--I think I connected it to Korea, despite the evidence of the text) and the odd spanking fetish did too. Whatever I took from the book when I was fourteen, it was enough so that I went out and found his other books and read them all, over a two or three year period.

As I remember the chronology, Glory Road came out right after Stranger in a Strange Land, a book as freewheeling in its way as Glory Road. Then came Farnum's Freehold, which is a deeply problematic book--not so much because of the sexual politics which made Heinlein's later few books so troublesome, but because it sets up a situation in which the protagonist can do every unpleasant thing it occurs to him to do because the situation "requires" it. It's a fish-shoot: put the fish in the barrel and take your best shot, you can't miss. But then, after the weird nastiness of Farnum comes my favorite Heinlein novel, The Moon's a Harsh Mistress. So everyone is entitled to an off day, or an off book. But I'm sure glad I started out with Glory Road, for all its flaws, and not with Farnum's Freehold.

Baby Got Wrist

2005-12-04T17:07:00.000-08:00

Alas, poor Younger Girl! She has just started taking ice skating lessons, which she loves. It's been fascinating to watch her; not only is she picking stuff up fast (on her own she's been attempting arabesques) but she's showing an unusual focus: normally she is the most sociable of creatures, taking more interest in chatting people up than in the fine points of what she's learning. But with skating she doesn't fall into giggling with her classmates; she's out there, alone-in-her-head, working on her form.

So of course, during the post-lesson free-skate period today she took a tumble and came down hard on one wrist. I think it's a sprain, not a break, but there was much weeping, and she's now ensconced in the sunroom with her blanket for company, a reading book, her arm in a sling, and an icepack on her wrist. Sarcasm Girl, who was at the rink with us, was frustrated by her inability to be helpful (YG emphatically did not want to be touched or cuddled, and was not tactful about repelling all such offers). Once we got home YG mellowed and SG was permitted to act silly to cheer her up. SG is now doing YG's chore (taking out the recycling) as well as her own.

update: The arm is broken; not badly, but broken. She was a trouper during the exam and the X-ray, and tomorrw they put a cast on. It's going to just kick the holiday craziness up another notch.

A New Face

2005-12-03T09:06:00.000-08:00

Via the New York Times: the world's first partial face transplant. I could wish that there were not any questions about the recipient's stability, if only to make the story a tidier one. But as far as the surgery and the accomplishment goes...wow. This is one of those science-fiction-in-real-life moments when science looks pretty damned amazing.

Muffled Thud

2005-11-29T15:00:00.000-08:00

One of the homely sounds of our household, since we have been living in this house, anyway, has been the 6am twonnnng of the newspaper hitting the security gate in front of the door. The gate was here when we bought the place--they're a pretty standard SF feature, usually made of dull silver metal of some sort. Ours is a series of large curlicues set onto a door-sized grid of diamond-shaped lozenges; the grid is meant to keep malefactors from getting past the curlicues and trying to prise the lock open. Ours is not a high-crime neighborhood, but the 90+ year old woman who owned the house before us had the grille put up some years ago; it made her feel safer about living alone.

The problem is that the damned thing was really ugly. So this weekend, filled with girlish enthusiasm (or stupidity) I got some paint and decided to paint the grille. How long could it take? Well, so far I've spent five hours on the thing, spread over three days. I've done the grille, both sides, on about a third of it, all the decorative curlicues on the front, and the basic frames. Then it began to rain, and I had to stop. It's going to be beautiful when it's finished.

But there's been a sonic change: gone is that musical twonnnng; in its place a muffled thud. I love the look of the grille, all shiny and black; somehow it makes my house look more approachable. But I miss the twonnnng.

