Sense of Adventure

When I’ve blogged about my animals it’s mostly been about Emma. I’m not sure why. Much as I love her, the cats and I are bonded much closer. We’ve got a lot more history.

Maybe that’s part of it. Tales about TJ and Squeak have tails, that reach back a dozen years. Emma’s been with us just going on four. Her stories are simpler.

Anyway, I was just sitting and going through my morning ritual of trying to get my brain to come on, always a significant undertaking. Currently it consists of doing some joint-mobilization moves and exercises, which I’d done, and then sitting on the couch drinking cocoa and reading Terry Pratchett Discworld novels.

Squeak, whose real name is Mia Antoinette, Red for Short (that’s all her name; no one’s ever called her “Red” for any reason whatsoever. See what I mean about backstory?) appeared on the back of the sofa at my left shoulder. She’s a gleaming black cat with auburn undercoat and a few stray white hairs which she’s always had, and eyes that range from amber to baleful yellow-green. She’s also a bit porky. She’s basically a black Siamese.

Anyway, she started dabbing tentatively at my left shoulder. This means she wants to lie on my chest and be cuddled. The problem was she couldn’t find an angle she liked to get into that position. Fortunately she’s not inclined to just launch herself and hope things settle out, which would almost certainly end in my getting numerous thin cuts sliced down my chest and belly by her claws.

So I picked her up and put her on my chest. At which, naturally, she put her ears back and bitched me right out. Then she settled down and began to purr happily.

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This hit me literally out of nowhere: the other day a message appeared in my e-box headed, “SCI FI NIGHT AT NM SCORPIONS HOCKEY,” from one Melissa Gomez, who proved to be the Director of Special Events for the New Mexico Scorpions hockey team (I’m presuming I’m not violating any confidence by posting this, since it concerns a public event, indeed a promotion.) At first I took it to be an invite for me to attend; on reading it, it turned out to be asking if I cared to participate.

Indeed do many things come to pass.

So what’s going on is, at 7:15 PM on Saturday, March 1^st 2008, the Scorpions will host a Sci-Fi Night at their game against the Colorado Eagles at the Santa Ana Star Center. For details I’ll just go ahead and quote the post verbatim:

“Mr. George Noory of Coast to Coast AM will be our guest that evening. Fans will have an opportunity to meet and ask questions. We would love to have local authors available to meet our fans and would like to extend an invitation to you to be our guest that evening. You will be able to display your books or upcoming events on the concourse and mingle with fans as they enter the arena at 6:00 pm. Currently local authors Walter Jon Williams, Jerry Weinberg and Jane Lindskold will also be joining us that evening.”

There you have it.

I wrote back to Ms. Gomez and said, basically, “Sure.” It sounds fun. And of course getting a chance to promote NM authors - myself notably included, o’ course - appeals to me. I don’t know exactly how big a draw a passel of SF authors will be at a hockey game, although if a lot of people turn out to see George Noory (Art Bell’s successor as host of the Coast to Coast overnight radio show, which deals with all sorts of weirdness) (as if you didn’t know) who knows? They might just find our high-quality local science fiction and fantasy entertainment product appealing too.

If nothing else, I’ll get to pass a pleasant evening with friends. I’ll go way out on a limb and predict there’ll be more of us there than Walter John, Jerry, Jane, and Your Humble and Disobedient. Not that anything sucks about that lineup…

And it should be a hoot to meet George Noory. Maybe he’ll decide to have some NM SF authors on his show some evening? We’re a fairly entertaining bunch, if I do say so myself as oughtn’t.

So if you’re in the area that night and find yourself at loose ends, fall by. You don’t know less about hockey than I do. It isn’t possible. We might even become fans. Stranger things happen. I’m just sure.

Yesterday (technically, day before now; but I only count it as a new day if I’ve been to sleep) I was awakened by a whump from the front porch, followed by Emma barking furiously.

By the time I found my robe and struggled into it and reeled to the front door I’d figured out, of course, what it likely was. A brand new box o’ Annja!

She has a somewhat new look on the new cover (for a larger image, and one which isn’t an ill-concealed ad, click here.) On some earlier covers her face was, at least to me, markedly reminiscent of Jessica Alba’s. Now, I think Jessica Alba has a nearly angelically beautiful face - too bad the child can’t act a lick. But she ain’t Annja.

