Corylea

Why I haven't been around

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 20:17:57 GMT

My parents are 89 (mother) and 90 (father). They're frail and are not really safe anymore, staying where they are, especially since they live in the country, so they have an enormous lawn to mow and no neighbors close enough to hear them if they cry out.

I've been trying to get them to move into assisted living for several years now, and they've finally agreed to go. But they're putting up all kinds of roadblocks (as one does when procrastinating on doing something one does NOT want to do).

I'm not in good enough health, myself, to drive 400 miles to where they are to help them; luckily my younger cousin has been going there to assist. But there are lots of things that need doing that don't require a physical presence, and I've been assisting with those things. One of those things is mediating between my parents and my cousin, because my cousin wants to take over and do everything HER way, but my mother still has most of her marbles, and she naturally wants her house and her life taken care of in her way.

All of this is exhausting and stressful, and when I'm not helping with my parents' move, I'm generally hiding from the world because I'm overwhelmed. So I apologize if I haven't read your news or answered your email, but I'm maxxed out at the moment.

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New Story -- "The Undercover Symphony"

Wed, 07 Sep 2022 18:32:51 GMT

On my birthday, back in March, a reader on AO3 left a very long, very detailed comment on her favorite of my stories as a birthday gift. This meant that she:

1. Looked up when my birthday was.
2. Remembered when my birthday was.
3. Wrote a long and detailed comment.
4. Since English is not her native tongue, she also wrote in a language not her own.

I asked when HER birthday was, and it's tomorrow, so today I posted a story written especially for her as a birthday gift (today, since I'm hoping she has better things to do tomorrow than read fan fiction. I mean, I love fan fiction, but interacting with real people who love you IS better. :-D) The story is "The Undercover Symphony."

This is mostly a regular Star Trek story, though I did include an OFC with a small role in the story as a stand-in for the recipient. So there's a teeny bit of Mary Sue in there, but the OFC isn't a Mary Sue for ME, and I think/hope she's not obnoxious. :-)

This one is about 14,000 words, so it's a little longer than my usual, though it still takes less than an hour to read, even with my always ridiculously voluminous author's notes. :-)

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Nichelle Nichols has died

Sun, 31 Jul 2022 21:15:03 GMT

Even though we knew this day was coming, it's still very sad. Still, a life well lived is a beautiful thing, and Ms. Nichols did so very much with her life, not just in the performing arts but also as a NASA recruiter. The number of people she inspired is huge, and the effect she had was profound, especially -- but not exclusively -- on women and people of color.

Thank you, Ms. Nichols, for making the world a better place through your actions and your example. We should all be so lucky as to have an effect on the world as excellent as your own.

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Helping women get abortions

Sat, 25 Jun 2022 18:06:28 GMT

In the wake of the awful Supreme Court decision, I've sent $100 to The Brigid Alliance, which helps women get abortions by providing transportation, lodging, child care, and whatever else it takes to help a woman get from where she is to an abortion provider.

If you were wondering how to help people impacted by the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, this is a thing you can do if you have the funds. I found out about the organization via the Future Crunch newsletter.

In personal news, I continue to feel as if I have a cold. Thank you, vaccine and Paxlovid, for making my Covid experience so much less severe than that of so many people.

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I've got Covid

Fri, 24 Jun 2022 18:58:54 GMT

Norman's and my 16-year-old niece came to visit recently. She's a lovely girl, and it was great to see her. Norman wanted to take her out to a Thai restaurant while she was here, even though the place is small and poorly ventilated. I was uneasy about this, but most of the restaurant's business is take-out, and I thought maybe it would be okay.

It wasn't. My throat started feeling sore yesterday, and I'm coughing and blowing my nose today, so I took an at-home Covid test, and it's positive.

So far, it just feels like a cold. I've called my doctor's office to see if I can get some Paxlovid, since I fall into SEVERAL high-risk groups. The receptionist said the nurse would call me back, so I'm waiting for that.

