The Mandelbear's Musings

Well, well. An entire week. Which just happens to coincide with the end of the month, this time.

Did a little work on the network configuration, aimed at making things more stable in the DMZ (the area between the Internet modem/router (polaris) and the inside gateway/router (stargate)). In particular, I got rid of an obsolete DHCP reservation for cygnus, that was conflicting with stargate's static IP address. Gleep! No wonder stargate's WiFi dropped out every so often.

Also for computer geeks: I got Colleen a 7" tablet. It's a Jazz, on sale at Office Depot for $70. Markedly inferior to my Nexus 7, but it does what she wants it to: web browsing and email. The only problem right now is printing; that's going to require setting up Google cloudprint. Which is kind of stupid for talking to a CUPS printer, but...

I *finally* got autoraise back -- turns out that the compiz window manager doesn't actually listen to the desktop config items anymore; Ubuntu has hacked them up to accomodate the Unity desktop. Which is Unbearable.

A number of other geeky items that I ordered during the last week dribbled in, including a case and USB-OTG cable for the Nexus, a really tiny 32-GB USB drive, a couple of uSD cards and adapters (16- and 32-GB), and a couple of other items that suggest that I probably need to stay off of Amazon for a while.

We got Chaos a microwave oven (hers had died). Colleen got the amethyst necklace she'd commissioned at Orycon -- this involved a trip to Wayward.

Moving on, ... I don't really like the way my weight has been going. I think that much of the recent increase was due to going off my diuretic. It was an interesting experiment, but my BP's on the high edge of normal right now; it may be worthwhile going back on the meds.

Of course, my BP would probably go down if I lost 30 poumds, too. Which would be better for me in other ways as well.

The last time I successfully lost weight was my senior year in college. Over 40 years ago.

Humph. One of the things I really like about commuting by bus is that it gives me time to read. I'm not a particularly fast reader, a trait which is better adapted to poetry than to novels. I am, nevertheless, reading two books right now. The one on my Nexus (via Kindle) is Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking by E. Gabriella Coleman -- an anthropologist's view of hacker culture. Fascinating.

The other, on my phone from Gutenberg via Cool Reader, is Pride and Prejudice, which has been highly recommended to me but was something I was always leery of. It's... ok, I guess. Perhaps someone more familiar with the genre could tell me whether it's meant to be funny -- there's an undercurrent of what appears to be wry amusement on the part of the author. Perhaps one problem is simply the lack of characters I can easily identify with. I'm curious, but not involved.

Anyway... details in the notes, as usual. I should probably try to get back on a twice/week schedule, shouldn't I?

Well.... I got all the health care receipts sorted into envelopes by month. That's something. Plus quite a few assorted odd chores, and a nice drive. No walk, though, and no music.

Colleen complained, jokingly, about my not having a sense adventure. One of us has to. The fact that we're moving is still pretty hard for me to wrap my head around, even after having it in the back of my mind for a couple of years. But Colleen has started triaging cookbooks. That sort of drives it home.

Determined that Google has offices in both Seattle and Kirkland. And that they're hiring.

Seeing that Anonymous is declaring independence made me think of this old essay of mine. Need to dust it off and put it up on my website. There's a glitch in the online copy.

xkcd: s/keyboard/leopard made me laugh out loud, especially when I noticed the figure caption in the background. I love my keyboardleopard. ESR's Holding up the sky is inspiring.

A good, quiet day. After taking the chaoswolf to the airport, I woke Colleen a little after 8am so we could watch the Rose Parade. Some amazing stuff this year.

We went out around 3:30 on a shopping expedition that ultimately turned into a drive through downtown Los Gatos, Saratoga, Los Altos, and Menlo Park, ending with dinner in Iberia. We arrived a couple of minutes before it opened, on what turned out to be a very slow day, so we got excellent service to go with the excellent food. So we had our 37^th anniversary dinner a day early.

