Whatta Fiasco

I had a strange interaction with my doctor today. I was back again about the hives (blah blah blah) and he mentioned that I might want to try a milk free diet, just in case it’s an allergic reaction. He explained that it wasn’t the lactose that was the issue, but rather the proteins. “Oh, it’s the casein,” I said.

And he gave me the strangest look. Have you ever seen that look? The one where the doctor suspects you’ve done a little too much research on your own and you might be trying to game your medical practitioner in some way. Then he wanted to know where I learned about milk proteins. Huh. I think I first learned about casein back in fifth grade science class. Is that really such a strange thing to know? Is admitting to any science knowledge at all going to put me at risk in getting health care?

A creepy romp of a spy/horror novel done in a very Strossian manner with higher mathematics, interdimensional Nazis, zombies, and committee meetings. And we won’t even mention the creepiness that rivals anything Iain Banks can dish out, only Mr. Stross also gives us bad puns along the way. At this point, I (almost) no longer care what genre he decides to play in because it’s going to be good reading.

I had a wonderful set of plans for this weekend, and nothing worked out quite as I had expected. I was going to drive south to spend an afternoon kayaking with my dad, but the hives have come back. I woke up feeling bad enough that I called and canceled. Instead of kayaking, I spent the morning in the doctor’s office. The last time I had hives was just over a decade ago and they lasted nearly two years. Two years of taking seldane and benadryl to blunt the symptoms while I tried to work through the side effects and hope they went away. The doctors still don’t know what causes them (although I got a strep test just in case that was the problem) but at least there are better second generation antihistamines available now. So far things are doing better, but here’s to hoping they don’t last as long this time.

Because I wasn’t down south, I decided to go downtown for the ice cream social / jam session that kicked off the state Fiddling and Picking Championship. Lots of good music. And it’s just as well I went because the competition was supposed to be this afternoon, but the rain gods intervened. The faintest of drizzles slowly ramped up to a downpour that showed no signs of abatement. And there was no rain location arranged. Ah well. I went ahead and bought a t-short to commemorate the first Fiddlin’ and Pickin’ Championship to be canceled in twenty-six years. After that, I went home to dry off and warm up before heading over to the gym.

It could easily be spun as a tale of woe, but all in all, it wasn’t a bad weekend.

Enjoy Catherine Deneuve and John Malkovich along with everyone else (Marcello Mazzarella and Emmanuelle Béart are stunning) in this gorgeous film inspired by/adapted from Proust’s classic and directed by Raúl Ruiz. I can’t tell you how closely it adheres to the source material as Proust is still sitting in my to be read list. But it’s creeping up in the list after seeing this film. And even if you haven’t and don’t intend to read the book(s), the film stands very well on its own.

Need a Terry Pratchett fix? This one is pretty good, standard Disc World fare. If you’re unfamiliar with Disc World, I’d suggest you hunt down a copy of Small Gods first.

I almost didn’t go to fencing practice tonight because I wasn’t feeling all that well, but habit is a force for good. It was a very goodpractice. Not because I scored a lot of touches. I didn’t. It was good because my footwork was the most solid it’s ever felt. Seriously. I was moving and my feet were like high speed (ok, medium-high speed) gecko feet. Thpock thpock. I still don’t have the extended combinations I want, but I have the solid base to get there. Driving home afterward I realized that this might well be the result of the hip abductor work I’ve been doing at the gym, balancing out all the adductor work you naturally get when doing fencing footwork. If so, I’m very happy.

Now I just have to get my point accuracy back again while continuing to stretch the footwork vocabulary.

It was a good, if full, weekend. Saturday was: mandolins, pizza, icecream, cannons firing in the park (boom!), stir fry, Princess Bride, and strawberries. Sunday was: a visit to the Sprint store, participating in a human loom project, back to the Sprint store, steak for dinner, crash.

The human loom project is being run by an old fencing buddy and friend of mine who was in town from California. It’s a community performance art project designed to promote peace and reflection. The participants act as the heddles of the loom and take turns controlling the heddles and weaving in yarn. It was a small group due to some last minute planning but I was very happy to have participated. I met some nice folks. (I’ve been doing a fair amount of that lately.)

