I always have grand plans about all the things I'm going to accomplish during a visitation weekend--clean the house, do some overdue shopping, etc. And it never happens. As soon as the kids leave, I get an overwhelming attack of Lazy, and all I want to do is lie around the house with a good book, drink smoothies, and play videogames.

I've gotten burned out on WOW. I'm going to finish up a few things--get my violet proto-drake, finish leveling my shaman--and then cancel my account until Cataclysm comes out. A good six months of not playing should be enough to get me excited about the game again.

Lately I've been playing Civilization again. I have such an unhealthy relationship with that game. World of Warcraft I love without reservation, but Civilization? It's love/hate. I get so mad at that game. I usually play a peaceful game and aim for a Culture victory, which I can achieve in the 1800's if the game goes well. But something always goes wrong. Julius Caesar declares war on me while I'm in the middle of a cash-starved expansion phase. Queen Isabella, who's been my best buddy for centuries, suddenly stabs me in the back.

And the game depends so very much on the details of the map--which is randomly generated and unique to each game. That is what keeps me coming back, the randomness of the map. One game turns out to be unwinnable because my capital city has a weak set of starting resources. Or I'm next door to Alexander the Great. Or I'm pinned between two rapidly expanding neighbors, or my secondary city-building spots are surrounded by desert or jungle, which are slow and expensive to develop.

I abandon three out of four games as unwinnable. But there's always another game! I tell myself that the next map will be perfect. I'll be sitting on top of two easily developed food resources plus iron. I'll have nearby expansion zones loaded with flood plains. My nearest neighbors will be the Dutch, the Malinese, and India (led by Ghandhi, who actually will declare war on you if you piss him off enough, but I am careful not to), and they'll be far enough away that I can build up my economy before we suffer the inevitable tensions of close borders.

Last night, I abandoned four games in a row, which left me very frustrated, and then my fifth game had a fabulous map. I won that game, achieving the top possible ranking ("Augustus Caesar"). The game makes me really really mad, but once in a while I get a jackpot reward out of it, so unhealthy as it is, I keep coming back.

I had to kick my own ass this morning to get myself out the door to exercise and do my morning chores. All I really want to do is load up Civilization and see what map I get today. I don't think the house is going to get cleaned this weekend.

This might be a little TMI.

I had a pelvic ultrasound today. What's been going on is I've been having this mild, off-and-on pain in the lower left part of my abdomen. And it wasn't a big deal, so I let it be, figuring it would go away, but after 2 months it hadn't gone away. And by that time, I'd managed to scare myself, thinking, what if it's ovarian cancer? Which is kind of irrational, but you have to consider that I'm only 2 years younger than my mom was when she died of cancer, and ovarian cancer particularly frightens me because its early symptoms are so subtle and easily missed. And also because I had a co-worker who died of it.

Here's the funny thing about going in for medical tests. It is a lose/lose situation. Either they find nothing and you feel like an idiot for wasting time and money doing the test, or they do find something, and then you really lose, because, oh crap, they found something.

I got lose situation #1. I went in for the ultrasound, and everything was normal. So it was a waste of time and money, but yay, I guess I don't have ovarian cancer.

Of course I still have that stupid pain in my abdomen. Who the hell knows what it is.

I swear, the female reproductive system is the most troublesome set of body parts in existence. I suspect nearly all women have some sort of trouble with them, whether it's ovarian cysts or fibroids or excessive bleeding or who knows what. I don't envy men who have to carry part of their reproductive system outside their body, where it's vulnerable, but yeesh, this engineer says the female reproductive system could have been a lot better designed!

Completely unrelated to pelvic ultrasounds, I dug up a few more chess photos. I'll put them behind a cut since I'm sure most of you are sick of them by now. The first is the only decent picture of Sean in the set. His cheeks are still red from the fifth disease. He's actually playing a tournament game in this photo, and you can tell he's concentrating hard. The next photo is me, from behind. (The only picture of me in the set.) I'm including it because some of you wanted to see a photo of the new hair and right now this is the only one I've got. It doesn't show the highlights real well, I'm afraid. I'm on the left. The lady on the right has a cool highlighting job, red highlights on black hair.

