Facebook Is Weird

So there's this guy I know. Sweet guy, fun to chat with, really funny. He does, however, tend to blush whenever we talk. He also has some difficulty maintaining eye contact, talking to my chest often enough that I feel a little embarrassed for him.

Earlier this week, I happen to run across him on Facebook. His profile is wide open--and completely out. Looking for dating; interested in men. Not men and women, just men. Uh, okay, sure. Whatever you say, but would you care to explain the total crush behavior? I'm not the only one who spotted it, and none of my other gay friends act like that (well, not the guys).

Then, while I'm still trying to wrap my brain around that one, Facebook goes and recommends that I send one of my junior high boyfriends a friend request. Um, maybe...later. It's been 25 years since we've spoken. I think I'll give my brain time to settle back down first.

All right, Facebook, what's next?

Paying Attention

When I'm interested in something, I focus--like miss obvious things going on around me kind of focus. This led me (in college, I think) to discover a nifty little trick.

The next time your in a mid-sized audience, say 15 to 100 people, for a speaker, try something. Pay attention. I mean close attention. Ignore your friends, watch the speaker, and try to anticipate what they'll say next.

Assuming your friends aren't trying the same thing, you'll notice something after about 10 minutes. The speaker, unless blinded by stage lights or very, very professional, will be talking to you. They'll spend 40-60% of their time looking directly at you. They'll wait for you to nod slightly at important points or smile at jokes. They'll drift slightly toward you if you're off to one side. They won't lose their topics, but they may lose the rest of their audience.

Works for almost anyone but professional storytellers, whose audience contact is part of how they tell the story. Works for professors, for introverts, for high corporate mucky mucks. I've even moderated a panel discussion at a convention from the audience this way. Their moderator wasn't doing much, I asked a couple of questions and listened to the answers, et voila. Pretty soon everyone on the panel was waiting for me to look at them before they spoke. Very strange, but kind of cool.

One word of caution: listening this way in a one-on-one situation can have a very different outcome. You may end up with a new best friend who has to tell you all their troubles (because you're so understanding), or someone may feel the need to tell you, nervously, that they're just not interested. So be careful where you practice.

GTA4

Grand Theft Auto 4 has some problems, and I'm not talking about the ones that get lots of press. I mean it hangs consistently on some game systems. We have one. After trying five copies from a local big-box retailer and finally persuading them to find a way to work around their no-return policy on games, we decided to try a specialty game store to see whether we might have better luck with a different pressing of the disk.

We walked in, and it was just us and the young woman (yay!) behind the counter. Ben asked, "So, have people been returning GTA4?"

She said yes, and we sighed. He explained our situation and that we were hoping they'd be able to fix it. "Oh," she said. "I hadn't heard about that. They returned it because it was too violent."

Blink.

Blink, blink.

Blink.

"Right. We'll take a copy then. Thanks." We managed not to laugh until we got out of the store.

What planet do you have to live on not to know what to expect from a GTA game? How do you maintain that level of ignorance and still be in a position to buy and play it?

That copy didn't work either, by the way. So now we're screaming for the patch.

What We Take for Granted

Working in the yard is a great way to meet the neighbors. People stop to find out what you're planting or weeding or just to say how happy they are that you've done something prettier than grass everywhere. Usually it's a quick "Hi. How's it going? The yard looks great. How about this weather. Have a nice day." conversation. But every once in a while, about one time in five, I get a reminder that I'm not living in the same world I grew up in.

The most memorable conversation last summer was with the four kids from a few doors down who were riding their bikes up and down the sidewalk on our block. The violets were in bloom, and they had never seen anything like them--this common weed that I encourage to grow wherever it wants. They wanted to pick some and to chase the butterflies. I explained what would happen to the flowers if they walked through them. I did pick them some violets, and I invited them to watch the butterflies from the walkway.

