Just got a truly lovely letter from a homeschooler who is moving to the Tallahassee, Florida area. She wants to know if I had any secular homeschooling contacts over there, and I told her I'd do my best to put the word out and find something for her.
I know there's a thriving homeschooling community in Florida, and I think it's big and diverse enough to have a lot of secular homeschoolers; but I don't know any in particular. Anyone want to drop me a line that I can forward?
And while we're on the subject: what would be the best way to help out people who write to me with this kind of question? I do get them now and again, and it bums me out not to have much to offer other than hopes and good wishes. Should I have a strictly non-romantic "Secular Homeschooling Lonelyhearts" column in the magazine, devoted to such inquiries? (The romantic variety might be fun, too, but that's another question altogether.) Would something online be better -- maybe a page on the mag's site where I can post requests? Would that be weird, or a perfectly natural extension of the magazine's work, a large part of which is simply letting secular homeschoolers know that they're not alone?
Let me know what you think. Posting here is great; for something to forward to my new Tallahassee friend, you can also write to me privately: deborah at 2ds dot org
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Funny isn't good enough
I'm working on a humor piece. Hence my funereal tone.
A lot of the articles I write have humor in them. Their tone may even be an overall humorous one.
But I distinguish between writing something that may have some funny, and an article the whole point of which is to be funny.
The bitter wish list was a just-plain humor piece. The overachiever's quiz is the same. Sure, they have their points to make; but their primary work is to amuse and entertain.
In terms of writing pure humor, I don't think I'll ever have it as easy again as I did for The List. There were moments when I sat and stared into the middle distance, but they were just that: moments. On the whole, the ideas had been percolating for so long, and reflected so much that I'd heard and thought and been tempted to say, that once it was time to write and I had a premise I was pretty much writing as fast as I could type.
The quiz was more of a challenge. I had the vague idea for it for a very long time; getting to the premise took some time. Having the structure in place made it easier, but it was still real work. The List was a sprint I took after months of training; the quiz was an all-day hike, with a lot of breaks to eat, drink, and admire the view.
This new piece feels trickier than either of them, though if I could take a mental time trip into the past, I might find that the quiz was just as hard.
I think the premise on this one is good -- not as good as The List, but I don't expect to outdo myself there.
That sounds conceited. "Oh, I've written the funniest thing ever, so I don't ever need to be that great again." I don't feel like that. In a way, I don't even think of The List as "mine." I sat down and wrote it, and I used all my skill and I'm glad I had the writing muscle to get the job done; but the reason it resonates with so many homeschoolers is that I wasn't being creative when I wrote it so much as I was just listening. Listening to stupid things people have said, sure; but mostly listening to the homeschooling community. Everything I wrote there had already been said, in a way; it was just waiting to be collected and written down. I was lucky enough to get there first.
This piece I'm working on now is really struggling to be born. I think that the basic premise has the potential to have a certain "Oh, I've thought that, too!" appeal. But I keep freezing up.
I've started it twice: once as prose, once in a list format. Some of the prose seems like better writing, but the list format can be very appealing.
Unless it comes across as gimmicky. Aargh.
I'd love to write something that has the potential to get around a bit. The magazine could use some publicity.
And just funny isn't enough to do that. "George the Fish has the Worst Day Ever" is perfectly funny, and plenty of people have told me they love it. I like it, too. But it's one of the pieces posted online, and in terms of generating chatter, it hasn't budged. Nobody's forwarding it, or recommending it as a must-read to their buddies. Google it -- there's nothing there.
I don't want that to sound like a waa-waa. "I worked so hard and nobody likes it, waa." I don't mean that at all, because it isn't true. I mean that just plain funny isn't enough to generate viral appeal. For that, a piece needs to really tap into something special.
Which is the other thing that's making me freeze up as I write. I think that part of the reason The List came out as swiftly and as sharp as it did is that I felt completely free while I was writing it. I didn't think that many people would read it. I didn't think any civilians would read it.
I wouldn't change a word of it. But if I'd known at the time that non-homeschoolers would be reading it, I think I might have gotten cold feet. I'd have been tempted to pull some of those punches.
I'm wrangling with that on this piece.
I have some worries about this article not sounding as if I'm buying into that idea that homeschoolers have it so bad because we're with our kids all the time. "Oh, I could never do that" -- you know the drill. But at the same time, I do want to address the fact that what we're doing really is a big deal, and many of us might not have expected our lives to look like this, even if we did know early on we'd be homeschooling. And plenty of us didn't.
Time to go wrestle with my angel, at the risk of offending with a very non-secular analogy that I happen to like. It helped to hash out some of my feelings here.
"Just focus on making it the best piece it can be," my husband says. Which would be great, if only I knew what that was.
A lot of the articles I write have humor in them. Their tone may even be an overall humorous one.
But I distinguish between writing something that may have some funny, and an article the whole point of which is to be funny.
The bitter wish list was a just-plain humor piece. The overachiever's quiz is the same. Sure, they have their points to make; but their primary work is to amuse and entertain.
In terms of writing pure humor, I don't think I'll ever have it as easy again as I did for The List. There were moments when I sat and stared into the middle distance, but they were just that: moments. On the whole, the ideas had been percolating for so long, and reflected so much that I'd heard and thought and been tempted to say, that once it was time to write and I had a premise I was pretty much writing as fast as I could type.
The quiz was more of a challenge. I had the vague idea for it for a very long time; getting to the premise took some time. Having the structure in place made it easier, but it was still real work. The List was a sprint I took after months of training; the quiz was an all-day hike, with a lot of breaks to eat, drink, and admire the view.
This new piece feels trickier than either of them, though if I could take a mental time trip into the past, I might find that the quiz was just as hard.
I think the premise on this one is good -- not as good as The List, but I don't expect to outdo myself there.
That sounds conceited. "Oh, I've written the funniest thing ever, so I don't ever need to be that great again." I don't feel like that. In a way, I don't even think of The List as "mine." I sat down and wrote it, and I used all my skill and I'm glad I had the writing muscle to get the job done; but the reason it resonates with so many homeschoolers is that I wasn't being creative when I wrote it so much as I was just listening. Listening to stupid things people have said, sure; but mostly listening to the homeschooling community. Everything I wrote there had already been said, in a way; it was just waiting to be collected and written down. I was lucky enough to get there first.
This piece I'm working on now is really struggling to be born. I think that the basic premise has the potential to have a certain "Oh, I've thought that, too!" appeal. But I keep freezing up.
I've started it twice: once as prose, once in a list format. Some of the prose seems like better writing, but the list format can be very appealing.
Unless it comes across as gimmicky. Aargh.
I'd love to write something that has the potential to get around a bit. The magazine could use some publicity.
And just funny isn't enough to do that. "George the Fish has the Worst Day Ever" is perfectly funny, and plenty of people have told me they love it. I like it, too. But it's one of the pieces posted online, and in terms of generating chatter, it hasn't budged. Nobody's forwarding it, or recommending it as a must-read to their buddies. Google it -- there's nothing there.