Festivities

2005-11-26T13:09:00.000-08:00

We had a perfectly lovely Thanksgiving, which ended (the loveliness part, anyway) at 11pm that night, when YG tossed up everything she had eaten all day all over her bed and herself. We got her cleaned up, and the poor wight did it again several times (into a bowl, fortunately...there is a limit to how many changes of bedding we own). I slept with her most of the night, for the better holding of hair and rinsing of mouth a l'instant. Yesterday she appeared to be on the mend--had a slight fever, but was able to hold down dinner. And this morning she woke up cheery, pranced around for a bit...then spent a hectic ten minutes throwing up again. So we went to see the pediatrician, who said, predictably, stomach bug. Keep her hydrated. So that's what we're going to do. It casts a bit of a pall over the holiday weekend, but it did keep us in the house and away from the horrors of Friday-after-Thanksgiving-shopping, so we're going to tuck the kid up in the sunroom and let her watch movies.

It's nice to know, per the doctor, that I didn't somehow obscurely poison my child with too much turkey.

An Era's Demise

2005-11-24T08:08:00.000-08:00

As of Thursday, the end-of-evening pub cry, "Ladies and Gents, Last Call" will be a thing of the past. Or at least, pubkeepers will have the option to make it so. In an effort to stop the 11pm flood of drunken British from spilling out onto the streets (and why am I hearing an echo of Monty Python and soiled budgies flying out of people's loos and infringing their personal privacy?) the government has made licenses available for 24-hour service--on the theory, I guess, that this will spread the number of drunks weaving on the streets across the whole night. About 700 establishments, including 240 pubs, have applied for the permits.

Does this mean London Transport is going to start running the Underground later? That would be nice.

Incoming...

2005-11-17T18:19:00.000-08:00

...inlaws. Will report back if we all survive.

Thoughts on the Eve of a School Strike

2005-11-15T21:21:00.000-08:00

There is no money for education in the Great State of California. As a matter of fact, Our Governor (who has never been a teacher, but once played a cop playing a teacher on TV) took multiple billions of dollars from the state's education funds last year to pay elsewhere. And the San Francisco Unified School District is only just recovering from years of financial, um, mismanagement (Arlene Ackerman, the outgoing Superintendent, is loved by some and hated by others, but no one disputes that the money problems got cleaned up under her aegis) so there is no extra cash there. And the SEIU workers--the support staff, the cafeteria workers and janitors and other unsung non-instructional, non-administrative staff--are threatening to strike on Thursday. And if they do, the teachers--who are in the queue right behind SEIU for contract negotiations--will refuse to cross the picket lines. According to the SFUSD, school will go on--administrators will teach, and parent volunteers will help, and somehow the kids will all get educated. Or not.

I don't blame the SEIU or the teachers; it's reasonable to want a raise every couple of years. It's reasonable to want to hold on to, or improve, your health benefits. I don't entirely blame the school district--I wish their finances were more transparent so that when they say there is no more money it could be demonstrated to one and all that this is the case, but given what I do know about education funding in this state, I'm inclined to believe that they're cash poor. The District has offered a small raise, with a little more money next year; once they settle with SEIU they'll have to negotiate with the teachers, and that'll cost some money too.

The real problem, the problem that makes me crazy, is that we don't value people who teach and care for children in this country. I'm as guilty as the next man: when we had babysitters (I refuse to say "nanny," which sounds far too, um, nannyish) we paid them whatever we could, but we couldn't afford to pay them as well as they deserved. But we expect the people who teach our children to love them, keep them safe, stuff them full of learning, socialize them, mark their papers, supervise their play time, know and appreciate them. And not just one or two kids: a couple of dozen of them at least.

We had a parent-teacher conference this morning. YG's teacher clearly thinks she's the bee's knees, and she reciprocates. And he has an eye on her social interactions as well as her schoolwork. She's one of his students identified as gifted, so he has to make sure she's adequately challenged. Of course, he has to do this for 28 kids--some of whom are gifted, many of whom are English-language learners, some of whom require remediation. He's got 28 plates spinning in the air, and he keeps them in the air, and they love him. Multiply this one guy by hundreds in the city, hundreds of thousands in the nation. All of whom deserve to make a living wage. So when I hear the odd screed about the selfishness of teachers and school workers it makes me crazy. What, they should pay me for the privilege of working with my kids? They're wonderful children, but I don't kid myself that the honor of working with them is sufficient payment...