While they were hanging out, I took the opportunity to point out that if they stopped turning their bikes in the middle of the boulevard, the daylillies planted there would bloom later and attract more butterflies. For their part, the kids wanted to know whether I owned (in hushed tones) "a car?" They were very excited when I said I did. They wanted to see it, but that was when the youngest showed up again. At some point, probably when the conversation turned from butterflies to cars, he realized they were all talking to a stranger. He'd run home to get Mom's authority to tell them they were doing something wrong, which ended the conversation. The kids went back to riding their bikes, but they did stay out of the daylillies. I think they'd moved by the time the boulevard bloomed.

This Saturday, I was picking up the trash that accumulates on a corner lot when I had a pretty typical yard/weather conversation. Only this time I could tell that the fellow had something else on his mind. Once all the pleasantries were out of the way, he said, "Excuse me, but what are the initials for?" I had no idea what he was talking about. He pointed behind me, and I looked. "Oh. That's the company that made the windows. They're new. Those come off." Then he went happily on his way.

I picked up more trash and reminded myself that not everyone grows up somewhere where good windows are important and more people could really use them but are never going to get them. I felt particularly lucky, not to be able to afford the windows, but to live in a place where I can't take them for granted.

Want to See a Migraine?

Warning: these visual illusions won't be comfortable. They may, in fact, have the potential to cause seizures if you're so prone.

The page says simply, "This page may feel you sick." (It's Japanese.) It didn't. In several places, I didn't even register the anomalous motion that was supposed to occur. Then it hit me. I could see it, but I was discounting it. The scintillating effect the author talks about is what I see when I have a migraine, only I'm looking at a normal computer screen (or the sidewalk, or the wall, or the inside of my eyelids). I'd just forgotten that most people don't see that at least once a week.

Welcome to my world.

Via Greg Laden, only at his old site.

Breaking Rules, Part II

I'm bad with rules. Really bad. I get too close to a rule and I itch to reach out and break it. If something can't be said, I can barely think of anything else to say. If it mustn't be done, I have to sit on my hands to keep from doing it. The only way to cope is to give myself permission to smash the rule to bits. Once the rule is no longer "in force," I can look at it rationally and decide whether I want to accept the consequences of breaking it.

Since everyone and their sister seems full of "rules" about writing, and since these are frequently presented in such concrete language as to invoke the worst of my contrarian nature, I've spent some time looking at the consequences of breaking the rules about writing.

My conclusion? Break any rule you want. Break two, or six. If.

Now, it's one hell of an if, having mostly to do with what a writer is doing in the bits where they're not breaking rules. There are, of course, also consequences.

Writing rules, at least the less arbitrary, more agreed-upon ones, are a codification of the contract between writer and reader as it has evolved through the ages. They're a way of making sure the reader gets enough reward for the work they put into reading. So most of the rules are about not making your reader do too much work to reach the reward. Cut the flab, use simpler words wherever they'll do, don't switch POVs, watch your verb tenses, vary sentence length, keep characters sympathetic and their names distinctive, don't lose sight of your conflict, don't radically change tone--all designed to make the read easier.

There's just one problem. If you read in any significant quantity, chances are that you've found a book that follows all the rules. It may well have bored you to tears. Why? Because it didn't surprise you in any way.

On the other hand, that book with the antihero, the one with the delightful off-topic rambles or the intricate descriptions that put you fully in the scene, the one with the odd sentence structure that made you pay attention to every word, even that one that really had no plot--those were magic. Why?

Because the writer had enough control to know which rules they were breaking and how to follow the rules they were observing. That contract is all about work and rewards. Breaking a rule makes more work for the reader. The more rules a writer breaks, the more they must nail everything else. They must provide more reward. Apt language can sustain a book through a number of diversions, and great insight can pull readers through nearly any number of POV changes.

As I mentioned before, there are consequences, even beyond having to be better at everything else. For every rule, there is some percentage of a writer's potential audience who cannot abide seeing the rule broken. Sometimes it's the happy ending; sometimes the sympathetic character. No matter how good the rest of the book, a writer will lose these people by breaking their pet rule. It's just going to happen.

But knowing that and knowing the extra work or skill it requires, if you want to break a cardinal rule of writing, go right ahead. I'm certainly not in any position to complain.

