Usually when I haven't done much personal-life blogging for a while, I catch folks up with an "update" post. In this case I've been up to so much I can't fit it in one post! So I'll cover writing/reading/gaming stuff now and the kids tomorrow.

WRITING

I'm still working on the final chapters of SSV--in fact, as soon as I finish this post, I'll go write SSV's climax. (Yes, I am procrastinating.) After I finish the book, I'll rewrite most of the opening chapter, make some important revisions to the first third of the book, and get a final round of feedback from any full-novel reviewers I can get my hands on. And then it goes out to agents.

I have decided not to query Finneas (my first novel) any more for now. In very limited querying, two agents rejected the full. One said, essentially, "I love it but I don't think I can sell it." The other described it as "absolutely publishable" but she didn't want to take it on because she didn't like the main character. (This is something I need to work on as a writer: stronger main characters! I tend to write a fairly bland main character and surround him with interesting side characters.)

I was encouraged by their feedback. I think the odds are good that if I keep working at improving my craft, and I keep writing novels, I will eventually sell one. But I don't think Finneas is my best work. I think SSV is better, so I think I am better served as a writer by finishing and querying SSV instead (the agent who loved Finneas will get it first!), and then starting work on novel #3.

Speaking of novel #3, I have two different story ideas, neither of which is sufficiently fleshed out for me to begin writing. Both would be set in the world of SSV, but will involve different characters. I haven't decided yet which one I want to write. I may actually take a short break after finishing SSV. My website could really use a month of dedicated work, and I'm toying with the idea of writing a couple erotic romance novellas as a palate cleanser of sorts.

READING

I don't post reviews of every book I read, which is a good thing, because I read about a hundred books a year and I'd be inundating you guys. Most books I don't have much to say about--they fall in the category of, "Good book. I enjoyed it. Didn't blow me away." If the book does blow me away, or I think there is something about it interesting enough to discuss, that's when I'll write a review. And lately I haven't read anything in that category. The best thing I've read recently was Life of Pi, which was quite good, but I can't think of much to say about it.

I'm currently reading a fantasy novel which is boring the crap out of me. It's such a chore reading it; I'm 130 pages in, and it took me a week to get that far. (Most books, I do about 130 pages per day.) I imagine I will drop this one when my next Amazon order arrives, but for now I'm putting on my writer's hat as I read and trying to figure out why the book isn't working. Because it isn't anything obvious. The novel is well crafted. It has some interesting ideas. There is nothing blatantly bad about it. Yet I'm bored.

I think the reason is that the novel is too fixated on its backstory. The novel does have a plot--there are things happening in the here-and-now--but so many scenes are about the characters thinking about things that happened in the past, or investigating events that happened in the past, that the here-and-now plot feels tacked-on and obligatory. I want to grab the author and say, "Hey! If those past events are so much more interesting than the current ones, why don't you write that story instead?" Because reading about stuff that already happened doesn't engage me the way reading about stuff happening right now does.

GAMING

I finished Plants vs. Zombies. What a great game! I only wish it had been longer. Kids love it too. I have seen kids as young as 5 playing it. (Ethan, however, is not interested).

Lately I have been really enjoying World of Warcraft. I enjoy the camaraderie and teamwork of dungeon runs, and the game feeds so wonderfully into my wish-fulfillment fantasies. I am a big-time animal lover. I've trained horses and dogs, and I'm fascinated with wild animals. Animals always play a major role in my novels. The main character in Finneas could shapechange into an osprey. The main character in SSV has an intelligent ferret he can speak to telepathically--a couple of reviewers have told me the ferret is their favorite character!

What does this have to do with WOW? One of my characters in WOW is a druid, and druids can shapechange into animals! So I can become a bear, a lion, a cheetah, a seal, or a bird. Seriously, a bird! And in bird form I can fly! I spend most of my time in lion form, because that's the form I fight in. Ethan was watching me once, and he said, "Mom, why are you Aslan?"

My priest can't shapechange, but with her I collect pets and mounts. Right now I'm two days away from being able to afford a hippogryph. (And yes, I can ride it, and it flies!) Next I will work on acquiring a red dragon mount. And Sean and I are planning to work together to get phoenix hatchling pets.

This is one reason WOW is such a tremendously popular game--whatever your wish-fulfillment fantasy is, WOW probably caters to it in some way. Pets and mounts and animal forms are only a small, unimportant part of the game. But for me they're a tremendous draw, because being a lion or a bird or riding a hippogryph is just pure joy.

On our fifth sailing lesson, the wind was strong (12 knots), but the weather was beautiful. Blue skies, sunny and warm.

Good thing, because this was the assigned day for CAPSIZE RECOVERY. This sailing place will not allow you to take their boats out unsupervised until you have demonstrated to them that you can right a capsized boat and get back into it. Small sailboats (dinghies) capsize easily, so for safety reasons you need to have this skill.

Unfortunately, it is not any fun to practice.

Capsize recovery was slated for the end of the lesson, because if we did it at the beginning, we'd spend the rest of the sail cold and wet. So for the first half of the sail, the instructors used buoys to set up a big triangle, and we went counter-clockwise around the triangle over and over again. One leg of the triangle was straight upwind, so for that leg we had to beat our way up, tacking back and forth. Another leg of the triangle involved a jibe.

