hrj

Exploring My Limits

2026-06-02T21:55:03Z

The Bay Area Book Festival was enjoyable and productive on Sunday, though also exhausting. I sold enough books to make it financially worthwhile, though I really need to have more realistic expectations of how many copies of Daughter of Mystery to bring versus later books in the series. I have fantasies of people buying the whole set, or already having the first book and coming back for more, but realistically that's not the way to bet. I was delighted to sell several copies of Skin-Singer and people seem to be very attracted to the cover art. Also had a number of people take my cards to follow up on the blog and podcast.

But by four in the afternoon I was thoroughly done and packed up an hour before actual closing. Crowds happened out by then so I don't think I missed anything serious. It was amusing that when I was packing up and my booth mates offered to help I had to work hard at saying yes and pointed out that I could, of course, do it all myself if I had to. One of my friends at the booth did a hands on her hips-type gesture and said, "You know that's a trauma response, right?" Yeah, I've had that pointed out before. And I'm still not quite sure how I acquired it, but I'll own it.

Several friends dropped by the booth either previously arranged or just by chance. So that was nice.

Monday I pretty much decided to vegetate. I've been able to cut back the pain meds to just Tylenol and have a couple of the oxycodone left over that I didn't need. But everything is just more tiring than usual and the most relaxing position for my arm is resting on the arm of my recliner, slightly elevated and on a padded surface. Most of the initial pain seems to be due to bruising from the operation and that is definitely going down consistently.

The one work-around that is actually going very well is using longhand plus speech-to-text to get Lesbian Historic Motif Project blogs written up. In fact, it's going so well that I need to remind myself to use this method all the time.

I have added one more bit of historic trivia to The History of Related-ivity which required consulting with the author of the source material as to how they wanted to be cited. The next serious task for that project is to come up with cover art for the book. Otherwise it's pretty much ready to go except for assigning ISBNs and maybe soliciting a couple of cover blurbs. I think I'm aiming for a August 1 publication date or thereabouts.

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Not quite the Bionic Woman

2026-05-30T15:23:56Z

The thing that always bothered me about the bionic man and bionic woman shows was the introductory images showing where their artificial parts were installed. OK, so you have an enhanced and reinforced arm and you go to lift an impossibly heavy weight. But your spine is not reinforced so that's where everything goes sideways. Literally.

In any case, I've always assumed that "bionic" involves something more than simple strengthening, although artificial hips and knees do seem to fit the bill. Much more solidly, my brothers implanted defibrillator is clearly bionics. But a mere titanium reinforcement plate? I don't think that gets me in the bionic club.

So yesterday I had my operation on my broken arm. It was all very smooth, successful, and uneventful other than being the main event. Massive props to the surgery staff and nursing staff at Kaiser Dublin. The ambulatory surgery wing has this fascinating almost assembly-line structure with a ring of individual patient bays around the central nursing station. You get a succession of visits from all the different individual functions getting you set up, sorted out, and interviewed. Everyone allowed plenty of time for chatting and questions, making the whole process more friendly and relaxed.

My input regarding aftercare was accepted and discussed seriously, especially with regard to expectations around pain management. I declined getting additional oxycodone beyond the prescription I hadn't used from the initial bone-setting and it looks like that will be plenty to get me through the initial stages, relying more solidly on Tylenol. I got a solid night sleep last night so I think I'm on top of that aspect.

The nerve blocks that they done on various parts of my arm wore off at different times. Initially my ring and pinky fingers were numb and the back of my thumb was numb and while the first two came back over the course of the evening I was a little worried that the thumb was still numb when I went to bed. But on waking up, it's definitely coming back too so I guess it just got an extra big dose.

I reluctantly decided to skip the party I had scheduled for this evening (yes, I know, I know, I was being stupid to think I could make it in any event) but expect to be solidly on for tomorrow's presence at the Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley. I'll be taking BART in, with all my books and paraphernalia in a rollaway which makes everything much easier. And it's a group table with the Bay Area Queer Writers Association so I'll have friends and back-up there.

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Reinforcing with Titanium

2026-05-29T00:16:29Z

Tomorrow I go into surgery to have my bones fastened together with titanium plates. After that comes the long boring recovery process, although with less concern about how the bones will come out. Not literally out, that is.

I've actually gone back to my morning coffee shop work sessions. My current workaround is to write up the journal article notes for my blog longhand and then dictate them using speech to text. I'm not very good at freehand dictating (like I'm doing right now) but long hand writing isn't affected and it works more at the speed at which my brain composes. Apple's speech to text does not entirely do well with the sort of specialized historic and theoretical vocabulary that the lesbian history project involves, but I'm muddling through.