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

So I'm on this client team at work, one of several. I have my own tiny little fiefdom, a project I run pretty much independently. I took it over because someone had to, and it turned out my experience was a good fit. Everything runs smoothly. The client, who wasn't happy with how the project was going before I took over, is happy with me. So far, so good.

Then we hit a few weeks ago. That was when I discovered that the client is not as thrilled with other parts of their experience with us. Suddenly, "They're always so happy with you and your work," which I've heard before and didn't think much of, has context. It has weight. Suddenly too many people know who I am. All the tiny little decisions I make every day have echoes I wasn't hearing before.

Now people want to meet me. Tomorrow, in fact. I'll walk into the room with a real smile on my face and be very happy to see everyone, but that will be surface. Underneath will be the constant little whisper of "I didn't sign up for this. I agreed that a bunch of stuff needed to get done and I could do it, but I don't remember promising anything like this."

And I haven't a clue what I'll wear. Yeesh.

International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day

It doesn't seem like it's been a year, but it has. In celebration, you're invited to enjoy my stories here. "Among the Trees" is new for this year.

Irony of the Day

...or, Why I Just Love Arial to Bits (Preferably Lots of Small Ones).

I had a project that was just big enough to use OCR on rather than retyping before I made changes. It happened to contain the word "kern." OmniPage, of course, read it as "kem."

Oy.

Duck, Duck, Owl

The earliest sign of spring in Minnesota (since it keeps snowing and covering up all the others) is the activity of the birds. In the past two weeks I've seen the usual suspects: robins, juncos, starlings, grackles, gulls, wild turkeys, herons, Canadian geese, mergansers and coots and more other kinds of ducks than I can differentiate. I've had to work to speak over a yard full of red-winged blackbirds and passed a park with a ring of tall trees and crows cawing from every available branch, wondering how long it would take to understand them if I stopped and listened.

I've also seen a bald eagle perch on the retreating edge of lake ice. I couldn't tell whether it was hoping the fish would have forgotten it over the winter or checking whether the mergansers had all made it through migration in good shape. They all scattered quickly enough when it flew across the water. The geese and trumpeter swans ignored it and its mate.

The hawks are looking plump again, instead of just fluffy. Yesterday, in an hour-long car ride, I saw more than half a dozen, which means I wasn't paying much attention. There was another eagle too, perched in a tree about twenty feet from the edge of the road. The standout of the ride, though, was the barn owl sitting on the fencepost in broad daylight. I don't know why he was hanging out instead of sleeping, but he very kindly spread his wings a bit to aid our identification. I hope he made it comfortably to nightfall.

Despite the dreary weather, I finally feel like spring is here.

Mixed Messages

I was passing a Victoria's Secret when I saw this in the window.


I think somebody's product development department just got a little more honest than they intended.

New Science Fiction Movie

Not that the makers of Expelled have copped to the fact that their film is fiction or that the little bit of science in it is ripped off from an educational video, but hey, it's still science fiction, right? I can't recommend it though. Even the Nazis (yes, there are Nazis) aren't enough to keep it exciting. When even Fox News calls your anti-science film "sloppy" and "not just a little boring," you know you've got problems.

Did I mention it's narrated by Ben Stein? Depending on your reaction to his voice, that makes it either a great cure for insomnia or a recipe for working yourself into a homicidal rage.

Spend the money on good popcorn instead. It'll leave a better taste in your mouth.

Thanking My Teachers

I've been involved in a few discussions lately in which public school education and teachers got pretty thoroughly dissed. I keep pointing out that good teachers exist and that many teachers play larger roles than they know in their students lives. I say it from personal experience, and I think it's about time I thanked my own teachers rather than (or in addition to) standing up for the profession on principle.

To start, I should point out that I could have been a poster child for recent resilience studies--the ones that say good outcomes are possible for kids with less than stellar home lives, as long as those kids have an involved and interested adult in their life. I should also mention that I'm likely to shortchange at least one teacher before sixth grade, since I really don't remember much before then.