I should have listened to myself when I felt uneasy, but Norman really wanted to go to the restaurant. When will I learn to stop letting him override my best judgment? He always seems so much surer of himself than I am of myself -- thank you, female socialization. And he's from a much higher social class than I am; his father was a professor with a PhD; mine was a mechanic with a high school diploma. I've spent a lot of my life deferring to Norman when I shouldn't. I hope that doesn't end up killing me. :-)

Update: I waited two hours for my doctor's office to call me back, and when they finally did, they told me to go to Mass.gov and have a telehealth appointment with them to get some Paxlovid. Funny, I thought my doctor's office was where I went to get meds, not the government! Sheesh. Still, the prescription is in the process of being filled at my local pharmacy, so I should have some tonight.

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Feeling like crap but writing anyway

Tue, 05 Apr 2022 21:09:51 GMT

I'm very sleepy today and am not nearly sharp enough to write ... but I've written a little storylet anyway.

When I feel crummy, I usually read fan fiction, because it's generally not very demanding, which is perfect for when I'm ill or just very low in energy or spoons.

Today I read one too many stories where All of Vulcan Hates Spock or Spock Never Had a Friend Until Jim Kirk or Spock Is Bullied Relentlessly By Everyone FOREVER, and I finally SNAPPED.

What I've written is more like the outline of a story than an actual story -- I'm not clear-minded enough to write well -- but at least it's an opposing view. :-)

The storylet is "Popular with the Girls," if you want to read it.

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Interesting Times

Fri, 20 Aug 2021 19:35:23 GMT

They say there's a Chinese curse that goes, "May you live in interesting times." I don't know if there really is, but times have been interesting in a Chinese-curse way lately.

Norman's and my 10-year-old niece, Aria, had her appendix burst on the day that her whole family plus Norman were supposed to go on a family vacation in the Adirondacks. Instead, Aria went to the hospital, and Norman went to his sister's house to watch Aria's twin brother, so Aria's parents could be with her in the hospital.

She was on intravenous antibiotics for more than a week and couldn't eat or drink for nearly a week; in the age before intravenous hydration, she'd have died. She had complications from surgery, so she had to have a second surgery to address those complications and to remove the pockets of infection that the first surgery missed. She spent 12 days in the hospital and was very sick, poor thing. She's back home now, though, and seems to be doing well, which is a great relief for all of us.

While Norman was gone, our air conditioner broke down. Like many modern appliances, our air conditioner has a computer that's supposed to report what's wrong with it, so the repairman can replace the defective part. Our air conditioner's computer reported "none of the above." Gee, how helpful!

It took a week for the repairman to come, and he seemed very discombobulated by not having the problem spelled out for him. Repairmen used to be like physicians -- they looked at the symptoms and figured out the problem from that -- but now they just do whatever the computer tells them to do and don't actually know how to diagnose a problem. After several hours of poking around, the repairman decided that BOTH of the fans on the central unit had failed at the same time. This seems unlikely to Norman and me, since the unit is only four years old and is under warranty for five, so the fans should be made to last at least five years. And TWO of them failed AT ONCE?

In any case, the repairman had no replacement fans and couldn't get any for two weeks. So the A/C has been broken since August 7th, and we're not scheduled to see the repairman again until the 26th. IF he manages to get the fans by then, and IF the fans really are the problem, then we should get the %$#@ thing repaired three weeks after it stopped working. In August. If he can't get the fans, or if the fans aren't what's wrong, then who knows when it might be repaired?

To add insult to injury, the A/C repairman who failed to fix our machine gave me a cold while he was here. It laid me flat for a couple of days, then went away, which is not the usual course of a cold for me. That makes me wonder if perhaps it was Covid, which my vaccination vanquished after a couple of days of fighting. In any case, I seem to have recovered from whatever it was.

