Words are inadequate

The cough from the Xmas Plague lingers, but that's typical for me and coughs. I think I'm more or less recovered other than that.

Yesterday I finished a very good biography of Jim Henson. I wish he'd had more time. The book is pretty clear that the eighties were a period of decline (attributed to the need for Jim to run his evergrowing company, at which he was good but not efficient, and to a tendency for his technology to overwhelm his artistry and storytelling). But it suggests that if he'd lived, if he'd successfully navigated the Disney deal, he wouldn't have had the burden of the company, and could have gotten back into the strictly creative side of things again.

(Sometime in the late 2000s Emily and JMax and I went to see a Henson exhibit at, mm, probably the Museum of American History? They were running some of Henson's old Wilkins Coffee commercials, and they mentioned that "our sketches tend to end in one of two ways: someone blows up, or someone eats someone else." That sensibility comes through clearly in the book, especially in the early days.)

I unloaded around two-thirds of my Go-Away Books at the local used bookstore, in exchange for $50 and volumes two through four of Greg Rucka's spy comic Queen & Country. Also another copy of The Dragon Waiting, because it's a good thing to have spare copies of. And I acquired a mixing bowl and two more black silk shirts at the thrift store, because I can never have too many black silk shirts.

Perhaps most importantly I got the stereo adapter thing installed in Hactar. The first two car stereo places refused to touch it, claiming bad experiences with the company that makes it, but the third said "sure, we can do that, we've got an opening today even." So, for as much in labour as the parts cost (shipped from the states), I now have a stereo that will play music off my phone, and even skip to previous and next tracks in the current playlist with the steering wheel buttons. I believe there's a way to switch between playlists but it looks like it requires a bit of setup on the phone itself, so I'll likely just leave it be.

And maybe tomorrow I'll do my annual State Of The Tucker post.

First night with the CPAP last night. Went to sleep around ten-thirty, woke around two, slept again until the alarm went off at five-thirty. No particular problems with the machine or the nose-mask, but I can't tell if it's actually doing any good either. That is, I don't know if I'm breathing through my nose or mouth when I sleep, and if I'm breathing through my mouth the nose-mask is unlikely to have much effect. Which would mean having to go to a full face mask, which I am even less in favour of. We Shall See.

I'm more tired than usual today, but I blame that on having been woken up by the alarm. The point of the light-alarm is to wake me up slowly and gently, but I guess I was out enough that that wasn't an option. I'd forgotten how much I hate hate hate the alarm sound. Especially when it's the first thing I hear in the morning.

I also mentioned my traitor lungs to the sleepdoc, and she suggested it might be vocal cord dysfunction (and why do I always want those to be vocal chords?). Worth looking into when I go back to talk to my main doc. Assuming the inhaler doesn't do me any good.

As for sinuses, who knows. I'll try the steroid and see what ends up happening.

It's either a particularly nasty cold or a mild flu, and I don't know which. I think it's hitting me less hard than it hit Erin at least. Or, hopefully, for less time.

Despite a lingering whatever-it-is she came down last weekend for a couple of parties. She managed to not spend the entire weekend bundled up in bed, which was an accomplishment. We survived the lovely scary 20cm snowfall on Friday; I went driving in a Smart, which was perhaps ill-advised, and drove in circles while trying to de-park and slowly skidded into not-yet-oncoming traffic trying to turn left onto Broadway at a red light.

We saw Black Panther (quite good; my favourite of the Marvel movies I've seen, which is not all that high a bar) and were reasonably low-key sociable, and I made cream-scones with lemon zest which turned out really well. And then on Monday we flew back north together, which was also pleasant; I've missed traveling with someone.

Tuesday she went to work and I stayed home to work and got progressively woozier and sinus-stuffy and cold, and finally admitted that yeah, I'm sick. It's come and gone, really. Tuesday was a bad day for being cold and kind of generally exhausted. Wednesday my sinuses were worse, but my mental state and the rest of my body felt better, enough better that on Thursday I helped with chicken chores and made biscuits to go with dinner. That may have been a bit much: things in general got a little worse over the course of the evening and I slept eleven hours last night. Today I've been tired and my nose has been running, but that's about all. At least I've worked every day this week.

Next week is Rainforest, for which I am also ill-prepared. Hoping that tonight and tomorrow, and Sunday to the extent it's not traveling, will be sufficiently restful that I can kick this thing by Wednesday.

Also there are more scones as of this afternoon, which will help.