( Photos behind cut )

Most of you have probably already seen this, but for those who haven't, from asatomuraki:

"hominysnark needs a hysterectomy to keep an unpleasant medical condition from becoming a life-threatening one (it's already most of the way there) and she can't, because she doesn't have health insurance.

Why doesn't she have health insurance? Because she's self-employed, and as many self-employed creative people (she's an artist and writer) know all too well, when you have to choose between eating and having a place to sleep or having health insurance, the health insurance loses. I know this, because the hubby and I have been paying for self-employment health benefits for most of this decade, watching the cost go higher and higher while the benefits get lower and lower. We pay more for health insurance than we do for shelter, but live in terror of not having it, just in case. Because not having it could mean complete financial ruin, and destroy our children's future. It's freaking scary.

So, anyway. She needs $2700.00 for the operation, or she has to wait for her condition to become life-threatening. (It will get there long before she could save up that much, especially since she has $8,000.00 in medical bills from just having it diagnosed.) See, she falls in that sweet spot between having enough income to have health insurance or pay for health care herself and being poor enough to qualify for any sort of break from providers or government program.

I know that if every one who can will give a buck or two, maybe we can get this thing done before her life is at risk."

hominysnark is a fellow writer, occasional critique partner, and all-around awesome person. She tried to negotiate a payment plan to get this procedure done, but was told she'd have to pay the whole $2700 up front. What that effectively means is she's going to have to wait until she's bleeding to death again, then go to the ER and have it done as an emergency procedure, instead of getting it done now before she bleeds to death.

I'm downright embarrassed of my country right now.

If you could throw her a few bucks, I'd appreciate it. Go here for details.

Well, my furnace is broken and it needs a part, but thank goodness, it's still under warranty. Won't cost me a cent. The furnace guy won't have the part until tomorrow, but I've got heat at the moment. You know how you can jumpstart a car with a dead battery, and get it to run for a little while? He did the equivalent of jumpstarting the furnace. It will die again, but hopefully not before the part arrives. And even if it does die, we'll manage. We are having a very mild El Nino winter; it's sunny and over 50 degrees. We've got trees that started blooming in January...

So, about karate, it's outrageously expensive ($200/mon per child), and we basically can't afford it. Not year-round. But the boys want to do it very badly, so I've promised to pay for a single month, and we'll see how things go from there. The boys are registered for T-ball and spring soccer, so it doesn't make sense to do karate at the same time as those--not when it's that expensive! We'll probably do a month of karate, then do T-ball and spring soccer, save up some money and maybe do a couple more months of karate over the summer. I'll also cancel Ethan's swimming, which will give us some savings.

There are less expensive places to go, but the boys are particularly sold on this place because they like the program and the instructors and there are kids they know in the classes.

Sean had his age-11 immunizations the other day, which means he is FINISHED with childhood immunizations. Done! Except for annual flu shots, if we choose to do those (we usually do, but we get the mist). He's also immunized against H1N1. My whole family is now, including me.

My writing is going well. I'm past the halfway point, still turning in 1000 words/day, except some days I now devote to writing query letters and fulfilling requests for SSV, so progress has slowed a little. I still don't know how to end this novel--I may get stuck soon if I don't figure it out. I'm good for another 10k words before I get stuck. I'm also worried that some aspects of the novel aren't working. I hope they are fixable in revision. My favorite part of this novel is the characters. Both protagonists have PTSD. One has a mild case and the other a more severe case, so I've been reading a lot of nonfiction and memoirs about PTSD so I can better get into these characters' heads. I've never had PTSD, so this is not a case of writing what I know; it's a case of doing a lot of research and hoping I get it right.

The next 10k words should be especially fun to write, because it's where Janto and Rhianne make their appearance. This is not their book--it's Lucien's and Vitala's book--but they get to pop in and help out our heroes at a critical juncture, and it's going to be so much fun to write them again. I really get attached to my characters.

55000 / 100000 words. 55% done!

Gah! My furnace has died! At least it's a mild day, for winter. I've got three fireplaces going and we're holding steady at 64 degrees, which is not intolerable. Still, it had better not turn out that I need a brand new furnace. This one is only a few years old.