I don't think I ever quite did the triangle right. I kept missing the buoy at the end of the upwind leg--I always seemed to tack in the wrong spot. Part of this was because there were 12 other boats out there doing the same course, so in addition to trying to plot our way around the triangle, we were trying to plot our way around those other boats. The wind was strong, which didn't help. It is amazing how challenging sailing is compared to driving or powerboating. It is not a case of just pointing your boat in the right direction. You have to carefully plot your course, and you also have to be ready to improvise on a moment's notice in case the wind changes.

Once we very nearly capsized. The boat went so far over that one side was underwater, and the boat was filling. At that point I'd decided capsize was inevitable and was plotting my fall so I didn't hit the boom on my way into the water, when Angie flung herself up onto the other side of the boat and actually managed to right us! We had to bail the boat, though, because it had so much water in it.

Angie took over as skipper. She set a personal goal of passing so near the buoys that we could touch them. (Which, actually, we never achieved, but she did a much better job of keeping on course than I did.) We finally got jibing down, though Angie got whacked in the head once with the boom. I think every sailor gets whacked in the head with the boom at least once; it's how we learn to respect it.

Then it was CAPSIZE TIME. Yuck. An instructor came over and told us to capsize the boat. New sailors always ask, "How do we capsize the boat?" As someone who's done capsize recovery before, I find that question funny. Capsizing is a small boat's natural state! All you have to do to capsize a boat is to stop actively working at NOT capsizing it.

So, we capsized the boat. During a capsize I never notice the moment of impact or the shock of entering cold water. The capsize itself is sufficiently frightening to me that my body goes straight into survival mode and I don't notice insignificant details like the water being cold. Angie and I went straight to work. As planned, I swam to the hiking straps on one side of the boat, and she swam to the centerboard on the other side. Here is what a capsized boat looks like (this is a laser; our FJ is substantially larger):



That board sticking out of the bottom of the boat is the centerboard. To right a capsized boat, you climb up on the centerboard. This is much harder than it looks. You are floating in deep water, supported by a life jacket. The only resource you have for getting up on that centerboard is pure upper body strength. Essentially, you have to do a pull-up. But you have to do more than just pull yourself up to the centerboard--you have to then pull yourself up and over and on top of it. It is very, very hard, especially for women, who pound-for-pound have less upper body strength than men.

The FJ (Flying Junior) has an interesting characteristic in that if one person climbs up on the centerboard, and the other person holds onto the hiking straps on the other side of the boat, the boat will come upright and scoop in the person holding onto the hiking straps! This seems physically impossible to me. If you've got one person on each side of the boat, wouldn't those forces even out, so that the boat won't come upright? But no, it doesn't work that way. Once the boat starts to come upright, the forces involved become powerful enough to lever one person into the boat.

Angie was at the centerboard, and I was the one holding the hiking straps, ready to be scooped in. For a long time, nothing happened, and I began to realize how cold the water was. It was a beautiful warm day, but the water felt absolutely frigid. I started shivering uncontrollably.

I couldn't see what was going on with Angie--the boat was between me and her. She was having some trouble, it seemed. The instructor was advising her. Finally, I felt the boat start to move! I hung on to those hiking straps and got pulled into the boat as it came upright.

It was a short-lived victory, because they immediately had me capsize it again. Back into the cold water! Now it was my turn to right the boat, and Angie's to be scooped in.

I have done capsize recoveries before on FJs, Lasers, and small catamarans, and the trick for me (given that my upper-body strength is poor) is to go all-out on a single heave. Expend every bit of strength and get the hell up there at all costs. It took me a couple of attempts, but I got up there and wound up lying on my belly on the centerboard.

The boat was not coming over. I knew in this case the correct course of action was to stand on the centerboard. To do this I would need to reach up and grab hold of the side of the boat so I'd have something to hang onto as I scrambled into position. But my arms were not long enough! I couldn't reach the side of the boat! I squirmed around, trying to find a stable position from which I could lever myself up somehow--the centerboard is very narrow, and it's slick too. Somehow in my movements, I found the sweet spot, and the boat began to come over. Once the forces tip in the proper direction, everything happens quickly and decisively. Soon the boat was upright and Angie was in it.

The instructors were impressed! I had thought it an awkward job, but they said I was the first person who'd succeeded in doing it without help. I suppose it makes sense I should be good at capsize recovery; I did it often enough in the Laser.

Unfortunately, righting the boat is only half the job. Next I had to climb back in it. This is done at the boat's stern (next to the rudder, which is annoyingly in the way), and it's just as difficult as climbing onto the centerboard. I like to do it in one big heave that results in my landing face-first in the boat. It's inelegant, but it works.

By then I was shivering so severely I looked and felt like I was having a seizure. We headed straight for the harbor. I could barely hold the jib sheets in my shaking hands. After docking, Angie, who was handling the cold better than me, kindly offered to derig the boat while I changed into warm, dry clothes.

We had no contact with Nemesis Boat at all that day. And we didn't go to the last class at all. I was bruised and battered and sore, and given that I'm already in physical therapy for a hip problem, I thought discretion would be the better part of valor, and I should let myself heal before going out again. Angie wasn't wild about going out alone, so she stayed home too.