This time, aside from those funky lips that seem to verge way too close upon Mick Jagger territory, she looks much more as I envision her, with a longer, less round face. Think more Hillary Swank or Jill Wagner, who played Krista Starr in the awful Blade TV series.

I really love the way her eye and part of her face are reflected in her Mystic Blade. Too bad it doesn’t appear to be sharpened…

Also this version of Annja seems to present her for the first time, at least on one of my covers, as a beautiful, sophisticated young woman who, if she happens to think you need it, will fucking kill you.

On other fronts … no graceful segue here … I’m befuzzled and off-balance. More so than usual. I haven’t been sick much this fall and winter. Until a week and half ago, when I got a scratchy throat, inclining to soreness, and then my chest got socked-in with bronchitis. It’s come and gone and actually was at its worse a couple of days ago: Monday it was all I could do not to sleep all day. Finally it seems to be breaking up some.

It’s been a bit rough. Not because I’ve felt terrible - I haven’t, mostly. Even when I’ve had a sore throat it hasn’t hurt much. But I’ve been short of breath and, along with the aforementioned drowsiness, often had a hard time focusing mentally. That makes it hard to get much done.

Poor Emma’s going stir crazy because we haven’t been out to walk in so long. I intended to go today until the wind came up. The cold cut through me like a scythe. Tomorrow isn’t looking any too promising either…

Ahh, the sweet, sweet sound of water rushing unimpeded through the blown-out stub in my backyard! It fills my heart with joy.

Who knew that would ever happen?

Here’s how it did.

When last we left our hero, his easy-going nature was getting sorely freakin’ tested by his household plumbing.

I woke this morning at around 9 AM and found myself unable to go back to sleep. Visions of plumbing danced in my head (it’ll never replace sugar plums. And what are sugar plums, anyway? Face it, visions of plumbing won’t even replace visions of hippos dancing in tutus.) So I decided that, even though my body cried out for more sleep, I’d go ahead and hook up the new faucet out back and get everything flowing again.

I padded out back with wrench and assembly in hand. Only to find the PVC join I’d cemented onto the stub yesterday completely encased in ice.

Oh … dear. Apparently water had seeped out despite my having cut the supply off out on the sidewalk. Which brought to mind the distinctly unpleasant possibility that water standing in the pipes had been driven by freezing pressure. In all of my pipes. Had more of them ruptured over the night?

There’s a happy thought.

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I must’ve been missing more sleep than I thought; wound up unable to stay awake until like eleven hours after I went to sleep. Happens.

But I was awake for a spell around 10 AM. Emma wanted out a bit earlier. It’s cold as a politician’s heart out there; she wanted back in pretty expeditiously. So I padded to the back door to retrieve her.

As I did I became aware of a persistent mechanical sound. After a moment I identified it as a helicopter. They fly over my house all the time. Once or twice a week I see V-22 Ospreys (aka Flying Crematoria) go over.

But this noise wasn’t Dopplering or showing other signs of movement. When I opened the back door I saw a helicopter hovering not very far to the west. A check with binocs confirmed it was the KOAT-TV News bird.

So I went back to bed and clicked on Channel 7. They were showing, I believe, The View, in the right-hand pane of a split window. On the left was live aerial footage of what the crawl bar beneath described as “Albuquerque home in flames.”

Indeed. And indeed it proved to be on Grande near Griegos, a block past 12^th Street. Basically ten or so blocks due west of me - half a mile to a mile away.

I didn’t see much by way of flames coming from the house, not that I particularly wanted to. What really caught my attention was that the street was on fire.

Let me repeat that: The Street. Was On Fire.

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Yes, it’s official: Christmas has knocked me on my kiester. I’ve basically felt like a lump of lead all day.

That’s not so surprising: I’ve been pushing pretty hard the last few days: writing, engaging in intense socializing (which always drains me, although I don’t get enough of it) and not sleeping as much as I should. Even after a protracted, if somewhat sporadic, sleep I felt pretty inert.

What did startle me was how much I ached. I felt, as if I told Joe when he called about 2 this afternoon, as if I’d been beaten with big bats.

