Exceedingly cute, exceedingly skinny, exceedingly young Latina clerk to another (laughing): “I never see you smile, Erin! Were you deprived as a child? Did you never go to the zoo?”
- Lowe’s grocery store, 4th and Griegos, Albuquerque.
By and large, life here on Jupiter is pretty entertaining.
Yep. How anti-Pythagorean of me. (Or not; although as is so often the case, the “debunking” on the linked-to site seems to rely largely on flat assertion. Meanwhile the whole “favism“ thing, claiming Pythagoras’ supposed injunctions against beans were meant to avoid bad medical reactions, strikes me as pretty post facto, mapping modern outlooks onto ancient beliefs, like attributing all vampire legends to porphyria.)
So … where was I? If “digression” ever becomes a marketable skill, Bill Gates will be doing my laundry (I was going to say “windows,” but we all know how that turned out, don’t we?)
Anyway … had a rough night last night, losing sleep to attacks by various forms of the Fear, now fortunately rare but rough when it hits. As a result I slept way late. I was wondering what to eat for my late lunch/super-late breakfast when I realized I wanted beans.
I know. I’m as surprised as you are.
So I went and chopped up some onion, dumped it into a can of black beans, and heated that on the stove. Then I defrosted me a Kosher hot dog and heated that inside a low-carb tortilla. Out of mad inspiration I added the beans’n'onions, creating a sort of weird impromptu burrito.
While the first bite was a disappointment, it actually turned out pretty well. YMMV, as always. And as a side I had some walnuts, making this small meal SuperFood
For some time now I’ve tried to reduce my intake of starches and things which would spike my GL (which is a much more useful indicator than glycemic index.) It’s a good way to lose weight as well as head off all kinds of potential nasty health complications. For more information I strongly urge you to read The Glycemic-Load Diet
Indeed it’s often occurred to me to start a blog devoted to the concept called La Vida Low-Starch to share what I learn, from research and doing (which is to say, “cooking and eating.”) Which I might yet.
Time to take this one
… and time likewise for you to put it on yours.
My good and beloved friends L. Neil and Cathy L. Z. Smith found themselves taking an unexpected trip to Tucson, which brought them through Burque today. I got an email alert from El Neil a couple days ago. I’ve not seen them for a couple years, which is that long too long, so I was happy for the chance to see them.
Early this afternoon Neil called to let me know they were on the road. He’s suffering laryngitis and asked if I did text messaging. I told him I didn’t. He said, too bad, since he used it all the time and it would save his voice.
So after I hung up I got out the User’s Manual for my Tracfone to look up how to do this here new-fangled texting thing. Yes, as I told Steve Kubica in my reply to his comment on my keeping stuff straight post, I’m boldly striding forward into the past and finally learning!
This delighted me. The upshot being Neil and I whiled away the afternoon texting each other like 12-year old girls.
I had to share this with you.
The following is an email I got just now purporting to be from “The lonely woman from Russia [SuzyQ]“. I’ve changed the correspondent’s alleged name to [SuzyQ] in order, I suppose, to preserve the sensibilities of whatever halfwit Russian spammer ginned this up.
Anyway, I think I can promise you this makes the most befuddled Nigerian scam email you have ever imagined seem like Tolkien.
Appended were two photos of a vaguely pretty, putatively Russian young blonde woman, which to my annoyance Thunderbird loaded in the message. I excised these, as well as the return email address, for the protection of my readers.
By the way, the phrase in bold below served as both the email’s subject and its first line. (I’d say, “somewhat surreally,” but if you read on you’ll see that description is just full-spectrum inadequate.)
Now, for your delectation and edification, after the jump (click if you dare! click but beware!) behold the splendor and the glory of:
Hello not the man familiar to me!
Back from a flying trip, in sundry senses of the word. Some fun stories to tell. Some not to.
Tired now.