I signed up my boys for a two-week trial with a local karate dojo. I've been encouraging them to take martial arts for a while, but they've never been interested. This year Sean has a bully in his school classroom. I wanted him to be able to defend himself if he had to, so I put my foot down, signed up both boys, and hoped they would enjoy it. We watched "The Karate Kid" for inspiration :)

They had a private lesson first, where they disappointed me by being excessively silly. Sean was wound up and hyper and goofing off, and Ethan copied him.

Then last night I took them to one of the group classes. Ethan was in the age 4-6 class and Sean in the 7-10, but the classes ran concurrently. Sean insisted he wasn't going to participate, he was only going to watch. Ethan, imitating his brother, said he was only going to watch too. I said that was okay. I sat with Ethan for a while and watched the age 4-6 class, then moved to the 7-10 class and watched that with Sean. To my surprise, two kids from Sean's class at school were in that age 7-10 class! I wonder if they were there for the same reason.

I left Sean and went back to sit with Ethan again, and discovered he'd gotten up to join the class. They practiced some punches and then did some tumbling, and I realized Ethan's gymnastics experience was going to come in handy. He was brand new, but his rolls were some of the best in the class.

I went to check on Sean and discovered he'd joined the 7-10 class as well!

Afterward, in the car, I asked them how they'd liked it. They both said they loved it and wanted to continue. I said we'd have to see if we could afford it, because I think this place is really expensive. It's a bad sign when they want you to do a 2-week trial before they tell you anything about price. Sean said if it was more than we could afford, maybe he could pitch in part of his allowance.

I thought that was great--he wants to take karate so badly he's willing to pay for it! The boys also want to take full advantage of the 2-week trial and go to every available group class, so we'll go again tomorrow.

I hope the price is something we can manage.

If you're not up to date on the Macmillan/Amazon kerfuffle, go read Scalzi's hilarious rant on the subject. It summarizes what happened pretty well.

I spent my software career working in electronic publishing, which gives me some perspective on this situation. I've been out of the industry for a while, so much of my knowledge is out of date. However, I have a good overall sense of the business. This kerfuffle has led me to think some more about the future of the publishing industry, and what role companies like Macmillan (traditional publishers) are likely to play in it.

Question #1, What is a publisher's value-add?

Before I look at that, I have to answer question #2, Why do we care about a publisher's value-add?

We, and by we I mean readers, care because we pay for that value-add. When I buy a traditionally published book, I am paying 3 different entities, not counting middlemen. A percentage of my money goes to the retailer (e.g., Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble), another percentage goes to the publisher (e.g. Macmillan, Random House), and another percentage goes to the author. While I don't know exact numbers, my impression is that the retailer gets the largest share, followed by the publisher, followed by the author.

Here I have to bring in self-publishing, because it's my belief that self-publishing and the growing ebook market are very closely related, in that as ebooks replace paper, self-publishing will become more viable, and it represents a threat to traditional publishing. When people self-publish, they cut out the publisher's percentage of the take, because there is no publisher. The take is split between the retailer and the author. The author has a choice of pricing his book the same as a traditionally published book and taking a larger cut for himself, or using the savings to undercut the market and price his book lower.

Given the financial advantages of self-publishing, why do most authors opt not to do it? Because having a traditional publisher is well worth it. The publisher provides value-add.

What's the publisher's value-add?

( Read more )

Someone at the tournament took professional-quality photos and distributed them to everybody. Here are a few of them. These first three are of Ethan.



( More photos behind the cut )

The boys had a very good tournament today! It was a small tournament, with only 5 players in the kindergarten section. Ethan won that section and took home the 1st place trophy! He had 4 wins, 1 loss. One other boy had the same score, but Ethan won on tiebreaks.

Sean's grade 4-6 Open was interesting because he was the 3rd highest ranked player there, and the two players higher ranked than him were his friends J.P. and T.C.! There was a good chance he would end up having to play one of them in the final round, if he won his early games, but the tournament took an unexpected turn. He lost his 2nd round in an upset to a lower-ranked player. He rallied, won the rest of his games, never had to play either of his friends, and ended up in 4th place. J.P., the highest ranked player in the tournament, spent the entire tournament on board 1, went undefeated, and won the Open. T.C. had a couple of upsets and ended with a 3.0, a state-qualifying score, but not as good as he usually gets.