Thus ends the sailing adventure! At least for now. Once I get my hip back in shape, look out, I'm hitting the water again...

I got photos that correspond to my most recent sailing post--the one where it was blowing 12-14 knots, we had stormy skies, and I ended up bailing a sinking boat with Nemesis Boat Guy. I'll post them here with short commentary.

Lately I haven't had time to blog. I was frantically finishing up a chapter for my in-person writing group, and then I needed to revise a chapter and put it up on the OWW in two pieces, and whoops! not enough points, so I've been doing lots of reviews. I have one more sailing story to share (in which Angie and I capsize the boat), and then I expect I'll be back to posting mostly about books and writing and kids.

So here's what the sky and water looked like that evening. It looked scarier in person. That white speck in the distance is one of Seattle's ubiquitous seaplanes.



And here we are getting ready to set sail. I am the one sitting uselessly in the boat while Angie and an instructor raise the sails.

( Read more; text and photos )

When Angie and I arrived at sailing on Thursday, it was dark and stormy looking with whitecaps on the waves. I was scared. I have sailed in high wind before, so I know what it's like (see last summer's post, 15-knot winds kick my ass).

I spotted an instructor and said, "Surely we're not going out in this." He gave me a sadistic grin and said, "Of course we are!"

The whiteboard by the dock had this reassuring advice written on it in big block letters: "DON'T DIE."

The instructors gave us some brief instructions on capsize recovery and bailing boats, and advised us to wear wetsuits. One instructor said helpfully, "This is going to be great! I've never sent a class out into this kind of wind before!"

They sent us to rig the boats, but said, "Don't raise the sails." That didn't make sense to me at first. As far as I'm concerned, rigging the boat is all about getting the sails up, so it was like they had said, "Rig the boat, but don't rig the boat." But it turns out it's actually possible to do most of the rigging without raising the sails. It's annoying because the sails are all over the place and in your way.

Angie and I chose boat #3 this time, and Nemesis Boat Guys chose their usual boat #2, so we were next to them again. As we screwed in our boat's drain plugs--which allow the boat to drain while on land but must be screwed in while sailing or the boat will fill with water and sink--Angie said, "I think we should sneak over and unscrew boat #2's drain plugs."

She had no idea how ironic that statement would be in hindsight.

Once again, Nemesis Boat shoved into the water before us, blocking our way. We'd been instructed to raise the sails only after putting the boats in the water. Angie and I watched as Nemesis Boat Guys struggled with their sails. They couldn't get them up. Two instructors came over to help, and they couldn't get them up either. Then someone discovered that Nemesis Boat Guys had tightened down the boom vang. They were supposed to do that, but only AFTER raising the sails. If you do it before, the sails won't go up. So they released the vang, raised the sails, tightened down the vang again, and set off.

Nemesis Boat struggled in the water. The wind was blowing straight into the harbor, so they had to beat their way out, tacking back and forth, without much room and with way too strong a wind. Angie and I watched their struggles with satisfaction. "I don't really wish them ill," Angie confided, "but I wouldn't mind if they capsized and we didn't."

We went out shortly afterward, with much less of a struggle, but that may not be to our credit so much as to the fact that the wind was calming. It blew 14 knots while we were rigging, but fell to 12 knots by the time we set out. That two knots made a huge difference.

12 knots is still a handful for a novice, though. I was skippering first this time, which means I controlled the tiller and the mainsail--by far the more difficult job. Angie was crew, so her job was to control the jib and balance the boat. I got us out of the harbor, but after that I could not tack to save my life. All my attempts sent the boat into a spin. I am not even sure I can blame it on the wind. I think I was just too freaked out to sail well.

Finally, I settled in on a nice upwind course. Have you ever ridden a spirited horse who grabs the bit in his teeth and runs like hell? That is what it is like, sailing a small boat in high wind. It wants to GO, and it takes all my strength and coordination just to keep it under control. The pressure on the rudder (and thus the tiller) is tremendous, as is the pressure on the sail. I have to hold both in place, while making little adjustments for the waves that are crashing into our boat. At times, I was simply not strong enough to sheet all the way in--Angie would reach over and give the mainsheet a yank to help me out. Then the boat would heel like crazy and we'd be flinging ourselves out to balance it. Angie was all, "Woohoo! This is awesome! I'm loving this!" I was exhilarated but terrified. The boat was constantly on the edge of disaster. I spilled wind over and over again to regain control.

We switched places so Angie could take her turn as skipper. I was relieved to be crew. It's an easier job requiring less physical strength. We saw a powerboat go by, carrying one of the sailors back to the dock. We assumed a boat must have capsized and the instructor was carrying the sailor back to dry off and warm up. We hadn't been able to watch the other boats much. At least I couldn't. I was totally fixated on keeping my own boat upright.

