In which the narrator wonders whether he's a prima donna

In recent months (specifically, since I got serious about attending the Dragon*Con Writer's Workshop last month), I have been organizing my computers and retooling my computer room into a writing study and office instead of a glorified server closet.

In this vein, I've rebuilt a secondhand Windows 98-vintage Compaq laptop (dubbed "Whitman") that I bought on the cheap from Hunter, spent some time revitalizing machines around the house, new and old, for writing: the Mac laptops (Tangy and Galactica) and my Mac Mini (Frost), and then came up with an effective set of methods for synchronizing them all through the use of a thumb drive.

For once, this isn't even procrastinating behavior! I've been brainstorming and organizing story ideas for use in next month's NaNoWriMo (not allowed to write any actual prose, though, until November 1), working on critiques of the manuscripts submitted by other members of the writing group that formed from the attendees of the Dragon*Con workshop, and continuing to read SF both new and old, and now trying to supplement my fiction diet with true classics, like the Iliad type of classics.

I have found, though, that I truly do love writing more when my tools are beautiful ones. When I hand-write, I use a Waterman Philéas fountain pen in a Moleskine or similar notebook; when I type, I increasingly want to use one of my Macs, and specifically using a truly wondrous bit of writer-oriented software called Scrivener.

I also am working hard to convert my office, as mentioned above, from a very technoid server room with fans a-whining into more of a study, a writing nook, a library. I'm not certain as yet what I want to do about the whining-fans thing (the house's computers have to go somewhere), but the environment in which I create has begun to become important to me, and optimizing the place where I do my thing does make sense: the more comfortable I am writing in a place, the more of it I'll do, and most likely the better I'll do it.

Excellent Article, and one of the things that got me on this writing-space kick: Writer's Rooms.

-Rich

An Omnibus Post to Bring Everyone Up to Speed

Abject apologies for the dearth of posts lately. It was a full and trying summer, though the fall is looking much better.

Here's a partial list of all that's happened in our lives since last I blogged.

Death of Sebastian, our dog
Sebastian was diagnosed with a particularly virulent form of cancer called hemangiosarcoma that usually manifests first in the spleen, but spreads quickly to the rest of the body. The lesions/masses can grow so quickly that they deplete the body of iron, so the primary symptom Sebastian showed was acute anemia.

After the first occurrence of anemia (in June), we had the vet remove his spleen and put Sebastian on a plan of iron supplementation. This bought us another four or five weeks with him in good, jumping-around health.

We came home the night of July 6th after a night out to discover that Sebastian was unable to move well, and had obviously had a seizure during the day. Seizing typically means that the end is near, so we made him comfortable and prepared for the inevitable. Around eleven o'clock he began seizing regularly. The emergency clinic was far enough away that making the drive might take longer than Sebastian had, so we decided to keep him in familiar surroundings.

Sebastian died gasping, at about three on the morning of the 7th of July, after many seizures. It was fairly horrible to watch.

We buried him in an area of Amy's parents' property reserved for pet graves. It was raining--the first rain showers Birmingham had seen in nearly two months.

Acquisition of a new puppy: Shasta!
About two weeks after Sebastian's passing, Amy suggested that we go puppy shopping. Reese (our other dog) hadn't shown too many symptoms of grieving or pining, but he did seem confused, often, when Sebastian would ordinarily have popped in front of him on the way to the back yard, or sat next to him on the couch, and failed to. In short, Reese was coping well, but we didn't want him to become too used to being the only dog around the house. At over twelve years old, Reese is an old dog, and was becoming a bit set in his ways.

Amy and I had discussed another puppy, and I was definitely all in favor, though only two weeks seemed fairly short to grieve properly--the topic was still painful. Anyway, we went to the local humane society and visited with a few dogs, but we eventually settled on Shasta, a black lab/husky mix with white toes and a shock of white on her chest. She also has one pale blue and one brown eye--very striking. :-) Amy was particularly taken with her because she was more easygoing and loving than most of the puppies we "interviewed," without being too energetic or overly fearful.

Shasta is a wonderful dog: extremely intelligent, and quite affectionate. It took her a few weeks to sleep through the night reliably, and to be sufficiently housebroken not to require "puppy pads" or frequent towel changes in her crate.

