I've had a couple people ask me for an update on the pets. bubblesutonium already covered some of this, but for those interested....

After Amy's diagnosis, we put her on a regimen of painkillers and anti-inflammatories to help manage the discomfort. So far they're working wonders. Amy will never have her old stamina back, and she still can't put weight on her bad leg, but she doesn't seem to be in serious pain.

There will come a point when all the painkillers in the world won't be enough, and that's when we'll have to let her go. We're holding that moment at bay for now. That's all we can ask.

It could be much, much worse. Vamp, one of the other greyhounds in Seattle, broke her leg badly at a greyhound event last Saturday. ("It was just dangling there, loose," said H, who was there at the time.) She made it to the hospital, but died on the operating table while the doctors tried to pin her leg back together. That same day another local greyhound, Jannie, had to be put to sleep after both her back legs suddenly became paralyzed. We've been counting our blessings.

---

Washington state's bar association takes almost three full months to grade their bar exams. That's because the exams are essay-based and all have to be hand-graded, a nightmare of a job. So bubblesutonium, along with many of her law school friends, has been waiting since February to hear how well she did.

By last week, H was so anxious that her vibrating was starting to register on the UW's seismographs.

Last Saturday she got the word: she passed.

So bubblesutonium, esq., is now officially licensed to practice in the state of Washington. She'll get sworn in later this week by one of her favorite judges.

FAQ: Why bother getting admitted to practice when you're going to tax school out of state? Do you have to be a member of the bar to go to tax school? A: bubblesutonium could go to tax school without passing the bar first. But it makes finding a job at the end a lot easier if you're already admitted to practice.

I never had any doubts she'd pass, but it's good to be over that hurdle. Watching her take a deep breath or two has been a revelation.

---

As for me? Not sure. I've been a hermit crab lately.

I'm still playing graduate student: traveling a bit, talking to professors a lot, not writing as much as I should. With luck, I'll have a conference paper submission and a conference poster done by the end of the month, and a dissertation proposal done not long after that.

Assuming I can get the funds together, I'm planning to sign up for the Issaquah Triathlon. My first triathlon. My goals are modest. Finish, don't be last, and don't drown in Lake Sammamish.

I'm also running an 8K in a couple weeks, the Beat the Bridge run. I'll talk about that in a separate post once I've got the logistics sorted out.

Otherwise, I'm keeping a low profile. There's some interesting stuff on the horizon, though. This summer and fall promise to be entertaining.

I've cut way, way back on my coffee intake lately, but the crisp morning and edge of hoarfrost on the grass sent me into the kitchen for a cup of what my friend Dylan calls Liquid Black Happy Awakeness. Sometimes it's the simple pleasures that keep you going, like sitting in your living room with two hounds at your feet, sipping a dark roast coffee and reading the New York Times.

With a little over a week to go before my generals exam, I'm alternating between moments of panicked anxiety and stoic "oh hell, let's just get this over with" thoughts, sometimes within the space of two minutes. I had my first "you failed completely and it's not clear to us why you're here" nightmare a couple nights ago, so I'm right on track.[1]

bubblesutonium has her own troubles. She's graduating next month (YAY!) into the worst economy since the 1930s (oops). I went with her to a party of graduating seniors at her law school on Friday night, where the fear was almost a physical presence. "Only three of us have jobs so far," one of her friends told me. "Three out of fifty-seven."

But that's tomorrow's problem. Once in awhile, you have to pause and savor the moment without worrying about what's to come. bubblesutonium has put in four long, hard years of work to get her J.D. I couldn't be happier or more proud.

Tomorrow I'm heading back to San Juan Island, with the dogs, for a few days of study retreat and Thanksgiving celebration with my family. bubblesutonium is joining me on Wednesday. Sometimes it's the little breaks that keep you sane.


[1] For those who came in late: the generals exam is the last major hurdle in a Ph.D. program before you can start writing your dissertation proposal. You spend about 3 to 4 months reading articles and books on your topic. You get handed one question each by four different professors, spread out over four different days. You have five hours to answer each question in essay form, using the readings. After a few weeks, you defend your answers in an oral exam with your entire committee. Pass, and you go write your dissertation proposal. Fail and you get one more shot; fail twice and you get kicked out of the program.