I don't want that to sound like a waa-waa. "I worked so hard and nobody likes it, waa." I don't mean that at all, because it isn't true. I mean that just plain funny isn't enough to generate viral appeal. For that, a piece needs to really tap into something special.
Which is the other thing that's making me freeze up as I write. I think that part of the reason The List came out as swiftly and as sharp as it did is that I felt completely free while I was writing it. I didn't think that many people would read it. I didn't think any civilians would read it.
I wouldn't change a word of it. But if I'd known at the time that non-homeschoolers would be reading it, I think I might have gotten cold feet. I'd have been tempted to pull some of those punches.
I'm wrangling with that on this piece.
I have some worries about this article not sounding as if I'm buying into that idea that homeschoolers have it so bad because we're with our kids all the time. "Oh, I could never do that" -- you know the drill. But at the same time, I do want to address the fact that what we're doing really is a big deal, and many of us might not have expected our lives to look like this, even if we did know early on we'd be homeschooling. And plenty of us didn't.
Time to go wrestle with my angel, at the risk of offending with a very non-secular analogy that I happen to like. It helped to hash out some of my feelings here.
"Just focus on making it the best piece it can be," my husband says. Which would be great, if only I knew what that was.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Scientific results...
Okay, possibly not all that scientific. I have no idea how many people I'd have to hear from to have this be totally scientific. But I got about fifty responses, and I figure that's worth something.
First, the context:
I had to get a random number from random.org recently, as you know. I plugged in "1" for the minimum number, and "9" for the maximum.
The system thought for a minute, and then spat out "5."
Now, I didn't say anything at the time of the giveaway, but that kind of bugged me. I was worried that the number-selection process wasn't truly random at all.
The reason I thought that is that if you asked me to name a number between 1 and 9, 5 would be the one I'd pick. It's perfect -- almost exactly in the middle. So getting that as an answer just seemed too tidy to be truly random.
But I went ahead and posted it with due fanfare.
Then I found that I couldn't resist going back to the site and trying again.
It coughed up 5 again.
Now, I live with a complete math/computer nerd. (If you've read my writing, you know that's one of the highest compliments I can pay.) This is someone who gets all excited on Christmas day if I manage to find him a book about statistics that he's never heard of.
I've learned a little through osmosis. I know that the chances of such a system picking the same number twice in a row really aren't that bad, given such a small range.
But what if this system just always gives you a mid-range number? That hardly seemed fair.
I tried again immediately with the same range, and was relieved to receive a 2.
But what if it only gave me that to throw me off the scent, and would go back to blithely tossing out 5s to all the other people who asked for a number between 1 and 9?
I mentioned all this to Professor Nerd of the Nerdology Institute. He shook his head when I mentioned the bit about how 5 just seemed like the number to pick with that kind of range. It seemed like the number a person would choose, and here the computer had come up with it twice.
Here's the thing. He didn't say, "I've read gajillions of books about statistics, numbers, and mentalists. The fact is, if you ask people for, say, a number between one and nine, they won't pick one, and they won't pick nine. People tend to steer clear of the extremes. They also won't pick five. It's right in the middle, and for some reason, that makes them feel as if 5 is somehow an official number in this little system. It's already got a job, as it were. So those three numbers right there are ruled out. So what do they have left? They have the series 2, 3, 4, and the series 6, 7, 8. Now, here's the funny thing -- if you ask people to pick a number between 1 and 5, they'll almost always pick 3. In a smaller series like that, they'll aim for the middle. So, with the numbers left to choose between 1 and 9, they'll tend to pick the middle number of one of those series' I mentioned. In other words, 3 or 7. But mostly 7, because people like higher numbers better than lower ones with a range like this. Low numbers feel weak. High numbers seem stronger."
Okay, he did say that. But not right away. At first, he just said, "No, I don't think so. I think most people would say 7 if you asked them."
So I went ahead and started asking. And then he gave me all the evidence.
Here's the thing, though. He found a chapter in a book by a famous mentalist about exactly this kind of thing. It said that 3 and 7 are the most common numbers people will pick. I believe it mentioned the math explanation I quoted above.
But it didn't mention the fact that, in our society, 3 and 7 are significant numbers. The Trinity, trilogies, best out of three, lucky 7.
If people pick, say, 7, are their minds doing the kind of math mentioned above, or are they just drawn to 7 because as a group we consider it an important number?
And what did people pick in my little unofficial survey, anyway?
My husband was right about one thing. 7 was the favorite pick by a landslide, at 18 votes.
Interestingly, people are apparently drawn toward 7 against their will. One voter told me that she was surprised by her own choice, because "I hate the number 7!"
That's another thing. Not everyone has a favorite number -- or a number that they dislike -- but I don't think anyone reading this feels particularly surprised at the idea of someone having a preference one way or the other. Where does that come from? Numbers are just numbers, handy and occasionally interesting symbols we use -- and yet we can have emotional responses to them. Plenty of people probably have a number they consider a favorite.
Does it work with letters, too? Do people love the letter J, or hate Ps with a passion?
Getting back to the survey: My husband was surprised at how many people chose 9. He didn't expect anyone to, but it got five votes. Its mirror extreme, 1, got no votes at all, which interested both of us.
Even more surprising was how well 8 did. It got 11 votes, putting it solidly in second place.
3 did fairly well, at 5 votes. 2, appropriately, got a couple of votes; 4 got three, as did 6.
And 5? The number that I figured everyone would just naturally gravitate toward, since it's the strong (almost) center of the range?
One vote. Out of almost fifty.
Usually I like to feel like I'm a little different from the crowd, but this kind of depressed me. And not just because I didn't come anywhere near being right in this unofficial bet my husband and I had going.
I think it's because the reason I would choose 5 under the circumstances is that I'm a different kind of nerd. The dorky kind. I like this kind of thing tidy and orderly. 5 divvies the number line up neatly. It's an easy number to count by. It's the number to pick if you and a friend went to random.org and decided to place bets on numbers between 1 and 9, with whoever getting closest to the random number generated winning the pot.
I'm also disturbed because this seems to explain to me why I'm a good writer and a lousy marketer. People appreciate the passion I put into the writing, but they don't necessarily buy my product. And that's because I have a really hard time understanding how to appeal to them in a marketing sense.
I'm probably high on the autism spectrum. Autism runs in my family. I didn't talk until I was almost 5, but I was reading well before that. And even when I started to talk, I did it badly. My vocabulary was great, but my pronunciation and, more importantly, my social skills reeked. It's taken me years to figure out conversational arts like asking the other person how they are, and not going on for hours at a time on whatever subject is compelling my interest on that day, and not telling people that they're just plain wrong even if they are. (If you don't have to tell them, don't bother; if you do, pretty it up a bit. You already knew that. It took me decades of listening to people talk as if I were studying chess games, and I still screw up more often than not.)
