Usually I work from my boss’s house, but because she’s on maternity leave right now, I’ve been working from home. Working from home is definitely a mixed bag. On the one hand, I get to wear the same sweatpants and sweatshirt every day for a week1.
On the other hand, having to pay for my own heat is quickly becoming detrimental to my health. I am a cheap bastard and come from a (short) line of cheap bastards that began with my father. My father would get angry if we didn’t nibble the fruit down to the seeds, if we paid an extra 50 cents per pound of meat, and, oh yes, if we dared to even think about cranking up the heat. In our house, we may have occasionally needed to put on three sweaters at a time, but our heating bills were low and that was all that really mattered.
Now that I’m living in a house of my own, I have to admit that the apple (fully consumed) doesn’t fall far from the tree. Especially since our house has a crazy layout of multiple floor and uneven heating.
But working from home means that my hands are always on the keyboard and if my fingers get cold, I can’t work. So sometimes I turn the heat up a degree or two, all the while looking over my shoulder to make sure that my father hasn’t somehow crept up on me and is preparing to give me the lecture about simply putting on more clothes, as if I don’t already resemble a sausage in my giant sweatshirt.
After the heat gets going, my fingers eventually warm up. For a brief period, I’m actually comfortable. Then I start getting too hot, because the thermostat only works for a narrow block of air directly in front of it. I turn up the heat, I turn down the heat, I put on sweatshirts, I take off sweatshirts.
It’s not an easy life, I tell you, and if I could, I would follow Paco’s example.
Paco has worked out a most efficient way of dealing with these temperature changes.
He carefully creeps into a bed and tucks his head under a blanket while leaving his bum hanging out. Like this:
Or this:
Or even:
Hey, I’m not really sweating here and it’s not like I go out, so I’m not getting my clothes dirty. AND I’m saving water. So really, I’m saving the earth.
My parents took us out tonight as an early celebration of my birthday. As with all things in our family, the celebration naturally revolved around food, and we decided to try a new restaurant that had recently taken over a buffet place which we had liked.
Although my parents had been to the location of the restaurant many times, with and without us, the name change seemed to confuse them. When my mother called to let me know they were leaving, she asked, “Is it past the Natick Mall?”
“Yes,” I said. “You’ve been there before, remember?”
“Yes,” she said. “Okay, we’ll meet you at Pacific Buffet.”
“Ginseng,” I corrected her.
“What?”
“Ginseng.”
“What?”
“GINSENG!”
“Ginseng,” she agreed, and hung up.
Chris and I drove to Ginseng. We were almost there when my cell phone rang.
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Today the heat kicked on during daylight hours for the first time since summer.
Mina and Paco happened to be in the beds closest to the heat vent in their bedroom, but Stanley was lying on the brown cube beside my desk.
The air coming out of the heat vent was still cool, but as it warmed up, Stanley suddenly leaped out of bed and ran downstairs.
I followed him down and found him sitting in front of the heat vent in the kitchen. Last year we kept beds by that vent but because of our open house in September, we’d moved all the beds. So Stanley was sitting, shivering, on the tile floor in the kitchen.
I found another bed for him and as he caught sight of it, he began to dance. He climbed into it before I had even finished putting it on the floor, and lay down.
It takes so little to make a dog happy.
by Anne Ursu
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Charlotte and her cousin Zee must save the children of their town from having their souls stolen.
I liked this book, but the plot wasn’t too interesting to me. What I liked more were the illustrations, the size of the book, the margins, and the font. Sometimes books just look good, you know?
The words in the actual book are mostly good, but the conclusion and the resolution of the conflict felt flat. It felt as though the book peaked at a different time from when the plot peaked.
I’d still read this author’s next book, but I won’t cry if I forget to look for it.
by John Scalzi
ONE LINE SUMMARY (for Old Man’s War): John Perry turns 75 and joins the Colonial Defense Force.
ONE LINE SUMMARY (for The Ghost Brigades): Jared Dirac is the clone of a scientist who betrays humankind to the aliens.
Over the course of three years, I noticed that my sci-fi/fantasy reading had fallen way down. Eventually I realized that the way I find something to read is to browse the “new books” section of a library, and the library currently closest to me purchases very few sci-fi/fantasy books. I was craving some sci-fi, so I asked Chris to ask his co-worker, Derek, for a sci-fi or fantasy recommendation, and Derek mentioned Old Man’s War. I finished that book in a day, and immediately looked for the next book which takes place in the same world, although the books have only a few characters in common.
Both of these books are quite good, although the second one pales in comparison to the first, namely because the excitement of how an old man becomes a young soldier is so much more entertaining. By the time a conflict finally arose, half the book had been taken up with John Perry’s transformation into a soldier.
