Merry Christmas!

When derien got home from work last night I had a hot buttered rum waiting for her. After that we walked around the town looking at the lights and enjoying the quiet. We went into the Bean's retail store, which is open 24/7, but didn't buy anything. When we got home we cooked up a quick late supper.

This morning we got up and opened our presents and had french toast with maple syrup for breakfast. Ah, the sugar rush of all time. Did I mention a pot of tea as well? Yes, tea. We have the big Christmas teapot that has to get used at least one day a year.

So I'm sitting here quietly in front of my computer while wanting to bounce off the walls. I wonder why I can't type!

I'm not sure whether ambition or sloth will rule the day today. Either way, it will be good.

Today, for a change, I was productive. For the last few weeks it's been all to easy to curl up and be lazy. I haven't been depressed, just unambitious. But today I managed to swim against the current: did three loads of laundry, two loads of dishes, went and fetched a packed, bought some groceries, gassed up the van, started back in on cleaning records, did a lot of poking around the house getting things cleaned up. I'm quite happy with the accomplishments so far, but want to do more.

I got my lab test results today. Glucose level is 14% lower than it was six weeks ago, even lower than it was a year and a half ago. Cholesterol is a mixed bag: total is now acceptable, triglicerides now acceptable, HDL still not there basically unchanged, LDL improved but not enough, Chol. to HDL ratio better but not good enough, LDL/HDL ratio better but not enough. Not bad really. I've seen improvement in almost every measure and 3 of the significant numbers are actually back within acceptable range. Now if I could just get my knees happy enough to jump back on the treadmill.

Jonathan Winters doing "A Christmas Carol" is coming on. I love listening to this!

I finished "Odd John" on Monday. It was much easier to read than the previous Stapledon works I've read, but wasn't exactly a walk in the park. It's was odd. In the end it's a strange mixture of utopia with dystopia. I'm not sure there is any other way to describe it.

53. Olaf Stapledon "Odd John"

Home from work with major headache and minor cold symptoms. derien is home as well with more pronounced cold symptoms. It's the coldest day of the year so far, so I'm glad not to have to go outside.

I wish I had the brain to concentrate, but mainly I'm just web surfing.

I'm lower than a snakes belly today. Don't know why, just a mood that hit me. Maybe frustration at work, maybe feeling a bit overwhelmed with lack of progress.

Still taking various pills and potions. I did have some soda finally (two as rum and cokes and one at a Christmas party), but it still hasn't found its way back into daily diet. I've had the occasional cup of tea, but again, it's not in my daily diet. I have been backsliding a bit on the vegetable matter and backsliding a lot on the exercise. There are lots of excuses, but they're just excuses (working six days a week, it's cold, don't have time, aches and pains, etc).

Generally though, things are clunking along in the old life. The holiday cards have been started. The little bit of shopping that I have to do has been started.

I'm still reading "Odd John", but I keep falling asleep at night instead of reading.

Today was one of those Maine days were everyone is dealing with just dealing. When I drove home almost all the stores were closed down and dark, the plows were running and the few people outside were bearing shovels. I helped one of the neighbors get his car out of the lot and up to the already plowed lot up the street. A few minutes ago the plow came through to clear our lot. We only got probably four inches of snow, but then it rained and the stuff is incredibly heavy and yucky.

It seems we had a pretty good cooperative effort to clear the decks and the walkways today. Almost everyone seems to be participating in the effort.

49. C.S. Lewis "The Magician's Nephew" (Argh)
50. Ray Bradbury "Farewell Summer" (Blah, a Bradbury I didn't like)
51. C.S. Lewis "The Last Battle" (Argh)
52. Isaac Asimov "Foundation" (Great!)

Fifty two!!!!!! I'm in the middle of reading "Odd John" right now. It's odd.

Started an entry over the weekend, but locked my system up doing an experiment before I posted it. Duh!

The good: Caffiene free for almost two weeks, ditto soft drinks, greatly reduced sugars intake, notably increased veggies intake (even the tiniest amount of green leafy things!), got a lot of 78s cleaned this weekend, cleaned up some stuff out in the back yard this weekend as well.

Not so good: Didn't get back on the treadmill after the foot surgery as soon as I should have, still have a cubic buttload of 78s to clean (2,000!).

The ugly: The jar of dill beans I opened today tasted nasty.

I finished "Childhood's End" yesterday. It's old school science fiction, written in 1953. It's been a long time since I've read any of Clarke's writing (20 years), so I'd forgotten his style. I was surprised by how textbook like his fiction was, yet it still drew me in. He does that distant and removed thing that I criticize other writers for, but does it well enough that I was drawn in. When this book was written, chapters were chapters, well defined entities that had sensible starting points, sensible stopping points, and cohesion. It was striking how some of the chapters ended with short story style turns. There is some old fashion learning to be done on how to construct a book. I've seen some modern science fiction writers try to write in the third person removed style, but they just don't have the skill or imagination to pull it off like this.

48. Arthur C. Clarke "Childhood's End"

44. Asimov's Oct/Nov 2009 double issue
45. C.S. Lewis "The Silver Chair"
46. Roald Dahl "The Umbrella Man"
47. C.S. Lewis "The Horse and His Boy"

Another reason to hate Walmart: http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/11/07/16449 .

On my way home from getting my toe hacked, I saw the guy down the street manuevering an armoir either into or out of a pickup truck. He's a big guy, but was all by himself and it was a big armoir. I wheeled into my spot, got out of the van, and limped back up the driveway far enough to yell up to him. "You need a hand?" "No, I got it." Sure enough, a few more steps to the side showed the armoir resting on its back in the bed. He thanked me for offering and I said, "Your welcome." I hobbled back into the house.