We'll see how I do at my relatively dense schedule of events in the next two weeks once I come out of surgery. I have two parties, one online convention, and three book sales events coming up in the near future. (I've finally gotten hooked into how one connects with local Pride events for selling books. The question of making a profit is entirely separate.)

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Broken Arms are Boring

2026-05-21T00:12:30Z

I'm getting a little computer work done, but mostly I'm sitting in the recliner with my cast elevated and ice-packed, binging Britbox mysteries and playing one-handed computer games.

That's in between laboriously doing one-handed household things. I've developed procedures for opening catfood cans and cleaning litter boxes. I'm exploring cooking techniques and have done some strategic shopping for easier approaches. (Prepared salad greens. K-cups for coffee. But I also happen to have a significant inventory of prepared meals in the freezer.)

After considering simply putting the podcast on hiatus for the duration, I've decided to do re-runs. (Minimal typing required.) Based on healing time estimates, I should be back in action by the podcast's 10th anniversary show (which will be an interview, so no extensive typing required). The most annoying part of working at my desk is that the strap of the sling tends to cause my shoulder to spasm. I need to work up some way to support the cast without the sling when sitting there.

Very few things that require driving in the next two months. I can manage driving but I'd prefer to minimize it. We'll see how I'm feeling when Baycon gets closer. I'd been planning to commute (gas is still cheaper than the hotel), but now I'm not sure.

But no bicycling, no gym, no tai chi, and no reason to do my coffee shop work sessions. No serious yard work, no crafts requiring two hands. (My knitted socks had just gotten to the bind-off stage and are now stuck there.) I need to see if I can do my article write-ups for the blog by dictation. I could definitely get a lot of reading done once my brain feels up to it.

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Exciting Adventures in Strawberry Picking

2026-05-19T02:40:41Z

I've been posting about this on most of my social media, so probably a lot of you know about it already.

So there I was yesterday, after finishing the late afternoon chores, out picking strawberries in the back yard. (I get a good bowlful every week currently, plus another bowlful of blueberries.) And I stepped wrong, tripped over my own feet, and fell on the concrete walkway, catching myself with my left hand and spilling the berries all over.

Well, you may be guessing where this is heading. I looked down at my arm, thought, "That's not what a wrist is supposed to look like," and my vision started going gray. I pulled out my phone, called Denise, and said, "I just fell and broke my arm." Before I got another word out, she said she was on her way. I carefully got myself up, grabbed my purse, let myself out through the garage (so I could use the phone app for the garage door and not bother with keys), and leaned against the fence, contemplating whether it would be a good idea to sit down, but not sure I could do so safely.

Anyway, got down to Kaiser ER and got taken care of. As expected, I didn't get released until midnight, at which point the friend-transport network had changed shifts, with a third party on standby. (The ER staff were a bit surprised that I had friends stepping up like that--evidently it's not typical?)

Today I'm having "fun" figuring out how to do things one-handed. (Opening pull-top cat food cans has been the hardest so far. Typing one-handed is tedious but not difficult.)

They expect to pull me in again in the next day or so for surgery to stabilize the bones since the break (radius and ulna both) is so close to the wrist.

During the traction to set the bones the doctor told me I was very brave, but honestly it was mostly the Fentanyl.

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Random natterings

2026-05-12T20:28:39Z

It's my birthday today -- the first time in quite a while when I'm not going to Kalamazoo for my birthday. (The Medieval Congress) As a result, I don't really have standard practices for what to do to commemorate the day. There will be a family dinner on the weekend, but today it's just me.

So I started with a fancy-breakfast-in-the-garden, which I don't do as often as I could. (I prefer to start the day with my bike ride, which practice is incompatible with a leisurely breakfast.) Other plans involved a movie and going out for sushi. I half-heartedly dropped my movie plans (Sheep Detective) on facebook with a solicitation for company, but facebook is facebook, the day is a weekday, and unsurprisingly no one took me up on it.

In the past week I've moved into the next stage of learning skills for self-publishing by working on formatting The Theory of Related-ivity in Vellum. So far Vellum is user-friendly, in that every time I've had a question about how to do something, it's either easy to figure out, easy to find in the help files, or easy to determine that you just can't do the thing I'm trying to do. As one review of the program noted, it isn't really designed for complicated non-fiction books, but there are only a few places that's been frustrating.