The first teacher I remember who made a difference was my third sixth-grade teacher, Ms. Becker. She was my third teacher because we moved twice that year. I was pretty traumatized by the family drama that prompted the moves and was dealing with multiple culture shocks. To make a long story short, I made no friends that year, except my teacher. She had a place in the country to which she invited groups of students on weekend afternoons. She spent even her spare time on her students. I'll never forget picking watercress in the near-freezing stream that ran through her property or being talked to like a human being instead of a responsibility.

The next year, I had several very good teachers. Mr. Foley, who taught life sciences, was memorable for keeping a piranha--and our attention, even when there was a goldfish sharing its tank. But the real standout was my math teacher, Mr. Neuenfeldt. I'm not sure what made him so special. He got so exasperated with us sometimes, but it was always obvious that he just wanted us to learn--not to absorb his lessons, but to learn. He was the teacher who introduced me to the cool puzzle game that is identities. I joined the drama club because he ran it, and I took two years of math from him. I was already starting to work ahead in the second year, and he was always happy to take the time to help me through the tough spots, even though he'd be covering them for everyone else in a week or two.

I had to give up Mr. Neuenfeldt when I moved on to high school. I had a very good English teacher, Ms. Lammers, who was lovely about not freaking out when budding goths chose Millay at her most self-destructive for their poetry readings. And a great grammar lab teacher who started the year by telling us, "It isn't your fault you think grammar is hard. People insisted on trying to teach you before your brains were ready to take it in. Forget all that, and let's start again." We did. It worked, at least for me.

Doc Wilson, who taught choir, demanded more of me than any other teacher but not more than I could give. I learned a lot from him about singing, more about not deciding beforehand what I couldn't do. And there was the math and programming teacher, whose name I have no business blanking on, who never blinked when his quickest pupil was one of the few females.

Then came Mr. Bauer. I took three years of physics from him. He was my second teacher to make science really cool. Physicists have some of the best toys, and Mr. Bauer collected great demos. He could flick our homework at us from ten feet away and the pieces of paper would head straight for us. He assigned quarter-long, independent study projects for one class despite the chaos and despite the extra work it must have taken to keep us all on track. He threw erasers and turned the fire extinguisher on us when we got too rowdy and patiently wrote on the board for us as we collectively worked problems in class. He took a small lab/large storage space and turned it over to the physics club for use during lunches and study hall. We installed a coffee maker and stereo. It was our geek haven and so was he. Not surprisingly, he was awarded a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching.

There were more great teachers in college, but they'll get their own post at some point. To all the teachers mentioned above, and to the others who taught me well even if they didn't save my life, thank you. I was a self-centered brat in school so I never said it then. I say it now. Thank you.

Funniest LOLcat Evar

Intelligent Design for Smart Alecs

Somebody putting together the Enrolled Actuaries Meeting schedule had fun with this one.

Intelligent Design After 409A

Section 409A was added to the Code by the American Jobs Creation(ism) Act of 2004. As regulations have gone through an evolutionary process, employers have struggled to comply. A diverse group of speakers show you how job creation has evolved into intelligent design.

Who says actuaries don't have a sense of humor?

Statistics for Fun

I got into a little slapfight on a blog this week with someone who claimed, among other things, that, "We do know that rates of young men entering college these days is in the toilet". There were no citations, of course, because that isn't the point of a slapfight, but it made me curious. So as long as I was avoiding some particularly tedious work this weekend, I thought I'd find out.

Answer: um, no.

And no.

Sure, enrollment rates among males aren't growing as quickly as among females, and achievement among females has finally caught up. There was perhaps reason for concern when male enrollment dropped from 1970 to 1980, although there were extra incentives for young men to be in college in 1970 that didn't apply in 1980. All in all, though, it's a bit much to be calling record-high levels of enrollment and achievement "in the toilet."

Next time, I'll tell him so.

Sources
U.S. Census Table A-1. Years of School Completed by People 25 Years and Over, by Age and Sex: Selected Years 1940 to 2007
U.S. Census Table A-6. Age Distribution of College Students 14 Years Old and Over, by Sex: October 1947 to 2005
U.S. Census population data by age and sex

Speaking Out

I walk to work. A mile and a half each way, mostly downtown. I've been hit before, although it wasn't serious, and the close calls have replaced coffee as a stimulant some mornings. Too many people are just too intent on where they want to go to look around and see who may be affected.