So, waysofseeing! Damn near a month and not a word out of you.

And the world is better off for it.

Yeah, but one of your LJ readers asked you offline the other day if you'd died.

My grocery bills say no, and I still owe fines on a couple of library books. The librarians come and haunt your ass in Hell if you die before paying up, you know.

So what have you been doing instead of writing LJ entries?

( Reading through concrete and the perils of self-piercing during a 10K )

I'm in my mid-thirties. Most days I do a passable imitation of being a grown-up.

And yet I still get a secret thrill every time I realize that I own my own clothes washer and dryer. It doesn't even require quarters.

---

I'm having that getting-healthy day where I realize, with some embarrassment, that I was a little more sick yesterday than I thought.

My notes from the conference call barely make sense and left out a couple of key points. I accidentally left my laptop plugged in all night. My dishes from yesterday's lunch were still awaiting my attention this morning. I discovered most of last night's dinner in the fridge as leftovers. I had to do a full house check to make sure that we still had all our pets.

Oops. Oh well. Time to get caught up.

I've been fighting an intense case of writer's block lately. Not good when you've got four or five writing projects all awaiting your attention, not to mention a blog or two.

I'd be panicky if this happened in the middle of the school year. Fortunately for me, summer is a little slower.

---

Mostly on a lark, and at the suggestion of jadeejf (a wonderful person, married to a gentleman named Carl, whom we are assured is not the same individual as wesa's husband Carl even though Carl and Carl have never been seen in the same place at the same time), I've been working through a "hundred pushups" training program. The idea is that you're supposed to be able to work over "six weeks" to the point where you can do 100 pushups without a pause.

I'm about at the halfway point, and here's the result so far: it's working, but it's slow. At least for me, "six weeks" isn't a realistic goal. I did "week 2" twice and am now on my second "week 3." On the plus side, I knocked off five sets of 15 to 25 push-ups each in about 10 minutes this morning. A month ago I could barely get through a single set of ten push-ups.

Two caveats. Push-ups are great but they aren't a workout by themselves. I've been mixing in crunches and leg-lifts, along with a cardio workout every other day.

Also, as one of my LJ friends discovered the hard way: don't try this if you've got hand or wrist issues. It's a fairly high-strain exercise.

It occurred to me last night that it's been a long time since I posted much about my life. I've been feeling kinda nonverbal lately, though. I've asked my cat Sandy to post for me instead. She likes walking across my keyboard anyway. I've translated from her native language:

---

Ahem.

I must begin by correcting several inaccuracies in the above introduction. First, my name is not "Sandy." You cannot pronounce my name accurately, nor have you earned the right to try. The closest translation is "Her Eminence And Lady Grace, She-Who-Devours-Spiders." I accept the title of "Sandy" as the best that the lowly drudges who populate this establishment could come up with. One must make allowances for their inadequacies.

Also, I am not "walking across the keyboard." I am, in fact, practicing my typing skills, as communicating our plans is a complex business. Do not concern yourself; you will discover these plans when they have borne fruit.

Any e-mails reading "BRING ME THE HEAD OF THE WRETCHED DOG" should be discarded. Purest coincidence.

In any event, my summer has been a good one. From my thrones on the desk and in the back window, I have been surveying my domain with great goodwill. The serfs finally got around to installing air conditioning this year--yes, it took them awhile; remember those inadequacies referred to earlier--and my domain has prospered thereby.

The taller of the two pale wretches who maintain my domain for me has been around a bit more this summer. It is a pleasant enough change, as it gives him more time to pay due attention to me. He still spends much time at his desk, muttering darkly about "vendor contracts" and "research papers" and "that thing I owe Curtis" and various other useless matters. He has not, however, been keeping late nights. This is a benefit, since it leaves the chair open for me to use. It does make claiming my nightly adoration a bit more difficult.

Both of those wretches have resumed playing fake plastic instruments regularly. Noisy, but it allows me to supervise them from my perch on the living room couch.

