I was feeling like I had a little energy, and I've been looking at the fermenter in my room, thinking that I needed to rack the mead out of it, and into the carboy that's been sitting beside it for a couple of weeks. So, I motivated myself to get up and go do that.

I used one-step to sanitize everything, and then proceeded with the racking. I learned some things about the process, and lost more mead than I really needed to, because I had no clear idea how thick the yeast pack on the bottom would be.

The mead is darker than I expected, but then, I started with some pretty dark honey, so I guess that's understandable. I took the specific gravity, and it was 1.24. Unfortunately, this by itself tells me nothing. I didn't record the specific gravity in my previous entry about this batch, so I don't know the change. I'm reasonably certain I recorded the initial specific gravity in my little red notebook, but, uh... I'm not certain where that is, at the moment.

Anyway, the hygrometer, for whatever that's worth, was saying the mead had about 8% alcohol.

Sometime in the next month or so, I'll get a second batch started, with orange peel and cinnamon sticks.

I finally finished Nana, all 47 episodes of the first series. Unfortunately, this only takes me through about half of the (planned) Manga story arc, and a lot of things are left as loose ends. I read that the writer of the Manga was ill, and production was halted for a few months... I hope it doesn't get left hanging, because it's a pretty good story.

One of the hardest things about being my age is that I have to realize that it's really too late to do some things. I'll never pick up the bass guitar and join a rock and roll band; I'll never be a rock star. And that's okay, really... I've lived this long without it, I imagine I'll survive the rest of my life without, as well. But... it would have been fun.

(as a side note, I really love the bass line from Concrete Blonde's "Days and Days," where the bass starts right in from the first note. I always rather fancied the theme from Barney Miller, which, as I recall, did the same thing).

Anyway. I was thinking about sword arts. When I was a kid, we pretty much always lived in pretty rural places. Even Tucson in those days was more of a town than a city. And there never seemed to be a lot of options for studying sword arts, and there were always people who would look at one oddly for even suggesting that sword arts would be keen to study.

Today, poking about the Internets, I discovered the Traditional Chinese Sword League, who are holding competitions of, well, traditional Chinese sword arts as a contact sport... sort of a Chinese Kendo, if you will, though apparently not so structured as Kendo.

I'm excited that there seem to be more options for kids these days who are sword crazy. I don't know if that means that there are more folks who agree with me that swords are keen, or if it's just that the internet allows us to find each other more easily, but it does seem like there's a renaissance going on right now.

I do sort of wish there was a more structured approach to learning SCA sword combat. I find "go in there and try it out" to be a sort of... dismaying... approach. Probably because I overthink everything. I'm a very cerebral sort of person, and I like to have things to sink my brain into, even in a primarily physical environment.

I've been thinking I need to find a Tucson area dojo that teaches either Tai Chi with sword, or Kendo. But it will be a while, I think, before I'm ready to do anything more strenuous than pick up a waster.

I need to find the "rewind" button on life....

This is my 2,764^th entry in this journal. I always forget to watch the statistics closely enough to celebrate when I hit the milestones, so hey... 2764! Party! Woo!

irnbruise was saying she felt LJ was dying. And I kind of feel like there are only a half dozen people who are actually reading my entries, but then, I've always felt like there are only about half a dozen people actually reading my entries, so no change there.

I ran out of beta blockers today. The doc who treated me in the hospital wrote me 4 scrips for 30 pills each. However, where the other pills were 1/day, the beta blockers were 2/day. I'd tried to get him to write me another 30, but... it didn't happen. And I don't have things straightened out with AHCCCS yet, so I can't go see him in his office.

This is why we need a national health care system.

Anyway...

D&D last night with the Usual Suspects. Quote of the night: "It's not that Dwarves have anything against personal hygiene; it's just that we like beer better." -- Spackle Salvagehammer.

I've been watching Nana on Hulu. Part of its appeal for me is that it's about people trying to make it as musicians. I've always been fascinated by that endeavor, by the drive and dedication needed to carry one through all the lean years to become an overnight sensation... or a one-hit wonder.