I solved one issue not related to Vellum when I figured out how to get better resolution jpegs of my Excel graphs. (Something that was a bit of a "Doh!" moment once I'd solved it.) But it wasn't until I did a test-export of the project into ebook and pdf versions that I was reminded that the lovely multi-colored graphs that are so easy to publish online and in ebooks also need to work in black-and-white for the hard copy. (It isn't that I expect to sell all that many hardcopy versions, but I want to have the option.) So now I need to go back through a couple dozen graphs and select color sets that will provide good B&W contrast. (Tricky for the percentage bar graphs with 13 variables! But there are only two of those.)

I've also decided to put out my translation and commentary of the 18th century French appeal record of Anne Grandjean (gender and sexuality issues) as a published book. That one has me thinking about the complexities of designing layout for both ebook and print. For print, it might be nice to do facing-page text with the commentary at the bottom of the pages, but that's impossible for the ebook. (Also, I'm not sure it would be possible in Vellum, though I know exactly how I'd do it in InDesign.) I'm also thinking ahead to the LHMP book and some fun layout ideas that wouldn't work for both. I should probably take a look at some examples of print/ebook pairs that have complex layouts in print.

By "complex" I mean things like separate text boxes for sidebars. (One idea I'm toying with would be rather than having all my mini-biographies in a single section, inserting them as sidebars in the topical chapters that they're most closely relevant to.)

One of the secondary functions for publishing low-impact smaller projects is to explore these sorts of questions. But compared to the non-fiction projects, novels will be easy!

When I think about my writing catalog, it always brings me back to that ill-fitting advice that a writer should stick to focused "branding" even if it means having multiple pen names. But my writing projects don't separate out neatly that way. the Grandjean translation is directly related to the LHMP book. But the LHMP book is directly related to my lesbian historical fiction. And the historical fiction is closely connected to my lesbian historical fantasy. And there would be no point to distinguishing that from any of the other types of fantasy I write. I still have a twinge of regret for using a pen name for Baby Names for Dummies, because it, too, connects up with my historical research. And what would be the point in using anything other than my real name for the Related-ivity book, since my identity is solidly connected to the reason I was interested in the topic.

I am me. I contain multitudes. I refuse to be fragmented.

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The Merry Month of May

2026-05-02T02:17:16Z

A couple days ago, I happened to see an "event" announcement on fb for the Berkeley Morris performance at dawn on May 1st, and I thought, what they heck, why not? I've only ever made it to their dawn performances a couple times back in...oh, let's just say quite a while ago, when I had a friend it the troupe.

Knowing that I've failed at this resolution before, I planned for success: laid out warm clothing the evening before, set up the coffee maker (yeah, I know, I only drink decaf now, but it's a ritual), and set my alarm for 4:30am. Yes, you read that correctly. The event was scheduled to start at 5:20 and the map app said it would take me half an hour to get to Inspiration Point in Tilden Park, so that seemed like the optimal waking time.

This did not take into account that there would be dense fog on the winding back-roads up the east side of the hills. It also didn't take into account that my directions app had an entirely different idea about where "Inspiration Point" was located. (I think there are two places by that name in the general area?) So I drove back and forth on one stretch of Grizzly Peak Road three times before I figured out the problem and finally was able to work out the right directions. (It didn't help that I've only ever driven to Inspiration Point from the Berkeley side of the hills before.

But I arrived at least a quarter hour before the dawn, so ritual was satisfied. I got to see half a dozen dances, participated in the singing of May Day carols, and danced in the massive Sellenger's Round circle.

When I was a little kid, in my family, May Day meant crafting little baskets made of woven paper, then filling them with flowers and leaving them on neighbors' doorsteps. I have no idea where that custom came from. I don't think it was a general thing that people did, just something my mom taught us.

After driving back home, I decided that I wanted to continue to drastically break routine for the day (and celebrate the one year anniversary of my retirement), and driving through the hills had inspired me to take a drive up to the summit of Mount Diablo and spend some time looking out over the vistas and generally just hanging out in scenic nature for several hours. I gazed admiringly (but not at all enviously) at the bicyclists who made the same trek. That is way beyond any bicycling ambitions I might have. I'm not big on hills.

And now, here it is a little after 7pm and my body is reminding me that I got up at four-fucking-thirty this morning and I should go to bed already.

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Vegging (the garden kind)

2026-04-14T20:24:37Z

I can't remember if I've posted any of this before and am too lazy to look back.

