Dinners For Two

One day I will be a master cook and a great housewife. I will have a healthy and delicious dinner ready and waiting for Tene when he gets home from

That hasn't happened yet, and probably won't for a while. But I'm working on it.

These are two meals that I have put together for Tene and I, and that were very delicious.

First was this lovely looking meal. I call it the Green Meal. We ate this maybe two weeks ago?

We've got an artichoke, boiled, with some garlic-lemon-butter for dipping. Then .... there's baked/steamed potatoes (they were baked in the oven, but were wrapped in foil, leading to a more steam-like situation than a bake-like situation; asparagus, which was fried; and finally brussels sprouts, which were baked in the oven. It was a very tasty meal, and I really enjoyed it. We'll probably be having it - or something similar to it - again soon.

Then, tonight's dinner - Parmesan crusted chicken which was made from two chicken breast halves and that I'm finally getting into the habit of cooking. I tend to have trouble not burning it to the pan. Up next we have whole-grain spaghetti with a tasty spinach pesto that Tene made on it. Ingredients for that were spinach, some basil, some olive oil, garlic, etc. It's very tasty, and gave us a good reason to use our new food processor! I'm very happy with the food processor. It's exciting. And, again, artichokes. Steamed, this time, but again with the artichokes.

I like artichokes. Who would have thought that such a spiky plant would be so delicious, let alone even edible? To whoever in the far past first attempted to eat an artichoke - thank you. You have made my diet a little healthier!

In other news, Tene and I might be starting on the paleo diet for the month of July, as a simple test for allergens and to see if it actually makes us feel healthier and more energetic like we've been told. So ... the two dinners above have parts that are disallowed - potatoes in dinner one, the pasta and breading on the chicken in dinner two. I'm hoping we get something good out of it, but even if we don't - it'll be a new, good experience, and I'm happy with that.

I've also be playing with my hairstyles, trying to find pretty things to do. Recently I figured out this one, which I thought looks elegant and casual at the same time. I might be cutting my hair soon, I'll give before and after pictures if I end up deciding that.

Other than that, things are going well for us here in CA. As seen above, we're eating mostly healthy - and we're being social and all that. We're working on getting me stable emotionally and healthy (the newest thing to happen is that I've been getting headaches almost every day, ranging from annoying cluster-headaches to full-on migraines, I see the doctor again on Monday to talk to him about it; currently looking at sleep and/or anxiety as the culprits).

Bad Dreams and Headaches

I've been having a lot of bad dreams lately - not quite nightmares, but enough to keep me up and make me feel bad for the day. Most of them center, oddly, around high school - particularly my high school choir. I'll have missed the entire semester, or I'll have a solo and my voice will crack, or I'll forget the words - or the entire song (or a combination of all of the above). I'm often made fun of in such dreams. Sometimes one of my high school crushes is in them - pretty evenly split between my main tormentor and my biggest support. Oddly, Tene is always lacking in these dreams. I'll end up feeling humiliated, confused, lost, and just plain depressed - a feeling which continues into my waking hours.

I don't know where these dreams are coming from, but I'm having them at least three nights every week. One of my friends suggests that they are little more than stress dreams, which certainly could be accurate. I just don't understand why I'm having them so much, and why they tend to focus around my old choir class.

I've also been having near-constant headaches. They've improved over the last week, but they're still there. I think I clench my teeth (perhaps grind them?) in my sleep, which would account for the pain. My doctor has given me some migraine medication to try to help take care of them - so far I've only needed it once.

Speaking of doctors I finally went in to try to understand why I've been so fatigued and tired. I underwent a sleep study (a take-home version, my breathing was monitored but my brainwaves weren't), and it looks like, while I don't have sleep apnea, I might have "Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome" - which basically means that while I don't stop breathing in the night (which is apnea) I get really close. I apparently don't enter the deep, very relaxing sleep (because when I do, I almost stop breathing, so I wake up - just a little - to avoid that), which is why I'm frequently tired. I'm trying to sleep with a C-Pap machine to see if I get better/more restful sleep with it. So far I've been having a hard time adjusting to sleeping with this HUGE THING on my nose, and it's been overly warm in our apartment - which means lots of uncomfortable sweating around the mask. I've gotten a few hours of good sleep from it, though, and I seem to be adjusting - just very very slowly. I think I might end up buying one for myself.