She's also been good for Reese: he's a bit arthritic, but now that we've got him on glucosamine supplements he's able to tussle and play, and honestly I think he enjoys wrestling with Shasta more than he ever did when he was a puppy himself.

The plan for Amy to leave her job
Amy had been eager to leave her desk job for some time--the commute from our house in Alabaster to her office downtown was punishing. Several factors both financial and interpersonal came together to allow us to have her leave her job in mid-August, having given notice in mid-July.

This would have worked out better if the beginning of August through the middle of September hadn't become a constant march of expenses, repairs and travel needs. Of course, this came after spending some impressive money on the first heroic rescue of Sebastian from the effects of his cancer, and after the wedding and honeymoon expenses of the spring.

The air-conditioner breakdown
The summer of 2007 contained one of the longest streaks of 100-degree-Fahrenheit high temperatures in recorded history. It was also an extremely dry summer, in terms of rain, but with periods of high humidity, to make the heat interesting.

Naturally, once Amy came home, the house's air conditioning began to malfunction.

The condensation overflow pan under the refrigeration unit kept filling up, so the floater switch that kept the pan itself from overflowing kept tripping, meaning no chilling of the air. Temperatures in the house routinely reached 85 and higher. I rigged up a siphon system to drain the pan until we could afford repairs, but I wound up having to empty the pan about every other day. Very trying conditions for Amy, and our animals.

At long last we determined (with the help of my new brother-in-law Greg) that a pipe that normally allowed the condensation to drain had become clogged, and after flushing that pipe all has been well.

Breakdown of Gladys, the Mercury Mystique
Gladys, the Mercury Mystique, was bought with several known problems. Electrical issues--check. Leaky tires--check. "Moosing" hum that emanates from under the hood when the car's not yet warmed up--check.

In late August, though, Gladys's alternator died, taking her battery with it. I appear to be hard on car alternators--I seem to lose them at a disproportionate rate to the rest of the car-driving world.

The Mercury Mystique, however, seems purpose-built to cause alternator pain. Not only is the alternator located near the bottom of the engine (and exposed to the elements, making it more prone to failure than other placements would make it), it's located such that one actually has to remove the car's front axle and hoist the car's engine to replace or otherwise service the part. Thus a $160 part can require $500 or more in labor to replace.

Luckily, having family in town who's been in the area for generations enabled us to find an alternator-specialized place that would cut us a deal on the part (repairing it rather than replacing it) and the labor. We made out for hundreds less than we were originally quoted by a more conventional place.

After waiting for the following payday, we got the alternator repaired, and all has been well.

Breakdown of Betsy, the VW Beetle
...which was just in time for Amy's beetle to lose its battery, another $90 expense and bit of installation headache right on the weekend where she was going to drive out to Atlanta to join me at...

Dragon*Con!
Dragon*Con was actually an enormous amount of fun, if getting Amy there was more grief than planned. We got to visit with my brother Matt and his wife Amy, hang out with throngs of our fellow geeks, and generally relax among the rampant absurdity.

I also got to attend a writing workshop taught by Ann Crispin (aka A.C. Crispin) as regards the craft of writing the science fiction novel. Very, very, very useful time had, there. And yes, I will be participating in NaNoWriMo this year. :-D

There was also a brief workshop, off in one of the rear rooms of the Hyatt, where there was an impromptu homebrewing discussion that cropped up...

Gentleman Meadmaker
One of the stars of the Dragon*Con homebrewing panel discussion was a quiet guy who had brought three bottles of mead (a beverage made by the fermentation of honey, and sometimes described as honey wine) to the con, and of course pulled the corks on them for the audience to sample. One of the samples Amy and I didn't quite care for, but one was sublime: exactly the sort of taste you'd expect from a fermentation of honey: sweet, alcoholic like a wine, aromatic like... well, like honey. :-)

About two weeks ago I dropped by Alabrew, my local homebrew supply store, grabbed 25 pounds of truly excellent Alabama orange-blossom honey and some suitable yeast and other sundries, and then went home and broke out the fermenting equipment.

