So this year, as so often in May, you get to pay your taxes. I'm not yet listed on any registers, so I have to go get a form from a Tax Center. Those tend to have...rather special opening hours (they open late and close very early, and they're clogged with people at this time of the year, obviousy).
But the French civil service thought about people who don't want to walk to a Tax Center: you can order an online form from their website.
That would be cool... if only the "name" field of their order form wasn't so ridiculously short. My full surname (which is long, but not horrendously so), barely fits into it--and leaves no space whatsoever for me to enter my first name. That means that if you have a compound first or last name, or anything out of the ordinary, you're screwed.

Gotta love this.

Mahabharata update: finished book 1, which leaves me with the sinking feeling that books 4 through 12 are going to be all battle-scenes...
Favourite moment: the hero Arjuna falls in love with his friend Krishna's sister. He asks Krishna what he should do. Krishna's answer: "well, she's going to have a bridegroom-choosing ceremony. I could introduce you, but you know women can be so unreliable when it comes to choosing things. I think you'd better abduct her".
Which he does.
And which she likes.
*headdesk*

35. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (Mary Roach).

On the off-chance that it matters, I have not read any of Roach's other books.  I do own a copy of Spook, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

This one is--truth in advertising--a look at sex research.  Roach traipses from lab to lab and book to book, recounting wacky experiments and writing gossipy footnotes about wacky experimenters, sometimes becoming a wacky experimental subject herself.  There's certainly enough wackiness to go around, right down to one study that involved dressing rats in polyester suits.

But even though I hadn't heard of most of these studies before, there's not a whole lot here that was news to me, if that makes any sense.  And the overall tone is a little too wink-wink-nudge-nudge even for me; I found myself wishing more than once that Roach would stop cracking sly jokes and do some analyzing, already.  (And I love me some sly jokes.  You know the situation was dire when...)

All in all, neither as entertaining nor as informative as the NPR segment I heard in which Roach was describing the book.  Oh, well.

Semi-final action between Jose-Luis Abajo of Spain and Fabrice Jeannet of France (Jeannet won, 15 - 12).

( +4 )

Story of my life, lately.

:: laughs ruefully ::

Well, quality of life just went way the hell up.  Willa Catheter is no more.  And I love you guys so much that as a token of my respect and affection, I am not posting relevant photos.

Yet

Dinner was great, relaxed which was good as I got home about 5 mins before he arrived :)

There was hard drive fossicking, Mind Freak (Chriss Angel, you are so hot and talented!) and I made the Mango Chevron:

Ingredients:
8 kid butterfly chops
125 mls lemon juice
2 teaspns curry powder
2 teaspns brown sugar
2 teaspns butter
1 tblespn cornflour
425 gm can sliced mangoes, drained,reserve juice
1 chicken stock cube, crumbled

Marinate chops in a combination of lemon juice, curry powder and brown sugar for at least 10 minutes. Drain and reserve marinade. Heat butter in a frying pan. Fry chops for 4-5 minutes on each side. Remove from pan and keep warm. Blend cornflour with mango juice and add to pan with reserved marinade and crumbled stock cube. Bring to the boil, stirring constantly until thickened. Add mango slices and allow to heat through. Serve chops with mango sauce accompanied by seasonal vegetables and steamed Basmati or Jasmine rice.

It's written as a quick cook recipe, and it was fast and delicious. That said, you could play with it quite easily and slow cook it. Approval from diners was lovely - will have to make this again I think. Golden Syrup Dumplings for dessert - stovetop ones. Yay for a wide flat bottomed frypan to cut the simmering time to 10 mins!

My Seagate drive still hates me. I've tested it with my Maxtor cord, and still no love. Appears to be the connecting point on the drive that's faulty. I'll talk to someone knowledgable for my options to fix it. Suggestions welcome.

I love cooking for ascetic_hedony, one it's an easy way to catch up as he likes to be cooked for, or at least he keeps coming over for me to cook for him :P He lets me test new recipes on him. And he tells K stuff that I can't get away with saying ;) *grins* There were several funny moments.

Massage booked with massage therapist of awesome, but have to wait till NEXT Saturday. Given the pain I'm in right now, I'm whimpering at the thought.

More gym tomorrow, currently it's different thigh bits that are owie whenever I move. Tomorrow I expect that they will either be better or worse, but hopefully not the same. I also expect that by tomorrow night my arms will have joined them.

Tomorrow night I am doing my inpromptu STAT workshop with black_samvara and maharetr - I am so lucky to have friends like them!

Brunchy thing with madradish on Sunday and then WASFF meeting.

Can't remember what I'm supposed to be doing Saturday night, hopefully nothing!