Friday evening I'd intended to meet Emily for dinner at the only source of gator in Vancouver and then catch a music performance. On the way to the restaurant we passed a theatre advertising that this was the last weekend they were showing Angels in America Part 1, and figured we'd go to that instead.

Only, I'd started feeling a little chilled after I left work, and noticed myself drinking a lot of water at dinner and generally feeling kind of ... not really lightheaded, not really spacey, not really achey, but ... feverish. So instead we went home, and Emily finished her sign for the Vancouver Science March ("Be part of the SOLUTION not part of the PRECIPITATE") and I took an hour and a half hot bath.

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I woke up the next morning feeling pretty much okay, and saw Emily off into the damp while I waited for Erin. We'd been kicking around the idea of going down to the States this weekend with some other folks, but I think we'd settled on just having a calm couple of days at home.

On the way there I got to experience my first moving vehicle accident. Not very fast moving, but still. Erin had just pulled out to turn left when someone who'd looked like they were turning right didn't.

I've been in several other accidents, from the time when I managed to come to a stop but the person three cars behind me didn't to the time when a concrete pillar at a gas station scooted into the passenger-side of my rental car at five in the morning. There's something different-- more visceral-- about being fully in motion at the time, and also about not being the one driving. Couple days later I'm still occasionally flashing back to the moment of impact, because I happened to be looking in that direction. It's not horrific or frightening, it's more "i can't believe this is actually about to happen."

Erin's car was rendered undriveable: body crunched up, tyre shredded, likely a snapped axle, possibly some engine damage. Probably totaled, since those things will cost more than two grand to fix.

We retreated to the safety of my place, and eventually made our way to Erin's, and the day turned from "quiet relaxing" to "recovery" and then "buying a car." Erin's out of pocket all this week for a school thing, and had been planning on driving her car, with a bunch of her stuff, up north the middle of next week. Which meant that she needed a car, pronto.

So Saturday was spent looking for cars, and on Sunday I rented a car (I'd been planning to anyhow) and we drove up to Squamish to test-drive one, and she ended up buying it. But that still took up much of the day, and much of the rest involved her frantically packing for a week away on a school trip, and then heading out past Maple Ridge for that. Not precisely the restful weekend I'd been hoping for.

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Enterprise put me in a Hyundai compact that reminded me a lot of Straylight, my last car. Straylight was a low-riding Saturn coupe that I bought after my previous car caught fire on I-81. It was no hi-performance sports car but it was still fun to drive, and I enjoyed the existence of the trick third door as well. For city-driving or traffic-driving I would have preferred a somewhat more maneuverable Smart; for highways or just point-to-point, Straylight was wonderful.

(When I moved north to the land of carlessness, I sold Straylight to my friend Stephen. I believe it had an unfortunate encounter with a tractor trailer in the Affle House parking lot a few years ago. Sic transit gloria transita.)

By the time I left DC I hated driving, partly because I had to drive to get anywhere but mostly because driving in DC means traffic. Looks like five years was about enough time for that to fade. I genuinely enjoyed driving up and down the Sea-to-Sky. Even the backroads of the camp I left Erin at were kinda fun, though also stressful, due to rain and hunger and uncertainty as to exactly where I was going.

I miss road trips. I miss the freedom of getting anywhere without concern for transit schedules and flaky buses. I miss Straylight. I never thought I'd say that.

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At least there was yoga this morning. I feel much better for that.

There's something bubbling under the surface about yoga and about things that make me feel more like me, and how that's changed, but it's not ready yet.

Ugh, time is getting away from me again.

Last Sunday I went to my viola teacher's end-of-year recital for her young students. There were maybe eight or ten kids performing, from ages three to eleven. I've not been to a Suzuki-type recital since before I graduated from high school. It was rather pleasant to hear a bunch of pieces I'm fairly well familiar with (and one or two new ones), in a relaxed setting. Felt like home. At the end Tegen and one student played the Bach Double. That's one of the two pieces (along with the Vivaldi A Minor) that I was always genuinely envious that the violinists of my acquaintance got to play, and which I've not heard in years.

(I did not play, mostly due to being a bit outside the target age range. I suppose I could have polished the Bouree from Bach's third cello suite, but, eh.)

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The day before that, uilos came back from taking Kai to the vet (annual old-cat checkup, no problems) and announced "I have a tickle in the back of my throat!" Dammit.