Amy and I have two batches going: the first is a six-gallon batch of "traditional mead" that's just eighteen pounds of honey, water added to six total gallons, yeast nutrient and yeast. We didn't boil it, didn't filter it, didn't even heat the honey: we just sanitized the heck out of all equipment, dumped the honey, water and nutrient into the fermenting bucket, agitated with a stirrer that was driven by power drill, added the yeast and covered. The bubbler's still going at a pop every two seconds or so, weeks later. (Mead takes a good while longer than beer or wine to "ferment out," or exhaust the yeast.) Should begin to be drinkable at around six months, sometime close to St. Patrick's Day.

The second batch is much smaller (just one gallon), but also more elaborate. It's a melomel/metheglin-style mead (containing fruit and spices) called "Joe's Foolproof Ancient Orange, Clove and Cinnamon Mead," found here at GotMead.com. It should be ready by Christmas, and Amy and I can't wait to try it--we scored whole nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and other spices from our local Whole Foods grocer, not to mention a decent bottle of Chaucer's Mead to sample while we set up the ferment.

Wedded Bliss
Amy and I are, despite the craziness of the summer, doing better than ever. People frequently say that the first year of marriage is the hardest to get through, and if this is the worst we ever see, then we're in good shape. Certainly it's been external problems that have caused the most commotion: coming home to my new wife has been the easiest part of this past summer by far. :-D

Well, I feel better
Whew! Lots of history to get through, but this covers the high (and low) points. I plan to do more blogging about issues great and small from now on (knowing that I had this huge thing to do made it easy to procrastinate on other posts I want to do), so keep an eye out!

-Rich

[Edit: Wanted to make a note for precision's sake that the batches of mead were started on 9/30/07. Just for my own future reference.]

Six Years!

Brain Squeezings turns six today!

I haven't marked too many of the anniversaries of the site's inception, but this year it seems appropriate. After all, one of the several reasons I started blogging in the first place was to help assuage the grief and pain attending dissolution of my first marriage. It, and the people who've read and commented along the way, have indeed helped me, beyond my wildest dreams of success. Amy, beloved wife of mine, I'm looking at you. :-D

Along the way I've made a few new friends; lost a few friends; done a fair amount of dating; learned a little about beer; got fired and hired; moved; held forth on subjects from parenthood to webcomics to technology to politics to wine; killed a pair of cars; and even, this blessed spring, managed to remarry, and this time it's going to stick.

(Yes, yes, I know there hasn't been an actual wedding post yet, but since getting back from the honeymoon there's been more than a little bit of drama to our lives, and it's only mostly been from the Altima's terminal wreck. More detail [and wedding photos!] to come.)

Leading the bloggèd life (even if Brain Squeezings's posting frequency has varied wildly with my mercurial need to opine before the world) has been a cleansing, eye-opening, educational experience, and an enriching one as well. I can't wait to see what the next six years of Squeezings will bring.

Thanks to all my readers, past and present, for hanging with me through whatever part of this journey you've hung through. I'm a happier, healthier person for having undertaken this little exercise, and it's largely because I've had great people out there reading, commenting and sharing the ride.

(Lifts a glass of Sangiovese)

Prost!

-Rich

The Mercury Mystique, Long May She Drive

Meet the new addition to the Miller family. A silver 1999 Mercury Mystique, acquired through a friend of my new parents-in-law. It's the little sister to the Mercury Sable/Ford Taurus: sturdy, reliable, but at nearly eight years old, rather lived-in. It came with a few quirks: no radio; only a valet key (unable to unlock the car's doors); some trim damage inside the car (and lots of dust and "age patina").

Still, for $2,500, not too shabby for being paid for. A trip to the local Mercury dealership, a locksmith, my local Circuit City and an inside-and-out car wash, and the car's looking presentable and behaving well.

It's also the V-6 "sport" version of the Mystique, which is surprisingly zippy, and since it's a late-'90s American car, it's still got enough heft that I'd feel safe in another crash. Amenities are good, too: power windows and locks, AM/FM/CD/iPod/Aux sound (now), air conditioning, sun roof.

It's also got some goofy faux-woodgrain panels on the dashboard. Since the steering wheel was looking fairly ratty (you know that beaten-up look that softer steering wheels get after a few years), I found one of those cheapo steering wheel covers at Wal-mart that was a great shade of black "leather" and an exactly matching hi-gloss faux woodgrain pattern. Stylin' now!