I experimented this year with putting in some "winter crops" with variable success. Cabbage probably needed to be planted earlier because one of the varieties is bolting and the other, though not bolting, looks unlikely to set heads. The edible pod peas are doing ok, in part I suspect because I planted them next to the fence, so they aren't getting excessive sun. I harvested a handful of pods today and suspect I can get a handful per week until they give up. The third experiment was some mixed greens (NOT KALE) recommended by the nursery salesperson. I pulled them out when they started to bolt and will do something with them this week.

Because I had to trim some overly enthusiastic grape tendrils, I picked off the leaves, parboiled them, and made dolmas. Very successful (except for not rinsing the rice sufficiently, so the filling is a bit too sticky). Since I had more filling than grape leaves, I pulled some of the bolting cabbage and did cabbage rolls. (The dolmas cooked in broth and lemon juice while the cabbage rolls cooked in broth and crushed tomatoes.)

Last spring, I spotted some asparagus starts at the nursery, having failed to find any sets, and put them in the circular bed around the persimmon tree. I'd more or less had that in mind and hadn't planted anything else in the circle except for some random gladioli. More than half the starts survived the year and then this year I did find asparagus sets so I added them into the mix. It looks like they get enough water from the lawn irrigation system, though I've been supplementing with an extra sprinkler last year, both for their benefit and to help the persimmon get a good start. It'll be a couple more years before they'll be established enough to harvest (and who knows how many years before I'll start getting persimmons).

When I watch various of my friends and acquaintances flit about from place to place, I think about how significantly my life plans are affected by my love of growing things. And how tragic it would be if this property eventually went to someone who didn't value the investment.

The tomatoes are in the ground now--the usual 18 varieties. (Well, except I doubled up on Sun Gold cherry tomatoes because they're my absolute favorite.) Some years I've carefully documented which varieties I plant and how they perform. This year I didn't even make a list. I made my usual sacrifice to hope over experience and planted summer squash and eggplant.

I still need to pick and process the second half of the Seville orange crop. (The first half went to Chaz and has been turned into marmelade.) The lemons that were sacrificed to a bout of pruning have been juiced and frozen as cubes (for summer refreshment), plus zested and packed in sugar (for baking use). There are still a few juice oranges on one of the trees. The strawberries are trickling in. And it's time to update the garden calendar with all of this for data tracking purposes.

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Vegging (not the garden kind)

2026-04-12T18:05:18Z

Thursday evening I figured out I was coming down with a cold (after a day of thinking it was allergies). This conveniently coincided with a three-day rain front so it was a cue to hunker down in rest-and-relax mode without being tempted to attempt to use my body or brain much.

Since I recently swapped my Peacock subscription (since the Olympics are over) for Britbox, I decided to spend multiple days binging Sharpe's Rifles and knitting. (I know the title is actually "Sharpe" but I figured that might be insufficient data for identification.) I rather enjoyed the series except for two plot-requirement aspects.

Most importantly, so much of Sharpe's troubles could have been forestalled by being willing to just outright shoot a nemesis the first time. (I tried to word that sentence with the plural of nemesis, but none of my attempts looked right.) I mean, the whole point of his character is that he's a rough-and-ready, up-from-the-ranks scrapper, not a silly honor-above-all officer-class type. So the insistence on one-on-one sword duels and letting a nemesis escape isn't really in character. (Ok, he has his own brand of honor, but I still think there's a problem here.)

The second plot point is that Jane's betrayal feels utterly contrived. I don't believe a woman who has been through her experiences and had the fortitude to help with field surgery and nursing is going to be so easily led astray. It's like they tossed out her established character because they needed to introduce a new girlfriend. Her later behavior isn't the same person.

But I got a bunch of knitting done.

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hrj @ 2026-04-06T11:50:00

2026-04-06T18:57:34Z

In case you haven't been encountering the links elsewhere, I'm now up to 10 (of 16) segments of my essay "The Theory of Related-ivity: A History and Analysis of the Best Related Work Hugo Category." (You can start here. Each individual segment has a link to the next--up through everything currently posted. https://alpennia.com/blog/theory-related-ivity-segment-i)

In theory, the individual segments should be showing up on the RSS feed of my blog here on Dreamwidth, but there's a glitch whereby the RSS feed pays attention to the date when the blog was originally created, not the date when it goes live. So anything I've set up well in advance (like this series) never shows up at all.

Once the whole thing has been published online, I'll be doing some revisions based on feedback and then releasing the work in ebook form. Haven't decided if I'll offer it for free or set a nominal price. I don't want to create friction for people who want to read it, but on the other hand there's the phenomenon that people don't take seriously what they can get for free. There will also be a hard copy version available at that point (obviously for a reasonable price).