The podiatrist was surprised and disappointed to see me. He had done the same procedure a little more than a year ago and it didn't stick. It was nice to see his chagrin, because I felt the same way. If it doesn't work this time I'll be scheduled for an outpatient surgery at the hospital. There's been more than once when I've been tempted to take an axe to the whole lot of them. (The toes that is, not the doctors.)

Thanks for the concern over my health and listening to my moaning.

Yesterday I cut my caffiene intake by about 50% and my refined sugar intake by a similar amount. Today I've managed to avoid the caffiene alltogether. I'm not planning on cutting out caffiene entirely, just taking the sugar out of my tea and cutting way, way down on my soft drink consumption. The withdrawl headache will probably hit tomorrow, so I may have a cup of tea in the morning to take the edge off.

I had today off from work, so it was easy to be good. Hit the treadmill for a little while. Did some other minor exercise periodically throughout the day to keep my metabolism up. Got a fair amount of stuff done around the house. Didn't attack the pantry like a starved shark, even though I've had the munchies like massive. The tension in my chest melted away at different points in the day, but still reappeared.

"On the bus today,
I met the queen of LA,
At least she said she was,
And who am I to say.
She was 65,
and full of life" Concrete Blonde "Still in Hollywood"

Went to the doctor's today for a followup on my bloodwork. It was a bloodbath, bloody awful, and not a whole bleedin' lot of fun. I like my doctor. She's nice, she treats her patients like humans, and she acts like a human. Still, she basically gave me an ultimatum. The last year has utterly destroyed my health. She gave me six weeks to reverse that trend and show positive motion in the other direction. Failing that, dot dot dot.

Catching up on the book list:

41. C. S. Lewis "Prince Caspian"
42. Asimov's January 2010
43. C. S. Lewis "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader"

This month's Asimov's was a lot of fun. In "As Women Fight" gender gets bent so much that there are pretzels standing around feeling inadequate and embarassed. "The Bride of Frankenstein" was funny and sweet. I was left flat by the post apocalyptic "Angie's Errand". Angie seemed to be alternately 40 and 12 instead of being a tired survivor at 22. Angie's character didn't ring true to me. "A Large Bucket, and Accidental Godlike Master of Spacetime" was a fine example of looking at things from a different angle. Starting out with an astronaut with an employment problem hooked me. "A Lovely Little Christmas Fire" was fun but a bit gratuitous.

Overall, I quite enjoyed the issue. The mixture was good, tending toward the light fare, but with variety.

40. Asimov's December 2009

I finished "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" last week soemtime. It was the first time read for me. After reading it, I am surprised this book gets so much mileage. To me it felt contrived, poorly paced, and not well brought together. I excuse a certain amount of the Mary Sue because it's kid lit, but it seems a little heavier in Sueness than the usual. I suppose it's alright for a young reader, but it would be down on the list of my choices for giving a kid. I will read the rest of the series, because I have them, but it's not a auspicious start.

39. C. S. Lewis "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"

Yes, I'm still alive. I think I've finally turned the corner on the early fall melancholy and morose. Not that I'm mister amazing ambitious or anything, but at least I feel a tiny bit more like communcating and dealing with the world. During the last few months my list of things undone has been getting longer rather than shorter, but I am hoping I'll be able to reverse the trend soon.

I just got the Fedco trees catalog in the mail. It has all kinds of wonderful Spring porn in it: fruit trees, berry bushes, ferns, and other green things. I think I'll keep it in my beside table for the Winter. I probably won't end up getting any trees, but I am considering some lilac bushes, blackberries and raspberries, and some smaller items to go in the bare places in the back yard.

I finished "An Ordered Love" last night and did a little dance of victory. This book is utter dross. It is written up as an academic examination of sex roles and sexuality within the Shakers, Mormons, and the Oneida community. The first three chapters of the book are an introduction consisting of convoluted sentences composed of stilted language. If you remember trying to write a 10,000 word paper on a subject you hadn't really researched by repeating yourself in different ways and spicing things up by thesaurus diving, imagine doing so for 80 pages. There is enough bovine waste in these pages to make entire continents grow green. This is academic writing at its worst: dense, repetitive, and meaningless.

The remainder of the book consists of a section for each of the societies featured. The first chapter in each section is a life history of the founder of the group. Unfortunately Kern, who's listed credentials do not include psychiatry, spends most of the chapter developing theories on the motivation of the founder based on his freudian analysis. This is sketchy at best and probably shows the ins and outs of Kern's psyche better than that of the subject. The remainder of the section is more readable, but no less laden with assumptions. Kern regularly holds these groups up to modern (1970's) standards rather than honestly comparing them with their time. In addition, he ignores historical, economic, and social realities that surrounded these groups whenever it doesn't suit his arguement of the moment.

If this is the only book you have available to read, gouge your eyes out now!

38. Louis J. Kern "An Ordered Love"

As I was sitting in the chair at the dentist's office the other day getting my teeth cleaned, I thought, "This could be really good if I was a true masochist." Do real dyed in the wool masochists get wood when they see the dental hygenist? Do they intentionally skip brushing to make it worse (err, better)?

Just think of the erotic potential this one twisted kink would provide. Do they volunteer to do other people's taxes? What would they do for work, with so many ideal fields. For people who like being humiliated almost any retail or customer service job is perfect, but masochists would have to have something more physical. In warm climes, perhaps roofer would the thing. In coastal areas, lobsterman would probably be perfect.

Oh, and just think, as you get older, more stuff hurts. Just getting out of bed on a damp morning could become an erotic adventure. For those lucky masochists with arthritis, every movement could become a grinding bit of delight. Just imagine the possibilities!

Meanwhile, dental care is, for me, a necessary evil during which I try to think of anything that will distract me from the requisite 40 minutes of torture.