Author: Alex

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Also: Science! (Bill Nye is coming to CU!)

I haven’t heard much buzz about this from my fellow Colorado residents, so I’m guessing this is just not a well-known event. Bill Nye the Science Guy will be at CU’s Macky Auditorium on February 15th – which is a week from tomorrow. General admission tickets are $10, and tickets for CU students are $1 if you can wave your student ID at them.

According to the CU Distinguished Speaker’s Board, tickets are currently sold out. But if any of you out there in the Colorado portion of internet land would like to see Bill Nye, LET ME KNOW. I will haunt the CU Connection and see if I can scare up some more tickets so long as you promise to pay me back.

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Uncategorized

Congratulations. You Have Survived Your Battle With ::Dentist::

I survived my six month check up! Yay! Considering how much I hate going to the dentist1, I feel like this is really an accomplishment.

Also, I’m finally on Mike’s insurance! Double yay! I was ridiculously excited to find this out, since it meant I could finally afford to have x-rays, and a consult with the dentist. And the fact that I was excited about both those things is probably the most clear signal to date that yes, I am now thirty years old.

The news was mostly good. No new cavities, the problem areas between a few of my teeth that seemed to be developing four years ago (the last time I could afford x-rays) have either not gotten worse or even cleared up entirely. So that’s happy.

However, the bad news is that my issue with clenching and grinding my teeth has gotten worse. Way, way, way worse. To the point that it’s apparently messing up my teeth so badly that it shows up on the x-rays, and has caused me to partially dislodge one of my old fillings. This apparently also explains the headaches I sometimes wake up with, and why my jaw sometimes locks. Awesome.

So Dr. Jason (the world’s tallest dentist) told me to get an over the counter mouth guard thingy to wear at night. Not every night, but just during periods of time when I’m feeling really stressed (HAHAHA) and seeing signs that I might be starting to grind or clench my teeth. He said that would either fix my problem entirely or make it way, way worse. In the latter case I would then need to get fitted for a custom mouth guard thingy that will run $300-$400, because Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas would not pay for piss if you were on fire, unless of course you had already reached your ludicrous deductible, and then maybe, well we guess, if we have to, grumble grumble.

And at the end of the month I get to look forward to having the filling I’ve destroyed replaced. Which supposedly is only going to take five minutes, but will still involve me getting poked in the gums with a needle.

I can feel my teeth clenching already.

1: If anyone ever tries to convince you to get your wisdom teeth done without being put under, tell them to shut the fuck up and just give you the drugs, because you’re carrying a hand grenade and have absolutely nothing to lose.

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Uncategorized

The longest day of Chinese New Year survived

Well, I survived the long, long day of performances for kung fu. We hit the road around 0830 and finished up a little less than twelve hours later. The most brutal part was actually going to Colorado Springs and back. The drive was awful because it was snowing, and being stuck in a car for basically 3.5 hours straight with only a short kung fu break in the middle left everyone extremely stiff and sore. We did kung fu numbers three times, which meant I had to do basic skills with hitting the concrete-filled cylinder three times, and make it look good and energetic all three times. My arms are really banged up now, and toward the end I was actually getting burst veins on the surface of my skin, which is kind of unusual and very unpleasant. My hands and arms are really tired too, from just playing cymbals all day. But yay, we survived! And I got to have a ridiculous amount of amazing food at the end of it, which is always great.

At least I did all my driving around with four extremely awesome people. We had the party car, no mistake. The saga of Porknbuns will forever remain in my memory… it’s been a long time since I’ve laughed that hard about anything.

In bad news, we just found out that Mike’s mum is in the hospital with severe vertigo, and the cause could range anywhere from an ear infection to a stroke. Please think some good thoughts her way if you’re so inclined. I’m really, really, really hoping it’s just an ear infection. We’re both incredibly worried.

Bed. Very, very soon.

