Category: Family

November 8, 2006 /

This is mostly for my own future reference, but the apples I found labelled “Mountaineer” at Whole Foods are just slightly superior to Fujis in every way. A little more tart and crisper, with thicker skin, less wax and a better texture. They asymptotically approach the quality of apples from my grandmother’s orchard, which is probably the best any commercial apple is going to do. Unfortunately, they seem to be available only in season, so it looks like I’ll be back to eating Fujis (which are, to be fair, far superior to any other cultivar) in a month.

Data point: since I started eating roughly four to five apples a week–something like a year and a half ago–I have not been sick. Magic? Or coincidence?

September 7, 2006 /

My family was pirates again! Brenna had to go to the hospital! But she’s okay! My embarrassingly bare portfolio site went live! Ben wrote another LJ-feed story!

Mario and Tessa sit at the machine.

“What do you think these knobs do?” Tessa asks. Mario responds in the most natural manner possible.

The machine will hum. Tessa will say “Wait, did you hear that?”

Mario will nod. “Yeah. It’s tensokinetic, all right.” He’ll twist another knob.

The machine will have hummed. Mario will have said “Now that’s just weird. Let me try and find another tense.”

Tessa will have said “Yeah, I don’t think we want to get much more esoteric than this.” Mario will have spun another knob…

But the past tense setting [error: tense not found] broken!

My mother actually WASN’T very educated when she came up with this. UNH.

August 24, 2006 /

All the nine-planet mnemonics you learned were dumb, because mnemonics are dumb, period. Purge them from your brain. Good!

My mother taught me the planets in kindergarten or something, using a song she and her friend made up on the playground when they were in elementary school. It goes like this:

“Mercury, Venus, Earth

dah-dah nanananah

Mars, Jupiter, Saturn

dah-dah nanananah

Uranus, Neptune and–

Plu-to.”

And I have never forgotten them since. The best part is that now that the list has been shortened, it’s more easily converted than your elevated mastodon who just served you divorce papers or whatever.

Uranus, Neptune and–

That’s all.”

Other people that write good

August 5, 2006 /

UJ wrote a fantastic response to my “Christ of the Barricades” challenge, and Will wrote a prequel to Beloit, saved here from the LJ feed:

Tarnished as it is, the dirty chrome armour of the Heliocrashers shines as they blast through the wall: Erythrophobia zaps at a guard, but canon says that sonoluminescence doesn’t cause bubble fusion. So she punches him through a wall.

The other ‘crashers are covering her while she sets a charge against the generator’s critical weak point when canon oozes out of a grate and tears Erythrophobia in half. The charge doesn’t detonate because canon says they use fusion to fly, not fight: instead, her top half flies into a duct and her suit’s failing containment does the job just as well.

And then there’s stuff like Sumana’s MC Masala, which… you know about MC Masala, right? And Leonard is getting the kind of rejection letters most of us would kill for, for a story you will (when you get to see it) kill to have come up with.

There’s no unifying characteristic between the amazing writers with whom I associate, no New School or Movement, even though I keep trying to assign one. I guess I’m just going to have to publish all you guys?

July 5, 2006 /

I discovered a few minutes ago that I have not only a big black splinter in the heel of my hand, but a hell of broken nail on that hand’s ring finger. My hand was in no such condition when I went to bed last night. What exactly am I doing in my sleep?

I know I haven’t written anything in here in like ten weeks; I have been saving up the biggest thing for the day when it actually happens. Meanwhile, Maria bought a red car, we ate at the Mayan Gypsy three times in a week, Ian touched down like a spinning stone, and Brenna will never trust us again.

May 23, 2006 /

Caitlan went out a week and a half ago and graduated from a small, private liberal arts school, after acing the comprehensive oral exams for two different programs (even though she’s a single major) and producing an Honors thesis, summa cum laude. Oh, and she did it in three years. She’s going to England in the fall to get a second bachelor’s degree, as the first and only successful applicant in her school’s credit-sharing program with Oxford.

When I explained Maria’s educational progress at a family gathering a while back, I watched my grandmother’s eyes grow wider and wider: yes, she went to an Ivy, yes, she’s going to be a medical doctor, oh, but right now she’s getting her PhD, and in brain sciences, right–and I had to laugh and admit the simple fact that my girlfriend is out of my league. I should have looked around, then, at the women there: my mother and grandmother, my aunts and my genius sister. When you grew up seeing the standards set that high, what else can you do?