When I lived in Alameda, California, I used to go to a couple of clubs over in Berkley, and listen to new punk / alternative bands play. A couple of them were pretty good. And I'd like to say I hung out at the Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill, but the truth is, it closed about a year before I hit the Triangle. But I've always liked going and seeing bands who were a step up from garage bands.

I lost that somewhere along the way. I haven't been to a live musical show of any kind in... a really long time. Years. At least a lustrum. That makes me sad.

I shoulda learned to play the guitar. I shoulda learned to play them drums.

I have, at times, worked very hard at not being a writer. I get story ideas, and I don't write them. When I absolutely have to, I work on things, but never serious things.

Tonight, I was reminded of why. I sort of accidentally started watching a Japanese animated series called Nana, and stayed up all night, watching the first eleven episodes on Hulu. They're very well crafted... the story is fairly simple, but the characters are complex and interesting, the sorts of characters I like.

I found myself thinking that I wish I could write something like that, but the truth is, I can't. It's just not in my experience, and anything I wrote in that vein would be forced and false.

Which, actually, is my problem with a lot of my writing.

So, if you didn't read about it before, I should probably mention that I had a heart attack. It will make the rest of this day much more comprehensible if you're equipped with this basic fact, going forward.

I have to go over and deal with the Department of Economic Security. Because critical care is expensive, and I have no money. And I'm greatful to the State of Arizona for picking up the bill on my heart attack, but the amount of paperwork required is... staggering. Plus? I have to see a cardiologist.

Anyway. In accordance with prophecy, I went out to the park last night for the Baronial barbeque, and was reminded that I'm really quite fond of both the previous and current Baronesses. (There are a lot of ses in that word).

We set up in the rain, and started a fire in the grill. By the time cooking actually commenced, it had stopped raining. I got to talk with some of my favorite people, and then I ran out of energy, and bailed early.

Which is sort of the story of my life.

And I guess I don't have to go deal with the DES today, but I should. I'm just having trouble finding the gumption to actually get up, shower, dress, and all those other things that are involved.

Because really? I'd rather sleep for another couple of hours.

But I won't.

Really, I'm going... any second now....

In case you were wondering, yes, I'm still alive. I spend a lot of time being tired, and even the simplest of activities get me to exhausted faster than you'd believe, but I'm still here.

Saturday morning, I went over to pick up satharn to go to the Sable Knight event with the SCA. As I was pulling in to her parking lot, I got a call from my old lab partner. I'd been meaning to call her, so I pulled over in the parking lot, and answered the phone. It turned out she already knew about my heart attack... Arizona is smaller than one thinks.

Anyway, we practiced our arts of conversation for a little while, and I called satharn to urge her to come on out to the parking lot. (She lives in a gated community). She told me that the weather (it rained prodigiously here in Tucson from about Wednesday to Friday) had forced closure of the tournament event, but that the planners had changed the venue to the location of Boar's Den later in the day.

So we ended up having one combined event instead of two. Anyway, satharn wanted to make a picnic basket for the basket auction, so I took her to do that, and then found myself at the end of my energy. satharn kindly let me nap on her bed while she puttered about with the basket makin's.

We headed out to the event, caught up with a few people, and eventually came to court. I got to read a couple of very nice folks into various sub-branches of the Order of the Boar, and then american_knight had a very cool court. Among other things, my dearly beloved friend snotblossom was offered elevation to the Order of the Pelican! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! (wild muppet flailing!)

Oh, and there was this cool thing where american_knight was given a replica of Captain America's shield, which was awesome... but not as awesome as snotblossom getting the bird!

So I was about out of energy after that... a couple of people remarked on how poorly I looked. I decided to go ahead and call it a night, and ran satharn home, then came on back to my own house and made with the collapsin'.

Only to get up this morning, and go out to Kingdom War Practice, where I met up with the cub scouts, and gave them a spiel about "Welcome, this is who we are, this is what we're doing today, if you have questions, I'm in that tent right over there."

So I went on over to that tent, and sat in the shade, and chatted with a couple of people, and... hit the end of my energy. Well before the people in armor did. So I made my apologies to atensibilla, said so long to snotblossom (who should totally do the plate thing!) and made my way home... where I made with the collapsin' and slept for several hours.