Will striking help the SEIU workers and teachers get what they want? The principal at YG's school, who has been through some strikes over her 40-year tenure in the SFUSD, says that strikes are generally divisive and leave the school community with all sorts of resentments and anger.

In the meantime I've got two kids who the Districts says should be at school on Thursday, come hell or high water. They will have to cross the picket lines, and that could get nasty. I have all sorts of mixed feelings: keep them home and honor the picket lines? Sarcasm Girl notes that most of the kids who are "honoring the picket lines" are doing so to avoid going to school. Send them through the lines to school (so that, quite selfishly, I can get some work done?)

According to the local news reports there's a "last minute scramble to avoid a strike." That'd be good. I certainly don't know how to solve this problem, but it seems to me that honoring our teachers and school workers would be a good start.

Big Day

2005-11-15T08:12:00.000-08:00

This morning we had YG's parent-teacher conference at 7:20 (**shudder**). Later, I'm going back to the school to meet Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is making a visit. Sarcasm Girl has a voice lesson, YG a guitar lesson, and, I have fencing class. Somewhere in there I have to make food and make sure everyone does their homework. We are having too much fun.

igod

2005-11-12T23:34:00.000-08:00

Talk to God. Or a God-bot. Someone has too much time on his hands.

Via Sarcasm Girl, who also has too much time on her hands. Try God out with a little Abbott and Costello (but don't be surprised if Monty Python stumps him.)

"I Need More Violence!"

2005-11-11T12:35:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the peer pressure thing rears its ugly head in the most rational child. Not that mine are. Rational, I mean. Not all the time, anyway.

So today, as it is Veteran's Day, the young had the day off, and YG went to my current favorite cafe with me. Somehow, on the way back, we got into movies that were, or were not, appropriate for her to see. My first prejudice is in favor of letting the kids watch whatever they want, on the theory that it will all shake out--but I have been proved wrong enough times to know that this isn't an entirely sound policy. It's one thing to let your 10-year-old daughter watch Shakespeare in Love with a shawl to pull over her head during the sex scenes (this practice gave rise to the term "blankie moments" to describe scenes of sex or violence that the watcher decides not to participate in. It's another for the same kid to watch Titanic and get monumentally disturbed by the emotional violence of the mother trying to force her daughter to marry (ick) Billy Zane. Or the character he's playing, for that matter. So I have become more restrictive as the years have gone on. I'm still, by my husband's lights, too easy-going, which causes some interesting, um, conversations chez moi.

YG went from protesting the fact that sometimes at the Boys and Girls' Club they show movies which in her judgment (and mine, too) are inappropriate for an audience that ranges from 6 to 13, to the fact that a lot of the kids she knows get to see movies we haven't let her see yet. I'm trying to talk to her about appropriateness in terms of story and thematic complexity; she's talking about language and violence. So I find myself walking down the street with an angry nine-year-old who is declaiming, "I need more violence! Everyone else gets to see movies with lots of violence! I want to see The Matrix Reloaded!" All my attempts to explain to her that we hadn't shown her The Matrix Reloaded, not because of the violence, but because it's a crappy movie, were as naught.

"I Need More Violence! I need to be like everyone else! You're ruining my life."

Sigh. Probably won't be the last time, either.

The Dance of Happy Rationality

2005-11-09T09:22:00.000-08:00

All of Shwarzenegger's Propositions were defeated. He is now talking about "working with the legislature." And the deeply ugly Parental Notification prop failed, as did both the drug program props. See Your Hostess dancing.

The Subway Gunman Wants Your Vote

2005-11-08T22:37:00.000-08:00

Via Derryl Murphy, The Banterist has a Superficial Voter's Guide - NYC 2005. It's all comic enough--but what floored me was the appearence, two thirds of the way down the page, of Bernard Goetz. That's right--the "subway gunman" who shot down four Black kids who threatened him on the subway two decades ago, is now running for Advocate in NY City.

This is the sort of thing which makes me feel like I'm living in a bad Heinlein novel.