J.P.'s younger brother G.P. placed (I think) 8th in the grade 1-3 Open, and T.C.'s younger brother K.C. placed 3rd in the kindergarten section. The boys' school won the team trophies for both the 1-3 and 4-6 sections. Here are the boys with their individual trophies and the team trophy:



And here is a picture of Sean with his trophy from the tournament two weeks ago. It is the biggest trophy we own. I know because the instant the boys got home from that tournament, they measured it to see how it compared to the others. (Boys! Always obsessed with size!)

I have been whining to people for a while about how I needed a better blender. Mine is an ancient thing with dulled blades, probably purchased at Target for $30 back when I was outfitting my first apartment. It can blend, sort of, but margaritas wind up with little chunks of ice in them, and pureed soups don't turn out smooth. I have been unsatisfied for a while and telling myself that one of these days I was going to buy a professional-quality blender that could make perfect soups, smoothies, and margaritas, and I was going to spend whatever it took to get that level of quality.

So now I have it! A Vitamix. It's a $500 blender, and you know what? I can't truly judge it based on a single day of use, but based on what I've seen so far, I think it was worth that hefty price tag.

What do you get in a blender when you spend $500?

* POWER. The thing can blend anything ultra-smooth. The smoothies I've made with it so far are amazing.

* Quality construction. Nothing about this blender says "cheap." All the pieces are heavy and durable.

* Ease of cleaning. To clean my old blender, I had to disassemble it and hand-wash everything, including the blades. It was so much hassle it just wasn't worth using, and sometimes I would put it back together wrong, and the next time I used it, food would splatter everywhere. This blender you clean by filling it half full with water, adding a drop or two of dishwashing detergent, and blending for a short while. Then you rinse it out. It takes a couple of minutes, tops. So quick I can easily make daily breakfast smoothies. This blender is not supposed to be disassembled ever. Yay for that. I don't want to disassemble it!

* Supposedly, long lifetime. It has a 7-year warranty, and people say the blades stay sharp for a very long time. Vitamix says that Jamba Juice uses these blenders in their stores. The blenders are designed for heavy, long-term use.

So far I've only made smoothies. They turned out wonderful, and they were very easy to make and clean up after. I'm hoping to make smoothies every morning for breakfast. Tomorrow I'll be making a pureed soup.

Supposedly this thing can turn out homemade ice cream in minutes--the kids are eager for me to try that one!

Holy crap, ya'll, Sean has fifth disease! This is actually a relief, because when he first broke out in the facial rash I thought it was acne, and that was pretty scary in an 11-year-old. (It looked just like it at first, whiteheads and everything, but now it looks very different.) He started with the rash on his cheeks and then broke out over his entire body. It looks awful but apparently is pretty harmless, as long as you're not a pregnant woman or immunocompromised. The pediatrician says he's not contagious, despite the rash, and can go back to school.

No surprise, I'm a transplant Southerner now living in the North who never had much of an accent to begin with, and worked hard to get rid of the few places it bled through, since people teased me about it.

And just because I was curious, I looked up sales numbers on kids' books:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6645692.html?industryid=47139

Note this is for 2008, so a bit old. I can't find similar numbers for 2009; maybe they're not available yet. In hardcover, the Percy Jackson and the Olympians book that came out that year was 6th in sales, at 1 million copies. Breaking Dawn, at #1, sold 6 million. In slots #2-5 are Rowling's Beedle the Bard, Paolini's Brisingr, a Wimpy Kid book, and some Jonas Brothers thing by Disney.

Also near the top of the list are some things I've never heard of, some picture books, a couple of James Patterson books (Maximum Ride series, I read the first book, it was okay), more Wimpy Kid and Stephanie Meyer, and something I didn't know existed, a 39 clues book by Rick Riordan (the Percy Jackson author).

Paperback frontlist is similar to the hardcover frontlist (as in, it's pretty much the same authors).