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science fair

Science Fairs and Wind Chill

The DPS District Science Fair was a lot of fun, as usual. We had a kind of ridiculous number of judges this year – not that a large number of volunteers is a bad thing – so we did most of the fair in teams. I actually rather like team judging, since it means that the kids tend to be more thoroughly questioned about their project. Judges seem to have a couple favorite lines of questioning, and as long as they don’t overlap that means we’re generally more thorough.

Of course, my own favorite sorts of questions are:
– Now that you’ve done your whole project, if you could change one or more things about your experiment design or your hypothesis, what would you do? (I like this question, since it shows if they’ve really thought about what they did and picked out sources of error.)
– Can you explain [insert basic scientific principle behind the experiment here] to me? (Which shows if they actually understood any of the research they did.)

This time I got a boot up into middle school, looking at eighth grade projects. To be honest, the three my team looked at didn’t really wow me… they all had some serious design issues, and in one case the student couldn’t explain the basic scientific concept behind their experiment. Which was sad, since the experiment itself would have been a good one if there’d been some deeper understanding there. Also, as usual everyone had “literature” cited on their boards, but very few students incorporated it into their discussion or conclusion.

So parents, if you’re reading this – make sure your kid actually incorporates their research into their experiment and understand it! Otherwise, it really gives the impression that they looked up a bunch of sources and just stuck them on the board because they had to, without actually reading and understanding anything.

Which, I suppose, really prepares them to be freshmen in college, huh.

The thing that set all of the grade winners out this year was definitely use of research – the first place in each grade actually did additional research after their project was done, so they could discuss their possible sources of error or reasons for unexpected results. Which is quite charming. And the winner for all of middle school was a sixth grader, which was pretty surprising. He did a model rocket project which involved testing different design elements, predicting how they would affect the flight of the rocket, and then figuring out why things didn’t go the way he predicted when they inevitably didn’t. It was pretty impressive.

Anyway, for a bit of excitement, I realized that the Colorado State Science and Engineering Fair has its judging on a Thursday. Now that I’ve dropped a class, I’m free that day, so I can participate in that one! And it’s even more exciting because this year, I can be sure I won’t come down with mono again. Wahoo.

It’s cold as hell here right now, and only going to get colder. I’m doing an experiment of my own – I pinned blankets over the patio door, since that seems to turn into a little wind tunnel at times, and I’m going to see if the house stays a little warmer. Tengu is already mad as all get out because he was content to stay away from the patio door until the blankets went up, and then he had to OMG LOOK OUT THERE RIGHT NOW. Except I won’t let him, since he might pull the blankets down. Yay for cat drama.

Really, I’m just looking forward to making like The Day After Tomorrow and running away from the cold air. It’s something to do, since in a moment of brilliance I left my homework at school, where it’s going to do me a lot of good. I’m really not looking forward to trying to get to school tomorrow morning, considering this morning it took about two hours each way.

Also, I’ve added some amazing entries to my “Undergrads say the darndest things” file, but I feel like I shouldn’t share them until after the semester is done.

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science fair

Science Fair Season

Ah, it’s that glorious season, when the sale of tri-fold boards spikes, and eager young scientists stand ready to excitedly tell judges how they grew mold on bread or watered plants with a variety of appalling substances. It’s science fair season!

I actually feel a little sad about it this year. Because of my class and teaching1 schedule, the only one I can possibly volunteer for is the DPS District Science Fair, since it’s on a Saturday. The rest take place on weekdays, when I can’t afford to miss. I’m particularly disappointed that I’ll have to miss the Colorado state science fair again. That’s the one I missed last year because I’d just come down with mono and, I was informed, looked like I was going to die.

Bread mold jokes aside, this sort of volunteering is something that anyone who cares about science education should take seriously. Particularly when it comes to people who make their living in the sciences (either in academia or in the private sector) it really does make a huge difference for kids to meet us as judges. It’s one thing to hear about how cool science is in school, and another entirely to meet real grown ups who do real science for a living.