Election Day

2005-11-08T08:43:00.000-08:00

California is a strange state. We elect a state legislature and then make all the governmental decisions via proposition. This year there are Props at the State level, most of them proposed by Our Governor. Then there are the city props. There are also county props. This year we only had to elect three actual humans; the rest was propositions of various sorts. And the advertising for a lot of these proposals makes considerable noise about the Evil of Legislators ("Hey, if the legislators are for it, I'm against it!"). But we don't seem to let the legislators do any legislating (all the big things are decided by You, the Voter, who can be swayed by advertising and don't have the time or resources to research the issues, and can be relied upon to vote emotion or pocketbook). This is a strange state.

I blame civics classes. I don't know what they're teaching kids these days, but I do know I grew up believing that government was a high calling. And I still believe that, somewhere deep in my cynical, irritable, panicky soul. Government may screw up, and because of the money and power involved, sometimes the wrong people are called to it. But I blame those people (I've got, as you might imagine, a long list of people I am happy to blame) and not governance. I don't want outsiders running my government; the learning curve is steep and time gets wasted. I want people who think that government is a high calling, and want to be part of that. You know, the kids who grew up thinking that anyone can grow up to be President, and doesn't regard that as an entitlement program or a curse.

Bits of Sun

2005-11-07T08:31:00.000-08:00

Spent the weekend in Portland, Oregon, at Orycon, a very nice regional convention. Worked hard (two panels on Friday; a reading, three panels, and an hour and a half stint on "Who's Line is it Anyway" on Saturday; and two more panels on Sunday) and had a good time. It was raining in San Francisco when I left (waaaaaay early) on Friday morning; and there was sun in Portland when I got there. That, of course, changed within a couple of hours: rain and gray and cold set in shortly thereafter. Sunday morning there was sun; the hotel is downtown, right on the river, and the trees are turning; there were two big trees right under my window (I think they were maples, but couldn't get close enough to check the leaves) one of them still green, the other a lovely mix of green, yellow, and brilliant red. By the time I finished my last panel and started off toward the MAX light rail station to get out to the airport it was clouding over, but I was feeling pretty pleased at being able to get around a town I don't know on public transportation. Of course, light rail service was interrupted because of repairs to a bridge ("They figure it's easier to put you on a shuttle bus for a day while they fix those little cracks in the bridge than it would be to fish a whole MAX out of the river" the bus driver informed us via PA) so I got to have an adventure. And by the time I got back on the MAX to get to the airport, it had started to rain. I'm sensing a theme here.

When I got back to San Francisco, YG had a fever of 101 and SG was feeling sick too. This morning SG has gone to school, but YG, still feverish, is in bed still. I know this is not all part of a plot to make me feel guilty about going away. It just feels that way.

Tall Tales

2005-11-03T11:12:00.000-08:00

I occasionally get recruited to come in and help out with the writing curriculum at YG's school. The fifth grade are involved in writing tall tales, and I went in to talk to the kids and look at their stuff. What's fascinating is that a lot of them, who I'm sure have the full complement of kid imagination, are so preoccupied with getting it right that they're afraid to take a chance on anything. "Is this a good name for my character?" "Well, do you like it?" "Um, yes, but is this a good name?" "It's your story..." and so on. The teacher and I came up with some ideas for the sorts of tall tales that explain local features--why the top of Bernal Hill is bald, how the Bay came to be, how Alcatraz Island was formed, etc. I immediately had six ideas for tall tales, and the kids were rather bewildered: how could I come up with all those ideas? It's a muscle, I explained. If I spent all day doing lay-ups and jump shots, my basketball skills would be pretty good. I spend all day thinking about stories, so I have plot skills. I think most of them would rather be playing basketball.

The Swiss Army Knife of Answers

2005-10-28T22:43:00.000-07:00

Garry Trudeau had a whole week of strips written and ready for Harriet Miers' Supreme Court hearings, but then she dropped out. So Doonesbury, via Slate, has kindly reprinted them for your viewing pleasure. They're all good, but the last one is killer.

Next?

2005-10-27T08:33:00.000-07:00

Harriet Miers falls on her sword.

