Heinlein Wanders In...

     Not the man himself, of course, or his shade, either; but I became curious about a book of essays to which had contributed,* and looked it up in the massive two-volume biography by William H. Patterson, Jr.,† which lead to reading around in the book (I am bad for following footnotes backwards into the text, in a "Hunh!  What prompted that?" sort of way).  Heinlein's an interesting writer and an interesting man, never terribly comfortable with his public image and rarely in as good health as he liked to have people think.
  
     Love him or loathe him, his influence looms large (and somewhat misunderstood) over SF, which he helped legitimize as literature while writing for a living and without even a hint of an MFA degree.
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 * I could swear he also contributed to a book on writing SF in the later 1940s or early '50s, which I located years ago at what was, at the time, a ruinous price; but I can't run the title to earth and it was about three desktop computers ago.

† Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialog With His Century, a marvelous and very readable effort, for which Patterson's reward was to unexpectedly fall ill and die.  This is the kind of thing that leads to nihilism in the survivors.

Lazy Day

     I admit it -- I have done nothing today.  Nine and a half hours at the thing yesterday, followed by an end-of-the-week dinner at A Real Grown-Up Restaurant left me all wrung out.  Slept eight and a half hours, made a very small breakfast, and have wandered the house ever since, midly dazed.

     Huck the cat and I played "chase and be chased" (you take turns; most cats will play this game) for awhile about noon and that's been the extent of my exertions so far.

Yearly Engineering Conference

     Today, I'll be going to a statewide Engineering Conference on the kind of engineering for which I am a technician -- and if you think that's confusing, ponder that most of the Chief Engineers (it says so right on their door) who will be there aren't officially "Engineers" in the hang-out-a-shingle legal sense, either.  About half of them have some form of EE degree, maybe more than half, but it's not a line of work where regular big boss engineers need to be Certified Professional Engineers, so they're not.  They hire 'em for projects when needed, and if a CPE is not needed (or if there is any sort of heavy lifting), you get soldering-iron jockeys like me.

    And tomorrow, the whole lot of us -- techs and Chiefs and Assistant Chiefs, plus the occasional CPE (usually teaching the rest of us) get to go hang out, learn stuff, attend a big rubber-chicken lunch and awards ceremony with non-technical people in our business, and then go learn more stuff while trying not to fall asleep.

     It'll be fun.

First Of The Month, End Of The Week

     Hooray!  It's bill-paying time!  At least I can pay the recurring utility and house-payment bills; the days of deciding who gets a wave-off until the disconnect notices arrive are behind me, at least for now.  You never forget those times if you've been through them, and not having to play Stupid Deadline Tricks is a relief.

     My Poetic License is up for renewal, too, and I let a good magazine subscription slide that I shouldn't.

Now It Can Be Told

     Finally warm!  The weather turned cold last week and the furnace at Roseholme Cottage needed to be checked out -- but our service guys were booked solid 'til Halloween.

    We dug up a 750 W (on low) forced-air space heater and kept the house at 58 (with occasional dips to 57 and that last degree is brutal), and a little warmer in whichever of three rooms in the back of the house it was aimed at.  Between it, electric blankets, comforters and cats, we did okay.  I simmered big pots of stew over the weekend, which kept the kitchen nice.  (When I moved in, I added two new electrical circuits, one for the washroom and one for my bedroom.  That's two dedicated circuits for just this kind of use.  The washroom opens off the middle of the hall, so the heater sat just outside the door and I did without a blowdryer.)

     Still, it was not entirely comfortable.  When Tam called me Tuesday afternoon to report the central heating was back, I was greatly relieved.  68 degrees F is wonderful!

Conspiracy Klutzes

     I have said it before: I do not so much mind the notion that some secret cabal or camarilla is running the world from their secret headquarters in Zurich or Duluth.

     What I mind is that they do such a lousy job of it.  If the Hidden Rulers Of Everything were even a little bit on the ball, there'd be intercontinental ballistic passenger rockets, robot valets and a luxury hotel on the Moon -- with, of course, a totally secret members-only club where the HROE could hang out, paneled in Lunar diamonds and the scalps of their enemies.  For their convenience, there'd be air-droppable, solar-powered cellular telephone hubs (tapped, of course, by the HROE) and scalable, air-droppable power plants in both atomic and solar, with a sideline in wind and ocean-thermal versions, all built under patents the HROE control, in HROE-owned factories.  They'd desalinate seawater and (being greedy plutocrats) sell it to the thirsty at prices that'd keep them alive to come back to buy more, day after day after day.

     But they don't.  We have none of these things  -- and neither do they.  If there are secret rulers of the world, they're idiots.  Clods.  They could be plundering an entire solar system and living off the fat of the land behind high walls, supporting bread, circuses and streetcar lines to placate the masses out of petty cash.