We will not speak of the two Things that inhabit our house. Any moment that the peons take them outside is the finest moment of my day. The four of them disappeared for several days in early July. It was several days of purest bliss. I can only hope that next time they will drop those Things in the ocean.

Meanwhile, it appears that the esnes have gotten around to providing me with food, and not before time. However, while I have your attention, I would like to address a brief note to those "LOLCATS" people: To catalog the mistakes of incompetent larvae is a futile waste of my time, but you will please take note that my grammar is impeccable.

Blog. Right. I have one of these things. *dusts it off*

If you haven't heard from me in awhile, well, no one else has either. I can only apologize. You'd think that dealing with the end-of-the-quarter crunch would get easier as you go through it more often. Ha! No. Yesterday, I handed in my grades, came home, and promptly collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut. About 16 hours of sleep later I'm starting to feel a bit more human.

Congratulations and much happiness to my sister achyvi, Evergreen '08, and my sister M., NVHS '08. It was great to see them walk across the stage--though Evergreen's graduation is probably worth a post in its own right. Suffice to say here that it was not the most well-organized commencement ceremony I ever saw in my life.

bubblesutonium is working two jobs and going to school at night and, by all evidence, having the time of her life. I'm not sure when she became the energetic go-getter around here, but I need to borrow some of her ambition.

Regular programming will resume in due course. Meanwhile: still not dead. Still not king, either, but what are you going to do.

At the Emerald City Comic Con today, I made a point of seeking out qcjeph, the author of one of my favorite web comics, Questionable Content. Not only do I love his comics, but I have an extra soft spot for him: he's a fellow Hampshire College alumn. (Years younger than I am, but what the hell.)

I mentioned the connection while he was doing a quick sketch for me.

"Cool! What was your Div III?" he asked.[1]

Oh, something on people with disabilities.

"Really?" he said. "What was the title?"

I told him.

"Huh. That sounds really familiar. I think that's one of the demonstration projects they're giving out now. You know, the 'hey, here's what a Division III project is supposed to look like' examples that you read before you start?"

"Oh my God," I said.

---

[1] Division III: Year-long thesis-like project on a topic of your choosing, required for graduation from Hampshire. Generally considered by the survivors to be a rite of passage.

I spent most of yesterday sitting in a King County Courthouse juror's box, listening to several not-quite-lawyers argue a murder case in front of a (real) superior court judge.

The case was imaginary but interesting. They use variations on the same scenario every year, so I won't post the details online, but it involves a shooting between two highly questionable characters in a dive bar. The questions are legal, not deductive: it's not "did this guy shoot the victim?" but "was the shooting justified?"

(No, bubblesutonium wasn't counsel on the case. This was a favor to one of her classmates.)

Today I get to catch up on all the housework, homework and grading that I didn't do yesterday, plus all the work I missed late last week after tweaking something in my lower back. God bless 222s, but they chop my IQ by about forty points. Fortunately I'm mostly back up to speed and back to good old Advil, which still lets me form coherent sentences.

Meanwhile, some bemusement:

I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You. Coming soon to a movie theater near you. Any and all resemblance to the plot of first season Buffy is strictly coincidental.

--

File under Thank God This Woman Didn't Go To Hampshire. Alisa Shvarts, a Yale art student, announced that her senior project was her story of the nine months wherein she artificially inseminated herself as many times as possible, forcing miscarriages whenever she got pregnant. Cue total outrage (and that's a tiny, tiny sample). Warren Ellis called performance art bullshit, and as it turns out, he was right.

Shvarts, no idiot, published a piece the next day saying no, really, I did it. Honest, along with the usual academic pseudo-intellectual justification about miscarriage as "an act of reading constructed by an act of naming," and "destabilizing the locus of that authorial act." Confused conservative bloggers still don't get the joke, but I'm not sure the artist does either.

After what was probably the most incredibly stressful morning I've had since I started graduate school, I left the computer science building and started heading over to the Ave for lunch, feeling miserable and sorry for myself. I pulled my cell phone out and dialed my wife as I walked.