Kitchen Porn

2005-10-26T08:32:00.000-07:00

I've found a soul mate!! Mark Morford appears to have the same jones for cookware that I do. Even for some of the same cookware--although I'm rather a purist, and resist the lure of non-stick. I have two pieces of All-Clad stainless (a small skillet and a larger skillet--Spouse says they're the best fucking pans ever) and one of the ways Spouse binds me to him with silken ropes is that he knows my lust for All-Clad, and has promised me from time to time that there will be more. Someday. When the kids aren't in braces or facing college.

Not, of course, that I do a lot of high-end cooking. My family (raise your hand if you've heard this rant before) tends to eschew high-end eating, and I have a curious reluctance to make food that no one but me will eat. But there is pleasure to be had in the ownership of a really good piece of kitchen equipment. My mother loathed cooking but had a full set of LeCreuset pots and pans and wonderful, artsy serving dishes and stuff. My father did like to cook, and this is one of the things he and I have in common; we used to bond over catalogs from restaurant supply stores, and in the early years of my marriage Dad would take pleasure in sending me cool kitchen neep: my marble rolling pin came from him, and the stoneware canisters in which my flour and sugar and brown sugar live, and the pasta machine. Could I live with a set of stainless steel pans from Costco? Well, yes. As a matter of fact, I do, and they're okay. But sometimes, while I'm making a prosaic meal for my prosaic eaters, I dream of haute cuisine and All Clad.

In Which I am Incorrect

2005-10-25T11:36:00.000-07:00

Younger Girl has decided that she's going to be Miss Congeniality for Halloween. Since I persuaded her that a full evening gown would be inconvenient and chilly for walking around town attempting to shake people down for candy, this will be relatively simple: a small fake gun in a shoulder holster or evening bag, and a banner that says "Miss Congeniality." The rub comes, you see, with the gun. I went three places today, looking for a small toy handgun. No joy. There were light sabres; there were foam-padded nunchuks; there were swords and armor; there was a broad array of "spy gear." There were also electronic versions of slot machines and Texas Hold 'Em and other gambling games. What there was not was toy guns. Apparently all these other forms of mayhem--and gambling--are okay, but shooting play is not.

Can I just say this strikes me as a little, um, shortsighted? When I was five, I asked for--and received--a tommygun with "genuine rat-a-tat action!" (It made a very loud noise which pleased me greatly.) I had cap guns. I even learned to shoot a 22 rifle and a CO2-powered BB pellet gun. And I am, today, pro-gun control; the same imagination that had me running around playing cops n' robbers and spies and all sorts of other gun-related games, plus a fascination with medicine and trauma surgery, gives me a pretty good idea of the damage a gun can do. I am profoundly anti-violence and about the least aggressive person on my block, and I still think that a kid should be able to find a toy gun for her Halloween costume.

Complexity

2005-10-24T08:25:00.000-07:00

The fabulous Jon Carroll admits he's not much of a fantasy reader, but he's reading Django Wexler's Memories Of Empire, and points out what big fantasies as a class tell us about our culture. You often hear about the dumbing down of American culture and art, but if you look at big fantasies like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, comics like Watchmen and Sandman and multi-layered TV shows like Buffy, Veronica Mars, and Lost, what they have in common is that they are dense with stories, characters, subplots, worldbuilding. They are popular because they're complex. Now, the given complexity might not be your cup of tea--high fantasy isn't mine, though I do make exceptions--but the fact that people are hot for the complex is encouraging, no?

In Which I'm Back

2005-10-24T07:47:00.000-07:00

San Francisco is (of course) foggy. I am home again, my laundry has been done, and the girls are off to school. I am feeling rather revived by the trip. The young have capered around me squealing "Mama mama mama!" (especially since I made a pilgrimage to our favorite handmade chocolate shop in the Berkshires, Catherine's Chocolates, and brought home maple sugar candy and chocolate covered cherries--the size of a baby's fist!). I had a good talk with my editor, and return with some interesting ideas about how to attack Miss Tolerance (editor: stop writing book 3 and start writing book 4. It's like the "skip the troublesome scene and go to the next" routine, several orders of magnitude increased). So once I have written the emails and letters and made the phone calls that didn't get made next week, I dive right back into work.

