A Curious Statistical Anomaly

We had a heck of a bad storm over the weekend. It started snowing on Friday and ended late Saturday night. For the first time in just about forever, I managed to take photo before the storm got going.

As you can see, we do have some snow left from the 1/2 to 1 inch dusting we’d gotten a few days before this bit storm. Here’s a photo taken during the storm.

Bird line up to eat during the storm

Note all the birds on the railing and at the feeder. It seems our local birds know where to get food when it storms. The minute the snow started on Friday they came knocking on the sliding deck doors. Then gathered to eat from the feeder. I say they knocked on the door but depending on the bird they peck at the glass or flap against it to get our attention. They tend to do this when the feeder is empty, especially when it’s snowing.

Here’s a photo of what it looks like today. The railing had been cleared off by the birds already.

The same view after the storm

There’s some glare in all the photos because they were taken through the glass doors but you get the idea.

In total we got about 2 feet of snow. When we woke this morning, we found that the neighbors plow guy had come through and plowed the main dirt road we all use. That means we only have to shovel from the carport to the road that was plowed — about 500 feet. So far Hyperion has shovel a single shovel width from the house to the car and then cleared off the car. He started doing two single shovel widths for the tires to the road. Actually the snow is too deep for body of the car to clear it (and it’s a pretty high clearance on that Honda). So, after he gets the two wheel lanes cleared he’ll start on the center strip. I really wish I could help but last time I threw out my back so I’m just a cheerleader this time.

We’re really lucky. We didn’t lose power and a lot of people in Maryland did. We didn’t lose any trees that we know of and another friend had two trees go down in their neighborhood and they’re stuck at home until the trees get taken care of.

Meanwhile for added fun, the weather people are predicting another storm midweek. I hope we get shoveled out from this one by then.

A Contest: The Sourcebooks, the publisher of Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape, is willing to support a giveaway for the US and Canadian readers of this interview. Leave a comment on the post and I will chose a random comment author on Sunday February 7th. I’ll contact the winner to get their snail mail address. Winner will receive one set of three books in the Darcys and Bingleys series).

Marsha Altman continues the story of The Darcys and the Bingleys in Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape, bringing us to 1812. This is book three of the series following The Darcys and the Bingleys and The Plight of the Darcy Brothers. The books are a delight, continuing the lives of some of literature favorite characters Elizabeth Bennet Darcy and Fitzwilliam Darcy. One reviewer said that “that [these books] would please even Jane Austen.” The more I read about Austen’s wit and humor, the more I do believe that she would appreciate Marsha Altman’s continuation of the story.

It may be Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape but you gave the women a very big role this time. Just how much fun was it to pair up the unlikely duo of Elizabeth and Caroline?

Marsha: A lot of fun, but also a little tricky. Even though nine years have passed since the events of Pride and Prejudice, these women still haven’t completely warmed to each other. Elizabeth is still witty and stubborn, and Caroline has to retain a certain edge to her for her to remain Caroline Bingley, even if she’s now Caroline Maddox. It’s not my attempt to make these characters unrecognizable, even if they do evolve significantly as they go through milestones in their lives, particularly marriage and children. Nor was it appropriate to have them constantly sniping at each other, because their journey was very serious. So I had to find a kind of balance there. Darcy and Dr. Maddox actually have more time to bicker, because they have few ways to pass the time while they’re waiting to be rescued.

So much of this resonated with Bram Stoker’s Dracula only without the vampires but with all the Gothic scariness. There’s even a ninja. Did you intend such a homage? Or am I just seeing a connection you didn’t intend?

Marsha: Just a straight-out correction here: There are two vampires in this story. The book just never says it outright, but the hints are hidden in the details. They reappear in other literature I’ve written that’s not Pride and Prejudice related and is either going to be published soon or I’m hoping will sell later this year. And there are no ninjas, only samurai (book 8 has ninjas).

