NoNoWriMo (note first vowel)

I never do NaNoWriMo; between Loscon and a full pre-holiday schedule November is just too full to attempt any such thing. Besides, I have a lot of trouble with plot.

Instead, my plan is to carve out at least an hour a day for either music or writing, preferably an hour of each. I'll be blogging about my progress, if any, under the nono tag.

I can't say that I've been entirely successful so far: Saturday was the household party and yesterday was Lamplighters. But I did do at least an hour's worth of singing and noodling on Saturday, and yesterday I tracked down a couple of songs and got chords, lyrics and rips into the filesystem in preparation for the Tres Gique practice session this coming weekend.

I'm not going to count ordinary blogging (e.g. links, memes, fluff, and so on), only the kind of one-subject post that merits a tag in the subject line (e.g. "River:" or "Travels with Plink and Cthulhu"). I will count work on drafts, software, web pages, and so on. Hopefully I can clear out some of my River backlog in the process. The probability that I will get 50K words done is low, however.

TheFerrett on love and fate

From theferrett, we have an interesting post titled Two Types Of Doomed Fate:

I have a problem with fate. Whenever I hear a guy telling a woman, "We were fated to be together -- we're soulmates" in the first month or two of a relationship, I just sit back and wait for that couple to crash into the wall, hard. Which they inevitably do.

It's almost as though they were fated to fail.

I'm not opposed to fate in love, mind you. It's just that in my experience there are two kinds of guys who really get off on Fated Love enough that they'll blurt it out on the third date, and both are toxic bad news.

The first, and harmless, Fated Love Junky is the Seeker. He's the stereotypical nerd who falls in love with an idea, not an actual woman. See, the trick in a relationship is to realize that people are irritating. Sure, some people are less vexing than others, but you live with someone for a couple of years and they're going to have some habits that drive you crazy. No two people are a perfect fit; like woodworking, you have to sand and plane a little to get the edges to match up.

As usual, I'm not entirely sure I agree on all points, and I suspect that it doesn't apply nearly as much to women -- Colleen, at least, claims that it was love at first sight on her part, over 39 years ago; reading cards in the Stanford coffeehouse. I'm not about to argue with success.

Found my hat

Found my top-hat, after about three weeks of searching. It was next to the inkjet printer underneath some discarded printouts. Duh.

River: Warmth: apparently it's not just a metaphor

According to an article in the October 24th issue of Science Magazine (p. 606) titled "Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth", people holding a warm cup of coffee are more likely to judge the person they're interacting with as having a warm personality than people holding a cup of iced coffee. People touching a warm object are more likely than people touching a cold object to give a gift to a friend rather than treat themselves.

I'm not sure which I find more weird: that there is, somehow, a reason why we use the same word for these two seemingly disparate concepts, or that Colleen doesn't find it weird at all.

In any case, I think I'll make myself a cup of hot ginger tea.

(ETA: Colleen and the article both point out the association between physical warmth and comfort, and the care a mother gives her infant. That is, indeed, the likely connection. I still find the linguistic association surprising. The fact that Colleen picked up on it instantly while I can only make the connection intellectually is, of course, not surprising in the least, but I find it vaguely disturbing.)

Randomness

They were giving out free flu shots in our building at work; got mine. Very mild needle-stick; I'm getting some soreness and a bit of a fever now. Apparently I needed it.

Managed to get in a walk at lunchtime, between the morning and afternoon rains. I like rain, but I'm not really equipped to walk in it anymore: that really takes a hooded poncho and waterproof hiking boots.