Sigh

2005-10-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

I'm home. I got off the train from Newark Liberty Airport at 7:30 this morning, shlepped my luggage up to 7th Avenue, and was instantly and comfortingly at home again. It's like a huge ball of tension I had not realized I was carrying just...melted. And I finally figured it out: San Francisco is a terrific city; it is beautiful, and there is much to love. But at this point I still feel like...how to put this? You ever have to entertain your grandmother's friends when you were a kid? Sitting up straight, balancing a cup and saucer in your lap and being careful about your replies because you don't want to reflect poorly on Grannie? That's the way I feel in San Francisco. So here, one more anonymous person shlepping a rolly-suitcase and computer bag, I could literally feel myself expand.

A couple of things I noticed. I'd forgotten all the fruit vendors at the corners, ready to sell you a banana or a dozen pears or a pineapple. You don't see that in SF--it's either Safeway or the Farmer's Market (Farmer's Market produce is undoubtedly better than the stuff sold on street corners, but the on-your-way-to-work convenience of grabbing an apple or banana is a very mass-transit-and-walking-culter sort of thing. Musicians in the subway; BART doesn't have 'em. Sometimes in the halls of the underground, yes. But the wonderful flautist who came on at 79th Street and played Mozart to 66th Street does not have an opposite number in BART. Finally: every subway car I was in today had ads for English language tutoring. "Aprende Ingles Ahora!" Oddly, despite the huge immigrant population in San Francisco, I can't remember the last ad I saw for English language tutoring. Not to say it's out there, but it's certainly not a saturation ad. I'm still thinking about all this, trying to figure what it all means.

Scripting Counts

2005-10-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

"Thank very much for everything. I like you." --Sgt. Maj. Akeel Shaker Nassir, Iraqi in charge of the Army Training Facility in Tikrit, to George Bush last night.

The publicity event itself was pretty creepy: the soldiers being interviewed all looked like little kids who had been told they could go to the circus if they were polite to the visitor, and the President seemed to stumble over his own talking points. But what was fascinating and sad was the video that went out of one of Bush's press handlers drilling the soldiers on what they were to say and how they were to react to the President's comments.

For a faith-based presidency, it seems to have very little faith in anyone or anything that hasn't been scripted and rehearsed. Even then...

Poll

2005-10-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, writers are ghouls. On a listserve I'm on a discussion has come up that started with Graham Greene's statement that every writer must have a sliver of ice in his heart (or something to that effect; I no longer have the original post) and gone on to people recounting experiences--from robbery to brain surgery--during which they have found themselves taking notes on the experience for later use. I have a bunch of these myself, from childbirth to having my wallet lifted (I got to go to One Police Plaza; I got deposed by an ADA; I felt like an extra in Law and Order!). Aside from the technical benefits of amassing information about a traumatic situation, I've always thought that the "someday I'll use this" experience is a way of getting a handle on an un-handleable event.

So my question is: when something big happens, do you find yourself taking notes? Are you a writer, or are we kidding ourselves in thinking that this is a behavior specific to writers, film-makers, etc.?

Appreciation

2005-10-11T18:04:00.000-07:00

I love looking through those odd catalogs you get--Sharper Image is the high end, Lillian Vernon the middle end (if the middle can be said to have an end) and there are a couple of definitely lower end ones--at the odd things people invent and put out for sale. Who decided that a pith helmet with can-holder and built in straw was a good idea? Or a pith helmet with a tiny battery operated fan in the crown, to cool ones sweaty brow?

So I note with reverence the passing of Eugene Beals -- inventor of turkey pop-up timer. Who among us has not peered anxiously into the oven to see whether the little red button on the Thanksgiving Butterball had popped yet? I just think it's swell that Mr. Beals came up with the idea, and swell that he is celebrated for it posthumously. The fact that I usually use my grandmother's method of testing a turkey for doneness (is the juice of the thigh clear, with no bloodiness? Your turkey is done) in no way diminishes my appreciation.

