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By Lynn, on August 29th, 2010%
 The Scent of Shadows by Vicki Pettersson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I got this as a Kindle freebie and I was grinding along, hoping for something to click, perturbed that in a book where a more-or-less traditional super-hero trope was supposed to underlie the magic neither the author or her editor appeared to have ever actually held a comic book in their hands but could describe Louboutin stilettos down to their seaming. Then I got to the day that started with descriptions of January and switched to November in the afternoon. I can forgive typos, but that sort of sloppiness borders on contempt for the reader
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By Lynn, on August 25th, 2010%
 Transformation by Carol Berg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Everything starts somewhere and Carol Berg’s novels start with Transformer. Despite being 438 pages long (in the Roc mass market) and the first volume of a trilogy that promises to a world-changing confrontation of good v. evil, Transformer‘s really an intimate story of an evolving friendship between a silver-spoon prince (bearing the requisite hidden, unexpected mark of greatness) and a slave so consumed by survival, cynicism, and despair that he no longer recalls his own past. There’s a journey, some magic, a few duels — not exactly the stuff of groundbreaking fantasy.
What Transformer does have, though — and why I’m looking forward to reading the remaining volumes in the trilogy — is a solid narrative voice (the slave’s, carefully balanced between detached observation and ironic self-awareness); well-drawn supporting characters (Berg’s men are better than her women, of whom there are very few); natural dialog (which allows the reader to appreciate nuances of character that the slave cannot); and an exquisite sense of dramatic timing that more than compensates for the relatively low number of surprises in the plot.
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By Lynn, on August 2nd, 2010%
When I got to my parents’ house yesterday afternoon, Mom was outside sweeping the (empty) driveway. She was adamant that her encounter with the semi hadn’t affected her at all physically and I really can’t disagree. Emotionally, she and Dad were are still coming to terms with events, but they’re doing better today. They’ve seen and photographed the damages, spoken with body shops and insurance companies, and have a better sense of what’s likely to happen over the next few weeks.
As a family, we burned through a lot of karma on Saturday and, for the moment, it looks like we’re going to be able patch our lives back together without too many changes.
My new chair may turn out to be a bigger change. It arrived today…in pieces, in large box with a single page of purely symbolic construction diagrams. The diagrams were actually pretty straight-forward, though I could have used a helper when it came time to attach the seat to the base and the back to the seat. This beast is heavy! Fifty-five pounds, according to the box, more than twice the weight of the Balans. And more controls than my first Volkswagen. I’ve figured out everything except the forward-tilt, which was one of the purchase criteria. I found the proper lever, but pulling on it didn’t do anything. I called customer service (I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing when your task chair comes with a 1-800 customer service number) and they promise to have a technical service rep call me tomorrow morning. (And what do you do for a living? I’m a long-distance chair tech….)
Sitting in it is a very different sensation. Well, probably a fairly ordinary experience for anyone who’s sat in an actual chair for any length of time, but it’s been 28 years since I’ve tried that trick. Honestly, in those 28 years, I never met anyone who liked my Balans. A good many people took one look at it and asked for a real chair, or they tried to type while standing or even kneeling on the floor. Everyone said it hurt their knees.
For me it had been love at first sight in an ad in a computer newsletter that made the rounds at AAA-Michigan where I was working in the early 80s. The first thing I did when I quit AAA to start writing full time was order my Balans. Bob and the kids were quite appalled when I assembled it in the living room. At least I never had the Goldilocks problem: no one ever wanted to sit in my chair.
One did not “sit up straight” in a Balans; straight in a Balans is tilted about twenty degrees off perpendicular, which took most of the weight/pressure off my pelvis (bear in mind, my mom’s had four hip replacements….and I inherited her bone structure…keeping pressure off my pelvis has always been important to me.) Based on the first six hours, I think I can be pain-free in the new chair…even if I can’t figure out how to make the forward-tilt lever do something useful, but it’s going to take practice…
..and maybe a visit to the eye doctor. Getting a good center-of-balance in the new chair puts my eyes a good twelve inches farther from the monitor or right in the wrong spot, vision-wise, for my computer glasses.
This whole growing old thing is a royal pain.