Just as she picked up the line, a passing seagull took a giant dump on my head.

As the New England horrormeister says, this is a true thing I'm telling you.

"I'll call you back," I told Bubbles.

Standing in the men's room, cleaning bird poop from my glasses and my hair and my jacket, I tried to decide why I was suddenly in a better mood. And then I realized:

I'm wearing seagull shit on my head. My day can only improve from here.

I trust that I'll be more fit for human company in due course, and might even remember how to write real LJ entries again. I'm eternally grateful for your patience.

It would have been easier if I'd remembered to put my sunglasses in my backpack this morning, but I didn't, because I'm an idiot. So after the eye exam I walked down to the busy street in First Hill with my eyes red, stinging and blurry. I blinked constantly and kept my eyes near shut when I could.

The bus I needed to catch was in the downtown bus tunnel, so I strapped on my full backpack and started walking, squinting desperately into the blazing grey day.

People melted out of my way. Nobody made eye contact. People would shuffle away from me at stoplights. It was like parting the Red Sea.

And just for a moment, I saw what it was like: for the rail-thin, wire-haired guy with wide open eyes and a few torn shopping bags; for the middle-aged woman explaining the incomprehensible with grand gestures and a voice of fervent passion to a nonexistent audience; for the guy sleeping on the grate and the one sitting quietly in the park listening to the birds sing. You're floating on a sea of humanity, disconnected and ignored, yet oddly free.

Weird morning.

Drumheller Fountain over on UW's campus doesn't freeze often. It just doesn't get that cold around here. But we've had a couple of very cold nights, and today the pond was frozen over all day. (The fountain doesn't usually run in midwinter.)

I stopped by the pond on my way home. A couple of very confused ducks stood on the ice, looking for small tidbits to nibble, sliding on their webbed feet every time they tried to walk. Their quacking had a very plaintive note to it.

Poor little guys. Winter is hard on everyone.

Sleep has its good points, I'm told. My cats and dogs are avid practitioners of the art. Right now, in fact, I'm looking at a cat who's climbed onto my desk, curled up behind my monitor, and has her face tucked into her paws. They certainly didn't learn the talent from me, since I'm averaging about 4-5 hours per night at the moment.

I can't remember. Which is supposed to be worse: Sloth? Or Envy?

Last Monday was one of those days that should have been fired with extreme prejudice. (And not just for me. My heart goes out to a couple of you who had worse days than I did: you know who you are.) I've been tired, busy, and heartsick for a lot of the week. On the plus side, I'm getting quite a bit done when I'm not slumped over my keyboard.

This is no condition to be teaching a four hour class tonight, but we'll make it work.

In other, more amusing news, Bubbles and I met Superman on the bus awhile back. He was a weedy guy wearing ordinary clothes, a red cape, and a kids' Superman backpack. Perfectly quiet, mellow guy.

"I've seen him before," said one of the other passengers right after Superman exited the bus. "He really does think he's Superman. I asked him if he could leap a tall building in a single bound, but he refused to demonstrate."

"Y'know," said his companion, "it must be tough being Superman these days. Not too many phone booths left."

I don't have a working camera at the moment, so you'll have to visualize these. I'll come up with real pictures at some future date.

A Smith-Corona Sterling typewriter. Probably from somewhere in the 1940s. It looks a bit like this. I bought it on a whim off of eBay last week. It works, mostly, but I'm having troubles getting the ribbon to advance properly.

Bubbles says I sound like an old-time newspaper office when I'm banging away on the thing.

What I really want to use it for is letter-writing. My handwriting is about as legible as a seasick eighty-year-old's, but somehow churning letters out effortlessly using one of the eighty bazillion letter-writing word processor templates seems--impersonal, maybe? Factory-produced? Boring?

Now I just need to finish fixing the typewriter. And find some decent, watermarked paper.

The football junkie, lost on his couch. Much to my wife's and mother's dismay, my step-dad and I spent almost the entire weekend Thanksgiving weekend watching football. We were civilized about it though. No Miller Lite for us. We were drinking decent wine while we were yelling at the TV set and eating chip dip.