If I do have UARS, it could also explain my depression (or at least, part of my depression), my headaches, maybe even my bad dreams! I go in again on either Wednesday or Thursday, so we'll find out some more then.

Life has been mostly uneventful for us, honestly. It's nice here - I'm really liking Mountain View - and we're enjoying ourselves. So not so much to report right now.

Sustaining the Earth

Most links in this post go to items I'm hoping to purchase. I promise I'm not trying to sell anything to you or beg for you to buy anything - I just wanted you to see what I'm looking in to.

The last few days I've been on a bit of a "green" kick. Part of it is from being utterly annoyed at the plastic and paper bags floating around the apartment (I can only use so many as garbage bags ... ) and part of it is from just not wanting to live such a wasteful life. As a result I've started looking in to some sustainable resources to try to help Save The Earth.

I already use reusable water bottles more often than not - I own six or seven waterbottles made from either plastic, aluminium, or stainless steel (I'm working on replacing them all with either BPA-free plastic or stainless steel, since aluminium has been linked - rather weakly - to Alzheimer's, and BPA has been linked - also rather weakly - to cancer, and I'd rather be safe than sorry), and the only time I use non-reusable water bottles anymore is when I'm out shopping, don't have a water bottle with me (which is sadly quite frequent - my bag doesn't have a water bottle holder, so taking a water bottle is often inconvenient), really need water, and won't be heading home soon. This happens ... once every few months? And soon I hope to make myself a different bag, or a smaller water bottle, so I'll be able to more easily carry water with me.

I have a single reusable shopping bag. I got it from our medical insurance company for becoming a member (how nice of them!). This bag is another part of why I've been thinking of making such changes. I'm hoping to buy some more bags from reusablebags.com (or reuseit.com - they both go to the same website) so that I don't have to bring home more plastic and paper bags from shopping.

Another thing we already do deals with lunch - I frequently try to make Tene's lunch so that he doesn't have to spend money on it, and I send it with him in a bento box. We now have three between us - mine is smaller and has a bunch of Totoros on it (it's adorable, and I love it) - and I hope to eventually get some more.  I'm hoping to eventually do furoshiki wrapping of the bentos, and to get some To-Go-Wear utensils to send with the lunch.

The adorable fuzzy thing sitting on the tree branch over there is Totoro. Or a Totoro. He's the biggest in the movie, but they come in a few different sizes.

Speaking of wrapping - another place that I'm hoping to save a bit of the earth will come when Christmas gets closer (or birthdays, possibly). Instead of wrapping gifts in wrapping paper, I'm going to wrap them in fabric. Which saves trees (and looks elegant, in my honest opinion)!

Finally - I've been thinking about buying a bike to run errands. Right now I get around town by driving, but it feels kinda wasteful - the temperature is nice, and it's not like everything is So Far Away that it would be impossible to do. Plus it would be good exercise. As long as I didn't need to get something like ice cream or milk, I think I would be fine - especially if I had some sort of case or basket on the back of the bike (which are pretty inexpensive themselves). And - if I had a case - I could easily put an ice pack in it to keep milk or ice cream chilled enough to get it home.

Anyway, that's what has been going through my head lately - I'm suddenly turning into an Eco-conscious type of gal. It must be the San Francisco atmosphere!

Things I Learned At Penguicon 2010: Post-Scarcity Futures

Title: Post Scarcity Futures
Panelists: Karl Schroeder, Geoffrey A. Landis, JD Luzio
Date and Time: Saturday, May 1, 2010; 9:00 PM

This panel ... wasn't what I was expecting, and I ended up not liking it very much. Anyway, the panel started off with a minor complaint from JD Deluzio. He had meant to have a panel talking about how the common views of the future had changed over time. It used to be that the future was either post-apocalyptic or it was the Star Trek future with humans colonizing the stars and winning all the battles. Now the two futures are a post-scarcity future, one where we've run out of some resource or another and the world has basically fallen apart; or a no-scarcity future - the one "the transhumanist optimistics" think of (there were a lot of digs at transhumanists in this panel, and it bothered me a lot).

The panelists talked about how there is always some type of scarcity, that things tend to balance out. One scarcity is solved only to be replaced by another, different scarcity. The panelists complained that there wasn't much ingenuity in the books that discuss such futures - because they always follow the same, or a similar, storyline.

