Sure, I need to eat, knit, feed the dog, keep a roof more or less over my head. That's not the point of this post. I need to work because if I don't, I stagnate as a writer. I become too cocooned in my world. It sounds cozy. It's also sterile.

Out there, are real voices, stories, color, events, change, collisions, joy, crisis, romance. I get to see it all for the price of getting up (a few ablutions), stepping onto a bus and letting the show begin.

The bus: A middle-aged woman got in an argument with two middle-school boys who were about to commit a minor act of vandalism; three high school boys talked about detention, girls, scary teachers, what was the purpose of school anyway; a young black man and a middle aged white woman talked about religion; two hispanics and a white guy compared their work release programs and plans for the future.

The day continues like that. The couple in line at lunch talking about what they first bought online, "College textbooks! Shit, Amazon, I can't believe I work there now. That was the old site, y'now." "I'm so sure. Mine was eBay, some junky thing."

Every one of these conversations is fodder for something. If nothing else, for how people really talk. What they talk about. I hardly ever hear anyone answer a question directly. (Kid 1: Is detention really bad?  Kid 2: I had detention 5 times. I had to stare at a fire hydrant outside. Kid 3. I had detention once. I didn't go outside though. Kid 2: Yeah we were watching a movie so Mr. Hutchins sent me outside. It was the Matrix. Kid 3: We always watch boring movies. Kid 2: Stupid fuck. I was outside staring at a fire hydrant. Kid 1: What other movies did you guys see?)

So who are those kids? Is kid 2 really the bad ass he's saying he is? Did kid 1 get his question answered? Are they friends or not friends? 

Me, I love listening to this stuff and trying to puzzle it out. It gives me ideas. These people become analogs for characters. If I didn't leave the house to go to work, I would lose touch. So it's good I have to do it. Even if I do indulge in my fantasy occasionally of not having to work. I know it's good for me.

Saw this on a bus this morning. 100 will be on Seattle buses during the holiday season, courtesy of the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

Now that we know what a HUGE Dr. Who fan he is, I see Chabon's new book, Manhood for Amateurs in our near future.  Perhaps I can even forgive him for doing such a crappy job with his female characters. Wait....No, not quite.

Yes, yes, I know. He's a great writer.

I now want to get me one of those metal detectors and go to England. If Indiana Jones is reading any of these, he's eating his heart out!

Just wandering around this here field in Scotland, and whoops! Found a bunch of treasure!

Real-life tomb raiders (OK, archeologists) find Bulgarian tomb treasure!

Not all treasure is gold and silver. Some of it was marble being shipped back to Europe.

Found in Bulgaria (and kept hidden): Alexander the Great's payroll. That had to have been a sad day.

My friend Joyce is a finalist in the photo contest for Verge Magazine, and all the photos are well worth looking at. Beautiful and thought-provoking.

We really have no idea of the brutality of the Spanish Civil War. Sometimes, little hints come across in books and movies. But the entirety of this devastating event, for the most part, passed us by as so many world events do.

Buried in a mass grave, with thousands of others, is the writer Lorca. The circumstances of his death are hazy. Where exactly he's buried is not 100% certain, but the Spanish government is now proposing to try and find him (if the family cooperates).

This is the most complete article (there are many out there) on the exhumation and what this is doing to Spain today.

Neverland: J.M. Barrie, the DuMauriers and the Dark Side of Peter Pan
Peter Pan never appealed to me. There always seemed something deeply wrong with it. Even as a child, it made me uncomfortable. As an adult, I continued to find it unlikeable. This biography of Barrie, his relationship with the five boys, and ongoing relationship with the DuMaurier family (Daphne DuMaurier is the endpoint of this book), has the same quality of watching a car wreck. Hard to look away, and yet you feel like you should.  Parts of it are shocking. Parts of it seemed speculative in the extreme. But, as Flora Poste would say, "Interesting and depressing." I don't know that I liked it. The author was a little too gleeful in his digging up of old and ugly scandals. It was nice to feel that my childhood instincts were correct. Peter Pan is icky.

City at the End of Time: There is much to like about City at the End of Time. The ties between the future city and current Seattle were well handled. I liked the story and the characters. it worked really well for me for the first three quarters of the book. The last quarter, as time fell apart, the book began to fall apart a bit as well. Once the characters walked into the indescribable chaos, and it had to be described, it no longer seemed as threatening or chaotic. There began to seem like there was only one possible outcome, and the characters had to turn out to be who they were. When they did, I found that disappointing. I was hoping for some last twist or change in circumstance.  So while I enjoyed it, I found the ending ultimately unsatisfying.  It's a good book for a cat owner.