The paperback backlist is interesting. Twilight is still tops (5.6M in sales), and there's a lot of classic books like the Narnia series and various Newberry winners in the list. Lightning Thief is in the #3 spot with 500k sales.

The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan

While I don't know actual sales numbers, this book looks to me like the successor to Harry Potter. I'm at my kids' elementary school a lot, and this is the book I see all the kids carrying around. This one and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. (Yes, Twilight is huge, but it's YA, not middle-grade, so it is popular at junior high and high school, not elementary.) Also, it's been made into a movie, so it's about to reach an even bigger audience.

I read YA novels for entertainment, but not middle-grade; middle-grade novels, aimed at ages 8-12, usually don't have enough depth for me. But I like to sample the really popular middle-grade books, partly because I have kids who read, and partly because I like to keep my finger on the pulse of up-and-coming adult readers. (My future market!)

The Lightning Thief is like Neil Gaiman for kids. I was reminded very much of American Gods! It's about a kid who learns he's the son of Poseidon, and a pawn in a brewing war among the gods. To avert the war, he must go on a quest to recover Zeus's stolen thunderbolt. Like Neil Gaiman's work, this is a setting-based novel. It's less about the characters than it is about the world. It's about Greek mythology transposed over the modern world and the cool places the characters go. Our heroes encounter the Lotus Eaters in Las Vegas, Charon and the gateway to Hades at DOA recording studios in Los Angeles, Mt. Olympus at the top of the Empire State Building. They fight monsters. There's plenty of action, making this a particularly good book for boys (though I see plenty of girls carrying it around too).

While character development is pretty basic, the writing is outstanding. Check out the novel's opening:

"Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.

"If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.

"Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.

"If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.

"But if you recognize yourself in these pages--if you feel something stirring inside--stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they'll come for you.

"Don't say I didn't warn you."

Doesn't that draw you right in? The book is laugh-out-loud funny in places. The author never misses an opportunity to entertain. Even the description is funny. So are the chapter titles. (First three: "I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-algebra Teacher", "Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death", "Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Pants"). I was particularly amused by an exchange where a monster announces herself, saying, "I am the Monster of Monsters, the terrible Echidna!" and Percy says, "Isn't that a kind of anteater?"

Boys who struggle in school may particularly identify with the hero Percy, who has both ADHD and dyslexia. These traits are present throughout the book rather than named in the beginning to make the character sympathetic and then conveniently forgotten. He really does have trouble reading, and he does act impulsively and get into trouble. The explanation for the dyslexia is a little silly--he's hardwired to read ancient Greek, not English--but the ADHD is something that makes him hyperalert, a better warrior, and if you read books on ADHD, a lot of researchers actually believe that is the case, that ADHD exists in our population because in evolutionary times, people with ADHD were superior warriors and hunters.

This isn't my kind of book because (a) it's middle-grade, and (b) it's more a book about Stuff than a book about People (like Gaiman's work, it's setting-based rather than character-based). But I'm impressed with its quality, and I would not hesitate to put it in the hands of any young reader. Boys should especially enjoy it. I'll bet Mr. Riordan has generated a lot of interest in Greek mythology among this generation of kids!

Should you personalize your query letter to an agent?

Some agents say it's a good idea. It demonstrates that you're not flinging queries out at random. You know your genre, you've done your research, and you know what sort of books this agent represents.

I get a higher request rate from my personalized queries than from my nonpersonalized ones. But that's a misleading statistic. More on that later.

Here's the truth about personalizing query letters. Sometimes researching an agent turns up information you didn't want to know. For example, I look up an agent's client list, and That Author is on it. The author whose books I despise, whose covers spontaneously combust when I look at them. I open my query: "Dear agent, what were you thinking when you signed So-and-so? Her books make me want to stab my eyes with ice picks..." No. This agent gets a nonpersonalized query.

Much more common is that I look over the client list and see a few books I've read, all of which I thought were okay, but kind of blah. I open my query: "Dear agent, I've read books X and Y by your clients, and you could do SO MUCH BETTER. Take my novel, for example..." No. I could lie and say I loved the books, but I hate lying. This agent also gets a nonpersonalized query.