(He asked me how big and what kind of a cave they came from. I told him those poodle-sized Philippine fruit bats that P. J. O’Rourke once said resembled lieutenant colonels in the rat air force. And they live in trees, not caves.)

One thing I thought might’ve contributed was having to push a car last night up Melinda’s driveway. Which is a quarter mile long and ends in an Alp. Joe said, “Well, as you know, the best way to push a car is to turn around, rest your butt against it, and push with your legs.” Well, talk about overestimating me; no, I told him, I didn’t know that. Although it’s one of those things that’s totally obvious after it’s been pointed out to you.

Christmas was good to me. Rode up to Melinda’s with my friend Chip, who lives but a few blocks away. She lives on a ridgetop. A somewhat narrow, steep-sided ridgetop. It does give her a stupefying view of what seems like about two-thirds of New Mexico.

The dirt road up from the highway, and of course her driveway, was pretty snow-packed. We were a bit concerned about predictions of later snow. Those proved, thankfully, incorrect. Chip’s concerns about getting back out, not so much.

I had a great time. Melinda’s husband Carl (who actually designed the house – which is incredible) was back from his gig overseeing some kind of gigantic building project in downtown Las Vegas. Various other friends were also in attendance: Wanda June and her daughter Rhea, who’s a very skilled artist; the ever-sardonic Ty Franck and his wife Jayné, who looks like Angelina Jolie; and George RR Martin and Parris.

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Christmas Eve rivals Christmas for my favorite day of the year.

Somebody, presumably the neighborhood association, lined our sidewalks with luminarias this year, as I discovered when I peeked out in late afternoon. I seem to remember they passed around a flyer saying something about it months ago; I spaced it out. They did a fine job, spacing them properly a yard between centers, and with the seams to the rear (why can’t people get that right?) I suspect they didn’t have much clue in advance how labor intensive an undertaking it was going to be.

What with one thing and another I didn’t get out for my traditional early Christmas Eve dinner at Steak & Ale (French onion soup, stuffed mushrooms, the rarest prime rib I can get out of them). Which was okay, especially since last night I got a nice steak at Outback with some of the local crew anyway.

But nothing was going to hold me back from my traditional walk with Joe from his house in the Sawmill District down to Old Town. We must’ve been doing this nigh on twenty years now. His daughter Juana Inez went with us. Joe bought me a hot cocoa at a shop run by a friend of his, we wandered around, gawked at the lights and crowds, visited San Felipe de Neri church and Saints & Martyrs, which is a very cool shop largely featuring old Mexican and Spanish religious relics, the Lady Chapel in its secret little plaza.

Then we walked back and Joe’s family opened presents while we drank some kind of hot fruit punch (non-alcoholic) and Juana Inez’s Chihuahua Tinkerbell generally ran amok. Joe gave me the new Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas CD, Spirit of The Season, which plays on the iPod as I write this. It’s lovely - Joe knows I really enjoy Christmas music.

Then I bade them Merry Christmas and took my leave. My evening had just begun. I headed home to collect Emma Dog for another Christmas Eve tradition. Only in the past it hasn’t included her. I’m not sure why.

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Okay, that’s totally a lie. I didn’t roll a bit of it. More doled it out with a spoon, and liberal use of my fingers.

Important Safety Tip: If you’re one of the people I give cookies to for Christmas, don’t read anything above this line!

Yes, it was time to make chocolate chip cookies. They’ve been a Christmas tradition in my family for most of my life. I love ‘em. Last year I chose to pass on making them because I was starting in on a regime of lowering my starch intake - something I’ve not been consistent enough with, although I’ve taken off weight and kept some of it off. I’m not as fat a wad as I was this time last year. Which is something.

I dallied with the thought of trying to make this a low starch, or at least reduced sugar recipe. Then I decided: screw it. I’ve enough else on the plate right now not to want to experiment, and I really am intending on gifting some of my friends with cookies. Hey, they’re good.

I am already gearing up for, around the turn of the year, getting into a much more rigorous low-starch regimen. One thing this’ll entail, as my earlier experiences have taught me, is getting far more seriously into cooking. I enjoy it and dabble in it and do pretty well; my red chile pumpkin soup, which I was more or less told I was going to bring, was well received at the Friday night ASFS meeting/dessert cook-off, by those who weren’t too chicken about the red chile part. I actually tied for second place in the “Pumpkin” subcategory. Which would be more impressive if there hadn’t been but three pumpkin dishes. And much more impressive if the category hadn’t basically been conjured out of air to give me something to win (the soup not being dessert) and thus help entice me to bring the stuff. What they hey; I got a nice prize (including, ironically, a soup cookbook.)