The homage is entirely intentional, but more for the reader than the characters. To them, Transylvania is a place they’ve never heard of and can’t locate on a map before this story begins, except within the context of Brian Maddox having mentioned it was in Austria somewhere in the previous book. Let’s remember that Dracula by Bram Stoker wasn’t published until 1897, and that book was the formation of the modern vampire legend and its association with Transylvania, whereas previously the legends about vampires were less centralized to a place and more nebulous. Vlad the Impaler, on whom Dracula the character is supposedly based, was actually from Wallachia, not Transylvania, and his legend wasn’t widespread until the book was published. So the name “Transylvania” wouldn’t strike instant fear into the hearts of people in 1812. It would be intimidating for being so far east, beyond the known and safe world of the European Continent even if it was technically part of the Austrian Empire at the time, because of its remoteness. The fear comes from leaving familiar Regency England and traveling into a dangerous backwater area, where the “other” is the real scare, not the supernatural.
Nonetheless I chose Transylvania because it has an instant connotation for my audience, and it does have a wealthy historical tradition of folklore to draw from in the scenes that use it. When you’re in a mysterious place, it’s an easy step to be drawn into the foreboding local tales that might surround it, so it’s a simple jump from “scary count who kills people” to “vampires, witches, and warlocks.”

I should remark that this isn’t totally fair to Romanian history. Transylvania had plenty of European, cosmopolitan nobles who had encountered the Enlightenment and were beyond this nonsense (there’s one in the book), but the villains are particularly backwards to heighten the experience.

It seems with each book that Mr. Darcy has to face some of his inner devils or at least learn to broaden his view of the world and the people in it. Do you enjoy tormenting him? Have you got much more torment in store for him?

Marsha: This is as bad as it ever gets for Darcy. Seriously, I let him off easy from here on. He’s better equipped to deal with strife that involves his family lineage in future books after his experiences in this book. This book was my attempt to stretch as far as I could my interpretation of Darcy. In many circles, there are two schools of thought to explain Darcy’s actions in Pride and Prejudice – either he made his mistakes because he was “proud” and then genuinely learned from his actions and changed his characters, or he was “shy” and misinterpreted, causing multiple misinterpretations on both ends that needed to get cleared up before the right people could get married. Austen provides fodder for both explanations: Mrs. Reynolds, on Elizabeth’s visit to Pemberley, goes out of her way to proclaim that her master has always been good and kind to everyone, and Darcy admits at Rosings that he’s not good in making easy conversation with strangers, leading to the “shy” interpretation. Then you have Darcy at the end saying that he was spoiled as a child and expected only the best, leading to the “proud” interpretation. I’ve always sided with “shy” because it makes Darcy a better man – he’s not a jerk who reformed so much as someone who made bad decisions and then corrected them.

Today we have a larger understanding of people who are uncomfortable around other people, myself being one of them, and don’t have an easy time making new friendships or retaining old ones. For people like this, parties full of strangers can feel like living hell. In extreme examples, you have Social Anxiety Disorder, where people can actually develop shortness of breath in the presence of too many people, and you have medication for it. I don’t believe that these problems didn’t exist in the past, they just weren’t acknowledged or understood. I am not, for the record, diagnosing Darcy with SAD (his symptoms don’t match), but pushed to the edge as he is in this book, the darker side of whatever makes him an unsocial person comes out in full force, and coupled with a genetic predisposition you have a serious problem on your hands that tests not just him but everyone around him. It’s a pretty radical interpretation of Darcy, but I like doing new things.

It appears that Gregoire may be learning to relax a bit. You’ve taken all the characters in new directions that wouldn’t have been expected just one book ago. But, it all feels so consistent with their growth. Can you tell us in some very general terms what we might have to look forward to in future volumes?

Marsha: G-d willing, this series will keep being published by my benevolent publisher Sourcebooks, and the next book will be mostly concerned with Grégoire, and his spiritual evolution after some events force him to return to England. Grégoire is like his half-sister Georgiana in that he believes in the good in everyone, but he’s a Darcy, so that makes him stubborn as hell about the way he wants to live his life, even if it seems in direct conflict with the way a modern person (in Regency terms) should live their life. In the fourth book you also have the emerging characters of the children. George Wickham (the third), Darcy’s half-nephew, is old enough to be in University, and Geoffrey Darcy is about to leave for Eton, and Georgiana Bingley is getting ready to enter society, so the shape of their characters as adults is starting to emerge, and the parents have to take a greater hand in trying to guide them into adulthood, where potential fortune or disaster awaits depending on their behavior. When they’re little kids, you can kind of let them run around and occasionally give them instruction, but the stakes become much higher much faster in their teenage years.