Thunder Overhead

2005-10-09T15:50:00.000-07:00

This is doubtless unpatriotic of me, and flying in the face of cherished local tradition and stuff, but can I just say that I hate the Blue Angels streaking overhead, so loud and so low that it calls up in me a passionate desire to hide under a table? I was no where near 9/11 (I was, in fact 100 blocks north), but like a lot of people in New York it took me several years to get past a flinch response when a regular ol' jet airliner went overhead. And these showboating damned jets zipping over my home makes me completely regress. Hate, hate, hate. There, I've said it. You can report me now.

Well, I'm Awed

2005-10-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

When we moved out west, Younger Girl got involved with Girl Scouting. We found her a lovely troop, with a bunch of nice girls and two women who acted as co-leaders, and it was all swell for about a year and a half...at which point both of the leaders felt that their professional commitments were overwhelming their ability to do the job properly, and they ducked out. There followed a year when YG wandered in the wilderness, doing some Council events but otherwise having no scouting home. The Moms of her troop kept talking about someone picking up the reins--a teacher from the school which had housed Troop 406; one of the Moms; a leader supplied by the Council. All I knew--because you have to have a little self-knowledge in the Mom biz--was that it wouldn't be me. I'm good for the odd afternoon here and there with a bunch of kids; I'm a fine support person, but I would almost certainly throttle someone if I were in permanent charge, and I don't believe that's The Girl Scout Way.*

So, on Tuesday of this week I decided we should stop waiting, and called the Council, explained the situation, and got the name of the leader of a troop that was open. As luck would have it, they were having a camp out last night at a nearby Girl Scout campground (in San Francisco proper! This is so not New York!) and if I wanted to fill out all the paper work to reregister YG and myself, she could attend that. So we loaded up the truck, I brought my pen and money for the various fees, and within twenty seconds YG had insinuated herself into a crowd of kids. When I left her there, she was happily stringing Froot Loops and pretzels onto red licorice strings as "survival necklaces" to much while they hiked. I'm sure I will hear tales of adventure when I pick the kid up in three hours.

But what awes me is the new Troop leader. She's not just in charge of the Juniors (YG's level). She manages a troop of Daisies (the kindergarteners), Brownies, Juniors, Cadettes, and Seniors. This is essentially the equivalent of voluntarily and without pay running a one-room schoolhouse. And she apparently loves it. True, she apparently has lots of Moms helping out, and doesn't seem shy about delegating, but even so: Wow.

Update: The girl had a swell time, despite blustery winds and very little sleep. She's totally gung-ho about the troop, met some nice girls...and is already planning for her part in the Troop trip to England in 2007, when she's a Cadette. Holy cow. Definitely not her mother's Girl Scouts. A trip to Westchester was considered hot stuff in my day.

*of course, when I was a kid I was briefly a Girl Scout, but quit because I was repeatedly mugged for my dues money by a fellow Scout...

"Heinlein's Female Trouble"

2005-10-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

Serve me right for taking five days to get to the Times Book Review section. There's a back-page essay called Heinlein's Female Troubles, all about Robert Heinlein's treatment of women in his fiction. Understand, I once got booed from the floor at a panel at an SF convention when I suggested that Heinlein's treatment of women in his later books got in the way of my enjoying them (the books, not the women...), but I stand foursquare for his juveniles and a good number of his adult works (I think Time Enough for Love is the place where his work jumped the shark; you might have your own thoughts on the subject). M.G. Lord, the author of the essay, says that Heinlein's work is what made a feminist of her, and I can't argue with the examples she gives or the points she makes. And she does acknowledge that Heinlein's post-1970s novels are tainted "with a dated laciviousness and [impair] his ability to create three-dimensional women." But I'd go farther and say that with his later books Heinlein stops trying to create three-dimensional women at all; most of them are a catalog of abilities (starship pilot! mathematician! particle physicist! gourmet chef!) stapled to a Playboy pinup, with a pair of ovaries paperclipped to the packet. While Lord criticizes Friday, for example, as "a brazen disease vector, recklessly promiscuous, with a bizarre weakness for male engineers," what bothered me about Friday and the other women of Heinlein's last works was their status as mommies. Future mommies, happy incubators...not raising children (who seemed to be brought on stage to be cute for a moment, then retired to the nursery to get out of the way of the plot) so much as being in a pre-gestational or peri-gestational period. Nursing mommies. These works gave me a permanent distaste for being told that pregnant women are sexy (which irritated Spouse a little during those times when I was pregnant). And I won't even go into the weirdness of Lazarus Long going back in time to sleep with his mother...