I'm wildly over-sensitive to heat, to a degree that people who've never met me in real life have a hard time believing. I lose half my brain and become lethargic and cranky at anything over 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 C), and yes, I know that's bizarre and extreme. My grandmother was the same way, and I seem to have been unfortunate enough to inherit her genes.

This means that the A/C isn't a minor matter for me; it's a necessity for me to be able to sleep at night or to cook dinner or to be able to have my mind with me basically at all. When we got the central air conditioner four years ago, Norman wanted to get rid of all of our window air conditioners. I insisted that we keep one for emergencies, which he thought was crazy. Well, I'm not looking so crazy now.

Norman put our one remaining window unit in my bedroom when he came home from his sister's house, so I've been cool enough to sleep at night for the past few nights (although it's really horribly noisy). Norman is not sleeping well at night and has put a mattress on my floor, so he can sleep in the air conditioning if he needs to. He hasn't actually slept there yet, because he doesn't want to listen to my CPAP machine all night, but I'm having trouble sleeping because I keep waiting for him to come in. So even with the A/C in my room, I'm not sleeping as well as I might, though I AM very grateful to have it.

We're living on frozen dinners, because we don't want to cook and add heat to the house. And I haven't been able to exercise! I had been so proud and happy to have developed an exercise habit just a couple of months ago, but I can't exercise when it's 90 degrees with 90% humidity, so I haven't been able to do more than ten minutes a day since the A/C went out. I'm really bummed about that; it feels so unfair that I've FINALLY developed this good habit, only to have it snatched away from me.

My 88-year-old mother has been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, which means that her heart is beating wildly out of rhythm and too fast. She feels dizzy and exhausted all the time. They put her on medication to try to fix it, but that didn't work. They shocked her heart twice, but that didn't work. Now she's on a new type of medication, to try to strengthen her heart before they try shocking it a third time. I'm very worried about her, but it's hard to get information out of her. Half of the time, she doesn't feel well enough to talk on the phone; the other half of the time, she deliberately minimizes what's going on with her so as not to worry me. I keep telling her that I'll worry LESS if I have ALL the information, but that doesn't seem to sink in.

My cousin, who has a tendency towards drama that sometimes manifests itself in confabulation*, told me today, "Your mother will be dead by Thanksgiving." Gee, thanks, Rayna. That helps so much. I mean, it might be true, but she doesn't know that, and thinking that way isn't really helpful.

Yep, interesting times. But probably not interesting to read. Sorry! I haven't really got the energy to be interesting to read right now...

*Someone who confabulates makes things up, but they aren't deliberately lying; they believe the fairy tale that their mind has created.

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A new story

Wed, 23 Jun 2021 18:22:00 GMT

Most of the people who write Star Trek stories that include telepathic mating bonds between a Vulcan and a human make those bonds magically perfect. Well, you know me -- I think magically perfect isn't a feature of any relationship, and marrying outside of your species will come with challenges that must be overcome. Of course, overcoming those challenges is definitely worth it when the prize is Spock. :-)

The story is called "Amanda Speaks," it's around 2000 words, and if you're interested in reading it, you can find it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32137483.

This is mostly a corrective to other fan fiction, so if you don't read much Trek fanfic, this might seem weird. But then, I DID choose "Weird Little Stories" for my pen name for a reason. :-)

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Insomnia causes my own zombie apocalypse

Sat, 24 Apr 2021 14:53:57 GMT

I've been quiet for the past couple of months -- I haven't even managed to answer all of my birthday e-mail, for which I apologize -- because I've been sleeping horribly for the past couple of months. I'm managing four hours of sleep, then dragging through my day in a daze. I can't even consult my doctor about it, because my doctor quit the practice, and now I have to find a new one. If I'm ever actually awake enough to do that.

Anyone local have a doctor or nurse practitioner they recommend? Someone who sees middle-aged obese women as actual human beings would be preferred.