In order to counteract this, I make a lot of eye contact with drivers, not all of it friendly. If someone creeps up on the crosswalk as I'm crossing, their bumper gets a dirty stare. If they do it again, they get a special, just-for-drivers, WTF look. Someone who's already in the crosswalk (even though no one ever manages to turn there against the light) may get a knock on the hood to let them know I'm there and using my right of way.

This may not make me the most ingratiating spokesperson for pedestrians. But as long as my life and other things I hold dear (my legs, my mobility, my independence...) are at stake, I don't care. I'm much more concerned that people know there's someone between them and their destination, someone besides them who has a stake in what they're trying to do.

A Second Look at Childhood Friends

You grow up with them. They're what you know, so they're normal, right? Then, after years have passed, you look back and blanch.

We acknowledge that Tigger is gregarious and affectionate, but he has a recurrent pattern of risk-taking behaviours. Look, for example, at his impulsive sampling of unknown substances when he first comes to the Hundred Acre Wood. With the mildest of provocation he tries honey, haycorns and even thistles. Tigger has no knowledge of the potential outcome of his experimentation. Later we find him climbing tall trees and acting in a way that can only be described as socially intrusive. He leads Roo into danger. Our clinical group has had its own debate about what the best medication might be for Tigger. Some of us have argued that his behaviours, occurring in a context of obvious hyperactivity and impulsivity, would suggest the need for a stimulant medication. Others have wondered whether clonidine might be helpful, or perhaps a combination of the two. Unfortunately we could not answer the question as scientifically as we would have liked because we could find only human studies in the literature.

The whole thing is here. Quite entertaining.

Edited to add: Found via Podblack. Lots more good stuff there, too. I'd have credited it earlier, but tabbed browsing is a great way of losing sources.

Community for Loners

I joined Facebook last weekend. There are folks I'd like to spend time with who are using it to arrange meetups, and I want to be a part of that. But I'm still ambivalent.

I've spent most of my life resisting community. I was miserable in Girl Scouts (really, who packs nail polish and cute outfits to go to camp?). School was one arcane set of rules and expectations after another, very few of which actually involved learning. Freedom finally came with a transfer to the U of M, which was big enough to pull communities apart into individuals. Every job I've had I've shredded the fixed job description, so I'm the only person doing exactly what I'm doing, and I'm working with people across the company.

Some of my disinclination toward community is natural introversion. I can spend days on end alone without noticing. I can go months or years without talking to people I really like. I read and appreciate blogs while rarely needing to contribute my opinion. None of this is community-building behavior, and communities reward active membership.

Some is contrariness. I don't know how much is natural and how much is survival strategy, but I have an unholy love of argument, counterexamples and logical loopholes. The more time I spend as part of a group, the more I emphasize me/them differences, the more I pick at the underlying basis for cohesion. (Strangely, I often don't hit this point with individuals.) This does not always make me popular with the group.

Some is a really strong identity. I've spent years figuring out what I like, what I want and what I'm capable of. Yes, my identity evolves, but the parts that aren't in flux are quite solidly fixed. Even the most diverse community, over time, tends to develop its own identity. "We think..." "We believe..." Swinging off the ends of bell curves as I often do, it can come down to a choice between the group identity and my own. Which do you think I'm going to go with?

So I tend to drift into and out of communities. When I enter, I do so gingerly. When I leave, I generally keep in contact with one or two individuals. Facebook could be a great way to hang onto these people. But its purpose is to build community, so I'm a little twitchy at the moment.

I Have a New Friend

I don't know his name, but he's awfully cute.

On our way to work, Ben and I pass a tiny fenced yard. Every month or two, there's a very large German shepherd hanging out, deafeningly defending his territory. We greet him when we pass, saying, "Hello, puppy." in the tones reserved for the cutest dogs, and offering him our hands through the chain link fence. He always sniffs and settles down.

On Thursday, instead of settling down, he pawed at the chain link. Then he reared up and came down on both forelegs, rubbing his nose on the snow. Puppy wanted to play.