So, I'm teaching my housemate to cook - what tips did you find most useful when you were first learning to cook for yourself, meal like stuff - or really anything. I'm putting stuff together for said housemate to use and draw on.

Last but not least, lady_niav brought me back Haighs from Adelaide *feels loved* and I had lunch with her and we caught up - was a high point of an otherwise busy and invoice wrangling day.

Also, lj user="amberfocus"> started a new angsty fic of awesome. I should know to wait till at least a few chapters are up, but noooooo I can't help myself and start reading and now I'm pining for more. Loving every second of it.

It is so my bedtime now.

ME: "Hey look! I found a copy of the Domesday Book in a secondhand bookshop!"
SONIA: "Why the hell would you read that? It'd be like reading the phone book."
ME: "Like reading an 11th century phone book!"

Wet read came back on the path report.  Clean margins, clean lymph nodes.  I'll be around to bother you guys for quite some time come.

I'm going to live.

Originally published at RajanKhanna.com. You can comment here or there.

…can be such a load of shit.

My god, I’m sitting here watching a Voyager episode (don’t ask) and it’s appallingly bad.

BSG has spoiled me for a lot of other shows.

I'm off the IVs, as you can see here:

Walker Cam

The real reason for the walker isn't balance — I'm ok with that.  The real reason is to manage Willa Catheter.  Her bag just doesn't accessorize well with anything I'm carrying.  I've been walking more distance every day,  The epidural was taken out yesterday and I'm on pain control by oral medication, but I lost bowel function during the Great Pain Crash, so I'm not being sprung until that stuff restarts correctly.

In other news, I am feeling a lot more normal, as evidenced by my dreams.  Last night I dreamt that this same team had operated on my Dad, then our daily care had been outsourced to a university dorm.  <lj user="bobbrown"> was the ward doctor, and was taking great pleasure in explaining to me the joys of a low-bid menu.

Back to bed for a while to surf the Dilaudid some more.  I'll try to be on later to read email and comment

Oh for fuck's sake.

So today, since I DON'T have to go teach and DON'T have some pressing papers to grade or exams to design or lecture to write (hee hee!) I've decided to spend my morning hours writing a blog about *gasp!* writing! That hasn't happened for a while. But I've got a list of topics and things that I've been MEANING to blog about regarding writing and SF and Fantasy in general, and I hope to WILL start blogging on those on a more regular basis now that the day job is finished. It can't interfere with the finishing of the current novel of course, but I can only write so many hours per day on that without achieving burn-out. So, here's the latest writing-related blog post on:

( The Muddle In The Middle )

And that's the latest writing entry. If you're in Binghamton, NY, today (May 14th) remember to stop on by the signing at the Binghamton University bookstore from Noon to 3pm, and if you can't make that there's also the Meet & Greet at Antonio's in Endicott tonight (May 14th) starting at 5:30 for an hour or so. Book to buy and get signed will be at both events.

Everyone's been terribly nice to me about this Sony award. Which is very kind, and I'm very grateful. Some have emailed asking if they can see pictures of a statuette, others wondering if I gave a speech.

It'd be lovely to pretend it was really as grand as all that, and that I deserve all these compliments. But in the interests of truth and ego restraint, I've decided to put down what actually happened. Oh, and for posterity too - you know, if some great asteroid hits the earth soon and eradicates most human life from the planet, I'd like some future descendants, struggling out of a new neanderthal civilisation, to prise open this Dell computer and extract from it a fair description of what a Sony Award Ceremony really is. (Maybe they could start a new religion around it.)

The black tie invitation was somewhat frustrating. I have lots of smart suits. If I'm not going to a wedding of some sort, I'm finding ways of getting out going to weddings. In this sort of London climate, my posh clothes for best get more outings than my sunglasses.  But I've not been to a black tie do since I was at university, and even if I could find the right wardrobe, I doubt I could squeeze into the trousers now. So I had to rent. That was useful, though, that was the first great social divider. I spent half an hour crammed into the BBC toilets, alongside lots of other men buffing their shoes and trying to work out what a cummerbund is for. ...And then, in the corner, there'd be the odd man who *knew*. Who didn't need his bow tie to be a clip on. Who had trousers specially laundered to his exact thigh thickness. They were the *serious* nominees. The ones who had done these awards so often, they'd actually *bought* the suit.