When I left it was 90°. Or more. Naturally I left the swamp cooler running so as not to bake the cats. It gets cooler at night usually, of course, but I figured it was no big deal. Especially as opposed to making the cats endure potentially lethal daytime heat.
So I’m flying back this morning and they announce that in Albuquerque it’s 49°. Whoa! 49! And when we arrive, it’s like 48°.
My friend Larry gave me a lift home. Also he drove way to hell and gone north to Corrales so we could retrieve the Em. He’s a pal.
(My car is … not reliable right now. So I had to plea for help.)
When we walk in of course the cooler is churning away. Out come TJ and Squeak. And they look at me and are like, “Dad? FREEZING!”
Oops. I mean, the damn heater was on. Took me a minute to figure out what was making all the noise, once I hastened to get the swamper off.
Oh - I also contrived to get to the kennel without Emma’s retractable leash and X-harness. The kennel guy lent me a leash to get her to Larry’s car. We got in the backseat; she seemed pretty eager.
The plan was for me to sit in back and hold onto her - usually I cinch her in with the shoulder belt through the harness. Which I lacked Also I figured that was less hassle on Larry. I was hoping Emma would be okay with the proximity to Uncle Larry as it was: even though he’s a close friend, and official External Member of the Milán Pack, he hasn’t spent a lot of time around her. So I wasn’t altogether sure he had yet graduated to the Official Emma List of Approved Persons. And if you’re not on that list, you’re on the Watch List.
So I had the German Bomber Channel on for electronic wallpaper a little while ago, and they were showing their Engineering an Empire show on Rome. And I was struck by a wonderful vision. (Thud.)
The scene: a couple years in the future. I’m enrolled in a course at Syracuse University. And the tall, lean, distinguished-looking professor points to some projection or exhibit and in his characteristic deep, slightly nasal, slightly metallic voice asks, “Can anyone tell me what this is?”
And I’ll pipe up in my best Professor Hikita accent, “It’s your hand
Enough whimsy. Okay; like that’s gonna happen.
Yesterday was a good day. Got a lot written. Annja’s current exploit’s really picking up steam, and The Dinosaur Lords are going great guns. Plus I did a lot of necessary world-building on DinoLords, which helped the writing a great deal.
The key there was that I actually wrote story, not just typed notes and drew maps, both of which I also did. I know way too well what kind of a trap that note-making thing can be: a whole novel, The War for America, wandered off into the swamps and bogged down because, in large part, I devoted so much time to writing reams of notes. That and not having an actual synopsis, but rather an idea in my head where I wanted to go. Not so good an idea. It turns out that, while I have a great gift of improvisation, I need a certain amount of structure both to activate it and to direct it usefully. Who’da thunk it? Anyway that’s why I’ve got upwards of 700 pages of novel and am not half done - and have, I judge, upwards of a million words of notes. Seriously.
(Someday I’ll go back and finish that. If events don’t overtake it first. Which is a major possibility.)
Been a busy day. Got a lot of writing done, and also made good progress in the yard. I’m finally about ready to plant the honeysuckle clipping I’ve been nurturing in a pot on the kitchen counter for the last year and a half. Soon after that I’ll be planting native grasses front and back. Yay!
Also, I finally got the necessary preparations made to learn at last whether I’ve indeed achieved compost. However I was too beat tonight to filter the stuff and find out. Tomorrow…
Poor Emma has somehow got a slice in one of her pads. Poor tyke. I gave her a quarter aspirin to relieve the pain. She’ll have to heal a few days before I take her out walking again.
Click here to read the reason behind the season - what makes Cinco de Mayo so damned special. I was going to watch the largely unknown 1970 Clint Eastwood/Shirley MacLaine (!) oater Two Mules for Sister Sara (the only movie I know of set during the Franco-Mexican War) in honor of the great day. But I’m too racked-up for that too. Maybe tomorrow for that as well.