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Movie Review: Hail Mary

2026-03-30T16:00:02Z

Such a large proportion of my online community were raving about this movie so I thought I'd check it out, despite it not being my usual genre. And...well...it was ok? I guess? I was struck by how parallel the overall plot arc was to The Martian: protagonist finds himself the sole remnant of an Earth expedition, is improbably successful at jury-rigging solutions to daunting problems, just barely survives a dire problem of astronautics. Yes, there are any number of differences, especially the first contact plot (which, as a linguist, I have to say also involved improbable success).

It's very much old-school SF, where a lone (male) hero solves insurmountable difficulties through the power of his enormous brain. Despite Weir's evident recent claim that he doesn't do politics in his writing, the "cross-species cooperation to survive" element is solidly political (and should be promoted more often for intra-species cooperation). But it's a solidly traditional theme (see, e.g., Enemy Mine), as is the mechanics of developing an alien language translation program (see, e.g., Arrival).

I did find the late reveal of spoiler spoiler spoiler to be a satisfactory motivation for the protagonist's eventual choice of fate. (Not the self-sacrificing aspect but the later choice.) And in that context, the flashback method of showing his gradual memory recovery was also effective.

So: it was ok, I guess?

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Related-ivity and Blog Comments

2026-03-28T16:34:47Z

Clearly my impulse to mirror The Theory of Related-ivity somewhere besides my Alpennia log was the correct decision, because I'm getting far more engagement (which implies far more readers) on File 770 than on my blog.

I was double-checking to confirm that I did actually get one comment on the blog and noticed something interesting that I'm not sure is correct. According to the "approved comments" index, while I've gotten an average of one comment per month on the blog in the last year (and thank goodness we've finally set up a filter that successfully blocks the deluge of spam comments), according to the index, I received NO comments in the previous 7 years.

I don't think that's right. I mean, I whine a lot (though mostly inside my head) about not stimulating conversations on the blog, but I'm pretty sure I got at least a few comments between June 2018 and June 2025! But since I get them so rarely, it would be a lot of work to scroll back through the blog and search to see if there are comments on the posts that simply aren't showing up in the index for some reason.

Does anyone remember commenting on my Alpennia blog within the last 7 years and remember what you commented on to help narrow the process?

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The Theory of Related-ivity

2026-03-16T16:00:33Z

My essay? book? blog series? Let's call it a "book posted in installments" The Theory of Related-ivity: A History and Analysis of the Best Related Work Hugo Category has begun appearing on my blog at: https://alpennia.com/blog/theory-related-ivity-segment-i.

The series will appear in parallel at File 770. At some point after the whole series has appeared, I'll also release it as a e-book. (I figure it's a nice low-pressure project for learning Vellum.)

This was a really fun geeky research project with some interesting (if not always surprising) conclusions. Best Related Work challenges Hugo voters to think about what "related" means and what constitutes a "work" with few administrative constraints. My study asks: how do Hugo nominators answer those questions?

I hope the study might spark conversations, although that means I'll need to keep on top of approving comments on the blog. (All comments are pre-screened due to spam.)

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I love a routine

2026-03-09T18:32:25Z

I sometimes say that I live and die by routines. If I have a routine for doing something, then it gets done. If I don't have a routine (or I depart from one) then anything could happen. This means there are things I do more often than I need to (like checking blood pressure or recording weight) because if I don't fit them into a daily routine, I don't get around to it. But it means that things that need a less frequent routine are sometimes tricky (like theoretically once-a-month housekeeping tasks, such as cleaning the cat waterer).

The daily bike-coffeeshop-write-bike routine is solid (even though there are two days when it's coffeeshop-write-gym instead), but if I need to do something substantial before biking--especially if it involves putting on normal clothes--then it's hard for me to shift myself back to it later in the day.

So on a day like today when I started off with an online podcast interview to record, I probably won't get the bike out. Knowing that, I plan to do yardwork and housecleaning. But there's always the temptation to say, "I make my own rules; I could just take a day off." Except I bought some Alpine strawberry sets a few days ago and they really need to get in the ground...

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Pointer to items of potential interest

2026-03-06T20:07:45Z

I prefer not to duplicate content on multiple platforms, largely through laziness. And I tend to assume that if people are interested in the content I post on a particular platform, they'll follow me on that platform.

That said, I'm posting a couple of multi-part long-form essays over at my Alpennia.com blog that people might possibly be interested in.