We were tempted. We really were. But even if we hadn't needed to go to work, something tells me the owners--the people who keep an oversized shepherd in their tiny yard on the edge of downtown--wouldn't be thrilled if we showed up on their doorstep saying, "Your guard dog just invited us to play. Do you mind if we hang out in your yard for a little bit?"

So we just won't tell them. But I still have a new friend.

The Strangest Trip

Yesterday, one of my nightmares came true. It wasn’t so bad.

As long as I can remember, I’ve been afraid of heights. My first memory that I can date happened when I was two and involves being terrified of a long, open flight of stairs. I’ve worked on it, and it rarely gets in my way anymore, but it’s still there, lurking.

About five years ago, I took a job in a tall building. I’ve never worked somewhere where I’ve had to use the elevator before, so I’d never noticed how much I avoid them. I thought taking the stairs was just a health choice. But five years is plenty of time to notice how my stomach drops when the door opens before the floors are quite lined up or when the elevator lurches into motion instead of accelerating smoothly. It’s plenty of time to ponder all the ways in which elevators can misbehave, plenty of time to dwell on being trapped in a misbehaving elevator, to imagine how terrifying that would be.

Yesterday, it happened. Someone got out of the elevator on the twentieth floor, the floor below mine. The doors closed unusually quickly (greedily, I thought) and I had it all to myself for the long ride down. I reached the first floor without incident, as usual. Then the door didn’t open. Then the elevator started going up again, back to the twentieth floor. The doors still didn’t open.

That was when the really stunning thing happened. I didn’t panic. I clearly and rationally decided that if the elevator was going to move again without letting me off, I wanted to be in charge of where it went. I pressed the first floor button again. We went back down. (Yes, the elevator was a person by then--not a very nice person, but a person.) Since the buttons were still responding to me, I held my finger poised over the door open button. As soon as we registered being on the first floor, I leaned on it. The door opened and I got off. The end.

It was so anticlimactic that I completely forgot to warn the guy waiting that he might want to keep waiting for a different elevator. I did realize I should tell the security guard, so I did. Then I left. I waited for the reaction, but it never caught up to me. No shakes, no hyperventilating, no nothing. Not then. Not later. Weird.

I know the outcome was good and all, but I have the strangest case of cognitive dissonance right now.

The Good Life

Yesterday I wrote five hundred of the hardest working words I've ever strung together. I left a document open in the background and dropped in a line or two whenever I was waiting on a remote database. I added more at lunch, made some important decisions while sitting in a training session that turned out to be mostly review, and stayed a little late to finish and clean it up.

It's not quite as brilliant this morning as I thought it was yesterday, but it's still a good story. Even at that length, it's only superficially simple. Some of the language hits directly at the reflexes. Backstory is hinted at but left largely to the reader. There is conflict without a villain. I'm a happy writer.

Then I got to lie on the floor upstairs with Ben and watch the lunar eclipse. How does it get better than this?

Fun With Marines

If you know an officer or NCO in the Marines, here's a fun trick. Ask to see his sword. Look over the scabbard, then pull the blade out a bit. Hold it up to the light and take some time to admire how pretty it is. Then let your eyes wander to the point where the blade meets the guard and frown. Making sure you can see the fellow, say, "Dude, your sword wasn't even made in the U.S.!"

Then you can sit back and watch his face as justifiable pride in owning a lovely piece of Toledo steel wars with finely honed patriotism. It's quite the sight to see.

Top 10 Signs You're Reading My Fiction

This is one of the cooler memes I've seen. It started on Fangs, Fur, & Fey and propagated on Wyrdsmiths. The original was specific to novels, but until I've finished another, it will be difficult to generalize about mine. This post includes my short stories.

1. The main character is not integrated into their society. Yes, this says a lot about me.
2. You won't see a lot of central romance. The romance you will see is usually more a flag for a change in outlook. This says much less about me, except, perhaps, that I don't equate romance with drama. What can I say? I'm happy.
   