Another common situation: I look over the list of client books and see a lot of books that I'm familiar with, but I haven't read any of them. And there's a reason I haven't read them. They're not my kind of book. Oh sure, they're in my genre--Fantasy--but Fantasy is a huge genre encompassing many different styles. In addition to the huge divide between secondary-world fantasy and urban fantasy, and the smaller gradations in urban fantasy (vampires vs. werewolves vs. other stuff), there are more subtle differences in style. I find that most books are either more about People (that is, they are character-based) or they are more about Stuff (they are setting- or plot-based). Also, they may lean more towards wish-fulfillment, where the hero overcomes overwhelming odds to save the day, or they are more literary, where it's all tragic, and the hero may save the day but he'll have to pay a steep price for it, and some questions may not be answered because that is Deep.

I lean towards secondary-world over urban fantasy, books about People over books about Stuff, and wish-fulfillment over tragedy and deepness. So when I look at an agent's list of client books, and it's all Books about Stuff, or it's all vampire novels, or it's all totally depressing, then I know the agent is a bad fit for me. She and I have different tastes. I'll still query her, but it won't be a personalized query, and I'll expect a rejection letter. (Most of the time I'll be right.)

So now it's clear why my personalized query letters get a higher request rate than the non-personalized ones. The nonpersonalized ones weren't personalized because I could see that those agents and I had different and probably incompatible tastes in fiction, and I neither wanted to point that out to them, nor lie and pretend to be something I'm not. The agent didn't reject my query because it wasn't personalized. She rejected it because the concept of my novel wasn't to her taste.

Once you realize how many agents have tastes incompatible with yours, the number of possible agents for your work drops dramatically. Querytracker lists 98 agents who accept queries for Fantasy, but I would guess that at most 30 are truly viable candidates for my work. I don't know for sure because I haven't worked my way through the whole list, but generally I find that no more than 1 in 3 looks promising.

I have about 20 "favorite" authors--authors whose new books I nearly always buy when they come out. These authors are spread out among agents, with one exception: three of them are with the same agent. The particular agent they're with is not an especially big name, but she obviously has taste in fiction very similar to mine.

I always personalize my queries to this agent. It's easy! I just rave a bit about those three authors, which comes quite naturally since I love them, and segue into talking about my own novel, which bears some similarities to work by those three. Every time I've queried this agent, she's requested material from me. Is it because I personalized the query? Maybe. But more likely it's because she and I have such similar taste in fiction. The novel I wrote is probably going to be something she likes. At the very least, the concept ought to appeal.

I will say, however, that there is one author on this agent's list whose work I don't care for. I don't hate her books, they're just not my thing. So if that author were the only author I'd read on this agent's list, I would have mistakenly categorized this agent as having tastes incompatible with mine.

This is why I query all agents who represent Fantasy, even if I look at their list of client books and think it suggests an incompatibility. Because I could be wrong. And even though most of my partial and full requests come from agents I wrote personalized queries to--that is, agents whose client lists include authors I especially like and can easily and authentically rave about--I do get some requests from my nonpersonalized queries. That's always a lovely surprise when it happens, and who knows? It's entirely possible I could find my future agent through one of those requests.

This evening, nederlandsgirl introduced me to the joys of consignment store shopping! The trick, she says, is to shop consignment stores in wealthy neighborhoods, because rich women's castoffs are typically in excellent condition (worn, perhaps, only a few times). And that was indeed the case. We got clothes in essentially new condition at bargain prices. I got a cashmere sweater for $13! Also a couple of blazers for about $20 each, and two more very inexpensive sweaters. I'll definitely be going back to this place. She showed me two more consignment shops in the area, but they were closed for the day so we didn't get to visit them.

And last weekend I had a birthday party! nederlandsgirl organized it, and a bunch of my girlfriends came, and we went out for sushi. We had extra time afterwards and no particular enthusiasm to go home to kids and chores, so on a whim (since skamamawa was talking about taking up roller derby) we went roller skating! It was funny that even though we all grew up in different parts of the country, every one of us knew how to skate, and quite well too. Several of us were out on the floor for the backwards-only skate. It was goofy and fun. Thanks guys! I haven't celebrated my birthday in years, so that was a treat. Photos from the party:

( Photos behind the cut )

Here are some family photos from Christmas. First is my brother with my dad. The next is me with my dad and my uncle. You can look for family resemblance :). You can tell my brother got the height in the family...