Then another powerboat went by, carrying NEMESIS BOAT GUY. He whooped at us as he flew past. Angie and I wondered aloud if Nemesis Boat had capsized too. Then the powerboat turned around and approached us. The instructor driving it said one of us needed to get out of the boat, and NEMESIS BOAT GUY would take that person's place. I was blinking at the instructor thinking, "WTF?" I could not figure out what they were doing. Angie volunteered to leave, so NEMESIS BOAT GUY took over as skipper of my boat. There are 26 people in this class. Why is it always NEMESIS BOAT GUY?

The wind had died down almot to nothing--maybe 4 knots. The instructors told us to head back to harbor, so NEMESIS BOAT GUY set a downwind course. I noticed at this point there was rather a lot of water in the boat. The sailing was easy now, so I grabbed the bailer and started to bail. If you're thinking of the bailer as a sophisticated device, it's not. It was an empty orange juice carton with the bottom cut off, making it into a big scoop. It was a terrible bailer because the cap kept popping open. I'd scoop up a bunch of water, only to have it run out the bottom through the open cap.

NEMESIS BOAT GUY and I became curious why there was so much water in the boat. He checked the drain plugs and discovered that one of them had broken. We were going to sink! I started bailing more frantically with my pathetic, defective bailer, and instead of poking around on the lake, we set a maximum speed course directly for the harbor.

We made it. I met Angie at the dock. She'd been put into another boat. What happened was one of the other boats had broken down, and because they had more students than working boats, the instructors were shifting people from boat to boat to give everyone a chance to sail.

I was soaking wet from the knees down, so I changed clothes, and we went to dinner at Jak's grill: me and Angie and her two cousins, who'd come along to watch. There's nothing like a fabulous meal after an exhilarating evening on the water! The cousins took pictures of us rigging and sailing. I'm hoping to get hold of them so I can post a few. Maybe there will even be a shot of Nemesis Boat.

On Tuesday, Angie and I arrived half an hour early to sailing class, which meant we got our pick of boats. We chose an FJ (Flying Junior), boat #1 (the boats all have numbers on their sails so the instructors can yell at us specifically), and began rigging up.

We had a little trouble rigging because last time we'd sailed a Hunter instead of an FJ, and they rig up slightly differently. When we had trouble remembering where a particular rope went, we peeked at boat #2, since the two guys rigging that boat seemed to know what they were doing.

When it was time to set sail, Angie and I volunteered to be first off the dock and rushed to our boat, only to find that the boat #2 guys were pushing off into the water. They were in our way, so we had to wait.

Eventually we got underway. We had a nice, brisk wind of about 10 knots from the north. A wind like that is manageable by a novice sailor, but it's a handful. We were sailing out to a park on the other side of the bay. After some hard sailing, we were poking along and resting a bit with our sails undertrimmed, when a boat came flying up from behind us. "That's our Nemesis Boat," said Angie. Sure enough, it was boat #2.

I have a bit of a competitive streak, and Angie has even more of one. We trimmed in the sails and hiked out, and our boat started to fly too. We ran neck and neck beside them, water splashing in our faces as we leaned out to balance the sails. Every so often, we glanced over at the Nemesis Boat guys, and they glanced over at us. Neither of us could outrun the other.

Then something went wrong. Our boat headed up into the wind and started to spin, and we went into emergency capsize avoidance mode. By the time we'd regained control and pointed our boat in the right direction, the Nemesis Boat was way ahead of us.

Later, when the wind settled down, the instructors had us doing circles and figure 8's near the dock. It was past time for class to be over, but these college kids either have a sadistic streak or they had no idea how hard they're working those of us in our 30s and 40s. Sailing a small boat in a 10-knot wind is far more physical than most people realize. I was exhausted, and even Angie, who runs triathlons and is far more fit than me, was worn out.

Three of the instructors went in to assist with docking, leaving just one instructor out with the boats. Every so often, he singled out a couple of boats to head back into the harbor. The rest of us, he sent around the loop again. I was reminded of those airline flights where you circle around over the airport in a holding pattern while waiting for your turn to land. He sent us around over and over again.

"Boat #1!" the instructor barked. "Circle around again!"

I was feeling punchy. "Again?!" I called to him playfully. We turned the boat into another loop.

Finally he allowed us into the harbor. Boat #2 docked last of all.

We unrigged and were getting ready to head back to the car when the instructor spotted us and said, "Sorry for sending you around so many times. I keep the best sailors out the longest, because I know they can handle being out there on their own." Angie and I debated later whether that was true or simply conciliatory--maybe he tells the boats he sends in first that he wants the best sailors to go in first so they can show the rest of us how to do it?--but decided that whether true or not, it was nice of him to say it.

Before we left, I used the restroom, and the restrooms at this place are really weird. The facility is an abandoned military base, so the buildings are old and decrepit, and there are no women's restrooms. Only men's. So the single men's restroom has been repurposed for both sexes, and there's a sign you're supposed to turn that says whether it's currently a women's restroom or a men's. I usually don't bother with the sign. I don't care that much, especially since even if a guy walks in, there is still a stall door for privacy.

I heard someone lurking outside, waiting, not coming into the restroom, and I figured it must be a guy because his behavior had a chivalrous feel to it. A woman would have just barged in. (Well, I would have.) I finished up, left, and guess what. It was NEMESIS BOAT GUY. We exchanged greetings and commented on how weird the restrooms were, and I went out to the car.