Today's link is for computer geeks, woodworkers, and artists: Jeffrey Stephenson's handmade wooden computer cases. I've been admiring this guy's work for a long time.

A pretty good day, mostly spent puttering. Colleen needed to buy some fabric and patterns, so we went to Jo-Ann's and added a drive and a trip to Ross. I was sorely tempted by some very lightweight luggage, but had doubts about its durability. We did re-arrange Colleen's scooter bags, moving the black-and-purple shoulder bag to the front, and moving her supplies to the purple SwissGear mini-duffel in back (where they'll be much more accessible).

I also moved the folding cup-holder from her cane (where it wasn't particularly useful) to her scooter.

I spent much of the evening sitting out in the living room with Colleen, watching the news and cleaning out my netbook so I can give it to the Wolfling. I inadvertently deleted more than I intended, but no harm done: I just restored the deleted config files from git and my home directory on the fileserver.

Thinking about my experiences in junior high seems to raise my anxiety level. A lot. It wasn't exactly a geek-friendly environment. Or maybe it's anger; I got a similar reaction from Police officer pepper-sprays seated, non-violent students at UC Davis

More links down in the notes.

Was I just complaining about not having enough entries? Admittedly, there are a lot of links and bits of puttering (indicated by the 15min: tag), BUT there were a few major items, too.

The biggest, I think, was the fact that Colleen was able to stand up and take 6 steps without holding on to anything. That's a total distance of about 3 feet, but still! Progress!

I set out for my walk in the morning, but stopped in at a garage sale two doors down and found a queen-sized futon couch for $20. The lovely young woman selling it helped me haul it to the house and into the living room, whereupon I decided that I'd had my exercise for the day.

We went out for a drive in the afternoon -- Highway 9 to Santa Cruz, then south on Highway 1, getting off at the exit labeled "harbor", because Colleen didn't want to be so close to the ocean without seeing it. We wandered around for a while, eventually finding ourselves on Cliff Drive between Santa Cruz and Capitola, which was simply lovely. I figured, correctly, that it would be difficult to get too lost in the little sliver between the ocean and Highway 1.

We remarked on how we should come back and explore Capitola on foot/scooter some time, and how it would be a nice place to retire to (though probably way too expensive). The fact that we're starting to consider moving, and actually talking about it, is a major step.

When we got home, I made a lovely guacamole (brightened by a ripe jalapeno and half a habanero pepper), and eventually posted my second Songs for Saturday. And Colleen repaired the pair of pants that's been sitting by the sewing machine for half a year. So I'm feeling pretty good about the day.

I went splat at 11, after feeling sleepy for about an hour and a half. (I got up at 8:15 this morning, so apparently I needed the sleep no matter how much I resent having to spend so much of my day unconscious.)

Quite a few links up in the notes, including several about ebooks. Most of those were related to seanan_mcguire's Across the digital divide. I may have something to say about that in the near future.

A fairly productive day at work, and a drive after dinner with Colleen. I also wrote some checks that I've been procrastinating for no good reason, and put in for dinner reservations at the Herb Farm during RainFurrest. More on that later, when/if I get the confirmation back.

But... I don't know. Sort of unsatisfying, on the whole. (Or maybe it's just the fact that I haven't had my coffee yet.)

Some links under the cut, and a reminder that if you're in the SF Bay Area, the Starport has air conditioning, a good net connection, and a Colleen who likes company.

It was Mother's Day. I called my mom around 11; Chaos called around noon; a few of our kids-of-choice also called. Always nice.

I gave Colleen her new Kindle 3, which she loves. It seems to have problems, though; some books don't seem to have synced completely. Grump.

Colleen had gotten a huge slab of smoked salmon at Costco, so we had bagels and lox for brunch. One of the few things guaranteed to get the YD out of bed. While I was out for bagels I went across the parking lot to Whole Paycheck, where I found some nice rockfish for dinner. With a caprese-type salad and baby asparagus sauteed in butter with a little mint (Colleen's idea). Yum, on both meals. The wine with dinner was a Columbia Valley reisling, very big and fruity. Also yum.