In GOOD news, I'll be fully vaccinated on Thursday afternoon. (I was eligible for a shot early because of having cancer twice in the past five years.) If I ever get some actual SLEEP, I want to go to the library and the park, now that I'm about to become eligible to leave the house.

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Thanks for the birthday wishes ... boom!

Fri, 02 Apr 2021 20:30:05 GMT

Thanks so much to everyone who wished me a happy birthday; I really appreciate it!

I got vaccinated the day after my birthday and became a zombie for several days as a result, which is why I haven't been able to give folks individual replies yet.

I told my husband that I hated not being able to DO anything, and he replied, "You are doing something; you're building immunity!"

I guess there's more than one reason why I keep him around. :-)

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I got vaccinated yesterday!

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 19:16:50 GMT

Yesterday, I got my first shot of Covid vaccine (Pfizer). Since I've had cancer TWICE in the past five years, I'm "lucky" enough to get my shot before the general public.

The day before yesterday was my birthday, so what a great birthday present!

I'm gonna tell you about it in some detail, so those of you who haven't been vaccinated yet will know what to expect.

The mass testing site was well organized, and everything on the medical end went smoothly.

The first thing they did was make us sanitize our hands. Then they verified our appointments. Then they made us take off whatever mask we'd walked in with and put on one of theirs. I guess they didn't want to have to individually evaluate everyone's mask, but the mask they made me take off was actually much better than the mask they gave me, since mine had a nose wire, whereas theirs gapped around the nose and eyes.

There was a large space for people to wait in line, with marks on the floor to make sure the line was socially distanced. But actually, there was no waiting in line; by the time I'd walked and walked down the entire waiting area, there was no one in front of me.

The nurses were very sweet, and the shot didn't hurt at all. The needle they used was so very thin that I actually didn't feel the needle go in. I thought for a minute that they hadn't even given me the shot, but since the nurse was putting a band-aid on my arm, it was clear that SHE thought she had. I actually half wondered if she'd somehow missed my arm, and I was grateful when my arm was a little sore several hours later, so I know I actually did get it. :-)

The bad part is that I had to get the shot in a mass inoculation facility that's in the city of Boston. That means that there's no parking nearby, and one has to take the subway to get there. It turns out that there's exactly ZERO social distancing on the subway! All these people are packed into a small metal container without much ventilation, breathing each other's air. And on the way home, I had a lousy mask.

If I get Covid from the subway because I went to get the vaccine, I will be royally PISSED! I've been staying home and being extremely careful for an entire year now, and to get Covid by taking the subway to the vaccination would be the bitterest irony.

Twenty-four hours after the shot, my only side effect so far is a slightly sore arm, but the other side effects usually take a couple of days to develop.

I'm hearing some reports of very weird responses to the vaccine, so I'm waiting to see what mine will be. My mother said that the foot she had operated on twenty years ago started to hurt again and the tooth she had pulled ten years ago started to hurt again, and basically every site on her body that had had surgery or severe injury hurt all over again! It only lasted for a couple of days, and then it all went away. What, the immune system went and checked out past sites where it had had to do a lot of work? Sounds weird, but there you go. :-)

My cousin (daughter of mother's sister), on the other hand, said she had vomiting and diarrhea for three days after the first shot and for TEN days after the second. She said it didn't start until ten days after the shot. If it had only happened once, I'd think she'd just gotten stomach flu, but she said it happened both times.

I think I'll hope I take after Daddy's side of the family! :-)

So, the good news is I've had my first shot; the bad news is I'm waiting to see if I got Covid on the subway.

Those of you who are afraid of needles, please note: The shot didn't hurt AT ALL!

Here's hoping all of you will be vaccinated soon!

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Happy Birthday, Captain Kirk!

Mon, 22 Mar 2021 23:34:33 GMT

Today is William Shatner's 90th birthday! And since Captain Kirk was given the birthday of the actor who played him, it's also Kirk's birthday. (That's TOS Kirk. Reboot Kirk was evidently born prematurely.)