The City and The City delighted me, but then I've really enjoyed all of Mieville's work. This was a shorter piece of noir than some of his other, longer books. It made me think about how every city overlaps other, secret cities within it. Cities we deliberate "unsee" every day. There were a lot of unanswered questions (how did the cities split apart? how had they ever had a war? Where did the stories of Orciny come from?) but really, it didn't matter. No one knew so there was no reason I should know.  It wasn't germane to the peculiarities of the story.  I thought this was pretty great, I loved that though there was a fantastic element in the book, it wasn't the fantastic that determined the outcome of the situation.

I've read a lot of Pratchett. A lot. More than I can list here.

Isaac's Storm: Non-fiction about the hurricane that destroyed Galveston. Well written, and extremely grim.

Harriet Jones was right.

Over the last two days we watched all five days of Torchwood: Children of Earth. I still think that this was exceptionally fine. RTD did not appear to go early to the pub and leave the story half done, for a change.  It was certainly dramatic (although as always, bearing the hallmarks of RTD's style. -Every- child on Earth is in danger, and then we don't hear any more about those other children, just Britain's).

For once, Jack was not the center of the story. It was nice to see Gwen shown off. Eve Miles is a better actor. I'm assuming that by now, -everyone- has seen it, but if you haven't yes, there are spoilers.

I was very pleased to have a genuinely allien allien, who was also scary. It depresses me to say that I can all too easily see the politics of a situation like that going down similarly to how it was portrayed. The series rollicked along fast enough that it was easy to ignore some of the really dumb moments. Jack and Ianto just run into Thames House on testosterone overdrive, with no clear plan, no real idea of how to deal with the aliens except bluster. From the very beginning that seemed silly. Ah well. Poor Ianto. He was always my favorite.

Frobisher's whole tragic arc I thought was really excellent. Horrible and sad and depressing in a mythological way.

It was interesting to me, as I thought about it afterwards, how ineffective Jack was through the whole thing. Nothing he does is successful, he seems to just make things worse, and in the end, the final tragic solution, isn't his idea but the civil servant's. He's the one who realizes how to implement the feedback loop and what the cost will be. Jack makes the choice to sacrifice his grandson, but that didn't seem anymore noble to me than his initial choice to sacrifice the 12 children. Ethical questions are always a problem.

It was certainly, I think, the best Torchwood. It doesn't, for me, come up to the best Dr. Who.

Fun stuff, conveniently gathered for us. Thanks, Archeology Magazine!

Austin sent me this college students explanation of why study anthropology. Now I understand why he needs that PhD. :-)

It's completely charming.

Short stories are not my preferred writing medium. I like a novel, where you get to loosen your corset and relax into your story. A short story is more demanding. It wants makeup and a good waist, perhaps stockings. I'm a little too lazy to work that hard very often.

To take on a short story, the subject has to really speak to me. I mull it over in my mind for a month or two, trying it on. This morning, I lay in bed for an hour finally getting the scenes straight in my head on something I've been thinking over for a long time.

And this afternoon I wrote the first quick draft. About 1,700 words. It will get longer I suspect.  It sucks right now, but has potential. It took a couple of turns I wasn't expecting. I like that.

And now I'm free of it, for a little while.

I find this a fascinating example (and one I encounter often) of what happens when one discipline doesn't talk much to another.  Classicists and historians have never questioned that there was another settlement at the location of Alexandria. It was called Rhakotis and was an Egyptian fishing village. It was often visited by Greeks. Homer mentions it. Herodotus mentions it. Heck, even the histories of Alexander mention it. Rhakotis continued as a separate portion of the city, inhabited by the Egyptian population, for a long time. It was one of the known districts.

But now, archeologists have finally clued in. Wow. Sometimes ancient history is true. The sarcasm is totally mine. After all, much that Herodutus wrote was -not- true (although cool if it were). But a lot of his testable geography was.

OK,, done ranting, I swear.

The an expensive poison pen letter, or a convincing argument for the return of the Elgin Marbles?

You decide.

No matter what the remaining artworks are phenomenal.