Got up in the evening, had dinner with the family. I'm going to try to get out of the house a little tomorrow, but I also really need to do some laundry... so maybe getting out of the house will wait 'til Tuesday. Hey, that'd be a cool name for a band....

Anyway... Your moment of Zen.

One of my favorite kilt makers, Matt Newsome, is holding a raffle for the Scottish Tartans Museum. Tickets are five bucks each, and if you win, you get Matt to make you a hand-sewn box-pleat kilt. Even if you only throw five bucks at it, it's a tremendous possible pay-off, and a great cause.

Saturday, I woke up with pressure in my chest. Not the kind where it feels like you have bands around your chest, or the kind where it feels like you have an elephant sitting on you... more the kind where it feels like the Alien is in there, and he wants out. I'd been feeling under the weather for a couple of days, and figured this was just the newest symptom... gas pains. Went through the day, feeling a little bit of pressure.

My aunt took off to drive her parents back to the rural town where they live. My uncle took off to go have a sleep study. I started having pain under my left scapula -- again, not a big thing for me, because ever since the Curly-Haired Girl fell asleep on my shoulder a couple of years ago, I get intermittent shoulder pain. The pressure in my chest got worse.

So I decided to take an aspirin for the pain, and an extra-strength mylanta for the gas. Only neither helped. So I took another of each. And they didn't help. So I started thinking that maybe there was something more serious going on. By this time, it was about one o'clock Sunday morning, and I didn't want to wake anyone up... I'd've felt an idiot if I'd woken someone to drive me to the hospital, and the ED folks said, "Here's some extra strong gas-ex, have a nice night."

So I got in the car, and drove up to the hospital. I walked into the ED, and the guy at the desk said, "Can I help you?" And I said, "it is within the realm of possibility that I'm having a heart attack."

So they took me right back, and hooked me to an EKG, and concluded that it was within the realm of possibility that I was having a heart attack. So they lay me down on a gurney, and started giving me various medications, and called in the on-call team for the Catheter Lab. About this time, I sent my uncle a text message asking him to call me when he had a chance... I knew I wasn't dying, so I figured there was no need to interrupt his sleep study.

I went into the cath lab, and they gave me a femoral catheter which spilled contrast dye into my heart while the doctor looked at it in real-time X-ray. The contrast was odd, as it made me feel hot all over my body, like I was being microwaved or something. Anyway, the doctor couldn't seen an occlusions while he was watching the scan live, but reviewing the tape, he found it.

Turns out, I have tissue damage to an area of my heart about the size of the head of a pin. I'll be fine, particularly if I take my meds, adjust my lifestyle factors, and so on. But it was pretty scary.

Big thanks to everyone who came to visit me... it was much appreciated.

takaal is to blame for my knowledge of this: First-person tetris. It's... different.

I know I have a couple of friends who knit... are you familiar with Knitty? Is it actually a decent resource? (Yes, that was linked to me in a very different context; I'm just wondering if y'all might find it useful).

I seem to have caught a case of the flu. It's not a big, nasty one... I'm just nauseous and want to sleep all the time. Bleah.

As I've mentioned before, Mrs. lysander_cat's parents are ill, and may soon come to live with us. This has caused a great deal of effort to be expended in thoughts about how, exactly, that's going to work. There was discussion of building a guest house in the back yard of the current house, but that plan seems to have fallen by the wayside in favor of moving to a house that already has one.

So, the last few days, we've been looking at houses. It's kind of a strange process, house hunting. We've seen a couple-three houses that I would not mind living in, but each one we see makes me think, "well, I like this one better..."

It's also strange to be voicing opinions on a house that I will live in, and will eventually contribute to the cost of... but for the moment will just be going along with.

It reminds me of when my ex-wife and I were house-hunting, actually.

