boxofdelights

They've probably been back for days already, but this was the first day I was in the right place at the right time to see them. I counted 39, circling, just after 5 p.m.

Just got back from book group. Sarah hosted at Kathleen's house, because Sarah's roommate's mother was visiting so she didn't have room, so we all brought food and drink to share, and petted dogs and gossiped and watched the lunar eclipse until the clouds covered it, and talked about the book, which was The Circle by Dave Eggers.

I am entirely in charity with my book group right now, which makes me feel quite brave about venturing among new crowds of people. We talked about taking the book group to Ellen in California in February, or maybe March. If we went to Ellen's the first weekend of March, maybe I could go to Fogcon the second weekend.

Brave is not how I usually feel, though, so... so even if I could make this happen I'd probably regret it.

Just sent mail to my daughter:

Cut almost 100 words. Mostly adverbs. Sorry, adverbs.

Young women use a lot of adverbs.

Context is that Nixie is applying for a grant for next year. Her project proposal and personal statement must be no more than 500 words each. They are 700-800 words each. She is too stressed by writing them to be able to see where to cut.

I used to have an image from the endnotes of a scanlation of the first volume of Kaoru Mori's Emma: Kaoru Mori's editor keeps pointing out things that could be cut, and she keeps exclaiming, "But that's the most important part!" I loved that! In the translation that got published in English, she says instead, "But that's very important!" Maybe that is a more accurate translation but it isn't as good.

Today is a good day to tell the FCC to protect net neutrality.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/09/open-internet-essential-free-internet-why-net-neutrality-should-matter-everyone
https://dearfcc.org/

There's an osprey at the raptor center. It is eating, which is a very good sign, since most injured ospreys just don't. They have to be tease-fed or force-fed. It came in with a spinal injury, so its prospects for release are not great.

Do you say ospree or ospray? I have always heard ospree, but everyone at the raptor center says ospray. I wonder whether they are influenced by the 'prey' in Birds of Prey.

As I was cleaning a Great Horned Owl (GHOW) cage, I kept referring to the bird as "she" even though I don't know her sex. I couldn't figure it out from her case file, either. I did figure out that the gender neutral pronoun people use for birds is "bird". They'll often leave out the pronoun and write sentences like, "Bird was on A-frame when I entered the cage. Watched calmly while I cleaned," but when they need a pronoun they usually don't use "it" or "he" or "she", they write, "When I moved too close, bird flew to SE corner, missed the perch, stayed on the ground the rest of the time I was in the cage."

Also had really annoying phone conversation with my doctor who decided to take that opportunity to reopen the question of why I was not taking statins. "Why is it," I asked her in return, "that in all the times you've told me I should be taking statins, you've never mentioned any possible side-effects? You've never talked about the pros and cons, only the pros."

"Oh," she said, "well the only likely side-effects are some people get aches, and sometimes they just can't tolerate them." And then she went into her rant about American diet and American cholesterol levels and she used to see two heart attacks a year but now she sees two a week and so on. And I just sat there and listened to it. I got distracted by the rant, and forgot about my question, which she didn't even pretend to answer, which was not "what are the side-effects of statins?"

My question was, why didn't her recommendation to take statins come with information about the pros and cons in the first place? Does she really think it's okay to only give me the information that supports her decision?

I got a flu shot and an appointment for a vaginal ultrasound to look for fibroids yay. Last time I took my blood pressure at the grocery store it was 112/82. When the nurse took it it was a bit high, which it always is -- but what do you expect when you measure my blood pressure right after you have me step on the scale? Then, when the doctor took it it was 150-something over 90-something, which is actually not bad for immediately after talking to this doctor. My last two visits with her, it was 170-something over 100-something when she took it.

I have talked to her about the specific things she does that ring my alarm bells but it doesn't seem to make any difference. She questioned me, as usual, about my employment status and my employment prospects and my employment history. I gave the same answers I always give. She repeated my answers back to me with a questioning inflection. I would be able to believe that her intentions were friendly if she didn't repeat what I said back to me with a questioning inflection! And if she didn't ask me the same questions every time even though my answers haven't changed in years.

At least this time she did not ask, "Don't you ever get tired of not working?"

Mostly, things reminding you of other things makes the world more interesting. It is one of the good things about getting older. But I can't really listen to Andrew Bird's new single, I Want to See Pulaski at Night, because the name overwhelms me with the need to listen to this again instead. Richard and Linda Thompson, so good.

So Mungo and I did go to Canada and also returned thence. We are both confident that Mungo could be happy and get a good education at either U of T or McGill. I liked Toronto much more than Montreal, but that may not be much of a compliment to Toronto: I'm not a city girl.

In Toronto, I got to spend time with bcholmes, the_siobhan, urban_homestead, and em_h. urban_homestead took me to the Royal Ontario Museum, which is a really good museum. I felt envy when the tour guide at U of T mentioned that U of T students can visit the ROM free on Tuesdays, but then I remembered that they're college students, they're never going to have the time to go.

B.C. said that, among Canadians, Torontonians are reputed to be cold and standoffish. They seemed polite and kind to me. When Mungo and I were on the bus-to-subway step of our journey from the airport to the hotel, I was saying to Mungo, well, here's the subway, but how do you make sure you get on the right train, one that's going in the right direction? An airport worker who had ridden the bus with us said, "There's only one direction from here." Which was a relief.

It is difficult to decide when to talk to strangers. On that subway ride a school group of nine or ten year olds got on. One of the girls grabbed the pole next to me. One of the boys started playing with her hand: he moved her thumb so that it was pointing upwards, instead of wrapped around the pole, and then pulled her hand off the pole. She shook his hand off and grabbed the pole again. He moved her thumb so that it was pointing upwards. She shook his hand off with a sound of annoyance. He started moving her thumb again. "Hey," I said kindly but firmly, "she doesn't want you to."

Generally, I'd agree that an adult who has no relationship to a particular child should probably leave them alone. I don't know that I was right to butt in in this case. But, I thought, if I were that boy's mother and the adult in charge didn't see what was going on, I would want me to say hey, I understand that exploring your power is an essential part of growing up, but that person is just as much a person as you are, so her desires are objectively just as important as yours are, and in this case her desires trump yours because that is her hand.

I guess that is why I am not a city girl: when you don't live in a city, you don't have dozens of interactions every single day with people who have no relationship with you, so you don't have to think about this sort of thing so much. It is tiring.

Macyn Taylor playing Michael Hedges' Ragamuffin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z47_kjnXLsk

That piece is so difficult and she is so young and she is playing it so well.

Here's Michael Hedges playing it at the height of his power: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ulWPVb8t44

Here's Macyn again, a few years older and more of a performer, playing and singing Sweet Home Chicago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpJ2ge85CAQ