We took a nice drive out to the coast on Highway 9, and back via 17.

Glanced at the nameplate on my external backup drive's power brick -- it's rated for 65W on the input side. The outputs only total about 25, and I know that the drive is about half that. So... yuck. OK, it's probably not pulling nearly that much, given that it spends most of the time asleep, but the inefficiency is annoying. An internal hot-swappable mount would be nice.

Did a little noodling on the guitar, and later called Naomi and sang to her and Colleen.

No links. Must have been busy, even though it didn't feel like it.

I managed a half-hour walk at lunchtime, and had a really nice drive with the Cat after dinner. We'd eaten at the New India Chaat Cafe, so we just kept going east on Hostetter Road to Piedmont, north to Milpitas, and back west via Calaveras. We continued west via McCarthy and Tasman, south on Great America/Bowers/Keily/Saratoga to Blossom Hill, then back home via Leigh. Nice, and we spent some of the time talking than we usually do.

Of course, much of the conversation was about how to get the YD's boyfriend out of the house now that he's been rejected for the apartment he applied for for. Anyone who wants to put up with a couch surfer for a couple of weeks?

Would have been a good day except for the worries.

A few links in the notes.

A pretty good day; lots of puttering. Typed in Naomi's script for the Norwescon concert as the liner notes for the CD. Bid high in the Interfilk auction at Consonance -- it's worth it. Spent more time working on the website.

I also went to Southern Lumber for 1x12's, to become shelves in what once was the "sewing room". (Before that it was the kids' bedroom, and it still does double duty as a guest room.) Getting there. And I pulled down a goodly number of guided-imagery mp3's from Kaiser.

On the downside, I had a blood sugar crash on the way back from Southern, so stayed home rather than going out for a walk as originnally planned. And then cooked up some chili for dinner.

A reasonably good IM conversation and a nice drive with Colleen finished the day; I went splat somewhere around 11:30.

Lots of good links up there under the cut. I think my favorite is OpenMesh via Humans Are The Routers on TechCrunch.

Weird. For once I have no links at all. Must have been, um... doing things? OK, mostly reading webcomics -- I've recently discovered Questionable Content. But...

So let's see -- formatting a 500GB drive for the YD, going out to a Baycon staff party, shopping expedition to Walgreen's and Central Computer, putting together the YD's external drive, and going out for a drive to look at the lights. And a little guitar noodling. OK, I guess that all counts.

Christmas isn't my holiday, but I do like looking at the pretty lights. They're very cheerful at this time of year (Northern hemisphere winter).

I ended the day with a painfully tight muscle in my right shoulder; sometime during the night it apparently gave in to the combination of a hot bath, cyclobenzaprine, and a shoulder rub from Colleen that hurt like anything but apparently was as worthwhile as I hoped it would be.

OK; reasonably productive at work; very tired and sleepy all evening. Possibly due to being very congested; I still am. Finally resorted to sudafed this morning, in spite of the fact that it's not good for people with high blood pressure. Have to do something -- I'm kinda addicted to breathing.

A little website maintenance, and a shorter-then-usual drive with Colleen. Short practice session; my throat started getting scratchy after only two songs. Grump. I hate my nose.

Not such a good day. I was oddly depressed, for no obvious reason. Dwelling on... what? Changing health care plans? Changing corporate culture? Retirement? Money in general? Don't know, but do not like.

A drive after dinner with Colleen helped a lot, as did some good snuggle, but...

And then there was that pressure/pain from something seemingly in or behind my right eyeball. What's up with that? (Nothing visible, no effect on my vision; still a lingering feeling of slight pressure but not hurting. More like an odd, slight headache at this point.)

A couple of links under the cut.

A good day, though I got a lot less done over the weekend than I wanted to. But I did get in a bike ride, plus a walk on Saturday. So that's good, right?