Books I read in 2010:

1. Swordspoint, Ellen Kushner
   
2. The Book of the Dead, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
   
3. The Wheel of Darkness, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
   
4. The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner
   
5. Cemetery Dance, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
   
6. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Jane Austin and Ben H. Winters
   
7. Old Soldiers, David Webber
   
8. Wee Free Men, Terry Pratchett
   
9. The Fall of the Kings, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman
   
10. The Paladin, C. J. Cherryh
    

The Consumer Electronics Showcase is coming up this week, and I'm sure there will be a number of nifty gadgets premiered there... and Apple has rented a hall to make a "major product announcement," which many people are betting will be the long-rumored tablet computer. And I'm a Mac guy, so I'd be lying if I said I weren't interested in that.

But what has me really excited is Plastic Logic. These are the folks who have invented a flexible plastic display. (cf the BBC Tech story). What's potentially as exciting, however, is that, in addition to having a light-weight, durable, flexible display, this is electronics that is not based in silicon.

Did you catch that? Their electronics are polymer-based, not silicon. That's pretty damn exciting, but let's leave the promise of non-silicon electronics for another day.

Instead, I want to talk for a moment about their new product, the Que e-reader. It's an 8.5 x 11 inch display, which means that my game books will be able to be displayed full-page at a time, which is exciting. But what's equally exciting is that a reader like that would make newspaper reading practical, which could eventually lead to a resurgence of print journalism.

It's less than a third of an inch thick, made of plastic, so it's light. It's flexible, so you can just toss it in your briefcase or bookbag, and not worry about it getting bumped or jarred.

And best of all, the makers are saying it will support multiple electronic document formats, such as Portable Document Format (PDF), Rich Text File (RTF), Microsoft Office 2003-2007 (.Doc), and ePub, which is becoming a defacto open standard for electronic books.

Plus? Barnes and Noble has partnered with Plastic Logic to make the Que their answer to the Kindle.

Now, I don't have the money to buy one right off the bat, and anyway, I'm not sure I want one of the first ones out the door. I'll wait six months to let them get the bugs worked out. But when I have some money... depending on the price tag on these things... I may well end up with one in my hot little hands.

oloriel did a nifty thing where she went back and briefly talked about 2009, month by month. I thought I would swipe the idea. So:

( January )

( February )

( March )

( April )

( May )

( June )

( July )

( August )

( September )

( October )

( November )

( December )

In short, more good things happened during the year than bad ones. I mean, the bad things that happened were big things, like getting kicked out of nursing school or evicted from the dorm, so they stick out, but it's important to remember that even while those things were happening, there were also good things happening.

Still... I'd be happy if 2010 had more big good things happen.

The little conversation, well it's over very soon
And I watch in admiration from my corner of the room.
[...]
These little conversations... if I try my very best
you know I never could say anything in twenty words or less.
--"Little Conversations," Concrete Blonde

It's New Year's Eve. For the first time in a number of years, lysander_cat and his lovely wife are not having a party tonight.

I've been invited to two different parties. One in a mass, sort of "y'all come, now, y'hear?" kind of way, and one where the folks hosting the party are at least friendly acquaintances, verging on friends, and have specifically said to me that they hope to see me.

Of course, that's a polite thing to say to someone, and I figure they wouldn't actually miss me if I weren't there. And I'm having a really hard time not crawling under my bed and hiding from the idea of a party. The social pressure, the feeling of having no idea what to say in conversations... yeah. Under my bed is looking pretty good, right about now.

There's a certain irony in the fact that I feel this kind of social anxiety, but have one of the more public jobs in the Barony. I'm okay with one-to-many interaction. I just start losing traction on a one-to-one basis.

The little conversation... well, I made it very rough.
They leave me all in pieces, you know there's never time enough.
It's like a book with missing pages... a story incomplete
it's like a painting left unfinished, it feels like not enough to eat.

I've been noodling over the question of the adoption of heraldry. Unlike several European nations, the United States of America has no armorial authority, and no laws on the bearing of devices of arms. Despite being a nation of yeomen (definition 2, here), most of us descended from ancestors who came here seeking a better life than they could get back home, and some outright fleeing legal or religious persecution, we have a national desire to be gently born. To be, as Sir Nigel would put it, "a gentleman of coat armor."