I'm a social nerd, because I don't understand why the just-plain truth often isn't what people want to hear. Take trying to sell the magazine. People don't want me to explain that the cost per issue is not unreasonable when you factor in expenses, pages per issue, and the fact that it only comes out once every three months. They want, quite reasonably, for me to make them feel as if they're getting a bargain. Everyone wants that. They want me to appeal to their sensibilities.
People aren't logical. They're people. They like 7s. (Or sometimes hate them.) And, clunky and clueless, I just keep running around trying to explain why 5 is a good, true number.
What a dork.
To everyone who voted: Thank you! This analysis was fascinating.
And to everyone who voted 8, 9, and 2: Thanks for messing up my husband's theory! I sincerely appreciate it.
First, the context:
I had to get a random number from random.org recently, as you know. I plugged in "1" for the minimum number, and "9" for the maximum.
The system thought for a minute, and then spat out "5."
Now, I didn't say anything at the time of the giveaway, but that kind of bugged me. I was worried that the number-selection process wasn't truly random at all.
The reason I thought that is that if you asked me to name a number between 1 and 9, 5 would be the one I'd pick. It's perfect -- almost exactly in the middle. So getting that as an answer just seemed too tidy to be truly random.
But I went ahead and posted it with due fanfare.
Then I found that I couldn't resist going back to the site and trying again.
It coughed up 5 again.
Now, I live with a complete math/computer nerd. (If you've read my writing, you know that's one of the highest compliments I can pay.) This is someone who gets all excited on Christmas day if I manage to find him a book about statistics that he's never heard of.
I've learned a little through osmosis. I know that the chances of such a system picking the same number twice in a row really aren't that bad, given such a small range.
But what if this system just always gives you a mid-range number? That hardly seemed fair.
I tried again immediately with the same range, and was relieved to receive a 2.
But what if it only gave me that to throw me off the scent, and would go back to blithely tossing out 5s to all the other people who asked for a number between 1 and 9?
I mentioned all this to Professor Nerd of the Nerdology Institute. He shook his head when I mentioned the bit about how 5 just seemed like the number to pick with that kind of range. It seemed like the number a person would choose, and here the computer had come up with it twice.
Here's the thing. He didn't say, "I've read gajillions of books about statistics, numbers, and mentalists. The fact is, if you ask people for, say, a number between one and nine, they won't pick one, and they won't pick nine. People tend to steer clear of the extremes. They also won't pick five. It's right in the middle, and for some reason, that makes them feel as if 5 is somehow an official number in this little system. It's already got a job, as it were. So those three numbers right there are ruled out. So what do they have left? They have the series 2, 3, 4, and the series 6, 7, 8. Now, here's the funny thing -- if you ask people to pick a number between 1 and 5, they'll almost always pick 3. In a smaller series like that, they'll aim for the middle. So, with the numbers left to choose between 1 and 9, they'll tend to pick the middle number of one of those series' I mentioned. In other words, 3 or 7. But mostly 7, because people like higher numbers better than lower ones with a range like this. Low numbers feel weak. High numbers seem stronger."
Okay, he did say that. But not right away. At first, he just said, "No, I don't think so. I think most people would say 7 if you asked them."
So I went ahead and started asking. And then he gave me all the evidence.
Here's the thing, though. He found a chapter in a book by a famous mentalist about exactly this kind of thing. It said that 3 and 7 are the most common numbers people will pick. I believe it mentioned the math explanation I quoted above.
But it didn't mention the fact that, in our society, 3 and 7 are significant numbers. The Trinity, trilogies, best out of three, lucky 7.
If people pick, say, 7, are their minds doing the kind of math mentioned above, or are they just drawn to 7 because as a group we consider it an important number?
And what did people pick in my little unofficial survey, anyway?
My husband was right about one thing. 7 was the favorite pick by a landslide, at 18 votes.
Interestingly, people are apparently drawn toward 7 against their will. One voter told me that she was surprised by her own choice, because "I hate the number 7!"
That's another thing. Not everyone has a favorite number -- or a number that they dislike -- but I don't think anyone reading this feels particularly surprised at the idea of someone having a preference one way or the other. Where does that come from? Numbers are just numbers, handy and occasionally interesting symbols we use -- and yet we can have emotional responses to them. Plenty of people probably have a number they consider a favorite.
Does it work with letters, too? Do people love the letter J, or hate Ps with a passion?
Getting back to the survey: My husband was surprised at how many people chose 9. He didn't expect anyone to, but it got five votes. Its mirror extreme, 1, got no votes at all, which interested both of us.
Even more surprising was how well 8 did. It got 11 votes, putting it solidly in second place.
3 did fairly well, at 5 votes. 2, appropriately, got a couple of votes; 4 got three, as did 6.
And 5? The number that I figured everyone would just naturally gravitate toward, since it's the strong (almost) center of the range?
One vote. Out of almost fifty.
Usually I like to feel like I'm a little different from the crowd, but this kind of depressed me. And not just because I didn't come anywhere near being right in this unofficial bet my husband and I had going.
I think it's because the reason I would choose 5 under the circumstances is that I'm a different kind of nerd. The dorky kind. I like this kind of thing tidy and orderly. 5 divvies the number line up neatly. It's an easy number to count by. It's the number to pick if you and a friend went to random.org and decided to place bets on numbers between 1 and 9, with whoever getting closest to the random number generated winning the pot.
I'm also disturbed because this seems to explain to me why I'm a good writer and a lousy marketer. People appreciate the passion I put into the writing, but they don't necessarily buy my product. And that's because I have a really hard time understanding how to appeal to them in a marketing sense.
I'm probably high on the autism spectrum. Autism runs in my family. I didn't talk until I was almost 5, but I was reading well before that. And even when I started to talk, I did it badly. My vocabulary was great, but my pronunciation and, more importantly, my social skills reeked. It's taken me years to figure out conversational arts like asking the other person how they are, and not going on for hours at a time on whatever subject is compelling my interest on that day, and not telling people that they're just plain wrong even if they are. (If you don't have to tell them, don't bother; if you do, pretty it up a bit. You already knew that. It took me decades of listening to people talk as if I were studying chess games, and I still screw up more often than not.)
I'm a social nerd, because I don't understand why the just-plain truth often isn't what people want to hear. Take trying to sell the magazine. People don't want me to explain that the cost per issue is not unreasonable when you factor in expenses, pages per issue, and the fact that it only comes out once every three months. They want, quite reasonably, for me to make them feel as if they're getting a bargain. Everyone wants that. They want me to appeal to their sensibilities.
People aren't logical. They're people. They like 7s. (Or sometimes hate them.) And, clunky and clueless, I just keep running around trying to explain why 5 is a good, true number.
What a dork.
To everyone who voted: Thank you! This analysis was fascinating.
And to everyone who voted 8, 9, and 2: Thanks for messing up my husband's theory! I sincerely appreciate it.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Don't think about this. Just do it.
Help me out with something that I'll explain in my very next posting?
Thanks. I knew I could count on you.
Don't overthink this, just go with your first mental response.
Tell me the first number that pops into your head when I ask you to say a number between 1 and 9, inclusive.