The fifth book, which a lot of my readers on the internet feel is the best book so far (nobody’s had a chance to weigh in on the last book and the Velociraptor-related ending), is the one where most of the children have entered society or are about to do so, and they become instrumental to the conflict and resolution in the story. There are still a lot of young kids running around, but the main cast of the next generation has emerged as players, sometimes to their parents’ disapproval. I didn’t want to write a series where BOOM! the kids are all adults trying to get married and the adults haven’t changed except that they have more gray hair and wear glasses. Books skip ahead a few years to key events, but the evolution is steady and somewhat mapped. Nobody ever stops evolving, because people are always growing, even in their later years.

What’s been the biggest surprise about response to your series?

Marsha: That people who have not read Pride and Prejudice have read it and enjoyed it. My parents re-watched the movie and that helped them out. I really should have included a summary of Pride and Prejudice in an introduction to the first book.

Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape—in stores February 2010

Hilarious and action-packed, this installment brings the Darcy and Bingley families to the year 1812 and the intrigues of the Napoleonic Wars. Darcy and Dr. Maddox go in search of Darcy’s missing half-brother and land in a medieval prison cell.

Much to his dismay, Charles Bingley is left to hold the fort at Pemberley while his sister Caroline, Elizabeth, and Col. Fitzwilliam traverse Europe on a daring rescue. Meanwhile, Lady Catherine de Bourgh kicks up a truly shocking scandal. One never knows what might happen next between the estates of Rosings and Pemberley.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Marsha Altman is a historian specializing in Rabbinic literature in late antiquity, and an author. She is also an expert on Jane Austen sequels, having read nearly every single one that’s been written, whether published or unpublished. She has worked in the publishing industry with a literary agency and is writing a series continuing the story of the Darcys and the Bingleys. She lives in New York.

Marsha Altman continues the story of The Darcys and the Bingleys in Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape, bringing us to 1812. This is book three of the series following The Darcys and the Bingleys and The Plight of the Darcy Brothers. While the lives of the major characters have continued since Pride and Prejudice, Altman has remained true to the character of each person and yet allowed them to grow and change, not to mention beginning a new generation of Darcys and Bingleys.

The book opens as the entire clan gathers at Netherfield, which Mr. Bennet has had to rent, for Kitty’s wedding. It’s an occasion that allows the reader to catch up on the growth that has taken place and refresh their memories of the previous books. It also sets up the relationships between the characters and their families, so what happens later in the story fits into these new and expanding friendships and family connections.

Once past the confused chaos and joy of the wedding, we’re hit with incident after incident with little quiet time to relax until the end of the book. That’s not to say the book is episodic or has gaps that make the story jerky — it’s just much more of an action adventure thriller than the sedately paced story most readers would expect from a Pride and Prejudice follow on. In fact, I don’t think any of Altman’s books are quite what you’d expect, but they are nevertheless some of the best follow on stories to Pride and Prejudice that I’ve read to date. Each volume is filled with humor, quirky happenings, incidents that will have you laughing right out loud, as well as scenes that will catch at your heart and put a tear in your eye.

You probably wonder why I’m not getting to what the book is about, well, it’s a book that brings a lot of characters together in way that you would not expect, doing things you probably would never have thought possible. Lady Catherine de Bourgh finally invites the Darcys to Rosings and of course she has ulterior motives that in themselves bring on some especially trying and unexpected consequences. Dr. Maddox’s brother Brian has invited him to visit with him and his wife in Transylvania. It’s a strange letter and Dr. Maddox feels he must not just respond but take the journey to find out for himself what is going on. Darcy has lost contact with his brother, Gregoire. The war is heating up in Europe and many of the monasteries are being disbanded. Concerned that traveling alone could be dangerous, Darcy and Dr. Maddox decide to travel together. When their wives receive notes that make them suspect that something is going on, Elizabeth and Caroline put aside their differences and set out on a mission to discover what has happened to their husbands.   Bingley and Jane, of course, need to stay behind and watch over all the children, related businesses and establishments. I’ll leave it up to the reader to determine who had the worse part of this adventure.

