Posted on October 18, 2017 Posted by John Scalzi 48 Comments
Hello fellow humans! I am not dead. I am slowly making my way down the length of California toward my high school reunion.
Life is good. I hope also that your life is good.
Tell the class about your day in the comments.
Yours,
JS
Taunting the tauntable since 1998
John Scalzi, proprietor – JS
Athena Scalzi, contributor – AMS
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I wrote a piece last night on my blog reflecting on the dog we had when I was a teenager and I cried writing it, but it was very cathartic and made me realize that when I graduate in a few months with a PhD, I am in the right time of life to have a dog and I should prioritize that. I’d love some sort of washout herding dog from a working line that maybe was just a bit too lazy for working stock, but there’s a special quality to herding dogs that hits a chord in me and I really can’t see myself with anything else. Just need to finish up and find a job first ^^ I talked to like 5 different people about sheep farming today to help refine my dataset, so on track there at least!
I have spent my day beating on SQL Server, and it is not cooperating. I am going home to have an nice single malt scotch!
Not good, have to decide between expensive root canal vs. expensive extraction + partial plate. About the only thing worse would be attending a high-school reunion. (High school in small towns is at best boring and at worst, Carrie.). I hope YOU have fun, though!
Hi Stubborn Wombat, washout working dogs often make good pets. When I was a kid, my dad had a beagle who wouldn’t sound off; maybe she feared doing so would interfere with her life’s work of exterminating the moles in the lawn. After she cleared the lawn, she found a second vocation as a beloved pet in a houseful of kids. I could tell other such stories. Watch out for border collies, though, they tend to go crazy if they don’t have a job.
Trying to write to a 17 syllable form on the subject: secrets songs, hidden harmonies, sacred shrines. So far a magpie at the top of the tree for shrines.
Have a great reunion. I avoid them like plague.
Took photos for United Way events at work. Also came in dead last in a chili competition at work for the United Way
I spent the day recovering from the flu shot I got yesterday. And covered with cats. I agree on Border Collies. I’ve had two of them in my life. The first one had conniptions whenever her “flock” left the yard. The second one viewed the cats as some kind of strange shelf climbing sheep. I also consider High School the 3 most miserable years of my life (I graduated as a Junior) and can’t think of any reason to attend a reunion.
Fading vignettes of a day near done
Workers hammering on a roof
School kids scurrying onto the sidewalk
A hand in a police car waving me on
A gift card declined at a smoothie store
A dog pulling away to chase a squirrel
A closing door and another day darkens
Into a moonless night.
I went to see the movie Battle of the Sexes, with Emma Stone and Steve Carell. It was good.
Three loads of laundry.
A 25 minute walk at the park.
Phone calls made and emails sent.
Holding a bag of frozen corn on the incision where a rib was removed 3 weeks ago to rebuild my sinuses, septum & nose.
Watching Fringe with two cats. I’m watching; they’re sleeping.
Life is good.
Wishing you a good time at your reunion.
Just returned from a trip on the California coast, walking amongst the redwoods was amazing, something I will not soon forget.
Life is good here too. This week my film OtherLife (very loosely based on Solitaire) began streaming worldwide on Netflix. My first screenwriting credit and I am Over. The. Moon.
Have a great time at the reunion! Humans get pretty good at being themselves after a certain point, and reunions can be splendid for rediscovering people.
Wombat, I recommend Sherry Moss of Nirvana Collies. She breeds both rough and smooth collies. Her dogs have great collie temperaments. If you are interested let me know and I’ll give you contact info. She’s in Kentucky. 5 of my 6 dogs came from her lines.
Taught today, then unloaded dog food. Going to bed soon.
I listened to a four star general talk smack.
Happy Diwali! I am in still an Indian food coma from a work lunch potluck.
Not my usual Wednesday. Two young friends (in their 30s) in our neighbourhood came to our house this evening and got married. They didn’t want any fuss, but I spent the morning cleaning the house, made some nibbles and picked up some proseco. Orchid bouquets for each of them. It was fun, but as I said, not usual
I got the worst coffee cake of my life this morning, had to,spit it out, then it was around 10am before I got desperate (a big cup of coffee and a latté with no food will do that) and bailed work to get some food. That helped. By 2pm I was done for the day, and went and rode my bike for a few hours, which helped even more. From 5pm on its been great.