Email it to me -- don't post it here. Deborah at 2ds dot org.
Scientific explanations very soon, I promise.
Thanks. I knew I could count on you.
Don't overthink this, just go with your first mental response.
Tell me the first number that pops into your head when I ask you to say a number between 1 and 9, inclusive.
Email it to me -- don't post it here. Deborah at 2ds dot org.
Scientific explanations very soon, I promise.
We have a, um, winners!
We have two winners!
First, because Sarah is super-nice and never once rhymes-with-itched at me because I am behind on my mailings, I'm giving her the whole bonanza instead of just the one issue she won before. Kind of an upgrade, you know? And I actually really will send it out tomorrow. I have the mailer ready and everything. My husband is going by the post office because it's on his way home from work and I'm still queasy. TMI? Yes. But never TM SHM. At least I hope Sarah won't think so.
So Sarah won -- but I already made the decision to make her a winner when I saw her posting. So I counted how many other people entered, which was 9. And I went to a really cool site you probably already know about, since I'm always the last to hear about these things. It's called RANDOM.ORG -- really, they use all-caps. Their address is exactly what you'd figure.
RANDOM.ORG has a nifty little random number generator. You just type in your minimum and maximum numbers desired, push the "generate" button, wait with bated breath, and...
...if you're me, you get: a number 5! Which is the lovely Gina, keeper of guinea pigs!
Okay, Gina. Write to me privately with your address, okay? Deborah at 2ds dot org.
Thanks so much to everyone else for making my birthday even more fun. I got a lovely haul of books, including:
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (yes, that's the title), by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith: a perfectly wonderful blend of the original text and a skillful weaving of new material, making this wonderful tale of romance and human fallibility a wonderful tale of romance, human fallibility, and random zombie attacks.
Who is Mark Twain? A collection of never-before-published short pieces by the American master himself, including some conversations with Satan and why Twain can't stand Jane Austen's writing (not the same essay).
An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting, by Jane Collier, a writer who died twenty years before Austen was born. Here's an excerpt that may just make this book a must-read in your home as well:
"The practice of tormenting the body is not now, indeed, much allowed, except in some particular countries, where slavery and ignorance subsist: but let us not, my dear countrymen, regret the loss of that trifling branch of our power, since we are at full liberty to exercise ourselves in that much higher pleasure, the tormenting the mind."
I'm sorry, but that says "Happy Birthday" to me with a capital "Huh!"
Thanks again for all the lovely postings!
First, because Sarah is super-nice and never once rhymes-with-itched at me because I am behind on my mailings, I'm giving her the whole bonanza instead of just the one issue she won before. Kind of an upgrade, you know? And I actually really will send it out tomorrow. I have the mailer ready and everything. My husband is going by the post office because it's on his way home from work and I'm still queasy. TMI? Yes. But never TM SHM. At least I hope Sarah won't think so.
So Sarah won -- but I already made the decision to make her a winner when I saw her posting. So I counted how many other people entered, which was 9. And I went to a really cool site you probably already know about, since I'm always the last to hear about these things. It's called RANDOM.ORG -- really, they use all-caps. Their address is exactly what you'd figure.
RANDOM.ORG has a nifty little random number generator. You just type in your minimum and maximum numbers desired, push the "generate" button, wait with bated breath, and...
...if you're me, you get: a number 5! Which is the lovely Gina, keeper of guinea pigs!
Okay, Gina. Write to me privately with your address, okay? Deborah at 2ds dot org.
Thanks so much to everyone else for making my birthday even more fun. I got a lovely haul of books, including:
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (yes, that's the title), by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith: a perfectly wonderful blend of the original text and a skillful weaving of new material, making this wonderful tale of romance and human fallibility a wonderful tale of romance, human fallibility, and random zombie attacks.
Who is Mark Twain? A collection of never-before-published short pieces by the American master himself, including some conversations with Satan and why Twain can't stand Jane Austen's writing (not the same essay).
An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting, by Jane Collier, a writer who died twenty years before Austen was born. Here's an excerpt that may just make this book a must-read in your home as well:
"The practice of tormenting the body is not now, indeed, much allowed, except in some particular countries, where slavery and ignorance subsist: but let us not, my dear countrymen, regret the loss of that trifling branch of our power, since we are at full liberty to exercise ourselves in that much higher pleasure, the tormenting the mind."
I'm sorry, but that says "Happy Birthday" to me with a capital "Huh!"
Thanks again for all the lovely postings!
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Hobbit-style birthday celebration: GIVEAWAY!
If you're a reasonably nerdy type -- actually, these days I don't think you have to be much of a nerd at all to have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. So regardless of your nerd status (I would rank mine as middling -- way dorkier than the ordinary population, but positively weak compared to the die-hards), you may know that hobbits give, rather than receive, presents on their birthdays.
Reading this as a kid, my first thought was, "RIP OFF!" Before the age of thirty or so, any suggestion of presents flowing from rather than toward one's precious self is met with shudders of revulsion and inward revolt.
But now that I'm about to turn thirty-eleven (tomorrow, or the Ides of May as I like to think of it), I'm feeling Hobbity.
Post here with a verbal offering of some kind. It could be about hobbits. It could be about the magazine. It could be a suggestion for an article you'd like to see. It could be a link to an online gift certificate to Godiva. I'm not hinting, I'm just saying.
After I recover from my birthday hangover, I'll use a random number generator to pick someone. And I'll send them tangible proof that if you really try, you can squeeze six issues into one of the small-sized flat-rate postal mailers.
Reading this as a kid, my first thought was, "RIP OFF!" Before the age of thirty or so, any suggestion of presents flowing from rather than toward one's precious self is met with shudders of revulsion and inward revolt.
But now that I'm about to turn thirty-eleven (tomorrow, or the Ides of May as I like to think of it), I'm feeling Hobbity.
Post here with a verbal offering of some kind. It could be about hobbits. It could be about the magazine. It could be a suggestion for an article you'd like to see. It could be a link to an online gift certificate to Godiva. I'm not hinting, I'm just saying.
After I recover from my birthday hangover, I'll use a random number generator to pick someone. And I'll send them tangible proof that if you really try, you can squeeze six issues into one of the small-sized flat-rate postal mailers.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
More Dorkbook -- I mean, Facebook -- news
(With apologies to Kathleen, a way funnier writer and editor than I'll ever be, for filching her joke. Like Shakespeare, I steal from the best.)
Okay, so my good friend Micki gently pointed out that I needed to turn off some privacy functions so that people could actually FIND me. I didn't even know I was BEING private. I TOLD you I needed help.
But I clicked some buttons and stuff. So now you should be able to see me in all my pensive-mom-foxiness.
And now I've just gotta figure out how to set up a Facebook page for SHM.
Or I could have a nice cup of tea first.
Okay, so my good friend Micki gently pointed out that I needed to turn off some privacy functions so that people could actually FIND me. I didn't even know I was BEING private. I TOLD you I needed help.