I started up the engine, put the car in reverse, and Angie says, "Wait, there's someone behind us." I look back and it's NEMESIS BOAT GUY, standing a little off to the side. He waves, telling me to go ahead. I refuse, because as a pedestrian, he has right of way. He crosses. What is it with NEMESIS BOAT GUY that he just keeps turning up?

We engineer types love efficiency. Efficiency is the heart of good engineering. When something works smoothly and elegantly, with no wasted effort--whether it is a piece of software or a machine or a freeway system--it puts a smile on an engineer's face.

Here's a familiar example. Say you're on a freeway and two lanes are merging into one. There is a smooth, elegant way for this to happen. I call it the zipper merge. Have you looked closely at a zipper? The two sides do a perfect interleave.



That's how a merge should be. One car from the left lane, one car from the right, one from the left, etc. Where I live, in Washington, drivers are exceedingly polite, and almost every merge is a perfect zipper merge. I love perfect merges. They give me that little engineer happy zing of "ooh! efficient!". With a zipper merge, you know exactly where your place in line is--where your car should go--and you can prepare before the merge point by getting into position. Everything proceeds smoothly. Whereas if you get an asshole or two in the bunch who won't merge in their proper spot and instead cut people off, it creates a whole bunch of starting and stopping in both lanes. Which makes engineers shake their heads in dismay.

I love that Washington drivers are so polite. Most other places I drive, I feel like I'm among enemies who are out to screw me over if I give them the chance. Driving in Washington, I feel like I'm among friends who will look out for me if I get into trouble. That makes driving relaxing and enjoyable rather than stressful. However, sometimes Washington drivers take politeness too far. They can be like the couple standing in front of the door saying, "After you," "No, YOU," "No, YOU" while everyone waiting behind them is rolling their eyes and thinking SOMEBODY JUST GO ALREADY. (Engineer Chick is impatient.)

Sometimes in a situation where two lanes are merging down into one, one lane will be moving very slowly, while the other is moving quickly and has a lot of empty space in it. Many ultra-polite Washington drivers, seeing that empty stretch in front of them, think, "Oh--I should merge now. It would be rude to drive all the way up and cut these people off." So they do just that. And then what happens? The ten cars behind them rush ahead to the true merge point and merge there. Then another ultra-polite car stops and merges early--then another ten cars rush by--etc.

Early mergers: JUST STOP IT! Seriously. I'm convinced that these attempts at fair play just make things worse. If the cars in the faster lane drive all the way up the open stretch to the true merge point, we can have a nice, orderly zipper merge at the end. Cars will fill up that lane, and if I'm in the slower lane and 20 cars back, I'll have to wait for 20 cars to merge before it's my turn. That's fine. But early merging can turn that into 40 cars, as I have to admit not only the early mergers, but all the cars that zip past them once their car is no longer there to block the lane. Early mergers slow a lane down so much I think they actually may be the CAUSE of mismatched lane speeds.

Sorry, early mergers. I know you mean well, but you get the engineer frowny face.

I'm an engineer, and we engineer types love details. We love facts. We love concreteness.

What we don't love is fuzziness. Murkiness. Words that could mean many different things, depending on your interpretation.

Case in point: the school zone sign in my neighborhood. It reads, "Speed Limit 20 When Children Are Present." You might think, well, that's pretty clear. If children are present, the speed limit is 20.

But NO. This is NOWHERE NEAR precise enough for an engineer.

If there is one child present, is that "children"?
If there are teenagers present, is that "children"? (this sign is outside a high school)
Does the school zone speed limit still apply when school is not in session (e.g. in summer)?
What if there are people present who are too far away for me to determine if they are "children" or not?
Should I really be analyzing people on the sidewalks to determine if they are "children," rather than watching the road?

And let's talk about "present." How close do the "children" have to be in order to be "present"? Does it count if they're behind me (and I do not see them)? Does it count if they are enclosed in a tennis court or fenced baseball field? How about if they are in a fenced play area? Is that "present"? These are not idle questions. All three fenced structures are found along this stretch of road.

Lack of precision. I hate it! Yeah, I know they don't have room on the sign for, "Speed Limit 20 when 1 or more persons age 17 or younger are within 100 yards of sign." (Though I guarantee you that if they did, engineers would go out there and measure that 100 yards.) But can't they afford those timed flashing lights that tell you when the school zone is active? Is the city really that strapped for cash?

Because I can't tell when the school zone applies--and because I got a ticket there once in questionable circumstances--I now always drive 20 mph through the zone. Even at midnight when it's deserted. Back off, tailgaters. It's not my fault. It's the sign!

Gacked from xnbach. This is totally awesome.

God, I love summer. I'm sailing again! My friend Angie wanted to learn to sail, and I felt like I needed a refresher after 9 months off the water, so we signed up together for a beginner's Adult Sailing class.

This is a different class than the one I took last year, which was run by a different company. Last year's class was a two day class, 8 hours per day, of which 6 hours were classroom instruction (including knot tying) and 2 hours were actual sailing. The result was I ended up with a lot of theoretical knowledge but not much practical experience.