To my fellow Coloradoans, particularly any Denverites that might be reading this, it’s time to get involved!

Denver Public Schools science fair information
Denver metro science fair information
Colorado state science fair information

If you’re not a Colorado resident, don’t despair – there are science fairs everywhere in the country, and this is the time of year they get started, preparing for the International Science Fair. If you’re interested in judging for a fair, a good place to start looking for your local events is on the Intel ISEF website. Though that’s by no means an exhaustive list and all you really need is some Google-fu.

Make a kid’s day. Make a difference. And as a bonus, there are normally cookies.

1 – Still feels so, so weird to be saying that.

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movie

Agora

Home from England, safe and sound. I’ve been fed (thanks to my parents) and have also taken a shower so I no longer smell like the inside of a plane. So really, I’m feeling refreshed and human again, but incredibly tired. I knew we’d gotten back into the US of A when, upon entering the immigration area, there was a TSA agent wandering around and telling everyone that we had to keep our cell phones off because it was illegal to have them on. For no apparent reason. Oh capricious and ridiculous airport security, I haven’t missed you at all.

I spent most of the flight back watching movies. One of them was Agora, which is a movie about the fall of Alexandria to the Christians and the death of Hypatia. So, I expected it to be a very depressing movie, because we all know what happens to Hypatia.**

What I didn’t expect was how angry the movie made me feel. Not angry at the movie, but just angry, the emotion building up from helpless frustration.

One image the movie kept coming back to was the library of Alexandria, after it had been ransacked by the Christians. The movie showed it as basically being destroyed inside, the scrolls torn up or gone entirely because they’d been burned, and animals were then penned inside it. The willful, gleeful disregard and hatred of knowledge made me angry, even if it was just a movie, even if it was an event that happened over a thousand years ago.

Then I think about our modern day situation, say, with John Shimkus on the Energy and Environment subcommittee, claiming that global climate change can’t be true because of something the Bible says. And I feel exactly the same sort of building, helpless frustration, because I don’t think we’ve really changed at all since Hypatia was flayed and dragged through the streets of Alexandria.

It’s a good movie. Watch it. Be prepared to cry at the end. And to feel angry, so angry, every time you see the destroyed library, every time someone makes an argument based completely on illogic and blind belief that simply can’t be refuted because no one would listen.

** – Just in case you don’t know, let’s just say that the Christians didn’t give her chocolates and an award for being female, outspoken, and interested in science.

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writing year in review

2010: Year in Review

Writing

Since one of my major projects for the year was writing, I want to cover that first. And it’s exciting, because I finally got to put my big girl writer pants on this summer! I’m now officially an associate member of the SFWA, which was a giant personal accomplishment for me, to go with getting my first story published at a pro rate.

Written This Year

Novels: I started work on two novels and am still having a hard time figuring out which to work on first. Which is fine, since I haven’t had a lot of time or attention span for working on something long anyway. I also got about a third of the way in to a second draft of one of my old NaNos, but let it fall by the wayside in favor of Throne of Nightmares

This year I also completed three separate drafts of Throne of Nightmares, which Isaac and Sin were good enough to critique. I also have started sending out queries for Throne of Nightmares, which is exciting and terrifying at the same time. We’ll see if I have any luck there…

Shorter stuff:
Written total: 8 short stories, 1 novelette, 1 novella
Finalized: 5 short stories, 1 novelette
Consigned to the Trunk of Awfulness, never to emerge again: 1 short story

Publishing
Queries Sent: 48
Rejections Received: 38
Most rejections received: Transportation at 14

Published this year: The Book of Autumn in Beneath Ceaseless Skies issue #49.
Slated for next year: Transportation in Anotherealm in September, The Falling Star in the New Fairytales Anthology by Aurora Wolf which should be coming out in early 2011.