But I clicked some buttons and stuff. So now you should be able to see me in all my pensive-mom-foxiness.
And now I've just gotta figure out how to set up a Facebook page for SHM.
Or I could have a nice cup of tea first.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Can someone please tell me how Facebook works, now that I'm on it?
Seriously, I'm such a geezer.
My fantastic friend Micki keeps giving me subtle little hints that I should join Facebook, such as mentioning it EVERY TIME WE TALK and slipping complete instructions for getting started into emails.
Apparently this week just hasn't been weird enough for me yet, because I just gave in, went over and hopped on the Facebook train.
That's me, looking all pensive and thoughtful in Sid Fleischman's living room. My son took the picture.
My first thought on seeing said picture: "Oh, my God, I look exactly like my mom."
My second thought: "My mom's a fox."
I'm just saying.
Any pointers re navigating the whole Facebook maze -- or, heck, just letting me know what the point is -- are most welcome.
My fantastic friend Micki keeps giving me subtle little hints that I should join Facebook, such as mentioning it EVERY TIME WE TALK and slipping complete instructions for getting started into emails.
Apparently this week just hasn't been weird enough for me yet, because I just gave in, went over and hopped on the Facebook train.
That's me, looking all pensive and thoughtful in Sid Fleischman's living room. My son took the picture.
My first thought on seeing said picture: "Oh, my God, I look exactly like my mom."
My second thought: "My mom's a fox."
I'm just saying.
Any pointers re navigating the whole Facebook maze -- or, heck, just letting me know what the point is -- are most welcome.
And speaking of Russians...
I thought that the one faint gleam of good news in this past couple of weeks was that all the Russian junk mail I've been getting via my editor's email address had finally dried up and gone away.
I can't get people in my own home country to know I'm alive, but I was getting multiple daily doses of junk mail I couldn't read: real estate opportunities, bargains (I assume) on caviar, and big blocks of Cyrillic text without any pictures to give me a hint as to their contents.
Then it stopped. Days and days and nary a Slavic peep. Aaah.
And then, just a few minutes ago, it started again.
Lesson learned. No more mentioning Stalin. Apparently it encourages the wrong sort.
I can't get people in my own home country to know I'm alive, but I was getting multiple daily doses of junk mail I couldn't read: real estate opportunities, bargains (I assume) on caviar, and big blocks of Cyrillic text without any pictures to give me a hint as to their contents.
Then it stopped. Days and days and nary a Slavic peep. Aaah.
And then, just a few minutes ago, it started again.
Lesson learned. No more mentioning Stalin. Apparently it encourages the wrong sort.
Stalin strikes Blogger
This blog is skinnier three entries.
I mention this because I don't like being all Stalinesque, but I also wanted to not have the entries in question posted any more.
Regardless of whether or not they were unprofessional, they were definitely more stress than they're worth. I'd like my mail to go back to something like normal.
I'd like my stomach to, too, but between this recent kerfuffle and the nasty allergy reaction I sustained while we were out of town, that doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon.
The deletion in question is an effort toward making that happen a little sooner than it might have if I'd left the postings up.
I mention this because I don't like being all Stalinesque, but I also wanted to not have the entries in question posted any more.
Regardless of whether or not they were unprofessional, they were definitely more stress than they're worth. I'd like my mail to go back to something like normal.
I'd like my stomach to, too, but between this recent kerfuffle and the nasty allergy reaction I sustained while we were out of town, that doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon.
The deletion in question is an effort toward making that happen a little sooner than it might have if I'd left the postings up.
Monday, May 11, 2009
More stamp acts
Postage went up today, and I still have a lot of 42-cent stamps from the big mailing. I sent a bunch of bundle-orders out today, and am decorating single-copy envelopes tonight. I'm trying to convince myself that all those penny stamps (six of them, along with their big brothers) look festive and cute, rather than odd and overdone.
The "Forever" stamps don't help me, because I'm sending out envelopes that require a certain monetary amount of postage. Plus they don't sell rolls of Forevers, and rolls of stamps do make my life easier.
Since I'm still moping around here trying not to wobble when I walk, my husband took the bundles and also a single-copy envelope, unstamped. His instructions: have them post the envelope, bring home the receipt so I can see how much it costs to send these puppies now, and grab some penny stamps while you're there.
He called to tell me the bad news about mailing the single-issue envelopes. "The price went up a lot," he said.
"What? How much?"
"Seventeen cents."
"You're high," I said with absolute assurance, and a little concern that he'd be driving home in this condition. "There's no way postage went up that much."
"That's what they said." They had also told him to stock up on seventeen-cent and four-cent stamps.
Mystified, I asked, "Look, how much does it cost to mail an envelope now?"
"A dollar ninety."
"Lackbrain," I said (hey, Talk Like Shakespeare Day was just a few weeks ago), "they were only a dollar eighty-seven before."
I have no idea who was thinking what, or how his purchase managed to seem necessary. All I know is that now I have a bunch of weird stamps. But I'll do the math and use them somehow.
The "Forever" stamps don't help me, because I'm sending out envelopes that require a certain monetary amount of postage. Plus they don't sell rolls of Forevers, and rolls of stamps do make my life easier.
Since I'm still moping around here trying not to wobble when I walk, my husband took the bundles and also a single-copy envelope, unstamped. His instructions: have them post the envelope, bring home the receipt so I can see how much it costs to send these puppies now, and grab some penny stamps while you're there.
He called to tell me the bad news about mailing the single-issue envelopes. "The price went up a lot," he said.
"What? How much?"
"Seventeen cents."
"You're high," I said with absolute assurance, and a little concern that he'd be driving home in this condition. "There's no way postage went up that much."
"That's what they said." They had also told him to stock up on seventeen-cent and four-cent stamps.
Mystified, I asked, "Look, how much does it cost to mail an envelope now?"
"A dollar ninety."
"Lackbrain," I said (hey, Talk Like Shakespeare Day was just a few weeks ago), "they were only a dollar eighty-seven before."
I have no idea who was thinking what, or how his purchase managed to seem necessary. All I know is that now I have a bunch of weird stamps. But I'll do the math and use them somehow.
Ask and it shall!
Here's an email I sent last night to the communications contact at the James Randi Educational Foundation.
Back up a second. You probably already know that Randi is the wonderful magician who is also the author of some fantastic books about skepticism and debunking. His Foundation offers a million-dollar prize to anyone who can "demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability of any kind under mutually agreed upon scientific conditions." That's all famous stuff.
The not-famous part is that Randi has meant a lot to me ever since I was a teenager and read Flim-Flam! and The Truth About Uri Geller and realized that I wasn't a failure; I'd just been had.
Briefly, my parents were believers in pretty much any kind of psychic claim that came their way. The larger universe, as they seemed to think of it, was much cooler than this drab little planet ever could be. We never had the money or time for summer camp or travel or even the occasional day trip to the first-class art museums that surrounded our suburban home, but when Silva Mind Control offered a weekend children's workshop, the hundreds of dollars necessary for my family to attend materialized like, well, magic.