A bald eagle, screeching loudly. He was sitting in a tree high over my parents' house when I walked outside to go watch the scenery for awhile.

I was informed by this eagle in no uncertain terms that I was a pink-skinned offal of uncertain parentage and I had better crawl away from his tree before he decided to do something about it.

I've never been cursed out by a bald eagle before. I felt vaguely unpatriotic.

A dog, keeping time. You know, I'm not even going to attempt to explain this one. Go talk to my wife.

I love, love owning a house, but there are certain things nobody warns you about when you buy one.

For instance:

Nobody ever told me that I might trace a foul odor in my basement to my crawl space, where some impertinent rat decided to urinate all over the plastic vapor barrier covering the ground.

Likewise, I never expected to spend part of an evening (when I'd had other things planned) slapping some quick-set cement over a small gap underneath the foundation that the rats seem to be using as a raceway.

I need a beer.

Awhile back, bubblesutonium and I discovered a woman who quietly ran one of the coolest businesses around: car negotiating.

You want a new car? Fine. Tell her the make, model, the options you want, and a choice of three colors you can live with. A few days later, you'll get a phone call: your car is at such-and-so dealership. The price is $X.

The price you pay is rock-bottom. Far less than either bubblesutonium or I could negotiate down to. We don't have the patience for it.

You drive to the dealership, write a check, pick up the keys, and leave. Then you send a check for a few hundred dollars to your negotiator. You've still come out way ahead, especially if you account for your time.

That's the method we used to buy our Jeep Liberty several years ago. The dealer we were sent to was a West Seattle outfit called Huling Brothers. It was obviously a high-pressure, high-volume sales outfit and the fleet manager was visibly not happy to see us. "I don't normally do deals like this," he growled. Meaning: I could have stiffed you two out of a lot more money if you'd walked in here cold.

We shrugged. We have a check here, we said: do you want it or not? He grumbled some more, handed us the keys, and barely restrained himself from kicking us off the lot headfirst.

A charming car dealership, we agreed. And people wonder why we pay someone else to do the negotiating.

Last year, the cops say, several of the salesmen over at Huling Brothers discovered that a mentally ill guy had enough money lying around his apartment to buy a pick-up truck from them in cash. They promptly found out where he lived and helped themselves to a seventy thousand dollar service fee.

The Hulings, who knew their dealership was being investigated by the cops, promptly sold the whole place to an unwitting fall guy.

I see in the paper this morning that the fall guy is losing money hand over fist and is about to close the place. He's planning to sue the Huling Brothers for failure to disclose the criminal investigation.

I'd shed a tear for them, but I hate the taste of salt in my morning coffee.

---

No word yet on Cherry's surgery. We'll know more later today.

Tonight's grocery store run was slightly off-kilter. I kept running into people in the store who I almost kind of knew but not really, like that guy you're looking at across the bar when you think "Dammit, I know I've seen him somewhere around here." Then a rather angry man on the corner felt compelled by God to drop his pants in the middle of Broadway while shouting to someone not visible to the rest of us.

God's whims are not to be questioned, I suppose, but they're occasionally a bit weird.

In other news of the moment:

I've been quietly advised by a couple professors I like and trust that I need to focus more attention on my research for awhile to make progress on my Ph.D. So...

After this summer, I'm taking a break from teaching for awhile. Teaching the same course four times in a row is plenty. It's time to do something else. I'm still scheduled to teach a grad student course in winter, and I'll doubtless have more to say about it when we get closer.

To make some money, I signed some paperwork to go back to work part-time for the rest of the summer and into the fall. I can't say much about the project, but it's related to my research interests and will be for A Large Software Firm That You've Heard Of.

Hopefully no pants-dropping will be required.

FARKLE AND FARKLE RADIO THEATER PRESENT
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

MUSIC: A QUIET BLUES THEME

SFX: NIGHT NOISES, CRICKETS, A COYOTE IN THE DISTANCE

SFX: A FAN RUNNING, UNDER THROUGHOUT

SFX: DOOR OPENS

bubblesutonium: Grover and I are going to bed, dear.

waysofseeing: You mean the cat's not asleep yet?

bubblesutonium: No, but he's working on it, and so am I. The dog's in here too.

waysofseeing: Good plan. I won't be far behind you.

bubblesutonium: G'night.