One is an 8-part series presenting and analyzing the primary source material on 18th century pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, in addition to presenting and analyzing the narratives about them in the General History of the Pirates. This is part of my usual Lesbian Historic Motif Project blog.

The other will be a 16-part series entitled The Theory of Related-ivity: A History and Analysis of the Best Related Work Hugo Category. If you were the sort of fannish data nerd who enjoy the article Charting the Cliff that Camestros Felapton and I wrote a couple years ago, this may also be your thing. Related-ivity will also be mirrored on File 770. (I haven't started posting this one yet.)

So you have several ways of reading, if that's something you want to do. I'd love it if you read (and commented) at the Alpennia.com blog. The blog also has a RSS feed here at Dreamwidth but I have no way of being notified about comments on it. And, as noted, Related-ivity will also appear on File 770 (where you can also comment) but obviously the LHMP series won't appear there. It occurs to me that, given that the RSS feed on Dreamwidth doesn't like image files, it's probably a poor choice for Related-ivity, since you won't be able to see the figures and tables.

Why is life so complicated?

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Well that was annoying

2026-02-28T01:13:38Z

Having made a resolution to try to get more engaged with local politics (on a more-than-just-voting level), I followed up on an email inviting me to meet up with a couple of county and state level representatives. The email clearly stated 4:30 PM today. I just double-checked the original email. But when I arrived at the venue and asked about the event, they said it had been held at 10:30 AM this morning.

The previous time I tried to go to a local meet-up held at a coffee shop, I hung out in the coffee shop all morning (a normal thing for me to do anyway, so not a problem) and the rep never showed. I commented on it to the barista who said, "Oh, yeah, I saw them poke their heads in and look around then they left again."

Contemplating whether to make it 0-for-3 in a couple weeks at a different town hall meet-up I've put on my calendar.

Is it me? Is this a strategy and somehow I need to get on the super-secret "we'll tell you when and where it really is" email list? I mean, this is super-blue California so I don't think my reps are chickening out. But I'm not feeling the love.

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Joys of Homeownership

2026-02-21T03:47:29Z

On the positive side, it all got fixed within a few hours.

I've been commenting lately that I felt like my home repair budget was fairly safe because I'd replaced every significant appliance in the house at some point since I acquired the house. (Fifteen years ago. 15! Can you believe it?)

Well, I forgot about the garage door opener. But it didn't forget about me.

I'd just gotten my bike out this morning, then when I went to close the garage door behind me, it made a lot of sad noises and declined to close. Examination showed that several of the side-rollers had jumped out of their tracks. (I'd known that one was out of the track for some time, but I couldn't man-handle it back in and it didn't seem to be causing problems.)

So. This calls for professional help. But first it called for securing the critical garage contents because the door was stuck open and I live on a well-traveled street. That having been done, I went on Yelp, located a relatively local garage door repair company, and got scheduled for a window within a couple hours. OK, good sign.

I solved my anxiety about the lack of door closure by doing yard work in the front yard until the repair guy arrived.

In addition to the roller misalignment (which is now happening on both sides of the door, thanks to my efforts to get it to fail closed) the cables (which evidently get winched up by a heavy-duty spring) are tangled on the spindle rather than being neatly wound on their designated place. So the immediate problem could be solved with brute force: prying the roller track open enough to force the roller back in; disconnecting the cables and rewinding in the correct place. That was going to be about $500 labor. Ok.

But, he says, look: these cables are corroded, and one of the heavy-duty springs is rusty. Furthermore, you really should use rollers with longer shanks, because these have a risk of popping off their sockets on the door. (I'm sure my description is not helping anyone visualize this.) So, he says, I'm going to recommend you replace pretty much all the door-lifting hardware. That's going to be a couple thousand.

I wince, but I can see the truth of everything he's saying. So he goes to work on all that and gets it all back in working order. And then he says, "So, you don't have to do this, and I don't get any commission or anything if you do, but the motor on your door opener is 20 years old, it isn't really as powerful as it should be for how much you use it, and it's probably going to fail within the next couple years.

So that was a couple more thousand. But now I have a fancy garage door opener that talks to my iPhone and includes a security camera. And maybe--just maybe--now I really have replaced the last appliance that came with the house when I bought it. Unless I've forgotten something else.

