Things I Know I Know

I've been looking for a new house on and off since last March. This is my record so far:

--House on the market for 2 months. The second time I go to look at it someone else arrives to look at it while I'm there and puts in an offer on the spot. This house was totally my dream house, but the people who bought it paid more than I could have reasonably afforded to pay for it.
--House on the market for a month. I go to see it three times (because it's a nice house, but the yard isn't perfect). I put in an offer. The owners refuse to sell it to me. Two months later they sell it for exactly what I offered them (this turned out to actually be good for me because two weeks after I put in that offer John Henry broke his leg and thank god I wasn't trying to move, but still...)
--House on the market for a month. I go to see it twice. Small but very nice, needs a few improvements. Very affordably priced (but not for everyone, for one thing there is no shower anywhere in the house and no way to put one in except to add a whole new bathroom). Yesterday, I put an offer on it. Someone else put an offer on it five hours earlier.

This does not count the houses I looked at but didn't put offers on. Last year the market was fairly hot, but this year it is very slow. There are something like twice as many houses on the market as there usually are this time of year. People need to stop buying my houses.

Posted by debco at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That except for shelves and cupboards, I use the following pieces of furniture in my house: desk chair desk, couch, bed.

So, really, I could get along with a lot less furniture than I currently have.

Posted by debco at 09:30 PM | Permalink

Because I am getting upwards of 800 attempts to post spam comments a day (gee, what would it be like if this blog were actually read by more than fifteen or so people) I have instituted a feature that sends everything to moderation if there are any links (including the link that you put in the URL request box). If you don't include links you should still go right through.

Sorry, but it's like having hordes of rodents constantly trying to get over your fence and into your back yard.

Posted by debco at 08:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know, I never remember where I find this stuff because by the time I get around to blogging it it's been sitting on my browser for three or four days.

But, anyway, here's a blog that talks about astronomy for science fiction writers:

What's a G-type star, anyhow? So of course you want your stellar navigators and scientists to talk knowledgeably about types of stars. Since I previously blogged on the properties of stars, it might be a good time to talk about what those funny letter-number codes mean. What's a G-type star, and how does it differ from an A-type? What does B4 V mean, and is it very much different from B4 III?

Back in the Old Days (tm), people would study the light from stars, noting how stars would have patterns of light and dark in their spectra. The main differences causing those patters are the surface temperature and the composition of a star. The job of separating out the spectra of stars into classes fell largely to a group of women at Harvard University; they began by putting them in classes A, B, C, et cetera according to the presence or absence of spectral lines that were characteristic of various elements. A lady named Annie Jump Cannon, however, realized that by and large, the composition of stars were very similar, and so the categories that truly mattered were the temperatures. She went back through their categories, and sorted them out from highest to lowest temperature.

Posted by debco at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have been looking at this all day and find it utterly fascinating.

The photographs are from a project to photograph one hundred 100 square foot flats in Hong Kong's oldest public housing projects.

It doesn't surprise me that people can live in a 10 x 10 foot room--bedroom, living room, kitchen, everything. I am fascinated by the ways in which each room is deeply personal as well as the things they have in common (television, fan, bunk beds, wall clock).

Posted by debco at 09:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have cancelled my hotel reservation for Wiscon and I won't be going this weekend :-(

I will miss finally meeting people I know online and I'm sure it will be fun for all. I decided that I've had the dogs in the kennel twice this month already . Both of them have been sick (John Henry while not at the kennel and Billie at the kennel--though not because she was at the kennel). They're both fine now, but Billie has had a couple of small seizures this last week and I think (in my crackpot theory way) that being sick messed up her medication balances and it's taken her a bit to get back on track again. And now I want her to stay on track for awhile.

Anyway, have fun. Send me many links to pictures and descriptions of the many great things you are all doing. I will post pictures of my dogs and maybe get some writing done.

Posted by debco at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

--You know that part of the story where you have to figure out what is actually and specifically going on? I'm at that part with about three stories right now. Good news though, when I figure it out, I'll have three more stories finished.

--Got the contracts for Chainsaw on Hand from Asimov's on Friday. I know that it says something deeply disturbing about me that I hadn't realized I hadn't gotten them yet.