It’s been a stressful week,but today was better. Been looking for a carpenter for a couple of weeks, Finally got a call back today about getting an estimate. It’s not much, but we seem to be moving forward. Husband is very happy about the Yankees. So now I can get ready to go on retreat this weekend, and unwind for a bit.
I hope you have a wonderful time at your high school reunion, sir. I wouldn’t go to mine if you held a gun to my head, but I am glad that your former classmates are the type you still want to hang out with.
Typical Wednesday for me, which means that I fought with the new accounting software my employer installed, created a presentation to explain an allocation to our special snowflake poster boy for the Dunning-Kruger effect, and then went to the pottery studio for a few hours to drown my sorrows making mud-pies. Wedging and throwing a ten-pound lump of stoneware is a great way to work out a day’s worth of frustrations, so it was very therapeutic.
Driving the valley or taking the coast?
A la Kendall Person, I hope your trip is going well, JS. The northern half of the length of California is pretty smokey. Yay for air conditioning?
Today the air quality in my town was better and I went for a walk. I came back NOT feeling like someone had shoved a knife in my lungs, so that was good. Wrote a review. Cooked turkey loaf. Watched the new birds who have come to the birdfeeder (displaced by the fires, we assume).
Stripped a screw installing my new Arlo camera. Successfully extracted a broken bulb socket from the security light fixture without electrocuting myself. Saw the new Blade Runner movie (thumbs up) and dissected it with a buddy over burgers.
I saw you have A PRIVATE LITTLE WAR on your Goodreads hitlist, John… I just posted a review. Talented guy, but I regretfully gave it 2 stars. The next book will probably be 4.5, I’m guessing.
Currently battling my 9mo toddler over whether 4am, here in the UK is a good wake up time. Trying the controlled crying method. Fingers crossed he settles in next 9 minutes.
Drove out of my parking lot in the dark, drove all day and over an hour into the night on on a wet winding mountain road.
What slowed my day was tarrying in a used bookstore and then starting a book in a coffee shop, and also, in another coffee shop, reading hundreds of comments on someone’s blog (Not John’s) and then composing the best reply I could.
Finally got the Browser opening methods refactoring sorted. Back pain finally fading; a reminder to everyone to be careful lifting bags of bird seed. Three Astro Pi cases ready to ship. Rain. More rain.
Still fighting off back pains, and have been for the last week. Unable to stay home for any length of time to let it mend because Admin will not let us get substitutes for employees unless said employees are gone for at least 2 weeks. Meanwhile, my second-in-command was on vacation last week, today went home early with tummy trouble, we are trying to train a new person, and a plethora of previously scheduled activities need to happen, so I’m grimly at work, on muscle relaxants and megadoses of ibuprofen, and not happy.
Had a bat in our showroom at work today. Nobody else wanted to touch it( they can carry unpleasant diseases) so I caught it in a cloth and took it outside. You have to leave them in a tree, with a cloth covering them, so predatory birds don’t get them, and come night time they crawl out from under the cloth and fly away.It was only a little one, about the size of a large mouse with wings, so it would make a good snack for a crow or hawk.Hopefully it will be gone in the morning.
Just catching up on morning news. I see that a Japanese lunar survey satellite has discovered a 500 km tunnel on the moon, and I can’t help wonder, did they find Little David’s Sling?
First day back after a week at the beach in Coffs Harbour, Australia.
Of course it rained every day we were there, the beach got closed one day due to a supposed Great White siting, and the next day the Blue Bottle Jellyfish drifted in… sigh, never change Australia, never change.
Still, between rain showers we built elaborate sand castles at the high tide line, with multiple defences against being washed away. Sometimes successfully. We spent a day watching the first three Harry Potter films when the rain was at its worse. We ate impulsively and well. We lounged, and read, and slept in.
Today? To be honest, it was a bit grey. And not just because of the rain we managed to bring home with us.
My day, like most of the past week, has started an hour earlier than desired, thanks to the messed up internal time clock of the four year old. I haven’t given in and adjusted my own sleep schedule to match his, however. So Pyrrhic victory?
Have fun at the reunion! (Insert obligatory “Grosse Pointe Blank” reference here)
Dana: “discovered a 500 km tunnel on the moon”
I was never quite clear on how a tunnel could form on the moon. Lava tubes? But where did the lava go?
Geologists are spooky.
Sighting. Damn, I really haven’t got full back from holiday.