I will go to my grave loving The Moon's a Harsh Mistress and The Day after Tomorrow and Double Star and a whole lot more of Heinlein's work. That's going to have to be enough.

Ick

2005-10-06T08:51:00.000-07:00

I'm sick. And Spouse is in NY at a convention. And I'm sick. Bronchitis. In a rare show of good sense, I called the doctor yesterday and got antibiotics, and probably by tomorrow I will feel better. I stayed home from work yesterday (which is hard to do when you work at home...essentially, I didn't do anything but feed the children and drink hot liquids) and may do the same today. YG started crying in the car on the way home from school yesterday: "Daddy's 3000 miles away and you're sick! This is terrible!" Funny, just what I was thinking.

Scary Dentist

2005-10-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

For some reason, San Francisco TV is peppered with ads for dentists and tooth-whitening businesses. I don't remember dentists advertising this aggressively on the east coast, but I could be wrong. In any case, there's one specific dentist who advertises in San Francisco who scares me. It's not as though he appears against a background of David Cronenberg-type implements of dental torture. He's really just another in a long line of business-owners who insist upon being the spokesman for their own companies despite the fact that they can't read lines for beans. That in itself is not scary. What is? His smile. The smile itself is big and white, a good advertisement for Dr. Jang's work. What is scary about it is the way he uses it. One gets the feeling that he doesn't smile easily; the smile is jerked into being at the end of sentences or paragraphs of copy, with flipped-switch suddenness, like an exclamation mark. It's clear that Dr. Jang has been coached to look approachable and smile for emphasis. He may be a terrific dentist; his staff may be remarkable, and they may speak every language known to man (in addition to English and Chinese, they advertise that they also speak French and, I think, Japanese and Tagalog), but...how can you trust a dentist who looks like he's about to bite your head off? Scary.

How I Learned About Politics

2005-10-04T07:33:00.000-07:00

I was twelve years old at the time of the mayoral race in New York City. While I certainly didn't understand it all, I remember all the players and the city they were talking to. That's why The Buckley Effect resonates so strongly for me, I guess. It's a fascinating article in its own right, but its effect on mee was like that of a kid who finally learns, years later, what all those half-heard and half-comprehended arguments between her parents were all about. And weirdly enough, reading the article reminds me that I miss New York politics. I get New York politics. I'm still working on the San Francisco politics thing, and in the oddest way this article made me feel homesick.

The Mills of the Gods

2005-09-29T23:15:00.000-07:00

Thirteen years ago I was working at Tor Books when I was asked to submit a story to a small-press anthology to be called Coney Island Wonder Stories. I wrote a story called "Somewhere in Dreamland," sent it in, had it accepted. A little while down the pike, the editors told us that the book would be a little delayed, but we were welcome to submit the stories to magazines and so on. So I sent the story to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, where it was bought, and in due time, published. I had somehow forgotten that the book itself had never seen the light of day...until today, when I got an email from one of the editors, apologizing for the delay and noting that the book is, at last, coming to a bookstore near you. Or at least to an online bookstore. I get my copies next week; I look forward to reading the other stories in the book.

Garage Sale, Part 2

2005-09-28T18:15:00.000-07:00

Wow. You list something on Craigslist and half the universe goes nuts. It's the American Girl doll, you see. Half a dozen people vying for her. Plus a couple of people who asked for photos of the bunk bed. This is fascinating.