Plus dinner, and laundry, and an expedition to BevMo at the end of a drive with Colleen, and singing a few songs for Colleen. OK, I guess it's not surprising I don't get as much done as I want to. But some of what I don't get to is stuff I want to do, and some of it is stuff I hate but that has to get done anyway. Gaah.

QOTD:
C: You're a very strange stuffed creature to be going to bed with.
Me: Was that addressed to the wombat, or to me?
C: Both.

Links under the cut include two about gay marriage, and one about polyamory. You don't have to click if that bores you.

Sunday's main accomplishment was finishing the bedroom makeover by putting up the shelves on Colleen's side of the bed. Go me! Also some configuration work on Argo, the newer of my two Thinkpads.

My pedometer turned up -- it appears to have been found amid the clutter next to Colleen's chair, so it must have fallen off my belt during a kiss. So there's an umimpressive step count again.

River content: a random observation, a month or two after the conversation that it would have been in context in: I'm not so old that sex doesn't matter to me, but I'm old enough that love and companionship matter more.

Mom bought herself an iPad. She downloaded and printed the 150-page manual; it's apparently pretty useless. I'm not surprised.

A couple of links under the cut, as usual.

Another productive day at work, plus a good walk around the pond. I'll miss that little park after we move; there's a park in the Cupertino area too, but it doesn't have koi, or very many trees. Ah, well.

ETA: it's my work group that's moving, not my family! The Starport isn't going anywhere.

We went to El Torito for our date night, and took a drive afterward, out San Thomas Expressway to the end of Camden, and back via Almaden Expressway and Blossom Hill. Nice. We both went splat around 11pm. Might have been just a little too early for me; I woke up at 2:45.

The pedometer seems to be gone for good. It was useful, but I'm better-calibrated now and can probably get by without one.

Lots and lots of good links, many from LWN.net. Plus another of kaath9's healthcare myth posts: Myth #5: Those systems are too “foreign” to work in the US.

Odd day; something of a rollercoaster. To start things out, the coffee maker failed halfway through the pot. One cup for me, one for Colleen, and that's it. Time for a new one, I guess; I'm tempted to get one that grinds the beans...

There was an all-hands meeting at work; big news but not bad news, about how our lab is having an impact on the company. The only part that affects me is that one of the four people in my group is one of the two people moving to a different group. Fortunately, his part of $PROJECT is nearly done, so the timing is good.

I walked down to the pond, but with two stops. Stopping or slowing down while I'm out for a walk is usually a sign that something is wrong -- that's me and my inability to feel emotions except from their physical effects, again. This time it closed the loop, with the question "if I can't detect emotions directly, does that mean I may never experience happiness? Joy? Are those even meaningful concepts for me?"

Or, on the other hand, are those even meaningful or useful questions to be asking? Probably not. That's just where I'm starting from. So I was discouraged and disappointed, but mostly puzzled. I was mostly back up to calm and neutral by the time I got back to the lab, but the puzzlement remains. It's going to take some research, of a sort that I don't really know how to do.

On the gripping hand, I came up with a new affirmation: "It's perfectly ok to be an introvert. It may sound as though everyone is an extrovert, but that's because we introverts don't talk as much."

Transcribing my notes from the walk, I ran across two more: "I am an interesting person" and "People enjoy talking with me."

I also remembered that N. had told me on Wednesday that she didn't think I looked particularly fat, or old. So obviously my self-image needs a lot of work, along with my self-esteem.

The evening was much better: we went out intending to try a new restaurant that turned out not to be open yet, so we diverted to Arya because we were close. Yum. For an appetizer we had a plate of little rice crisps with three different sauces. Gluten-free and delicious.

Took a drive on the way home.

Any day that ends with pon-pon chicken, yu-shiang eggplant, szechuan beef, dry-braised green beans, and an hour-long drive to noplace in particular with my lovely Cat has to be a good one, right? It was.

It also included a walk, with a little meditation and the koi emerging mysteriously out of the murky depths of the pond like gilded and silvered submarines.