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More tax nattering

2026-02-15T20:48:33Z

Finished doing the paper draft of my taxes and have enough confidence that I understand all the new (retirement-related) elements to be ready to go online and fill in the forms. Also did a very rough draft of my expected 2026 federal taxes (based on 2025 forms and projected numbers) and I don't see a need to adjust my current withholding at this point. Of course, the rough draft doesn't include the unknown amounts I'll be getting from Bayer (pro-rated bonus from last year and what's likely to be a very minimal long-term-incentive program bonus), which will only apply for 2026. So 2027 will actually be the first year when I'm working entirely on retirement numbers. (As usual, I'm using spreadsheets as my self-soothing mechanism and nattering on about the results.)

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Am I Too Prickly?

2026-02-14T19:09:40Z

I think people who follow me on social media (especially here and fb) are aware of my habit of explicitly noting when I don't want "helpful" commentary/suggestions/feedback on something I"m describing--and, conversely, explicitly noting when I'm seeking input. But sometimes I worry that people take that as a signal that I don't want interaction at all. (Why in the world would I post things about my life if I didn't want any interaction?)

I'd love to have more actual conversations on social media. Back and forth, discussions of topics of mutual interest. But it feels like so few people stop to ask themselves, "Am I phrasing my participation in this conversation in a way that implies the original poster is ignorant or incompetent? Is there a way I could rephrase that makes it clear that I'm providing additional information for other readers, rather than implying this is something the original poster doesn't know? Or that I'm amplifying and agreeing with the post, rather than contradicting it or poking holes in it?"

Here's a generic example.

OP: [Interesting Fact]
Commenter: [Subsidiary Information that could be assumed to be known by anyone who already knows Interesting Fact]

Compare to:
OP: [Interesting Fact]
Commenter: What I love about that [Interesting Fact] is [Subsidiary Information].

The first implies the OP doesn't know the fact. The second shows solidarity by assuming the OP knows the fact and the commenter is sharing their love for it.

Now, one could object that people differ in their ability to communicate in nuanced fashions and some people just aren't good at analyzing on the fly how their comments might be taken. But from the other side, people differ in their ability to assume good will in the face of past experience. A mirror-world version of "I'm not good at reading social cues" is "I'm working very hard to read social cues and the false positives are abundant." Telepathy still hasn't been invented.

Anyway, I don't know why I'm whining about this (given that the inciting interaction was incredibly trivial).

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Drumroll please

2026-02-13T06:41:15Z

I think I now have all the data and documents and forms assembled to do my transition-to-retirement-year tax returns. Today's task was to turn last year's financial spreadsheet into my usual yearly summary, then put the relevant data from it and all the various W2s and 1099s and whatnot into my tax data template (which needed to be updated for several new types of documents and data).

Because of how my brain works best, I'm going to go to the length of printing out paper copies of the forms to noodle on, even though I'll be filing online. And I'll be reading through the pdfs of the instruction booklets and highlighting everything that looks relevant. But on my first skim through, I think this is going to be easier than I feared. The schedule C stuff (writing business) is the same as always. And although the worksheet to calculate how much of my social security income is taxable is convoluted, the instructions walk you through it step by step.

One new wrinkle is that they now have a separate "1040-senior" form, evidently to simplify the instructions for the enhanced standard deduction for seniors (which get convoluted if you're married filing jointly but only one of you is a senior). I'll compare it point by point with the standard 1040 to make sure it doesn't do anything else bizarre.

And despite the rather chaotic nature of how my withholding is set up for the various retirement incomes, I think it's still pretty close to the right amount. Once I have this year's returns done, I can probably do a mock return for next year and see what adjustments I should make on the withholding.

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Fiction LIne-up is Public

2026-02-10T02:37:14Z

I gambled that my authors would read their email and respond within a few days and held off on the On the Shelf podcast until I could include the announcement. Offers went out on the 6th, the podcast would normally have gone up on the 7th. As of this morning I still had one acceptance yet to come in, but I'd scripted the show and decided to go ahead and record. Then the final acceptance came in just as I was setting up the mic. (I wouldn't have uploaded the episode until everything was final, but it was unlikely I'd have to change the script.)

Once again, I'm pledging myself to get ahead of the game. I'll send out payments tomorrow and any suggested edits by the end of the week, along with requests for bios and pronunciation guides. I'll be doing all the narration myself this year. So I have half a chance of actually getting everything recorded well in advance. (But only half a chance, because inevitably I get distracted by something else, thinking, "Well, I have plenty of time.")

I bought five stories again this time, due to some short lengths, though I'm not sure whether I'll do a double-episode or use one as a special bonus fiction episode at some point. The podcast is having its 10th anniversary this year, which might make a natural context for that.