My parents had their priorities straight. Travel and exposure to culture would only have broadened and fed my young mind; Silva Mind Control would give it the power to do anything I chose. Especially if I chose to bend a spoon.
Heaven only knows why that was the cutlery and task of choice. I didn't then and don't now. I only know that in the circles in which my parents moved, having a child who could put a ripple the silver was a real coup.
But they had me, and I couldn't do it.
Plenty of other kids in the class could, as they pointed out. I should try harder.
When I pointed out in reply that the teachers would leave the classroom for minutes at a time, and that said spoon-bending children then took the opportunity to attack their spoons with both hands and all the muscle they possessed, I was chided. These children had not been cheating. They had been "loosening the metal up," preparatory to the push they'd be giving it with their minds. The ultimate work was done mentally, and that was what mattered.
Being an idiot child, I bought it. Sort of. I still believed that the kids had cheated, but I also believed that the task really could be done psychically, if only one tried hard enough.
I kept trying and kept failing and kept feeling like a failure. And then I got a little older and found James Randi's books and saw that the only failure on my part had been not questioning more and sooner. I'm now grimly proud to have been the only failing student in that Silva class.
Back to the present. Here is the email I sent to the JREF last night:
I'm the editor of Secular Homeschooling Magazine, a print quarterly publication. Our next issue is going to focus on critical thinking and skepticism.
Recently, I was lucky enough to interview Sid Fleischman, a wonderfully skeptical children's writer. He mentioned to me that his upbringing had been perfectly conventional, but learning magic at an early age had propelled him toward skepticism.
This really got me thinking. I would very much like to run an article about how teaching our children about magic can help them build critical thinking skills. A friend suggested I get in touch with you, since your organization is all about education and you work closely with magicians.
Can you help me get in touch with anyone who might be interested in and capable of writing a piece such as I describe? My magazine is fairly young, so unfortunately I can't pay much. It would have to be pretty much a labor of love, but your organization certainly seems like the place to find people passionate about spreading the skeptical word, as it were.
I always feel like a huge dork writing such letters. Asking for charity (which is what I always feel as if I'm doing when I go a' begging for articles) is bad enough; asking for weird charity is, well, weird. I expected to hear back in a few weeks, if at all. I figured such an odd request might take time to process.
I sent this around ten o'clock last night. First thing this morning, I wandered over to the computer in my usual morning state (don't talk to me, don't touch me, and for pity's sake don't look at me), managed to open up my email, and found the following:
I've sent your request off to James Randi. Someone here will definitely write you an article, but Randi would be the obvious first choice. :)
Thanks for contacting us
SHRIEK!
We've been going back and forth via email. Still figuring out who's going to write it -- the man I'm mostly talking to would be fantastic, since he's taught critical thinking himself and used magic as an educational tool in his classrooms.
As for me, I'm just thrilled that I might be able to be in a position to help some kids learn skepticism and critical thinking a little earlier and less painfully than I did.
Back up a second. You probably already know that Randi is the wonderful magician who is also the author of some fantastic books about skepticism and debunking. His Foundation offers a million-dollar prize to anyone who can "demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability of any kind under mutually agreed upon scientific conditions." That's all famous stuff.
The not-famous part is that Randi has meant a lot to me ever since I was a teenager and read Flim-Flam! and The Truth About Uri Geller and realized that I wasn't a failure; I'd just been had.
Briefly, my parents were believers in pretty much any kind of psychic claim that came their way. The larger universe, as they seemed to think of it, was much cooler than this drab little planet ever could be. We never had the money or time for summer camp or travel or even the occasional day trip to the first-class art museums that surrounded our suburban home, but when Silva Mind Control offered a weekend children's workshop, the hundreds of dollars necessary for my family to attend materialized like, well, magic.
My parents had their priorities straight. Travel and exposure to culture would only have broadened and fed my young mind; Silva Mind Control would give it the power to do anything I chose. Especially if I chose to bend a spoon.
Heaven only knows why that was the cutlery and task of choice. I didn't then and don't now. I only know that in the circles in which my parents moved, having a child who could put a ripple the silver was a real coup.
But they had me, and I couldn't do it.
Plenty of other kids in the class could, as they pointed out. I should try harder.
When I pointed out in reply that the teachers would leave the classroom for minutes at a time, and that said spoon-bending children then took the opportunity to attack their spoons with both hands and all the muscle they possessed, I was chided. These children had not been cheating. They had been "loosening the metal up," preparatory to the push they'd be giving it with their minds. The ultimate work was done mentally, and that was what mattered.
Being an idiot child, I bought it. Sort of. I still believed that the kids had cheated, but I also believed that the task really could be done psychically, if only one tried hard enough.
I kept trying and kept failing and kept feeling like a failure. And then I got a little older and found James Randi's books and saw that the only failure on my part had been not questioning more and sooner. I'm now grimly proud to have been the only failing student in that Silva class.
Back to the present. Here is the email I sent to the JREF last night:
I'm the editor of Secular Homeschooling Magazine, a print quarterly publication. Our next issue is going to focus on critical thinking and skepticism.
Recently, I was lucky enough to interview Sid Fleischman, a wonderfully skeptical children's writer. He mentioned to me that his upbringing had been perfectly conventional, but learning magic at an early age had propelled him toward skepticism.
This really got me thinking. I would very much like to run an article about how teaching our children about magic can help them build critical thinking skills. A friend suggested I get in touch with you, since your organization is all about education and you work closely with magicians.
Can you help me get in touch with anyone who might be interested in and capable of writing a piece such as I describe? My magazine is fairly young, so unfortunately I can't pay much. It would have to be pretty much a labor of love, but your organization certainly seems like the place to find people passionate about spreading the skeptical word, as it were.
I always feel like a huge dork writing such letters. Asking for charity (which is what I always feel as if I'm doing when I go a' begging for articles) is bad enough; asking for weird charity is, well, weird. I expected to hear back in a few weeks, if at all. I figured such an odd request might take time to process.
I sent this around ten o'clock last night. First thing this morning, I wandered over to the computer in my usual morning state (don't talk to me, don't touch me, and for pity's sake don't look at me), managed to open up my email, and found the following:
I've sent your request off to James Randi. Someone here will definitely write you an article, but Randi would be the obvious first choice. :)
Thanks for contacting us
SHRIEK!
We've been going back and forth via email. Still figuring out who's going to write it -- the man I'm mostly talking to would be fantastic, since he's taught critical thinking himself and used magic as an educational tool in his classrooms.