And I got a new toy at work -- the next generation of the eWriter device we've been working on. The hardware is a bit ramshackle, and the software is still rather flaky, but Oh! it's sweet. (I can only say that much because a paper's been presented.) My demo, on the older hardware that went to Japan with $grandboss last week, will be going to New Orleans with $boss next week.

On the other hand (literally), washing dishes is not kind to my right shoulder: I tend to hold pots in my right hand and sponge them with my left. Oh. Right.

On the gripping hand, I finally talked myself into buying a new 1.5TB hard drive for the file server, instead of using the three existing .5GB drives in a RAID. Simpler, and much lower power. Between California's outrageous power rates and my current tax bracket, it has about a one-year payback.

And here's a fascinating wikipedia article on "disaffectation", which may be the best description yet of what "my main problem" is.

So, yeah. Good day.

A pretty good day, or at least a moderately productive one. Colleen had originally wanted to get up early and go to Tapestry In Talent downtown; I figured that if she doesn't wake up with a kiss, she needs the sleep.

While she slept I did the dishes, cleaned the pots, partitioned the fileserver's new drives, made breakfast, and made my hotel reservations for OVFF.

What I actually ended up doing with Colleen was going for a drive, and stopping at the large Whole Foods in Cupertino. Scored a 25-pound bag of brown basmati rice and some gluten-free English muffins, among other yummy things. Win.

I went out for a walk around the Rose Garden, and made burgers for dinner. I ought to show the YD how to make hamburger patties properly so they cook thoroughly and don't fall apart. Colleen's and mine had blue cheese in them. I can haz (blue) cheeseburger!

Ended the evening running through my concert set for Naomi (via phone) and Colleen; we added Chaos via skype about halfway through what ended up being a 90-minute session. We really need to get streaming and conferencing set up, and do it more often.

I'm not sure why music gets pushed aside so often. Some kind of coping strategy gone awry, I suppose.

A pretty good day, though not too productive. A good talk and a productive meeting at work, and a drive with Colleen in the evening. Colleen used the walker, not the scooter, to get to and from the car.

I meditated in the morning just after waking up; it got rid of essentially all of my neck pain and tension. Big win. I'm probably going to have to re-arrange things once I start having to take the YD to school in the morning, but for now it works.

The main thing I did yesterday was to finish replacing the shelf bracket in the bedroom, and putting up new shelves. There are now three or four more than there once were, and a lot of the junk and clutter has been dealt with. There were a few treasures, like a picture of the YD taken at Baycon X, the year she was born.

I got in a 3-mile walk by Los Gatos Creek; my calf muscles were a bit sore, and were still a little tight when I got to the park, so I turned back. They were fine when I got back to the car. I should stretch more.

An unexpected call from Callie and a drive with Colleen ended the day on a calm, happy note. I should also mention that, in between other things, I ripped about a dozen CDs over the course of the weekend.

A lot of things still aren't getting done. Grumble.

Woke up in fair shape this morning, going rapidly downhill when Colleen got up and while I took her to a doctor's appointment to check on her fistula site, which appears to have become re-infected. She was on the edge of panic, I think. We both calmed down after getting a prescription for (a different) oral antibiotic; the infection started up after her week on the previous prescription ran out.

Note: positive feedback is bad. When Colleen is panicking, I get weird and either panicked or depressed. Or both; I have no idea what to call that state.

After Kaiser we went out for a longish drive: quality time is always good for both of us. We're now back at home waiting for a pain pill to kick in so I can change her wound dressing. After that I'll go out for my walk.

Colleen and I went for a nice long drive yesterday; around the long loop up the coast and home through Half Moon Bay. It was mostly good, but some disturbing things came up toward the end and I'm afraid my mood crashed pretty badly. Yes, my baseline mood has improved recently (Colleen confirms it, and ordered me in no uncertain terms to stay away from gluten from now on). But the amplitude and frequency of the swings has also increased considerably.