I'd never received a Sony nomination before. I was longlisted once, I gather, for the drama award, for one of my plays - but I'd given up expecting to get any further. The two most contested awards are the ones for Comedy and Drama, and they're also the only two for which I'm ever going to be eligible. I'm unlikely to get the nod for Most Hippest DJ, or Disaster News Reporter of the Year. So when a text came a couple of months ago, telling me I was going to the Sonys, I honestly had no idea what it was talking about. I didn't even recognise the name of the programme - because the title I'd written under was specific for my story, not for the show itself. Last year the chaps at BBC7 had the bright thought of commissioning a writer to devise and script the first instalment of a serialised short story - something odd and intriguing enough that it'd get the audience's creative juices flowing, and they could submit further episodes building upon and twisting the plot, leaving it each week on a cliffhanger. My job was to stimulate discussion of it on the message boards, give the odd encouraging radio interview, and pick up the strands for episode thirteen and conclude it all in a coherent way. (Which I did. Sort of. Although the lesbian lover artificial intelligence plotline introduced in episode seven never really made sense to me, and I left it as a loose thread.)

So it was a game, really. And the category we were nominated for was Best Competition. Over the evening I was asked by a lot of BBC honchos wearing black tie suits, all of which were better fitting than mine, what I was in for. It was a little like what you'd expect in a prison. When I said I was up for Best Competition, they'd smile and pat me on the head and give me a biscuit. I began to understand this wasn't one of the most prestigious categories. I felt a little bit like it would be meeting Al Pacino at the Oscars, and telling him I was hoping for the award for Best Achievement Used in Piano Sound Editing in a Foreign Film.

But the funny thing was, being in the same room, wearing the same clothes, we all *looked* equally important. It was a big event. On the way in, arriving in our respective taxis, we had to pick our way through two levels of security checks, and gaggles of autograph hunters. And the hotel that was booked for the event was massive. To give you a sense of that: all the invited guests were seated at numbered round tables, with a dais in the middle of the room where we would collect our awards. Each table seated about ten people. There were 136 of these tables. I was allocated table 25. I had hoped to meet up with a friend during the ceremony, and get a little sloshed with him - but he was on table 111. Which was about two and a half miles away. Because it was hard to see, high above the seating area were ten huge video screens covering the event. When the ceremony was taking a breather, when we were networking or eating, photographs of all the nominees were projected upon these screens, one by one, in rotation. Oh, look, there's a huge photograph of Jonathan Ross! There's a huge photograph of Chris Moyles! There's a huge photograph of Robert Shearman! (Who the hell's he? I don't know. He's got a very moody looking picture, though.) I'd say that you can get used to seeing your face glaring out of a big screen in artistic pose - but you don't. Every five minutes the rotation would get round to me again, and I always squawked, and pointed, and laughed. The more with each glass of wine, probably. Jonathan Ross didn't do that. Jonathan Ross was cool.

There were 35 awards to be given. That's a lot. Checking the programme we were given, I found out I was up for award number 13. I was told that was a good position to be in - early enough so that the audience aren't too bored and drunk, late enough that no-one actually cares much. We were given first courses of our supper, as Paul Gambaccini warmed up his host act, and the BBC prepared all their hand held cameras so that each award could be beamed into the houses of anyone fool enough to be watching the live webcast. I thought it was a savoury pie. It turned out to be caramelised pears. It still tasted pretty savoury to me. 

It was agreed that my producer, my actress, and myself would all be the ones to get up on to the dais should we win. And that the producer would give the speech, whilst I stood behind smiling and looking gracious. I thought was a great idea, and practised my acceptance smile for ages. The first award was the Live Event Coverage Award. I relaxed - I thought it'd be pretty unlikely I'd get a last minute shoo-in for this. I was surprised that they read out not a single winner, but opened with the Bronze Award, then Silver, all the way up to Gold. Only the Gold had to get up and do the speech thing. I was delighted. I told our producer that meant we had three chances od getting a legitimate award! He agreed. He said that if you were one of the nominees who *didn't* get placed, though, that it made it that much more humiliating. I didn't care. I was now hoping we wouldn't get a Gold. Silver or Bronze would mean I'd won a Sony, with all the publicity it suggested, but would mean I wouldn't have to get up from my seat and put down my wine glass. Everybody wins!

Consequently, when award number thirteen rolled around, and some celebrity I didn't recognise got up to read out the winners (they'd used up Joan Collins on one of the cooler awards), I was the only one on the table who shrieked with delight when we got the Bronze. "We got the Bronze!" I said to my producer. "It's brilliant!" "Yes," he said, "it's quite good." "I should say," I agreed, and poured us both more wine. Someone else won the Gold, and gave a speech, and got some plaque in perspex. I don't know who. We moved on to the champagne.

It was now about nine o'clock. I think. There were another 22 awards to be presented. (Including The Promo Award, and The Station Imaging Award.) I ate a little. I didn't drink that much, actually - I sort of wanted to go home now and get into my comfy clothes, but had to wait it out. There was a lot of schmoozing. I lied to a lot of people that I'd really found their work contributed to the overall glow of excellence to which the radio services must strive. At about two in the morning I reassured a lot of drunken BBC producers and editors that not winning an award probably wouldn't be the end of their career, and that they should be happy with their nomination. (They didn't believe me. One woman cried.) I was asked to dance by the producer of the Jonathan Ross Show, but I'd been getting on so well with her that I didn't want to ruin any illusions she might have of me as svelte and smart and declined. And I met Paul Darrow. And didn't tell him he'd been hammy in the Doctor Who story 'Timelash' in 1985. I was proud of myself for that.