SFX: A SINGLE SET OF FOOTSTEPS ON WOOD, FADING

SFX: TYPING AT A KEYBOARD, CONTINUING FOR SEVERAL SECONDS. QUIET MUSIC UNDER

SFX: HORRIFIC CRASH, PLASTIC AND METAL ON WOOD

SFX: SIMULTANEOUS CAT-IN-PAIN SCREECH AND DOG HOWL

SFX: FRANTIC SCRABBLING OF PAWS ON WOOD FLOOR, FADING SLOWLY

SFX: SMALL METAL OBJECT TINKLING ON WOOD FLOOR, FADING TO SILENCE

TWO-BEAT PAUSE

waysofseeing: I take it the cat just dropped the fan on the dog.

bubblesutonium: Yep.

MUSIC STING AND OUT. CUT TO COMMERCIAL

I've been playing Guitar Hero II fairly obsessively lately. Tonight, for example, I was playing Rush's "YYZ" on Expert mode when bubblesutonium came home.

Since I'd like to stay married, I turned off the game console to talk with her for awhile. But in a break in the conversation, I found myself tapping out the opening rhythm to the song with my fingers. Dah-dit-dah-dah-dah-dit-dah-dah-dah-dah-dit-dit....

"Hey, I just realized something," I said.

"Oh?"

"That song is called YYZ, right? It's the airport code for Toronto. That's where Rush is from."

"Okay..." said Bubbles.

"So that rhythm line is pure Morse code. Y-Y-Z, repeated several times."

Bubbles paused to think about this for a second.

"My God, you are a geek," she said.

"You just now noticed?" I asked.

If at first you don't succeed, find out if the loser gets anything. Bill Lyon

--

With my Mac G5 tower in the shop I had to build a laptop workstation at my desk. I was working on the computer setup this morning when I suddenly burst out laughing. Never has such an unholy hybrid been seen:

- Macintosh PowerBook G4
- PC 15" LCD monitor
- Microsoft ergonomic keyboard
- Microsoft wireless mouse
- Microsoft-branded USB mousepad

Reuse and recycle, that's my motto. Horrifying religious zealots since 1974, that's my other motto. See, Apple and Microsoft can work together as friends!

I have a hard time with the Apple keyboard and mouse anyway. They're very hard on my wrists. I've worked with ergonomic stuff too long to be comfortable with anything else.

--

I don't recognize this court! shouted the defendant. You had it decorated! Morecambe and Wise

--

Still getting adjusted to the summer schedule. I only have to be on campus two days per week (!) but have quite a bit of work to do at home. This takes discipline, especially when it's lovely and warm outside. The temptation to put everything down and go jump in a kayak is quite overwhelming.

I'm planning to take a long walk over lunch. With luck, that'll give me some concentration. I've been easily distracted lately.

--

A new book has been released entitled Friends of George W. Bush. It is only one page longer than the work, Famous Antarctic Television Personalities of the Eighteenth Century. President Bush said, "I've spent most of this week reading it, finding it challenging in its scope." SNL's Weekend Update, slightly revised

--

My cousin nomadicshiner is coming to town this week for a brief visit before he heads back to Africa. Should be good times, assuming the poor guy can remember where he is. In the last three weeks or so he's been in Karthoum, Rome, Barcelona, London, Milwaukee, Houston, and now Seattle, plus a couple other places I've probably forgotten. I'd have trouble remembering my own name after a trip like that.

--

My brothers, said the Pope, I bring you good news and I bring you bad news. The good news is that I have just received a phone call from Christ, who has returned to earth. The bad news is that he was calling from Salt Lake City. Monseigneur Geno Baroni

--

I finally got fed up with cleaning up dog diarrhea and hauled both dogs to the vet yesterday. Result: lots of pills. Hopefully they'll help.