This class feels like the opposite of that one. It's run by 4 college kids who find classroom instruction awkward--clearly they don't know their way around a whiteboard--and prefer to just throw us in the boats and let us figure things out on the water. The first day, they didn't even teach us to tack or jibe. They just shoved us out in the lake to bumble around. Fortunately, the wind was very gentle that day. If we'd had a strong wind, there would have been serious carnage (in the form of capsized boats).

It feels crazy, but I actually like this method of instruction better. I feel much more relaxed. I'm not trying to go through the list of 6 things to do while tacking and making sure I get everything right; instead I'm just mucking about and picking things up by feel. It also helps that I'm not a total beginner this time; I have some rudimentary reflexes.

Last night, Angie and I got caught in traffic on the way to class and were late, so we missed the classroom instruction entirely and spent the whole class in the boat. The boats are Flying Juniors and Hunter 140's--2-person boats. There are a couple dozen people in the class, so that's a dozen sailboats, all controlled by rank novices, tooling around in the lake. The instructors go zipping about in powerboats, herding us like sheep. Angie and I like to head out a little further afield than the others to avoid the crowd. Every so often an instructor in a powerboat zooms out and snaps at us to turn around.

The wind was gentle at first, but towards the end of the evening, it started to pick up. An instructor zoomed out to me and Angie in our Hunter and said it was time to head back to harbor; the wind might be building into a storm. So we tried to turn the boat around, but it wouldn't steer. Angie was at the tiller. She handed it off to me to see if I could figure out how to turn the boat. But I was equally flummoxed. I could scull the boat around a bit, but as soon as I started to get it pointed in the right direction, it would fall off again in the wrong direction. We tried turning the opposite way, and the same thing happened. The boat just fell off.

The boat was going downwind, and we needed to get upwind. The wind was getting stronger, and the harbor was getting farther and farther away. The powerboats--whose presence we actually wanted now--were busy herding up other strays.

I figured since moving the tiller wasn't having an effect, maybe I needed to change the sail trim. We had the sails all the way in, so I let them out. Mistake. The boat still wouldn't steer, but now instead of just sailing in the wrong directon, we were sailing in the wrong direction at a high rate of speed.

Finally a powerboat zipped over to us. Before the instructor could yell at us for going the wrong way, we told him our steering wasn't working. He spotted the problem instantly--our centerboard had popped up. We effectively had no keel!

That was a major "duh" moment for me. In hindsight, it all made sense. You cannot sail upwind without a keel. CANNOT. The laws of physics prevent it. (Video on the physics of sailing.) So all our attempts to turn the boat upwind failed.

We pushed our centerboard back in, turned the boat around, and tacked back to the harbor. I was feeling kind of scared at that point--I'd half hoped the powerboat would offer to tow us in so we didn't have to sail all that way ourselves in the increasingly heavy wind--but they offered us no such easy out. So we sailed back on our own, which of course was more satisfying in the end.

It was a grand evening, all told. We had a little adventure, which was mildly scary but not truly dangerous. And we will never again forget to check the centerboard when the boat won't turn upwind!

Columbine, by Dave Cullen

I've never taken much interest in the Columbine massacre or other school shootings, partly because they're so depressing and partly because I don't like that media coverage makes celebrities out of murderers.

However, when I saw Janet Reid's review of this new book about Columbine, I had to read it. It appears that most of what we think we know about Columbine is wrong.

The myth of Columbine is that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were bullied outcasts who got revenge on the jocks and popular kids. So they were meting out a kind of misguided, vigilante justice.

Turns out it's not true. Eric and Dylan were not outcasts; they appear to have had average popularity. They did not lack friends or social contact. Their journals contain no accounts of being bullied. They do contain much bragging about how they themselves picked on "freshmen and fags." Eric and Dylan also routinely went on "missions" where they vandalized the homes of kids they didn't like. Eric and Dylan weren't bullied. They were the bullies.

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Guys, go read this blog. It's a riot! It's written by a publishing industry intern, so mixed in with the funny is some information about how the industry works.

You'll never believe what I did today. I wrote a short story. Yeah, here I am, hip-deep in SSV revisions, and I wrote something completely different! And I never write shorts. It's an 850-word comic short about a world in which advertising has gotten out of control. I'm hoping that slight speculative element will qualify it as social SF, though there is no special technology involved.

I struggled with the ending. Isn't that always the tough part of short stories, finding a satisfying ending? Ending novels is easy. Ending shorts is hard.

The hardest part of this particular story was getting the tone right. At first I had a semi-serious ending planned, but given that the comic element of the story is broadly drawn and a bit silly, mixing something serious into the story didn't seem to work. So I went for a lighter, goofier ending.

The story might suck. I don't know. I'll put a couple days of revision into it and then throw it on the OWW as an interlude between SSV chapters.

I enjoyed this article janwhit linked on the OWW list: Can This Manuscript Be Saved?. I always have to remind myself of the action/reaction/decision formula, because I have a tendency to write inverted. I often write the reaction first and then explain what caused it ("Janto frowned when..."). It makes a scene feel "telly," so in revision, I flip those around. I'm not the only one who writes inverted; I see a lot of it in other people's chapters I'm critiquing.

And if you want a laugh, go read edittorrent's post on the "Mantasy."

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE my Venus Fly-Trap?