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Reading Submissions

2026-02-04T19:44:55Z

There's a terrible tension when reading fiction submissions between wanting to share the experience (both the good and the questionable) and knowing that no good ever came from discussing specific submissions in public. [1] Especially when...*waves hi to some of my submitters who also read this journal.*

If I had an editorial team, then that would be the appropriate forum for such discussions, but the project simply isn't big enough to call for anyone besides me. (Also, part of the joy of a small project is that ability to cater to one's own tastes without the need for compromise.)

I think as the Fiction Series has evolved, I've gotten a bit more skilled at identifying and articulating what I'm looking for and what drives my decisions. I've blogged a couple times in general terms on that topic (and link to it in the Call for Submissions) so even those who don't follow me personally in social media can have a glimpse inside my decisions process, if they care to.

Anyway, nothing really important here, just ruminating on my current priority. Only 7 more stories to read in the first round, then comes the harder part.

[1] Conventions have occasionally had panels on the theme "it came from the slush pile" where stories get shared, but anything that gets specific enough that a particular story/author could be identified is rather in bad taste.

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Veggies of My Estates

2026-02-04T00:59:45Z

I forget whether I discovered the technique for turning artichoke leaves into cardoons earlier than last year. Having solidly learned the knack, I've started the harvest already (while the globes won't start showing up for a couple more months). The result is basically a slightly bitter "carrier" for other flavors, but they add bulk and fiber to a dish. They go well with marinara sauce, for example.

I actually got my act together to grow some "winter vegetables" this year and have a dozen cabbages thinking about doing something, as well as some assorted greens. Haven't checked to see if the peas have come up, but there are also onions that were started as seed last spring that have gotten as far as scallions now. This is the tricky time of year when I don't have the irrigation turned on, so I need to pay attention to whether it's raining often enough to keep things going.

I harvested all dozen or so of my grapefruit and they're chilling happily in the crisper drawer. (Some critter had gotten to a couple of them, so I didn't want to leave them on the tree.) I have a half grapefruit every couple of days, since the word is that they don't always play well with blood thinners and I don't want to overdo it, but that'll take me through the end of the month or so.

The juice oranges are mostly ripe and I'm picking one or two at a time. (I think there may be a couple dozen in total across three trees.) And it's time to Do Something with this year's Seville orange crop, which reminds me I need to reach out to the friend who wants some for marmalade. (I can never remember what the middle vowel in marmalade should be on the first try.)

Other than that, I need to spend a lot more time pruning and weeding during the wet-and-fallow season. But the first daffodil bloomed today, so there's that.

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Winding down the travels

2026-01-24T00:51:45Z

I left NYC on Tuesday and did the train-bus-rental-car thing to get up to Augusta ME, where I've been enjoying a couple days visiting with my brother and sister-in-law, getting the tour of their current livestock (goats and chickens and geese oh my!) and finally getting a chance to see the small theater-and-studio/shop complex that they bought and have been working on turning into a going concern. (Going slowly, but to interesting places.) This was accompanied by sitting in on a rehearsal for A Doll's House: Part 2 (someone's modern "15 years later" extension of Ibsen's play). I've interspersed that with a couple of "me days" getting writing done and recovering from all the peopleing I've been doing.

This morning I got a notice that the train leg of my trip back toward the airport was cancelled and it wasn't until this evening that I had the time to play phone tag with Amtrak to reschedule. (I was concerned that it was a weather cancellation, which would affect in which direction I rescheduled.) After all that, I'll be taking a slightly later train and still getting to the Newark airport at a reasonable hour Sunday evening. I have an airport hotel room that night for a scheduled flight out Monday morning. We'll see if the planes are flying Monday. If not, I have multiple options for what to do. Playing it by ear. Life is an adventure.

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Amusing Encounter

2026-01-18T01:26:14Z

So today's adventure was going uptown to meet friends at the Cloisters and see the special exhibit (on sexuality in the Middle Ages) with them. I took the subway up then walked the last bit through the park with snow softly falling. As I'm walking along the path, a couple coming the other way stop to compliment my coat. (This is the long green redingote with the shoulder capes.) I thanked them and told them about how I loved to make historically-inspired clothing and we chatted briefly then went on our way.

So I saw the exhibit and the rest of the museum. Went to an early dinner with my friends. Then caught the subway back toward downtown, but because it's a weekend I had to overshoot my destination and double back from Columbus Circle. So I'm standing on the platform at Columbus and I hear this voice, "I'd recognize that coat anywhere!" It's the same couple (at the opposite end of town). We chatted some more while waiting for our trains and it turns out they both went to Berkeley for college. What a small world.

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