( Photos behind the cut )

And that's it for picspam. I don't have a picture of the new hair yet. It's not dramatically different, just a bit more two-toned.

Every few years I get sick of my hair and have to change it. I've spent a couple months growing it out, and tonight I stopped coloring it. Instead I highlighted it. Extensively. I really like the way it turned out!

That's all. Just happy with my hair! (It'll be just my luck if everyone else hates it.)

We've been having amazing weather here in Seattle--very warm for Seattle, approaching 60 degrees at times. El Nino has been sending all our crappy weather down to California, which is getting clobbered right now. Sorry, guys!*

*not


I saw my dermatologist today. I always find these visits kind of creepy. Nothing wrong with the doctor herself--she's very nice and totally non-creepy--but the office is located in one of the wealthiest suburbs in the Seattle area, on the lake close to where Bill Gates lives. (Why do I drive out there for this? I don't know. It's just where I was referred.) And it's clear that the office makes the bulk of their money on cosmetic procedures. They offer plastic surgery on site. Today they were having a 25% off special on breast augmentation. I am not joking!!

Some of the people (receptionists etc.) who work in the office have obviously had plastic surgery done. They have those beautiful-yet-creepy sculpted faces. Others have serious skin problems, and you kind of guess why they might have chosen to work in a dermatology office--to have access to people who might be able to help them. Because to be a woman with a serious, visible skin disease is, tragically, to be defined by that disease. Men have many routes to sexual desirability--looks are a big deal, and so is youth, but men can also attract women with wealth, high status, or a charismatic personality. But for women, sexual desirability pretty much boils down to youth and beauty. A woman with a skin disease is S.O.L. no matter what other assets she may possess, unless she can get it cured.

Dermatology occupies a fuzzy line between medical treatment and cosmetics. Some procedures can be billed to insurance and some can't. Acne treatments can be billed to medical insurance, for example, but not laser treatments for rosacea. Cosmetic procedures seem to be the real moneymakers, as they are heavily advertised throughout the office.

Sadly, for many conditions there is little that can be done. My dermotologist's complexion is no better than mine, and I'm sure she's in a "cost no object" situation. It's a potent reminder that medicine has its limits. When I told her I couldn't tolerate Retin-A anymore because it irritated my skin too much, she told me she understood completely because she had the same problem.

Still, a lot of progress has been made. Acne is pretty much curable now if you have deep pockets (good insurance or $2-3k to spend). And eczema medications have improved. For several years, I've been using a drug called Elidel. You know how people who get organ transplants take a drug that suppresses their immune system so they don't reject the organ? Elidel is the topical form of that drug, and it does a really good job of suppressing my skin's tendency to overreact to harmless substances.

It's not perfect, though. I still get some breakouts, and I have a medication I use to control the breakouts, but here's the irony. I appear to be allergic to that medication. I take it, and it makes the breakout worse. So my dermatologist switched me to another one that hopefully I won't be allergic to, and she recommended a new "barrier cream." What's a barrier cream?

Well, if your skin is normal, it produces certain oils, proteins, whatever (I'm not sure exactly what) that create a "barrier" preventing allergens from penetrating the outer layer of your skin. People with eczema have defective skin that does not produce all the necessary ingredients for that barrier. Therefore, allergens routinely get through and we break out. To prevent breakouts, we try to substitute an artificial barrier. My barrier of choice is Vaseline. I rub Vaseline on my hands every time I wash them.

It works pretty well--my hands improved tremendously when I started using it--but it's a crude barrier, and my dermatologist thinks I might have better luck with a new product called Cera Ve cream (it's over-the-counter). Supposedly it replaces the missing ingredients my skin does not produce. Now, isn't that exciting? A product that actually fixes the problem instead of acting as a band-aid? I don't want to get my hopes up too much, but I bought some Cera Ve and I'm trying it out. Wouldn't it be awesome if my hands stopped breaking out?