There are plenty of incidents that occur in England and in Europe and Altman manages to keep us informed on what is happening to each of these various groups: Darcy and Maddox; Elizabeth and Caroline; Gregoire; the Bingleys, and the Fitzwilliams. Just as in life, it’s complicated, but once you begin you just can’t put the book down. I ended up reading it through four times preparing for this review because if I opened it to look up something, I ended up rereading it. In fact, I’m about one third of the way through again.

So don’t waste any time, Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape should be available from Amazon and from wherever you usually buy your books. But don’t start reading until Friday night because you’ll want to finish it in one go and start over again to savor the humor, the adventure, and the pleasure of spending time with the Darcys and the Bingleys.

NOTE: Tomorrow’s post will be an interview with Marsha Altman about Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape and other books planned for the series. Please check back for the interview and to enter a contest to win a set of all three of the books that have been published in this series so far.

A friend pointed me to this YouTube Video about the sameness of urban fantasy book covers and the poses of the female protagonists. Go ahead take a look.

The problem is that often, if not nearly always, authors have no control over their book covers. That’s why a red-headed heroine might be on the cover as a blonde or brunette. Mythical creatures that never show up in the book might be featured prominently on the cover.

It’s not the artist’s fault either as some discussion with cover artists have informed me, it’s seldom within their deadlines that they are actually given a copy of the book to read before they begin the project. Often an artist gets an overview of those items that should be on the cover to make it stand out on the shelves.

The problem is that when a great urban fantasy comes along and sells well, the marketing types forget that people are buying a book with a compelling story and figure if that type of cover sells, then our cover with the same elements should sell our book. Many times the writing and author combine to sell the book, reinforcing the move toward a “look” for the newly emerging sub-genre.

I remember years ago when Fabio was on practically every cover of a romance novel in the bookstore. Some friends and I were in a bookstore, came around a corner and faced a wall of outward facing romance covers. We began to look at them. We figured there were probably about 10 poses which included: girl clutched to man’s leg, girl clutched to man’s back/side/chest, girl draped over man’s arm and so on. The only difference in these poses were the costumes that indicated the period of the romance.

This video certainly makes it seem that things haven’t really changed. That as hard as publishers/artists/authors/art directors try to be different, with the lead times they have for publications, there are bound to be a whole lot of covers that look like fraternal clones.

The Washington Science Fiction Association [http://www.wsfa.org] has created of a literary award to honor the work done by small presses in promoting and preserving science fiction. The WSFA Small Press Award will be given yearly for original short fiction works (17,500 words or fewer) of imaginative literature (e.g., science fiction, fantasy, horror, speculative fiction or like literature) published by a small press.

For the purposes of the award, a small press is defined as a hard copy print or web publication house releasing from 3 to 25 titles per year. Eligible periodicals are those with a paid circulation of fewer than 10,000 in the year that the story is published. Periodicals must have an must pay authors in cash as opposed to non-monetary items. Any story published in a periodical owned by a major publishing house or media producer is not eligible for this award. For complete rules check the website.

For this our 4th Annual WSFA Award, eligible works are those published for the first time in English in 2009. To help us identify worthy pieces, we are asking for small press publishers and authors to nominate stories. (The story does not have to be published by you, although we generally expect you to nominate works from your publications.) You may nominate up to three (3) stories as a publisher, one (1) story as an author.

FOR THIS YEAR THE DEADLINE FOR NOMINATIONS IS April 1st.

Nominated stories _must_ be submitted in electronic form, in any of the common formats (e.g. doc, rtf, pdf). Judging will be blind, that is the name of the author and publisher will be stripped from the story. Therefore, we ask that you either send the story in a format that allows us to edit the file to remove the author’s name, or strip the name yourself but be sure to include the name of the author in the accompanying email message.  Nominations should be sent to admin at wsfasmallpress dot org. The accompanying email should indicate the name of the person or entity that holds the copyright to the story and permission from that person or entity to circulate the story within WSFA for the purposes of judging. We also need to know the publication information (Publication name, issue date) The story WILL NOT be circulated beyond WSFA members and will be housed on a secure, password-protected website.

The award will be presented at the annual WSFA convention, Capclave, held each year in October in the Washington, DC, area. The award winner and the publisher will be notified prior to the convention.

Additional information about the award can be found at the website.

We woke up to a thin blanket of snow covering everything.  Yesterday the ground was bare of snow — today a couple of inches so far.  It’s also cold.  Bone chilling cold.  I’ve stayed in all day.  But one thing snow means is that all the little birds in the area flock to your deck to peck at the window to let us know it’s time to fill the feeder.  I didn’t know birds were so clever.