     We need a better line of hidden despots.  The ones we have -- if we do -- suck at the job. They sow only panic and reap only famine, poverty and failure.  I'm starting to think they just might be imaginary.

The Good Old American Jury-Rig?

     A good many Americans pride themselves on their ability to make do -- even if you have to come up with a terrible kludge, you go ahead and get the job done, right?  And it's as American as apple pie!  We're can-do people!

     Except, you see, while we're good at that, darned good at it, so are a lot of other people.  Oh, it's not quite the same.  Every culture has its own flavor, and yet it's always a similar dish.  Our linguistic neighbors, the Brits, just bodge something together and muddle through; over in India, the quick fix or improvised solution is a jugaad, and they're so good at it that there's an entire class of junk-based utility vehicles and a management technique both known as jugaad. The French put on their thinking caps and apply "System D," and hack not just technological systems but socioeconomic ones was well.  The Germans have "Trick 17" and the frugal German-speakers in Switzerland have saved up and made it "Trick 77," while the Finns think "Trick 3" is handier.

     And so on.  The human race is a clever bunch -- and one of the things we're most clever about is getting by.

Mission To Zyxx? Yes!

     I'm three episodes in.  It's an interesting podcast -- improv science-fiction comedy, with a basic setup that's been done just about often enough to make a good foundation for comedy: the evil Galactic Monarchy has been overthrown by the way less-evil Federated Alliance -- or is it the Allied Federation? -- in what is totally not a lateral move.  They're sending diplomatic missions everywhere and scraping the bottom of the barrel for diplomats.  The Zyxx region has probably not been a very safe place to send ambassadors, at least none of them have ever been heard from again, and now a very assorted and perhaps less-than-qualified crew is being sent there to try again....

     Not for the kids.  Clever and funny.  Mission To Zyxx.

It's A Chilly Morning

     I had a left-over potato, evicted from the beef stew last night on account of carbs -- wait, beef stew?  Yes, this:

      Beef stew with oxtail, beef shank, Italian sausage and stew beef, along with a couple of nice fat turnips, carrots, celery, onion, a few cherry tomatoes, some fresh mushrooms and a very little banana pepper for zing.  A store-bought crusty roll on the side.

     But back to breakfast: here's this huge baking potato that needs to be used or towed out to sea and sunk, and wouldn't that be a waste?

     Also, it's kind of cold in the house, what with the change in the weather, cheapskate landlady and all.

     So: four slices of bacon, anointed with smoked Spanish paprika and rubbed sage, fried.

     One double-fist-sized baking potato, sliced very thin and fried in a mixture of paprika-sage bacon fat, garlic-ginger stir-fry oil and tasty olive oil, with some "bread-dipping" Mediterranean spice mix dusted over.  Even with a 16" skillet, this takes time -- and warms the place up.

     A few cherry tomatoes, split and fried and eggs to match, and there you have it: Serious Breakfast!  Tamara even declared a "cheat day" and had six or seven (this is cheating?) chips.  There'd be photos but it didn't last all that long.

Sometimes You're Just Mommy (And Don't Realize It)

     Even without children, even no more domestic than I am--

     I was rattling around the kitchen last night, irked and short-tempered;  Tam and I had planned on going somewhere for dinner but it has dawned on the tower crew that there is very bad weather incoming (possibly as early as noon today) and they worked aloft until sundown and chased the very tail end of civil twilight out the gate; so I got home late, having stopped at the corner grocer on the way home and stocked up for dinner and the next morning's breakfast, or so I had thought.

     In the freezer, there was a little left-over beef stew and I thought I had a can of relatively low-carb French Country Vegetable Soup to eke it out, but no, what I had was Beef And Barley (ironically, lower in carbs) and it simply wouldn't do.

     Tam was conciliatory: "Look, there's enough there for one.  You have that, and I'll fend for myself."

     I was still annoyed.  She's been away the better part of a month and it turns out a big part of my self-image is being able to, you know, feed the various creatures under my roof: cats, Tamaras, and so on.  Cooking and serving a meal is soothing.  Not being able to, even when the "cooking" is no more than reheating leftovers and opening a can is frustrating.

     Having the cats come to me to be served breakfast (they're quite insistent) and snuggle up to me whenever I relax is soothing, too.  I'm definitely a "mommy" to the cats.

     I made an omelette this morning.  "Sweet" Italian sausage, mushrooms, a Poblano pepper, a few Kalamata olives and some Manchego cheese. Tam was just retreating to her couch as I was getting up (a night-owl to begin with, she's been out West and hasn't readjusted to Eastern time), but she said she'd be up for breakfast, so I've saved her a portion.

Too Much To Do

     Didn't get any really good pictures yesterday.  Today, I have another CAT scan early in the morning, followed by a busy day, so, well, I'll try to post something interesting tomorrow.

In Haste

     Much to do this morning.  I'll see about taking some pictures.