This will be briefer than I would have liked; details have already started to fade. But some of it is very important, at least for me.

Somehow, probably in response to me asking her to clarify something, we got back on the subject of my attempts to get her to answer questions when I didn'tunderstand or didn't hear the original answer. She blew up at me. You may remember a post upstream titled Why I asked. Yeah, that again. Plus something that triggered memories of last March and April when she feared she was losing me (which I've touched on under the title of The Silicon Mistress). And didn't believe me when I said she wasn't, because she was paying more attention to my attitude than to my words.

The combination sent me into a tailspin, wondering whether our relationship had deteriorated to the point where she no longer wanted to talk with me about it. From further conversation, I don't think so. I hope not. She also came up with a fascinating bit of information. It raises more questions than it answers, unfortunately.

She was under psychoanalysis for years, from a very young age; it left her with a lifelong hatred for and distrust of the whole profession. It hasn't stopped us from getting the kids help when they needed it, but she reacted vehemently when I asked whether we would benefit from counseling. I wouldn't know -- I've never done it.

But apparently my way of asking questions, multiple times with different wordings to try to come to an understanding of what she said, sounds to her exactly like what a shrink does. No wonder she rejects it.

Question: what in Hell can I do about this? I can't stop asking her for clarification: if it was important enough for her to say something to me, it's important for me to understand it. Is there a way of asking for clarification that doesn't make me sound like I'm trying to psychoanalyze her?

Public service announcement #1: When I ask you a question I am not trying to psychoanalyze you. Nor am I trying to see whether you know something, the way I would with a kid drilling for a test. I'm just trying to get an answer. When I ask a question it's because you know the answer and I don't. If I ask again in different words, it's because I didn't understand the first answer, or because it sounded like the answer to a question I didn't ask. If I paraphrase your answer and ask you to confirm it, it's because I want to make damned sure I understood what you said, because it seemed to be important.

Public service announcement #2: Please listen. I will usually tell you why I am seemingly asking a question again. If I do, I mean exactly what I say. Please listen to the exact words of the question, too. Don't respond with the answer to the question you think I was going to ask: it will only confuse both of us.

I don't know how I can make this more clear. Suggestions welcome.

It's been a weekend of conversation, puntuated occasionally by snuggle, sleep, food, and a little music. Many things left undone, though the few important items, plane tickets to OVFF and a second room for Loscon, finally got taken care of. On the whole, I'd rather spend time talking with friends than almost anything else.

Mostly talk with M.S., up from Southern Cal for a funeral and staying with us for friendship and lack of drama. A good little walk in the Rose Garden yesterday, and two lovely mornings of bacon, eggs, coffee, and conversation. Mostly about relationships, hers and mine. I showed her the Royal Amethyst rose and explained that, yes, it's OK to talk about Amy. Grieving isn't about forgetting the past but about coming to terms with it, and remembering is my way of doing that.

A brief interlude yesterday to take the Y.D. to an interview for possible travel next summer, and rowanf's 25th anniversary party in the afternoon. They'd requested music and poetry on the theme of love in lieu of gifts; I sang The River, of course, and got some good reactions. Longish talk with spikeiowa afterward.

This morning, M gave me a voice lesson -- extremely useful. More on that later, perhaps. A drive with the Cat in the afternoon -- the conversation continues. I love my friends, and I love talking with them. I love my Cat the best of all, and even when we have little to say, the silence between us is alive with conversation.

Yesterday Colleen and I took a long drive -- our first in several months, given the recent rise in gas prices. The long loop via Highway 9 to the Coast, up Highway 1 past Devil's Slide and through Pacifica, and back on 35 and I-280; about 135 miles and four hours. It was still significantly cheaper than dinner out, and there's a produce stand just south of Half Moon Bay where we got fresh tomatoes and white corn.

It was also our first long drive since I started getting serious about the river posts; the conversation was fascinating, and occasionally intense.