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… snow falling from a mostly clear, bright blue sky.

Emma asked to go out a while back, maybe half an hour. It was snowing and the ground was pretty well whitened with a comprehensive but thin layer of snow. She didn’t particularly want to stay out but she needed to eat her breakfast (okay, I got up a little late today) and also the cats get an early treat.

Emma’s in fact really good about keeping away from what’s not hers, amazingly even food, until given explicit permission. But I don’t want to torment the girl, nor have her presence make the cats nervous. They like her and trust her not to act hostile, but not to get rambunctious and, you know, accidentally squash them.

Anyway I got everything taken care of and went out to bring Emma in and let her finish eating inside where she wasn’t at risk from moisture falling on her from the sky. I noticed that little bitty flakes of snow still fell enthusiastically. I also noticed the back yard looked pretty bright.

I stepped off the porch and looked up. There remained some pretty dense, stormy-looking clouds roundabout, but overhead was a huge swatch of brilliant blue, with just a kind of thin horsetail sweeping across one side of it. But what was amazing was looking up and up through millions of falling flakes into the bright sky.

It really took me by surprise. I’m not unused to sun showers; heck, here in NM, especially with the spring winds, we can get dust storms in the midst of rain storms when, yes, the sun is shining: mud sun showers. Seriously.

But a snow sun shower? That’s a new one on me.

It was really pretty. It did look a bit like one of those mock snowfalls, where fine powder blows off tall roofs or tree branches. But there’s nothing particularly tall around here. No big trees in the neighbor’s yard, or indeed the next; and it’s pretty much one story from here north to city’s end. Anyway, in spite of coming down at a notably steep angle, this snow was clearly not bing blown off anything (not enough wind; that’s another thing.) It was falling.

When I stepped out again about two minutes later I thought the snow had stopped. Then I noticed a few flakes dusting down and stepped off the porch again. I could still see falling flakes stacked way up the sky.

Now (10-15 minutes later) I’m guessing the snow’s stopped. I’m sitting on the sofa facing the front wall; through the translucent window liner thingies (writes Mr. Professional Writer Guy Who Always Knows the Right Word) the light’s dimmed, indicating it’s clouded back over.

I hope the streets don’t get too icy. ASFS is holding a Dessert Bake-Off for its December meeting tonight, and somehow I was conscripted into entering my Red Chile Pumpkin Soup, even though it’s not dessert. We shall see.

And indeed do many things come to pass.

Emma just petitioned pretty enthusiastically to come inside. I opened the door and it was raining. That made pretty clear why she wanted in so urgently.

That might seem strange. When we go walk one thing pretty much everyone notices is that she’s a Black Lab: she’s big, glossy black, got the tail and the “Labrador waddle.”

But she’s really a Black Sharpie - a term I coined to describe the intrinsically unlikely Black Labrador Retriever/Shar Pei cross. And therefore she’s a conflicted pup. Because Shar Pei are noted for disliking water. Whereas I think we all know Labs are for all intents and purposes amphibian.

So Emma is simultaneously drawn to water and repelled by it. Her solution? She’s a passionate wading dog.

She loves going into the ditches when we walk. It’s problematic this time of year when most of the irrigation ditches near my house are shut down. Indeed the one four or five blocks away never really flowed all summer. So when we walk on one of those ditches she can’t usually get a drink of water.

Fortunately, the clear ditch down by the RGNC levee bike path, across the bosque from the river, flows year-round. So when we walk there she can always drink.

And, of course, wade. For a time after I got her, in May of 2004, she didn’t like to go in water deep enough to wet her tummy. As long as it was just up her legs she’d splash around happily and slurp. When the fur on her underside started touching water, though, she’d want out.

Now she’s gotten to the point where she feels safe as long as her feet touch bottom. In the heat of summer, obviously, that lets her get even cooler. Although really she’s usually most avid to sit down in the water and dunk her fanny.

Problems arise, though, when water gets too deep. And gods forbid it get over her head.

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