--Sent the whiny white professor story to Interfictions. Someone needs to love this story because--have I mentioned this before--this story is awesome! :-)

Posted by debco at 07:52 PM | Permalink

Seventy to ninety trains a day go through Ames, IA. When I tell people this--including people who actually live in Ames--they hardly ever believe me, but it's true. There are two different sets of train tracks so really, that's only about three trains an hour on each track, twenty-four hours a day. This morning when I was sitting in the park with Billie, five trains went through in the space of forty minutes. Sometimes there are two trains at once, which is a bitch if you're running errands at lunch and you have to sit through two entire trains. There are very few over/underpasses. Most of the crossings are at-grade. There are actually very few accidents--and this, even though one of the crossings has a fairly nasty traffic flow.

But, when I'm driving through town, one of my decision points is when to cross the railroad tracks--if I can go one way and cross right away and a different way and cross later, I will always choose to cross right away because odds are if I wait, there will be a train.

Posted by debco at 07:32 PM | Permalink

ME: I sent my check six days before it was due and you charged me a late fee. What's up with that?

THEM: Well, really it was only five working days

[Note from me: well, really not because the USPS actually works on Saturday].

THEM: And, plus, it takes six to eight working days for your payment to get to us.

ME: It takes six to eight working days for mail to get from Iowa to Missouri?

THEM: Yes.

ME: You've got to be kidding me.

THEM: Oh no, it's totally true.

ME: If I send mail to a person's house in St. Louis it takes, like, two to three days.

THEM: Well, it takes six to eight days to get to us.

ME: So, do you, like, let it sit around in a room for four or five days?

THEM: Absolutely not. It takes six to eight days to be delivered to us.

ME: So it takes longer to deliver mail to a business than to a residence?

THEM: Apparently [No, really, she actually said this part]

ME: How would I know this totally out-of-whack and unpredictable thing?

THEM: You should call us and ask us.

ME: Why would I expect mail to you to be totally out of whack with the entire rest of the world and therefore know that I should call you and ask you how totally out of whack your mail delivery is?

THEM: Well, you should pay over the phone or online.

ME: I can't pay online because your webpage is totally hosed up.

THEM: That's a feature. It's for your security.

ME: Well, it's totally working.

To her credit she was a) reasonably nice to me the whole time even when I was laughing at her mail delivery statistics and b) agreed to waive the late fee--just this one time, you understand because now I totally know that it takes days and days for mail to travel to St. Louis.

I find this most frustrating because this is my credit union credit card and my credit union used to have the Best Credit Card Ever. It had no rewards, no special promotions, no cool shiny things. It also was not trying to make all its money off charging me stupid and outrageous fees, messing with the due date (the current credit card people change the billing due date every single month). It was a low interest credit card that let me charge things and pay for them at the end of the month. It had grace periods for paying and months with no payment and a simple clear bill. It was 950 times better than any other credit card I ever had and I loved it. That credit card was all about the customer and not all about the money that can be made off the customer, like every other credit card on Earth.

When I told the credit union (which I like very very much except for this credit card thing) how much I loved the old card and how much I don't love the new card, they said--well other people wanted rewards and therefore were not happy with the old card. I said, yeah, it didn't occur to me that I needed to call you up and tell you how much I loved my old card and now it's too late :-(

So, the lesson here is that if some organization is doing something you really like, call them right now and tell them you really like it--because some idiot is out there at this very moment complaining about it and if you're not careful you too could be having conversations like the one above.

Posted by debco at 06:32 PM | Permalink

I spent most of last week in Gainesville, Florida at a technology conference. We stayed here, which is right on the University of Florida campus. Also on the University of Florida campus is a lake with alligators.

Now, it seems to me that if you had to list the top ten things that should not be mixed together, college students and alligators would be right up near the top of the list. I guess they don't lose a lot of students, but man, we just have ground squirrels and rabbits on our campus. I walked around the lake one afternoon while I was there and I have to say I was sorta creeped out by the whole alligators right there in the water thing.