I quickly cobbled together a little story for the occasion; it's "Happy Birthday, Captain Kirk!"

While Spock has always been my favorite character, I do appreciate the heck out of Kirk, and I have to appreciate the longevity of an actor who's still working at the age of NINETY!

Leonard Nimoy's birthday is four days from now, and my own birthday is halfway in between that of Mr. Shatner and Mr. Nimoy. So, really, I was DESTINED to love Star Trek. :-)

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New Story -- "Unconditional"

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 18:12:27 GMT

I've posted a very short story for Valentine's Day, "Unconditional".

Every Valentine's Day, Star Trek fans post lots of stories where Spock is taught that he HAS to make a grand romantic gesture for Valentine's Day. Those always leave a bad taste in my mouth. Spock's culture views the public expression of emotion as a terrible infraction, and asking someone to go against their own culture for something as completely frivolous and unnecessary as Valentine's Day ... yuck.

So of course I had to do something different. I spent several years as a professor, and I guess I never managed to get all of the chalk dust out of my blood, because my stories usually have tiny lessons tucked inside. But then, it's not truly Star Trek unless there's a message somewhere, so I'm firmly within Trek tradition. :-)

If anybody reads the story, I hope you enjoy it.

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Well, THAT was scary!

Mon, 08 Feb 2021 06:42:11 GMT

I tried to take a multivitamin tonight, and it got stuck in my throat. I vomited while trying to get it to go up or down, then breathed in some of the vomit. I kept trying to cough up the vomitus, but that just made me vomit more.

There was a while there when I couldn't breathe at all, then many minutes when I could only breathe by gasping as hard as I could while my chest made crackling sounds. I was gasping so hard that my mastectomy scar was pulled as tight as possible and wasn't letting me expand my chest as much as I needed. Norman kept wanting me to explain what was happening, but I didn't have enough breath for talking; he finally brought me paper and pen.

I'm still coughing, and it's probably good for my lungs to cough this stuff out, but I'm afraid of getting back into the state where I couldn't breathe at all.

The wife of a friend of mine died when she aspirated some vomit in her sleep, so I'm a little nervous about going to sleep tonight ... which is why I'm still up at 1:38 a.m. I did try lying down, but I kept coughing, so I don't think there will be any sleep tonight.

Norman called my doctor's after-hours Urgent Care line for advice, but all they wanted to do was make sure I didn't have Covid-19.

So that's my adventure for tonight. Hope your night was quieter!

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Happy Winter Solstice!

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 23:04:33 GMT

I'm extremely ready for the days to start getting longer and for the light to return, though I think the light won't truly return until noon of January 20th. :-)

Happy Yule to all my Pagan friends!

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New Story -- "Insignificant Differences"

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 23:24:00 GMT

I'm feeling a bit better than I was the last time I posted, but then, there was nowhere to go but up. :-)

Today I wrote a story — written, edited, and posted all in one day. It's only 1500 words, and it's not exactly deep — or maybe it's just profound in its simplicity :-) — but any day where I feel good enough to write even a bit of fluff is a good day. Especially since what I'd planned on doing today was the laundry. :-)

It's "Insignificant Differences."

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I hate so much that I even hate myself

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 18:36:48 GMT

I've been so full of HATRED lately that I can barely stand to exist in my own skin.

I usually try to understand people, but I don't want to try to understand conservatives anymore. When it's reached the point where HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of Americans are dying because of the intentional misinformation of the conservative media and the intentional neglect of the pandemic by the man in the Oval Office, then those people aren't just misguided, they're actively EVIL.

I know that a policeman's job is difficult, and they have to make split-second decisions about whether or not they're in peril of their lives. But when Black person after Black person gets shot by cops when White people in the same circumstances don't, I don't want to try to understand how hard it is to be a cop anymore.

