My Archives: October 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
I was sorry to read of Peg Bracken's death (but like Deborah Kerr, it's a case of not knowing that she was still alive at 89). Her cookbook, The I Hate to Cook Book, published in multiple editions over the years, is astoundingly funny and always made me laugh. I think I've read most of her other books, also! She may be out of print right now but used copies are widely available. Maybe I'll make some Slug-a-bed Stew in her honor.
(tags: PegBracken, Cookbooks)
Posted by Anita @ 04:32 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]
Monday, October 22, 2007
I stayed up much too late last night (3 am!) reading Naomi Novik's latest Temeraire novel, Empire of Ivory. Great! I really enjoy this series (dragons in the time of the Napoleonic wars) and this new installment lives up to the previous books. There are three earlier novels in the series, with plans for more.
I was able to hear Novik interviewed at Nippon2007. She was very interesting, talking about her tech writing and fan fiction roots. The only drawback was her interviewer was her Japanese editor (I think) and so there had to be translation of everything that was said on both sides.
Novik has a website with a wiki that has lots of fan participation with details about actual history vs her alternate history. Plus, she's got a livejournal!
(tags: NaomiNovik, Termeraire, EmpireOfIvory)
Posted by Anita @ 03:35 PM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]
Saturday, October 20, 2007
My old buddy Dan Sanderson at Brainlog gets titlelessly geeky about pens. I don't write enough by hand to have preferences here but I find it entertaining to read folks giving their opinions about topics like this. "I'm still on the fence: It's clear gel pens have benefits over traditional ball point pens in terms of consistency and reliability, but I haven't met a gel pen that didn't slather the page too much. Every time I use a gel pen I feel like I'm making a mess. Rands disqualifies the fine point gel early in his trials, but I'm eager to try one after his review, because a fine point might win me over."
Dan was inspired by Rands and the joy of pens.
(tags: BrainLog, DanSanderson, pens, gelPens, Rands, RandsInRepose)
Posted by Anita @ 04:44 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
I love this story from Love Shak, Baby:
Two years ago, the fire department spoke at my son's school for fire prevention safety week. They spoke about many fire safety rules and stressed the importance of changing the smoke detector batteries in your home. My son John took to heart the fireman's words. He came home and started in on his dad about checking the batteries of our smoke detectors. My husband told John that he would check them but he put it off for "later". My tenacious son kept after my husband for two weeks straight. Finally, he checked the smoke detectors and was shocked to discover that the batteries in every single detector in our house was dead. He took John to the store and bought new smoke detectors with backup systems for the entire house. Two weeks later on Thanksgiving morning, we woke up at 4:00 am to the sound of smoke detectors going off. We had a fire in our family room which was at the other end of the house from the bedrooms.
(tags: SmokeDetector, LoveShakBaby)
Posted by Anita @ 04:39 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]
Monday, October 15, 2007
Where have I been? A week ago I had a pump connected to my port-a-cath with a new-to-me chemo drug. The pump was all loaded up and would be slowly dosing me until Saturday morning. All seemed to be going well. My grandson Riley went to preschool on Monday then again on Wednesday; Jack drove him and picked him up. But during the day on Wednesday I started feeling stupider and stupider! I couldn't even get my UMPC booted up so I put it aside until Jack got home.
Jack was very worried by my condition when he got home. "Aphasic, lack of time sense." He called my doc but he didn't get a call back until around eleven. Difficulty with speech is a side effect of this new chemo drug but it's a rare one. The doc asked him to bring me in to the emergency room -- I did not want to go, but cooperated to the amount of putting shoes on. We asked our friends Kate and Glenn to meet us at the emergency room and take Riley for the night -- Jack's mom would come up from Oregon during the next day and stay until tomorrow.
By the time we got the call-back I was already feeling somewhat better, and could talk to some extent to the triage nurse and emergency room doc at the ER. A whole raft of tests followed: cat-scan and x-rays and blood tests. A head MRI was the last thing (they have to call the technician in since middle-of-the-night MRIs aren't common). The ER nurse had to call an 800 number to confer with a nurse clinician who works with the pump manufacturer about how to disconnect, reconnect and reset my chemo pump because it couldn't go near the MRI. Thanks, Anne! [more]
Posted by Anita @ 05:02 PM PST [Link] [6 comments]