As for me, I'm just thrilled that I might be able to be in a position to help some kids learn skepticism and critical thinking a little earlier and less painfully than I did.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Clarification and context
Just so that last posting doesn't make me sound like the biggest whiney-pants ingrate ever, there are a few things I didn't have time to mention:
1. As well as homeschooling, teaching some other homeschooled kids, editing the magazine, and taking care of an allergy-intensive household, I'm the onsite manager for our apartment building. This keeps our rent low, which is good. It's also usually not much work. However, right before we left on this trip -- which incidentally is the first time we've been away for literally years -- we had a vacancy in the building. So on top of getting the magazine to the printers, home, and out to subscribers, and getting ready for the trip, I had to show the vacant apartment to any and all comers. We really needed to get the place filled before we left. Which, miraculously, we did. Except that the management company -- the people who took over bookkeeping and other chores when the owner, my husband's uncle, retired -- messed up with getting the keys to the new tenant. So now they keep calling and leaving messages on our home phone. Which is adorable, since back when we were IN TOWN we couldn't get them to return a single phone call, about the keys or anything else. Now we're thousands of miles away -- and they KNEW we were taking this trip, we're with one of the building's owners, for heaven's sake -- they need someone to blame for screwing up, and all of a sudden all they want to do is chat. So does the new tenant, since he doesn't know what's going on and he just wants to be able to get into his new apartment. Which I'd love to help him with, but it's not as if I can just zip home and straighten everything out for him. So even if Disney World were my idea of paradise, it's really hard to relax and feel as if I'm on vacation when the most unpleasant aspects of the least favorite of all my jobs keeps following me around here.
2. I'm constantly short of sleep, because my husband is, to put it gently, a very audible sleeper. I have a white noise machine and the strongest ear plugs in history, but it's not enough by a long shot. At home, we're either in separate rooms or he's using a sleep apnea machine, which he couldn't bring with him on this trip. So between his involuntary noisemaking and my son, Sir Kicks A Lot, who's bunking with me because he gets insecure when we travel, I'm getting almost no sleep. It's been days. I'm flippin' exhausted.
3. My mother-in-law is a good, kind person. However, early in my marriage, we butted heads a LOT. I learned some patience, which helped matters a little. My husband's sister married someone who made my mother-in-law realize just how lucky she actually was in the daughter-in-law department, which helped matters a LOT. I homeschool her vegetarian grandson and cook for her son, who is currently allergic to tomatoes, vinegar, cultured milk, chocolate, all fruits, pumpkin, and alcohol -- and he's allergic enough that he can't even be around these foods if they're cooking. I may be a little sharp at times, but I keep everyone alive and well and fed according to their needs and philosophies. So she's much easier on me than she used to be. But we're talking years of some very rough times. As good as my intentions are, I find it incredibly difficult not to have all my defenses up around her, because I was pretty constantly under attack for a very long time and the aftermath of that doesn't just go away overnight. Spending days with her in this kind of proximity is an emotional workout for me.
4. I don't like to travel in general, and I'm a loner, and I don't like Disney. I've traveled thousands of miles from home, with almost no alone or down time, and am living in nonstop Disney madness.
5. If I ever do want to travel, I want to go somewhere that ISN'T DISNEY, and we can't afford to do that any time soon. We couldn't have ever paid for even a fraction of this trip -- in fact, we've had two bill collectors call while we were here, which ratchets my tension levels up even higher.
5a. Our last two vacation trips were here -- my husband has a web site that's pretty popular, a Disney satire site, and he can write off coming here on our taxes because it's research.
5b. I got a bad sinus infection the first time we came here; the last time we came here, I got another bad sinus infection plus we all got violently ill from a nasty flu virus that swept the hotel. Oddly enough, I don't have wonderful associations with staying at Disney World.
6. I also don't have typical ideas of "fun." I'm a work-oriented, book-oriented person. I want to be at home, mailing out the current issue of the magazine and working on the next one. If I'm "relaxing," I’d love to hike or exercise all day, come home around teatime, and spend the rest of the evening reading. Just to let you know what my idea of a really good time is: I brought Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd with me on this trip. My mother-in-law gave me some spending money and I've managed to find and purchase four books in what, I think we can all agree, is not a particularly bookish corner of the globe -- a collection of Irish fairy tales (from Epcot's "U.K."), a book about wild cats (from our hotel, the Animal Kingdom Lodge), Becoming a Tiger: How Baby Animals Learn to Live in the Wild, by Susan McCarthy (from Wild Animal Kingdom), and The Demon's Sermon on the Martial Arts, an 18th-century Japanese classic by Issai Chozanshi, translated by William Scott Wilson (from Epcot's "Japan"). I've had almost no time to myself, but I've still managed to finish reading two of the books I brought with me. And I've also managed to put a dent in The Origin of Species and The Cambridge Companion to The Origin of Species, because I'd be even insaner than I already am if I didn't have the feeling I was getting something accomplished on this trip.
7. One week after we get home is my birthday, and I'd been really hoping to go to the Huntington or the Norton Simon Museum -- but we can't unless it's on a weekend, when they'll be crowded and icky, because my husband used up all his vacation days on this trip.
So: sorry for all the screaming last time, but I hope that this helps it all make a bit more sense.
1. As well as homeschooling, teaching some other homeschooled kids, editing the magazine, and taking care of an allergy-intensive household, I'm the onsite manager for our apartment building. This keeps our rent low, which is good. It's also usually not much work. However, right before we left on this trip -- which incidentally is the first time we've been away for literally years -- we had a vacancy in the building. So on top of getting the magazine to the printers, home, and out to subscribers, and getting ready for the trip, I had to show the vacant apartment to any and all comers. We really needed to get the place filled before we left. Which, miraculously, we did. Except that the management company -- the people who took over bookkeeping and other chores when the owner, my husband's uncle, retired -- messed up with getting the keys to the new tenant. So now they keep calling and leaving messages on our home phone. Which is adorable, since back when we were IN TOWN we couldn't get them to return a single phone call, about the keys or anything else. Now we're thousands of miles away -- and they KNEW we were taking this trip, we're with one of the building's owners, for heaven's sake -- they need someone to blame for screwing up, and all of a sudden all they want to do is chat. So does the new tenant, since he doesn't know what's going on and he just wants to be able to get into his new apartment. Which I'd love to help him with, but it's not as if I can just zip home and straighten everything out for him. So even if Disney World were my idea of paradise, it's really hard to relax and feel as if I'm on vacation when the most unpleasant aspects of the least favorite of all my jobs keeps following me around here.
2. I'm constantly short of sleep, because my husband is, to put it gently, a very audible sleeper. I have a white noise machine and the strongest ear plugs in history, but it's not enough by a long shot. At home, we're either in separate rooms or he's using a sleep apnea machine, which he couldn't bring with him on this trip. So between his involuntary noisemaking and my son, Sir Kicks A Lot, who's bunking with me because he gets insecure when we travel, I'm getting almost no sleep. It's been days. I'm flippin' exhausted.