So I feel that generally, I did a good job with writing this year! I’m hoping to do as well next year, though I think my productivity will be lower since I won’t have half a year off of school this time around.

Blogging

This, I didn’t do so well at. Total, I did 165 entries this year, which is okay I guess… averages about one every three days or so. But I was trying for every other day. Up until about September I did all right (we shall not speak of April… my excuse is wedding prep!) but after that my productivity just tanked. I honestly don’t think next year will be much better thanks to that grad school thing. In the grand scheme of things, if I have to choose between writing a blog post and writing on a story, the story is bound to win.

Everything Else!

2010 was a massive, crazy year for me. And mostly filled with good instead of bad, so I can’t complain at all.

The Good

1. I got married! (I have many photos, by the way…) That was exciting, and involved some wonderful cake and a lot of British people wandering around in Colorado and feeling faintly bemused. Married life has, honestly, not been much different from unmarried life considering Mike and I had been living together for five years before the wedding. But it was still an incredibly important milestone in our relationship and I couldn’t be happier.

2. I started grad school! I’ve still got my doubts, worries, and uncertainties, but I survived my first semester, and I think I survived it fairly well. Of one of my classes, the less said of it the better, but the other – sedimentary petrology – I did really well in. I even got the highest score in the class on my sandstone practical, as far as I can tell. I haven’t started my research yet, but I read two articles a week and am slowly coming up to speed on the Bighorn Basin.

3. I survived to my 30th birthday! And then I got very drunk.

4. I’ve managed to get myself back into good enough shape to start kung fu back up. I’m incredibly excited about that. I’ve learned the entirety of the sze sze chuen suong ta now, and I’ve gotten deep into ching men chuen. I feel like that’s extremely good for only three months back.

5. I got an Exxon-Mobil research grant, so I’ll be able to spend a month or so up in the Bighorn Basin next summer. That’ll hopefully give me a good start to my research. Once I figure out what my topic is.

6. Got my first short story published at a professional rate! Yes, I know that I already mentioned this, but it’s so exciting I think it’s worth mentioning again.

7. I rescued a cat and helped find her a new home. I got to cat sit for her at the beginning of December, and she’s thriving. Crazy, but thriving.

8. I got to go to TAM for the third year in a row and hang out with all of my friends – and got hugged by DJ Grothe (omg Squee). I also was able to go to MileHi Con for the first time in years, even if only for a day. I was very excited about that and had a blast. And, of course, capped that day with getting to go to a Not-Quite-a-W00tstock.

9. Made it back to the UK for Christmas this year, after skipping last year so we could save up for the wedding. It was really nice to get to see everyone, and have our (mostly) annual walk along the beach in Brighton.

The Bad

1. The furnace springs immediately to mind, since it also only just happened. While it’s only a thing, and it didn’t kill or harm anyone, the harm that it’s done to our bank account still has me reeling. I also realized that if it had gone up before we headed to the UK, we wouldn’t have made it this year. So a thing falling apart in and of itself isn’t that big of a deal, it’s the stress that it puts our household under that makes it bad.

2. In the same vein, getting the news that the car is going to fall apart soon and really isn’t worth repairing was rough. On the good side, it’s still running, even if it sounds so awful you feel like you should have a bag over your head when you drive it somewhere. But we know the day is coming, and now our money that was reserved for the car is gone, thanks to the furnace.

3. The class that shall not be named in grad school made the last three weeks of the semester a living hell during which I didn’t even get to see my husband for more than a few hours a week. This is probably for the best, since if I had seen him I likely would have started screaming at him for no good reason, just because of the stress.

4. Being completely unable to find an internship for next summer. This was a major blow to my self-esteem, particularly since everyone assured me I had a rock-solid resume. Maybe I just suck that much at the interview part of the process. Of course, this also adds to the financial distress, since it means I won’t be earning nearly as much in the summer of 2011 as I should. But what can you do… we’ll survive.