I feel like it's the end of an era. We met with Dr. Barnhart. Mark has the skinny on the big picture of what happened to him. I've now given him some of my additional theories of how what happened and why. The burden of Knowing Stuff has shifted, which is good.  There is, of course, a lot of the day-to-day events that Mark won't know about unless he reads my eljay entries. Some of the most traumatic are still writ wide across my memory. I suppose that's not surprising.

We saw all the cardiac PAs while we were waiting in Barnhart's office. Bill, Steve, and Pierce. They were glad to see Mark up and doing so well, and it was nice to see all of them at once too. It rounded out the visit with a nice piece of closure.

It is unlikely that we will ever see Dr. Barnhart again (if we do, it means something has gone terribly wrong), and you know, that's OK.

1. Watching people on the bus suddenly discover their friends, and maneuver to sit next to them.

2. Finding my soup card was full, so I had free soup today.

3. Mark coming up with: "Sweeney Dog, the Demon Barker of Flea Street."

4. Buying fish at the fish place on the way home, and realizing how lucky we are to have such a fabulous place in walking distance.

5. Making a particularly scrumptious dinner.

It's off to work tomorrow for the first time in three and a half months of FMLA. Feels very odd.

Poddie is charging.

Lunch is picked out.

Mark has set alarm.

Bus schedule is checked.

Know what to cook for dinner.

I can't think of anything else. Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs do that thing bed bugs do to your toes.

I knitted. Often, I knitted the same two inches over and over again because I made so many mistakes (no concentration) I would rip them out, knit them again, and rip them out again.  I know for sure one day I ended up with no net progress on the "midnight skies" scarf at all.  But it gave my hands something to do which was good, and a way to connect with nurses and CNA's and others, also good.  These are also posted on Ravelry, which I don't use as much as I should.  Yarn supplied/bought through Astrid Bear's Damselfly Yarns.
This is the "heart" scarf and watch cap. I know some of you helped knit it. Basic garter, which was all I could do for a long time.
This is Damselfly's Midnight Skies, which I really loved for the flecks of sterling silver and softness.  They don't come out very well in the photo, but are very stunning in the yarn.  It took me a lot longer to knit this than it should have due to my losing my place, ripping it out, and starting it over.  I could really have used a "lifesaver" thread in this one!
Geri Jeter donated to me her stash before she and KW moved to Vegas. This was made with some of the worsted weight yarn from that collection, most of which was purchased while they lived in England. I was also the fortunate recipient of all her (old) British knitting books, which I need to wander back through again.  This is a beautiful dark teal. It's very rich color that I rarely see.

And then they made Stew. And drank beer and mead.

What a send off!  Be sure to check out the recreated recipes!

BTW, I discovered this little nugget courtesy of my slow cooker, which has a recipe for "Midas' Feast Lamb Stew" and links to this site.

I have cups and cups of beans in the fridge. I had no idea, really, no idea, when I soaked Bob's Redmill 13 bean combo that I would end up with so many. Dried, they didn't look so big.

Two cups went to chili tonight, which was good. Gave some of that away to Miki. Must do something else with the 5 or 6 cups I have left. Wow, that's a lot of beans.

If you haven't heard about the Portus Project, you should check it out. It's very cool. I'm stunned that a) it was lost after it was first discovered in the 1800's, and b) it's next to an international airport and no one noticed. How do these gigantic things just get buried and forgotten? The University of Southampton has magnificent photos of the objects and field work as well as computer visualizations here.

Another amazing ongoing project is the Persepolis Fortification Archive. These "volumes" catalog the daily business of the Persian empire, revolutionizing knowledge of the ancient Persian empire from around 500 BCE. There's a bit of rush to get moving on this since the Oriental institute "borrowed" it to copy and translate since 1933. Iran would like it returned. The politics would fill a book. U of C is indeed hurrying, with technological help.

It was a good book day. I found a used copy of Folk Shawls (knitting) and Cirque du Freak at our local used bookstores. Very pleased. And got my order of Intelligence Activities in Ancient Rome: Trust in the Gods, but Verify. Who could resist a title like that? Not me!

Mark is doing well. Miki delivered a loaner oximeter to us, which is awesome. We watched Mark's pulse go from 116 before dinner to 98 after dinner. His oxygenation is good. This device will make it much easier for him to keep track of this stuff. We went out for lunch, which was nice. It was sunny down at Alki, and great to get out. Today really felt like a vacation day which was nice.