Catch actually catches flies! Which is awesome, because I hate it when we have a housefly buzzing around the kitchen and landing on everyone's food. Gross. We've had four total flies in the house since the weather got warm enough for them, and Catch has eaten every one of them. One I had to swat and feed to him. The other three he caught on his own. I get such a perverse satisfaction when I go to bed annoyed by a fly in the kitchen and wake up the next morning to discover a closed trap and no more fly.

I have never actually seen a capture take place. One happened while I was out of town, and the other two were during the night. Maybe Catch is more successful at luring them in the dark.

Fly-Traps are supposed to be hard plants to grow, but Catch has thrived well beyond my expectations. They are certainly very fussy plants. They need a swamplike environment which is both humid and sunny. I simulate that with a plant light, the water tray Catch sits in, and by placing him in a sunny window by the sink, for a little extra humidity. He has to be given only distilled water--nothing from the tap. And of course he has to be fed occasionally. When there aren't sufficient flies in the house, I send the kids on a quest to find bugs. They do this with great enthusiasm, since whatever they find, they get to feed to Catch themselves.

One of the fun things about the Venus Fly-Trap is that it's constantly changing. Each trap has enough energy to close 3 times--no more. This is why you should never tease a fly-trap into closing its traps on your finger. You will starve it. So each trap makes 3 attempts at a capture, and then it dies. See the blackening trap at the top? It's closed 3 times and is now dying off. If you look closely at the center of the plant, you can see new traps forming. Just to the left of the blackening trap is a big trap that's almost finished--it's still growing its spikes. Once it grows those, it will open up and be ready for business.

To maximize my plant's health, I try to make every capture a successful one, but it's easier said than done. If I pick the plant up and move it around, I may jar it into closing a trap or two. Also, when I feed it myself, sometimes I pick the wrong size bug. If it's too big, it will force its way out of the trap. If it's too small, the trap will reject it and re-open the next day. Digestion takes a great deal of energy from the plant, and it will not undertake that effort for a too-small bug.

It's better when Catch feeds himself. He's never had a bad capture when he lured the bug on his own.

"Ethan," says the gymnatics instructor, "go back and do that again."

He's on a wedge mat--sort of a big, soft triangle--and he was supposed to do a somersault. Instead, he flung himself down it, rolling haphazardly, calling out, "oof!" He was Indiana Jones, leaping out of the way of the rolling boulder.

The gymnastics instructor is just the kind of teacher Ethan needs, warm and friendly but with an authoritative voice and a no-nonsense attitude. He is accustomed to this kind of correction from her--he gets it often. Without comment, he goes back to the beginning of the wedge mat and does a somersault with perfect form.

The instructor turns her back to help another student, and Ethan is Indiana Jones again, jumping and rolling, crashing onto the ground, and flinging himself just in time through the closing stone door.

"Mom," says Sean, "can I use your deodorant? Or is there different deodorant for boys?"

After some questioning, I learn that the sex-ed class he's taking at school is covering hygiene. "And now that I'm in puberty," he says, "I'm supposed to use deodorant."

Actually, he's not in puberty, and he doesn't smell bad. When he starts to smell, believe me, I'll notice, and then I'll be advocating not only deodorant but daily showers. He's only 10 years old. Some boys come in that early, but not many, and given Sean's generally sluggish growth, I think he'll probably start later than most. I'll buy him some deodorant if he wants to use it, though. I can't see how it'll do any harm.

He is also becoming a more adventurous eater. I don't know if it's a permanent change or a short phase. But it's astonishing to watch, given how absurdly picky he is. Sometimes it seems he eats nothing but bread, cheese, peanut butter, and almonds.

These days we rarely eat out, for budget reasons, but this weekend we ended up doing it twice in two days. First we went for sushi. Sean normally eats rice, tempura prawns, and edamame at this place. For myself I'd ordered, among other things, a California roll, and Sean wanted to try a piece. So I gave him a piece and told him to stick the whole thing in his mouth at once. It ruins a roll to pick it apart and eat it piecemeal; they're all about the blending of flavors and textures. He ate it and LOVED IT. He ended up eating half my roll. Now he wants to go back so he can order one of his own.

Next day, we went to Salty's on Alki for brunch. I can't remember if I've blogged about Salty's before. It's an all-you-can-eat seafood and brunch buffet. They welcome you at the door with a bag of warm, freshly-made doughnuts, and the buffet offers just about everything you can imagine: crab, salmon, clams, mussels, oysters, catfish, shrimp, chowder, made-to-order omelets and pasta dishes, pancakes, waffles, bacon, eggs, potato dishes, even ham and prime rib. And the dessert table is amazing, with pies and cakes and cheesecake and cookies and a chocolate fountain you can dip strawberries or marshmallows in.

Anyway, Sean got the stuff he usually gets, then went back for seconds. Then he went back for thirds, and this is what he came back with: a clam, a mussel, a peel-and-eat shrimp, and a raw oyster. He has never eaten any of those foods before (well, shrimp, but not in this form). I talked him out of the raw oyster--I do not think they are safe--but he cheerfully ate all the rest, much to my surprise, because some of those foods even I'm reluctant to eat. Clams, after all, look like little wads of phlegm. I eat them in chowder, where I can't see them, but I'm less interested when I have to stare at the things.