Yesterday we had an incident with the kerosene heater.  It smoked.  Turned out you need to occasionally jiggle it to make the chimney seat right.  Who knew?  We’d had the same model for years and never jiggled it.  We’d used this heater for the last three months and never jiggled it until yesterday.  When it smoked I turned the heat back and it stopped and thought that was it.  Then I checked on it a few minutes later and it was smoking a bit.  I shut it off.  Then I spent the rest of the day rewashing the clothes that were in the basket waiting to go upstairs as they were covered with soot.  And washing off just about every surface in the living room where the heater is.  When Hyperion got home and got down to check it out (I’ve got arthritis in my knees so I don’t get down that low unless I absolutely positively have to), he found that it had a label with tiny print that said to open the tiny door and jiggle the thingy if it smoked.  He did and its been working since.

Today we cleaned the living room floor and most of the flat surfaces.  I’ve still got to wash windows, walls, floor, and dust all the books and things throughout the upstairs and the level with the heater.  This is due to the fact that we occasionally touch things and find our fingers sooty.  Less this evening than this morning since we’ve been picking at this problem all day.

I really don’t need these types of crises at the end of the month since we’re working on getting the zines up and live on February 1st.  So, far I’m semi-keeping up.   All I’ve got left to do right now is finish and polish my own reviews and do my editorial overviews of the issues. I can see the home stretch just down that long, long, tunnel — the one with the light at the end.  At least I think it’s a light, but it could be a train.  Is that a whistle I hear?…

The good news of today is that my first package for the Rockin’ Sock Club came from Blue Moon Fibers.  I’d looked at the blog and on the Ravelry forum and so many people were reporting that they’d received their yarn and patterns.  But, when I picked up the mail — nothing, nada, zip, zero — no fibery goodness at all.

Today, it was delivered.  So, it’s sitting out so I can admire the yarn.  It comes with two patterns and I’m going to dither for a while on which one to make because they’re both so wonderful looking.  Hyperion says that if necessary we can buy a second skein so I can make them both — Isn’t he the best?  Yeah, of course he is.

Anyway, now I have something to look forward to putting on the needles.  Each year I’ve read about the Rockin’ Sock Club and wanted to join but just didn’t seem to get my act together enough to make the sign-up period willing to spend the money.  Yeah, the world’s going to crap in the economy/financial area but the past year has been very stressful for me with my health and there’s some very inescapable commitments coming up that are inherently stress squared.  So, after talking with Hyperion and going over the budget we decided that I could join this year. [Hyperion here:  There's money and then there's life, and I know which is more important.  Gayle really loves knitting and fiber.  So if the Rockin' Sock Club can bring her some much needed joy, I say it's worth it at twice the price ... or an extra skein of yarn so she can make the second pattern.]

Knitting after all, as every knitter knows, is way cheaper than paying a psychologist by the hour to listen to a litany of stressors that can’t be fixed and can’t be changed because they’re a part of your life that is going to be there until…well, forever.  It’s nice that some people can change their lives, but when a good part of the stress is pain because you have a body that doesn’t function like it should — well, knitting is a way of keeping yourself centered so you can just keep on keeping on.

Once club members are allowed to post photos of their socks publicly, I’ll be sure to post the one I chose to do so you can be as excited as I am about it.  Meanwhile, I’ll touch the fiber and dream of really nice socks until finish this month’s commitments and can cast on.

It’s still cold.  It’s still snowy out there.  But I’m smiling.

I don’t get to knit much except during those times when there’s not much else to do that requires my hands — so I knit when the PC locks up (which lately is a lot and knitting keeps me from trying to get it to work by pressing keys, thus making it worse) or when watching TV or DVDs, when we have company and just sitting and talking.  But somehow, to my surprise I managed to finish a few things that have been hanging around.  You know how it is — a bedroom project, a living room project, an office project, and one that fits in the purse for travel.

First, I finally finished these socks made with Red Heart’s Heart & Sole with Aloe yarn. As usual with self-stripping yarn they’re fraternal socks. The colors aren’t quite right but they’re a beautiful orange, burnt red, purple, brown, yellowish that reminds me of desert sunsets. They’re just my basic sock pattern only with a broken rib pattern on the leg section. Only since I really don’t like doing purl, the purl band only shows on the inside and the outside has some interesting bumps and texture that I really liked.