By Lynn, on July 9th, 2010%
By Lynn, on July 9th, 2010%
I had a client coming over this morning for some data/publications consulting, so, naturally, I rounded up the trash and used kitty-litter to haul down to our dumpsters. I’d just dropped the lid on the big, blue steel box when I heard a sound. A cat? I thought, because we’ve got quite a few feral cats in the area. Then I heard it again and it sounds almost as if someone were calling for help, but I hadn’t been paying close enough attention to vector the sound. My suspicion, since I was alone in the dumpster lot and the nearby streets and sidewalks were empty, focused on our around-the-corner neighbor, Wedgewood – a well-maintained Assisted Living Facility based in a renovated motel.
Sure enough, the third time I heard the sound, it was definitely a call for help. I ran over to the wall that separates the properties. Each of the rooms has a little patio, divided from the adjacent patios but open to our parking lot. I scanned those as I approached the walls, saw nothing, and thought the person in distress must be inside…but no, when I looked to the right I saw a woman, probably in her mid- to late eighties, lying on the hot asphalt between the ALF’s dumpster and a row of parked cars.
Adrenalin really does marvelous things: I jumped over the wall. Ethel—I learned her name a few minutes later—was alert but obviously in pain, clutching her hip and trying not to move or make things worse. Waving my arms and shouting, I ran around to the front of the ALF, easily attracting the attention of two managers, one of whom ran into the office to call an ambulance while the other followed me back to Ethel.
I didn’t stick around….there was nothing more I could do (though I plan on walked over later in the afternoon to make sure she’s okay), but as with so many things these days, the event gives me pause. It’s getting easier to imagine not only my parents but me in Ethel’s predicament. I’m going to start carrying my cell phone more often
….and I’m going to dress better when I take the trash to the dumpster. If worse comes to worst, I want to look as good as Ethel because, yes, I would have jumped the wall for anyone, but I fear I jumped higher and ran faster because seeing her there, all neat and tidy, red-lined my compassion.
By Lynn, on July 9th, 2010%
Yesterday I woke up to the sound of beeping, a sound that usually means the power’s died…again. But there were numbers visible on the alarm clock and the overhead fan was spinning. It was spinning a bit slower than usual, but I don’t turn it on until after lights-out and I have been known to pull the chain three times, instead of two. So, the in-charge part of my brain directed my body to roll over and go back to sleep, but the beeping didn’t stop and eventually the word “brownout” penetrated my uncaffeinated fog.
Ugh.
I’d rather have no power than a little power. The UPS did its job of protecting Cobalt, but everything else was at risk. I raced from room to room, flipping switches and pulling plugs, then I hit the circuit-breakers and waited….and waited, because when the power goes off, it’s pretty easy to tell when it comes back on, but once you’ve thrown the circuit breakers, there’s no juice in the wires, so nothing’s coming on.
And there’s no coffee…when I really needed it
Eventually I found a less cautious neighbor who convinced me that the power was fully restored. I made coffee, but my mind had been thoroughly fried by that point and the best I could manage was cleaning….deep cleaning.
Back in April–after two neighbors died leaving an overstuffed condo behind, while Diane was immersed in boxing frenzy, and I left the television on as background noise during a marathon broadcast of several episodes of HOARDERS—I decided that it was time to lay hands on everything I own with the goal of divesting myself of at least 5% of it.
It’s been a slow process—not just dusting or polishing, but emptying every drawer, every shelf and asking “why” questions about every object. I’m barely halfway through the living room, but I think I’m a bit ahead of the 5% goal and definitely gaining space. Some of the drawers remain empty and the bookshelves are definitely sparser—thanks mostly to Kindle: I’ve replaced as many of my undergrad paperbacks with their digital equivalents as I could find. (I bought all 150 volumes of Balzac’s Human Comedy for $5.00!)
With other things that are more memorable than valuable, I’m taking a picture and adding the picture to my never-ending photo slideshow. It’s not like the place is getting barren or anything, but there’s noticeably more room and I’m feeling lighter, freer.
(Today, BTW, I upgraded the blog. When Wordpress went to version 3.0 last month my old “Green Apples”-based theme officially hit an evolutionary dead end. I considered all sorts of fancy, odd-ball options, but finally settled on the same theme that Carolyn’s using over on Wave Without a Shore.
I kept the old look-and-feel, or tried to, but the back end is much simpler. No more hand-coding whenever I want to add a page or widget!)
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What I'm working on these days
Exiled on Main St.
Short Story
Status: Active
Word count: 5500
as of: 7-12-2010
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Look Who’s Talking…