He had so much fun playing with the clam shell, after eating its contents, that he said he wanted "an army of clams," so he came back with a plate of three more. He ate them all, then had the clam shells wage war against each other. Later he took them home and left them on the floor, and the dogs, thinking they were food, crunched them to bits.

I was amazed. After all, this is a kid who is reluctant to eat such ordinary and innocuous foods as apples and oranges. So apparently apples are poison, but clams and California roll are okay. Go figure.

Why Gender Matters, by Leonard Sax, MD, PhD

This book, published in 2005, talks about the latest research on gender differences. I'm always skeptical reading a book like this, because almost nobody writes about gender without having some sort of agenda. I was not interested in seeing the tired old stereotypes trotted out ("girls are more emotional!" "boys are more competitive!"), nor was I interested in hearing about how gender is a cultural construction and gender differences will go away if we give toy trucks to girls and dolls to boys, because that isn't true either.

I've always wanted a book that just goes over the research. Just facts, no agenda.

This, unfortunately, is not that book. The author does have an agenda; he is an advocate of single-sex education. But it comes close to being that book. There is a lot of science in it, and all the author's arguments are backed up by research. The presence of an agenda in a book always makes me wonder if the author is cherry-picking just the studies that support his theories, so I have some skepticism there. But I happen to agree with him in a most of his views--his understanding of the current science (he is a doctor and psychologist) matches what I've picked up as a layperson and what I've observed from just being around kids--and I found this book informative and interesting.

A key point of the book is that male and female brains are fundamentally different, and it has nothing to do with hormone levels, and everything to do with the brain being masculinized or feminized during fetal development. Many popular gender stereotypes do NOT hold up under research. Examples include "boys are naturally better at math and science than girls," "girls are naturally more emotional than boys," "girls are naturally collaborative while boys are competitive." All untrue.

Here are some differences that research finds ARE true:

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I just finished reading a book called The History of Torture, by Daniel Mannix. (Research purposes for SSV, I'm afraid.) In its concluding chapter:

"First, it should be said that because torture has been used for nearly a thousand years, principally to extract confessions from accused persons, many authors on the subject devote most of their efforts to proving that confessions made under torture are unreliable. It would seem unnecessary to belabor this point; it is obvious."

Another interesting bit from earlier in the book comes from the chapter about the methods of the Spanish Inquisition:

"The water torture was considered the most terrible and used when other means had failed. The prisoner was tied to a ladder (the escalera) with his head lower than his feet. An iron prong (the bostezo, yawn) was used to force his mouth open and a strip of linen (the toca) pushed down his throat. Water was slowly dropped on the linen until the prisoner, in his efforts to avoid being strangled, swallowed the strip. The strip was gradually withdrawn, covered with blood and mucus. The process was then repeated. The amount of water used was carefully measured and could never exceed eight quarts at any one time; otherwise the prisoner might suffocate."

Now, is it me, or is that WATERBOARDING? (With the exception, perhaps, of the strip.) The "most terrible" torture used by the Spanish Inquisition was authorized for use by my country, here in the modern era?

This book was written in 1964.

I'm beginning to think Ethan may not turn into the enthusiastic reader that Sean is. For one, Sean was reading independently by this age, while Ethan is not. And Ethan is not always crazy about being read to.

Sean is a sponge who soaks up anything and everything. He likes almost every book I read to him. Of course, since I know kid lit rather well, I'm providing him with excellent material. But I'm providing Ethan with the same stuff, and he's a harder sell.

Ethan is nearly 6 now, and most picture books feel too babyish for him. So I moved on to simple chapter books. I tried "Magic Tree House" first, but he didn't like those. (Neither did Sean, actually, though I know many kids who love them.)

"Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle" was a hit, but "Pippi Longstocking" was not. I think Pippi bothered him because she was so wild--Ethan likes an ordered world. I tried "Jedi Apprentice" next, because he loves Star Wars, but after a few books he became bored.

So I moved on to "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," and there we had a hit! He loved that one. Now, I am of the opinion that there are only 3 good Narnia books: "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," "The Horse and his Boy," and "The Silver Chair." As for the others, "Prince Caspian" is a rehash of the first book, "The Last Battle" is disturbing, and the other two are just dull. So I wanted to skip ahead to one of the other good ones, but Ethan insisted on reading "Prince Caspian" next, so we're doing that.

I thought he might want to watch the movie of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" after we read the book, but he declined, saying he thought it would give him nightmares. He found the White Witch very scary.

I'm glad we've found something he likes. Once we exhaust Narnia, there are lots of other series to start him on: "Warriors," the Prydain Chronicles, and the Ramona books, to name a few. What I often did with Sean, once he was able to read independently, was to read him book one of a series, then provide him with book two to read on his own. Eventually I should be able to do that with Ethan. He's picky, but at least there's some stuff out there he likes.

Ethan: Can I keep my underwear on?
Me: No, you're getting in the bath.
Ethan: But this way it will come out clean laundry!

...

Ah, if only it worked that way. I would throw my clothes on in the morning, hop in the shower, and never do laundry again.