Next, I blogged about knitting the Baby Fan Mitts of a Paton’s Silk Bamboo yarn in a previous post. The pattern is a free Ravelry download designed by Morgan Wolf that you can find here. The pattern is very clear and the mitts are beautiful and dressy without being too fussy.

I had plenty of the yarn left over so I decided to make a matching cowl to go with the mitts. I used a pattern from one of Barbara Walkers’ books and started knitting. It took a few tries to get what I wanted but here it is drying. (Don’t let the color fool you — this is the same yarn as the Baby Fan Mitts and in the same color — for some reason I just couldn’t get the same color in the pictures. Actual color is a very pretty blue-teal — closer to the mitts photo than the cowl one.

I think it came out pretty good and I’m pleased with it. I’ll try to get a picture with me wearing it at some point. I’ve been thinking of writing the pattern up and posting it but don’t know if there would be much interest. Would there? Should I?

But because now I didn’t have anything but sweaters on the needles, I needed to start another pair of socks. These are a beautiful green/gold/red/yellowy tweed using Paton’s Kroy Socks yarn.

I haven’t yet decided what to do with them. So, I’m making a plain foot and will do something with the leg portion when I get there. I’m debating making these as a Christmas gift for someone so I’ll have to see how the foot looks before deciding how to do the leg. Right now I’m thinking a plain 2×2 knit purl ribbing or some other simple ribbing pattern.

I’m rather pleased with myself at doing so much over the past two months. But then the fibro has been pretty bad and knitting is something I can do even if I can’t really think straight as long as it’s just plain knit and socks are mostly that. Luckily when you’ve been knitting for years even using double pointed needles to do socks is second nature.

I signed up for the Rockin’ Sock Club by Blue Moon Fibers this year. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and I finally managed to hit the enrollment period with the money to do it (just got paid for a freelance gig). I’m really looking forward to getting the first shipment of yarn and patterns. If I can keep up with the socks from the club I should manage to keep my feet warm next winter and hopefully a couple of the pattern will make great gifts for those who keep asking me for socks for those family members who keep hinting for socks.

Saturday was the worst flare up of Fibromyalgia pain I’ve had in over a year. After I woke myself up whimpering, the day seems to slide down a very steep hill.

At first it was my lower back and I took aspirin. Several hours later I’d upgraded to a big pain killer — no difference in pain level. I’m talking 8 to 9 on the 1-10 pain scale. A second big pain pill and a muscle relaxer and I managed to get it down to about a 5. Other than infrequent weeping from the pain — I thought I handled it pretty well.

I didn’t snap at anyone. I didn’t go and sit in the dark closet and hope the world would go away. I even managed to talk to company as if my brain actually functioned. Of course since the company was a friend who was well aware of my Fibro short-coming, I was given a bit of leeway when my attention span seemed a bit shorter than a 2-year-old after four bowls of sugar-laden cereal in a room full of shiny things.

Today, I’m happy to say, I’m back to my usual 3 and finding myself unusually grateful for it. I hope that I don’t have another flare up of this magnitude ever. Yet, I know that I probably will and there’s very little I can do to prepare or avoid it. Thinking over the past several weeks, I can’t see anything that I’ve done that would have triggered it. I’ve been very careful to avoid strenuous activities except in very small doses and with proper warm ups — that includes carrying wash up and down stairs, housework, washing floors, changing beds, cooking, etc.. I keep things to short 15-30 minute intervals with a rest period in between where I relax and rest (read, knit, work on the computer…).

I survived a very bad Saturday that stretched into a bad night. Today, Sunday, the world looks a lot better to me. Maybe I appreciate it more in contrast because today is grey and gloomy but none the less, today was and is a beautiful day.

If Fibro has taught me anything it’s that no matter how bad it gets, if you just hold on long enough, you’ll come out on the other side. You won’t be cured. You won’t be pain free. But, you’ll be alive and the world will look a lot brighter because it won’t be as bad it was. I now have a new benchmark for “bad” and I don’t think I’ll forget about it any time soon. So, every day that’s better than Saturday will be a good day.