Anyway, I'm nearly entirely mended from my little brush with automotive disaster: aside from some remaining tenderness in the form of an upper-shin bruise and stiffness in my right shoulder and neck, I'm approaching 100%.

Coming this weekend: moving hijinks, as space for Amy's stuff is made among mine!

-Rich

What it Means to Be Blessed

That would appear to be that for the Altima. I am, miraculously, battered and bruised but okay. Nothing broken, no serious damage.

Prelude
Friday night, after driving Amy home after a sushi dinner and a shopping trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond, I decided to head over to Lowe's to pick up a vent-shunt of some type for the air-conditioning register over our bed.

As I was driving on County Route 12 toward Route 119, I saw a police car coming toward me, but slewing in the light rain. He swung to his right, off the road, then his left, into my lane. We were each going about forty-five miles an hour, and brakes on the wet asphalt seemed to do little good, so the aggregate speed when we hit was nearly ninety.

The Altima gave its life, violently, to save mine.



Dramatic Tension
After coming to a stop, I inventoried all my body parts, found that everything still worked, resolved to move as little as possible until I was checked out, and proceeded to call Amy, though I was still hyperventilating mildly. The "key in ignition" four-beep pattern sounded, over and over. Around the airbag I could see that smoke and/or steam was wafting from the region of the engine.

While I was on the phone with Amy, the officer who'd cut me off, staggering a bit, came over to my car. I waved an "I'm OK" arm out the window, NASCAR-style, not realizing until later that I hadn't had to roll it down.

"You all right, buddy?"

"Yeah, I'm here and I can move okay."

"Okay, I've called an ambulance. They'll be here before too long."

I returned to my cell phone. Amy was immobile--her car was still at her old apartment, since we were going to reclaim it the next day (we'd planned to collect her cats and introduce them to my dogs), so she called her brother-in-law Greg, and said she'd meet me at the nearby hospital where we'd agreed I'd go.



An Attempt at Comedy
As I waited for the ambulance, another police car arrived and the new officer started asking me questions about my identification, a little belligerently, but as I explained that I had not been drinking, that this was my car, that I was a responsible citizen, employed here in Birmingham, and that I was in general not some random lowlife, he became a little more sympathetic to my position. In his line of work (I believe he was an Alabama state trooper) I'm sure he has to deal with a lot of shirkers and lowlifes, so I could understand a bit of his attitude, but I thought it was remarkable that he was being so gruff toward a guy who was possibly badly hurt, and going to need cutting out of his car.

Speaking of which, we had found by then that my driver's-side door wouldn't open. Nobody wanted to take the risk of moving me over the console in the middle of my front seat, so they began cutting the driver's-side door from the car's frame. A paramedic leaned into the passenger side, and covered me with a blanket as the guys pried and sawed at my door, to shield me from any glass or other debris that might have been flung at me as they worked. The phrase "negative LOC" was tossed around a few times, which I discovered meant that I hadn't lost consciousness during impact, as I'd mentioned to them earlier. Everyone agreed that "negative LOC" was a desirable thing.



The paramedic in the car with me was a good-natured type, and chatted with me as the door-cutters did their thing: recently married; yes, Jamaica was awesome; to which hospital I wanted to be taken; how he liked the GPS he had, and that he'd be careful to pull mine out of the car so as to keep it safe (we've still got it, but it turned out not to have survived the impact).

Progress
Eventually after much crunching, popping and grunting the door came off the car.

"All right, Mr. Miller, we're going to take you out of the car now. Do you hurt anywhere?"

I told them that the left side of my neck felt strained, and that I felt like I'd been punched in the chest. I also left like glass from the window might have worked its way into the left side of my pants' waistband, as I had a number of small, sharp pains there. Eventually these injuries would all be shown to have come from the lap belt, shoulder belt and air bag.

They put a neck collar on me, and smoothly worked me out of the car and onto a gurney. There was some brief debate about to which hospital I wanted to be taken, as the one closest to me (for which I'd expressed a preference) didn't have certain types of equipment, and for head-ons (I'd been in a head-on!) they typically liked to hedge their bets a bit more and take people farther into Birmingham.