So… twice as much good as bad. That’s always an excellent sign! Hopefully 2011 will be even better. A little less woe in the finance department would be nice.

Categories
science fiction writing

The Mid-vacation Post

So far, it’s been a nice visit to the UK, which is really no surprise to anyone. Christmas and Boxing Day were big family get togethers, which I enjoyed and only got a little drunk for. My jet lag problem is still present this year, though I think not nearly as obnoxious as it’s been in years past. I’ve had to take naps on a couple of days, and have had a little bit of insomnia, but not to the point that I’ve been up at 3 in the morning and completely unable to sleep like I have been in other years.

The weather in the UK has been just fine as far as I’m concerned. There’s been a lot of do about the temperature being below zero C, but I went for an hour and a half walk in it on Christmas morning while everyone else was at mass, and it was perfectly fine other than my ears getting cold since I forgot my hat back in the US. I think the bigger problem is just that the cold temperatures means the ice doesn’t melt, and I guess this part of the UK doesn’t know the wonders of car-destroying mag chloride the way we do in Colorado. I did have to avoid some terrifying icy sidewalks during my walk, to be sure. But other than that, it hasn’s been any kind of Snowmageddon. Yesterday when we got back from London (around 2200) it was actually raining fairly heavily, so that’s hopefully a sign that it’s getting a bit warmer and the ice will go away. We ended up taking a cab from the train station at Wokingham, since the line west of it was shut down and the rain was nasty enough we didn’t feel like waiting for the bus, or walking home once we caught said bus.

Speaking of Snowmageddon, we landed all right, but Heathrow has still apparently not gotten its shit together. Once we landed we had to park somewhere in the back of beyond for a good twenty minutes because there was nowhere for our plane to go, and then moved to a slightly less far away parking spot so that we could take buses to the terminal. Immigration was fast, but then we spent a stupid amount of time waiting for our luggage. I was also insanely thirsty the entire time, and there was nowhere to get anything to drink, though I could have apparently bought a SIM card from a vending machine if I wanted to. Maybe you can suck on those like mints. Anyway, our flight landed not long after 0900, and we didn’t get our luggage collected and get out of there until after 1100. There was also a frightening graveyard of lost and unclaimed baggage taking up one entire section of the claim, which did not inspire confidence.

It’s also worth noting that I didn’t get to sit next to Mike for most of the flight, since the television for his seat was broken, and they moved him to the only empty seat on the airplane so he had something to do. I mostly used the flight to catch up on movies… I watched Toy Story 3, which I thought was very good and don’t feel at all ashamed about sniffling through. I also watched The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The funny thing is, when Mike and I met up after landing and were talking about the movies we watched, we could each name two of them and it took us forever to remember which one the third was. For both of us, it was that movie. Which I think pretty much says all you need to know about how utterly unremarkable it was as a film.

Yesterday Mike and I went in to London. I paid a quick visit to Harrod’s – the store was insanely busy, but everyone apparently just desperately wanted to buy perfume. After we got out of that section of the store it was just fine, and we were in and out in less than twenty minutes. After that we met up with Sam and Rick, and spent the rest of the day taking up space in a pub and playing board games. The game we started off with was Ticket to Ride, which was a lot of fun and I’m going to have to pick up a copy once my checking account stops crying about the furnace.

Oh yes, translation for any UK readers: by furnace, I mean boiler. Even though it has nothing to do with boiling water. I do not in fact own any sort of smelting equipment. This announcement brought to you by Mike’s parents, who found that particular vocabulary mix-up very entertaining.