I was hoping to get a picture for this one, and I'm still hoping one might wend its way into my email, but I forgot my camera and so did my friends who were at the tournament, so no photo for now.

This weekend's tournament had an atypical format. There was an extremely competitive Open section for all players under the age of 21. That was USCF-rated, and then for lower-rated players we had under-800 and under-1200 sections by age group.

Sean's rating is in the 1100's, so he's a great candidate for an under-1200 section. I entered him in that. His friend T.C. was also in the under-1200. His friend J.P. had too high a rating, so he played in the Open (against high schoolers!). There was no kindergarten section, so Ethan did not play.

T.C. took 2nd in the under-1200 section, and Sean took 4th. They both came home with giant trophies. Ethan was jealous. All he came home with was a strawberry burn on his shoulder that he got while playing on the playground. He told me it looks like Jupiter's Great Red Spot.

When we left, the Open was still in progress, and a 3rd grader (!) was at the top of the standings. Can you imagine that? A third grader beating high school kids?

Ethan is an aspiring alpha male. He's been butting heads with me since he was 18 months old. It's as if the Terrible Two's started early and never stopped--and now he's 6 years old.

All boys jockey for status, but some put more effort into it than others, and they differ in their tactics. Sean accepts my authority, at least ostensibly, but sometimes he gets around me in underhanded ways, like telling me he's cleaned his room when he hasn't. Ethan, on the other hand, will challenge me directly. He wants confrontation. He loves it! He'll tell me with pride that he hasn't cleaned his room--and then he'll give me the Evil Cackle.

Ethan has an Evil Cackle worthy of Dr. Horrible. Sometimes he'll cackle on demand if I ask him to. But mostly he cackles when he thinks he's won a confrontation, or when he's starting one. In the latter case, it seems to stem from excitement. ("I'm about to get in a big 'ole fight with mom! This is my favorite thing EVER!")

I've been reading Ethan the Henry Huggins books by Beverly Cleary. I recommend these highly for boys between the ages of 5 and 8. They are so funny and heartwarming, and so utterly real. In each of them, Henry has a goal--something simple and mundane. To save up enough money for a bike. To get a paper route. To build a clubhouse. And always he's thwarted by a mischief-maker, sometimes his dog Ribsy, but more often the neighborhood pest, 4-year-old Ramona. What's even cooler is that after finishing the Henry series, Beverly Cleary wrote another series about Ramona, so she turned the antagonist of one series into the protagonist of the next.

I was reading Ethan the final chapter of the final Henry book, Henry and the Clubhouse. Henry has been having a rough day because he's trying to deliver papers and there's a foot of snow on the ground, and he can't ride his bike, and he's having to carry the papers all the way to the door so they don't get buried in drifts, and to his displeasure Ramona's been following him around, and she gets cold and starts to cry and he ends up having to waste time running her home on his sled. And then the next day someone who witnessed him doing that has written a letter to the editor praising him for it, and his boss saw the letter.

So here's me reading to Ethan:

Me: "[Mr. Capper] gave Henry a friendly slap on the shoulder. 'Keep up the good work, Henry. I am proud of you.'"
Ethan: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Me: [... Henry shows the paper to his parents... ] "'Henry, I am proud of you!' said Mr. Huggins. 'I don't care how much snow there is. I'm going right out and buy half a dozen papers so we can send copies of this to your relatives.'"
Ethan: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Me: [...] "'By the way,' [Mr. Huggins] remarked, 'how much money do you need for that sleeping bag?' 'About five dollars,' Henry admitted. Mr. Huggins took out his wallet, opened it and handed Henry a five-dollar bill. 'There you are. Tomorrow you go to the sporting-goods store and buy that sleeping bag.'"
Ethan: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Ethan's reaction was weird! Those lines were not funny. They were triumphant. Henry's hard work paid off. It was noticed and got rewarded. I think this was a variation on Ethan's Evil Cackle. He wasn't laughing because he was amused; he was laughing because he felt triumphant (on Henry's behalf). I thought it was interesting. It was also fun to watch, because it was neat to see Ethan get so thoroughly caught up in the book.

"You like that book, don't you?" I asked him, when we'd finished it.

"Yeah," he said. "That one is my favorite."