I insisted on my first choice, mainly because I was pretty sure there wasn't anything too exotic wrong with me; I did mention, though, that I would defer to their expertise if they thought I seriously needed a longer drive.

At that point I was rolled into the back of the ambulance, and driven to the hospital (my first choice, as it happened). It was my first (and hopefully last) ride in an ambulance, and while the experience was actually pretty nifty, the circumstances could have been better. In order to check me out, they wound up cutting my shirt and pants off, and after that I was pretty shivery (not from shock, thankfully, but it had been an exciting evening, and the back of the ambulance was chilly).



Assessment
Once I got to the hospital they took me to one of their trauma rooms, and after a series of palpations and checking-overs (and another description of the events of the collision, and taking-down of my information) I was told that I'd be getting a head-to-pelvis CAT scan in lieu of any X-rays. I was also given an IV, both because it's evidently standard operating procedure, and because I was eventually going to need some "contrasting agent" injected for one of the CAT scans. Let the record show that despite having given blood to the Red Cross several times, I'm not a fan of IVs.

At about this point Amy and Greg arrived, and we had some very welcome chat and additional goings-over of the events of the crash. I have to give Amy credit--I'm sure I looked like absolute hell, and she was steady and together through the whole thing.

Denouement
Eventually the orderlies whisked me off for my CAT scans, which took the better part of 45 minutes, and then back to my little trauma room to await the results. To make a long story a little shorter, I was cleared of any serious trauma, and released. Amy and Greg had bought me new clothes to wear home, but it took a little doing and ginger handling to help me limp out of the place and get into Greg's SUV.

Since then, Amy's been a superb and patient nurse, and I've been recovering both faster and slower than I expected. Lots of stiffness, LOTS of very spectacular bruising, but you don't get to see pictures of that, because it's all in areas where my lap and shoulder belts hit me, and this is a family-friendly blog.

Finally, there have been two doctor's visits so far for precaution's sake, and an orthopedic visit scheduled for tomorrow to check on some persistent grief with my right shoulder (did I mention that I tensed against the steering wheel when I saw the hit coming?).

Fundamentally, though, I am whole and only lightly hurt. Similar crashes claim the lives of thousands a year. There have been many thanks offered to the Almighty over the course of this past week from the nascent Miller household.

-Rich

Yes, Virginia, There is Such a Thing as Evil

This past Saturday I had my bachelor party--I, my brother, and three other friends started the afternoon by heading to an indoor pistol firing range and visiting rather convincing violence on myriad paper targets. I'd fired a .22 rifle in the Boy Scouts when I was 16 or so, but this was the first time I'd ever fired a handgun; it was a great thing, to demystify pistols--my rental was a 9mm Springfield XD. Load the magazine (no mean feat, when you've got a 15-round magazine with a stiff spring), chamber a round, aim, fire until the paper target's taken all the punishment you want to deal out or the magazine's empty, repeat. Just a tool, just a machine. Feeling the thing kick in my hand, hearing the ring of its report in the small building, seeing the targets punched time and again, instilled instant respect for the thing, the weapon.

In any case, great fun was had by all. Shoot, while prepping for the weekend I joined the NRA, something I've been meaning to do for years.

Then news broke on Monday regarding the shootings at Virginia Tech, and I figured that for decency's sake I should sit on the tale of our wild & wacky shooting hijinks at the pistol range. But after watching the (entirely appropriate) coverage of the grief and pain of the moment, I then was treated to the usual (entirely inappropriate) avalanche of "how could this happen?" hand-wringing stories and "who let this happen?" finger-pointing stories.

Blaming the SUV for the Accident
And, of course, there have been the usual calls for increased gun control: "when will it be enough?" "how many of our children must die before we admit to ourselves that the Second Amendment is a bad idea in the modern age?"

And, from Tripp, "We have established a system in which our children are sacrificed for our right to own a firearm...our supposed right to protect ourselves. We are willing, intentionally or not, to allow people to go to K-Mart or Dick's sporting goods and purchase handguns just like the ones that Cho Seung-Hui possessed."

Geez, where to start?