The Doctor Who Christmas special was pretty good, I think. I wouldn’t place it higher than the first Christmas Invasion, or even the Runaway Bride, but I definitely liked it better than the silly episode with the space Titanic, or the one from two years ago that was kind of about the cyberman and all it really had going was a lovely steampunkish Victorian setting. I’d say this one was as close at Doctor Who’s really gotten to just out and out producing a fable, and while it had the normal plot holes that you could drive a truck through, it at least had a lot more life in it than the last couple of episodes I’ve seen. (Which were, for the record, Victory of the Daleks and The Adventures of Spitty Timothy Dalton as the Most Underused Rassilon Imageinable [not its actual title].) Really, considering that I feel like the entire episode was based around someone saying, “I’ve got this awesome mental image of a shark flying through the air, pulling a rickshaw… let’s combine that with Christmas!” the end result was surprisingly coherent and fun. It’s also convinced me to give Matt Smith another chance as the Doctor… considering my first exposure to him was the underwhelmingly written turd of a Dalek episode from his season, he really needed something to recommend him.

I think a some point I may have to devote a post to how I feel about the way the Daleks have been used in recent episodes. It won’t be a very nice post.

Today Mike and I are headed off to Brighton to see Sam and Dan and Rhi and hopefully Captain Stu, so that’s exciting. It’s hard to believe we’re already at the midpoint of our trip, though this one’s a few days shorter than trips we’ve taken in the past, since Mike ran out of vacation. Something to do with a wedding.

Also, Anotherealm has now published its 2011 lineup. Transportation will be the September offering – I’m really excited about that!

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Uncategorized

Furnace Installation

There are scary noises emanating from my downstairs closet, which must mean that a nice man named Wayne is installing my new furnace. I hope.

As you can see, Loki is hard at work helping.

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Uncategorized

For Christmas, I Got You an Empty Bank Account

I woke up this morning and the house was cold. Cold, and silent except for the sound of the cats and the hum of my laser printer in power save mode.

I’m sure everyone who has ever owned a home feels an empathetic sick, sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach just about now.

I called the HVAC people. They sent out a nice young man named Chris. His nametag helpfully informed me that he’d been both tested for drugs and undergone a background check. (They also e-mailed me his picture in advance, I suppose so a person posing as an HVAC technician couldn’t get into my house and monkey around with my broken furnace.)

Chris, with Loki close by, ready to assist him at a moment’s notice, fixed the furnace-not-turning-on problem very quickly. Unfortunately, he also found another problem.

“Look in this hole. See where I’m shining my light?”

“Yes?”

“See how this little tiny ring is missing from that aperture?”

“Yes?”

“That means your furnace is trying to kill you.”

Okay, that last thing is not actually what he said. Rather, he told me that it was the symptom of a badly cracked heat exchange, and that if it was that badly cracked, my furnace might start filling my house with carbon monoxide at a moment’s notice. So effectively, that last statement is what I heard.

That is why, the day before leaving the country for Christmas, we now only have about $500 in our savings account. I guess the good news is that we were saving all of that money for a new car next year, so we had it on hand to pay for a new furnace. The bad news is that we no longer have that money for acquiring a new car. But hopefully the faithful old steed will keep limping along while we try to rebuild our savings.

Chris brought in an electrician, who looked around and within five minutes found over $6,000 worth of reasons my house is not up to building code. Thankfully most of that can be ignored until I’ve managed to sell a kidney on the black market, several years from now. The stuff actually related to the furnace he took care of today, and the price seemed very reasonable in comparison to the number he quoted for, say, replacing my electrical panel, which comes direct from the 70s and is chock full of aluminum wiring. As far as I can tell, the sole purpose of aluminum wiring is to set houses on fire.

The new furnace will be installed tomorrow morning. Chris the Technician put a brand new carbon monoxide detector in that will warn us if the furnace tries to kills us, so that we can use tonight to prevent ourselves from freezing to death.

I guess I’m glad that this happened now, after I did all my Christmas shopping. It means all of our friends are getting nicer presents than a candy bar, or a used bookmark that Tengu has chewed up. I’ve now managed to take in enough alcohol that I no longer feel like screaming hysterically.

Santa, if this is how it’s going to be this year, I just can’t wait to see what surprises you have in store for me at the airport.