I had just posted Talking long distance; I went over the next few posts in that series, ending with "Crosstalk", about my inability to do anything else but listen or read if there are voices in the background that I can hear. She said, "I wish I'd known that 30 years ago!" Me too.

That led naturally to the fact that she now turns off distractions when I get home, so that we can be together in the living room for a while. Then to broken promises, and her grumpiness over the fact that the River has taken over a lot of the time and creative energy that she feels I should have been using for the CD I'd originally planned to have done by now wasn't even started yet.

I pointed out that I'm a very different person now from the one who made those plans, and that a lot of the time that would have gone into music was now spent with her. I like the trade-off in general, but she thought for a while and told me that the hour between 9pm and 10pm was for me to work on music without her -- recording, and the kind of intense practice and songsmithing that drives her crazy to listen to. A million thanks, Love!

Mornings, before she gets up, are for writing and editing. It's 7:45 now. When did I become a morning person?

We talked about my poor memory for words; the fact that I often ask her to repeat things, and my inability to deliver a simple verbal message without writing it down. I came up with an analogy: "Do you remember all the dialog of a movie the first time you see it?"

"Depends on the movie."

"Well, I never do. After I get out of the theatre I'm lucky to remember a quarter of the scenes and a dozen lines of dialog. To me, life is exactly like a movie that I'm seeing for the first time." (The quotes are as close as I can remember, of course, and not exact -- I have a better memory for the scenes with intense emotion attached, and Colleen had some tears in this one.) I might add that it's a particularly boring movie, for the most part, and the amateur actors keep flubbing their lines.

We had a couple of weepy meltdowns, but even those led to insights and places that need to be explored and worked on. That will be another post sometime; for now I'll just report that Colleen says that they happen when I "snap at" her, when I disagree with her, and when I "don't listen to" her. They also happen when we hit on a topic that's emotionally loaded for her, including unfinished projects.

I realized later that there are three cases that get confused, and get a similar reaction:

1. The case where I understand what she's saying, and genuinely disagree with whatever she said.
2. The case where I understand what she's trying to say, but the words mean something else. This usually happens because she's using technical terms that she doesn't quite understand; in this case it was operating systems and the difference between the OS in her sewing machine and the OS that her embroidery-design software runs under on her PC.
3. The case where I understand what she said, but it wasn't what she meant.

I tend to approach all three of these cases the same way, trying to clarify her words until I understand exactly what she meant, and then (in the latter two cases) trying to get her to understand the difference between what she actually said and what she meant. It's during that dialog that she often melts down, accuses me of snapping and "not listening", and thinks that I'm disagreeing with her and arguing for the sake of arguing. I really don't know what either of us can do about this, but we'll continue to work on it.

The other place where I don't know whether there's anything either of us can do is the fact that I'll often miss the first word or two of a sentence, and ask her to repeat. This is because my attention was elsewhere; either on a task or, in the middle of a conversation, on composing a reply. I don't think she understands the extent to which I find listening, thinking, and talking incompatible; I always have to compose what I'm saying before I can say it. If I don't know exactly where I'm going with a thought, I have to pause in mid-sentence to figure it out. Which is about where we started the discussion, somewhere around the location of the old Dead Cow tannery. Which was being torn down and turned into condos or a strip mall or something.

Just got back from a drive with the Cat. Smoke from the fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains made the sky an odd, dirty blue-gray as we were setting out.

Good walk this afternoon, after tasty shrimp wonton soup in our building's little deli. I love their soups. I like to eat at my desk from about 11:30, and then go out for a walk at noon.

My weight was 180.5 this morning! Even as the low end of a +-1 swing, it's an improvement.

I'm writing this in the living room on Matrix, our ancient Thinkpad. For the first time I've killed my IM client in the office and am running it here, sitting next to a sleepy flower_cat. Works. The screen, 800x600, is cramped, but at least it has a decent keyboard. It's so much like coming home that I'm unlikely ever to use any other kind of laptop anymore.