A bit of an experiment today - take that as yesterday, Friday, May 2nd, the day before this nominally posts.
As I mentioned in our last thrilling episode (and, yes, I’m easily thrilled) I’ve got both Dragon NaturallySpeaking and my DVR up and running. So today when I took Emma Dog for a walk down by the Nature Center, I decided to try my hand at an audio diary. I keep a journal of our walks anyway, and it’s struck me several times just how convenient it’d be to be able to record interesting events, sights, impressions, and suchlike, just by speaking. I do carry my beloved Pilot T/X religiously, but writing into it’s … not so efficient. Especially since Graffiti 2, their writing interface software, basically sucks. Although in truth I’ve never been terribly accurate at writing on my PDA.
But talking, obviously, is pretty easy.
Also, of course, it’s my intent to dictate my fiction on the go, implementing what I’ve long thought of as my “Man in Motion” concept. So I reckoned this’d be a prime opportunity to test several things at once.
What follows, therefore, is my transcript of the day’s session. It runs 1006 words. It’s proofread, but not edited - I’m proud I only said “um” once. It’s as close to word-by-word as I could make it.
Feel free to skip this one. If not - here goes:
Well, they promised us awful winds today…
It’s been a good day, mostly. After the usual cocoa and mobilizing exercises I headed off to the office, which is to say Village Inn, where I had breakfast (yeah, at 1:30 in the afternoon. Sue.) and wrote plenty on Annja.
Fortuitously, the battery capacity on my Toshiba notebook and my bladder’s ability to contain all the water and coffee I suck down both tend to run out about the same time. As usual when those things happen I called it quits.
I packed up and headed out. Went to the grocery store, to get some necessities such as fresh garlic. Can’t do without that.
As I parked I saw a stocky, red-faced woman wandering the lot carrying a clipboard. Never a good sign. After I turned off the car I hauled out my Pilot to write in the date and time for a cool Baroque trumpet piece they were playing on KHFM, so I could look it up later on their website.
She came right up to my window and, despite the fact I was doing something, said, “Are you registered to vote?”
“No.”
“Would you like to register to vote?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a vile thing to do.”
She made a face and a dismissive gesture. Fortunately she didn’t argue. She turned and walked off toward Carlisle. I kind of hoped she’d wander into traffic but this didn’t happen, at least soon enough for me to see it.
Today started off very well.
Actually got up when I intended to - my sleep pattern, to give it more dignity than it deserves, got all out of whack when I was finishing off my recent Rogue Angel novel. I’ve had a terrible time trying to get either enough sleep or regular sleep. To one degree or another I’ve had trouble with that most of my life; I need, and intend, to get it squared away soon.
Did my mobilization exercises, then some kettlebell. To cool down I did the Long Form of Yang taijiquan. TJQ works great for that.
I drank my morning cocoa. Then I packed up the notebook PC and headed to the Village Inn over on Menaul near University, a regular haunt, for huevos rancheros and coffee. VI does surprisingly good huevos rancheros, at least here in Albuquerque. Never, never order them anywhere outside New Mexico. Trust me on this.
I wrote for a while, most productively. Well-pleased, I headed out into a cool but lovely day. By which I mostly mean, calm. We’ve had some cold, explosively windy days the last couple of days. I was glad to see the wind abate.
First I went to Costco and dropped 160 bucks and some on fripperies like food and necessities such as coffee. You understand the priority, yes? Sadly, I could probably live a Neptunian year off stored body fat, but evolution has cruelly and senselessly neglected to provide our bodies the ability to store caffeine. This constitutes the single best refutation of intelligent design I know of.
(Oh, and by all means, guys, feel free to drop the whole “Flying Spaghetti Monster” gag any time now. It was never that great to start with; it’s long since tipped over into pure boring asshattery. If your goal was to prove that people who claim to favor science can be just as annoying, irrational, and sometimes outright scary as the loopiest Fundie loonball … mission accomplished.)