My mother's sister is a Trump voter. My mother is a lifelong Republican who loathes and despises Trump and who's planning to vote Democratic for the first time in her life, at the age of 87. She won't talk to her sister about the election, because she "doesn't want to cause a rift in the family." I want to bop both of them over the head and tell them to GET A CLUE.

I really hate being so full of anger and hatred. I feel as if I can barely breathe for all the anger and hatred that's choking me. I don't plan on hurting anyone, but even so, the intensity and the awfulness of these feelings still scare me. I feel as if I'm not myself anymore, as if I'm becoming someone I do not like.

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Allie Brosh's new book -- "Solutions and Other Problems" -- is very sad

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 18:11:14 GMT

Allie Brosh's previous book, Hyperbole and a Half, was so funny that I laughed until I couldn't breathe. It was also so TRUE that I was hugely impressed by the author's unflinching honesty.

Brosch released a new book on Tuesday -- Solutions and Other Problems -- and the unflinching honesty is still there, but the humor mostly is NOT. It's not surprising that Brosh isn't really up to humor right now, since the past five years have included the breakup of her marriage, massive medical problems, and the untimely death of her younger sister. I'm sorry for all she's been through, and I wish her well.

But if you were hoping for a book to take your mind off of the pandemic, this book is not it.

Notice that the Amazon review giving the book five stars and talking about the book's wonderfulness was published TWO YEARS BEFORE THE BOOK CAME OUT.

(Personal note: I've been doing quite badly lately, so if I haven't replied to something you said, I apologize.)

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Happy Star Trek Day!

Tue, 08 Sep 2020 18:48:12 GMT

Today is the 54th anniversary of the first broadcast of Star Trek.

1. If anybody's reading "An Embarrassing Savior," I uploaded Chapter 5 today. I had intended to refrain from posting updates to this story until it was complete, but I had Chapter 5 ready on Star Trek Day and just couldn't manage to sit on my hands. :-)

2. CBS is having events all day, including panels for all the shows and streaming episodes; you can find out more at www.startrek.com/day. It's kind of weird that NBC was the network that bought and broadcast TOS, but today Star Trek -- including TOS -- is owned by CBS. But then, a lot can happen in 54 years...

3. On Sept. 8, for every person who tweets #StarTrekUnitedGives, CBS will donate $1 to organizations who champion equality, social justice and scientific progress. Organizations include the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) and the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI).

4. I wish people didn't celebrate the anniversary of TOS by watching "The Man Trap," which is neither the first episode made, nor the strongest episode, nor the most representative.

The first episode made was "Where No Man Has Gone Before," which is a totally worthy episode. (Yes, I know "The Cage" was made before that, but since it features an entirely different set of characters, it IS Star Trek, but it's not representative of TOS.)

Most people agree that the strongest episode of TOS was "The City on the Edge of Forever," though I, personally, disagree.

And I think the most representative episode of TOS is "The Devil in the Dark," which has just as relevant of a message today as the day it was made, and has a far lighter touch with the message than most episodes of TOS -- or Star Trek in general -- managed.

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"Meals on Heels" -- Drag Queens Deliver Take-Out

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 17:48:23 GMT

Everybody knows that restaurants and small theaters are in trouble nowadays. Well, a San Francisco club owner had a bright idea that has put a few of his usual performers back to work -- delivering take-out meals and giving a three-minute performance as a drag queen. They call it "Meals on Heels."

You gotta love San Francisco. :-)

I read about it in The Washington Post. (I subscribe to the Post, so I don't know if the article is visible to non-subscribers or not.)

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The Starfleet Candidate

Fri, 21 Aug 2020 15:46:35 GMT

I burst into tears several times while watching Joe Biden's speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president. The past four years have been so incredibly painful, and that's been intensified in the past six months, as Trump's incompetence has resulted in the deaths of more than a hundred thousand of our fellow citizens. Some of that pain began to drain -- and even turned to hope -- as I watched Mr. Biden speak.