I spent the whole day with my nose inches from a computer monitor, writing a set of system requirements for a complex medical device. By the end of the day I had a headache, sore back, stiff knees, and bad breath. Nonetheless, for a tech nerd like me it’s a satisfying creative outlet.
I finished my wonderful signed copy of The Collapsing Empire and as such, my day was bittersweet! Happy to have read another great Scalzi, sad that its over and now my life is a yawning void of emptiness. Guess Ill go outside or something…
I spent the latter half of the day at the State Fair with my family! Didn’t overeat this year, so that made it even better than normal. ;)
Productive work with clients during the day that HIPAA and professional ethics won’t let me describe, and time reading the first Harry Potter book with my six year-old in the evening. Not too shabby.
Vanquished my area of testing in the latest round of (bi-weekly) software patches (more fixed than broken, so that’s a win),
Called out lousy tech support by notifying management of their shortcomings (outside vendor),
Herded other (figurative) work-related-cats,
Proofed/beta read another 30 pp of hubby’s latest novel,
Yoga class,
Watched the first part of Patton Oswalt’s new concert (laughter is the best medicine for a mediocre day).
Today will be better: other than a couple of staff meetings, I will work, grab a quick dinner, and then spend 2.5 hours volunteering at our local food bank packing center. That’s always a good end to a day.
I’ve only been to my 30th class reunion. I was surprised that, out of a class of almost 700, there were only 100 people (including spouses) there. Not many of my friends came, but I did end up chatting with former hoods and socs, so I’d go again (maybe for our 50th).
Rain here in Portland, which you have probably already passed through.
“Shelf climbing sheep”! *chortle*
@MikeM, I love your bat adventure! And I am curious about a tunnel on the moon.
MadLibrarian, my sympathies on the back. Take care of it and don’t let the painkillers fool you into causing more damage. I’m in the third week of this and it isn’t going away soon.
Damned bird seed.
@FossilFishy:
Barring hallucination or prank, the sharks were both sighted there and sited there.
Went to look at a prospective new apartment — great location, in my price range, allows cats. And WAY too small. I have seven full bookcases, and while I know I’ll have to get rid of some of them, I draw the line at cutting out most of them, and 3 huge windows do bring in lots of light, but they cut down drastically on available wall space. So, back to the search. Dang.
It’s ok. Yesterday I tried my hand at making a Matzo Brei omelette, a dish made by mixing by hand two eggs with two sheets’ worth of softened Matzo crackers. The dish came out a lot better than my attempt at a Thai omelette, an effort that set off the fire alarm and a heavy investment in Febreeze for fabrics.
Also finally saw the Spanish horror film [Rec] (remade as “Quarantine” in America) after much procrastination and…was less than impressed. Oh yes, there were a few nice jumps but the setup felt far too long and dull. The tension never felt as if it ever rose above a slight simmer. Onto the Trade pile for this one.
Elizabeth Mancz – that would be great! I grew up with blue heelers but I’ve been around a lot of collies lately for my research (sheep carbon footprints) and have come to really love them as well. I still don’t know where I’m going to be post-graduation (looking for postdoc gigs) but I’m fine with traveling for a dog and I’d need to save up a bit more anyways. I just really want a working line washout rather than from a show line, both for health and temperament reasons. Do you know if she does genetic screens for the MDR1 variant and cerebellar abiotrophy?
Yesterday was lots of running around doing various errands and appointments. First was putting laundry into washers at the laundromat. Then an orthodontist appointment. Then moving laundry from washers into the dryer at the laundromat. Then went home to hang-dry all the hang-dry laundry, and pick up my yoga gear. Then went to pick up the dried laundry from the laundromat, en route to my massage appointment. Immediately after the massage was the chiropractor (the best time to visit a chiropractor is right after a massage…). By the time I left the chiropractor, it was too late to get back across town in time for the yoga class I’d originally planned on, so I bought some food and went home. While I was eating dinner, my evening plans got postponed to today (anime club, we’re about to start on Stein’s Gate). So I rushed off to get to the next yoga class and got there just in time. After that… I think I vegged out in front of Facebook for the rest of the evening.
Today I’m at work, but can’t get myself to focus on anything, so now I’m just websurfing until it’s time to leave for anime.
Good to know you’re not dead; glad you’re going to the high school reunion and not me. I try to avoid absolute statements but made and exception to declare ‘I will never attend any reunion of my high school class.’ There were 800+ in my class – they won’t miss me.