I managed to dodge any symptoms until Friday, when I woke up with a sore throat that I attributed to the weather having decided to get cool again. I then did a bunch of socialising over the weekend and got very spacey whenever I wasn't directly doing anything, and stayed home from work yesterday. I was kind of on the fence about going in today, woke up at my usual time, decided not to, and proceeded to fall back asleep for three hours. Which pretty much never happens.

At this point I'm a little spacey and short of breath, and coughing a bit, but I ought to be okay to go back in to work. The interesting thing is that while I tend to get sick on the tail end of uilos being sick, it's not always the same thing, or at least doesn't manifest the same way. Hers is bacterial, multicoloured snot and all that, where mine seems to be viral and settling in the vicinity of my chest.

Bleh.

Woke up last Saturday morning with the telltale soreness of sinus drain at the back of my throat. I didn't have any other symptoms, though: no headache or stuffy head, no spaciness, some tiredness but not much. Mostly just the sore throat.

The bone-weariness kicked in further on Sunday, and I ended up staying home on Monday. I could have gone in, I guess. Mostly I didn't want to deal with the hour of transit to get there and back again.

I was more or less fine by Tuesday. uilos has picked up something of her own; if it's the same thing I had then it's hitting her a lot worse.

Stupid spring sick.

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Every NYT Millennial Trend Story: "Millennials--the demographic group also known as Generation Y, Generation Me, and Daesh--have found it difficult to balance dueling priorities as they exit their parents' basements and enter the real world." (I am told this is even more hilarious with the browser extension that replaces "Millennials" with "Serpent People.")

Masculinity Is an Anxiety Disorder: Breaking Down the Nerd Box: "Man, from my perspective, is not an identity so much as a Long Con, and masculinity is a concatenation of anxiety–founded posturings."

Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle: "In 1996, an amateur archaeologist found a single upper arm bone sticking out of the steep riverbank—- the first clue that the Tollense Valley, about 120 kilometers north of Berlin, concealed a gruesome secret."

'I'm not the Obamacare kid anymore': "He was the chubby 11-year-old African-American boy who stood next to President Barack Obama as he signed Obamacare into law at a White House ceremony on March 23, 2010.... As supporters prepare to mark the sixth anniversary of Obamacare's signing, Marcelas is marking another rite of passage -- as a transgender teen."

An interview with Gail Ann Dorsey about Bowie: "He completely, single-handedly altered the course of my life."

Smart Car turned into a snowcar: "Yeah, it's just a thought that came to me and it seemed like the right thing to do."

1) I seem to have caught a summer cold. My sinuses feel like they've been packed with sand.

2) There seems to have been a flood (burst pipe, I assume) in the basement last night. The elevators have been out most of the day. Climbing twenty-five flights of stairs is Not Fun.

3) On Tuesday I saw a software testing job come up that wants "two years experience." Hey, says I, I've got that, thanks to three crappy software companies in Blacksburg a decade ago. May as well apply: I hate testing but they aren't gonna call me anyway. On Wednesday I got an email from a guy wanting me to come in for an interview today. Said guy wasn't there when I showed up, having apparently forgotten about the interview, and the person who did interview me basically said "we're looking for someone with automated testing experience," which I don't have, because crappy software companies. Complete waste of my time.

4) Icing on the cake: one of the cats (probably Chaos but we haven't seen him do it) is no longer into this whole "litterbox" thing. Near as we can tell he's getting into the litterbox and then mostly missing the litter. Contra LBJ, I'd much rather have him outside the litterbox peeing in than inside peeing out. Not sure what we're going to do about this.

In unrelated news, a barge carrying two houses just went by.

Last week I finally put in my order for a custom carbon-fiber viola from Germany. Paid extra for a "hybrid" model, which comes with an electric pickup built in, and to have it dyed a dark dark green color. I went with 'carbon-fiber' and 'hybrid' on the grounds that I don't know exactly what I intend to do with it, but I'm more likely to do goofy things than to play in an orchestra. The hybrid model makes it easier for me to turn out to be the next Zoë Keating or John Cale, and carbon-fiber travels better and holds up better in varying weather & humidity than wood.

So, excitement! Also nerves. This is literally more money than I've spent on any single thing other than my second car, and that includes my first car.