Among the last words of the speech were these: "Love is more powerful than hate. Hope is more powerful than fear. Light is more powerful than dark."

Okay, we all know that I'm a deranged Star Trek fan, but in those words, I could hear echoes of the speeches I've seen Kirk and Picard make. This may only make sense in my own peculiar mind, but to me, Joe Biden isn't just the Democratic candidate for president, he's also the Starfleet candidate.

I'm tired of living in the Mirror Universe; I want Joe to take us back to the real world. I think he can win, provided that Trump's cheating and attempts to steal the election are overcome.

If I believed in a god, I'd be praying with everything I am that Mr. Biden lives until November. Since I don't, I'll just be sending my stimulus check to his campaign. :-)

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Merging my obsessions

Sun, 03 May 2020 00:12:51 GMT

I think I mentioned that I'm currently obsessed with the first Sims game, because its world is so sweetly simple, and god, sweetly simple looks so wonderful right now. Because it's an older game, the graphics are fairly rudimentary, which means they're relatively easy for a non-artist like myself to alter. I've been re-coloring a lot of clothes for my sims, and last night I made a Starfleet uniform for my sim. (Of COURSE I did, right? :-D)

My Sims game comes with something called The Sims Creator, which lets you paste photographs of a real person onto a sim, which the program then tweaks to make them into sims that you can use in your game.

So maybe you'll recognize the people below:

To my eyes, Spock and Uhura are the two most beautiful people in Star Trek's original series (sorry, Jim!), so I simmed them first. But I may need to do them all, especially now that I have most of the uniforms. :-) (I put Uhura in pants, because the TOS female uniforms were ridiculous, so yeah, I'm aware that this isn't what she normally wore.)

Too bad I don't know anyone else who's currently playing The Sims 1, since I've hacked a lot of stuff to work better and made clothes and walls and whatnot. Devoted to a 54-year-old TV show and a 20-year-old computer game. God, I'm old. :-)

But hey, I'm proud of myself for learning how to hack Sims 1 items, which is a fairly esoteric skill. :-) The game's maker had coded the toilet so that it needed to be cleaned after every single use, which is just ridiculous. So I changed the coding so that it needs to be cleaned approximately weekly. This would be small potatoes for a computer jockey, but since I'm a psychologist, I get to feel proud of myself. :-)

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I've been hiding in my cave...

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 16:50:33 GMT

... like the hermit I am. :-)

I've been very anxious since all of this started, but not about the virus itself. No, I'm anxious about the weaknesses in our social fabric that the virus is revealing, and I'm anxious about the latitude an emergency gives to You-Know-Who to try to grab more power.

I usually try to understand people. I try to understand how fear pushes people to do stupid things, how old patterns lead people to shoot themselves in the foot, how someone's circumstances have led them to a different place than my circumstances have led me. But I simply HATE Trump. I can't give him the title of his office, because he does not deserve that office, and to give him a title held by such folk as Jefferson and Lincoln and Kennedy ... I just can't.

Trump's denial that there could be a problem has led to thousands of deaths. People who believe in an afterlife think that he'll pay for his self-centered inaction in the life to come, but since I don't believe in an afterlife, to me it seems that he's gotten away with mass murder. And the latest poll shows that 54% of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of issues. FIFTY-FOUR PERCENT? Just over half? Good lord, what's wrong with the other 46%? Who ARE these people?

So I'm mostly hiding from the news and from the world around me. I'm sorry that this has led me to hide from my friends, as well. But really, I wouldn't be good for your mental health, right about now.

I'm mostly playing The Sims these days. Not The Sims 4, or even #3 or #2. No, I'm playing the first one, because it shows us such a simple world and one in which no sim ever dies unless you take terrible care of them. And I don't. I take excellent care of my little people, and they lead happy lives. Even *I* know I'm engaging in displacement, but I need to, right now.