I have arms, which I adopted and registered with the College of Heralds of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), of which I am a member. (Azure and argent per chevron, a tree blasted and eradicated counterchanged). I did this because I am a member of this group which strives to recreate a medieval flavor, and I'd like to move up to a more responsible office within the organization at some point.

While hamner and I were talking about the origin of his family name the other day, though, I ran across one of the places that will sell you "your family coat of arms." Now, leaving aside the fact that there is no such thing as a "family coat of arms," because arms are individual to the armiger, the arms they showed on the page were kind of nice. It was a simple design, it incorporated some nice elements, and hamner kind of liked it.

hamner is not a member of the SCA. Therefore, he does not fall under the authority of the Society's College of Arms. I could probably get the arms registered for him, if he wanted them registered there to keep anyone else in the society from bearing them, but that seems kind of odd.

So I'm left, contemplating the fact that America has no armorial authority, and no laws about bearing arms. How would you feel, my American friends, if you adopted arms, and then saw someone else wearing a t-shirt with those arms on them, out in public somewhere? Would there be fellow-feeling, or a kind of "hey, why are you wearing my arms?"

There's a woman I don't know, but to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. She's the mother of wednesdayschild and alohomoron, who I count as two of my most valued online friends. Today, she had a ministroke, and spent the day in hospital, which is a frightfully bad Christmas for all involved.

My biological father died when I was young, younger than alohomoron is now. I was a sailor at the time, stationed aboard USS Papago. I'd spent the night off the ship... I don't remember where, or what I was doing. I had to come back in the morning, because I was scheduled to attend a course on-base, and needed a dress uniform to do it in.

As I came across the brow, the officer of the deck told me that the executive officer (XO) wanted to see me in his quarters. I walked up there, and knocked on the door. "What did I do wrong?" I asked, joking, "and how did you find out about it?"

He looked at me without amusement, and said, "Come in. Sit down." I figured I was in deep trouble, and started casting my mind about, trying to figure out what I might have done.

He said, "I was contacted by the Red Cross at the request of your uncle, Thomas. Your father is dead."

He had emergency leave papers already drawn up. He asked if I had the money to fly home; I did. He assigned the ship's duty driver to take me to the airport.

Meanwhile, my family had been told that I couldn't be contacted, because my ship was at sea. My uncle made the entirely reasonable decision to proceed with cremation, in accordance with my father's wishes. So by the time I got home, it was done. I never saw my father's body.

For a long time, that created a kind of disbelief in me. That my father wasn't really dead, that it was an insurance scam, and he was sitting on a beach somewhere in Mexico.

It's hard when our parents die. We grow up, thinking that they're so strong, that they'll always be there. And when, suddenly, they're not, it's a shock. It's been more than twenty years since his death, and I still think about it at least once each week. Things I'd like to say to him, things I'd like to ask him.

So I understand what my friends are experiencing, and I have deep sympathy for them. I encourage them to make the most of the time they have with their mother, because one day....

So, yesterday, I went and took care of some animals for a friend who's out of state, visiting his wife's family back east. It has been noted in the past that "back east" is a little bit of a flexible concept for Arizonans, with some of us feeling that it starts at about the Arizona / New Mexico border, but in this case, I'm fairly certain that the state he's visiting meets anyone's definition of "back east," as it's on the Atlantic coast.

After finishing with the pilling of the dog and so forth, I gave raventhourne a call, asked if it was a good time to come over. See, apparently, I was born without a whole set of social instincts, and whenever I just drop by someone's house, it turns out to be the Bad Time. So I called, and she said sure, c'mon over, so I did.

I ended up sitting out in the workshop, chewing the fat with posadnik_ivan. It was very nice... I have very few male friends; for some reason, I just don't get along well with the majority of men. So even though I felt like I was babbling, and had talked more than I had in the preceding week put together, it was, as I say, very nice.

We went over to Woodworker's Source, which I'd driven by and noted fairly often, but had never gone in. As we wandered, looking at wood, I was given once again to ponder the making of scabbards. I have a dirk that is a fantastic piece, but has a crummy scabbard, and a sword I would likewise like to dress better. Ivan recommended cherry wood for the scabbards, so I'm thinking at some point, I'll pick up a piece and see what can be done about that.