The other night, after I got back from the conference, I was watching Miami Animal Precinct on Animal Planet. A man was called in to remove an alligator from a sinkhole at Monkey Jungle (I don't think that was really the name, but it was some tourist attraction that involved lots and lots of monkeys). Apparently they had bought the alligator several years ago as a tourist attraction (in case the monkeys weren't interesting enough) and now it was big and cranky and they were afraid they were going to start losing monkeys (or college students).

So this, I swear, is how you catch a gator in a sinkhole:

First, you put a ladder in the sinkhole, at which the gator disappears because apparently it knows what's coming. Then you and your two assistants go down in the sinkhole and take off your shoes (because it's a sinkhole and it's muddy). Then, you get in the water (yes, that's right, in the water with the monkey-eating alligator) and you start feeling around with your feet for the gator (it is at this point that I said to the television--'Oh my God!'). This occasionally pisses the gator off.

When, in your careful feeling around, you actually touch the gator, you next need to determine (and I'm thinking pretty damn quick) whether you are touching the gator head or the gator tail. If you are touching the gator head, you carefully determine which direction the gator tail is in because you actually want the gator tail, not the gator head (for, I would think, obvious reasons).

--And if you're wondering how I know all this, it's because the guy explained it to the camera while he was feeling around for the gator.--

When you get ahold of the gator tail you loop your rope around it and pull on the tail until the gator gets pissed off and its head comes up--he didn't say this, but I'm guessing it helps to know where the gator's head is before you do this as you wouldn't want your assistant to be standing right in gator jaw snapping territory. It's probably hard to get new assistants for this sort of thing. Anyway, when the gator's head comes up, you quick get a rope around it and voila, caught gator.

Yeah, I'm not taking this up as a profession anytime soon either.

This guy said he's caught over a hundred gators and never gotten bit (before this, because this gator actually did bite him--and an assistant.) And, having watched one other episode of Miami Animal Precinct I know that there are other ways to catch gators who are living in more open water and not in monkey-infested sinkholes. But seriously, you couldn't pay me.

Posted by debco at 08:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm re-reading West of Everything by Jane Tompkins, which I read several years ago and quite liked and which I still like and am getting new things out of since, like the river of Time, I am different than I was back then.

I will probably have several comments to make on it as I go (or then again I could drop out of sight once again and forget to post anything), but here's a good quote from early in the book on living in a Western (or, I would contend, living in a lot of genre worlds):

Ordinary work--in fact, ordinary life--is too much like shopping. It never embodies what the hero's struggle to get out of the blizzard embodies: the fully saturated moment. But this is not because life in the twentieth century involves people in all those transactions the Western hero traditionally rejects--the acquisition of material goods, the desire for social status, the search for luxuries, technology, laws, or institutions per se, but the sense that life under these conditions isn't going anywhere. If Westerns seem to long for the out-of-doors, for a simplified social existence, for blizzards and shoot-outs and fabulous exploits, it isn't because their readers want to give up TV and computers and fast foods and go back to life on the frontier. It's that life on the frontier is a way of imagining the self in a boundary situation--a place that will put you to some kind of ultimate test. What distinguishes the life of the L'Amour hero from that of his readers isn't that he can build a fire in the snow, kill ten bandits with six bullets, or get on his horse and ride out of town whenever he wants to; it is that he never fritters away his time. Whatever he does, he gives it everything he's got because he's always in a situation where everything he's got is the necessary minimum.

I think this gets at the thing (and much better than I've ever said it) that I'm always trying to talk about when I talk about characters who do things that matter (not necessarily 'perfect heroes;" I'm totally in favor of flawed and complex characters). Mainstream and literary fiction, even when well-written, often seem to me about people doing things that make no impact on the world. I live my whole life making no impact on the world--I don't want to spend my precious reading time reading about my boring stupid life. And I think that it may also be related to why I find alot of current F&SF so tedious. There's too much something that feels to me like navel-gazing rather than engaging in doing things that matter (and I'm not going to make a sort of attempt to define 'things that matter' except to say I know it when I see it). I read more non-fiction these days--non-fiction tends to be about people doing things that matter.

Posted by debco at 08:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)