[The "costs more than my car" metric is one I started using when uilos and I were browsing in a furniture store in Rockville that was supposedly having a huge Going Out Of Business Sale. Their prices were ... not commensurate with what I think of as Going Out Of Business, much less Sale. At one point we passed under a giant crystal chandelier with a low-five-figure price tag, and I realised that the people who buy this sort of thing are, to quote Fitzgerald, very different from you and me. ("Yes. They have more money." --E. Hemingway)]

I've also ordered a decent case. It is bright blue, and looks like a tiny cello hard case, complete with wheels. It's being shipped to my parents because the seller wouldn't ship it internationally, and from there to here. Hopefully it will get here not too much later than the instrument itself. Also, hopefully the viola will fit into the case. The thing about violas is that there is no standard size viola, unlike for the violin or cello. It's just sort of "for best sound, make it as big as you can handle."

My actual playing continues to improve, I suppose. Fixing my posture fixes a bit of the bow bounce, and relaxing my hand fixes some more of it. I am now at the point where I have to take the various techniques I've been learning and apply them to music, which is of course harder than just doing them individually. I have some faith that I'll get there. Eventually. In the meantime I run through a lot of left-hand exercises, because I'm relatively good at those.

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Other news, noted mostly so I'll have a record of it: E has been mildly ill for the past week, and I have a sneaking suspicion it's getting to me as well. I've had a stuffy nose since about Thursday. As of today I have the sore throat of sinus drain. Bleh.

Also, a week ago last Friday I started having pain in my right foot when I stand on it. I'm blaming this on having done something weird to my hip and having that affect the nerve running down to the foot. Stretching seems to help, as does staying off it. The trouble with staying off it is that it means I can't use my office, since my desk requires standing.

If the foot isn't better by later this week I'll look into seeing a doctor, I guess. I ought to find one of those anyway.

The internet has been down since last night and I seem to have picked up a head cold at VCon last weekend. Blergh. On the bright side, I can leach internet from my phone as long as I don't overdo it, and the head-cold symptoms respond well to tylenol-sinus.

What are you currently reading?

Tiassa by Steven Brust, for the third time. Tiassa is my favorite of the Dragaera books, and in my top five of Steve's books overall. (Agyar, then Tiassa and Freedom & Necessity and Sun Moon & Stars fighting for second place, then either Taltos or The Phoenix Guards depending on how I'm feeling that day.)

What did you recently finish reading?

Iorich, also for the third time, I think. I mean, I read it when it came out, and I almost certainly reread it when Tiassa came out. I remembered basically nothing about it, though, which is an uncomfortable situation for me to be in with regards to a Dragaera book. (I've read all the books up through Issola enough times that they're imprinted in my memory, and I know Dzur and Jhegaala reasonably well.) Iorich is a perfectly decent Vlad book. It's not a triumph of intricate structure the way Tiassa and Taltos are, but it's got a solid mystery/conspiracy plot, plenty of snark, and some thinky thoughts about justice and law.

I also read Karl Schroeder's Ventus, because what was supposed to be a brief trip to the vet ended up as a three-hour tour of West Van and it was what I opened to on my phone. Nanotech terraforming space-opera that kept packing on more stuff until by the end I just wanted it to come to a resolution already. Unlike with Neal Stephenson I never felt like Schroeder had lost control of the Cool Stuff he was flooding the book with, and indeed it does all resolve quite well. I just... had hit my saturation point by about two-thirds in. Still quite good and worth reading, and I'll dig into the prequel Lady Of Mazes one of these days.

What do you think you'll read next?

Hawk, because it shipped yesterday. *happydance* (Which is why I'm rereading Iorich and Tiassa.)

After that I will finally get into Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, Winner Of All The Awards, because I've been meaning to for well over a month and because Ancillary Sword shipped on Monday.

Went out to the aquarium with Steph and uilos in the rain on Sunday, which was great fun: light-up jellyfish! adorable otters! the octopus!. Also probably an error in judgement, since I've spent the rest of the week in a sinus-infected fog. I've been self-medicating with lots of tea and honey, which tastes faintly terrible but does stop my throat from hurting. It all tipped over from "muzzy" to "miserable" sometime last night. Hoping it's on the upswing now.

Lots of stuff going on this week. Got our official Landing paperwork, which will make us permanent residents. It will likely not be acted on until late May, since they recommend you not travel out of the country between the time you land and the time you actually get your permanent resident card, and Feb thru May is when we do most of our travel. Still, that's ... somewhere between "a relief" and "exciting."

Also received an invite to an invite-only gaming convention in Niagara in mid-April, and started looking seriously at the amount of time I'm taking off work in the next few months. It's ... excessive. Twenty days in three and a half months. I think it'll be good for me, though. First up: the week-long Sun Trip at the end of February to ... somewhere as yet undetermined. I suppose I should get on with determining that.