3. Fear is a greater motivator than danger, and there are lots of things scarier than death.
4. Work and economic circumstances are a strong presence in the story and may drive the plot.
5. The past often plays a larger role than the present.
6. Narrators (and close POV characters) are sort of reliable. That is, they won't lie to you, but their outlook is limited or their focus narrow.
7. Characters are not all able-bodied and -minded.
   
8. Families, if relevant, are small and have frequently been pared down by circumstance.
   
9. Someone is going to discover that their deeply held beliefs about the world aren't so much wrong as based on incomplete information. This will be critical to the resolution of the plot.
10. Reading over this list, it seems a little grim, but the endings of most of my stories are cheerful, triumphant or both.
    

Traditional Medicine is Sweet

Of course, that's because a lot of it contains lead. On purpose. Mmmm, love me some of that folk wisdom.

Oh, LEGO

Ben's birthday is today. I know he'd love more Star Wars LEGOs, but he won't be getting them from me. And despite everything Lucas has done, it's not about Star Wars.

I played with LEGOs as a kid whenever I could. They're the ultimate in undirected play. They don't require great dexterity, they come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, and they don't get knocked over by stray breezes or brothers. LEGOs were great.

Then, a few years ago, I walked into the LEGO store at Hugedale (Snoopydale at the time). It's a great looking place, with art that explores the limits of what can be done with their product. It's also filled with ecstatic screaming children, miserable screaming children, and children screaming that they need "THIS--RIGHT NOW!" Ahem. Anyway.

A couple of steps into the store was a barrel of LEGO-figure key chains. It took me a few seconds to process what I was seeing. Then a few more to get my breath back. I chirped, "Hey, Ben, look. You can grow up to be a fireman." Hold up one key chain. "Or a doctor." Another. "Or a policeman. Or Darth Vader. Or an astronaut." Drop the voice by an octave. "Or a girl!"

Bastards.

No more LEGOs for Ben's birthday. Not this year. Not ever.

Rodents of Unusual Size

Meet Josephoartigasia monesi, a one-ton prehistoric guinea pig.

As P.Z. points out, "[t]here is no suggestion that it lived in a fire swamp — its habitat was probably forested river deltas."

Cooking Blind

There's an odd challenge to cooking a meal in the middle of a migraine aura. This cup of cornmeal feels level; is it? Where exactly is the top of the milk in the measure? I can tell the venison isn't red anymore, but how brown is it? Am I going to get this done before the pain starts? Will I want any food by the time it's done? Whee!

So far, so good. It's in the oven and still smells like food.

On a side note, I have to stop beating myself up for being lazy when I just don't feel up to working--not sick, just not well. I started keeping track. It's generally three to five hours between the start of "lazy" and the start of the migraine.

Eating Meat, Lots of Meat

There's a character I've been wanting to write for a while but probably won't until the next book. He's a vegetarian. It's pretty central to his character, and I want to make sure I do it justice. But thinking about it made me realize just how not a vegetarian I am.

I started counting the number of different kinds of meat I've eaten. Once I lost track for the third time, it was time to write it down. I've probably forgotten some, but here's the list. (*) designates a critter I've cleaned or otherwise taken apart. (**) means it was live when I got it.

Mammals

• Cow
• Pig
• Sheep
  
• Deer*
• Elk
• Bison
• Goat
• Yak
• Rabbit
• Squirrel*
  

Birds

• Chicken
• Turkey
• Duck
  
• Goose
  
• Pheasant
  
• Pigeon

Fish

• Cod (and other "whitefish")
• Sunfish**
• Crappie**
• Bass**
• Trout
• Salmon
• Tuna
• Shark
• Swordfish
• Tilapia
• Mahi mahi
  

Other

• Snapping turtle
• Alligator
• Snail
• Crawfish
• Shrimp
• Lobster
• Crab
• Clam**
• Oyster
• Mussel**
• Scallop
• Conch
  
• Squid
• Octopus

I don't remember eating eel, frog, rattlesnake or bugs, but they've certainly been offered. It's possible I've had them too. I'm sure I left off some fish, though I'm not a big fish fan, and I'm probably missing some game birds.

Forty-one animals, with probable omissions and not counting varietals. That's a lot of meat.