3. My mother-in-law is a good, kind person. However, early in my marriage, we butted heads a LOT. I learned some patience, which helped matters a little. My husband's sister married someone who made my mother-in-law realize just how lucky she actually was in the daughter-in-law department, which helped matters a LOT. I homeschool her vegetarian grandson and cook for her son, who is currently allergic to tomatoes, vinegar, cultured milk, chocolate, all fruits, pumpkin, and alcohol -- and he's allergic enough that he can't even be around these foods if they're cooking. I may be a little sharp at times, but I keep everyone alive and well and fed according to their needs and philosophies. So she's much easier on me than she used to be. But we're talking years of some very rough times. As good as my intentions are, I find it incredibly difficult not to have all my defenses up around her, because I was pretty constantly under attack for a very long time and the aftermath of that doesn't just go away overnight. Spending days with her in this kind of proximity is an emotional workout for me.
4. I don't like to travel in general, and I'm a loner, and I don't like Disney. I've traveled thousands of miles from home, with almost no alone or down time, and am living in nonstop Disney madness.
5. If I ever do want to travel, I want to go somewhere that ISN'T DISNEY, and we can't afford to do that any time soon. We couldn't have ever paid for even a fraction of this trip -- in fact, we've had two bill collectors call while we were here, which ratchets my tension levels up even higher.
5a. Our last two vacation trips were here -- my husband has a web site that's pretty popular, a Disney satire site, and he can write off coming here on our taxes because it's research.
5b. I got a bad sinus infection the first time we came here; the last time we came here, I got another bad sinus infection plus we all got violently ill from a nasty flu virus that swept the hotel. Oddly enough, I don't have wonderful associations with staying at Disney World.
6. I also don't have typical ideas of "fun." I'm a work-oriented, book-oriented person. I want to be at home, mailing out the current issue of the magazine and working on the next one. If I'm "relaxing," I’d love to hike or exercise all day, come home around teatime, and spend the rest of the evening reading. Just to let you know what my idea of a really good time is: I brought Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd with me on this trip. My mother-in-law gave me some spending money and I've managed to find and purchase four books in what, I think we can all agree, is not a particularly bookish corner of the globe -- a collection of Irish fairy tales (from Epcot's "U.K."), a book about wild cats (from our hotel, the Animal Kingdom Lodge), Becoming a Tiger: How Baby Animals Learn to Live in the Wild, by Susan McCarthy (from Wild Animal Kingdom), and The Demon's Sermon on the Martial Arts, an 18th-century Japanese classic by Issai Chozanshi, translated by William Scott Wilson (from Epcot's "Japan"). I've had almost no time to myself, but I've still managed to finish reading two of the books I brought with me. And I've also managed to put a dent in The Origin of Species and The Cambridge Companion to The Origin of Species, because I'd be even insaner than I already am if I didn't have the feeling I was getting something accomplished on this trip.
7. One week after we get home is my birthday, and I'd been really hoping to go to the Huntington or the Norton Simon Museum -- but we can't unless it's on a weekend, when they'll be crowded and icky, because my husband used up all his vacation days on this trip.
So: sorry for all the screaming last time, but I hope that this helps it all make a bit more sense.
This SUCKS!
Just a quick report from Planet Effing Disney World, where I've been dragged kicking and screaming and biting for TEN [very bad word, gerund form] DAYS.
I have WORK to do. Work I'd LIKE to do.
I have all sorts of things to do AT HOME.
Instead, I'm stuck here in a place with a carbon footprint you can see from the [even worse word, also a gerund] moon. A place where it's ninety degrees outside and sixty inside because the air conditioning is always blasting because heaven forFEND all the rich people don't have SOMEwhere to wear their fur coats.
They haven't cleaned our room today, because we only went out for six hours. And before you give me grief about what a tough job professional cleaning is, I USED TO CLEAN HOUSE FOR A LIVING, all right? Yes, I used to clean house for total strangers for money. Wow, does that sound dirty (the other kind of dirty) when I say it like that.
I get to scream about not having a clean room to come back to, because my allergies and sinuses are killing me because of the abovementioned fur-coat-appropriate air conditioning.
I get to scream in general, because I'm spending ten days with my mother-in-law, who is paying for this whole trip and is very very nice and I KNOW I should be nicer to and about her, but her hobby is self-abnegation and if she doesn't stop saying "No, no -- after YOU" to everyone in the [worst word you can think of, ending in -ing] WORLD, I'm going to kill someone.
It's really hard to tell someone to STOP BEING SO BLEEPING NICE, already. Especially the kind of nice that DOESN'T HELP ANYONE. That doesn't even make SENSE.
Example: I came up to join her and my husband and son after a blissful couple of hours alone with my books (not all of them) in the hotel room. They (my family, not my books) were sitting on a bench that was exactly big enough for them. M-i-l shoves herself over so that SIX INCHES of bench are showing between her and my son and says, WITH A COMPLETELY STRAIGHT FACE, "Do you want to sit down?"
Not exactly a criminal offense.
But have I mentioned I want to go home?
Home, where I can clean my OWN stuff if I need to, and have ALL my books (instead of just a select few) with me, and I can buy chocolate and actually BRING IT HOME without it melting to the point that I can just fold it if it's taking up too much room in my bag?
They're back. Time to frog-march through Epcot.
(I KNOW that word is supposed to be all caps. I DON'T CARE.)
I have WORK to do. Work I'd LIKE to do.
I have all sorts of things to do AT HOME.
Instead, I'm stuck here in a place with a carbon footprint you can see from the [even worse word, also a gerund] moon. A place where it's ninety degrees outside and sixty inside because the air conditioning is always blasting because heaven forFEND all the rich people don't have SOMEwhere to wear their fur coats.
They haven't cleaned our room today, because we only went out for six hours. And before you give me grief about what a tough job professional cleaning is, I USED TO CLEAN HOUSE FOR A LIVING, all right? Yes, I used to clean house for total strangers for money. Wow, does that sound dirty (the other kind of dirty) when I say it like that.
I get to scream about not having a clean room to come back to, because my allergies and sinuses are killing me because of the abovementioned fur-coat-appropriate air conditioning.
I get to scream in general, because I'm spending ten days with my mother-in-law, who is paying for this whole trip and is very very nice and I KNOW I should be nicer to and about her, but her hobby is self-abnegation and if she doesn't stop saying "No, no -- after YOU" to everyone in the [worst word you can think of, ending in -ing] WORLD, I'm going to kill someone.
It's really hard to tell someone to STOP BEING SO BLEEPING NICE, already. Especially the kind of nice that DOESN'T HELP ANYONE. That doesn't even make SENSE.
Example: I came up to join her and my husband and son after a blissful couple of hours alone with my books (not all of them) in the hotel room. They (my family, not my books) were sitting on a bench that was exactly big enough for them. M-i-l shoves herself over so that SIX INCHES of bench are showing between her and my son and says, WITH A COMPLETELY STRAIGHT FACE, "Do you want to sit down?"
Not exactly a criminal offense.
But have I mentioned I want to go home?
Home, where I can clean my OWN stuff if I need to, and have ALL my books (instead of just a select few) with me, and I can buy chocolate and actually BRING IT HOME without it melting to the point that I can just fold it if it's taking up too much room in my bag?
They're back. Time to frog-march through Epcot.
(I KNOW that word is supposed to be all caps. I DON'T CARE.)
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