So there you go. I'm the winner of a Sony Award! It makes me feel very proud, and it sounds great. But it's not for a particularly *good* award, and it was the Bronze. But that's okay. It was for short story experimentation, and what they said about that makes me very proud. And I got to eat caramelised pear. You can't do that every day.

Two years ago, journey2master  arrived on my doorstep with his suitcase.

At the time I wrote this:

Sunday was an extra special day for me. It's been a long time since I've had this kind of intense physical and spiritual connection with someone, brief as it was. journey2master  was here from mid-afternoon until he flew back to San Francisco this morning...

We walked down to the stone spiral and walked it, separately, for Samhain, then walked up to Westgarth and to Denn for dinner. Back home and it was one of those nights, discussions and intimacy ranging across crazy landscapes. It ended at about 5 this morning in my fabulous huge bath tub drinking scotch and eating organic orange chocolate...

What a perfect way to start the year. What a perfect way to warm my new home, first the housewarming and then this uisge beatha of a man ending the drought (and it's been a long time between drinks). I asked the universe to let love into my home and my heart and it brings me this!

There was more, but that's private. I honestly thought it was going to be a lovely one-nighter and nothing more. I even titled the post "Ships in the Night". Anyway, happy anniversary, my darling. Thank you for knocking on my door. Thank you even more for ringing me when you got home and inviting me over to your place too. I love you.

Any ideas as to what to do with a sudden deluge of small nashis? We don't actually eat them. Can I make nashi pie?

Someone on my f-list (maybe buymeaclue?) tipped me off regarding the National Geographic photo feed, and it is way way awesome!

If you're not friending it, get over there right now and do so! Purrtiness abounds.

she starts singing the theme music from The A Team, you just sing along...

A kind of simple dinner tonight, two types of sausages with corn, and Aubergines with Tomato and Chickpeas. It was my first time to use the pomegranite molasses. One and a half tablespoons did indeed flavour the entire dish. It was lovely. It wouldn't make it to my favourites list yet, but was good, and probably will make for a shared meal one night.

( Bad photos of dinner. Enjoy! )

A friend of mine having a frustrating time at work reminded me of THIS timeless site:

http://despair.com/success.html


Nothing like despair to put a smile on your face.

You know people most often see the grouchy disillusioned side of the Last Short Story reading project, but there are some days, like today, where I feel so totally excited and honoured to be part of this whole world reading-writing thing, this amorphous blobulous jelly of artistic miscellany, this twelve-tentacled dancing thing of variety and substance, of gentle moments and wonder.

To think, that there are people in the world who think that the things we as a species think up *with our brains* and write *with pens or puters or other implements* are actually important. How fucking cool is that? That amid all the stupid and the fighting fucking and fear that our primal ancestors bequeathed us, we take time out to play at being humans, that we share ideas and try our hardest and succeed or fail we try to make each other think or feel or just smile. That's cool, right?

And one of the things I love about doing LSS is the little moments where you suddenly realise how much of the jellyfish you can see, how all the little bits fit together and how they grow and shift and change, how one thing gains perspective from its reflection against another, how the parts that seem useless can be vital over the long term, how you can become entranced by a single limb, a single hair, a single cell, how it wiggles in the wind and how it does its little task...

I love that there are so many people trying so hard to add beauty to the world, and I love that I have had the opportunity to appreciate so much of it.

Now, back to being curmudgeonly :-)

I don't really have the greatest understanding of US politics, but is the theory this?

That if you run down and besmirch your own party's candidate enough, when the actual election begins the opposition will have nothing left to say?

This was the episode that convinced me that new Who really knew what it was doing.

It's a lovely episode. The Dalek is actually given some real menace. After all the years of being defeated by the Doctor, I must admit that I don't find the Daleks that scary anymore as a rule. But this episode does a great job at demonstrating the threat of one lone dalek. Statton, too, is a great middle-level threat, and he's played with just the right injection of believability amid the meglomania.

The climax with Rose is beautifully orchestrated, and the episode manages to both do something different with the daleks' psyches and also avoid schmaltz by justifying it logically. I've seen the ending three times now, and it still made me cry. *sniff*! So it's either really good or really bad :-)

Seriously though, the final scene is beatifully written and played.

I'll leave the final summation to Jen, who says:

"I loved that dalek! I would have been its friend."