They also talked about how they thought all futures would arrive - just not equally. The horrible post-scarcity future will come to some people, while others will experience the transhumanist future. I, personally, disagree with this, but that's for another time.

Finally, a lot of books were mentioned - many of which sounded interesting.

• Wind Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi was frequently referenced
• World made By Hand by James Kunstler
• Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson
• Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder
• Accelerando by Charles Stross
• and anything by Greg Egan - I think Permutation City was specifically mentioned, but I'm likely wrong (Tene read it recently so I easily could have picked it out from the Amazon author page as looking and sounding familiar).

Penguicon 2010 Posts
Character Driven Storytelling
Non-Obvious Reflections of Culture in Science-Fiction
Methods of Life Hacking
Publicity 101
[[Post-Scarcity Futures]]

Things I Learned At Penguicon 2010: Publicity 101

Title: Publicity 101
Panelists: Cherie Priest, Patrick Rothfuss, Daniel J. Hogan, Brian Briggs
Date and Time: Saturday, May 1, 2010; 5:00 PM

This was the only panel I went to that Cherie Priest was on, which made me a little sad, I had hoped to see more of her (she is seriously awesome). I went because I wanted to learn some about selling myself - since I ... had no idea how to do it.

The panel started with things that we shouldn't do to try to sell our works. First was that we really shouldn't be "that guy" - the guy who writes his own reviews, pumping himself up on Amazon, or the guy who sics his friends and family after bad reviewers. In fact, the panelists agreed that we should avoid fighting on the internet and just roll with the punches - everyone gets bad reviews, after all.

We were also told that we shouldn't overextend ourselves financially - publishers don't pay for conventions or marketing, and conventions don't really end up being worth the cost.

The last Don't Do This was that while blogs, podcasts, Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace are good for staying connected to your fan base, they're not so great for marketing purposes. Which makes sense - you don't get new people just by tweeting all the time. Also that anything that requires a psuedonym is probably a bad idea: specifically things like posing as your characters on Facebook or Twitter. All of the panelists agreed that doing that was fun at first, but quickly becomes annoying.

Then the panelists moved on to good things to do to promote your work. Branding yourself is a good thing to do, although they never really talked about how to do that (or they may have, but it's not in my notes, and I don't recall it).


We were told to be confident, modest, and earnest - because all of those are endearing qualities. Basically, to be honest - especially with the important people (publicist, editor, etc). They need to be kept in the loop, because otherwise they can't help you need it.

Getting into a habit of making frequent posts to blogs and other social networks was also suggested, because you can learn from your mistakes - and your wins - before you're more popular. It will also help to put you out there - especially if you don't make many "horrific asshole mistakes". We were told that we should tread carefully putting ourselves out there like that. The panelists suggested we avoid talking about sex, politics, and religion on blogs - since those topics are likely to really upset or even offend some people (which is part of why I've yet to merge Criss Cross Asterisk with the rest of the blogs on here).

Spending time on marketing was encouraged - but that it should be secondary to creating. "The best possible promotion is quality work," the panelists said, and, "If it's good nothing can stop you, if it's bad nothing can help you." We were told that we should make the novel the absolute best that it can be.

The last part of the panel was about getting readers - we were told to become part of a network like the SFWA or the Author's Guild (although the panelists admitted that none of them were in such networks). Having friends boost your work up on Amazon was also good - but only when we're getting started. We were told to make friends with local, private booksellers and libraries - and to be nice to them - because such a relationship would definitely be beneficial. Also, and this one I liked the idea of, When we get our initial run of books printed we shouldn't necessarily give them to friends and family (who would boost us up and support us regardless), but to send them to people we think are cool - even if they're unknowns. The worst that happens is the never read it - the best that happens is you get a review from someone you find awesome! There are also book review websites available that will, well, review books. Business cards were also suggested, but not in much depth.

And my favorite quote from this panel came from Cherie Priest: "Everything you finish levels you up." I'm now going to play Writing: The RPG.

Penguicon 2010 Posts
Character Driven Storytelling
Non-Obvious Reflections of Culture in Science-Fiction
Methods of Life Hacking
[[Publicity 101]]
Post-Scarcity Futures