In the second book, my initial “hey, that’s a neat idea” enthusiasm faded. Without the “neat idea,” this book has to rely on plot to carry it through, and I admit that I couldn’t follow parts of it. And because this book focuses on someone who is largely emotionless (but becomes more human), I found it harder to empathize with Jared’s dilemmas.
by Diane Duane
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Nita discovers a book in a library, becomes a wizard, and with fellow wizard Kit embarks on a journey to save New York from the Lone Power.
I found Support Your Local Wizard at a used book sale. I dimly remembered reading something by the same author that I had enjoyed, so I figured I might as well buy this — especially since it contained the first three books of the series and so I was getting 3 books for the price of one.
To my surprise, I was immediately drawn into the first book, So You Want to Be a Wizard, and speedily dove into the second book, Deep Wizardry. This second book involves Nita and Kit’s journey into water to again save the world. Although the nemesis is the same, the books are different enough so that I really didn’t feel much boredom. The third book, High Wizardry, centers around Nita’s younger sister who also becomes a wizard.
Both of the first two books are recommended; I found the third book less compelling mainly because I just couldn’t get over the stupidity of Nita’s sister in running off with her newfound wizardry. But then, I’m over thirty.
by Peggy Vincent
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Peggy Vincent details her career from nurse to midwife in this memoir.
Although I don’t really understand why some women would not want pain relief if it’s available, I can understand the midwife’s perspective and would probably choose a midwife myself if I had a baby. The way doctors are trained in obstetrics is not necessarily the best way for a pregnant woman. For example, I’ve read that episiotomies often take more time to heal than a natural tear.
This book mainly consists of short chapters detailing a different patient. Although there isn’t too much personal information about Vincent, the book holds together quite well until the part when Vincent gets involved in a lawsuit. I understand the reasons for including this part, but it was an abrupt transition from the previous chapters.
This is a good book, even though I now know more about placentas than I wanted to.
Over a year ago, my mother suggested that we go to Russo’s. I had never been there before, but had recently heard about it from a friend and was interested in seeing it.
On the designated day, Chris and I woke up about half an hour before we had to leave. We took care of the dogs and were ready to go only a few minutes late, due to an ugly argument revolving around how I had told Chris it was warm enough to wear shorts, Chris putting on his shorts, and then Chris stepping outside to find out that it was too damned cold for shorts and shouldn’t I have known that? (In my defense, when I took the dogs outside, I never actually stepped outside but watched them from the relative comfort of our kitchen, and hey, the weather looked humid.)
Chris drove to Russo’s while I navigated. I was accompanied by my Massachusetts Street Atlas, printed MapQuest directions, and my father’s emailed directions (sample line: “It locates at the opposit of Willow st on the right hand side of River st”).
I studied the map carefully, looking up at one point to tell Chris, “Go up.”
Chris looked at me. “I need a right or a left,” he said gently.
“Oh.” I examined the map again and tilted it. “Right,” I said finally.
When we arrived at Russo’s, the parking lot was packed. We parked and I called my father from my cell phone.
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Around 11:00 last night, I felt tired. I wanted to go to sleep, but I also wanted Chris to come with me since I felt I’d hardly talked to him all day. Chris, however, was at war.
I’d asked him when he was going to stop playing his computer game, and he’d said around midnight. So from 11:00 pm to 11:43 pm, I sat on the couch with two dogs on my lap and another dog curled into the blanket beside me. I was so tired that I just sat, staring aimlessly at the clock.
At 11:30, I said, “Wow, I’ve just been sitting here doing nothing for half an hour.”
Chris made no response, except to fire off another missile at an insurgent.
“Chris, how much longer until the round ends?” I said.
“Um, not long…spawn on me, spawn on me!” he yelled.
“You know, I’ve only been alone with you for two and a half hours today, and for one of those hours, you were asleep,” I complained.
“When were you sleeping?” he asked.
“No, when YOU were sleeping. On the couch, remember?”
Chris ignored me. At least, I think he ignored me because I don’t think he was directing “Get back to base!” at me.
After a few more minutes, I was so tired that I was ready to go to bed, with or without him. I disentangled myself from the dogs and said, “Who do you love more, me or Battlefied 2142?”
He said promptly, “You!” while staring at his computer screen.
“I don’t think so,” I muttered darkly, and went to bed.
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My friend Kelly gave birth this morning to a baby boy, and that’s when I realized that everyone I know who was or is pregnant this year is having a boy baby.
My sister and my sister-in-law are both due in December. Both will be having boys. Two other friends are due in February — both boys.
Kelly was the lone variable; the one chance that this string of boys was a fluke. Kelly and her husband hadn’t wanted to find out the sex of their child, so I figured with the odds being what they are, they would probably have a girl.
Now that they are the proud parents of a little boy, I can safely say that boys are all the rage this year. Next year: babies who can breathe underwater!
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