Just because the aphorism "guns don't kill people, people do" has become trite doesn't mean it's wrong. Cho was a disturbed person with violence on his mind and evil in his soul; he'd set fires in his dorm room, stalked women, written disturbing poems and plays, and of course there's the lovely little multimedia presentation he sent to NBC. This was someone who, deprived of firearms, might have set a bomb, lit another dorm fire, charged people brandishing an ice pick, or even laid in wait among the campus's bushes with a length of piano wire. Cho's murderous urge is the problem, not the fact that he had no prior convictions and thus was entirely legal to purchase firearms in Virginia.

Well, Cho's urge was at least half of the problem. You see, Virginia Tech recently managed (all the while thumbing its nose at the Second Amendment) to render itself a gun-free zone, granting itself the power to expel students and fire its staff for possessing any variety of firearm on campus.

I'm sure I'm not the first to come up with this phrase, but this amounts to trying to keep people safe by rendering them defenseless. Does anyone seriously think that the same degree of carnage would have resulted if even one of the professors or students had had a weapon to oppose the madman? Yes, there were armed guards on campus, but they obviously arrived too late to affect the outcome.

Can't We All Just Get Along?
Gun-control advocates seem to think that by making law-abiders (otherwise known as prey) give up their only real means of defense from law-breakers (aka predators), we'll all be safer.

"But, culture of guns! Assault weapons available over the counter at Wal-mart! Surely if guns were harder to get, we'd see less violence using them! It's simple math!"

Sorry, no. Countries enacting strong gun control laws (as in "everybody surrender your weapons under order of the government") almost without exception see increases in all varieties of violent crime, because A) criminals don't surrender their weapons, and B) the knowledge that nobody around them has a firearm with which to fight back emboldens the predators of the world. If I were greedy or desperate enough to try and burgle a house, would I choose one with a "proud gun-free home" sign on the lawn, or one with a "this house defended by Smith & Wesson" sticker on the window? There's probably a reason why I've seen several of the latter kind of decal, and had to make up the former.

Besides, my brother Matt lived in Kennesaw, Georgia for a time: a municipality in which every landowner must own a gun and ammo for it, by law. Interestingly enough, there's very, very little crime there. As one article I found put it, "most criminals don't have a death wish."

The Root of the Problem
Most criminals have no death wish, of course, but not all. Cho is that exception, the irrational actor, but at the same time, he was very methodical about certain aspects of his atrocity. He chained doors shut to keep his targets inside the building; he carried huge amounts of ammunition (none of those killed were hit fewer than three times, and there were another 30ish wounded); he bought his pistols some time apart, and took the time to write his little manifesto/screed.

While Cho may not have been sane, he was day-to-day capable. And as to his motivations and deeds, the only word that I can apply is evil. He was a man who hated deeply and consumingly, and channeled that hate into words and actions that ruined and ended lives, including his own.

I refuse to understand those who advocate defenselessness in the face of a world rife with the sort of evil that consumed Cho, even ones who advocate Christlike cheek-turning, which I take to be a condemnation of revenge more than a pacifist injunction. Proverbs 25:26 reads "Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked," and in my opinion failing to defend oneself or others from one bent on doing ill would be doing just that.

-Rich

So Close, and Yet So Far... Keep Trying, Abortion Lobby

"Diabetics cured by stem-cell treatment"

First off, let me say a hearty congratulations! to all those who appear to have had their Type 1 diabetes cured by this treatment, and who will be helped by this treatment as it is perfected and made suitable for application to the rest of the diabetic population.

Second, since the article only expresses this in a roundabout way ("stem cells drawn from [the patients'] own blood"), let me amplify: these were adult stem cells, and required the destruction of no human embryos.

The usefulness of embryonic stem cells (and thus justification for the idea that unborn babies might not only be disposable, thanks to Roe, but their flesh useful) is still awaiting any sort of proof.

Yet the authors of the article can't resist getting their digs in:

Previous studies have suggested that stem-cell therapies offer huge potential to treat a variety of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and motor neuron disease. A study by British scientists in November also reported that stem-cell injections could repair organ damage in heart attack victims.

But research using the most versatile kind of stem cells — those acquired from human embryos — is currently opposed by powerful critics, including President Bush.

Those eeevil Republicans and their opposition to baby-killing. How dare they?

-Rich