You'd think I'd be watching Star Trek, but it's clear to me that we're living in the Mirror Universe, so Star Trek no longer comforts me the way it used to. The idea that we diverged from the main universe when Trump was elected was kind of a joke, back in 2016, but now it simply seems true.

I'm in a rather bleak place when I'm not trying to get my sim to marry her girlfriend or trying to get her the skill points she needs for her next promotion, which is why I haven't been replying to e-mail or comments or doing much of anything. I'm sorry for being such a downer, but in a world where thousands of my fellow citizens have died unnecessarily and 46% of the population thinks that the man who allowed this to happen is doing a wonderful job ... I can't be here; I'm simply not strong enough.

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Free short story by Naomi Kritzer

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 16:32:02 GMT

Naomi Kritzer -- the author of the Hugo-winning short story "Cat Pictures, Please" -- has a new short story on the Tor website; it's "Little Free Library".

I enjoyed the story, though I DO have to wonder at the protagonist. I mean, who in their right mind gives away a Terry Pratchett book because she's never going to want to reread it? :-)

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The Most Decent

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 19:18:32 GMT

Although I'm currently living in Massachusetts, met my husband in upstate New York, and have lived in Chicago, California, and Virginia, I was born and raised in Delaware. When I mention this, the most common reaction I get is, "I drove through there once." Yes, Delaware is a place that people mostly pass through on their way to more interesting locations. :-) With our three -- count them, 3 -- Electoral College votes, I never thought that Delaware would be in a position to provide a presidential candidate to the nation. Well, live long enough, and you see just about everything. :-)

Joe Biden wasn't the smartest of the Democratic candidates running in the primaries this year; I'm pretty sure that was Elizabeth Warren. Joe Biden wasn't the most passionate of the Democratic candidates; I'm pretty sure that was Bernie Sanders. But Joe Biden has a bedrock decency and kindness and caring, and if you think that isn't important, then look at what's in the White House right now, and look at where it has gotten us.

Although I voted for Warren in the primary, I will be pleased and even proud -- not just as a former Delawarean but as an American -- to vote for Biden in November.

When Biden won so much on Super Tuesday, I sent him some money, which means that now he sends me e-mail. The e-mail he sent me today brought a tear to my eye. He said, In part:

We will not defeat Donald Trump by being like Donald Trump. We won’t win with division, cruelty, or appealing to the worst in us. We’ll win with compassion, humanity, humility, and joy. We’ll win by being a campaign that brings Americans together -- a campaign that shows decency, but also determination. A campaign that shows humanity, but also grit. And in the end: we will show the country that a better future is possible.

Around this country right now, there are people stepping up to the call of a crisis. Nurses with nothing but garbage bags to protect them -- but they go into work anyway. Environmental Services workers -- like the one Jill spoke to just this morning in Chicago -- keeping our hospitals safe without attention or little appreciation -- but they work around the clock anyway. Teachers leading classes remotely, while balancing their own families at home -- but they teach anyway. There are grocery store workers and food delivery people paid far too little for the work they do - but they do it anyway.

It’s amazing who we are. I have talked a lot in this campaign about the Soul of America. Well -- we are seeing the soul of the nation on display every day in this crisis. Courage. Bravery. Selflessness. A commitment to something bigger than ourselves. That’s who we are. And it makes me so damn proud of America. And those are the things that make me so damn proud to be our party’s nominee.

So, yes: we’re going to defeat Donald Trump. But once we do that, we’re going to tackle the climate crisis head-on. We’re going to make health care accessible and affordable to everyone. We’re going to take on the NRA, and we’re going to relieve a generation of the crushing burden of debt. We will not win just the battle for the soul of our nation. We’ll transform it as well.

Go, go, Joe! I believe that your decency -- even more than Warren's brains or Sanders' passion -- is what America needs right now.

(No, I don't want to debate who should have won the primaries. We have our candidate, and what I want to focus on now is BEATING TRUMP.)

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