The Sprint store experience was less pleasant. Hubby’s phone died a horrible death, caught in an endless boot cycle that never quite completed. Eventually they offered him a replacement, which he took. We also asked about getting a new battery for my phone. First they wanted to keep it for eight hours to do a battery test. So they can tell me what I already know: It doesn’t hold a charge for very long these days. When I asked to just get a replacement battery, they admitted that they don’t sell that model anymore. At that point my eyes were rolling in my head too hard to be bothered dealing with them any more that day. I have a phone upgrade in my near future, but it can wait a few more weeks.

It also doesn’t help that the Sprint store has all the charm of most doctor’s offices, but with fewer chairs and many more simultaneous sound tracks. Even worse, there aren’t that many toys to look at. In fact, I found the selection to be appallingly small. I keep hearing rumblings that the major telcos are slowly moving the US cell business into something approximating the modern age, but it’s taking a ridiculously long time.

What a strange little story, mixing together imagery of whiteness as innocence and whiteness as death. China doll heads, blanc mange, little girls’ undershirts, little white lies, plaster walls, deceit and destruction. Honestly, this one is going to have to ferment a while before it settles and makes sense in my head.

And just hen I didn’t think it could get any stranger, one of the characters starts singing Tam Lin. And this after I had deliberately chosen a novel as far from Elizabeth Bear’s Bloos and Ironas I could get. Clearly, it was time for me to do a little research before Tam Lin began seriously stalking me. I’ve taken a good step in that direction now.

As for whether Kathryn Davis is a great writer? She’s clearly talented, but I’ll have to read some more of her stuff before I can decide just how much I like her.

I did my part today, in a small corner of my world. It was food day and the theme was deemed to be Mexican. So my still rather English manager brought… orange juice? Maybe the English have a strange notion of what Mexican food is, but he’s been living in the states for a very long time now. I don’t know what he was thinking.

My contribution was guacamole. I made a lot. There were no left overs. The key to a good guacamole is ripe avocados and simplicity. Although, given my druthers and a perfectly ripe avocado, I’ll just eat it plain. But guacamole was promised. The trick was that I didn’t buy the fruit until last night on my way home. This was a risky decision, as the avocados around here haven’t been looking all that good. Given a few days, you can ripen them up just fine, but I didn’t have that kind of time. Luckily I scored some reasonably close to ripe ones. Add a little salt. Stir in some fresh lemon juice. Add just enough green salsa (I used a tablespoon of salsa for a pint of guac) to barely taste. Stir until there’s a nice consistency but the green stuff hasn’t completely gone to slime. You should still have small chunks. Cover tightly and refrigerate.

Don’t buy the pre made stuff. Don’t bury it in onions and garlic or tomatoes. Just sweet, creamy green goodness. And if your avocados are less than stellar and a little under ripe, try adding just a bare pinch of sugar to imitate the natural sweetness. Happy guacamole eating people.

Now if I can just figure out why two different databases at work have suddenly decided to go on strike. I’m hoping they appoint a negotiator tomorrow.

Today was the first site day for renfest. The fencing crew turned out to transform the plywood floor from our old fencing location into an outdoor fencing strip at renfest. Too many sheets of four by eight plywood, all of which needed to be painted. The layer on the bottom had to have a preservative applied, and the frothy vile green stuff quickly got nicknamed Swamp Water and Toxic Goo. Nasty stuff, but it should keep the wood from rotting or being munched to pieces by bugs. The rest just needed to be painted, and much paint was applied. By the end of the day we had everything painted and screwed together except for the final layer. We’ll finish that up next week.

How amazingly nice to see old friends and the friends I almost never see except at renfest. We also got to see the rehearsal for the Royal Ball (complete with the brand new Cinderella, whee), and some still rather early looking rehearsals for the chess match. Once they get it all pulled together it’s going to be good as usual. And they have the right people to do the pulling in the next two weeks.

We worked hard in temperatures in the upper nineties, but we were still only out there for seven hours. I’m wiped. And now that I’ve washed off the last of the Toxic Goo and the paint, I’m ready to pretend being human again.